Crime Immemorial

Forty-two-year-old Bernita White, a computer engineer at Electronic Data Systems Corporation, was spending June 23rd, 2001 with her five-year-old daughter Michala in Potter Park in Lansing, Michigan, where one of Michala’s friends had been having a birthday party. Mother and daughter were at the park with Artis White, Bernita’s husband and Michala’s father. Notably, Bernita had filed for divorce from her husband almost exactly one month previously, but the couple was still living together, reportedly on friendly terms, despite Artis’s admissions of infidelity.

As the afternoon went on, Michala began pestering her parents to go to the Potter Park Zoo nearby, and finally Bernita acquiesced. According to Artis White’s account, he left Bernita and Michala to walk toward the zoo, and told them he was going to pick up their other daughter, seven-year-old Alanna, from another birthday party in Delta Mills Park, about nine-and-a-half miles away, so that the whole family could spend the rest of the day at the zoo together.

After he left, Bernita and Michala began crossing the pavilion that led to the zoo entrance. It was a sunny summer Saturday, and hundreds of people were milling about, both at the park and inside the zoo itself.

At approximately three-fifteen p.m., either one or two gunshots rang out, and Bernita crumpled to the sidewalk in front of her terrified daughter. A single bullet had entered her body through her left arm, had penetrated her heart, and exited through her right side. She was killed instantly.

Both park and zoo were immediately evacuated, but no further shots were fired. As investigators combed the scene, they soon determined that the fatal shot had most likely come from a high-powered rifle, and that the shooter had been situated between one-hundred and one-hundred-twenty yards from the victim.

In a heartbreaking coda to the case, Bernita’s mother, Barbara Sims, died of a heart attack on the very same evening, after being informed of her daughter’s murder.

Because Bernita and Artis White were going through a divorce, and because Artis had worked as a Michigan state trooper for many years, suspicion naturally fell upon him right away, although he has steadfastly maintained his innocence, claiming he had no reason to want Bernita dead, and in any case was not present when Bernita was shot, having driven to Delta Mills Park to fetch Alanna and not returning to Potter Park until well after four p.m. There are reportedly witnesses who stated that they saw Artis White at Delta Mills Park at around the time of the shooting.

In 2003, Artis White published a book called Who Killed My Wife, in which he asserted that the police had botched the investigation and only pointed to him as a person of interest because they were frustrated that they had been unable to find the real killer. He was also reportedly working on a documentary about the case, and about being “wrongfully accused,” but as of this writing, there is no further information regarding the film, and if it was ever completed. Artis White continued to work as a state trooper following the crime.

Investigators have carefully refrained from formally naming Artis White as a suspect in the media, though some officers have gone on record as stating that they have a good idea of who the killer is, but do not have enough evidence to prosecute.