HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - A central Pennsylvania man who shot and killed his estranged wife and two daughters lost a bid to get his three convictions and death sentences overturned.
Fifty-four-year-old Ernest Wholaver Jr. was convicted of murdering his wife and two of their daughters. Police found the victims shot to death in their Middletown home on Christmas Day in 2002.
A Dauphin County judge on Thursday rejected defense claims that Wholaver didn’t receive effective counsel at his 2004 trial and that prosecutors didn’t turn over evidence.
Wholaver was sentenced to death after being convicted by a county jury of killing his 43-year-old wife Jean, 15-year-old daughter Elizabeth and 20-year-old Victoria.
Prosecutors argued at trial that Wholaver committed the murders to keep his daughters from testifying that he raped them.
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