A Middletown mother and her two daughters were shot execution style in their home on the 800 block of North Union Street, prompting police to seek their estranged husband and father who had recently been accused of molesting the girls, authorities said last night.
Dauphin County District Attorney Edward M. Marsico Jr. said late yesterday that police were seeking Earnest “Earnie” Wholaver for questioning in the deaths of his wife, Jean Wholaver, and their daughters, Victoria, 20, and Elizabeth, 15. A nine month-old baby girl, also found in the home, was unharmed.
Marsico declined to call Wholaver a suspect at what he termed the early stage of the investigation.
The three homicides were among four slayings being investigated yesterday in Dauphin County.
Harrisburg police are investigating a homicide that occurred in the city’s Allison Hill yesterday. Police said a man was shot near 15th and Market streets yesterday afternoon. Officials did not release the victim’s name. No additional information was available last night.
In the Middletown slayings, Coroner Graham Hetrick said the three female victims had yet to be positively identified by family members, who were en route from the Johnstown area. But Marsico confirmed that police were proceeding under the tentative identification that the three victims were Jean Wholaver and her daughters.
Authorities do not know exactly when the crime took place. Neighbors said they last saw the three on Monday and that they were due to leave for Johnstown sometime Tuesday. There were also no signs of a disturbance or any reports of shots Tuesday night, when many neighbors said they were visiting each other on Christmas Eve and watching the snow fall from their front porches.
Hetrick said the victims could have been dead for as long as 15 to 20 hours before they were found Christmas morning by Middletown police. The cause of death was gunshot wounds.
“These were not random shootings,” Hetrick said. They were execution-style.”
Officers checked the home about 8:30 a.m. yesterday after relatives in Johnstown called police when the three didn’t arrive as expected.
When no one answered the door, an officer entered the home through the garage and found one victim on the first floor and two more on the second floor.
Officers also found an infant,, believed to be 9 month-old Madison, the daughter of Victoria. The baby was unhurt and turned over to Dauphin County Children and Youth, police said.
Police have been unable to locate Earnest Wholaver, described as being in his early 40s. He is out on bail on charges that he molested his daughters. He is being sought for questioning in the deaths, officials said.
Neighbors awoke to the flashing lights of police cars, ambulances and yellow police tape that was strung around the Wholaver house like an out-of-place decoration.
“What a rotten Christmas” said one neighbor, who added that his family was so sick about the homicides, that they could not eat their Christmas turkey.
It was not, the first sign of trouble at the Wholaver home.
Wholaver had been barred from contacting his wife and daughter as a condition of his release on $100,000 bond on charges that he had molested his daughters.
Middletown District Justice David Judy bound the sexual abuse charges on to Dauphin County Court, after a preliminary hearing held several months ago. Judy also continued Whotaver’s bail, meaning Wholaver would remain free until the trial. Judy last night declined to talk about specifics of the molestation case.
Marsico said a trial in the case was to be held soon in Dauphin County Court. He added that it was not unusual that Wholaver would remain free on bail until the trial.
After his arrest, Wholaver, a machinist at a shop near Harrisburg International Airport, was barred from returning to the house, and his wife had the locks changed, according to neighbors.
Avoiding all contact with’ his family was also a condition of his bail, Marsico said. But he’ did not know if there was also a protection from abuse order against Wholaver.
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