Oh, you guys are killing me.
[sniffles]
That picture makes me feel anger and sadness.
It makes me angry at John. It makes me hate him.
He was my brother.
He was the only person I had left.
And family's supposed to be there for family,
but how could you -- how could you be there for that?
God, I can't even imagine it.
I can't even imagine it.
Doesn't even look like John.
Doesn't look like the John I remember.
He could have had a really good life.
Somewhere along the way, he...
took a wrong turn.
The damage that he has done is...
unrepairable.
There's no going back.
You can't bring any of these victims back.
And I'm so glad my parents weren't around to see
him there, to see that picture.
I don't know how he was able to
keep people fooled for so long by his stories.
He always seemed to have an excuse
that seemed to be plausible.
John had this evilness to him that I didn't see.
I think I was too close to him.
I love my brother.
And I hate him.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
-[knock at door] -[creaking]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[water dripping]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
This is a picture of John and I.
I think I was probably about...five.
And...
he was probably about eight.
We grew up in Augusta, Michigan, very small town.
John and I were very close.
I loved him. I looked up to him.
And I wanted to do what he was doing.
Playing baseball, playing kickball, playing hide and seek.
We did it all together.
Oh, I'd love to go back to that time.
John and I had a fantastic childhood.
It was a normal childhood.
Somewhere along the way,
something happened with John.
He let...evil in.
My father, he was police chief.
He was fire chief.
He was mayor of Augusta.
He did everything.
We knew everybody,
and everybody knew who we were.
John, at a young age, got himself
into trouble quite a bit with his mouth.
When John was in high school,
he had a friend, they would both run up
to the girls' locker room,
and he would open up the door and just yell,
you know, "I need a maxi pad!"
And they just thought that was so funny.
[distant male laughter]
When they came home and they told me about it,
and, of course I laughed.
I just shook my head.
I'm like, "John you're gonna get into trouble for that."
And he always was, like, shrug it off, be like...
"I'm just havin' fun."
Well, my parents always wanted to
make sure that we always were truthful.
John would get in trouble
because he didn't tell the truth.
John would tell stories, lies,
about his homework and school.
John always had an excuse or story for what he did,
and I don't think I ever remember him
taking responsibility.
And when we weren't truthful and we lied,
my father would take action with that.
AS JOHN'S FATHER: Come on now, John, confess.
CHRISTINA: My dad would take him in his bedroom,
shut the door, and then ask him to tell the truth,
and when he didn't,
then he would get a spanking.
[smacking noises]
And until he was able to then tell the truth.
When John got a spanking, that bothered me.
I would cry.
I think it hurt me worse than it did him.
I don't remember John crying.
John was never really too emotional
growing up that I could ever remember.
John and I used to play games
at night after my mom and dad went to bed.
John and I had bedrooms that were right next to one another.
When mom and dad thought we were in bed,
we used to throw things at each other in our rooms.
It was mainly stuffed animals, and we'd just
throw them back and forth and just laugh.
We did it all the time.
One night, I threw a stuffed animal
into his room, and he didn't throw it back.
So I threw something else.
He didn't throw it back.
So I grabbed something else, and I threw it.
This time John came back,
but he walked right into my room.
He just said, "If you throw anything else,
I'm gonna kill you."
It didn't even sound like John.
He was very dark.
That was the feeling I got -- very,
very dark and just unlike John.
It did scare me a little bit,
and I just went and got in bed,
and he turned around and went his bedroom,
and that was it.
I just figured he was just
in a bad mood that night, could have been a million things.
I do not believe that we even played that game anymore.
And, you know, you don't think that your brother is
mean or -- or evil.
I don't think that at all.
Looking back,
after what I know now and what John has done,
maybe that was a flag, and I didn't notice.
His threat that night
could have been more than...
just talk.
Growing up, John and I both had a paper route
when we were kids.
He did one side of town, and I did
the other side of town -- one day,
I was on my paper route, and I was delivering
a paper to this house that had a big, beautiful dog.
When I walked up to the porch,
here come that big dog.
The dog jumped on me,
put me down to the ground, then I remember
the people that lived there coming out
and pulling the dog off me.
[distant dog barking]
I was crying when I went home.
Mom and dad were calming me.
We talked about how the dog had attacked me.
I had a few bite marks on me, but I -- there
was no blood or anything like that, but it scared me.
I know John was there, but I don't
remember John ever saying anything
at that time or even acting upset
over the situation.
When I went to do my paper route the next day,
the dog was nowhere to be found.
And every day the dog was not there,
I went to school with some people that lived in the area,
and they had told me that the people
had found their dog, and it had been shot.
