I Am a Killer: Richard Paul White
Richard Paul White’s childhood was not an easy one. He grew up in an abusive, dysfunctional household with his neglectful, alcoholic mother and violent stepfather. His two younger sisters, Maureen and Danyall looked up to Richard as their protector and lovingly called him RP. Maureen claimed that Richard would often beat neighborhood kids who teased them and steal candy from the local stores so they wouldn’t go hungry.
As they got older, Richard began to show signs of violence, and he claimed to have a demon inside of him. He would chase his sisters around the house with a kitchen knife, and in one horrible incident, he snapped the neck of the family’s bird just to upset Danyall.
“He’s the kind of person you enjoy being around, until he decides all the sudden, he’s not. He turns very scary, very fast. […] If you said the wrong thing, you were going to pay for it.” – Maureen White (I Lived With a Killer)
As adults, that darkness in Richard never disappeared, but he managed to keep up certain appearances in front of his sisters and friends. They had no idea what he was capable of until one incident pulled back the curtain on his monstrous acts.
In the early morning hours of September 8, 2003, Danyall received a phone call from her brother asking for help. He had done something terrible. While cleaning his gun, it went off, striking his friend, 27-year-old Jason Reichardt, in the head and killing him. Jason had befriended Richard a year earlier when Richard was going through a rough time being unemployed. Jason had let Richard move in with him and even helped him get a job. But now, Jason was dead, and Richard was claiming it was an accident.
Before this incident, Danyall had blown off her brother’s outlandish lies. For an entire year, Richard had let his family believe he had HIV, only to laugh and tell them later that he had made it up. He had even told Danyall and his own girlfriend about how he murdered a woman by strangling her with his belt. However, no one believed him due to his history of being less than honest.
But this time, when Richard asked Danyall to pick him up so he could gather supplies and head for the mountains, she knew he was telling the truth.
After taking her brother to the mountains, Danyall returned home to discover that investigators believed Reichardt’s death had been a suicide. Not wanting Reichardt’s family to wrestle with the guilt and pain of believing their loved one had taken his own life, Danyall decided to call the police and tell them the truth.
Richard Paul White was arrested and confessed to the death of Jason Reichardt. But while discussing the “accidental shooting” with investigators, Richard made a shocking admission.
“I am a killer. I’ve killed three other people.”
His victims were sex workers, people he claimed no one cared about. And two of them were buried in his backyard.
On September 10th, investigators convened in Richard’s backyard and began the process of searching for two of his victims. It was there they discovered the bodies of Victoria Lyn Turpin, 32, and Annaletia Maria Gonzales, 27. Richard admitted to taking them back to his house, where he assaulted, tortured, and then strangled them. He would make them pray with him in between the assaults, asking God for guidance on what to do with them. But he claims God never responded.
As part of a guilty plea deal to avoid the death penalty, Richard led authorities to the remains of Torrey Marie Foster, 25, whom he had killed and dumped in Southern Colorado. Foster was his first victim, a young mother of two young children who was studying cosmetology so she could start a new life.
Richard Paul White received three consecutive life sentences for the first-degree murders of Gonzales, Turpin, and his friend Jason Reichardt, whom Richard admitted to killing so he could rob him. Murder charges in the death of Foster were dropped as part of his plea deal. In addition to his multiple life sentences, Richard also received 144 more years for the assault and torture of his three surviving victims.
“I felt such rage and anger and so many emotions I did not know what to do.” – Maureen White
Danyall still deals with the guilt and pain of turning her brother in. Several family members have shunned her for her actions, and she has dealt with years of alcohol abuse. She eventually moved from Aurora to start over, where no one knew who she was. Maureen suffered from anxiety, nightmares, and self-abuse.
Ultimately, Danyall believes that her brother boasted about his crimes to people in an attempt to get someone to stop him because he would never be able to stop himself.
White is currently serving his life sentences at the Centennial Correctional Facility in Colorado.
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