The Misery Machine - The Horrifying Case of Alianna DeFreeze

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

This week, Drew and Yergy head back to Northeast Ohio to discuss the case of Aliana DeFreeze, a 14-year-old schoolgirl with a developmental disability who was tragically kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered in Cleveland, on January 26, 2017. On her way to E Prep & Village Prep Woodland Hills, Alianna boarded an RTA bus but was followed and abducted near East 93rd Street and Kinsman Road. Her body was discovered three days later inside an abandoned home on Fuller Avenue. Christopher Whitaker, a registered sex offender with an extensive criminal history, was linked to the scene via DNA evidence. In March of 2018, he was convicted of aggravated murder, kidnapping, rape, and gross abuse of a corpse. He was sentenced to death. In 2021, Christopher's legal team appealed to change the sentence to life without parole. Alianna’s father, Damon DeFreeze, publicly agreed with a life sentence, stating that death was "too quick" and that he deserved to "sit there and think about what he did."Support Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachineJoin Our Facebook Group: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachineOfficial Merch Store: https://miserymachine-shop.fourthwall.com/Instagram: miserymachinepodcastTwitter: misery_podcast#documentary #themiserymachine #truecrime 🚨 EDUCATIONAL, DOCUMENTARY, SCIENTIFIC, OR ARTISTIC CONTENT DISCLAIMER 🚨CONTENT WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS ABOUT A SENSITIVE TOPIC INVOLVING LOSS OF LIFE. WE'VE REMOVED ANY GRAPHIC CONTENT TO COMPLY WITH YOUTUBE'S GUIDELINES. WE AIM TO PROVIDE INFORMATIVE, FACTUAL JOURNALISM ON A TRAGIC EVENT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST THAT DOES NOT DISMISS ITS SERIOUSNESS. ALL CLIPS ARE USED UNDER THE DOCTRINE OF FAIR USE FOR NEWS REPORTING AND ANALYSIS.Fair Use Disclaimer: "Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for 'fair use' for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."THE CONTENT IN THIS VIDEO IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, BASED ON BELIEVED RELIABLE SOURCES. THEY MAY NOT BE CURRENT OR FULLY ACCURATE. VIEWERS SHOULD DO THEIR OWN RESEARCH AND NOT SOLELY RELY ON THIS INFORMATION. WE'RE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INACCURACIES OR OMISSIONS. WE DO NOT CONDONE, ENDORSE, OR ENCOURAGE ANY OF THE BEHAVIORS OR ACTIVITIES SHOWN. WE URGE EVERYONE TO ALWAYS ACT RESPONSIBLY AND WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE LAW.

Aliana Selena Daphrease was born on June 12, 2002 in Detroit, Michigan to parents Denise Cooper and Damon DeFries, who later separated. Damon would later go on to marry a woman named Watanya. Aliana also had a younger brother who was two years old as of the events of today's story. Aliana was a seventh grader at E-Prep and Village Prep Woodland Hills, a charter school in Cleveland, Ohio, where she had been a student there for two years. She was on a special education track and, according to Dinesha, she acted much younger than 14 years old.

Deniseia said she still played with baby dolls. Aliana's favorite color was purple and she had a stuffed animal named Lucky. Denisha described her as a bubbly and happy girl who cared about her little brother. Her cousin Ariel Dufree said that Aliana was very family-oriented and she was very, very loving. Getting to school took two RTA buses. Aliana boarded near her home, transferred at East 93rd Street in Kinsman Road, and rode a second bus the rest of the way. Denisea and her grandmother Yvonne didn't like her riding city buses,

but one of her stops sat directly in front of Cleveland's 4th District Police Station that made them feel much better about it. There was one more thing about Aliana's family, and it's the kind of detail that would be hard to believe if it were not in the public record. Ali on his grandfather was criminal and far-left militant Donald DeFries. At 14, he left Cleveland for Buffalo and joined a street gang there. Later moved to New Jersey, and that is where he married Gloria Thomas, who already had three children. Together, they had three more.

A couple moved to Los Angeles before finally returning to Cleveland in the late 1960s. But being a father of six was too much for Donald to handle. He was quoted as saying, I just couldn't take it anymore. I was slowly becoming nothing in reference to feeling overwhelmed by trying to support the children. He also said, I started playing with guns and fireworks just to get away from life and how unhappy I was. He left Cleveland again after posting Bond following an arrest for climbing on top of a bank

with a toolkit and a hand grenade. In 1969, he was convicted of armed robbery in Los Angeles, and he was wounded in a gunfight with police during that arrest. On March 5, 1973, he broke out of Soledad prison in California. Three months later, his wife filed for divorce and was granted custody of all six children. Donald went to Oakland and formed the Symbionese Liberation Army, or the SLA for short. Donald took on the alias of General Field Marshal Sinkyu when the group was formed. Members of this group assassinated Marcus Foster, the first black superintendent of the Oakland, California Unified School District in November of 1973.

