Terry Firma

Another day, another clergyman (and repeat offender) confesses to a violent crime:

A mid-Michigan minister charged with killing a young woman in her mobile home has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the case. The Morning Sun of Mt. Pleasant reports 55-year-old John D. White entered the plea Thursday in Isabella County Circuit Court in Mt. Pleasant. He’s expected to serve more than 45 years in prison under an agreement with prosecutors. … Police say he confessed to killing 24-year-old Rebekah Gay on Oct. 31 as part of a sexual fantasy.

White’s fantasy centered on having sex with a corpse. He claims he can’t remember if he in fact defiled Rebekah Gay’s body after he killed her. He does recall hiding her remains in the woods.

In 2007,

[White was] released from prison, 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.

Nice touch: The good reverend, after his latest killing but before his victim’s body was finally discovered, asked his flock to pray for the “missing” woman.

Also consider this facepalm-worthy fact: His small congregation knew about his past — and thought that it couldn’t possibly matter.

Church elder Donna Houghton certainly doesn’t seem plagued by any remorse or self-doubt. She prefers to think Gay’s death wasn’t her or her fellow believers’ fault, and she doesn’t even blame John White. It was [drum roll!] the devil whut did it.

“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.”

Sorry ma’am, but I somehow doubt that Rebekah Gay, in her dying moments, thought that Satan was responsible for her life being snuffed out. Instead, she might have pointed the proverbial finger squarely at John White, and at the people who gave him a veneer of respectability and trustworthiness by knowingly appointing a serial violent offender as their godly pastor.

[John White mugshots via Jonathan Turley; arm wrestling image by ongchewpeng via Deviant Art.]

