[Gletkin]

Pastor charged with killing fiancee's daughter
by Ed White and John Flesher
Associated Press – 13 hrs ago

Bloomfield Township, Mich. (AP) — As police frantically worked to figure out how his fiancée's 24-year-old daughter had vanished, a Michigan pastor who had turned to God to shed his violent past went to his flock with a request: pray for her.

But all along, authorities say, he knew the sordid truth about where the young mother was.

The pastor, ex-convict John D. White, later confessed to killing Rebekah Gay to fulfill a fantasy of necrophilia, police said Friday. White drank four or five beers before going to the woman's mobile home and repeatedly striking her head with a mallet and strangling her with a zip tie, according to court documents.

Police said White stripped her dead body but does not remember if he carried out his sexual fantasy. After dumping the body early Wednesday, he returned to Gay's home and dressed her 3-year-old son in his Halloween costume, then later dropped him off with the boy's father.
"He kept saying he's a bad person, he's a pastor, he felt bad for the people in his church. ... I don't recall him bring real remorseful at all with regard to the victim or anything else," Isabella County Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski told The Associated Press.
"He just basically said he was attracted to her, thought she was a very cute girl. It's a crazy, tragic situation," the sheriff added.

The case shocked the pastor's roughly 14-member congregation and raised questions about how a man who had found religion after a criminal past could return to his dark past.

White was in jail without bond Friday, a day after he was charged with first-degree murder in Gay's death in a rural area in Isabella County, 85 miles northwest of Lansing. The 55-year-old has asked for a court-appointed attorney.

White was engaged to Gay's mother and regularly watched her young son while she worked, said Donna Houghton, a church elder who had a role in hiring White three years ago to be pastor at Christ Community Fellowship. Church members, she said, were "absolutely floored" by the allegations.
"I protested his innocence until I had the absolute news that he confessed. Then he had no leg to stand on," she told the AP.

Before his arrest Thursday, White called Houghton to ask that she contact other church members and start a prayer chain for Gay, who still was missing at the time.
"He was pretty shook up. He said the police were giving him a hard time," Houghton said.

White confessed that day after being told the woman's body was likely to deteriorate in the cold, wet weather, Mioduszewski said. He said his fantasy had been fueled by pornographic videos.

Houghton said the congregation was aware of White's criminal past when he joined the church. He was released from prison in 2007, after serving nearly 12 years for manslaughter in the death of a 26-year-old woman in Kalamazoo County, according to the Michigan Corrections Department.

He had previously been sentenced to probation for choking and stabbing a 17-year-old Battle Creek girl in 1981.

"He was absolutely contrite," said Houghton, 76. "All kinds of people turn around and meet the Lord and they are a different person. He was doing a lot of good in the community. ... He was doing a lot of good and Satan did not want him doing good and Satan got to him."

She said White got on her roof and cleaned her neglected gutters last week, a chore that inspired his Sunday talk. She recalled him saying during that sermon that "we need to check closely the seeds we sprout in ourselves. Nothing can be hidden from God."
At the trailer park on Friday, pictures of pumpkins and other Halloween decorations were still on Gay's home. Park resident Matt Brown said White regularly cut through his yard to visit Gay's trailer that was one street away.

Brown, 21, said White seemed to have scratches on his face when he told residents Wednesday that Gay was missing and that her car had been found outside a bar.
"It looked like he was in a struggle," Brown recalled.

Charles Kenworthy, another resident of the park about 11 miles west of Mount Pleasant, said the killing so close was "just scary."
"I would think they'd want to look into different people and their background before they let somebody live here," the 53-year-old said.

___

White reported from Detroit. AP News Researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

"Jesus Saves".
Yeah, not this time.
"Finding God" may help with character flaws, but not full-blown homicidal psychosis.

He must've had one hell of a lawyer to get just probation for choking and stabbing a minor.

[Far-Right Sage]

Execute him, but that should be obvious.

Men such as these who take up the cloth as wolves in sheep's clothing are particularly disgusting.

[Kman]

1 Pastor commits a crime, suddenly all the christianity haters come out of the woodwork to smear christians yet again. Why is this a news story? There are over a billion christians, ofc some will commit crimes.

[Far-Right Sage]

Who is attempting to defame Christianity?

My comments referred to the specific actions of an individual, which surely you must agree are worthy of condemnation.

[Donna]

Either a mod is deleting posts or Kman is hallucinating.

[Rei Murasame]

This is astounding for a number of reasons:

• No one during the vetting process thought to themselves that a man with a history of violent crime and attempted murder against young women, might be a bad candidate for this job? Who is going to be held accountable for knowingly appointing this man?
  
  
• Why on earth did a man allow this guy to use his field as a shortcut access for the pastor, when he would've been quite plainly strolling over there with a mallet in his hand?
  
  
• Why the hell is he allowed to have one-on-one visits with young women at all?

This is not a matter of 'some will commit crimes', it's a matter of complete lack of any concern for the safety of anyone, as though this sort of thing is inevitable. It's never the people who appoint these scumbags that pay for it.

It's always like this, always somebody's child living in a trailer, getting beaten over the head by a man with a mallet and then strangled with cable tie, and raped.

Kman's attitude towards this, is I think part of the problem. This is not the first time that this has happened, this is simply the latest in a number of insane crimes that have been allowed to unfold in churches because the vetting process for these people is ridiculously lax and stupid.

