BLUFFTON – For nearly two years, Mike Meyer dreamed of the day when the man who killed his daughter would be convicted of murder.
Inside a packed Wells County courtroom bathed in the faint light of a setting sun Monday evening, he got his wish.
A jury of six men and six women found 29-year-old Tyler A. White guilty of murder in the killing of his estranged wife, 28-year-old Amy Meyer White, a verdict that caused her friends and family to hug one another in relief while Tyler White’s family sat in stunned silence.
“We finally got what we wanted,” Meyer said. “We wanted the truth to be told and heard, and I think that’s what we got.”
There was never a question whether Tyler White shot his estranged wife when she came by the garage of his parents’ Bluffton home Oct. 27, 2009, to pick up their 1-year-old son for shared custody. White admitted he shot her twice with a 9 mm Glock handgun.
But he disputed how it happened. White claimed he shot Amy White from his knees in self-defense when she pulled a handgun of her own from a pocket in her windbreaker with their son playing a few feet away.
During his closing arguments Monday, Wells County Prosecutor Michael Lautzenheiser painted a picture for the jury of White as a desperate man. White called his wife vulgar names, had recently lost his job and did not have a lawyer for an upcoming custody hearing, Lautzenheiser said.
Lautzenheiser also focused a series of improbabilities that had to fall into place for White’s version of events to be true.
Amy White, who never showed an interest in guns, all of a sudden had one. Not only that, but the gun she had was stolen from Tyler White’s best friend, a gun she had little opportunity to steal. Her gun wasn’t primed or ready to shoot, while Tyler’s gun was loaded, ready to fire, tucked in the back of his pants and hidden by a suit coat.
White’s story would essentially contradict a forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy on Amy White and said he was 99 percent certain the bullets that killed her did not come from someone on their knees.
Then there were White’s inexplicable actions after the shooting: He took the time to shoot her cellphone – which witnesses said she used to record their meetings – and then washed his hands before checking on his son and calling 911.
“That would’ve been wonderful for the defendant, that would’ve exonerated him,” Lautzenheiser said of the phone, from which no recordings could be recovered.
“The defendant’s claim of self-defense is absolutely ridiculous, ladies and gentlemen,” Lautzenheiser told the jurors later in his arguments.
James Voyles, White’s Indianapolis-based defense attorney, focused on another pathologist’s claim that his client’s story was possible within the realm of 60 percent reliability, as well as a less-than-stellar police investigation.
Police found a gun box in the back of Amy White’s truck that matched the gun Tyler White said she pulled on him. But officers did not find the box until a day after the shooting when a civillian who retrieved the truck from an impound lot found it.
The lead crime-scene investigator drew Voyles’ wrath for not cataloging everything in the truck at the scene.
“I think he was tripping all over himself that day, quite frankly,” Voyles said of the investigator, who claimed during testimony he did a “cursory” inspection of the truck.
“It’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard from a crime-scene investigator in all my years of practice,” Voyles asserted.
Lautzenheiser countered that, ultimately, it didn’t matter when someone found the gun box.
Voyles also hammered the point that one of Amy White’s hairs was found inside the gun box, while no hairs or forensic evidence belonging to Tyler White were found there.
Prosecutors, who contend White planted the gun box in the truck, could present no evidence on how the hair got there save for a pathologist saying that there are nearly infinite ways a hair can travel and it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint one hair’s movement.
“Maybe she really handled it,” Voyles told the jury. “Maybe she really handled the gun.”
With the verdict for murder read Monday, the jurors are expected to be back in court today to decide whether White will be convicted of an enhanced charge of feticide because his wife was pregnant at the time of her death.
Meanwhile, Mike Meyer will start a new fight – getting custody of Amy’s son, who was placed in the care of Tyler White’s brother and sister-in-law after the shooting.
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