By Seamus McGraw
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| Leola, Penn |
April 13, 2006
LEOLA, Pa. (Crime Library) — For the second time in less than a year, residents of Pennsylvania's once rural and bucolic Lancaster County are coping with grief and the unrelenting spotlight of national media attention, in the aftermath of brutal and bloody domestic multiple murder.
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| Jesse Dee Wise |
Jesse Dee Wise, 21 of Leola was charged early Thursday with six counts of criminal homicide in the deaths of six members of his family, including his grandmother during a brutal attack last weekend, according to West Lampeter Township Police. In a police affidavit filed Thursday, authorities said the 21-year-old bludgeoned three of the victims, presumably with a bloodstained pipe later recovered from a guitar case inside the house. The rest, authorities allege, were strangled.
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| East Lampeter Police patch |
The victims, spanning three generations of the Wise family, ranged in age from 5 to 64.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that Wise confessed. It was not immediately clear what triggered the young man's alleged murder spree, though authorities had quickly focused on him as a suspect, and reportedly spent much the night questioning him.
Investigators first learned of the slayings early Wednesday afternoon, when the patriarch of the family, Jesse Wise, 60, a contractor who was away on a job in New York, telephoned to say that he was worried because he had not heard from his wife and family since Friday.
Police went to the house to check, and accompanied by a young friend of the family, they found the first four bodies in the basement. According to the affidavit, the young friend had made it halfway down the basement stairs when he came across the scene, and shouted to police, "They're all dead!"
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