Michigan Pastor Gets 56-Year Prison Term For Murder
MOUNT PLEASANT (WWJ/AP) - The former minister of a small Michigan congregation was sentenced Thursday to at least 56 years in prison for killing his fiancée's 24-year-old daughter, allegedly to fulfill a fantasy to have sex with a dead body.
Isabella County Chief Circuit Judge Paul Chamberlain ordered 55-year-old John D. White to serve from 56 to 85 years behind bars, saying he saw no reason why White, who had two prior convictions for attacking women, should ever leave prison.
White pleaded guilty last month to second-degree murder in the slaying last Halloween of Rebekah Gay. According to police, White confessed to killing Gay in her Broomfield Township home as part of a sexual fantasy. According to court documents, White admitted that for two weeks he thought about killing Gay and having sex with her dead body.
White was engaged to Gay's mother and regularly looked after Gay's young son while she was working, according to a member of the tiny church he led, the Christ Community Fellowship church in Isabella County's Deerfield Township, about 120 miles northwest of Detroit.
Prosecutors say on the day of the killing, White drank several beers before going to Gay's mobile home, where he repeatedly struck her head with a mallet and then strangled her with a zip tie. Police said White had undressed Gay's body, but he couldn't remember if he had sex with it.
Gay's son, then 3, was home at the time she was killed. After using his pickup truck to dump her body in the woods, White returned to Gay's home and dressed her son in his Halloween costume before taking him to an area Meijer store to be picked up by his father.
As authorities searched for Gay's body in a rural area in Isabella County, about 85 miles northwest of Lansing, White asked his roughly 14-member congregation to pray for her.
"For 20 excruciating hours we prayed that Rebekah would come home," her mother, Sally Gay, told White in court Thursday. "She was not yours to take. How dare you."
Sally Gay asked the court to show the man she was once engaged to the same lack of mercy he showed her daughter. She said her family was devastated by the death of Rebekah, whom she called the family's "heart and soul," and she said her daughter's 4-year-old son will suffer more than anyone.
Church members have said they were aware of White's criminal past when he joined them. He was released from prison in 2007 after serving nearly 12 years for manslaughter in the death of 26-year-old Vicky S. Wall in Kalamazoo County. He had previously been sentenced to probation for choking and stabbing a 17-year-old Battle Creek girl in 1981.
Sally Gay said Thursday that White is not the person she knew before he killed her daughter, and that she thinks he wanted to return to the structured environment of prison.
Rebekah's sister, Deborah Gay, said her family wants to see the creation of a registry for violent offenders such as White. She said her sister might be alive if she had known about White's violent history.
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