Probe Stymied in Shooting of Former Officer

Authorities in rural Spokane, Wash., announced Thursday that they have reached an impasse in their investigation into whether two armed gunmen shot Doyle Wheeler, or whether the former San Diego police lieutenant staged the bizarre incident to win publicity for himself and cause public distrust of the San Diego Police Department.

Stevens County Sheriff Richard Andres said the last slim investigative lead his office will follow is to have a brief telephone tape recording analyzed to determine, if possible, whether the person who called the Police Department from the Wheeler home moments before the shooting was one of the gunmen or Wheeler himself.

Other than that, Andres said, the case is being placed in his inactive file.

“We’ve done everything we possible can,” the sheriff said. “It was certainly a difficult case. It was one of those very difficult to prove.

‘No Question He Was Shot’

“But there’s no question he was shot. That’s irrefutable. We recovered a bullet from under a pillow where he indicated he was shot. And the emergency medical technicians who arrived at his house had to untie him.”

In a telephone interview from his home, Wheeler said the sheriff’s office never really believed his story that that two men entered his home last April, tied him up, tortured him and shot him once behind the ear.

“A crime investigation was started, but it was never completed properly,” he said. “If a rational person stops and looks at this, they have to realize how frustrating this entire thing has been.”

He has alleged that he was attacked because of his testimony on behalf of Sagon Penn in Penn’s celebrated trial last year for shooting two police officers. On Thursday, Wheeler contended that San Diego police officials “lied and interfered” in the Stevens County investigation to discredit him with the sheriff’s office.

“They waged a campaign against me,” he said. “All they did was attack me, attack me personally.”

But Andres said the San Diego Police Department cooperated in the investigation. And he said Wheeler was unable to identify suspects from among police officers who work in the San Diego Police Narcotics Street Team and whose descriptions were somewhat similar to composite drawings of Wheeler’s alleged assailants.

“Doyle Wheeler thought they might be responsible,” Andres said. “But photographs of those individuals who came any way close to the composites were sent up, and he examined them all. And he was unable to identify any of them.”

The sheriff said that as many as 2,000 man-hours have gone into investigating the April 19 incident. Wheeler was alone at his home when the shooting occurred.

Left to review is the tape-recorded telephone conversation. Andres said that, moments before the shooting occurred, someone in the Wheeler home called the Narcotics Street Team in San Diego and asked to speak with Police Agent Donovan Jacobs.

Not Optimistic on Analysis

Jacobs, who is white, was shot and wounded by Penn, a black man, in a 1985 confrontation that left another officer dead and a civilian ride-along wounded. Wheeler later testified that Jacobs was prejudiced against blacks and was an overly aggressive officer.

Andres said he is not optimistic that a technical analysis of the tape will help the case. He said most tape experts, including those from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, require at least 20 spoken words to positively match them with someone’s voice.

The telephone tape contains only nine words. Nevertheless, Andres said, experts will be asked to compare it to another tape of Wheeler’s voice.

Sheriff’s officials have said there is some speculation that Wheeler made the phone call, possibly in an attempt to prove later that his “assailants” were connected with the San Diego Police Department.

Asked if it were plausible that gunmen sent from the Police Department would call the same Police Department from the scene of the crime, Andres said: “It wouldn’t make any sense. I wouldn’t believe it.”

Wheeler insisted that he heard one of the gunmen talking on the phone after they tied him up and just before they shot him. “They’re not going to match my voice on the tape,” he said.

But the sheriff said Wheeler has not been totally cooperative with his investigators, particularly in his refusal to undergo a lie-detector test.

Wheeler said he refused because polygraph examinations are not totally reliable.

But Andres said that, had Wheeler taken a lie-detector test, it probably would have shown right away whether he was being truthful about the shooting. And the sheriff said the test was considered crucial in light of Wheeler’s past psychological problems and his early retirement due to stress from the San Diego Police Department.

“We would have concluded our investigation considerably sooner,” the sheriff said.

Wheeler said he still hopes that evidence will be found to vindicate him.

“Maybe the truth will eventually come out,” he said. “I really, really hope so.”