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Marilyn Burns would eventually become Michael White's civil lawyer. She says that she's gotten to know Michael very well and describes him as "gentle in nature, quiet and kind ... with no hardness about him."

Based on her dealings with the man and the evidence, Burns strongly believes that Michael White is innocent.

I asked her about the videotape evidence of a man driving an SUV by a pub, not far from the White residence.

Her response: "There is a fuzzy black-and-white image of an SUV driving past Richard's Pub, allegedly shot the morning when Liana went missing, but it is impossible to say that was Liana's green vehicle.

"There was a grainy back-of-the-head shot of a bald guy in a vehicle ... and another of someone running in the opposite direction 11 minutes later. I would say Mike was a good 40 to 50 pounds fatter than the guy in the video.

"More revealing," she said, "was that Mike was not bald the day Liana disappeared. Mike had short hair that morning, like he did when he was in the military."

"But the perception was that Michael White was bald because just before he was arrested, he was bald."

As recorded in preliminary hearing transcripts, Liana's mother, Maureen Kelly, testified she opened the bathroom door and saw Michael shaving his head. Kelly said this surprised her.

White said there wasn't anything unusual about that because he often shaved his head.

"As for the jogger ... stand outside the doors of the Castle Downs Sobeys and within an hour you'll see several men walking out who fit that description."

Burns says there's no evidence that puts White at the ditch where Liana's body was left.

"Absolutely zero. And there's zero evidence that places him at the site where Liana's SUV was found."

Burns says she was stunned to see the blood found in the White house was "next to nothing."

She said, "If Liana had been killed in the house, as the police claim, not only was the mess cleaned up – but there was absolutely no trace of the blood having been there.

"Liana lost a lot of blood ... several litres. The rags contained very little blood. Where did all that blood go if Liana was killed in the house?

"Another thing, the rags picked up in the field by Mike also contain his blood ... yet police say there wasn't a scratch on him the day Liana disappeared. In other words, both Mike and Liana's blood are old.

"Where you find Liana's lifeblood, you will likely find clues to her killer.

A U.S. forensics expert who testified at White's murder trial asked, "Where's the blood?"

As for the police theory that Liana was mortally stabbed in their bedroom, Dr. Jon Nordby questioned why police hadn't ripped up the floorboards in the bedroom.

A forensic examination could have indicated if Liana's blood was there.

Police also checked all the drains in the house ... but found no sign of blood.

(More about the U.S. forensics expert's testimony can be read here).

From elsewhere on the Last Link on the Left website:

Dr. Jon Nordby, an independent consultant in crime scene analysis and forensic science, qualified himself at Michael White's trial as an expert through his work for the F.B.I. and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Nordby said he helped process human remains at the World Trade Centre towers in New York following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

White's defence called on Nordby to offer his opinion on the evidence presented at the trial.

The expert said there was not enough blood present in the White's home for a stabbing to have occurred.

According to earlier testimony from Alberta's assistant chief medical examiner, Dr. Bernard Bannach, Liana White would have lost two to three litres of blood.

“I'm left with a question: Where's the blood?” Nordby asked. "I don't know where it is. I would have expected a lot more blood."

Nordy told the court that even if you accept all the evidence of blood in the bedroom from the police testing and combine it with the bloody items found in garbage bags, it would still not be the amount expected.

"We're still missing some bits of evidence."

Nordby told the jury blood stains on the bedroom wall may not indicate a stabbing.

“The stains on the wall came from a sort of impact blood source,” he said. “Could be a fist, could be a foot, could be a knife – but I would put that low on my list.”

Nordby cited an absence of cast-off stains if a knife had been used.

Defence lawyer Laura Stevens did not ask Nordby if the bedroom blood stains were consistent with a nosebleed.

Nordby was critical of police methods, and asked why floorboards in the White's master bedroom were not removed to locate more evidence of a heavy blood loss.

He also attacked police use of the chemical Luminol to locate traces of blood in the couple's bedroom and in the back of Liana's Explorer.

Nordby stated Luminol is only a presumptive test for blood and cited debate in the scientific community about its accuracy.

He said Luminol also tests positive for copper, iron, vegetable matter, bleach and other cleaners.

At the body recovery site, Nordby said insect samples should have been taken to aid in determining a more exact time of death.

Soil samples should have been taken, he said, to see if Liana had bled out in the ditch.

"It would be interesting to know how much."

Nordby said the samples would also help determine whether she was killed there.

The Crown cross-examined Nordby on several points.

Nordby admitted that less blood found in the home would be consistent if Liana White was strangled or if a stabbing resulted in mainly internal bleeding.

He also said insects aren't a perfect indicator of when a person died.

Burns once told a CFRN (CTV Edmonton) reporter that Michael White was Edmonton's David Milgaard.

A private investigator said Milgaard's problem was that when police came across circumstantial evidence that indicated Milgaard may have been involved they got "tunnel vision."

"Same thing with Mike White," Burns says. "Police found some bloody rags and said, 'this must be our guy.' Tunnel vision."

Milgaard, who now lives in Calgary, was paid about 10-million dollars in compensation after DNA evidence cleared him (a chunk of that money went to his lawyers).

Milgaard is married to a woman from Romania. The couple has a boy (born 2006) and girl (born 2008). He says he's trying to get his life in order and refuses media interviews.

It was because of the work of Milgaard's lawyer, Hersh Wolch, that Michael White's parents got Wolch to argue Michael White's appeal.

Over coffee at Tim Hortons on 170th Street near 111th Avenue, I asked White if he would tell me how rags with Liana's blood on them ended up in a garbage bag in front of his house within a week of Liana disappearing.

He did.

His story was that a few weeks earlier their daughter was playing in their bedroom, laying down on their bed and playing with a child's coathanger (a round stick with knobs sticking out). She swung it and accidentally struck Liana in the face, causing her nose to bleed.

Michael says Liana at first wanted to go to the hospital, but changed her mind because she thought she might have to wait a while.

White said the bleeding stopped and he cleaned up the mess.

He said then he put the bloody rags in a bag that already had grass clippings and odds-and-ends garbage from the garage in it.

White said he later dropped the bag over a barbed-wire fence in a field northwest of their house. He said he'd been to the spot a number of times to dispose of garbage, especially grass clippings.

Defence lawyers would later say that White retrieving bloody rags while his wife was missing showed a 'guilty mind.'

Others said it showed unbelievable stupidity.

Michael White's mother pointed out that if Michael was really guilty and wanted to destroy the evidence, he would have burned the rags ... certainly not kept them in his truck while he picked up his daughter from a babysitter. Or taken the rags with him when he went to Fort Saskatchewan to pick up his father.

White said when he realized his wife was missing and people were looking for her, he panicked and retrieved the bloody rags to prevent searchers from finding them and thinking that something had happened to Liana.

White later brought me to the field, west of 127th Street and north of 167th Avenue, where he dumped his garbage. In the grass I saw broken furniture, cans, broken bottles, plastic buckets, curled-up cardboard, mounds of old grass clippings ... and some dried-up dog shit.

For a split second, I thought I was back in Detroit.

I told White that if he went down for murder, people would laugh at him for years for putting bloodied rags out in his garbage at a time when he must have known he was a murder suspect.

He shrugged. "But that's what happened," he said.

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deadmonton - michael white - the untold story - 19