“Newark [Del.] police reported Wednesday that John P. Wheeler III was spotted at 8:30 p.m. Dec. 30 as he wandered through a DuPont Co. building, apparently confused and disoriented — filling in five more hours leading up to the discovery of his body in a Wilmington landfill,” The News Journal of Wilmington reports this morning.

The newspaper adds that “the former Pentagon official’s body was found about 13 hours later, on New Year’s Eve, lying in refuse at Wilmington’s Cherry Island Landfill.”

As we reported yesterday, “sad tales” about the 66-year-old Wheeler’s last days are coming to light. Before being spotted in the office building, he had been at a Wilmington parking facility looking for his car — though it was parked blocks away. As we said, surveillance video shows him walking around holding a shoe in one hand. His death has been ruled a homicide, but authorities have not yet released a cause. Copyright 2011 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.