The group used Hollow Point Bullets Pack with cyanide. The hit was carried out on the belief that, Mr. Foster was, in the SLA's eyes, a fascist, and because he supported a plan to require student ID cards in an attempt to combat the presence of drug dealers on campus. On February 4, 1974, Donald helped plan and carry out the kidnapping of Patty Hurst, then a 19-year-old student in Berkeley, California, and she was used to attempt to negotiate the release of two SLA members in custody, as well as to get her rich family to provide millions of dollars worth of food to the poor.

She was held in the closet with her hands tied behind her back for a week. But two months later, she publicly announced that she had aligned herself with the SLA and robbed a bank with the group in Los Angeles. Once his name was attached to the kidnapping, FBI agents in Cleveland raided the East 96th Street home where Donald's mother lived. He soon gained national attention, and for days afterwards, reporters gathered outside his ex-wife's home. The search for him ended on May 17, 1974.

when roughly 400 police officers, as well as federal agents, surrounded a Los Angeles house where he was holed up with other SLA members armed with fully automatic weapons. It was one of the largest police shootouts in American history, with a reported 9,000 rounds fired between both sides and several canisters of tear gas by police. The house caught fire during the shootout and burned to the ground. Officials said Donald removed himself from the earth with a gun, as it burned while the rest of the SLA members were either shot dead by police or died of smoke inhalation. Four days later, Donald's body was flown back to Cleveland and he was buried at Highland Park Cemetery in Highland Hills. Donald's daughter, Don DeFries, wrote about him on a religious website in 2001. She wrote,

At my father's funeral, I couldn't shake the overwhelming feeling of guilt for not being able to cry for him. He had been an absentee father, a part of my life yet never there. I could not understand the wailing and grieving of so many people I have never seen before. Christopher Whitaker was born on January 29th, 1973 in Fayetteville, Tennessee. His parents never married and did not live together. He saw his father only now and then and was far closer to his father's parents who lived in the same town. According to social worker Mary Cecil McDonnell, both Christopher and his older sister told her that they had never been mistreated or neglected his children.

His mother died after a long illness when he was just eight years old. His oldest sister, Alicia Summers, was 19 at the time. Worried that child services meant to scatter the children across separate foster homes, Leisha got a hold of a U-Haul and drove all seven of them to Cleveland, where the family had two great-aunts. Within one week, his mother had died and he had been moved to another state, away from his father and paternal grandparents, and out of the school he'd been attending.

Leisha was granted guardianship and from then on she was the one raising him. Her boyfriend Michael McDonald moved in with a family in Cleveland. Soon, Michael developed a heroin addiction and became violent toward Leisha and Christopher watched him beat her. Leisha said that when Christopher was eight or nine years old, he saw Michael give her two black eyes and a busted lip. Thankfully, Michael left the family and he moved back to Tennessee after a woman. about a year. Christopher went to Cleveland public schools until the fourth grade. Fifth grade found the

family in Garfield. He left high school partway through his sophomore year. There he received one suspension for fighting. He started using crack and other forms of cocaine in his early 20s. In the year 2000, he went through a 28-day inpatient drug detox program. Christopher went on to have four children, son and three daughters by four different women. His record starts in 1996 with a no-contest plea to assault and a guilty plea to criminal trespass. The trespass came from climbing through a man's window in Maple Heights to take a television with the resident home at the time. In 1998, he was charged with grand theft and burglary and separately with aggravated robbery and felonious assault, with the latter two charges later being dismissed. In 1999, he pled guilty to burglary again

into grand theft of a motor vehicle. The car belonged to a relative whose house he had broken into. The court put him under community sanctions for two years. He kept filling. drug tests, and that cost him eight months behind bars. Then came April 8, 2005. Over the course of one night, Christopher phoned a 45-year-old woman again and again, and eventually asked whether he could come up and use her bathroom. She lived at the Trinity Tower's apartments on Rockside Road in Bedford Heights, and she let him in. When he was taking a long time in the bathroom, she called out asking what was taking so long. He answered, what do you think, and came out holding a pair of scissors. She was sitting at her kitchen table when he began choking her, and she lost consciousness.

While she was out, he essayed her and stabbed her in the neck with the scissors twice. She woke up on the floor of the back bedroom. Her neck hurt, her clothes had been taken off her, and Christopher was gone. Hillcrest's hospital treated her, and police arrested him four days later. The original charges were attempted murder and essay. However, he took a plea of sexual battery and felonious assault instead, served four years, and came out in 2009 on the registry, but he didn't stop there. A 2012 guilty plea to theft and aggravated theft got him six months in jail and two years under

community control, and he lost that when his drug tests came back positive. Community control exists in the state of Ohio and is essentially it functions as probation, but the term community control is reserved specifically for those who've committed felonies, not misdemeanors. According to reports, the theft had taken place in Bedford, where Christopher Brokewere, into his ex-girlfriend's home on Ledgwood Drive and took three televisions, a CD player, a fax machine,

a computer, a washer, and a cell phone. He loaded all of these things into her car. Legendary has arrived in Alberta with BetMGM Sportsbook. Sign up to unlock access to hundreds of pregame and live betting options for all your favorite sports, including hockey, baseball, soccer, and much more. Have a hunch your favorite player is going to have a great game?

