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gonna just leave her vehicle. t
It just smelled.
It was the biggest story of the entire period,
and people were on the edge of their seats,
like, what happened to this woman?
Of all the cases that I have, this one needs to be solved.
I'm going to go back and do the bush.
Back and forth, this search and rescue team
is spending its day in the ditches
looking for a clue.
That SUV, we believe to be the Ford Explorer,
enters the screen and drives through.
And the video didn't capture
the license plate of that vehicle?
No, it was certainly not that kind of quality.
It's every homicide detective's dream
to get a bag of evidence
that the bad guy actually got for you.
I went, "Holy crap, look at this stuff."
It was a gold mine. It was unbelievable.
Welcome to Crime Beat. I'm Antony Robart.
On July 12th, 2005,
a 29-year-old Edmonton mother vanished without a trace.
Her disappearance sent shockwaves throughout the city,
especially because she was four months pregnant.
No one had any answers as to where she could have gone.
Here now is Jayme Doll with "Behind Closed Doors".
Day breaks in Edmonton on a warm July morning.
As the city stirs, a woman on her way to the gym
discovers something unusual
in the parking lot of a baseball diamond.
It was July 12th, 2005,
and it first started off where somebody noticed a vehicle
abandoned in suspicious circumstances.
She actually phoned the police saying there was a car there.
She knows for a fact that that SUV was there at 5:45
when she walked to the YMCA for a workout.
I remember being called out to the scene
of where the SUV was abandoned.
I was asked to take pictures of the SUV.
There was a pair of shoes sort of nicely placed there.
The door was ajar on the vehicle.
It was a Ford Explorer.
It was parked in kind of a gravel parking lot,
and there was no other vehicles around.
It just seemed strange.
The keys and her driver's license
were on the driver's seat,
and they were just sitting there.
The other forensic guy had gotten into it,
and I think he's just under six feet tall,
and he couldn't touch the foot pedals of the vehicle.
So it had to be a large person that was driving that vehicle.
No one touched the seat at all.
No signs of a struggle, no blood, no--
nothing in that truck that we could see with our naked eyes.
It was a parking lot of a wreck area in Castle Downs.
The initial responders thought that it looked staged.
Nothing looked like it was random.
Any idea at that point who the vehicle belonged to?
Yeah, they ran it.
It belonged to a lady named Liana White,
who didn't live too far away.
and I started looking around these trees,
in and around, and then we started walking that way.
I saw a wallet sitting as a leaner, like in horseshoes,
against the bottom of the tree trunk.
It was underneath the branches.
We saw this and grabbed it, and it was Liana's wallet.
I still remember seeing the video of police
walking around with the little markers, evidence markers.
The door hanging open as they were walking around,
it really sort of symbolized
the we don't know what happened here,
and she just disappeared out of nowhere.
People were clamoring for any kind of information
about what happened to Liana White.
29-year-old Liana White
lived with her husband, Michael White.
They had a little girl and another baby on the way.
Liana was a mother to Ashley,
who was a young child, probably two or three at the time.
She was a unit clerk in the Neonatal Unit
at the Royal Alexandra Hospital.
By all accounts, a very popular and valuable employee there,
very reliable.
Michael was a former military member,
now working as an apprentice heavy-duty mechanic.
He tried calling his wife and didn't have any luck.
She hadn't shown up for work.
So that's when things, you know,
the flags really started going off
that something probably really serious happened here.
Makes me a little nervous, concerned,
because you're not sure, you know,
if there's someone out there watching,
you know, if this woman was on her way to work,
and how she could just disappear.
You wonder, you know, how she kind of got targeted.
It makes me wonder if we should worry,
if there's something going on
that they're not telling us, perhaps,
or something we should watch for, or if something is off.
So I think what really stood out is,
here's a woman that is pregnant,
and if she was missing and needed help,
it wasn't just her life that was at stake,
it was the unborn child.
We were covering it as
a missing persons case at the time.
She was a young woman, cautious, careful.
She worked as a clerk at the Royal Alexandra Hospital.
She seemed like a responsible, prudent person.
I would guess the distance
between where the vehicle was located
and her home was maybe about ten blocks.
Two original patrol guys
went to the house and the door was open.
