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When White arrived back at the Remand Centre, he phoned to say where I could pick up the keys to his house. The keys were in a small, sealed envelope marked "Give to: Byron Christopher."

The note inside read, "Expose The Trueth!"

That's not a typo – that's what he wrote. I put it that way because I detest writing [sic].

White told me to turn his house upside down if I wanted to.

"If you find anything that says I'm guilty, please do a story on it."

I got the keys and went around to 227 Warwick Crescent.

Another reporter from 630 CHED was with me when I turned the key.

The veteran reporter had integrity, guts and went beyond the news release. That's another way of saying the guy had initiative.

I also liked his position on the Michael White case: he didn't have one.

To conceal his identity, I'll use initials: J.T. Lemiski.

After a quick tour of the house, Lemiski headed to Liana's small office downstairs where he snapped on a pair of disposable, plastic gloves and went straight to work.

It wasn't long before Lemiski was holding (what we call in the biz) a nugget.

"Look at this," he said, flipping through the pages of Michael White's diary, penned when he was first put into the Remand Centre right after he was charged with murder.

Lemiski was holding the personal writings of a man accused of killing his wife.

Lemiski read some of the entries out loud. He remarked that Michael White's musings showed a man at his lowest depths, at the end of his rope, "baring his soul."

Lemiski handed me the diary.

The first thing I did was to photocopy it as insurance. That turned out to be a good move because the person looking after it accidently threw it out.

The diary contained no confession.

White wrote about his longing for Liana, how he missed his daughter, thoughts about his lawyer and his plans to return to Ontario with Liana's body after he was found innocent.

(More excerpts from the diary can be seen in Chapter Thirty)

Liana White standing in front of her desk

Pinned to a framed corkboard in Liana's office, just above a small desk, was a list showing contact numbers for Michael White, including some numbers for police officers.

On the board, too, was the business card I had dropped off at the Remand Centre.

But the document that stood out was Liana Clarissa White's death certificate.

On the desk lay several uncashed Child Tax-credit cheques.

Lemiski found a printout of Michael White's debit-card transactions. It backed up Michael White's claim that on the day Liana disappeared, before going to work, he bought a coffee at Tim Hortons.

Lemiski noticed something else on the debit-card printout: just before Liana was allegedly killed, the Whites bought items for the baby that was due in the summer. The reporter wondered why Michael and Liana White would do this if they weren't getting along.

Liana was extremely well-organized. Her small filing cabinet had folders on everything from receipts and recipes to power bills. Everything was neatly labelled (I later discovered that Liana had even labelled her plastic containers in the kitchen).

Even the dog had his own file. The file contained Sid's vet bills and a list of shots he'd received.

Up until Liana's death, bills were being paid on time.

We also came across a post-secondary school certificate Liana received when she lived in Kelowna, British Columbia. It made me wonder what was running through her mind when she got it.

What were this woman's dreams?

A folder that contained the house blueprints was empty. It's my guess EPS detectives made off with the house plans.

I returned to the White house many times. Quite often I was alone.

Like Lemiski, I wasn't "creeped out" at being in the house where police claimed Liana was murdered.

It didn't bother me to be there ... save for one time when I was in the very lower part of the house, in the rec room, when I heard a creaking sound. It sounded like someone walking upstairs. I went up, checked around but nobody was there. The door was still locked.

In my search of the White house, I went through cabinets and cupboards, boxes, pulled things off shelves and checked under mattresses.

I also came across intimate notes Michael and Liana wrote to each other on their anniversary and birthday cards – see images »

I found the cards in a drawer about halfway up in Liana's china cabinet, just under where her lock of hair was on display.

Down in the rec room I popped the foam drop-ceiling panels, searching for a possible weapon that might shed light on what happened to Liana. I got nothing but a nail and lots of insulation fibres in my throat.

Memo to self: don a mask when handling fibreglass insulation.

When I told Michael White I had also searched for 'souvenirs' (ie rings etc. which could have linked him to Edmonton's numerous unsolved prostitute killings) he said, "What? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

I checked the master bedroom where police claim Liana White was stabbed to death, losing several litres of blood.

Police allege that Michael White had cleaned up the blood – in the bedroom and elsewhere in the house – and disposed of the bloody rags in a field.

Given the amount of blood Liana lost, some of it would have seeped into the cracks between the wooden boards that made up the floor of the master bedroom.

Ripping up the floorboards would show, one way or the other, if Liana's blood was there.

Police didn't do that.

Michael White's family in Ontario said police didn't rip up the floorboards for the same reason they didn't take soil samples and didn't do forensic tests to determine when branches covering Liana's body were cut.

I was to put in many hours at the house of Michael, Liana and Ashley White looking for anything that might tell me more about what happened to Liana.

After a certain allegation surfaced at Michael White's preliminary hearing, I returned again to Liana's office to search her filing cabinet.

A female psychic testified that Liana had told her she was having severe marriage problems.

Dona Piercy, a palm-reader at the Russian Tea Room

White's lawyer at the time, Larry Anderson, questioned the psychic on how Liana had paid for the session.

The lawyer was told Liana had paid with her VISA. Anderson then asked the psychic if she had a copy of the transaction. She didn't. It was destroyed, she said, when her husband spilled a drink on it.

I found the VISA statement for the period Liana White was to have seen the psychic. Apparently the psychic's husband had some magical powers of his own: the VISA statement contained no such billing.

She may have seen it coming, but the psychic wasn't called as a witness for the murder trial.

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deadmonton - michael white - the untold story - 25