Lock in your picks and watch. watch the action unfold. You can make your picks on your favorite team too. And every time you play, you can enjoy instant deposit options and fast withdrawals. BetMGM Sportsbook is available in Alberta. Download the app and experience Vegas thrills in the palm of your hand. See betmgmgm.com for terms. 18 plus Alberta only, please play responsibly, subject to eligibility requirements. If gambling is affecting your mental health or well-being, 211 Alberta is here to help. Call or text 211 or visit ab.211.ca. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with the Alberta Eye Gaming Corporation.

Standard message and data rates may apply. Do you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better.

Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. And drove away with it. After the break-in, he called her and threatened to kill her unless she took back her statement to the police and kept threatening her after he got out. On December 23rd, 2015, he sent her Facebook messages

saying he would harm her and her family. By 2017, Christopher, the registered offender, was supposedly living in South Euclid. He was in compliance with his registration had passed six verifications with the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department since 2009, most recent on May 9, 2015. However, when reporters went to that house after his arrest, family members there said he had not lived there for years and was only using it for mail. Before we dive into the events of today's story, we need to talk about the house on Fuller Avenue, just off of East 93rd Street near Kinsman Road. A man named Lavante McKenzie owned it. By 2017, it had been in his hands for about two years.

He and his cousin worked on it over the summer of 2016, tearing up carpet, digging up tile, and ripping out the kitchen and the bathroom flooring. For security, he locked the front door, and he kept a peasant. pit bull in the yard behind the house. By the winter of 2017, that dog was gone, thank goodness. The city had taken it four to six months earlier. Now, Christopher already knew the place. He and some friends had pulled the water heater and the furnace for scrap metal and they took this all out of the basement. For all intents and purposes, this place was completely abandoned. Thursday, January 26, 2017 started out like a normal school day.

Denisha walked Aliana from their house to the bus stop at East 154th Street and Kinsman Road, about 6.30 in the morning to catch the first of the two buses. Aliana was dressed in her school uniform, tan pants, and a white shirt. While they waited, she kept hopping into the street to watch for the bus. When it came, she gave her mother a kiss on the cheek and got on. Christopher was already out there. A Cleveland police detective who reviewed video surveillance from the surrounding area saw the same man walking around East 93rd and Fuller Avenue three separate times that morning at 426, 501, and at 630.

The man was later identified as Christopher. Surveillance video from the True Gospel Missionary Baptist Church showed him pacing along the street for several hours. FBI agents pulled surveillance footage from RTA buses and from businesses along the route, and analysts built a timeline. Aliana got off her first bus at East 93rd and Kinsman Road. RTA video caught her stepping off, smiling, and laughing. About 6.50, she boarded a southbound bus on East 93rd, headed towards her school, and requested a stop shortly after and got off near Bessemer Avenue.

She walked north on 93rd at the same time a man was walking south. She crossed the street and the man reversed direction and headed north as well. Investigators separately described surveillance from a nearby business that showed her being stopped outside the church, taking a step back, and then the man followed her northbound. At 719, an analyst picked out two figures he believed were Aliana and the man, crossing an empty lot in the direction of Fuller Avenue. Kenneth Chambers was 19 years old and lived in the area. He was standing at a bus stop on 93rd, waiting for his own school bus when he saw a man grab Aliana and take him. He never called the police. He was not sure whether Aliana and the man were related.

Kenneth said, he grabs her, and my first thought was to call the police, but I didn't. And this is an unfortunate problem. We don't exactly know what this situation looked like to Kenneth, but it's not uncommon for a bystander after the fact to express that they weren't sure if the person taking the child is a parent or other relative, and that the child is just upset and overreacting because of it. they ultimately end up being not sure whether they should call or not, and so they just don't. We don't know if Christopher could have been stopped in time if Kenneth made the call, but his inaction is something that you yourself should reflect on,

because there are questions to ask yourself ahead of time. What do I need to see before I make that phone call? Where is the line? And when you know where your line is, you pick up your phone without hesitation and make that call. This may sound like a no-brainer to you. But a lot of people have never asked themselves these things, or they think they know and then they're faced with a situation, and they are busy trying to figure out where the line is during a moment where timing could be crucial. Situations like this, you obviously will be operating with incomplete information, and that is obviously difficult. But what can help bridge the gap is to know your answer ahead of time.

So that way, you don't have to spend much time contemplating. and someone's life might one day depend on that. Christopher took Aliana into the vacant house on Fuller Avenue where he essayed her. Then he used the tools that were in the house to beat and stab her. Investigators believe most of the injuries happened in the dining room, on and around a built-in window bench. Her autopsy was later performed by Dr. David Dallanak, a Cuyahoga County Deputy Medical Examiner.

And his conclusion was that Aliana died of multiple injuries. He counted eight punctures to her face and head at varying depths. One had gone in through her right eyelid, pushing the eye partway out of the socket, breaking the bone above and behind it, and carrying on into the right side of her brain. The seconds on the right side of her face left a mark Dr. Dallanak said was consistent with a corded drill with a sprocket at the end of it. A third passed through her right ear, through the skull, into the brain. There was a mark on her face that matched the metal teeth of a power drill.