The dog had been shot out in the woods.
At that time, I didn't think very much of it.
People in Augusta,
we -- they -- everybody was big hunters.
I didn't put John with this until later on.
I would not have thought John had done that.
Maybe I didn't want to believe.
After John graduated high school, he went into the Navy.
He was over in Japan for two years.
After John returned home,
John told me all kinds of stories of things that happened
where he was stationed.
He told us a story about how he met this woman at a bar.
They went back to his hotel room to have sex.
He had said that she had
went into the restroom, and when she came out
and walked over to John, and he turned around,
and it ended up being a man.
MAN: So -- so what did you do?
John and said that he had totally
freaked out and beat the hell out of him.
[laughter]
He's such a storyteller that he told it in a way
where all the guys in the room
found it very funny.
I didn't really think it was that funny.
It was always hard to tell when John was serious,
or he was exaggerating.
I didn't know whether to believe it or not.
That was the first time that
I've heard John ever admit to any type of violence.
He was over in Japan for two years,
so a lot of things could have happened to him.
It makes me wonder if that's the time
he started having different types of sexual desires.
John got together with one of my friends from high school.
She got pregnant, and...
they got married -- his life was good.
Their marriage seemed to be okay.
There was problems,
but from what I seen from the outside,
John was -- he was a doting husband.
MAN ON TV: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen...
CHRISTINA: One day, I remember sitting in
my apartment, just watching the news.
I remember hearing John's name on the news.
It said that
John White had been
arrested for
stabbing Theresa Morris
numerous times.
She survived the attack.
I immediately just...
freaked out,
I guess, is the best words to say, I --
I couldn't believe it.
[phone ringing]
John's wife called me on the phone.
[phone ringing]
She told me that John and Theresa were downstairs
smoking pot, and...
next thing she knew, that John had -- was running up
the stairs,
screaming that he had killed her,
and to call the police.
I just needed to go see John.
When I seen John for the first time,
he had had cuts
on his hands by his thumbs.
I asked him how he got those cuts on him,
and I remember him saying because she came at him with
a knife. -She tried to attack me.
CHRISTINA: They were doing drugs,
and then Theresa
turned on him and came at him with a knife,
because she wanted his drugs.
The way the cuts were on his hands,
it was like he was trying to stop somebody from
stabbing him.
John had said that he had blacked out,
and when he woke up, she was laying on the floor, bleeding.
I can't see any logic in it,
so I don't understand why or how he could possibly do that
and why he would do it on purpose.
I didn't believe that John had done this intentionally.
According to Theresa's testimony,
his whole demeanor changed.
I remember her saying that it was like he was not there.
His eyes were, like, black,
and then that's when she got scared.
Looking back now, I believe that Theresa told the truth.
There's just got to be more to that story,
because you just don't go downstairs to stab somebody.
That would make him the sick person, evil person that he was.
My dad and the lawyer decided to go for
a temporary insanity plea.
John only served two years for his crime
in prison and got out on good behavior.
With John, there was always a reason why
it happened, and it was never his fault.
He wasn't the one to start things.
He wasn't remorseful about it.
I never heard him say that he was sorry
for what had happened.
I look back on it now, and John should've...
never gotten out.
Two women might be still alive
if they wouldn't have let him out.
When he was in prison for stabbing Theresa,
he had written a book about his life.
John sent me a copy of his book.
Some of the things that he wrote
in the book caught me off guard.
In that book,
he speaks about our paper routes.
I got to the part where he had talked about shooting
a dog because it had attacked me.
I was shocked.
I didn't expect that at all.
He kind of explained how he got
down on his belly and had his shotgun
and had
waited for that dog to come out in the backfield,
and -- and he shot him,
because the dog had bitten me,
hurt me, scared me to death.
Didn't have a clue at any point time.
He never mentioned it.
He never came back to me
and said, "That dog will never bother you again."
I definitely got a sense of
he did it because the dog hurt me.
I felt that John's sense of right and wrong
were definitely off,
but I obviously didn't know everything about my brother.
So this is a picture of John
and his big truck that he drove.
He was very proud of that truck.
Back then, I thought it was very cool
that he was an over-the-road trucker -- I thought...
How cool would that be, just to go and just
cruise around the United States?
He used to tell me about all
the great things he's seen and been through and...
and then he also talked about prostitutes in the truck stops.
He called them lot lizards.
They would come up and talk to
all the truckers and talk to him.
He never said anything about having sex with them.
But according to his friends,
he told them that he had taken
prostitutes into his truck, and...
after they had sex, he dumped 'em in the dumpster.
He did not actually say that he had ever killed any of them.
