Minister Convicted in Slaying Found Hanged in Cell in Ionia

Oakland Press
August 28, 2013

http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2013/08/29/news/state/doc521ea3332712f074607216.txt

A minister convicted of murder for killing his fiancee’s 24-year-old daughter to fulfill a fantasy to have sex with a dead body has died after being found hanged in his prison cell.

MLive reports that officials at the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia found 56-year-old John D. White about 4 a.m. Wednesday suffering from self-inflicted asphyxiation.

White had been a minister of the small Christ Community Fellowship church in Isabella County’s Deerfield Township, about 120 miles northwest of Detroit.

He was sentenced in April to 56 to 85 years in prison for the October 2012 beating and strangling of Rebekah Gay. Police say White confessed to killing Gay in her Broomfield Township home because he wanted to have sex with a dead body.