Alianna DeFreeze

Christopher Whitaker (born 1973) was a native of Fayetteville, Tennessee with a long criminal record.

His crimes and alleged crimes include:

According to a witness, Whitaker grabbed her as she walked along East 93rd Avenue.

The witness did not contact the police because he was unsure of the relationship between DeFreeze and Whitaker.

Surveillance video then shows Whitaker leading DeFreeze through a field to Fuller Avenue.

Whitaker took DeFreeze to an abandoned house.

There, he raped her.

Whitaker then used a Black and Decker drill, a Phillips-head screwdriver, a nut driver, a box cutter, and a hammer to stab and beat her to death.

DeFreeze died as a result of the stab wounds and blunt force injuries which were numerous and severe.

Whitaker claimed he was high on cocaine and blacked out during the crime.

After murdering DeFreeze, in the late morning hours, Whitaker assisted a pastor at the Golgatha Missionary Baptist Church to unload food pantry items from a truck.

The pastor described Whitaker's demeanor as calm.

Her mother became concerned at 4:00 pm when DeFreeze had still not returned home from school.

She called E Prep and was informed that DeFreeze never arrived at school.

DeFreeze was reported missing, prompting a city-wide search.

On January 29, DeFreeze's body was found at the house where Whitaker had murdered her by three Cleveland police officers.

The officers entered the house after noticing that the back door was open and found a trail of blood leading from the dining room into a room behind a closed door.

After kicking open the door, they found DeFreeze's deceased body crumpled in a corner in a pool of blood.

She was naked except for her socks and had wounds to her head.

The Boxcutter was used to slash DeFreeze's neck, while the drill had been used to put four puncture wounds into her cheek and a wound on her forehead that dislodged her right eyeball from the socket.

On January 26, 2017, Alianna DeFreeze, a fourteen-year-old girl from Cleveland, Ohio, was kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered by Christopher Whitaker.

Whitaker, who had a criminal history involving grand theft, burglary, aggravated robbery, felonious assault, and sexual assault, took DeFreeze to an abandoned house, where he raped her.

She was found beaten and stabbed to death using a hammer, a screwdriver, a nut driver, a box cutter, and a drill.

DeFreeze, who attended school at E Prep & Village Prep Woodland Hills, was reported missing, causing a city-wide search.

Her body was discovered three days later.

RTA surveillance footage recorded on the morning of January 26, 2017, shows DeFreeze exiting a bus, while surveillance video from a business shows her crossing East 93rd Street.

She was then stopped outside the True Gospel Missionary Baptist Church by Whitaker, who, according to video recorded from the church, had been pacing around the area for several hours.

DeFreeze took a step back from Whitaker, who followed her.

Whitaker’s murder trial occurred in February 2018.

Defense attorneys argued that Whitaker's drug use impaired his ability to control impulses and obey the law while prosecutors disagreed, saying that he knew what he was doing.

The jury convicted Whitaker on February 13, 2018.

Later, the jury recommended that Whitaker receive the death penalty and the judge upheld it.

Whitaker is currently on death row.

In 2019 DeFreeze’s parents filed a lawsuit against several people and entities arguing that the school's failure to notify them about DeFreeze’s absence and the failure to monitor abandoned properties led to her death.

In 2022, DeFreeze’s family received a $1 million settlement.

In 2019 Governor John Kasich signed a law named after DeFreeze which requires schools to notify parents of unexcused absences within two hours.

Alianna DeFreeze, the daughter of Damon DeFreeze and Donnesha Cooper, was a seventh-grader at E Prep & Village Prep Woodland Hills.

She was fourteen years old and had a developmental disability.

She would take the RTA bus to school, which her mother and grandmother did not like, though the fact that one stop was in front of a police station made them feel better about her means of transportation.

Alianna DeFreeze was the granddaughter of Donald DeFreeze, the founder and leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a left-wing terrorist organization that gained notoriety for kidnapping Patty Hearst.