Jesse Dee Wise will spend the rest of his life in prison after admitting in court today that he killed six members of his family last year and was planning to kill a seventh.

Wise, 22, dressed in a red prison jumpsuit, agreed to plead guilty to all the charges stemming from the largest mass murder in Lancaster County history in return for a sentence of six consecutive terms of life in prison without parole.

The defendant, in an eloquent, tearful statement he read in Lancaster County Court this morning, apologized for the crimes and said he was in disbelief at his actions.

"It's hard for me to come to terms with the gravity of the crimes I committed," Wise said during the 10-minute-long statement, during which he paused numerous times to sob quietly.

Wise, saying his words and his life sentence "can never come close to equaling the crimes against my family," told Judge David Ashworth that he does not seek favor with the court.

"I bear the guilt of my crimes fully on my shoulders," Wise said. "I am extremely sorry for what I've done. I can't fathom the pain I've inflicted on the victims, both directly and indirectly.

"I was confused, misguided, deluded and lastly deranged," Wise said.

In presenting the plea agreement this morning, Assistant District Attorney Craig Stedman said that the remaining members of the victims' family "did not wish to pursue the death penalty," if Wise was willing to accept responsibility.

And in a statement read on behalf of the family by Pam Grosh, the program director of Lancaster County's victim-witness program, the family acknowledged the "awful thing" Wise had done, but added: "We as a family would not want Jesse Wise to receive the death penalty."

The prosecutor outlined for the judge how the six members of the Wise family were found on April 12, 2006, in the basement of the home they shared on East Main Street in Leola.

After doing so, Stedman said: "I think that there's very little I can say to amplify the level of malevolence and horror of these crimes.

"I really am at somewhat of a loss for what to say," Stedman said. Of the plea agreement, he said, "I am satisfied that this is an appropriate disposition in light of the family's feelings."

Defense Attorney John A. Kenneff portrayed Wise as an intelligent young man who had a rough upbringing. Wise, he said, was raised by his grandparents from age 3 because his mother was a chronic drug user and his father wasn't in the picture.

Both his mother and father died before he became an adult.

Wise's former elementary school teachers in New York recalled him as a "friendly, outgoing, wonderful child — a pleasure for them to teach," Kenneff said.

"They were shocked when they learned of these events. It was not the child they knew," Kenneff added.

Wise attended junior and senior high at schools that were ridden with crime and gang activity, Kenneff said, and he fell into that life and spent time at juvenile facilities.

After moving to Lancaster County with his family when he was 18, Wise's drug abuse — he used cocaine — became worse, said his defense attorney.

Kenneff said a psychiatric evaluation of Wise found that he suffered a "severe, adverse psychological" impact from his abandonment by his mother as an infant, and, later, low self-esteem and a sense of alienation from the rest of his family.

Combined with his drug use and what clinicians ruled was depression, Wise was mentally ill, Kenneff said.

Ashworth said he, too, was at a loss to explain the murders.

"Frankly, I have nothing else to say or express because somehow words fail in a situation like this," he said.

He accepted the plea agreement.

Wise, speaking to the judge without his statement in front of him, said: "I just want to make it clear that I didn't understand what life was about. I had no appreciation for it," he said.

Stedman detailed for the judge this morning how each of the victims died:

Jesse James Wise, 17, the defendant's uncle, was strangled and stabbed 36 times.

Skyler Wise, 19, the defendant's cousin, was bludgeoned multiple times and a cord was wrapped around his neck.

The defendant's two aunts, Wanda Wise, 45, and Agnes Arlene Wise, 43, both died of blunt traumatic injuries to their heads.

His grandmother, Emily Wise, 64, was strangled and struck numerous times with a blunt object.

And 5-year-old Chance Wise, the defendant's cousin, was strangled, suffered blunt trauma and had an electrical cord tied around his neck.

The murder weapon, Stedman added, was found in a guitar case in the home — two pieces of 3-foot-long angle iron, tied together. Investigators found blood stains and signs of a struggle throughout the Leola home, Stedman said.

After beating, stabbing and strangling the victims sometime around April 8, prosecutors said, Wise continued to live in the home, inviting friends over and using the victims' money and credit cards to buy food and stay at a motel with his girlfriend.

It wasn't until after Wise was in custody, Stedman added, that investigators learned Jesse Dee Wise also had plotted to kill his grandfather, Jessie L. Wise, 66, who was in New York.

"He told a friend he had to finish what he started," Stedman said, and drove toward New York soon afterward "to do what he had to do."

"Luckily, his car broke down," outside of Philadelphia, Stedman said, before he was able to carry out the crime.

For the additional charge of attempted murder, Wise was sentenced to a concurrent 10 to 20 years in prison. For assorted other, unrelated crimes, including burglarizing a Paradise church and business, Wise was given four years concurrent probation.

Wise was also ordered to pay about $35,123 restitution for his family members' funeral expenses and other unrelated crimes.

The horrific crime was discovered on the afternoon of April 12 after John Adams, a friend of the Wise family, contacted police.

Adams told police the elder Wise had called him, concerned that he could not contact his wife or any of the other relatives in Leola.

Dispatchers sent East Lampeter Township police Officer Samuel Sanger to the Leola home where he met Adams,

 When Sanger arrived at the house, he was met by Adams, who told him that he had been knocking on the doors and windows for some time before Jesse Dee Wise, accompanied by 16-year-old Angie Gillogly, answered the door.

The mailbox was full of mail, vehicles belonging to all the missing people were in the driveway, and the inside door had been barricaded, Adams told the policeman.

The policeman told Jesse Dee Wise he wanted to come inside, just "to make sure there was no foul play" involving the young man's six missing family members.

While Sanger and Adams went inside the house, Wise and the girl silently got into a car parked in the driveway and left.

Adams went down into the basement, the policeman testified at a pretrial hearing, and almost immediately came running back up the steps, yelling, "They're all dead! They're all dead. All six of them!"

Sanger said he then went to the basement, too.

"About half-way down I detected an odor of a deceased body," Sanger said, then looked in front of him to see a large body, under a blanket, with bloody drag marks behind it.

As he looked around, Sanger said, "I saw multiple bodies on the basement floor covered with blankets."

Sanger ran outside, broadcasting a description of the car Wise was driving and telling police to stop him in reference to the multiple dead bodies the officer had just discovered.

Minutes later, police stopped Wise on Horseshoe Road, near Conestoga Valley High School, and took him into custody, eventually charging him with the largest mass murder in Lancaster County history.

Wise later confessed to the crimes, giving East Lampeter Township Detective Joseph Edgell and Trooper Gerard Sauers a 46-page statement about the massacre.

The large, white, three-story East Main Street house where the family lived and small horse stable behind it have been vacant since the slayings.

CONTACT US: tmurse@LNPnews.com or 481-6021