Prosecutors seek to revive 'cold case' murder charge

Action by Texas' top criminal court Wednesday will give Travis County prosecutors one last chance to revive their case against Jimmie Dale White, a 58-year-old Austin man arrested in 2003 and charged with killing his roommate 17 years earlier.
White's murder charge was considered a major achievement for the Austin Police Department's cold case unit — at the time, it was the oldest unsolved case resulting in an arrest — but White never went to trial.
On New Year's Eve 2006, hours before retiring from the bench, state District Judge Jon Wisser announced that he had reluctantly dismissed White's murder charge because a fair trial was unlikely after the passage of so much time and the death of many witnesses who could have vouched for the suspect.
The Travis County district attorney's office appealed Wisser's decision to an intermediate court but lost.
On Wednesday, however, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to examine prosecution arguments that White's charge was improperly dismissed. There is no deadline for the appeals court to rule.
The decision keeps alive a case that has taken numerous twists and turns, including White's 1993 diagnosis with Lou Gehrig's disease, a fatal condition that attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Prosecutors took White's health into account when launching their appeals, assistant district attorney Holly Taylor said.
"We feel the evidence is pretty clear that he did kill this victim," Taylor said. "It's certainly unfortunate he has ALS, but there is also an issue of justice for this victim and this community."
David Botsford, White's appellate lawyer, said Wisser was correct to dismiss the charge.
"Who's in a better position than the trial judge — given the evidence he heard and credibility of witnesses — to determine whether this man could receive a fair trial?" Botsford said.
The mystery began May 3, 1986, when an Austin patrol officer discovered the body of Michael DesJardins in a parking lot at 5550 N. Lamar Blvd. The 23-year-old had been shot in the head, chest and abdomen and dumped in the parking lot.
The investigation led detectives 1 1/2 miles north, to the home DesJardins shared with White at 1211 Dwyce Drive. According to court records, White said he and DesJardins had visited several gay bars the night before DesJardins' body was found, and that DesJardins had left in the company of a person he met at one of the bars.
The investigation stalled, but through the years, new information arose. According to White's 2003 arrest warrant:
• White told his sister that he killed a man in his house and dumped the body in a Lamar Boulevard parking lot. That information came from White's brother-in-law in 1990.
• Also in 1990, a family friend told police that White's sister once discussed cleaning blood from White's house while he drove away with a body.
• In 1996, a bar patron recalled a 10-year-old conversation in which an intoxicated White had mentioned wanting to kill DesJardins over a debt. White offered to pay the bar patron to help with the killing, police said.
No arrests were made because of a lack of evidence, police said.
The Police Department's cold case unit picked up the investigation in late 2002. Detective Rick Blackmore found additional witnesses, including White's former next-door neighbor, who recalled a late-night scuffle, one or more "popping" sounds and sudden quiet. Several days later, the suspicious neighbor phoned an anonymous tip into CrimeStoppers after reading about DesJardin's killing in the American-Statesman, court records show.
Police, fearing that White was preparing to flee after he placed a rush order for his first passport, arrested him 17 years and two days after DesJardins was killed. Efforts to reach White's trial lawyer, Doug Beeson, were unsuccessful. Beeson has said in the past that he thinks his client is innocent.

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