Indiana prison inmate charged with murder wins GOP town board primary

An inmate in an Indiana prison who is charged with the murder of his cancer-stricken wife won his town board primary election from jail this week.

Andrew Wilhoite, 39, who is currently being held in custody on murder charges, won the Boone County primary election for town board on Tuesday. He was charged in March with the murder of his wife, Elizabeth “Nikki” Wilhoite.

The Lebanon couple were engaged in a domestic dispute last month when Wilhoite allegedly struck his wife, who had recently completed chemotherapy treatments for cancer, with a concrete flower pot, and knocked her unconscious. Police say he then put her body in his car and dumped it into a nearby creek at Ross Ditch. Indiana police retrieved Nikki Wilhoite’s body from the creek last Saturday morning.

Police say Wilhoite initially lied about his wife’s whereabouts but later confessed to killing her after the two had entered into a heated dispute over the divorce she was seeking after finding out weeks prior that he had been unfaithful.

In spite of his jailed status, Wilhoite was on the ballot for a seat on the Clinton Town Board and won one of the three Republican spots in this week’s primary election with 21.74 percent of the vote. As long as he is not convicted of murder, he will remain on the ballot in the November midterm elections.

Wilhoite has until July 15 to remove himself from the November ballot if he so chooses. If he is convicted of a felony before the midterm election he will be removed from the ballot. Wilhoite’s trial is currently scheduled for August. If convicted he faces life in prison, or possibly even the death penalty.

Election data shows Wilhoite received 60 votes, while the other two Republicans running for town board received 100 and 160 votes, respectively.