Dan was murdered in a service station robbery on April 12, 1965 when he was a 19 year old student at Northwest College.
The information here was taken from a lengthy published article in the May 2015 issue of The Seattle Met by James Ross Gardner.
Daniel Wolf, college student, wedding singer, and late-night gas station attendant, arrived at work Sunday night, April 11, 1965, with newfound enthusiasm. It was to be his last graveyard shift at the 24-hour Enco Service Station. Working all night till seven in the morning was the pits. The 19-year-old had landed a swing shift at another station closer to home and more compatible with his class schedule at Northwest College in Kirkland, where he was a sophomore studying psychology.
He pulled into the lubrication bay just before 11pm and was greeted by Gary Grasley, his coworker and friend. Dan was clearly in a good mood. “It was his last night,” Grasley explained to a newspaper reporter the next day, “and he was glad it was over.” The boys shared a love of music; Dan often sang at weddings at the Church by the Side of the Road. Both sported the same hairdo: dark, slicked-back coif a la early Elvis.
In fact, music permeated Daniel Wolf’s life. His father, George, a Boeing employee, filled the home with notes from his saxophone and had led the church orchestra for years. Dan’s siblings, two younger sisters and one younger brother, all played instruments. And holding the whole mellifluous clan together, nurturing its faith, was his mother, Ada. While they were a physically active family—father George was known to ride his bike 15 miles a day—the family was mostly recognized for its artistic proclivities (Daniel had been a regular in school plays at Tukwila’s Foster High) and strong Christian convictions.
Grasley left around 11:45 as Daniel settled in for a long night. Ninety minutes later, a regular customer, a nurse by the name of Margaret Gettman, pulled into the station for cigarettes and heard a moan coming from the back of the building. When she opened the door of a small storage room she discovered Dan on the ground, alive but covered in blood from head wounds. He was trying to stand up. “Lie down,” she said, comforting him. “Help is on the way.” After she called the police, she soaked paper towels in water and cleaned the blood from his face. He died an hour later in the ER at Harborview. “I went to pieces,” Gettman would later tell a jury.
Again, clues were limited. Roughly $60 was missing from the cash register and about $350 from a floor safe. Two shell casings from a .22 caliber pistol lie near the body.
Investigators determined that Daniel Wolf was shot from above, that he’d knelt in front of his killer just before the trigger was pulled, knelt as if in prayer.
Daniel’s death changed the Wolfs, the musical family with the bike-riding Boeing employee father. The kids stuck with music, two pursuing careers in music education. The oldest daughter, Marilyn, followed her brother Daniel’s dreams and became a social worker. But Ada and George divorced in 1973. Over the years the family split in different directions, to Alabama, Iowa, and other parts of Washington.
In 1995 Ada was, at age 71, working at a retirement home in Coupeville, on Whidbey Island, and was active in her church, Oak Harbor’s New Covenant Fellowship. In the fall of that year, a county tax auditor visited the retirement home for an assessment. He and Ada struck up a conversation and he mentioned that he was active in Kairos, a Christian prison ministry active inside Monroe’s Washington State Reformatory Unit.
Ada said that she knew of someone there rumored to be an active Christian and a model prisoner. Did the tax auditor happen to know an inmate named Tony Wheat? Of course he knew Tony. Tony was a good man.
Letters went back and forth until Ada’s pastor sent the prison superintendent and Wheat’s most recent lawyer, Leta Schattauer, a letter stating that Ada would like to meet with Tony.
Such a meeting was against prison policy. And besides, Tony’s friends in administration warned him against it: The meeting could turn into a confrontation, as unpredictable emotions poured out. Tony was unfazed. “I owe her this,” he said. The request went up the chain of command and the meeting was allowed. They would convene in a room reserved for parole hearings. In attendance would be Ada, her pastor, the prison chaplain, Tony, and Tony’s lawyer.
At 12:30pm, Friday, December 15, 1995, a guard brought Tony into the parole room. “I’m so nervous,” Tony said. But after introductions, he took the lead, telling Ada he was sorry for what he had done to her son. Ada reminded him that she had been in the courtroom on the day he was sentenced and that he had promised everyone there that if his life was spared he would commit the rest of it to serving others.
“Have you done that?” she asked.
“I have.” He spoke of his work helping improve life in prison.
“Can I ask you another question?” Ada said. She wanted to know her son’s last words. She had known Dan prayed out loud just before he died and she wanted to know what he prayed for.
Tony went deep into his mind and retrieved the words that he’d buried in the Jungle decades ago. He took a deep breath and then recited:
"Lord I pray that I have been the person you wanted me to be. Let my family know I love them. I also ask Lord that you forgive these men for what they are doing".
Tony had to stop because he was crying. Ada was crying too. He looked down at the table and realized they were holding hands.
“Tony,” she said, “I want you to know that I forgive you.”