I’ve found that hardly anyone knows what “wherefore” means these days, and many journalists are not all that bright judging by a typical article about guns, for example. So I’m not too surprised that a journalist fouled this one up.
I know, wherefore isn’t used very often nowadays, so it doesn’t shock me that a journalist doesn’t know what it means. What irks me is that someone would choose to start off an article about a stolen dog with “Romeo, Romeo, wharefore art thou Romeo?” without bothering to find out what the heck that means.