There was a tear to her scalp, and the medical examiner said a hammer or a wrench could have done it. The top of her head had been punctured in a way that matched a Phillips head screwdriver. Beside her left ear was an injury, he said, might be an imprint to some extent from the bottom of the boots. And he said the boot driven against her cheek may have broken her jaw. Her breastbone had been punctured, and a cluster of the same wounds ran across her back. The medical examiner matched both to a Phillipshead screwdriver. He found many injuries to her neck and said the amount of blood she had lost told him

her carotid artery had been cut. Most of what was done to her, according to the medical examiner, was done while she was alive. Once the carotid artery was cut, death could have followed inside a couple of minutes. He was less certain about the abrasions on her right breast and across the front of her chest because there was no hemorrhaging around them. A lot of her wounds had already started to heal, which told investigators she survived for several hours after they were made. in the end there were so many injuries and they were so severe that the medical examiner could not name the one that killed her. Now, we don't share any of this with you to be gross or extreme or macab, but we're sharing this with you to just show the lengths that this man, for a lack of a better term, went to brutalize this little girl.

At some point, Christopher dragged her out of the dining room and into an joining bedroom and left her in the corner. At around 10 o'clock that same morning, Christopher walked into the Golgotha Missionary Baptist Church at East 93rd in Marshall and asked David Bruton, the assistant pastor there, if he could use a hand on loading the truck for the church's food pantry. He worked for two hours. Assistant Pastor Bruton said that while the two of them were working, Christopher told him, I'm not working and I'm down on my luck and I had some problems with my woman. He said he noticed nothing unusual about Christopher's appearance and nothing that suggested that he was intoxicated or under the influence of drugs.

By about 3.45 that afternoon, Danisha was worried because Aliana had not come home from school, so she called the school. The principal told her that Aliana had been marked absent the entire day. the school allegedly had an automated messaging system that was supposed to alert parents when their children did not show up. Denisha never got a message. According to a Cleveland police officer who looked into it, a malfunction in that system meant no alert ever went out to her. The principal walked to the Cleveland Public Library to look for Aliana as soon as she realized the little girl was missing.

As the minutes turned into hours, more school staff began canvassing the neighborhood. Cleveland FBI also joined the search. Flyers with Ali on his picture started going up. On January 28th, Christopher Tolton acquaintance named Alton Sanders, I got to get out of here. I will pay somebody 20 bucks to take me out of here. Alton told him I don't have a car. On Sunday, January 29th, Cleveland police officers were working their way

through vacant houses south of Kinsman Road. Officer Willie Hodges and his partner noticed that the back door of the house on Fuller Avenue was open. Inside, blood had been trailed out of the dining room and into a bedroom next to it, behind a closed door. Officer Hodge's partner kicked that bedroom door open. There, they found Aliana's body crumpled in the corner in a pool of blood, naked except for her socks. She had wounds to the back of her head and to her eye. Officer Hodges said, it definitely looked like she was dragged from one room to the other and just thrown into the other room. At the start of the blood trail in the dining room, officers found a drill, a screwdriver, a hammer, and a nut driver.

There was also a bent putty knife and a blade that turns up in the records under two names, a box cutter in some and a utility knife in others. Several of these tools had blood stains on them. Bootprints and blood ran through the dining room and the living room and across the bedroom floor. In the living room, they found some of Aliana's clothes and a condom wrapper. CSI Todd Clemens documented the bloody gray glove and a backpack lying on the built-in window bench in the dining room. Other records in the case say her backpack, her earbuds, and her winter coat were never found. Aliana's body was identified by the medical examiner's office using dental records.

Forensic analysts developed a DNA profile from the evidence, and it came back to Christopher Whitaker. On the evening of February 2nd at around 7, Cleveland Police and U.S. Marshals arrested him at the Villa Serena Apartments in Mayfield Heights. Detectives interviewed him after he waived his rights, and the interview ran almost three hours, and his story changed every time they put a new piece of evidence in front of him. He started by saying he did not know Aliana and had no idea what had happened to her. He said he had been on Fuller Avenue a few days earlier to drywall a house. That Wednesday night, he had stayed over on 84th Street, and that he had not gotten up until sometime between 10.30 and 11 that Thursday morning. He knew the house on Fuller because he and some friends had stripped the basement,

but he claims he had not set foot anywhere else in the building. Detectives told him his DNA had turned up upstairs. His answer was that he had stepped into the kitchen to check whether the countertops were still in place and had gone no further. They told him it had also turned up in the dining room. Now he said the group had walked through the house looking for a cast iron tub.

Then they asked him how his DNA had been found inside Alliana. He said he had ridden a bike to the area on Wednesday night looking for a place to get high, met two men and gone into the Fuller Avenue house with them. He claimed that he had no idea how Aliana came to be there, only that she was already undressed when he walked in. He denied hurting her and said that he had done nothing but pleasure himself, because, in his words, he could not fit inside her.

