Second person sentenced to 30 years for kidnapping, murder
The second defendant in a crime a prosecutor called “nothing short of an abomination” was sentenced Friday to 30 years in prison for his role.
Tess M.M. White, who was pregnant at the time, was kidnapped, tortured and strangled in West Allis before her body was set on fire twice, once in Minnesota and then in South Dakota, where farmers discovered her remains in May 2016.
Shanta D. Pearson, 47, pleaded guilty in May to kidnapping as a party to the crime and bank robbery. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge David Borowski imposed consecutive 15year prison terms and consecutive 10-year extended supervision terms, all to start when Pearson completes a current sentence for another crime.
He called the crime “unspeakable depravity.”
Pearson and Tiffany Lynn Simmons, 38, were arrested in Colorado in June 2016, weeks after White disappeared.
They were charged with tying up White, 25, in the back of Pearson’s pickup truck, where Simmons later tortured and strangled her in a parking lot on National Avenue in West Allis.
According to prosecutors, Pearson and Simmons kept White’s body hidden in the truck for days while they robbed a bank using a different car and finally headed out of town in the pickup. They tried to burn White’s corpse in Minnesota but botched the attempt, then did so successfully in South Dakota, where two farmers found the remains May 17, 2016.
White had been reported missing by her aunt May 14, 10 days after she had seen White get in a white pickup truck.
After Simmons and Pearson were arrested in Denver on May 25, 2016, on a warrant from the May 6 West Allis bank robbery, the aunt said the white pickup they were driving when stopped for a headlight violation was the same type she saw White get into the day she disappeared.
It took days to identify White’s remains. After that, there was a dispute among her family members, who belong to different Native American tribes, over where she should be buried. Her funeral was stopped in the middle of the week-long ceremony before it was finally worked out in court.
Simmons, who had mental health and drug issues for years, had been released from prison 10 weeks before killing White.
White knew the defendants. Simmons suspected White of stealing drugs the three were using. White, in turn, accused Simmons of using her ATM card. That day in the truck, the two women began fighting, so Pearson stopped and they bound White. He later got cocaine and left the women in the truck, when Simmons killed White.
Simmons pleaded guilty to first-degree intentional homicide and was sentenced to life in prison without a chance for parole. At her sentencing, Assistant District Attorney Karl Hayes called the case “nothing short of an abomination.”