08/04/2011
By Carole Mikita
SALT LAKE CITY -- From the depths of despair to exoneration, Utah resident Ted White has quite a story to tell. But he says what he learned from these experiences about faith and redemption have helped him to move forward.
On Friday, July 22, White held a news conference, putting a period on what he describes as a living nightmare.
"It's like having a hundred pound feed sack, lifted off of your shoulders. Because you fought so hard for all these years, and then to have it come to an end … it was unbelievable," he said.
Before moving to Utah a few years ago, he had lived in and worked as a businessman in Lee's Summit, MO, outside Kansas City. In March of 1998, his wife told police that he had sexually abused her 12-year-old daughter.
Three months later, the detective who took the case told his police chief he was having an affair with the suspect's wife. Nevertheless, the detective remained on the case.
In February of 1999, White was convicted but fled to Costa Rica, where authorities caught him. He spent a year in a prison there, where his life was threatened.
It happened again when he was returned to a Missouri prison.
"(I had) seven knife fights, I was hit with a padlock in my eye socket … had to have reconstructive surgery... stabbed."
White says when he was at his lowest, Mother Opal, an 84-year-old prison visitor, taught him about the Bible and forgiveness.
When he moved from Jackson to Clay County prisons, Latter-day Saint missionaries taught him to give his anger to the Lord.
"I had to really forgive them and get on my knees and pray for the person who took my kids away," he said. "That's when everything happened -- it was miracle after miracle after miracle."
Midwestern Innocence Project attorneys got White a new trial, which ended in a hung jury. The trial was set for a third time, but White had no money. That is, until a visit from secret Santa Larry Stewart -- a man who handed out hundred dollar bills at disasters or at Christmas and helped those he believed were wrongly convicted. Stewart footed the bill for the third trial.
Eventually, White was acquitted in 2005. He then sued his ex-wife, the former detective, the police chief and the city of Lee's Summit.
In 2006, Lee's Summit agreed to pay any judgment against the former detective. In 2008, a jury awarded White $16 million.
The city initially refused to pay, but this year, after a district judge threatened Lee's Summit with a crime fraud hearing, the city agreed to pay.
Ted White still believes in the Constitution, the legal system and that he someday will return a spiritual favor.
"You just don't know the effect you have on people. And I hope I can have that same effect and help people like my missionary did for me," he said.
White calls himself a blessed man. He has a new family in a new state, where he has found friends. And he hopes one day to be with the three other children he hasn't seen since his arrest. He said the door is always open. White remarried three years ago and he and his wife and 2-year-old daughter live in Utah where he is re-establishing a health insurance business and writing his story.
