Death Comes to Amish Town. (And wholesale death at that. Like you might get at the outlets.)

5 year old Chance Wise, victim. (Above left.) Ann and Alexys Palmer and a friend, mourners. (Above right.)


It looks like the guys and ghouls of cable horrorvision are going to sit this one out because it doesn't seem to involve sex.

Pittsburgh's other newspaper: Killings of six family members shake tiny village near Lancaster
The lace curtains and white teddy bear in the front window belied the horror inside the white clapboard house where Jesse Dee Wise Jr. allegedly strangled and bludgeoned to death six relatives he lived with in this rural village near Lancaster.

Kudos to Tracie Mauriello. Sometime, some stories cry out for a woman's touch:

Other neighbors trickled past the house after work to leave flowers, notes and stuffed animals. Some brought children and struggled to explain why they would no longer see 5-year-old Chance Wise at school.

Six-year-old Alexys Palmer and a 6-year-old neighbor tied a teddy bear, a stuffed dog and three yellow roses to the police tape hanging over the Wises' white picket fence. The girls said it was too difficult to talk about the boy who sat next to them at Leola Elementary School.

Alexys' mother, Ann Palmer, 32, described him as "a very spunky little boy. Very spunky and very happy. He liked to be around people."

Other neighbors said the Wises hadn't lived in the house long and didn't socialize much.

"I never heard any screaming, no yelling, no fights. They were very quiet-type people," said Robert Lopez, who lives two houses away. "Everybody is friendly here, but they were quiet. We tried to get them to play games, football and stuff, but they didn't."

His nephew, Giovanni Lopez, who is in Chance's kindergarten class, said he noticed that his friend hadn't been in school.

"I missed him because we used to play the bear game and pretend to be bears," Giovanni said. "Now he died. He went to Jesus."

Amen to that, Brother Giovanni. Amen to that.

May God have mercy on all souls.

It seems our justice system let the entire Wise family down. Big time.

Authorities said the suspect's parents were both dead and that he lived with his grandparents.

More than a dozen charges from 2004, including burglary, theft and agricultural vandalism, are pending against him in Lancaster County court. In September, police used a stun gun to subdue Mr. Wise after he allegedly punched a man and stole $20 from him at the New Holland Fair. He was charged with third-degree robbery and simple assault, court records show.

Is it too much to try a guy on more than a dozen counts a year and a half old? Will any "journalist" ask the D.A. why this man was walking around free?

Justice delayed is justice denied, especially for the Wise family.