How the Edmonton police captured Michael White for killing his wife

Follow Edmonton homicide detectives as they unravel, thread by thread, the flimsy web of lies spun by Michael White in one of Edmonton's most sensational murder cases

Michael White, who was convicted of the 2005 murder of his wife, Liana, was granted full parole on June 6, 2023. This feature about the investigation was originally published Jan. 7, 2007.

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Marie Olah was walking to the north Edmonton YWCA at 5:45 a.m. on July 12, 2005, when she spotted something amiss.

An SUV with its driver's door open sat abandoned in a parking lot between two baseball fields, the first important clue in what would grow into the most peculiar, sensational and successful homicide investigation in the recent history of the Edmonton Police Service — the hunt for Liana White's killer.

Before commencing her workout, Olah called in the tip to the EPS. But the police operator decided the information wasn't that out of the ordinary, declining to dispatch a car to the scene at 116th Street and 157th Avenue or to take down the SUV's licence plate number.

After a second tip at 7:27 a.m., a police car was finally sent out. Two officers came upon a bizarre scene. On the ground beside the vehicle, a Ford Explorer, they found a pair of women's shoes, neatly placed side by side. Other items were scattered leading away from the vehicle, including a cellphone and identification cards for a 29-year-old woman, Liana White. At once, the officers called the nearby White residence. There was no answer.

The officers travelled to the White residence at 227 Warwick Crescent and entered to inspect. They found the house clean and tidy, with no obvious signs of struggle. They also found a list of phone numbers and contacted Liana's husband, Michael White, who was at his mechanic's job at a local garage, having already dropped off the couple's three-year-old daughter, Ashley, at daycare.

Michael came home at once, arriving in a seeming state of shock and distress. He told the officers that Liana had awoken at her usual time of 5:55 a.m. and headed off to work, but when he called her at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, where she worked as a unit clerk, he found she had failed to show up at her usual time, 7 a.m.

The police asked if there was any reason Liana might want to flee from her life with him. She was four months pregnant, White said, and looking forward to the new baby. Their relationship was good, their financial situation tight but bearable, he told them.

Through the day, investigators talked to Liana's friends and family. They confirmed Michael's story about the couple's relationship. There were no reports of domestic violence or even nasty arguments. The police also learned of Liana's stable and cautious nature. She would never miss work or be late. She would never stop to pick up anyone on the road. She was described as a doting mother.

As the hours passed with no sign of Liana, the prospect of foul play grew as a possibility. Homicide detective Mike Campeau, a seasoned investigator, was handed the case. He went to the mobile command post set up near the Ford Explorer.

Campeau knew it wasn't uncommon for a wife or husband to go missing after a marital spat, but this was starting to look extremely unusual. He wondered about the shoes outside the car. If this were an abduction, a struggle, why would the shoes be left perfectly aligned, as if they had been placed there? Why weren't they askew?

This could be a setup, a staged crime scene, he thought. But why? Did Liana stage the scene herself?

Maybe she was fed up with her relationship, casting away her cards and leaving her shoes like that as a message: These boots were made for walking.

Maybe Liana would turn up one day in Las Vegas.

Through the early afternoon, more of her belongings were found near the Explorer, heading back in the general direction of her home. Her wallet was found under the low branches of a pine tree, leaning against the trunk. The branches were so thick and low that it would be almost impossible to toss the wallet and have it end up propped against the tree truck. It looked like someone had placed it there, more evidence of a staged scene.

The driver's seat in the Explorer was also pushed far back, indicating a large person had been driving, not five-foot-four Liana.

If this was a case of foul play, Campeau knew that the culprit was most likely someone close to the victim, such as a family member. Michael, 29, a former tank crew member in the Canadian Armed Forces, was a big, somewhat menacing-looking man — six-foot-three, 250 pounds-plus, shaved head, goatee — but he was coming across to the police as a grieving husband, not a killer. He wept as he filled out a missing person's report.

But Campeau learned that while Liana had a clean record, Michael had been in trouble in the army for theft, so he wasn't pure. He asked for White to head to police headquarters to be interviewed by Det. Ernie Schreiber, another veteran investigator.

At that point, Schreiber had no specific reason to suspect White. His goal was to go over White's timeline about the morning's events, which could then be checked out and would either show White to be truthful or a liar. Schreiber also needed to gather as much information as he could about Liana's habits and background, so the police might know where to search for her. "I’m a 215-pound sponge," Schreiber told White during the interview. "And all I’m doin’ is soakin’ in everything you’re telling me."