The dog was outside, which is never outside.
The door wasn't locked, so they went in and found phone numbers
for Liana's work, Mike's work,
that's where they got all the phone numbers
from where they worked.
She would not not show up for work
and not let anybody know.
She certainly isn't going to just leave her vehicle
in the parking lot and take off.
Police went to see Liana's husband, Michael,
at his work.
He was brought in for an interview,
and not as being a suspect.
He's a witness, so, you know, you've got to get his story
before you can start much.
What did he say?
He just said she left for work at six o'clock
and he was asleep and he never heard anything.
He had no idea where she was or what happened to her.
Michael White was at work generally saying,
"Everything was fine. when I went to work.
I dropped our daughter off at daycare.
I came to work and here I am.
I haven't been able to get a hold of my wife by phone."
Again, that was normal behaviour
for Liana and Michael.
They called each other back and forth
about four or five times throughout each day.
So according to his story,
he's the last person that saw her at home.
It's like layers of an onion. You're peeling the onion.
And initially, we've just got an onion with one layer off it,
which is we've got this vehicle.
At that point, that's our crime scene.
If there was some evidence that we had
that was leading that, in fact, a crime had taken place,
we would let you know.
But at this time, it's missing person.
We have no indication at all that a crime has taken place.
The word at that time
was that they had had a peaceful, happy marriage.
There was no major conflict. He was a good husband.
He's a big Baloo, the bear of a guy,
like a happy-go-lucky friendly guy
like Baloo the bear in The Jungle Book.
They're just a normal family.
She's pregnant. They were happy.
And she was ready to have a second child.
And then now she's missing.
The thought was that she was on her way to work
and at some point between leaving home
and getting to work, she was strangely abducted.
It was the biggest story of the entire period,
and people were on the edge of their seats,
like, what happened to this woman?
Welcome back to Crime Beat.
29-year-old Liana White failed to show up for work.
Her SUV was found abandoned in a parking lot.
The doors left open,
with some of her belongings strewn on the ground nearby.
Now, as the mystery builds, police step up their search
for the pregnant Edmonton mother.
We now return to Jayme Doll with "Behind Closed Doors".
We had two search managers
that were searching the areas north of their house.
And where the SUV was found, where the house is,
it's a pretty large area from 153 Ave. North in Edmonton,
between, I don't know, 97th Street and 142 Street.
That's a big area to be looking.
So they started organizing volunteers and policemen.
I was just trying to get a picture of the vehicle
and then a picture of Liana, put it on a poster,
and essentially try and get as many people as we could
to see that and be on the lookout for her.
We've checked all the leads, and people are phoning in.
We probably had 500 tips in the first three days.
She may have had an old boyfriend ten years ago.
We checked him out.
There was two guys in a car at the Land's Happy Mart
that had nothing to do with it.
Liana sold Avon Cosmetics as a part-time job.
So one thing we were trying to explore is,
was this a robbery?
And because she did the family's finances,
she was the one that went to the bank
and did all the banking and things like that.
Did she have money on her from her Avon sales?
The other most likely explanation is,
is that she's hit the road, right?
She's tired of this guy, and she's gone.
Not likely, as she's left her daughter, Ashley.
But you never know, right?
We interviewed Liana's mom.
When we found out that Liana and her mom were really close,
we asked her mom some questions about
how she sort of saw Liana and Michael's relationship
and whether Liana had ever confided in her
about any problems or concerns.
The mother thought the relationship was fine.
Maureen was obviously really stressed.
She was really worried.
I think she was a little overwhelmed
with what was going on, which is pretty understandable.
Meanwhile, a steady stream of journalists
were knocking at the White's door,
eager for any information on a story
that was gripping the city.
Michael said, "What should I do with the media?
Should I talk to them?"
I said, "Well, you know, you do what you feel like doing.
If you think it's important
that you should go and talk to the media,
then you go and talk to the media.
But we're not going to participate.
So as soon as we were getting ready to leave,
he goes to the door and he's like,
"I'm going to talk to them."
We are hearing for the first time tonight
from the husband of an Edmonton woman
who left for work yesterday morning and then disappeared.
Police did find 29-year-old Liana White's car
abandoned not far from her home.
