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See No Evil's new episode, titled The Girl on the Bus, will revisit the gruesome murder case of 14-year-old Alianna DeFreeze. The episode premieres Wednesday, July 19, 2023, at 6 pm ET, exclusively on Investigation Discovery.
The official synopsis of the episode, as per IMDb, reads:
"In the dead of winter, a 14-year-old girl vanishes without a trace on her way to school. Her parents have no idea where she could be. Investigators follow a trail of surveillance footage...but will they find the missing teenager, before it's too late?"
The facts regarding the disappearance of Alianna DeFreeze were quite clear from the initial police investigations. DeFreeze, who had last been seen by friends and teachers exiting her school bus in the afternoon, was on her way home when she was abducted by a man who'd been roaming the nearby streets for several hours.
While the events had been caught on numerous CCTV cameras in the area, giving the police a clear image of who the suspect was, it was what followed after the kidnapping that shocked the police force and the entire state of Ohio. The man, identified as Christopher Whitaker, had reportedly taken Alianna DeFeeze to an abandoned house, where he r*ped, tortured, and murdered her.
In the legal proceedings that followed the horrific case, many disturbing details about the crime came forward, causing the jury for the case to sentence Whittaker to death after a brief deliberation among themselves. The criminal was reportedly revealed to have had a history of arrests for crimes including burglary, s*xual assault, and kidnapping.
Who was Alianna DeFreeze, and how did she die?
Alianna DeFreeze was a seventh grader who had attended E Prep & Village Prep in Cleveland, Ohio's neighborhood of Woodland Hills. The 14-year-old had a developmental handicap growing up and, therefore, used to take the RTA bus to school. While this particular fact was not liked by Alianna's mother and grandmother simply because they didn't want her to feel any different from the rest of her peers, they were content knowing that Alianna's stop was in front of a police station.
After a regular day in school in January of 2017, Alianna DeFreeze was on her way home. She took the RTA bus and got off at her designated stop; however, she did not make it home. Upon inquiring at the school about her whereabouts and asking her friends where they had seen her last, Alianna's parents were convinced that someone had kidnapped her.
They not only reported her missing to the police but spread the news about her disappearance in as many neighborhoods as they could and even reported the event to the local news, causing the entire community to come together for an intensive search.
While the police had identified the person who had kidnapped Alianna through the CCTV footage captured from the streets near her house, they were not able to locate exactly where the criminal had taken her. Almost three days later, three officers from the Cleveland Police Department were able to discover Alianna's body at an abandoned house where Christopher Whitaker had murdered her.
When the cops entered the house after finding the back door open, they discovered a blood trail extending from the dining room into a space behind a closed door. They forced through the door and found Alianna's lifeless and blood-covered body. She had cuts and bruises on her head, and her cheek had several puncture wounds. One of the most deadly injuries inflicted on DeFreeze was an incision on her forehead that forced her right eye out of its socket.
The police also found several of her blood-covered clothes with the front ripped out and scattered throughout the residence. According to an autopsy conducted by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner, Alianna had sustained injuries from the numerous objects that the police had found at the house, including a drill, screwdriver, and box cutter; however, the examiner was unable to determine which of her multiple injuries led to her passing away because they were all so serious.
Additionally, forensic experts discovered Christopher Whitaker's DNA evidence on Alianna DeFreeze's body, which led them to conclude that he had s*xually assaulted her. Given the abundant evidence, Whitaker was immediately taken into custody by the police.
In the eventual legal proceedings that followed the arrest, Whitaker's attorneys pleaded that the criminal had not been aware of the crimes he was committing given that he had consumed cocaine a few hours prior. According to People, this argument, however, further aggravated the prosecutors, with one of them claiming in court:
"The evidence does not point to a drug-induced frenzy, does not point to a blackout. It points to that he knows what he was doing."
After a brief deliberation, after both parties had presented their evidence, the jury decided on a death sentence for Whitaker and a 48-year prison sentence for r*pe and concealment of evidence. He is scheduled to be executed in July 2026.
Watch the upcoming episode of See No Evil on Wednesday, July 19, 2023, exclusively on Investigation Discovery.