After going over White's alibi and Liana's background, Schreiber asked White outright if he had any involvement in Liana's disappearance.

"No, no. How could you ask me that?" White said. "I love my wife. There's no way I could ever hurt her, or anyone else. No."

Schreiber knew from the science of statement analysis — the study of the speech patterns of truthful and lying interview subjects — that when asked such a question, a truthful person will tend to utter a strong and direct denial, while a deceitful person will tend to deflect the question. An innocent man might even punch the questioner in the face or stomp out of the room.

White's denial wasn't nearly as emphatic as that, but it was OK. Schreiber knew that some innocent men were polite when asked such a provocative question, still trying to be co-operative and help the police.

Schreiber asked White if he wanted to talk to the media. White hesitated, saying he didn't want to come across as a showboat. "You know, it's a private matter," White said. "And there's no point stepping on anybody's toes and making a goof outta yourself, like throwing their hands up and bawling to the TV."

After the interview, Schreiber met with Campeau and the other investigators. Two things bothered him, Schreiber said.

At one point in the interview, Schreiber had asked White if forensic experts could go into the house and search for clues, any evidence that might point to what really happened to Liana and help take the spotlight off White himself. After digesting this for a few minutes, White mentioned to Schreiber a curious fact: "I cleaned this afternoon, made sure everything was tidied up."

The comment jumped out at Schreiber. Was it a slip-up, an inadvertent admission? Could it be that White had cleaned up after committing a crime and now felt the need to provide an explanation as to why the house was so clean?

The second issue that bothered Schreiber was White's odd attitude towards little Ashley.

White never mentioned Ashley until Schreiber himself asked about her, wondering if White wanted to see the little girl, who was staying with a family friend. White seemed hesitant, then broke down weeping: "Something that chokes me up, what the hell do I tell her?" he said.

In the end, White never pushed to see his daughter. Campeau, who has five kids of his own, thought that if his wife were missing, he would want his kids next to him. Schreiber agreed. Maybe White didn't want to see Ashley because he had just killed the girl's mother and couldn't bear looking at her, he thought.

On the other hand, maybe White was innocent or just an odd duck and didn't know how to handle seeing his daughter at such an emotional time.

In the final meeting of that day, Campeau reviewed reports that seemed to conflict with White's timeline. Two people said they had seen the SUV parked in the lot before 6 a.m., when Liana should have just been getting out of bed, according to her husband. Two others said the vehicle was there the evening before. Campeau and his team couldn't be sure any of the witnesses had their times right.

Just before the police shut down their mobile command post that night, Marie Olah came by and again told the police her story, that the SUV had been there at 5:45 a.m.

Campeau came in the next morning at 6 and read Olah's report, more evidence that appeared to contradict White, though it was still unverified.

That morning of July 13, Schreiber and Det. Brian Robertson went to visit White, seeking to go over his alibi one more time.

When they arrived, they were surprised to hear that White's earlier reticence about talking to the media had evaporated. He had already given an interview to CFRN-TV. Other reporters were camped in front of his house, determined to talk to him as well. Schreiber suggested to White that he could deal with the reporters all at once with a press conference. White agreed, and a meeting in White's driveway was set up for a few hours later.

In their talk that morning, the detectives were surprised when White asked them whether he should return to work. He is already moving on, Schreiber thought. Shouldn't his only concern be his wife, not his work?

But the most troubling moment came during the media scrum. White marched out to face the reporters, Robertson at his side, and without showing a bit of emotion, White pronounced: "Thanks to everybody who's been involved and looking. Thank you. Thanks for every police officer and detective on the case. Thank you. I just want to say thanks."

White then turned and retreated into his house.

No, no, no, Schreiber thought. This is not right. This is just completely wrong.

He had never seen a person who was truly grieving act in such a controlled, unemotional manner, thanking everyone as if he had just won an Academy Award. Here White had all the media in front of him, a golden opportunity to plead for Liana to call home or to plead for her life, and he had said nothing.

This wasn't any kind of proof of guilt but, in Schreiber's mind, it turned White into a bona fide suspect.

Thousands of others in Edmonton reacted the same way when they saw White's performance on TV that day. Police officers and friends called up Campeau, asking, "What is up with this guy?"

At their office, Schreiber and Robertson watched the raw footage of the CFRN-TV interview, with White saying, "Liana — hold tight…. If whoever has her, or if she is out there and you see me, just stay there and we will find you. I will find you."

What did White mean by telling Liana to hold tight, Schreiber wondered? That he had killed Liana and had put her some place? Was it another verbal slip-up? It certainly sounded that way.