Is there something you wanted to say?
Uh, Liana...
just... ...hold tight.
Thanks for everybody who's been involved in looking.
Thank you.
Thanks for the media and their support
and putting her out there and putting her face on,
making known who she is.
Thanks for every officer,
police officer, detective on the case.
Thank you.
That's all I got to say.
I just wanted to say thanks.
This must be a really difficult time for you.
Well, I mean, .
Thanks. I just...
I'm going to go back and do the bush.
Back and forth, this search and rescue team
is spending its day in the ditches
looking for a clue.
A clue that will help lead them to Liana White.
So far, they've found nothing.
We're searching near Liana's residence
and we call that the point last seen
where she was actually physically seen.
Liana's husband, Michael, was also searching.
He was taking neighbours and friends
and family and all of the people in this city
that felt compelled to be able to try to help on this,
taking them out and searching for his wife.
Walking up and down the streets,
going in through the ditches,
looking for any kind of evidence.
Meanwhile, investigators were zeroing in
on CCTV footage they collected from a pub
not far from where Liana's vehicle was found.
They came in, they asked if they could see
the surveillance cameras for that evening.
They played them.
They're generally about six hours in length,
so they watched them for a few hours.
Once they finished viewing them,
they asked us if they could...
take the tapes with them.
I got the impression that they'd seen something.
There was no timestamp,
so that was a challenge for us
in kind of knowing what portion of the videotape to look at.
So we methodically just went through that entire videotape.
So that SUV, we believe to be the Ford Explorer,
enters the screen and drives through.
And if you notice, there's a light-coloured
or white shirt on the person driving the vehicle.
And the video didn't capture
the licence plate of that vehicle?
No, it was certainly not that kind of quality.
It was at a time in the morning,
just after sunrise,
where Liana would not have been going to work.
It would have been a couple of hours later
where she would be going to work.
So that was strange in itself.
We concentrated our efforts on the vehicle
and comparing it and making sure
that it was possibly that vehicle.
This next segment is where we tried to time
the event of a video placement exercise.
We had a detective drive by with the same SUV
at various times in the morning,
just before sunrise.
Again, this is the detective driving by
in Liana's Ford Explorer.
And again, this segment slowed down here as well,
to be able to see.
The reason we used the same recording equipment
was to give an apples-to-apples comparison
of the vehicle we believed was driving by that morning.
There's a lot of thinking like,
"Okay, where is she? Where could she be?
What happened to her?" And people don't know.
And they're not inside the investigation.
They're not up on all the things
that the police are up on.
So their suspicions aren't building
like they were with the police through that time.
There's just genuine concern for Liana.
Where is she? Is she okay? Is there foul play?
And there's a huge search going on
and many people are volunteering
and participating in that.
Five days went by
and still there was no sign of Liana.
But the search for her pressed on.
It's a rural area that doesn't see
a whole lot of traffic from the citizens of the city.
And we just like to exhaust all avenues.
And we're hoping for anything at this point
to help with the investigation.
Michael White and his family said,
"Well, we want to go out to the command post
where the search and rescue people are.
And just thank them for all the work
they've done this weekend."
After thanking the volunteers,
the family headed back out to search.
When Michael White and his family
left that parking lot,
they turned north on one of the rural roads.
Michael's out, I believe, with his mom and dad
and his brother and sister are in another car.
And they meet up on that road,
142 Street and Poundmaker Road.
They stop there. And they're chatting.
And then the mother goes, "What's that smell?"
And gets out.
And goes and stands at the edge of the ditch
and then starts crying.
And gets back in the vehicle.
Michael's mother recognized that it was Liana
because although she was covered
with some loose brush and branches,
she could see her dolphin tattoo on her ankle.
I believe it was Michael's brother
who called 911.
And the RCMP went there and then they notified us.
It was gruesome, you know, advanced decomposition.
Welcome back.
After Liana White's body is discovered
by the side of a rural road,
the police investigation
that has been going on in the background
reveals their primary suspect.
Here again is Jayme Doll with "Behind Closed Doors".
Where was the body found?
It would have been right kind of here
at the edge of the trees, edge of the bush.
But keep in mind, this is all-- grass was about this high.
