REBECCA — Larry Wheeler is a troubled man. After his sister, Deborah Wideman, was murdered at her mother-in-law’s home in Rebecca on March 22, 2002, for the next three years Wheeler was consumed with finding out who was responsible for the triple homicide. It has been almost five years since Turner County Tax Assessor Tommy Joe Wideman, 51, his wife Deborah Wheeler Wideman, 48, and their pregnant daughter, Melissa, 22, were shot and killed and the home burned to cover the crime.

After three years of constant wondering and worrying, Wheeler said for the last two years he has tried to put the case aside and out of his mind.

“I’m bitter, I’m frustrated, I’m angry,” Wheeler said. “I try real hard not to think about it.”

He said he is sure he knows who killed his sister and her husband and daughter.

On Wednesday, as he ate lunch with his wife, Carene, at Peck’s restaurant in Ocilla, Wheeler said it is a torture to know who is responsible for the murders and then not be able to do anything about it.

When the case seemed stalled, Wheeler hired a private investigator from Jacksonville who was a retired FBI agent.

The investigator made it clear to Wheeler he would need the cooperation of Sheriff Randy Kendrick, so Wheeler sent Kendrick the investigator’s references. “Then I paid $500 for the investigator to come up and meet with the sheriff,” Wheeler said.

“The whole thing fell through,” Wheeler said. “Randy stopped it.”

Wheeler asked, “Why not take any help you can get?”

He sums up his feelings by saying, “You can’t fight the system by yourself.”

To understand what happened in the Wideman murder case, Wheeler said you have to understand the dynamics of the Wideman family.

At the time of the homicides, Mary Jo Wideman, in her 70s, was the matriarch of the Wideman family. Her husband, Charles Sr., was deceased. Her husband had been a farmer who had purchased land and real estate and had invested his money wisely. He had left Mary Jo Wideman a wealthy woman.

“She had a beach home in Fernandina Beach, and that is where she was when the murders happened,” Wheeler said.

Mary Jo and Charles Sr., had two sons: Charles Henry Wideman and Tommy Joe Wideman. Charles Henry is the oldest son.

Charles Henry and his wife Diane have two sons: Chip and Clay, who was killed in a car wreck on I-75.

Tommy Joe and his wife Deborah had one daughter, Melissa.

Wheeler said that Charles Henry was his father’s favorite and Tommy Joe was his mother’s favorite.

Just prior to the homicides, Deborah Wideman had opened a shop in downtown Ashburn. “Mary Jo had helped finance the business and helped get it open. Being a new business, it was a struggle financially, and Mary Jo helped with that,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler said Charles Henry looked at it as “spending his inheritance.”

Charles Henry Wideman said, “My mother signed on a $150,000 note for the Oak Tree gift shop. That was her involvement.”

Wideman said that since his mother’s death, he had paid the note off.

On the night on the homicides, Tommy Joe and his family were not staying in their home in Rebecca.

“Mary Jo had asked them to house sit while she was in Fernandina,” Wheeler said. “In the past, when she was away, there had been problems, and she asked Tommy Joe and Deborah to watch after things.”

“It was always my understanding that in a criminal investigation you start with the family and close friends and work out from there,” Wheeler said.

He said right after the homicides the GBI had asked him to make all of his family members available to take a lie detector test.

“We were ready to do that, but no one ever called,” he said. “Then, when I asked them why no one was taking a lie detector test, I was told, ‘The Widemans didn’t want to do it.’”

Wideman said, “I haven’t taken any lie detector test. The sheriff said that it was there if we wanted to take it and our lawyer said it was ridiculous to do it.”

“As far as I know, no one in the family was ever really questioned,” Wheeler said.

“Of course they (GBI) talked to us,” Wideman said. “They came by four or five times and talked with us.”

Mary Jo Wideman died one week after the homicides. Wheeler said before she died, she paid for the three funerals for her son, Tommy Joe, her daughter-in-law, Deborah, and her granddaughter, Melissa.

“That’s a lie,” Wideman said. “I paid it all out of her (Mary Jo’s) estate. Mother was in the hospital when they were killed. She had pneumonia, asthma and emphysema. She never got out of her hospital room.”

Wideman said that when he received the check for the loss of his mother’s home, he paid the entire funeral bill. “We had 60 days to pay it or they would start charging 18 percent interest,” Wideman said. “They (the Wheelers) said they would pay their part but they never did.”

Mary Jo Wideman’s home, where the murders occurred, has been razed. The home was sitting on 100 acres of land. Half of the land had been given to Tommy Joe and half of the land had been given to Deborah.

Now there is a lawsuit.

The Mary Jo Wideman Estate is suing the Deborah Wideman Estate.

“In other words, Charles Henry, who is the executor of his mother’s estate, is suing me, executor of Deborah’s estate,” Wheeler said.

“He (Charles Henry) wants us to pay for all of Deborah’s funeral expenses and half of Melissa’s,” Wheeler said. “And he wants the 50 acres that belonged to Deborah.”

“Everything Tommy Joe and Deborah had was given to them by my mother,” Wideman said.

Wheeler said he has had one small life insurance policy to pay on a large amount of debt left by his sister.

“I paid the local debts first, then the credit cards and the rest went unpaid,” Wheeler said.

Wideman said, “The first thing they were supposed to pay was the funeral bill and then any secured debts. They didn’t do that.”

Wheeler said that he and Charles Henry no longer speak.

“That’s no secret,” he said.

“I don’t understand them,” Wideman said. “They act like they are the only ones who lost someone. They were never close to us, or to Tommy Joe and Deborah as far as we knew.”



To contact reporter Jana Cone, call 382-4321, ext. 208.