Elizabeth Nikki Wilhoite and Andrew Nathan Wilhoite.
For striking and killing his cancer-stricken wife Elizabeth “Nikki” Wilhoite with a heavy cement flower pot and then dumping her body in a creek near his Indiana home just one week after she filed for divorce, Andrew Wilhoite has been sentenced to spend the next 30 years in prison.
Notably, Wilhoite, ran for — and advanced in — a GOP primary election for a township board position in Indiana while he was facing the charges. He eventually withdrew according to the Associated Press.
A jury ultimately found Wilhoite guilty of voluntary manslaughter this April after they were unable to unanimously convict him on a murder charge first brought against him by prosecutors.
As Law&Crime previously reported, police found Elizabeth Wilhoite’s body submerged in three feet of a water in a creek near the couple’s home in Lebanon, Indiana, on March 26, 2022. She was 41 years old at the time of her death and had just finished chemotherapy treatments for cancer.
She was reported missing by coworkers just a day before her body was found by police.
Prosecutors said the Lebanon man got into an argument with his wife and was drunk when he lashed out at her. Elizabeth Wilhoite had learned that he was cheating, police said, and this triggered the fatal spat.
He told police after his arrest that she had started to hit him and he then ushered her out of their house. Wilhoite claimed his wife charged him at some point and that was when he grabbed the cement flower pot and struck her in the face.
He allegedly told police she did not move nor speak after that so he gathered her body, put it inside his truck and went to the creek to dispose of it.
The couple had children together and Wilhoite had two of his own from a previous marriage. Before her death, the couple had been married for 12 years. Court records showed Elizabeth Wilhoite filed for divorce on March 17, less than 10 days before her body was found.
According to the Lebanon Reporter, a friend of Elizabeth Wilhoite testified about a strained relationship the woman had with her husband’s oldest daughter, saying she disliked her.
The outlet reported that during a jailhouse phone call following his arrest, Andrew Wilhoite told a friend that his wife was “going after” his eldest daughter on the night of the feud.
Though he told his friend he was worried about his daughter’s safety, police heard nothing about this during the initial interview. Wilhoite was reportedly interviewed by officers for two hours just a day after his wife’s death but never brought up what he told his friend on the jail call.
Police said they found a copy of the divorce filing in the same truck that Andrwe Wilhoite used to get rid of his wife’s body. A state police detective also testified that he found Elizabeth Wilhoite’s blood in the bed of the truck but it had been covered up with bags of animal feed.
At trial, his attorney claimed Wilhoite acted in self defense and Elizabeth Wilhoite had scratched her husband on several places on his body including his neck, shoulder, chest and arms. Evidence introduced at trial did locate his DNA under her nails, too.
Police never located the pot the man used to hit his wife but they did find a duplicate of it on the couple’s porch. It weighed just under 30 pounds.
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