CLEVELAND, Ohio — Alianna DeFreeze, the 14-year-old Cleveland girl whose body was found earlier this month in an vacant house days after she was reported missing, was beaten and stabbed to death, according to court records.
Christopher Whitaker is accused of abducting DeFreeze, raping her and inflicting blunt-force injuries, stabbing and puncture wounds that killed her, Cleveland police detectives wrote in records filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court that were made public on Tuesday.
The records do not say if investigators recovered a weapon.
Whitaker, 44, is scheduled for an arraignment hearing Thursday after a grand jury handed up a capital indictment charging him with aggravated murder, rape, kidnapping, aggravated burglary, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence.
Whitaker is the first defendant that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley will seek to put to death since taking office in January.
“The facts of this case together with his violent criminal history compels this Office to seek the death penalty,” O’Malley said.
Whitaker is being held on $3 million bond.
The records made public after Whitaker’s indictment offer the first official glimpse into as to how the girl may have died.
Cleveland police have refused to say how they believe Whitaker killed the girl. An affidavit filed in Cleveland Municipal Court provided no details past naming Whitaker as a suspect in the death. The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office has said Alianna died of “multiple injuries,” and has refused to offer any details into her cause of death.
Ryan Miday, a spokesman for O’Malley, would not comment Tuesday beyond what was in the court records.
Whitaker was arrested Feb. 2 after the medical examiner identified him through DNA evidence collected during the investigation, police said.
Alianna, who suffered from mental health issues, was reported missing last month after she did not show up to school on Jan. 26.
She got onto an RTA bus about 6:45 a.m. that day on East 149th Street north of Kinsman Avenue and got off the bus to switch lines at East 93rd and Kinsman Avenue, police said.
Alianna never made it onto the second bus.
Police say Whitaker kidnapped her at East 93rd Street and Carton Avenue, then took her to a vacant house around the corner on Fuller Avenue. Police officers found her dead days later inside the home.
Hundreds of people attended Alianna’s funeral on Saturday.
Whitaker is a registered sex offender stemming from a 2005 guilty plea to sexual battery and felonious assault charges after police said he attacked a woman and stabbed her with scissors.
Whitaker on April 8, 2005 called a then-45-year-old woman several times throughout the night. He asked permission to use the restroom in her apartment at the Trinity Towers apartment complex on Rockside Road in Bedford Heights.
The woman let him into the apartment. Whitaker went into the restroom and emerged with a pair of scissors. He choked the woman unconscious.
He sexually assaulted while she was unconscious and stabbed her twice in the neck with the scissors.
Whitaker served four years in prison. He also has prior burglary convictions.
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