{"id":327506,"date":"2026-05-22T07:31:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T07:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/327506\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T07:31:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T07:31:17","slug":"an-east-bay-murder-seemed-like-it-would-never-be-solved-then-the-suspects-mom-called-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/327506\/","title":{"rendered":"An East Bay murder seemed like it would never be solved. Then the suspect’s mom called police"},"content":{"rendered":"

EMERYVILLE \u2014 Dexter Appleby had been shot and killed on a city sidewalk<\/a> late one night, and police had almost nothing to go by \u2014 just a grainy video showing the suspect in a particular jacket, and local gossip that the lead investigator didn\u2019t believe.<\/p>\n

That all changed in 2025, when a woman contacted Emeryville police to complete a task no mother would envy: she wanted to turn in her own son, James Wheeler, in the May 26, 2023 killing of Appleby, according to court records. Now Wheeler, 45, has been convicted of first degree murder and an enhancement for personal use of a firearm, prosecutors announced Thursday.<\/p>\n

By the time Wheeler was identified as a suspect in Appleby\u2019s killing, he was already well on his way to being convicted in another homicide. Both occurred in 2023. Nearly six months to the day after he killed Appleby, while working as a UPS driver<\/a>, Wheeler shot and killed Johnny James Johnson Jr. during a dispute in an Oakland parking lot<\/a>. Wheeler told a friend from a Santa Rita Jail phone that Johnson was trying to \u201cvehicular manslaughter me\u201d and jurors appeared to take those crimes seriously, convicting Wheeler only of voluntary manslaughter, a crime that involves \u201cimperfect\u201d self-defense, according to court records.<\/p>\n

But while Wheeler was on trial for Johnson\u2019s killing, his mother was working with Emeryville police to build a second murder case against him. She came forward in June 2025, just as the Johnson trial was set to start. In September 2025, prosecutors charged Wheeler in Appleby\u2019s killing, ending a nearly two-year investigation that initially seemed hopeless, according to court records.<\/p>\n

Appleby, 34, was shot and killed a little before midnight, on a dimly lit section of road near 41st Street and San Pablo Avenue in Emeryville. Tipsters came forward telling police it must have had to do with an archaic gang feud between near-defunct groups in North Oakland, but the leads went nowhere, prosecutors say. Desperate for leads, police in late 2023 released video from a surveillance camera showing an unidentified suspect walking from the scene. He was wearing a \u201cLanesplitters\u201d jacket but his face wasn\u2019t recognizable to Emeryville police.<\/p>\n

Wheeler\u2019s mom would later tell authorities she\u00a0recognized her son immediately but kept silent for years. Then in 2025, an intensely personal accusation was made against Wheeler by another family member, causing her to come forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is my son, James Wheeler, 100 percent,\u201d she allegedly said. \u201cI raised that boy since he was 5 years old.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defense attorneys argued the woman\u2019s \u201cbias\u201d should give anyone pause about whether she was telling the truth.<\/p>\n

But Wheeler\u2019s mom told police she recognized the suspected killer\u2019s jacket as a present she bought Wheeler years earlier. She also told police he \u201chad the same walk as his grandfather and her husband,\u201d prosecutors said in court filings, and that she recognized the manner in which he was walking in a way that a mother would. He appeared to be up to \u201cno good,\u201d she told police, according to court records.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis video shows me that he did something and he\u2019s just trying not to be noticed or he\u2019s on his way to do something,\u201d she reportedly told police.<\/p>\n

When Emeryville police began looking into Wheeler, they came across a second revelation: The suspected murder weapon had been sitting in an Oakland police locker for nearly two years<\/a>, ever since a raid on a Ney Avenue home by cops who were investigating Johnson\u2019s death. A ballistics test proved the connection. But Wheeler\u2019s attorney argued in court records there was no evidence Wheeler knew the gun was inside the home, which was frequented by lots of other people, and by the time police found in Appleby\u2019s homicide was months old.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese facts indicate that Mr. Wheeler was not in possession of this firearm that was linked to the homicide,\u201d Deputy Public Defender Erin Herrera wrote in court papers. \u201cIn fact, these issues point to other people having the firearm instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wheeler is scheduled to be sentenced in Johnson\u2019s killing on June 10, and in Appleby\u2019s on June 17, court records show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EMERYVILLE \u2014 Dexter Appleby had been shot and killed on a city sidewalk late one night, and police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[861,862,59207,98783,59208,864,865,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-327506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-bay-area-crime","tag-california-crime","tag-emeryville-murder","tag-emeryville-police","tag-emeryville-shooting","tag-oakland-murder","tag-oakland-shooting","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}