He said that he had biked home afterward, arriving somewhere between 8.15 or 8.20 that morning, and that he had not known how young she was until he saw the flyers. Detectives told him that the only bloody bootprints in that house were his, and then his story changed again. Now he said he and the other men had met Aliana in East 93rd, and that she kept pacing back and forth while he stood at the bus stop, and that he didn't know at first if she was,

and this was his words exactly, a streetwalker. By his account, he asked her, was going on, said he was going to get high and asked if she wanted to come along with them. He said the group had crossed the field to the house with Aliana trailing after them, and that the two of them went inside while the others stayed out. He claimed that he was high by then, and that Aliana wanted to know what that felt like. Then he said, he asked whether the two of them could take their clothes off and do something. He, a man in his 40s, claim the encounter with a 14-year-old girl was consensual.

In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac Canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility, Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury.

Then in his words, things got out of hand. He said she pushed him and hit him and that he punched her as a result. After that, he said it was like a blur. He almost blacked out. And by that time, his mind cleared everything that was done. he said he was not sure whether she was alive or not, so he put her in the closet and left the house. When asked about the tools,

he said he had no memory of using any of them on her. He said none of this would have happened at all if he had been sober and thinking straight. And as I'm sure you've heard in other cases before that we've covered, these explanations murderers give in defense of them committing extreme brutality. are not uncommon. Saying they have no memory and they just blacked out and don't know what happened.

And oftentimes they begin the story with the victim attacking them, which allegedly caused them to blackout. Even when the victim, in this case, is a 14-year-old girl, almost as if a minor pushing you justifies brutally disfiguring someone over the course of several hours.

On the interrogation video, he told detectives, I turned around and it's like I punched her. But then after that it's like a blur. Like I almost blacked out or something. People are going to look at me like a monster. I'm not a monster. I'm just an addict who made a mistake that shouldn't have happened.

I don't remember what I did. I just remember when I came through. I was just disgusted with myself. The world is going to hate me now. She never had a chance to grow up. Never had a chance to experience anything. And I took that away from her. He also told them he didn't want to face the media and wanted to avoid a circus of a trial.

When the questioning ended, Christopher called a friend named Deb from the interview room. He had told her that he had not done it. He said the reason the police had him was that he had been in the Fuller Avenue house scraping it, so his fingerprints would be inside. The next day, February 3rd, he asked to speak to detectives again. He repeated his claim that other people had been in the house with him. He showed him the evidence that only one type of boot impression existed inside. Questioning turned to what he had done in the house.

He said Aliana panicked and that her panicking made him panic, and that's when all hell broke loose. When asked about her torn clothing, he said he had probably tried to yank it off her to hide the evidence. He said he believed she was still alive when he ripped her clothes off. Over the following weeks, Christopher made a series of monitored phone calls from jail. February 16th, 2017, he got a woman named Martha on the phone and told her, If anybody asked you that night when I got arrested, were we drinking and getting high, just say yeah.

Martha replied, but we wouldn't. Christopher said, you just say okay or just do it. Anything that might have been said that first night I got arrested would have to be thrown out. They never tested me or anything for drugs or alcohol. March 3rd, told an unidentified woman, this is like pulling the rabbit out of the haystack. I might have to use you as one of my witnesses or somebody as being. in the house and getting high and having sex with me, I'm talking about at the Fuller House. On April 6, he told another woman, I need you to call and probably one more person to call.

Call the lawyer and tell him, you all don't want to be on TV, but you were over there and you had sex with, and at that point, the recording is unintelligible before he finishes with in the house. He instructed her to say it happened on January 23rd or 24th. He finished with, They will know I was in that house. If my DNA is in there, it was because I did have somebody else in there and we had six. On February 13, 2017, a Cuyahoga County grand jury returned a 10 count indictment. Counts 1 through 3 charged Christopher with aggravated murder committed during an essay, a kidnapping, and during an aggravated burglary.

Count 4 charged aggravated murder with prior calculation and design. Count 5 was essay. Count 6 and 7 were 2.7. were two separate kidnapping charges, one for the purpose of terrorizing or inflicting serious physical harm on Aliana, and one for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity against her will. Count eight was aggravated burglary, count nine was tampering with evidence, and count 10 was gross abuse of a corpse. Each of the four aggravated murder counts carried three death penalty specifications. Count five, six, and seven each carried a specification alleging

Christopher was a sexually violent predator, and those were later dismissed. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley announced his office would seek the death penalty. Christopher was the first defendant prosecutor O'Malley sought to put to death since taking office that January. Christopher pled not guilty to everything and was remanded without bond. Jury's selection ran through January of 2018. During questioning of prospective jurors, Attorney Fernando Mack told them, we're not contesting liability in this case. Mr. Whitaker is responsible for taking the life of this child.

Opening statements began on Thursday, February 1st. Attorney Thomas Shaughnessy told the jury they would not contest the charges. He said the reason was that Christopher had instructed them not to do so. Two rulings went against him before the jury ever heard a word. January 9th, the court denied his motion to suppress. And on February 6, over his lawyer's objection, the court granted the state's motion to have him examined by its own psychological. psychologist. Three days later, the state asked to put him through a Minnesota multifasic personality inventory.

