A 56-year-old Peach Bottom Township man is now institutionalized in Maryland after pleading guilty this past summer to gunning down two men who lived near him across the state line, bringing a measure of resolution to a case that has lingered since 2023. Steven Nolan pleaded guilty on July 16 to two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Timothy Witherite and David Octavec, who were killed in Harford County, Maryland.
According to the York Daily Record, Nolan is institutionalized in Maryland following the plea, three years after the killings took place. The newspaper's reporting confirms his age, his hometown of Peach Bottom Township, and the July 16 date of his guilty plea.
The shootings themselves happened on July 1, 2023, on Scott Road in Pylesville. Harford County police alleged at the time that Nolan shot and killed 62-year-old Timothy Witherite inside a home before shooting 70-year-old David Octavec outside the same home, according to the York Dispatch.
Arrest Came Within Hours, Extradition Followed Days Later
Nolan did not get far after the shootings. He was arrested on a Maryland warrant by Pennsylvania State Police in Peach Bottom Township about two hours later, the York Dispatch reported. He was initially held in York County before being extradited to Maryland on July 11, 2023.
The violence that day also claimed the life of the family's dog, which was shot and killed, according to CBS News Pittsburgh. At the time, police said the motive remained unclear, a detail that station's reporting notes was still under investigation in the immediate aftermath of the shootings.
Victims Were Brothers-in-Law and Longtime Neighbors
Witherite and Octavec were not strangers to one another. The two men were brothers-in-law and had been neighbors since 1992, according to the Baltimore Sun, which reported on how the Pylesville community memorialized the two men shortly after their deaths.
A Pattern Seen Elsewhere in Maryland
Nolan's case echoes another recent Maryland homicide resolution. Anthony Lechner pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing his wife, Kimberly Lechner, at their Monkton home and invoked Maryland's not-criminally-responsible plea, according to WBAL-TV. A Circuit Court judge in that case approved a plea agreement that included a not-criminally-responsible finding, and Lechner was ultimately committed to a state psychiatric facility rather than sentenced to prison.
A York County man who once lived near his victims across the Mason-Dixon line is institutionalized in Maryland, three years after the shootings in Pylesville upended a quiet, decades-old neighborhood connection.
