WAYNESBORO, Pa. (WHTM) — The Department of Justice has announced that a Waynesboro man has been found guilty after a lengthy trial of murdering three people in 2016.
According to US Attorney Gerard M. Karam, 32-year-old Torey White was convicted after an almost seven-year investigation regarding the murders of three individuals that occurred on June 25, 2016, on a property along Welsh Run Road in Mercersburg.
Pennsylvania State Troopers were called to the scene and found the bodies of two men and a woman in a barn on one of the victims’ property.
Attorney Karam also says that all three victims were shot, had their hands zip-tied behind their backs, and were set on fire.
The evidence presented at trial stated that the woman who was killed was in a relationship with White and a co-conspirator. They had been previously assisting both with their drug distribution operations. Attorney Karam said White and co-coconspirator Kevin Coles learned that the woman was cooperating with federal authorities and then contracted for her to be murdered.
Two co-defendants in the case recruited members of a Baltimore-based gang and others from the city to travel to one of the victims’ properties to kill the woman, according to Attorney Karam. The killers were promised that they could take $20,000 as payment, which was to be located in a safe in the barn, and any drugs and firearms that they could locate on the property.
According to Attorney Karam, the woman was killed to protect the drug trafficking activities of Coles and his coconspirators. The two other men present at the time of the murder were killed to prevent them from being witnesses to the crimes of violence that were committed.
In addition to White, 13 other people were charged as a result of the investigation, according to Attorney Karam.
White faces three mandatory life sentences, one for each count of conviction.
This prosecution is also part of an extensive investigation by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force identified as “Retribution for Welsh Run.”
