On March 25, 1991 the naked body of Juliana Frank, twenty-nine, was left on a set of abandoned railroad tracks in Middletown, New York. She was pregnant with her third child. The police did not connect her death to anyone in particular, and when the man who killed her went to prison soon afterward, it was for something else. Nathaniel White had been convicted of abducting a sixteen-year-old girl and was waiting to begin his sentence. Under a plea bargain later heavily criticized, he had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, which made him eligible for parole after a year.
He was born on July 28, 1960, grew up in Poughkeepsie, graduated from Poughkeepsie High School in 1979 and spent 1980 to 1983 in the Army. By the time of the killings he was a laborer living in the Town of Wallkill, just outside Middletown, with a girlfriend, Jill Garrison, and her two young daughters.
He was paroled in April 1992 and went home to Orange County. On June 1 Garrison's niece, Christine Klebbe, fourteen, who had just finished the eighth grade, disappeared. Her family did not report her missing until July 1. Her father later told reporters that social services workers had asked the girl to testify that White had sexually abused her and Garrison's two daughters, and said he believed that was why she was killed.
On July 10 Laurette Huggins Reviere, thirty-four, a mother of three and a close friend of Garrison's, was killed in her home in Middletown and found there by the police. Her children had slept over at White and Garrison's house a few weeks earlier. She had been packing to take her family home to St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
On July 20 two cousins, Angelina Hopkins, twenty-three, and Brenda Whiteside, were at the Blue Note Tavern in Poughkeepsie. Accounts give Whiteside's age as twenty and as thirty-two. They were last seen leaving in his pickup truck. Hopkins's sister Cecilia had seen them go, and when the Poughkeepsie police declined to act on a missing persons report for lack of information about the men they left with, she and her mother went on looking themselves. In the early morning of July 30 Adriane Hunter, twenty-seven, of Middletown, was stabbed to death; her body was found later that day in Goshen, near the burned-out Hillcrest Manor restaurant. She left two daughters.
Hunter's death brought in the New York State Police, who began to suspect that it was tied to the other disappearances. On August 2 White walked back into the Blue Note, Cecilia Hopkins recognized him, and he was arrested. He confessed, and on August 4 he led police to the ground he had used in Goshen: Christine Klebbe's body off Echo Lake Road, and the cousins in the woods off Harriman Drive by an abandoned farmhouse, both dead of severe blows to the face and head.
In a televised interview after his arrest he said voices had told him to kill. He also said the first killing came from a film. He had watched a scene in RoboCop 2 in which a man's throat was cut and his body opened from chest to stomach and left in a particular position, and with the first woman, he said, he did exactly what he saw. The remark made the case famous as a copycat killing; it is his account of himself, given in custody.
A grand jury indicted him for Christine Klebbe's murder on August 7, 1992, and the other five were added on September 9. He was charged with six counts of second-degree murder and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. On April 14, 1993 he was convicted on all six, and Judge Jeffrey Berry sentenced him to 150 years to life. He was sent to Elmira Correctional Facility.
The questions the case raised were about the parole. The New York Times asked within days of the arrest whether the state parole system had failed, and Governor George Pataki later cited White's case in his campaign to bring back the death penalty. Five of the six women were killed in the three months after his release.
July 28, 1960: Nathaniel White is born.
1979: he graduates from Poughkeepsie High School.
1980 to 1983: he serves in the Army.
March 25, 1991: the body of Juliana Frank, twenty-nine, is left on abandoned railroad tracks in Middletown, New York.
April 1992: White is paroled after serving time for abducting a sixteen-year-old girl.
June 1, 1992: Christine Klebbe, fourteen, disappears.
July 10, 1992: Laurette Huggins Reviere, thirty-four, is killed in her home in Middletown.
July 20, 1992: Angelina Hopkins and Brenda Whiteside are last seen leaving the Blue Note Tavern in Poughkeepsie in his pickup truck.
July 30, 1992: Adriane Hunter, twenty-seven, is stabbed to death; her body is found in Goshen.
August 2, 1992: he is arrested at the Blue Note Tavern and confesses.
August 4, 1992: he leads police to the bodies of Christine Klebbe, Angelina Hopkins and Brenda Whiteside in Goshen.
August 7, 1992: a grand jury indicts him for Christine Klebbe's murder.
September 9, 1992: the five other murders are added to the indictment.
April 14, 1993: he is convicted on all six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to 150 years to life.