Man pleads guilty to family murders
He was sentenced to life in prison for the 2006 killings of six relatives in Lancaster County.
LANCASTER - A man who beat and stabbed six relatives to death and hid their bloody bodies in the basement as he partied and went on a shopping spree pleaded guilty to murder yesterday and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Jesse D. "Jay" Wise avoided the possibility of execution, prosecutors said, because surviving family members asked them not to seek it.
Prosecutors said Wise, 22, killed his grandmother, two aunts, two cousins and an uncle over a four-day period in April 2006 and left their bodies in the basement while continuing to spend time in the home the family shared in Leola. The youngest victim, cousin Chance Wise, was 5.
Neither the state nor the defense could suggest a motive for the killings. "I think that's going to be one of the mysteries we're stuck with," prosecutor Craig Stedman said.
In court, Wise expressed remorse. At one point, he appeared to be crying as he said he was praying for forgiveness.
"Hate is like a cancer that slowly devours your heart and your soul," he said. "I just want to make it clear I didn't understand what life was about, what it was. . . . I know what it is to be lost."
Wise's grandfather Jessie L. Wise operates an excavating business in New York. Jessie Wise has said he moved the family to Pennsylvania Dutch country to keep the children away from the city's bad influences.
Stedman said authorities believe the killings occurred from April 8 to 11. Jesse Wise used the victims' money to go on a shopping spree after they died. Prosecutors said he also went to parties and saw girlfriends during the murder spree.
Wise also pleaded guilty to attempted homicide and was sentenced to 10 to 20 years for driving toward New York with the intention of killing his grandfather. That plot was foiled when his dead grandmother's Mercedes-Benz broke down on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, police said.
Defense attorneys said longstanding chronic depression and substance abuse rendered Wise mentally ill.
The victims were his grandmother Emily Wise, 64; aunts Wanda Wise, 45, and Agnes A. Wise, 43; cousins Chance and Skyler Wise, 19; and uncle Jessie James Wise, 17.