You may have heard this referred to as an MMPI as well, and that request was denied. The trial ran six days of testimony. Prosecutors showed the surveillance video. They laid the tools out in front of the jury one at a time and put up photographs of the puncture wounds to Ali on his face and head right beside the tools that made them. The DNA analyst who ran the samples, Jeffrey O'Block, of the Cuyahoga County Regional Sciences Laboratory, told the jury that the dominant profile taken from the male DNA and Aliana's body was Christopher's. And he put the odds of some unrelated person being a possible contributor at about $1.958 trillion with the T. A forensic scientist from the Cuyahoga County Regional Forensic Science Lab. Don't you wish you could just hit skip

on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. Told the jury that every bootprint in the crime scene photographs plus both impressions cast in plaster at the house. carried one tread pattern and looked to have come off a single boot. Police had seized a pair of boots from where Christopher had been staying.

These were compared to the left boot to the bloody impressions in the plaster and concluded there was a level two association, meaning the samples shared the same physical properties and displayed unique or atypical characteristics. Prosecutors told the jury the evidence showed Christopher went out hunting that morning. Now, Aliana was who he found. Investigators found no evidence that Aliana had attacked him. She was under five feet tall and weighed around 110 pounds. Christopher, however, weighed 275. Exactly one year later, the jury convicted him on all 10 counts.

Outside the courtroom, Denisha told reporters, it is just a step towards justice because there is still another part to do. I feel like justice is being served. When asked whether she wanted jurors to recommend death, she said, I'm for whatever they choose. Mitigation phase opened on February 21st. Social worker Mary MacDonald, the one we mentioned earlier, laid out Christopher's background in family history. His siblings, James and Leisha Summers, both testified. James said Christopher had always hung around their mother when he was young, but

that he went into a shell once she was gone and they all had been moved north to Cleveland. Leisha described their mother as a good mom who did the best she could for all of us and said that after the move, life was kind of rough, but it was family. Leisha said she had never once seen him use drugs and that she thinks now that she was in denial about that. Dr. Robert Kaplan, a clinical and forensic psychologist, testified for the defense. According to Dr. Kaplan, seeing his sister attacked when he was that young, taught Christopher to bury his anger and left him with what Dr. Kaplan called a maladaptive, coping system dissociation. In the doctor's account, that mechanism kept Christopher unaware of his own negative feelings right up until the point where they got past his ability to hold him down.

Dr. Kaplan said the murder was a manifestation of that repressed anger, that Christopher lacked the capacity to control his behavior through a combination of dissociation and intoxication by cocaine. Dr. Kaplan told the jury that Christopher is a very troubled man with very serious problems. but that he is not a psychopath. Said Christopher fell short of the criteria for antisocial personality disorder because there was no conduct disorder on his record before he turned 15 and that he did not meet the criteria for any paraphylic disorder,

including being a petto. He said testing showed Christopher has traditional sexual values and no history of attraction to adolescent girls. Dr. Kaplan said this was an aberrant situation. He's not someone who normally tries to flirt with younger girls, adolescent girls. He's not someone who tries to pick them up. This is a very unusual event.

Now, we're not repeating this as truth. This was just the defense's psychologist's statement. Under cross-examination, Dr. Kaplan acknowledged that Christopher had at first claimed to remember nothing at all and had then shifted to saying he was on drugs that Aliana had wanted to have sex with him. Dr. Kaplan said Christopher later recanted that claim. James Aiken, a prison confinement consultant, testified about how Christopher would adjust to life in prison under a sentence of life without parole. He said Christopher's vulnerability level would be very high because he was older on the registry and had murdered a child. He also told the jury Christopher belonged to the gangster disciples and that gang membership pushes his risk higher still.

He said, I don't care whether you're with the. Aryan Brotherhood, the gangster disciples, or the Mexican Mafia. They have one common denominator. They hate six offenders and child murderers. James said that as a warden, he would keep Christopher out of general population altogether, and that death row would actually be a safer place for him. His conclusion was that Christopher could be managed and pose no unusual danger to staff or other inmates so long as he was properly confined in the proper security level.

He said, the prison system can adequately address Whitaker. her security needs from here until he dies. Then Christopher read a short statement that he prepared to the jury. He said, from the beginning, I've accepted full responsibility for my actions. I assisted the detectives as to where to find my clothes and boots I was wearing that day. I never wanted this to happen. And ever since that day, I've been feeling regret and remorse. Through the year, I made a lot of phone calls.

And those calls, I've said things, a lot about things in order to protect my family's feelings. I've admitted to my guilt to the detectives and to my lawyers. I asked my lawyers not to contest or challenge anything in this case because I really wanted Alianna's family to have closure. I will not try to hide behind drugs or alcohol. I will not pretend or lie because it wouldn't be fair to the family. I apologize to the family and the community for my actions. There's no excuse for what I've done.

