When a central Pennsylvania man goes on trial in the Christmas Eve slayings of his wife and two daughters, his younger brother will likely testify that he drove him to and from the scene of the crime, and later led authorities to the murder weapon hidden in the woods.
In exchange for that cooperation, Scott Wholaver will spend as much as 25 years in prison as a result of a plea bargain approved Thursday in Dauphin County Court by Judge John F. Cherry.
“He is very saddened by these tragic events,’ his attorney, Justin McShane, told reporters. ‘These were his nieces and his sister-in-law.”
Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against Ernest R. Wholaver Jr. for allegedly shooting his estranged wife, Jean Wholaver, 43, and their two daughters, Elizabeth, 15, and Victoria, 20, at the family’s Middletown home because, according to prosecutors, his daughters were about to testify that he sexually abused them. On Christmas Day, police found Victoria’s 9-month-old daughter physically unharmed, crying next to her mother’s body.
Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and shackled at his hands and feet, Scott Wholaver, 28, quietly repeated the word “guilty” when asked by a prosecutor how he pleaded to three counts of third-degree murder and one count each of burglary and conspiracy to commit burglary.
He was sentenced on one murder count and will be sentenced later on the other counts, McShane said. If he cooperates, the sentences on the other counts would run concurrently to the sentence he received Thursday so that he would serve no more than 25 years in prison, and as little as 12 1/2 years.
His older brother’s troubles do not end with the murder charges.
Ernest Wholaver, 43, was also accused last month of trying to hire a hit man while in prison to frame the father of Victoria’s child for the murders. The plan, authorities said, was to have the father murdered in a manner that looked as though he had committed suicide out of remorse for the December slayings.
Wholaver was charged with a single count of criminal solicitation to commit murder last month. Prosecutors entered an innocent plea on his behalf.
Prosecutors say they believe Wholaver killed his wife and daughters to eliminate the witnesses against him in a pending trial in which he was accused of molesting the girls.
Wholaver has pleaded innocent to the murder charges. A trial is scheduled for Sept. 8, and prosecutors hope to also press the criminal solicitation charge in that same proceeding.
His attorney, Spero T. Lappas, is seeking to have Scott Wholaver’s testimony kept out of a trial and said he keeps changing his story.
Scott Wholaver “is incapable of telling a consistent story because he is incapable of telling a true story,” Lappas told reporters.
But McShane, Scott Wholaver’s attorney, said his client’s story has remained consistent and detailed through 10 to 15 hours of interrogation by authorities.
During a February preliminary hearing in the case, Scott Wholaver testified that he drove his brother 100 miles from their parents’ home in Saint Benedict to Jean’s home on the night of the killings, supposedly so that his brother could retrieve his pet puppy.
Ernest Wholaver donned dark clothes, a hunting mask and two pairs of gloves, and returned to the parked truck a block away five or 10 minutes later in a “shaking, nervous” state, he testified.
Scott Wholaver also led police to a .22-caliber revolver in the woods of Clearfield County that prosecutors say may have been used to commit the murders. Police said the victims all were killed with .22-caliber slugs.
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