In the EPS video unit, Sgt. Brian Andersen made another key discovery that day.

Security tapes had been gathered from the area where the Ford Explorer had been found, including one from a local bar, Richard's Pub, at 161st Avenue and 121st Street. Andersen went through the tape and spotted a Ford Explorer driving by in the early morning, a few hours into the tape, which had started running at about 3 a.m. But the video had no exact time signature, so the next morning, Thursday, July 14, Andersen went to Richard's Pub to try to figure out exactly when the video had started and how it had been recorded.

Early that same Thursday morning, a homicide detective interviewed Marie Olah and confirmed her times, finding she had swiped her pass card and entered the YWCA at 5:53 a.m. July 12.

White's alibi had now been dealt a serious blow. Campeau decided that White had crossed a line, was now a suspect, and the next time the police talked to him he would have to be read his charter rights to silence and to a lawyer.

At their morning meeting, homicide detectives were glad to hear Liana's Ford Explorer had shown up on the video, but Robertson still hoped it would reveal more. Surely there must be a city bus or a delivery truck on the video, something that would give a more accurate time stamp, he thought. And if Michael White had ditched the Explorer, might he be on the tape at some point, walking home?

Robertson paced around and worried about this problem until Campeau told him, "Get out of my hair. Go watch that tape for a couple of hours."

Robertson went at it. For several hours, he saw little of note but then came the Explorer. Sgt. Andersen had stopped watching the tape at that point, but Robertson kept watching, with a mounting sense of disappointment that his effort was fruitless. The tape was almost over. Daylight started to brighten the image.

Just then, the tape showed a large bald man in a white T-shirt walk by.

Robertson gasped. "Holy —-! That's him!"

The man moved just like White, a big, ambling bear. Robertson watched it again.

"There is no one else in the world this could be."

At once, Robertson called up to Campeau. "You better get down here. I think we have something."

Eight officers filled the room to watch the tape. Each of the officers who had met with White — Robertson, Schreiber and file co-ordinator Mike Bartkus — were convinced it was him on the screen, returning home after ditching the Explorer and staging the crime scene, doing his dirty work when he should have been in bed sleeping.

Schreiber is a cerebral, unflappable investigator, not one to get too excited, but Robertson's discovery thrilled him. It was a remarkable piece of evidence, next to impossible to refute in court.

From that moment on, Schreiber had no doubt that White was the killer. In fact, the whole team felt that way. There were no other suspects.

The investigators started to think hard about White's motive for killing Liana. It was clear that she was the stronger personality of the two, the one who did all the heavy lifting in their marriage, from caring for Ashley to handling the couple's finances. Maybe she had threatened to leave him.

In his first interview with Schreiber, White mentioned he’d promised to stop coming home from work late, but on Monday evening, in the hours before the homicide, he’d been out drinking with his workmates. Maybe that had precipitated a fight with her?

Now the police started a game of cat and mouse, employing the media to keep White in the dark. That same day, Insp. Jamie Ewatski announced to reporters there was still no indication of foul play: "Right now, this is still a missing person complaint. That's what it is and that's how we’re treating it."

Michael White told a TV station that he wanted to start searching himself because he was getting tired of receiving no answers. "My sorrow has now become anger."

The police were only too happy to have White out searching. Maybe he would lead them to the body, they thought. Campeau could now justify putting 24/7 surveillance on him.

Late that Thursday afternoon, police operatives started to trail him. That evening, White was part of a search party, ostensibly looking for his lost wife. He briefly went home at 10 p.m., then headed out to pick up his daughter from friends.

On the way, he made a brief side trip, stopping along a road on the city's outskirts at 127th Street and 167th Avenue. Const. George Crawford watched as White got out of his vehicle, waded into the tall grass along the road, then came out with two garbage bags. White placed the bags outside his home with other garbage bags meant for pickup the next morning, Friday, July 15.

Campeau arranged to have a police officer, Const. Michael Wynnyk, ride on a city garbage truck to ensure the bag was collected for the police instead of heading to the dump.

At police headquarters, Campeau watched as forensic experts went through the two bags. They contained a broken lamp, bloody clothes including a regimental T-shirt from White's old army unit, bloody latex gloves and sponges.

"Holy crap," Campeau said. "This is just a gold mine."

That same morning, police checked the area where White had picked up the garbage. Right at that spot, along the road, they found a lampshade on a fence post.

The new finds made Campeau's team start to think that White must have taken two trips that night.

