One possibility is that Wheeler hid in a dumpster to keep away from the cold. His death would then be accidental. While not outside the realm of possibility, this theory has two problems. First, investigators traced matching partial DNA to a dumpster in Newark, DE, 14 miles away from his last-seen location in Wilmington. It struck investigators as odd that he'd go all the way to Newark just to hide in a dumpster (though he may have taken a train there). The other issue with this theory is that the medical examiner determined that Wheeler died from blunt force trauma and that the likely cause of his death was homicide.