And there's some other willows and stuff like that.
You know, you're not going to stop in that small of an area
unless you know where to stop.
Days before Liana's body was discovered,
police and even reporters started to question
the demeanor of Liana's nearest and dearest,
her husband Michael White.
It started after he gave this interview.
Is there something you want to say?
Uh, Liana...
just... ...hold tight.
This was strange. It was a strange interview.
Just walking out and making those--
you know, thanking people and then breaking down
but not really and having some tears come.
But it didn't quite feel right.
It felt odd and I didn't quite understand what was going on.
Talking to a lot of the other reporters
that were there with me after the fact,
we were sort of saying the same thing,
that this was odd.
It didn't add up.
It wasn't what we had seen prior when talking to people
dealing with grief, dealing with loss.
What does that mean? Like, who says that?
Liana, stay put.
Like, what is that all about? Stay put, what?
There was no like, "I will find you."
Every person operates differently
when they're under stress.
And so, you have to be careful to not leap to conclusions
because people are acting a little bit different
than you think you would act
under the similar circumstances.
It really sounded like...
he didn't know how to behave.
Michael asked some questions
and they did catch us off guard.
He asked, "When should I go back to work?"
He asks, "How long will you be looking for her?
And how long will this investigation take?"
And those are sort of
upside down questions.
It was around that time police were dialing in
on the surveillance footage of Liana's vehicle
passing by the pub
and they discovered there was more on that tape.
Here we go.
Brian Robertson was getting on my nerves.
We're partners. We're partners in homicide.
He said, "Just go away, you're driving me nuts.
I know we have to do things, but--"
So I told him to go down to the audiovisual place
and watch the rest of that tape.
So he went down there, and in about 45 minutes he phoned me.
He said, "Mike, you've got to come up."
I see the Ford Explorer
go through the screen and driving down 161 Avenue.
I watch afterwards. Really nothing happens.
12 minutes later, from the left side of the screen,
a person is jogging along the sidewalk
back towards Warwick Crescent and the White residence.
That person comes into view and actually looks up
towards the Richard's Pub roofline where the video is
and there was no doubt in my mind
that it was Michael White.
The quality wasn't sufficient enough
to identify the person,
but the height, the gait,
the white-coloured shirt again,
surfaced of a man running by.
Either it's, yeah, a man out for a jog
or it's Michael White running back home again
so he can get back before his child woke up.
That was the first time that he became
a legitimately strong suspect.
Between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning
for the next three or four days,
I also looked for anybody
that looked like Michael White walking in the area
just in case it was somebody, you know, not related.
So now we've got Michael White
lying about what he did.
We've got Michael White running back from the area
where the Ford Explorer was discovered
towards the area where he lives.
I went to our bosses and said,
"We need 24-7 surveillance on Michael White."
I knew we had him in a bunch of lies
and I knew that he was good for Liana's disappearance.
We still don't know what happened to Liana.
On the evening of July 14th,
undercover police officers followed White
and watched as he walked into a field
and came back with garbage bags.
When he came out, he was carrying two garbage bags
full of unknown things.
Put the garbage bags in his truck
and then drove back to his house,
into the garage, closed the garage door.
Not long after that, he brings the garbages out to the curb
because it's garbage day the next day on the 15th.
We put one of our undercover operators
on the back of the garbage truck
operating as a garbage collector.
He picked up the two garbage bags,
put them beside him, away from all the other garbage,
drove away and then he gave them to our forensic guys
and brought them to headquarters.
I went, "Holy crap, look at this stuff."
It was a goldmine.
It's every homicide detective's dream to get a bag of evidence
that the bad guy actually got for you.
Like, he brought it back to his house and put it out.
"Well, there you go." It was unbelievable.
It's something that probably happened
the only time in my career.
There was bloody towels, there was bloody shirts,
there was blue nitril rubber gloves,
there was blood on everything, there was a broken lamp,
hordes of paper towels full of blood.
Cleaning bottles, like bleach bottles and stuff,
all in these two bags.
That broken lamp matches a partner lamp
that was in the second bedroom in the house,
so we could connect that lamp to the White property.
There was also a paper sheaf of a knife,
it was just a sheaf, it's probably a foot long.