I can't imagine the pain the family feels, but I know the pain I feel when I had to look at what I've done. If I could go back to that day in January, I'd change everything, but I can't, so I have to live with each day with the shame, hurt, and guilt. And although the trial is over, the regret and painful memories will remain with me. So that sometimes, that's just things I can't shake. I pray that the family can find peace and she can find rest. Reading from the statement, Christopher appeared to lack all emotion, and it took him less than two minutes to read all of that. In response, the state called Dr. Sarah West a forensic psychiatrist.

Hers was the examination the defense had objected to back on February 6, and she went through Dr. Kaplan's findings one by one. According to Dr. West, Dr. Kaplan's own testing actually indicated a low probability for dissociation, and she said its occurrence was highly unlikely. She said that in her interview with him, Christopher never brought up the DV at all. On the drugs, Dr. West said his own statements were the only evidence he was high at the time, and that nothing in the police report supported it. Dr. Copland's, the jail psychiatrist, had recorded no current psychiatric diagnosis for him not long after he was booked in. Dr. West's own diagnosis was an other specified personality disorder.

Christopher fit the antisocial personality disorder criteria, but no such diagnosis existed for him before, he was 15. Dr. West also disputed that Christopher was remorseful and she read the jury a jail phone call. In reference to a possible release from jail, Christopher had said, and I quote, When I come walking out of this motherfucker, I'm going to tell everyone to kiss my ass. I ain't going to show no remorse, no nothing. On the same calls, he said, I kept telling everyone that I never came in contact with this girl. There was one thing the jury never heard. Months before trial, Christopher had offered to plead guilty,

waive every post-trial avenue for relief and accept a sentence of life in prison without parole. In a move we don't often see, the state rejected the offer and insisted on trial. His lawyers asked the court to let the jury know he had made it, arguing it showed acceptance of responsibility. In closing, assistant prosecutor Mahmood Awadala told the jury, give him death because that is better than what he did. The deliberations began at about 3.15 on the afternoon of Thursday, February 22nd. The jury went home without a decision and came back Friday morning.

This family is on the brink of Civil War. Mobland. The hit original series is now streaming on Paramount Plus. We are the heraldigans. Don't know the ant? And Google us. From the underworld of Guy Ritchie. Do you want to step up the ladder? I won't call him dead. starring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren.

Do I have to do everything myself? You want to want? I'll give you a... Moblad. New season is now streaming on Paramount Plus. On that day, they recommended the death penalty. Sentencing was Monday, March 26, 2018. It was the first time Allianna's family faced Christopher directly. Denisha sobbed as she told Judge Carolyn Friedland

what kind of child her daughter had been. She said, he just snuffed out a really bright light, in the world because of his own selfishness. Tanya DeFries, Aliana's stepmother, said she had developed congestive heart failure since her death. Anisha said she no longer had the drive to go to work or at times even leave her house. Damon spoke last.

His frustration mounted, as he told Judge Friedland, he had tried to warn Aliana about predators like Christopher. He turned toward Christopher, who was flanked by five courtroom security officers and said, Excuse me so I can look at this bitch ass dude. Judge Friedland interrupted him immediately and told him he had to address her and not him. Damon said he had said enough and returned to his seat.

Christopher chose not to make a statement. Judge Friedland accepted the jury's recommendation. She said the circumstances Christopher's attorneys had presented to convince jurors to spare his life, pale in comparison, the barbarity of the evidence of what he did to Allianna. Sentence was death on count four plus 48 years on the remaining counts to run consecutively. At top of that, she classified him as a tier three-three-futable. sex offender and child offender registrant, who carries lifetime registration and in-person verification every 90 days.

Judge Friedland also addressed Christopher's expression of remorse. She quoted back a statement he had made to homicide detectives about his arrest. When he told them he was worried about the news coverage and about being made out to be a monster to his family. Judge Friedland said the remorse he felt was basically for himself. Christopher was the first person condemned to death out of a Cuyahoga County court, since 2016. He joined 20 other men convicted in Cuyahoga County who were on death row at the same time. Rosicuder O'Malley said, my thoughts and prayers go to the family and friends of Aliana DeFries.

The imposition of the death penalty is never an easy decision, but given the facts of this horrendous case, it was the right decision. Because Ohio automatically reviews every death sentence, the case went to the Ohio Supreme Court. August 18, 2022, the court affirmed his convictions and his death sentence, but not all of it. Found the state had not proved aggravated burglary because the Fuller Avenue House had been vacant and gutted for a prolonged period and therefore was not under Ohio law is concerned and occupied structure. The court vacated the aggravated burglary conviction, vacated the finding of guilt on count three, and dismissed the death penalty specifications built on it. Sent the case back for a corrected sentence. Justice Jennifer

