In May of 2021, the National Park Service received a call that a woman had fallen over the Grandview Overlook at New River Gorge National Park. After days of searching with rappel lines, infrared cameras, and dogs, they didn't find anyone. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Phoebe Judge and what is Criminal Plus?
Hi, it's Phoebe. I wanted to let you know that on Tuesday, April 8th, I'm hosting a trivia night on Zoom along with Lauren Spohr. Our whole team is putting together questions. And of course, there'll be prizes. If you'd like to be there, join Criminal+. You can learn more about it at thisiscriminal.com slash plus. Here's the show.
Chapter 2: What was Operation Ranch Hand and its impact?
Between 1962 and 1971, the United States government sprayed more than 19 million gallons of herbicides in Vietnam. Parts of Cambodia and Laos were also sprayed. The military wanted to strip the leaves from trees, making it hard for the Viet Cong to hide from U.S. military airplanes, and to kill all the crops, eliminating sources of food.
It was called Operation Ranch Hand, and its informal motto was, Only you can prevent a forest. The most common herbicide was Agent Orange, produced for the U.S. government by several companies, including the Monsanto Corporation and Dow Chemical. Agent Orange got its name because its barrels were marked with an orange line. And it makes people very sick.
By some estimates, 400,000 Vietnamese people died from exposure. The Vietnamese Red Cross estimates that 3 million people were harmed, including hundreds of thousands of babies born with birth defects. In 1988, an Air Force researcher wrote a letter to Senator Tom Daschle, quote, We were aware of the potential for damage.
However, because the material was to be used on the enemy, none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide. But a lot of U.S. soldiers were exposed, an estimated 2.6 million. In 1991, Congress began to offer funding and treatment to American soldiers who served in Vietnam and had certain diseases.
And they later introduced a special program to help children whose parents were deployed to Vietnam and whose exposure may have caused the child to be born with spina bifida, a condition where the backbone and spinal cord don't properly develop. Those children can get benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs. One of them was Kelly Wriston.
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Chapter 3: Who is Kelly Wriston and what fraud occurred?
She was a VA beneficiary. She had spina bifida. She received in-home health care. Her home health care services were not skilled services. They were basic meeting needs of the beneficiary, such as helping her shower, brushing her hair, preparing meals for her, cleaning her home, things of that nature.
Tom Dominski first heard about Kelly Wriston in 2017. He's the resident agent in charge at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Inspector General in Pittsburgh. He was brought in because something didn't seem right with the way the health care worker, Julie Wheeler, was billing the government.
Chapter 4: How did Julie Wheeler commit fraud against the VA?
She was billing the VA for eight hours a day, seven days a week, which would be 56 hours of care per week.
Kelly Wriston and Julie Wheeler already knew each other.
It was actually her sister. So Julie Wheeler was claiming to VA that she provided home health care services for her sister. However, some witnesses claimed that maybe she was providing 10 to 15 hours of care per week.
The beneficiary's husband acknowledged to us that through the course of a year approximately, he would estimate that Julie Wheeler only provided a total of eight hours of care over a year.
She was being paid $736 a day.
And it was right around $470,000 total that she had received from VA.
And she was never there.
Basically, no, ma'am.
So tell me a little bit more about how did she get caught? I mean, how did the red flag happen?
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Chapter 5: What led to the search at Grandview Overlook?
My name is Eric Gose. I'm an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of West Virginia.
In February of 2020, Julie Wheeler pled guilty to federal health care fraud. Her sentencing was scheduled for June. She was facing up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine and would be ordered to pay restitution, potentially as much as $469,000.
But at least part of the structure of the plea agreement was so that the defense lawyer could argue that she should receive a lesser sentence even than the guidelines suggested. And that was at least part of the strategy, as told to me by defense counsel.
A couple of weeks before her sentencing, on May 31st, she and her husband, Rodney Wheeler, and their 17-year-old son visited the Grand View Overlook in the New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia.
This is a scenic overlook. There's a protective fence around the overlook, and it captures just a beautiful view of sort of a horseshoe bend of the new river. And it's a very steep drop-off, so it's nearly 1,000 feet from the overlook down to the river, and it's a series of ledges. It's ledges and deciduous trees. It's very beautiful in the fall in a very steep area.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. We'll be right back.
It's been a rough week for your retirement account, your friend who imports products from China for the TikTok shop and also Hooters. Hooters has now filed for bankruptcy, but they say they are not going anywhere.
Last year, Hooters closed dozens of restaurants because of rising food and labor costs.
Hooters is shifting away from its iconic skimpy waitress outfits and bikini days, instead opting for a family-friendly vibe. They're vowing to improve the food and ingredients, and staff is now being urged to greet women first when groups arrive.
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Chapter 6: What was the outcome of the search for Julie Wheeler?
It was explained to us that there were three of them, a juvenile and Rodney and Julie. were just walking. They had parked in an area called the North Overlook, and they had walked a trail that connects the two overlooks.
And according to Rodney, he had walked with his family almost to the overlook when he turned and went back to get the vehicle to move it around the area set up so that there's two parking lots. And so he's basically parked fairly far away from the main Grandview Overlook.
And his statement is that he went back to get the vehicle because Julie and the juvenile were thirsty and he was going to move the vehicle closer because he felt they were tired too. And so according to Rodney, he goes back to get the vehicle. He drives to the main overlook. He exits his vehicle and starts to walk out the trail to the main overlook.
And that's when he's met by the juvenile coming up the trail reporting that his mother has fallen off the cliff. And then he went on to say that the juvenile and the mother had went around a barrier to sit and almost dangle their feet from the cliff edge. And when they thought they heard Rodney coming back, they wanted to get back on the proper side of the fence.
And that when Julie stood up, she noticed that she had dropped the earring and bent to pick the earring up. And when she did, she fell from the cliff.
How did the search begin?
So we put folks in the end of the woods with just headlamps and packs and just sent them walking down around the trail. We did have a rescue team with ropes respond, and they were able to anchor ropes to the top and repel from the cliff down to where... we would see this impact zone.
And so we had a mixture of folks walking, you know, in kind of it's a very thick area so that just getting folks in there was a little bit troublesome because they had to, you know, work their way through this thick underbrush.
And it was dark.
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