There was also some kind of army t-shirt,
it was his regiment, and it had blood on it.
And the broken lamp would come into play
because where he took those two bags out of the field
there was a lampshade on one of the posts,
right beside where he went in to get the two bags of stuff.
So that eventually said
the broken lamp in the bag was all from his house
because the matching lamp and shade was in his house.
I think he was afraid that
the bag was going to be found by the searchers.
Michael White was brought in again
for questioning,
but this time not as a witness,
as a suspect.
We had to caution him, like it's a caution statement,
"You know you're at risk, you can call a lawyer."
"No, no, I'll talk to you, I'm good."
Are you telling him at this point that he's a suspect?
Yeah, we have to because we know he is.
We can't try and spoof him in an interview room.
What did he say when he finds out he's actually a suspect?
I don't think it offended him that much.
"Of course I am, I'm the husband,
so of course you're going to look at
the closest people to her."
He's just chalking it up to that.
Correct.
We knew we had evidence,
but that would come into play
on the last interview.
We let him go.
Investigators needed more evidence
before they could lay charges.
Later that day, they returned
to Michael White's home with a search warrant.
Michael was there, we told Michael,
"We're not talking to you,
we're not answering any of your questions,
we're having a conversation with your family,
we can't make you leave."
They wanted to know things like,
"Have you checked for any neighbourhood
break and enter suspects that are around the area,
any car thieves that are operating in the area,
any serial sex offenders
that have been released from jail recently,"
all of-- now, these things are things that normal people ask.
Michael White's family was staying there.
So when the house was being searched,
they were removed and put up in a hotel.
When we go to leave, Michael asks one question,
and he asks, "Will you be searching at the dump?"
Now, we already know that we've got his garbage.
Forensic officers have been in and out of the Whites' house
for most of the day.
Now, police declined an interview with us today,
but when we stepped on the property,
we were told we had to leave
because this is being treated as a crime scene.
It was obvious that the house was the crime scene.
I'm seeing no indication
that anybody else is involved but him.
When the family went back out to search
after thanking volunteers,
the police surveillance team had been following them.
When detectives arrived on scene,
they said Michael White was distraught
at the discovery of his wife's body.
We've got the body. We've got him.
We don't want him, in case he does something else dumb
like take his own life or hurt somebody else.
White was detained and put in the back
of a police cruiser and brought to headquarters.
They had the whole game plan on how to interview him.
We had pictures up on the wall,
the crime scenes, the house, the truck,
and by that time we had luminoled
the back of the SUV, the house.
Luminol fluoresces with the iron in the blood.
You spray the luminol on
and then turns the lights off in black light.
You can see the drag all the way through the house,
out to the back, into the back of the SUV,
and when you shone it in the back of the SUV,
the luminescence was outstanding as well.
It looked like someone was just laying there.
And he wiped it up, but you're going, "Wow."
And on the bumper,
you can see some of the swipes there too,
so he tried to clean it all up.
No murder weapon was ever found.
He just wouldn't admit to any part of hurting her.
The most unemotional person I've ever met in my life.
Had no emotions.
Hello and thank you for joining us.
A major break lay tonight
in the case of missing Edmonton woman Liana White.
Police suggesting for the first time
the four-month-old pregnant mother of two-year-old
has been the victim of murder.
And issuing a statement this evening
that her husband, Michael White,
has been charged with second-degree murder
and indignity to a body.
These startling developments coming a day after a body
was discovered in a North Edmonton ditch,
just about two kilometres northeast of the home
he shared with his wife.
Her body was found with very few clothes on.
And while the medical examiner is still searching for
an exact cause of death,
police say that there were marks found on her body
that indicate she was involved with some sort of struggle.
We can also tell you that police did not find
any evidence of premeditation,
which is why Michael White
has been charged with second-degree murder.
But police say they found plenty of other evidence
that made them suspicious of White.
From Tuesday till now...
our forensics team have received over 150 exhibits.
So I can't say that we found evidence at the SUV,
the Explorer, in the parking lot.
We've discovered evidence at the house.
We've discovered evidence at where the body was recovered.
It's devastating. It's a tragic day.
It's not a-- it's not a victory for the police service.