First, he killed Liana, then gathered up her body, the murder weapon and the bloody sheet and clothes, and dumped them somewhere. White likely then returned home to do a thorough cleaning job, using gloves, sponges and the other items later found in the garbage bags. After cleaning up, he dumped the bags at a location close to his home, marking them with the lampshade on the post so he could return at some point, locate the bags and do a better job of disposing of them.

On Friday afternoon, Schreiber called White in for a second lengthy interview. Now that he was a suspect, the goal was to get him to repeat his timeline, only this time do it after he had been informed in painstaking detail of his charter rights to silence and a lawyer. There would be no question, then, that White's timeline was given freely and voluntarily in the full knowledge that he was a suspect. That way, it could be used in court to show White as a liar.

Still playing the part of the grieving but helpful hubby, White readily agreed to talk to Schreiber. During the interview, White again blurted out an interesting fact, mentioning that he used to dump grass clippings in a field, right where he had been one night earlier picking up the two garbage bags. Again, with no apparent prodding from police, White was going out of his way to provide an explanation for shady behaviour, a sign of a guilty conscience.

But Schreiber didn't confront the killer just then. The police were still getting search warrants for White's home and their vehicles. Plus, there was the issue of Liana's body. Throughout the week, White had talked increasingly about his efforts to find Liana and had plotted strategy for his search with the police. "You’ve got to find her, you’ve got to find her," he kept saying.

It was clear to Schreiber that White was desperate to have Liana's body found, but why?

White's mother, father, stepmother, brother and sister-in-law had all come out from his hometown of Mar, Ont., to help in the search. Maybe, Schreiber thought, White wanted to start playing the part of the distraught husband in front of his family. If the body was found, he could tearfully prepare for the funeral, rather than have to live with the anxiety of the search, and all the doubt and pesky questions about what had happened to Liana. He could wallow in self-pity and sympathy.

After Schreiber's interview with White, he and Robertson travelled to White's home to meet with White's family and answer their questions. The family all appeared to be great folks, the two detectives thought. They were supportive of Michael, but also of the police.

In the back of his mind, Schreiber thought, "If you guys only knew."

At one point, White himself went off with the two detectives and quietly asked his own question. "Will the police be looking at the dump?"

It was clear that White hoped the dump was a great abyss from which nothing ever emerged, Robertson thought. But, of course, White's garbage was already in police hands.

The next morning, Saturday, July 16, the police got tough with White, arriving at his house with a warrant to search the place. "Everybody will have to leave," Schreiber told White and his family. "We will provide lodging for you. Michael, we will not provide lodging for you. Michael, you will not be allowed to take any of your clothing."

White's family was bewildered. White himself was agitated. "Are you guys saying I’m the guy that did this? Are you guys saying I’m a suspect?"

"Michael," a family member cut in, "they are just doing what they need to do. It's OK."

White could say little more, forced as he was to play the part of the co-operative husband.

The police had a warrant for White's truck, but left him with it, wanting him to be mobile so he could still lead them to Liana's body.

The EPS forensic team went to work, uncovering traces of blood in White's bedroom, then on a path down a hall to the garage, and in the back of Liana's Ford Explorer. Blood was also found on detergent bottles. They also found sponges, towels, pants and a shirt that matched the items in the two garbage bags.

Early on Sunday morning, White called Schreiber, wondering where his team should search that day, the last day his family would be able to help him before heading back to Ontario.

Hoping to plant a seed, Schreiber encouraged White to find Liana that very day. He told White that sometimes husbands and wives have an almost psychic bond, and mentioned that once while he had been away in Ottawa, he got a strong feeling that his wife was grieving. He called her and found out that her father had passed away.

"Kind of paranormal things can happen," Schreiber told White. "Just go with your intuition. If you sense that she is someplace close, just go with your intuition."

That evening at 5, White and his family — followed closely by police operatives — found Liana's body, naked, face down and covered in branches, in a ditch just east of St. Albert.

Her corpse was rotting, ravaged by insects and animals and marked by knife wounds. White dropped to his knees and wept, then told a family friend to take the licence plate numbers of those who drove by, as killers often come back to the scene of the crime.

When Campeau heard that the body had been found, he knew his puzzle was complete. "Arrest him," Campeau said. "Arrest him for murder."

In police custody, the homicide detectives put an operative next to White in jail, hoping he might make some kind of confession. But the big man said not one word.

White spoke for some time to a defence lawyer. He almost certainly would have been told not to talk to the police, but Schreiber made the attempt anyway. To his surprise, White agreed to talk.

By then, Schreiber had gone over his interview strategy with Campeau and the rest of the team. They decided White was an unemotional offender, as opposed to an emotional one, so it was no use trying to make him feel bad for what he’d done.