Just when he was done,
he referenced throwing them into the dumpster.
I thought for sure when I first heard it
that his friends were just making things up
or John was again telling one of his stories.
What if he had a prostitute in this truck?
What if he killed somebody in this truck
and dumped her in a dumpster?
Seeing where things went to,
maybe he did.
I think the life that John led on the road was his evil side,
his evil life, his other side.
Later on down the road,
I was into watching crime shows, and there was
a particular one where there was prostitutes
that were missing on this one stretch of highway.
So I do wonder if John was involved in any of that.
I didn't think much about it at the time.
I didn't think about it much until...
Vicky.
About this time, him and his wife were not getting along.
They were having problems.
He took a job at a laundry place that did linens
for hospitals and such,
and this is where he met Vicky Sue Wall.
He told me that he had fallen in love with her.
He had an affair.
He also told me that he would meet Vicky in the parking lot,
and she would get in his truck, and they would go and have sex.
I think I'm in love.
I don't want to hear about this.
I told him he needed to come clean with his wife.
That's enough.
But John didn't want to tell his wife.
In July of 1994, we had a call from
John's wife, about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.
His wife had said that he had hurt someone,
and he was going to end his life.
I was totally freaked out.
I remember going and getting in
the car and going to look for John.
There was something very strange going on.
And at that time, there was a report of
Vicky Sue Wall had been missing.
So we were putting two and two together
and was wondering
if John had anything to do with that.
CHRISTINA: The police went out there, and they found John.
So there turns out that there was
a surveillance tape, and it showed John
pulling up to Vicky's car.
And she got out and got in the truck, and they drove away.
The tape never showed John coming back
and dropping her off.
When they found her,
they identified her with dental records, because it
was so hot that the body had decomposed.
John was arrested for Vicky Sue Wall's murder.
I went to visit John in prison
to get his side of the story.
He told me that Vicky was into
strangulation
and rough sex.
He would pick up Vicky in the parking lot
of a department store,
and they would go out back, and they would have sex,
and after they were done,
she had slumped over in the seat.
And when he tried to move her,
there was no response, and that he was very scared.
He didn't know what to do.
After John dumped the body in the woods,
then he had went home and confessed to his wife
about his affair.
He also told her what he had done.
My response was, "Why didn't you take her to the hospital?"
And his response was, he was too scared.
I do remember thinking, another story.
Here's another story.
He's making excuses.
Because people just don't fall over dead.
I tried to talk myself into believing it was an accident.
But in the back of my mind,
I didn't know whether it was or wasn't -- looking back,
I wonder if John's story is even true.
It's so far out there, it's just unbelievable.
He could have just killed her.
And then in May of
'95,
John was convicted of...
murder and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
While John was in prison, his wife divorced him.
He became a minister
and had told me that he had given himself to Christ.
He assured me that his past was behind him.
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I'm just that way.
So if he said he was changed, and that's
what he wanted to do was go to Christ,
who was I to say he didn't?
John came to live with us,
and he tried to find multiple churches to minister,
but because of his background,
he didn't have any luck with that.
I remember him dating online, and that's when he met Sally.
She was a very, very nice lady --
funny, fun to talk to.
She told me that she absolutely adored him
and loved him,
and I was pretty happy about that, because John loved her.
I asked him, I said,
"Does Sally know about your past?"
And he said yes.
Then I went to Sally
and asked Sally if she knew of John's past.
He gave you all the gory details?
And she said yes -- I did wonder
what she really did know.
There was an opening for a minister
at her church.
The church took him in, they welcomed him in.
He decided to move up there.
And John was very happy.
As time went on, John and Sally became engaged.
Sally had a daughter of her own, and her name was Rebekah.
She was a very beautiful girl.
She was funny. She was nice.
John was excited about Rebekah becoming his stepdaughter.
They were growing close.
John moved into a trailer park,
and Rebekah lived in the same trailer park.
Rebekah had a young son, and John talked
very highly of him and doing things with him.
With John and Rebekah,
the relationship that they formed was
a father-daughter relationship.
John was sick.
He came down with a really bad cold, and since Rebekah lived in
the same trailer park, she would take him
soup, check on him,
bring pizza over.
And on the other hand, when Rebekah
would have to go to work,
John would come and take her son,
take him to daycare, whatever
she asked him to do.
They kind of just helped each other out.
But there was a time that John had called me
and seemed to be a little bit upset.
Rebekah had
promised to have pizza and movie night,
and she had backed out on John.
She's got some damn nerve!
CHRISTINA: Rebekah stood John up that night
to get together with her baby's father.
I believe that they were going to try to make amends.