It's just a tragic day for two families.
The medical examiner determined the cause of death
to be homicidal violence.
They found two stab wounds, one fairly deep stab wound
and one more shallow stab wound on Liana's hip.
And they found defensive knife cuts on her left hand.
At the autopsy...
there was a 98-gram male fetus found in her womb.
It's horrible.
I still don't understand his mindset with the...
That's the other story.
Where was Ashley during this night,
the night of the 11th, morning of the 12th?
I still don't know.
Ashley, the White's little girl,
was believed to be home the night her mom disappeared.
It's just total disbelief.
We don't have too much information at this time,
but what we hear is it's very sad news.
So we're all distraught.
Everybody was hoping in the city
that she'd be found alive.
It's sad to find out that one of your neighbors,
that something like that can happen to them.
Shock and grief.
Staff at Royal Alexandra Hospital
talk about losing someone they love.
She's a friend and a colleague and very well liked
and respected for the work
that she did in the neonatal program.
So we miss her.
Everybody certainly knew that Liana was pregnant
because she shared it with everybody.
She told everyone, yeah. Very dedicated mother.
Her child was everything to her.
And very excited with the prospect
of having another child.
Michael White grew up here
in Mar, Ontario, a farming community
on the shores of Georgian Bay,
about three and a half hours northwest of Toronto.
He worked like many rural children
on the family farm, his former classmates
calling him an all-around nice guy.
Many in the small community say
they are shocked and saddened by the news,
and they say out of respect for the Whites,
a family who has been here for generations,
they do not want to speak publicly
about Michael or this tragedy.
There's a number of people that definitely thought that
he was a victim in all of this,
that maybe the police were just looking for the easy answer
and maybe not looking for the right answer,
that maybe they should look a little bit deeper.
Details started to emerge
about Michael White's past.
In March of 2002, he was court-martialed
for theft and possession of stolen property.
He pled guilty.
He was given a severe reprimand
and was fined $3,000.
And there was more about
what was possibly going on
in Michael and Liana's personal life
behind closed doors.
What people didn't know, though,
was stress was slowly building
as the young couple struggled with money.
A $36,000 accident settlement had hit them hard.
Finances were strained even more when the couple
moved into this $170,000 home.
With a huge mortgage and additional car loans,
the couple's debt kept growing.
But to the outside world,
including Liana's mother, everything seemed fine.
As far as Maureen was concerned,
they were in a very healthy and loving relationship.
Two months after being charged,
Michael White was granted bail and released from custody.
- Nothing at all? - Nothing right now.
What do you want to say to
the people who may think you're guilty?
No comment right now, please.
No comment.
White's bail release
angered some Edmontonians to the point
thousands of signatures were gathered on a petition
demanding it be revoked.
They felt personally invested
in trying to find her.
They felt betrayed,
probably, by a husband
who is now charged with his wife's murder.
And to then see him get bail,
forget the legal reasons for it,
forget any of those sorts of questions about whether
it's the right thing legally or not,
morally they felt wronged by that.
It was an outrage to the people.
Have you seen your daughter yet?
I cannot make a comment. I'm sorry.
All right.
Mike, if you didn't do it, who did?
Have you been trying to find a job?
I can't make a comment now.
Family and friends of Liana White
said goodbye today.
The 29-year-old was laid to rest
more than two weeks after she disappeared
from her North Edmonton home.
She had a magnetic personality
and drew people with her striking smile
and sparkling eyes.
She was a dedicated, nurturing mother
who was selfless in her love for her family.
As an employee and co-worker, she was outgoing,
reliable and compassionate.
When Maureen counts her blessings,
Liana tops the list as her centre and joy of her life.
Michael and daughter Ashley
did not attend the funeral.
My top priority is Liana and putting...
her in God's hands and...
Ashley.
That's our top priorities right now.
More than a year after his wife's death
in November of 2006,
Michael White's second-degree murder trial
began before a jury.
Today, on day one of the trial, the Crown told the court
that it has overwhelming evidence against Michael White.
It said the court will hear that
two days after Liana's disappearance,
Michael White returned to a field
where he picked up two garbage bags
and placed them at the end of his driveway.
