The recording is of Earnet Wholaver talking to a DEA agent that he believes is a hitman. Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo, who helped oversee the sting, made sure the agent who posed as a hitman on the phone had a West Virginia accent since the jailhouse informant who told officials of Wholaver's murder-for-hire plot hailed from the state. It made sense his hitman contact would, too.

Chardo told PennLive the recordings played at trial, still haunt him because they reveal just how cold-blooded a killer Wholaver was. It’s all there, Chardo said, in the sound of Wholaver’s relieved sigh after arranging the hit. It’s the sound a normal person makes after receiving the best of news. Wholaver released it after setting up yet another murder -- that of his older daughter's ex-boyfriend and father of her baby daughter. Wholaver sought to set him up as the killer, complete with a staged suicide and note confessing to the murders.