(WHTM) — The man who killed his wife and two daughters on Christmas Eve more than two decades ago remains on death row in Pennsylvania.
Ernest Wholaver Jr. remains in SCI Somerset 22 years after Jean Wholaver and her daughters, 20-year-old Victoria and 15-year-old Elizabeth, were found shot to death inside their home on North Union Street in Middletown on December 24, 2002.
Victoria’s 9-month-old daughter was also found alone inside the house.
“It’s an awful case,” Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo told abc27’s Ali Lanyon in 2022 on the case’s 20th anniversary. “Any time you have a family wiped out, children murdered, it’s horrifying. And it happened on Christmas Eve, and you had a 9-month-old placed in danger. But for the concerns of the extended family and the diligence of police, the 9-month-old would have died, too.”
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Wholaver Jr. also faced accusations of raping his daughters and trying to hire a hitman to kill the 9-month-old’s father. The person he thought was a hitman was actually an undercover agent.