Those bags were found to contain clothes
and paper towels covered with blood
with DNA that matched Liana White's.
And there was more evidence on the rubber gloves
found in the garbage bag.
The inside of the gloves are his DNA.
So the inside of the rubber glove is his,
the outside is her blood.
So he was wearing gloves when he touched her blood.
There was also some kind of army t-shirt.
It was basically his regiment and it had blood on it.
And they found a pair of jeans
with blood on it that turned out to be Liana's blood.
Found a pair of sandals.
The evidence now shows that he killed Liana
in the house and transported her away from the house.
You've got the body. You've got the bloody clothing.
You've got the blood in the scene.
You've got him on the camera
the morning that she's gone missing.
Her vehicle being driven.
At the scene where the vehicles left,
the driver's seat's pushed all the way back.
So clearly she wasn't driving it.
The shoes are placed, kicked out of the vehicle.
I mean, everything just added up
and it's all pointing in one direction.
Right at him.
Michael White, a tired,
thinner version of his former self,
sat in the prisoner's box today.
His lawyer says White will later testify
that he loved his wife.
He didn't kill his wife and that he's an innocent man.
The defense says there are too many unanswered questions,
suggesting police made assumptions,
shutting doors early on in the investigation
after seeing this pub security video.
You can't convict anybody on the strength of that image.
It's poor.
The defense says
if Liana died from a stab wound
to the neck as suggested, where is the blood?
Police used luminol
and detected traces in the couple's bedroom.
If she had died in this house
and lost the amount of blood they said she did,
that place should have lit up like a Christmas tree.
White told the jury the blood was from his wife's nosebleed.
If he is lying, it should have been better than that.
He loved his wife. He gained nothing from this.
He has lost everything.
But Crown Counsel Troy Couillard says
White is guilty and he lied to the jury.
"The story of Liana's nosebleed
is just incredible.
I suggest you reject it."
A story he didn't tell police
the morning he was charged with his wife's murder.
Couillard says White killed Liana in their bedroom,
dumped her body, stashed garbage bags
full of bloody evidence,
left the SUV in a parking lot, staged a robbery scene,
ran home, then cleaned up.
Madam Justice Moreau will read her charge
to the 12-member jury Wednesday morning.
Once that is complete, it will begin deliberating
and the fate of Michael White rests in the jury's hands.
I don't think he had a motive.
I think they got in a fight.
Circumstances were such that he just lost it
and ended up killing her.
Welcome back.
Michael White is on trial
for second-degree murder,
accused of killing his pregnant wife,
29-year-old Liana White.
He is denied any involvement and pleaded not guilty.
And now his fate rests in the hands of a jury.
Here is Jayme Doll with the conclusion
of "Behind Closed Doors".
Maureen Kelly's only child is gone,
Liana White murdered by her own husband.
How could you?
And why?
What happened?
Maureen held hands with her friend
while the jury read its guilty verdict.
Michael White closed his eyes, tilted his head back,
but he didn't cry in court
until his mother hugged him goodbye.
Michael White was sentenced to life in prison
for the second-degree murder of his pregnant wife, Liana,
with no chance of parole for 17 years.
I'm sad that my daughter's gone.
He's got a sentence, but my daughter's gone.
Ashley's mom is gone.
And...
because of his mistake, his life is ruined.
Twenty would have been better.
I think 17 seems kind of short
for kind of the offense that occurred.
That's not going to bring her back.
Nothing's going to change that.
So we still are going to have that
going through our lives forever.
He took two lives that day and still tries to deny it.
So I hope we never see him around here again, ever.
Maureen says the day Liana disappeared
was the day her world fell apart.
She described her agony to the court
at Michael White's sentencing hearing
while he sat listening in the prisoner's box.
In her victim impact statement, she said,
"I'm tortured by the way she died,
the suffering and fear she must have endured,
as well as the sense of betrayal."
Michael White lowered his head
when Maureen talked about Ashley,
but then he stood to speak directly to Liana's mother.
"Maureen, I don't know what to say to you.
I'd like to start off first with Ashley.
You are in charge of her life.
Raise her well, like you raised Liana.
Make sure she knows all about her,
every little detail.
Tell her about the man I used to be,
if you can ever find it in your heart to.