Instead, the plan was to hit him hard with the facts, one after another, and hope that he realized no one would believe his lies, so it would be best to come up with a new story. The police expected he might claim that in the middle of a heated argument, Liana had bashed him with a lamp, so he lost it and killed her.

In the interview room, the police plastered the walls with news stories of Liana's disappearance, hoping that would unnerve White. Schreiber also had ready photographs of the contents of the garbage bags and the video clips of the Explorer and White in front of Richard's Pub.

Campeau believed he had enough evidence to convict White already. A confession would be icing on the cake. Schreiber wanted to get White to at least admit certain things, and he succeeded at first. When White saw the tape of the Explorer, he admitted it was his vehicle.

We’ve got him, Schreiber thought. He's adopting the evidence.

But when White saw himself running on the videotape, he made no admission.

"That's you, Mike," Schreiber said. "Want to see it again?"

"That's not me. That's my Explorer. That's not me running. There's just no possible way."

After thinking about the Explorer on the videotape — which proved his timeline was wrong — White simply said he might have been mistaken about times that morning, and Liana might have left the house earlier that day.

As for the evidence in the garbage bags, White admitted the regimental T-shirt and broken lamp were his, but denied the other items belonged to him. Nothing worked to budge White and get him to confess. When he said he was getting tired, Schreiber called off the interview, knowing he could pick things up the next morning.

The next day, Schreiber went at White hard, berating him for being such a bumbling criminal, trying to make White angry and get him to confess. He talked about White's failed attempts to clean the house, his walking by on the video 12 minutes after dumping the car, his strange statements to the press, how he picked up the garbage bags but didn't even bother to look inside them.

"If I were to package this up and if I were to go to Hollywood and tell them this story, they would say that I can't believe a guy would make this many mistakes, that he would goof up so badly in trying to cover his tracks this way, taking the vehicle down there and not pulling the seat forward, the wallet under the tree, getting caught on video.

"This is worse than a B-grade movie. You have made mistake after mistake after mistake, and we’ve captured most of them. Propping the lampshade up on the post so you knew where the bags were, getting your family to find the body. Bad mistake, bad mistake, bad mistake."

Schreiber talked for minutes on end, with no response from White, other than the odd comment that his lawyer had advised him not to talk. White sat in his chair, head down, slumped over, not even appearing to be listening.

He has shut down, the detectives thought. Logged off.

At the end of the interview, Schreiber pressed him one more time.

"Anything different, Mike?"

"My lawyer instructed me not to say anything."

"OK," Schreiber said, then went to shake hands with White. "Good luck to you, Mike."

Just then, White leaned towards Schreiber's ear and whispered, "I wish you’d believe me."

The comment summed up everything, Schreiber says.

"That is Michael White. ‘I wish you’d believe me.’ At the end of all of this, at the end of all the hours of dealing with him, first presenting the evidence to him, then taking it a step farther to where I get on him for what a bumbling criminal he is, at the end of all this, he says, ‘I wish you’d believe me.’

"That's the Michael White message. It's not that, ‘I didn't do it.’ It's, ‘I wish you’d believe me.’

"You see, it's all about him. It's all about seeing things through his eyes, and coming alongside him, because he is the poor, pitiful guy that life has never been good to.

"My response was, ‘It's not about believing you. You killed your wife. It was a huge mistake, and at least I wish you could say, ‘I’m sorry.’ "

Robertson isn't surprised White didn't confess. Throughout his life, whenever White had been caught stealing, he rarely admitted any wrongdoing, either denying his guilt outright or saying he was merely borrowing things, not stealing them. "He has been very successful at jamming his head in the sand and letting all of that stuff just sort of blow over."

As frustrating as White was, the case marked a high point for investigators. "At every intersection, we got a break that told us which road to take," Robertson says.

If Robertson hadn't found White on the videotape on the Thursday morning, the police would not have tailed him that night and spotted him picking up his garbage. They wouldn't have seized the garbage bags the next day, depriving them of crucial and devastating evidence. The bags might still be in the dump.

And Michael White might be a free man, rather than serving a life sentence for second-degree murder without parole for 17 years.

"To get that kind of evidence on a homicide file is outstanding," Schreiber says.

"It's a once-a-career kind of file when you get everything that comes together this way. I was ecstatic about seeing it."

"This is a dream case," Campeau says.

"This is a case where everything fell in. How often do we get a guy going back to where he dumped his bloody clothes and bringing them back to his house?

"He should be in the world's stupidest criminals video because he did everything wrong."

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