On the morning of August 2nd, 2006, Kathy Wone packed an overnight bag for her husband of three years, Robert. He was working late that night, and rather than make the trip home to the Virginia suburbs, he arranged to spend the evening at the DC home of his college friend, Joe Price.
An up-and-coming attorney, the 32 year-old Wone had already compiled an impressive resume - and an even more impressive collection of friends. Newly appointed as general counsel at Radio Free Asia, the future attorney general, Eric Holder, was a former colleague. On that Wednesday morning, Kathy kissed her husband goodbye, for the very last time. 
At 10:30pm, Wone arrived at Price's upscale DuPont Circle townhouse. Less than 90 minutes later, Wone was dead with three stab wounds to the torso. Some four years after this horrific crime, that's about all that's certain.
From the outset, everything about the case felt off. The three gay housemates - Price, his domestic partner Victor Zaborsky and housemate Dylan Ward - said an unknown and unseen intruder was responsible for attacking the heterosexual Wone. But investigators never really bought that story.
Years passed, the investigation languished, the story fell from news headlines and Robert's murder a cold case. But his slaying and the questions around it had all the hallmarks of a typical DC scandal: bold face names, rumors of sex, and alternative lifestyles. Yet it lacked a media frenzy.
Then in October 2008, an arrest warrant was issued and an indictment became public. Accused in connection with Robert's murder, was one the housemates, Dylan Ward. Ward was part of a self-described gay family living in a polyamorous relationship on Swann Street.
Ward was not accused of murder however, but was charged with conspiracy, evidence tampering and obstruction of justice. The allegations all but burned up the 14-page indictment, but few noticed. It was the final days of campaign 2008. Price and Zaborsky were later indicted on the same charges.
Prosecutors alleged Robert was restrained, injected with a paralytic drug, sexually assaulted, stabbed, showered, redressed and placed into bed before the housemates called authorities...all in less than an hour and a half. Although the prosecution has walked back some of those initial charges, the 79 minutes between Wone's arrival and the 911 call at 11:49pm, still remain a mystery.
Weeks after that first indictment hit, the four of us sat down to dinner, and while the rest of DC was focused on the new President-elect, the prosecution's charges were top of mind with us. Loosely defined as a gay family ourselves, we all worked in the media business in some capacity: journalist, speech writer, PR exec and digital media consultant. The conversation turned to the puzzling and shocking aspects of this crime that occurred in our neighborhood. Implicated were three gay defendants that in many ways looked a lot like us.
We spent the evening poring over the document, the principals' relationships, and by war-gaming dozens of possible scenarios. As communications professionals, we were struck by one fact, the lack of buzz on the streets. Where was the in-depth investigative reporting? We pretty much knew why: shrinking newsroom budgets made it nearly impossible for any outlet to devote resources to a case that at best, moved at a glacial pace. OK, but where at a minimum was the blog?
Two days later, almost on a lark, a rudimentary blog with our first primitive posts went up. With limited blogging, legal or criminal justice experience, we naively launched a site that was meant to be a simple clearinghouse on the crime. We collected the legal docs, profiled principals, aggregated the media coverage and offered commentary on the investigation and legal maneuvering.
Two of us brought years of C-SPAN experience to the project which dictated an editorial framework based on transparency and an unbiased approach. But even with that home field advantage, we didn't know what we didn't know. We were certain of one thing: it was near impossible for us to compete head-to-head with the MSM or gay press, those who wear press tags for a living. Still, we thought we could fulfill some small role, no matter how undefined it was at the time.
A few months went by and the site evolved. We had some status hearings under our belt, a dozen trips to the clerk's office and a roster of sources we developed, many who were close to both Robert and the defendants. We chased leads, broke news, published undisclosed documents, and grew a community as committed as ourselves, hell bent on answering the question: who murdered Robert Wone?
While finding our footing as courthouse cub reporters, our mission began to evolve again; we became a resource to the MSM. We helped one journalist with the layout of the crime scene from real estate photos we found online; we shared sources that we mined with another. When the prosecutor raised the name of Price's brother, Michael, we had the only footage of him; shot on the courthouse steps a year earlier. The TV correspondents had the video in time for their newscasts. Last week, while videotapes of the defendants' interrogations were played in court, we rescued several reporters from writers' cramp by sharing with them the official transcripts we'd posted the month before.
We met a credibility threshold too, with DC Superior Court. Before the trial, we requested to live blog the proceedings. That request, the first from a non-news organization, was not granted, but we were given two reserved seats in the media section of Judge Lynn Leibovitz' courtroom; seats we've occupied for the last three weeks; seats we're proud to share with our colleagues in the working press.
Now, with 400 posts that generated 25,000 comments and nearly 1.5 million page views, we're inside the weave of the investigation and are providing gavel-to-gavel coverage of the month-long trial.
With the trial now in its fourth week, the government is wrapping their case, then the defense team will rebut. The verdict in this bench trial could detonate around the Fourth of July holiday, and our eighteen month journey will start to wind down. Come verdict day, the courtroom will be packed with journalists, many of whom we now count as friends, yet we still hope to be the first to file the bulletin nonetheless. Maybe we can and do compete with the MSM after all.
-Doug Johnson, Craig Brownstein, David Greer and Michael Kremin, editors of WhoMurderedRobertWone.com