He was like, "I can't believe she did that.
"After all I've done for her. I have done so much for her.
I can't believe that she would stand me up like that."
And he would repeat himself.
John was going on and on about it, and I just thought that
it was a little bit ridiculous to be going on that much
about it. -I got to go.
After John and I hung up the phone,
I really didn't think too much of it.
In hindsight, I think that...
he was becoming obsessed with her at that point.
As I look back,
Obviously, John had sinister thoughts about his stepdaughter.
On October 30th,
I received a phone call from John,
and he told me that Rebekah was missing.
John had told me that he was supposed to pick up
her son and take him to a Halloween party,
but when he went to pick him up,
Rebekah was nowhere to be found.
[sighs heavily]
John told me that he had called
the police, and everybody was out searching for her.
I had just that little bit of hope that
maybe she was with her other friends.
I wanted that so bad,
so bad -- mothers just don't
leave their small children by themselves.
I felt that something was wrong there,
that John had done something.
I just got a horrible, sinking feeling.
[phone ringing]
A day or so after I had that conversation with John,
I received a call from Sally.
[phone ringing]
She seemed very upset.
She had told me that
they had found Rebekah, and that she had been murdered.
She also told me that John
had called her from the police station.
He told her that he loved her,
and that he was the one that murdered Rebekah.
And we just cried.
It makes me angry at John. It makes me hate him.
[sniffles]
Makes me feel horrible for what Rebekah went through.
That right there breaks my heart.
REPORTER: The crime scene tape at Rebekah Gay's
mobile home was already there with the other
Halloween decorations.
At an afternoon press conference, police
detailed John White's confession.
First, they say, early Halloween morning,
White went through an unlocked door
at Gay's home and saw her in the hallway.
He told police he wanted to act out a fantasy of killing
a woman and having sex with her dead body.
-Uh, the suspect... -No, no.
Can't do that. I can't do that.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
I know what he did to Rebekah, I know,
and I don't want to watch it.
I don't.
Sorry, I don't.
I know what he did.
He walked into her trailer and hit her on the head with
a mallet, and he had sex with her dead body,
and he threw it in the ditch.
And yeah, I've been there.
It's not a good place for me.
I'm sorry.
What he did to her
is unforgivable.
When I turned on the news, I saw John...
confessing...
to the murder of Rebekah.
I remember feeling anger,
being appalled.
I just couldn't believe it. I was shocked.
Everybody was shocked. It's evil that does that.
John was convicted of murder
and 56 years in prison.
He deserved a lot more than that.
He deserved...
he deserved to die.
When I look at this picture, I see John White,
a serial killer.
This isn't my brother.
I always gave him the benefit of the doubt.
I couldn't imagine
the things that he had done.
For me to talk about John,
and to talk about what he has done,
was a sort of a weight off my shoulders.
But the picture of Rebekah...
[voice breaking] it hurts my heart.
it breaks...
my heart.
[normally] This is the letter that I received after John
was in jail for the murder of Rebekah.
"Dear Chrissy, I want to tell you how much I miss you.
"I love you dearly, Chrissy,
"and I do understand how pissed off
"at me you must be.
"I know what a disappointment I am to so many people,
and I'm so sorry."
That's the first time I've heard John
ever say that, and I don't believe it.
I feel that he's sorry that he got caught,
not that he's truly sorry.
"I'm hoping someday we can talk,
maybe tell you what really happened."
He's just telling another story,
and he wants to talk to me, because he wants to try to get
me to believe that what he did,
there was a reason for it.
But there was not a story, he could tell me to...
make it sound, like it was somebody else's fault.
But I never answered. I didn't want to answer.
John called me
every day, sometimes twice a day.
But I never accepted any of the calls.
Nobody was in John's corner anymore.
I was there for him.
He was family, I backed him,
I believed in him.
I had to admit that I was wrong to myself
and realize that there was a dark, evil side to John
that I see now
versus I couldn't see then.
Telling my story has been emotionally exhausting,
but it's also -- it's also a relief.
This whole experience has helped me
more than what you realize, because...
I can talk about him
versus just keeping it all in.
He very much betrayed me
and his family.
I just knew what it was.
I just knew before I even picked up that phone
or answered.
The officer proceeded to tell me that John had
committed suicide -- he had
hung himself.
The brother I knew and loved had died a long time ago.
So I did cry for him, but I had
oh, I don't know what the word is,
detached myself from me.
He was no longer
the John I knew.
I remember thinking that in hell
is where he deserves to be.
That was the only way to
kill the evil.
John had a...
great life.
He had a great childhood, but somehow,
somewhere,
he let evil in.