The prosecution said a July 2024 disappearance inquiry uncovered a retaliatory killing tied to a Maryland shooting investigation.
LANCASTER, Pa. — What began as a missing-person case in Lancaster County ended with a 43 to 100 year prison sentence for Steven Scott Gaddis, whom prosecutors said killed Matthew Whisman after learning the 25-year-old had been helping police in a Maryland shooting investigation.
That investigative path is what makes the case stand out. When Gaddis pleaded guilty and was sentenced, the court was addressing a killing that authorities said had gone hidden for months. The public first learned Whisman was gone, then that remains had surfaced in Maryland, and only later that investigators believed he had been beaten, injected with fentanyl and thrown from a bridge. The two remaining defendants still await trial.
According to state police and court records, Whisman was last seen on April 3, 2024, at a home on Lancaster Pike in East Drumore Township. But the investigation did not begin in earnest until July 2, when his mother told authorities she had not seen or heard from him since the spring. The next day, troopers interviewed Whisman’s brother, who said he had been inside the house on April 3 when a confrontation broke out over Whisman’s cooperation with law enforcement. He told investigators that Gaddis, Jeremy Absher and Alexander Whisman took Matthew Whisman to a car and later came back without him. That account gave investigators a working theory months before they had a body, and it shifted the case from a disappearance to suspected homicide.
The missing-person inquiry grew sharper in August. Human remains were found on Aug. 8, 2024, along Conowingo Creek in Cecil County, Maryland. Maryland officials later said the remains were recovered near Camp Shadow Brook and were identified through DNA as Matthew Whisman’s. That discovery gave investigators physical evidence and a location tied to what witnesses and later defendants described: a drive toward the Maryland state line and a stop at a bridge over the creek. The case now crossed county and state boundaries, with Lancaster County prosecutors, Pennsylvania State Police and Maryland authorities all appearing in the factual chain. By October, prosecutors said they were ready to file charges against Gaddis, Absher and Alexander Whisman.
Only after the remains were identified did much of the alleged sequence become public. Court records cited in local reporting said Gaddis went through Whisman’s phone inside the East Drumore Township house and found messages about the earlier Maryland shooting. Investigators said that discovery triggered a beating in a bathroom and laundry area, followed by an order to shower, then a forced ride south. In one interview, Absher said Gaddis told the victim, “Look bro, this here is going to help what I’m about to do to you not hurt,” before injecting him with fentanyl. In another account, Alexander Whisman said Gaddis had formed a plan to remove the victim from the house and kill him. Those statements became some of the most important bridges between the missing-person file and the later homicide charges.
The sentencing itself came later, after Gaddis pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit third-degree murder, aggravated assault, kidnapping and intimidating a witness. Lancaster County prosecutors said Judge Thomas Sponaugle imposed the 43 to 100 year sentence last week. At the hearing, First Deputy Assistant District Attorney Cody Wade read a statement from Whisman’s mother, who wrote that there would “always be a hole in our family.” The district attorney’s office also said Gaddis pleaded guilty in a separate April 2024 Quarryville shooting case involving gunfire into a residence where three juveniles were inside. That second case added to the sentence picture, but the Whisman homicide remained the center of the hearing and the reason the case drew continued scrutiny.
This version of the story ends where the investigation has not. Prosecutors have said the cases against Jeremy Absher and Alexander Whisman remain pending, and local reporting has indicated Gaddis’ guilty plea may affect how those prosecutions develop. Alexander Whisman, who was a minor at the time of the killing, has already been ordered to stand trial as an adult in the homicide case. What remains unknown in public detail is how each side will frame coercion, participation and planning when the remaining cases reach court. What is established is the sequence investigators built: a man disappears, a creek yields remains, interviews tighten, and one defendant has now admitted enough for a sentence measured in decades.
The current posture is stark and unfinished. A missing-person mystery has become a solved homicide in one courtroom, but not yet in all of them, and the next milestone will come when the remaining defendants’ cases move forward.
Author note: Last updated April 19, 2026.