It may be too much to ask.
I'm sorry for everything
that you've gone through from day one to now.
I'm sorry."
He said he was sorry that Maureen was in pain,
but he never said he was sorry he did it.
Carol Forbes and White's stepfather
would say little as they left the court,
but are obviously upset with media.
You've done the dirty work in the beginning,
and it was you that helped convict him.
Michael White went on to serve 17 years in prison.
In 2023, he was granted full parole.
According to parole documents,
White has maintained his innocence
and is working to clear his name.
And there are others out there hoping to do the same.
The whole of Alberta was very emotionally charged
and very quite hateful towards Michael
because of the way the media had portrayed him.
As I got to know him, I'm going,
"This is not making sense.
The details are not making sense."
Marilyn Burns is an Edmonton-based lawyer
who has worked with the White family
on a number of civil suits.
To this day, she is still poring over the evidence
used to convict Michael White.
The police were there that day, and the house was pristine.
They couldn't see blood anywhere.
It wasn't until the luminol test was done
that they found the blood splattering on the floor.
Luminol basically tests for iron.
Blood, of course, has iron in it.
So do many other substances, vegetables,
cleaning substances, fluids.
Lots of materials would test positive for luminol.
The police theory is that
he not only murdered his wife,
he cleaned the entire bedroom.
He had managed not to wake up his daughter or his dog.
There was obviously not a lot of noise.
Maybe...
the throat slash was first,
so she couldn't make a lot of noise.
You would think she would scream if she could.
He managed to get her body into the vehicle,
all the way down to dropping it off in the ditch,
dropping off the garbage,
driving over to the location
where the vehicle was found with the door open,
and then he ran back home.
When I look at all that,
you'd have to be a mastermind to do that.
That's not the kind of human that Michael White was.
According to Marilyn,
Michael claims his daughter accidentally hit Liana
in the nose with this clothing hanger.
And this is how the nosebleed happened.
So there was blood in the garbage bin
on his clothes and from the cleanup.
What he didn't tell anybody, and what I extracted from him,
was that he had been collecting garbage from his neighbors,
and they would pay him to go to the dump.
But instead of going to the dump,
he dumped those bags in a field.
But he felt really...
embarrassed about having been dumping.
Innocence Canada says Michael White's case
is on an active list,
and it's currently being reviewed.
Burns believes there is another story
about what really happened to Liana White
she's determined to share one day.
Something I can't let go of,
and it's one of those projects I have
that ultimately one day I will go word by word
through the trial transcripts and prove that way
that Michael could not have done what is alleged.
He never admitted to doing it.
You know, you've got volumes of evidence.
It could only be him.
And he's doing the O.J. Simpson,
"I'm going to keep looking until I find her killer."
Just take a look in the mirror, buddy.
It's right there.
We always have to be mindful of tunnel vision.
And that's something that's always in the back of our mind.
We looked at other vehicles that had driven by.
We had, in terms of the video,
but in terms of the investigation itself...
we have to avoid...
you know, focusing on one particular thing
and having tunnel vision.
And I remember those discussions occurring
with the homicide team
that we can't have tunnel vision.
There's no doubt in my mind that Michael White killed her.
This is probably one of three cases
that I will remember for the rest of my life.
One of the ones that stick with you
because the pregnancy
still is probably the worst thing.
Mind-boggling what goes through these people's minds,
what a human being can do to another one.
A young mother, she's pregnant,
murdered in her own home by her husband.
By the safest guy she should have been with
and the safest place she should have been.
This is just awful.
We're all family guys in the homicide section.
You just can't...
how anybody could do this to their family member?
To know that Ashley is continuing on
without her mom, it's really sad.
And it really does affect us all,
and I think it affects most of Edmonton too.
We will take her memory and all that she stood for,
and we will make sure that goes on
and just make sure Ashley knows where she came from.
According to parole documents,
Michael White has remarried, has stable employment,
and has a close relationship with his family,
including his daughter Ashley.
He has also been granted permission to travel
outside of Canada on recreational trips.
Other than visits with his daughter,
he is not allowed to contact members of Liana's family
as part of his release.
Thank you for joining us tonight on Crime Beat.
I'm Antony Robart.
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