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The 2001 killing of 21-year-old Centreville High School graduate Danny Petrole exposed a lucrative drug network operating around Centreville and Chantilly—and ultimately produced a death sentence that federal courts overturned amid findings of prosecutorial misconduct.

Petrole was shot outside his Bristow townhouse on March 15, 2001. Owen Barber IV, then 21, fired 10 rounds from a 9 mm Smith & Wesson through the passenger-side window of Petrole’s car, striking him with nine bullets. Barber discarded the gun in a nearby intersection as he drove away.

Barber and Centreville resident Justin Wolfe, who was nearly 20, soon left Virginia. Barber traveled to California, while Wolfe went to Florida. Both were arrested that April.

The murder stunned Petrole’s family and community. His father was a former Secret Service agent living in Virginia Run, and Petrole attended Northern Virginia Community College while working part time delivering flowers.

But investigators searching Petrole’s property uncovered evidence of a massive drug business. They found $965 in his wallet and $17,460 in his car trunk. Inside his townhouse were guns, $120,366 in cash, and ecstasy and marijuana valued at nearly $500,000.

Evidence later showed that Petrole spent about $360,000 each month purchasing marijuana from Seattle and earned between $100,000 and $140,000 monthly by reselling it. Authorities said roughly a dozen young dealers in Fairfax and Prince William counties had become wealthy as hundreds of thousands of dollars regularly moved through the operation.

Petrole and Barber sold marijuana. Court testimony also portrayed Wolfe as a high-level dealer who bought marijuana from both men and distributed it to others. Barber and Wolfe graduated from Chantilly High School in 1998, the same year Petrole graduated from Centreville High School.

Much of the testimony at Barber’s and Wolfe’s trials in Prince William County Circuit Court came from local young people who acknowledged using or selling drugs.

Barber initially faced the death penalty for Petrole’s killing. He testified against Wolfe, claiming he had not known Petrole and had murdered him because Wolfe hired him. In exchange for his testimony, prosecutors reduced Barber’s charge from capital murder to first-degree murder.

A jury convicted Wolfe of capital murder in January 2002 because murder for hire was a capital offense. Five months later, he received the jury’s recommended death sentence, along with 33 years in prison—30 years for distributing drugs and three for using a firearm during a felony. Barber was sentenced to 38 years in prison on Aug. 6, 2002.

Wolfe consistently maintained his innocence. Barber’s testimony was the only evidence directly connecting him to the murder.

That case began to unravel during a November 2010 evidentiary hearing in federal court in Norfolk, where U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson considered evidence that had not been presented at Wolfe’s trial.

In July 2011, Jackson overturned Wolfe’s convictions and sentences. He found that prosecutors had failed to disclose evidence suggesting Barber and Petrole knew each other before the killing. Statements from a confidential informant also indicated that Barber owed Petrole money and that Petrole had placed a hit on Barber—information that could have been used to challenge Barber’s account.

In August 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the ruling that Wolfe’s due-process rights had been violated and that his convictions and sentences should be vacated.

Judge Robert B. King wrote in an Aug. 16, 2012, court document that a police report showed Prince William County Detective Samson Newsome had told Barber he could avoid the death penalty by implicating Wolfe—before Barber first claimed Wolfe hired him.

King concluded that Barber had a reason to misrepresent what happened. He also wrote that evidence concerning Wolfe’s alleged drug dealing was unavoidably tainted by the prosecutorial misconduct in the case.

Wolfe’s cousin Jason Darne, another 1998 Chantilly High School graduate who knew Barber well, said he and friends questioned Barber’s accusation from the beginning. Darne said Wolfe appeared shocked by Petrole’s death and disputed the characterization that Wolfe fled to Florida, saying the two had already planned to attend a Super Street car show in Daytona.

According to Darne, Wolfe, his girlfriend, and friends were spending time at the beach and eating seafood when U.S. marshals arrived.

Darne said he and others later wrote Barber in prison, urging him to tell the truth about Wolfe. At the 2010 Norfolk hearing, Barber testified that he wanted to “do the right thing,” Darne recalled. Wolfe’s relatives continued hoping the overturned convictions would eventually allow him to return home.