LANCASTER – A Lancaster County judge sentenced a Chester County man to 43 to 100 years in state prison for murdering an East Drumore Township man who was cooperating with investigators looking into a non-fatal shooting and separately for firing a gun into a Quarryville residence. 28-year-old Steven Gaddis of Pocopson Township pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit third-degree murder, aggravated assault, intimidating a witness and kidnapping, just days before he was slated to go to trial for those offenses. Gaddis assaulted and kidnapped Matthew Whisman, then injected him with a lethal dose of fentanyl the night of April 3, 2024. Whisman was at the time cooperating with a police investigation into a shooting in Maryland months earlier in which Gaddis was a suspect. After Gaddis learned that Whisman had been talking with police he, along with Whisman’s cousins assaulted him inside a residence in the 1100 block of Lancaster Pike in East Drumore Township. The three then forced Matthew Whisman into a vehicle where they injected him with the drugs, killing him. Whisman’s remains were found months later near a hiking trail in Cecil County, MD. Prosecution is pending against the cousins.
STEVEN GADDIS