Rude Awakening-Story Overview

 

Rude Awakening
Story Overview

The reporters said it was “a sexy story.” Church, sex, greed, adultery, blood, a defenseless child with Down Syndrome, a geeky journalist and church organist, a manipulative and narcissistic woman, and a well-known and well-liked Knoxville businessman who didn't see it coming...all the elements that garnered column inches and ratings, spurring readership and attracting viewers.

In the early morning hours of June 8, 1994, a flyspeck of a man, dressed in black, covetous and possessed by passion, clutched a knife in his gloved hands and stood above another man who slept quietly in his own bed. In those critical seconds as the knife descended towards its target, the sleeping man suddenly awoke and somehow deflected the blade away from his throat. The cold metal sliced through his earlobe and grazed the side of his neck.

Wide awake and distinctly aware his life was on the line, Rob Whedbee engaged the black figure in a struggle for control of the weapon, and called to his wife for help. He worried, “Was she already dead, and what about his little girl sleeping down the hall?” As the battle ensued, the two rolled to the floor, and Rob, the larger man, was able to maneuver behind his attacker and clutch him by the wrists. Still the man in black continued to swing the knife, cutting and nicking the man he had planned to kill.

When Rob's wife Lisa finally appeared in the doorway to their bedroom, wielding an aluminum softball bat, he felt a moment of relief. He called to her again for help, yet she stood there, silent and ghostly in the dim light of the hallway. His brief sense of relief quickly dissipated as the man he held shouted to her, “You've got to do it. Do it now!” Stunned by disbelief, he clearly understood the betrayal at hand. He was on his own. He also knew that voice and the black figure was no longer a stranger to him.

The morning light revealed the truth of the odd tale. Lisa Outlaw Whedbee and her lover had carefully planned the demise of her husband, Rob. The case was immediately dubbed “The Tennessee Love Triangle,” and the minute it hit the AP wire, the media descended upon the peaceful, Tennessee city of Knoxville. CNN, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and People magazine were just a few of the news outlets vying for interviews with almost anyone who might have a connection to the story.

Even when the O.J. Simpson case hit the news five days later, media interest in the attempted murder of a respected Knoxville business man remained high. Tabloid news shows saw a good story and before long the cameras were rolling for segments on A Current Affair, Hard Copy, Dateline, City Confidential, and Snapped, AND for the first time in Tennessee legal history, the doors of justice swung open for Court TV, and legal pundits were summoned to provide commentary about the convoluted proceedings.

The provocative trial was a fiasco, as a sharp defense attorney vilified the victim and wooed the jury, hoping the lies that were served up would be accepted as the truth. The prosecutor was “old school” and hammered out the facts and evidence over and over. The seven men and five women, called upon to mete out justice, were confused, and after their decision they faced the truth: Maybe they had gotten it wrong. The outcome of the case still has people across the country shaking their heads in disbelief.

It's been 19 years since that night, but native Knoxvillians remember the story. The episodes on City Confidential and Oxygen's Snapped are still broadcast frequently, and the showings always elicit a flurry of emails from across the country, and even some from Europe, all expressing empathy for the man who almost lost his life that night and for the innocent children who were forever abandoned by a cunning woman who did not deserve to be called a mother.

Rude Awakening explores the events leading up to the crime, the bizarre account of the attempted murder, and an in-depth post-mortem of the legal fiasco that followed.