Joseph Wieder and Derek Simmons's Relationship

Joseph Wieder and Derek Simmons's Relationship combines everyday dependence with unusual personal loyalty: Derek repaired things at the professor’s house, while Wieder promised to keep looking after him and reminded him to take his medication. Derek later described Wieder as the only friend he had. That intimacy makes Derek’s discovery of Wieder’s body and his account of the night before it especially consequential, even as discrepancies with another witness complicate how confidently his version can be accepted.

A Practical Bond and a Promise of Care

Derek’s connection to Wieder included ordinary, concrete work. On the morning of December 21, 1987, he went to Wieder’s house to repair the downstairs bathroom toilet. Wieder was home packing for a holiday trip to the Midwest, but invited Derek to stay for lunch and ordered Chinese food. The scene presents their relationship not as a formal arrangement but as a familiar exchange of assistance and hospitality: Derek came to fix something, and Wieder made room for him at the table.

During lunch, Wieder told Derek that he had found suspicious footprints in the backyard snow. He also promised that he would continue to take care of Derek, even though he planned to leave the country for a while. The promise and its qualification matter together. Wieder’s impending absence did not, in Derek’s telling, cancel his responsibility toward him; instead, Wieder paired reassurance with a direct reminder that Derek should keep taking his medication. The care described here is specific and practical, rooted in Derek’s ongoing needs rather than in a grand declaration of affection.

Derek’s recollection also suggests that Wieder spoke to him about matters beyond household repairs. He remembered Wieder’s worry about the footprints and the professor’s plans, and later said he and Richard Flynn had spoken quite a lot while Richard worked in the library. Derek’s position around Wieder’s home and work therefore gave him access to both personal routines and potentially important details. The relationship’s closeness is established through these particular acts and conversations, not through a claim that Derek understood everything Wieder was doing.

The Last Day and the Discovery

After leaving Wieder’s house at about two in the afternoon, Derek went to the campus area to paint an apartment. That evening he returned home and had dinner, but became concerned about the professor’s condition and decided to check on him. At the house, he saw Laura Baines’s car and heard an argument inside. From beside the lake, he watched through the open curtains as Wieder, Laura, and Richard Flynn were in the living room; Richard stood over the seated pair and appeared to be shouting most loudly.

Derek said that Richard left, and that he went around to the front to catch him, but could not find him after an interval of only twenty or thirty seconds. He returned to the back of the house to check on Wieder. In Derek’s account, the professor was still in the living room and got up to open a window; Derek then left because he feared being seen. He noticed that Laura’s car was back nearby and assumed she had returned to spend the night with Wieder. This sequence places Derek close to the house at a crucial time, but his account of what he saw does not itself establish who later killed the professor.

Early the next morning, Derek went back to make sure Wieder was all right. When nobody answered the doorbell, he used his own set of keys and found Wieder’s body in the living room. The keys and the return visit underline the trust embedded in their relationship: Derek had access to the house and felt responsible enough to check on his friend again. The same access also made his presence and knowledge relevant to the investigation.

Friendship, Vulnerability, and Loyalty

Derek later described Wieder with an intimacy that was blunt rather than sentimental. Nearly thirty years after the crime, when asked why he had agreed to discuss it, he said, “The professor was the only pal I had.” His remark explains why the memory remained painful and why he had wanted to protect Wieder’s reputation. Derek said he had not told police about Laura because he feared newspapers would exploit the suggestion of a relationship and tarnish the professor’s name. He did tell them that Richard had been there and had argued with Wieder, but believed his own words would carry little weight before a jury.

The relationship also involved care in the other direction. Derek recalled that he was taking pills and explained that, although he went to a nearby bar after leaving Wieder’s backyard, he did not drink alcohol. He went because he was worried and did not want to be alone; at the bar he had a Coke or coffee. Its owner, a friend whom Derek sometimes helped with small repairs, confirmed that Derek had been there, providing the alibi that led police to stop treating him as a suspect. This episode places Derek’s vulnerability in the account without making it the whole relationship: Wieder had urged him to continue his medication, while Derek described seeking company rather than alcohol when distressed.

Conflicting Accounts and Narrative Significance

Derek’s testimony portrays the bond as loyal and close, but the investigation does not leave that testimony unchallenged. Frank Spoel also claimed to have been hiding in the backyard that evening, yet his account omitted Laura and described no argument between Richard and Wieder. Derek and Spoel thus offered incompatible versions of who was present and what happened. When confronted with the discrepancy, Derek suggested that Spoel might have forgotten or might be lying, and questioned why the interviewer would believe Spoel rather than him. The disagreement leaves the relationship’s emotional reality distinct from the evidentiary question: Derek may have cared deeply for Wieder, but affection alone cannot settle the accuracy of his recollection.

Wieder’s professional work adds another uncertain dimension. Susanne Johnson, who typed his completed manuscript about memory, said he had also been involved in a project concerning therapy for soldiers with post-traumatic stress. She recalled that his mental state seemed shaky toward the end of the experiments and that he had stopped giving her documents to type for about two months before his death. These details do not establish that the project affected Wieder’s relationship with Derek, or that it caused the murder. They do, however, set the professor’s promise of care and Derek’s recollection of his medication within a wider story concerned with treatment, memory, and vulnerability.

The relationship ultimately functions as both emotional history and a problem of testimony. Derek’s access to Wieder’s home, his return with the keys, and his description of Wieder as his sole friend make his account indispensable to understanding their bond. Yet the competing account of that night prevents intimacy from serving as proof. The friendship explains why Derek returned, why he grieved, and why he wished to protect Wieder’s name; it does not, by itself, resolve what happened in the house.