Now there is a three year old child without a mother, and they are going to blame what is obviously a systemic failure which stems from a flagrant disregard for the safety of women, on 'random chance' or even 'Satan'.

It's ridiculous.

[Far-Right Sage]

Why on earth did a man allow this guy to use his field as a shortcut access for the pastor, when he would've been quite plainly strolling over there with a mallet in his hand?

He likely didn't notice him walking through or what he was holding if his cutting through was a common occurrence. This would seem more out of place in suburbia, but is typical in rural communities where everyone knows each other.

[Brother of Karl]

I think you might be wrong on all counts, Rei. I'm just speculating here, but there probably wouldn't have been a vetting process, because, judging from the fact that the church only had 14 members, Pastor White was probably the founder and owner of the church. He couldn't have been "appointed". When a protestant church or other independent organization appoints a spiritual leader, they are probably going to do background checks, like with any other employee. Franchises like the Catholic Church have their own standards. But, if this man started his own church, the actual congregants would have had to figure it out on their own. This would be unlikely to happen, because most people don't question or mistrust authority figures, so they can, literally, get away with murder some of the time.

[Rei Murasame]

On the issue of the field, that may be true.

On the issue of the church, however, the article does state that the congregation were aware of what the man's background was. Also, it phrases it as he "joined the church", meaning that he couldn't possibly have been the founder of it.

There are also a number of churches which carry the same name, so it might actually be a small branch of a larger denomination.

[Verv]

Kman has a point..

A lot of people try to turn these sorts of articles as ammunition against Christianity. Although not initially done... it was subsequently implied by Rei.

[Rei Murasame]

Should we not do that? The Christian belief that people who are known to have criminal proclivities and like to sexually prey on children and have been convicted and sentenced for it in the past, can somehow be saved by grace, is what leads to them having deliberately lax vetting processes.

Which is how that man ended up being assigned to that congregation and was able to carry out that necrophiliac quasi-ephebophilic rape-murder right under their noses.

In almost any other kind of institution, simply having a criminal record of that nature would disqualify him immediately from working with young people and children. Yet they let him do it.

You can't act like we are being unfair when we point these things out.

[Ignite]

The guy was insane and a horrid being. Put him away forever.

In regards to religion. If a Muslim does one act (usually worse than this one) you get "IT'S JUST ONE MUSLIM YOU RACIST!!!" but if one Christian does something like this then you get "CHRISTIANITY IS THE WORST THING TO EVER EXIST!"

[Far-Right Sage]

I would once again ask, Ignite, who exactly has been propagating such a line?

The alleged persecution you refer to seems to be completely imaginary. Defamation of Christianity was not in any way the primary reaction to this story.

[Ignite]

I would once again ask, Ignite, who exactly has been propagating such a line?

The alleged persecution you refer to seems to be completely imaginary. Defamation of Christianity was not in any way the primary reaction to this story.

I'm sorry FRS, I was talking in generalities and not exactly directing it towards anyone specifically in this thread.

[Decky]

So you were moaning about something that hasn't happened?

I'm getting in on some of that!

Why is everyone in this thread generalising about people with dark hair, I am offended!

[Ignite]

So you were moaning about something that hasn't happened?

I'm getting in on some of that!

Why is everyone in this thread generalising about people with dark hair, I am offended!

I know some people only use the forum as an extension to fill what they lack in the real world and don't really read things but Rei has admitted to it in this thread, and others have gotten on Christianity here and in other threads. I was being nice to avoid an argument but leave it up to your kind to take it to the elementary school level.

[Rei Murasame]

Well, I don't think I've ever let Muslims off the hook in the way that you've described. I take the same approach to these incidents no matter which of those two religions do it.

[Far-Right Sage]

Don't forget Jews, Rei

Of course, above all else, this is a murder story, and the man in question, pastor or not, should be immediately executed.

[Verv]

Issues about sexual molestation are a bit different.

It also has to be understood that false allegations do get made from time to time. Naturally, I think all of the allegations should be reported to the Police and investigated...

Forgiveness is not a bad thing, also.

People can and have changed their lives -- whether it is by grace is up for debate.

[Rei Murasame]

The man was convicted in a court of law of it - the previous incident involved him stabbing a woman. The man did it and it was proven in court. And now he's done it again and actually killed somebody's daughter, and you are seriously going to say, "false allegations do get made from time to time"? Was the knife-wound from his previous conviction a 'false allegation'?

When this is what women constantly have to deal with seeing when these stories come up, you cannot be all that surprised that feminists coined the term 'rape culture'. Your post is the essence of rape culture, Verv.

How can the subject of false allegations come up when the man has killed a young woman and sexually assaulted her dead body, and was convicted of violence against two women with weapons years beforehand as well?

How could your reaction even involve the words 'false allegation'? In any way other than an ironic attempt at humour? My mind is blown. How can I even respond to this? Is there any thread on PoFo about rape, in which a man is not going to try to eventually introduce a discussion on false allegations of rape?

I would have thought that this - the mallet-wielding necrophiliac murderer rapist with criminal record for violence against women thread - would be one such thread where it would be impossible for a conversation about false allegations to occur, but apparently it is possible for a man to introduce that possibility at any time in any thread. Without any sense of irony at all.