Bruner agreed the convictions and the death penalty should stand, but wrote separately to disagree on one point. She wrote that the plea offer was mitigation. The jury was entitled to hear and that keeping it out was an error. That a plea offer being conditioned on avoiding execution affects how much weight a jury gives it rather than whether the jury hears it at all. She wrote that the trial court had made an error, that the error could be cured by the Supreme Court's own independent review of the sentence. The court did conduct that independent review, and it weighed the mitigation seriously. Wrote that Christopher had presented substantial mitigating evidence entitled to considerable weight and gave weight to his disrupted childhood, his mental

health problems, his history of substance use, the love and support of his family, and his likely adjustment to prison. It then wrote, that said, Whitaker raped and murdered 14-year-old Aliana de Frees in a vacant house. He then fled the scene and was arrested only after DNA evidence identified him as the perpetrator. Under these circumstances, we conclude that the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt. Christopher Whitaker is currently housed at Ross Correctional Institution. There is no execution date currently set. That does not mean the case stopped moving. In November of 2019, Christopher filed a petition asking the trial court to vacate or set aside his conviction and his

sentence. He backed it with seven volumes of exhibits. In February of 2022, he amended the petition and file seven more. The state opposed it that October, and he replied, following January. As we understand it, he is one ruling away from exhausting all his appeals barring an appeal for clemency to the governor. While Governor Mike DeWine has granted clemency to a death row inmate prior, this commutes the sentence to life in prison. No matter what happens, Christopher is virtually guaranteed to die in prison. On January 28th, 2019, Damon and Denisha filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. They named seven defendants, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District,

E-Prep, and Village Prep Woodland Hills, City of Cleveland, and Friends of Breakthrough Schools. Also a woman called Lanisha Richardson, Levante McKenzie, who owned the House on Fuller Avenue, and Christopher Whitaker himself. They asked for $15 million. Their attorney, Alan Bozeman said, Unfortunately, when these cases happen, you have to hold every single person accountable. You can't let anyone off the hook, and here, everyone played a role. According to the lawsuit, the school knew Aliana was absent and never told her mother,

despite having her contact information. And if Denisha had been notified immediately or within a reasonable time, Aliana might have been found before she was murdered. It also alleged the school lied when it said it had tried to send an alert that failed. Damian Danisha claimed the city of Cleveland had failed to monitor abandoned properties, and that McKenzie had failed to maintain and monitor the house in Fuller. Avenue. November of 2019, reporters obtained the questions school's lawyers had filed in response. One of them demanded that the family identify the, and I quote, tremendous and unimaginable physical

harm, each body part harmed. Another one of the debilitating mental distress of individual family members itemized. There was also a question about Aliana's phone records with a teenage boy as if that was relevant at all. Danisha said, why would they put me through? that torture. Make me answer those questions. I had to read them again out loud. Like what? They were just hurtful and disrespectful. Attorney Bozeman said, where we sit, they're looking for dirt. We view this as a form of victim shaming. On August 27th, 2020, the 8th District Court of Appeals ruled for the school. E-Prep argued it was immune from liability as a political subdivision, and the appeals court agreed. Judge Raymond Hayden wrote, given how much of our society, including

our public education system increasingly relies on technology. We cannot hold that a malfunctioning parental notification system constitutes a physical defect of the sort envisioned by the legislature. In January of 2022, records filed in Cuyahoga County Probate Court should have proposed settlement with the remaining defendants for a total of $1 million, with each of Alianna's parents to receive more than $245,000. The other thing that came out of Aliana's death was a law. Democratic state Senator Sandra Williams took the case to the State House. The bill she introduced, Senate Bill 82, cleared the Ohio Senate 33 to zero. The measure that reached the governor's desk was House Bill 66, and then Governor John

Kisik signed it in early January of 2019, taking effect in April of 2020. The law requires Ohio schools to notify parents when a child is at least two hours late without an excused absence. Until it passed, there was nothing in Ohio law about a school's responsibility to tell parents when their children missed class. Senator Williams said, hopefully this bill will help prevent any other child on their way to school from dying at the hands of a violent perpetrator.

It is called the Aliana Alert. Damon started the Aliana DeFries Let's Make a Change Foundation, working to raise money to buy vehicles that could get children to school safely. 2025, Alianna's cousin, Ariel DeFries, told reporters that she had founded a counseling and trauma recovery center and that her team had helped more than 100 families. She said their goal was really committed to helping urban communities overcome those adversities and heal. I created what I didn't have.

Aliana's funeral was held on Saturday, February 11, 2017. At 10 o'clock that morning, officers gathered at the Lucas Memorial Chapel on Garfield Boulevard in Garfield Heights. And a police escort took her body to Amani Temple Ministries on North Taylor Road in Cleveland Heights. The service was at 1230. Hundreds of people came. The praised dancers from the Cleveland School of the Arts performed a tribute. Aliana's aunt read a letter her grandfather had written in her memory. It reads, The 14 years you were here, you gave me and your grandmother so much happiness. How you made your grandpa laugh when he was down and teased him when you were done. How I'm going to miss all the warm and loving hugs you gave me. She was laid to rest inside the community mausoleum

at Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio. In May of 2018, Aliana's classmates at E-Prep planted a garden for her right outside of the school doors, full of purple flowers. They decorated her locker. Superintendent John McBride said, that will be part of this community and show that we'll never forget. Her friend Janaya shared, I feel like she would love this. I feel like it describes her. Aliana would have graduated from eighth grade with her class that spring. The school awarded her a diploma anyway, and her parents accepted it in her memory.