White to 1st victim: Are you dead yet?

SPRINGFIELD, Mich. (WOOD) - She is the first known victim of John White, the 55-year-old pastor now accused of killing a 24-year-old Mount Pleasant mom.

Theresa Morris, now 49, was 17 when White stabbed her 15 times in the basement of his Battle Creek home in 1980.

She is convinced -- based on his words during the attack -- that she wasn't his first victim.

"He said, 'This isn't my first time. Just shut up. You're making this more difficult than it has to be,'" she recalled on Friday in an interview with 24 Hour News 8.

She said she would not be surprised if there are more victims that no one knows about.

Morris, then Theresa Etherton, was a student at Battle Creek Central High School and lived just down the street from White, then a 22-year-old married man. She described him as polite and unassuming. He had invited her over to look at his new slot-car racetrack.

Within moments, she said, she felt the first stab under her right shoulder blade.

"It's just a really weird feeling that you get when you're stabbed," she recalled. "I couldn't breathe. I guess he'd punctured my lung."

She said she fought him and was still standing when he cut open her abdomen.

"I remember watching him, and it was just, the look on his face was just like pure pleasure, like putting a knife into butter," she said.

At one point, she said, he took a break to use the bathroom. A few times, she said, he called her by his wife's name. He said he was angry that his wife had gained weight.

"He held me while he did it, just kept rocking me. Shhhhh. Go to sleep."

At some point, she fell to the floor.

"He would stand there, and he would look at me on the floor, and he says, 'Well, are you dead yet?'"

She pointed to a scar on her left upper arm, which she considers a badge of honor. She used that arm to block a stab she believes was meant for her heart.

Morris said she is not surprised to learn that in the most recent case, White told police that wanted to have sex with Rebekah Gay after killing her in Isabella County. She believes that was his plan for her more than 30 years ago.

"He said, 'You're going to be a really nice piece of meat.' I said, 'What the hell are you talking about?' He said, 'If I can't have you, I'm sure as hell not going to let anybody else have you.'"

She said he kissed her and touched her as she lay bleeding on the floor.

"He wiped my mouth off and he kissed me and he held my hand and he said, 'You're going to go now.' He says, 'I'm really sorry you had to go like this.' He said, 'But what the f---, you're just a woman.'"

She said she played dead and that he left her, believing he had cut her throat. Instead, he got her chin.

"Thank goodness there was enough blood to let him think he had cut my throat," she said.

At one point, she said, White's wife walked in with a sheet.

The wife "put a sheet over my face and said, 'Shut up, just shut up,' and I'm just begging her for help," she said. The wife, she said, walked away.

A woman visiting the home heard her screams and helped her, she said. Soon, there were police and paramedics. If not for surgeons, she said, she would have been White's first known killing.

"I died on the table, according to them," she said. "I just remember being cold and quiet and people talking over me."

The injuries kept her out of the military and doctors believed she would not have children. She now has three children and is a grandmother.

White was sentenced five to 10 years in prison after being found guilty of assault with intent to murder in 1981, but was released after two years.

"I felt really betrayed, and I was scared -- not just for me, because the way that he did it was so easy and so comfortable for him; I was scared that maybe he'd either try to come back and finish, or somebody else would take my place," said Morris.

She said authorities had promised to notify her when White was released. Instead, she said, she found out when she heard his voice behind her at a Secretary of State's office about four years after the attack. She was in her early 20s, she said.

"I was standing in line and I heard this voice, and I'd been hearing that voice in my head almost every day," she said. "I turned around, and he's just smiling."

She said she grabbed a stanchion and went after him, yelling to a security guard what White had done to her. She said the guard got in her way.

"The security guard just told me, 'Run, baby girl, just go," she recalled.

In 1994 -- 14 years after the attack on Morris -- White was living in Galesburg when 26-year-old Vicky Sue Wall disappeared. She had been having an affair with White and was last seen getting into his pickup truck. Six weeks later, Wall's body was found in a wooded area, so badly decomposed that an autopsy couldn't determine a cause of death.

White called it a "tragic accident" before he was sentenced to eight to 15 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. He served 12 years.

Morris said she was never