Just prior to his death, Thomas White had reason to believe that his ten-year ordeal in the Puerto Vallarta prison may have been coming to a conclusion.
According to White’s lawyers, warrants were issued in February by Mexican authorities for the arrest of six people they say “conspired to extract multi-million dollars in settlements from White through a blackmail scheme using underage boys to falsely claim that White raped them while plying them with drugs and alcohol.”
Only one of the six men, local attorney Mauricio Rodriguez Borrego, was detained in Puerto Vallarta on February 24 and remains in prison.
Another of those cited, lawyer David Replogle, who is currently serving a sentence of life without parole for conspiracy to commit murder in California, represented Daniel Garcia in a 2003 state court lawsuit in San Francisco in which he claimed White had sexually abused him while he was a minor.Lawyers for White say while this lawsuit was pending, Replogle and Garcia travelled to Puerto Vallarta and met with Borrego, a lawyer and former juvenile judge, who recruited his former juvenile defendants to claim that White had sexually abused them as minors.
Replogle, with Borrego named as the youths’ guardian, filed a claim of sexual abuse on behalf of 20 Mexican plaintiffs in U.S District Court in San Francisco, concurrent with Garcia’s suit against White.
According to White and his lawyers, in order to enhance their lawsuit, Garcia and Replogle “established a relationship with the U.S. government and the FBI, and fed them evidence that White was guilty of sex crimes against youths in California and around the world.” The lawyers said that in Mexico, Garcia, Replogle and Borrego introduced FBI agents to several of their civil suit plaintiffs, who told the agents elaborate stories of suffering severe sexual abuse and drugging by White.
In 2005, the U.S. government indicted White for offenses related to “sex tourism,” consisting primarily of allegations that he travelled outside of the United States with the intent to engage in underage sex. The U.S. petitioned the Mexican government for White’s extradition, a request that was still pending at his death.
In 2005, the two lawsuits merged for purposes of a combined settlement of 2.3 million dollars awarded to the plaintiffs.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, after the initial case was settled, Garcia testified in a legal filing that Replogle had recruited plaintiffs in the case by promising Puerto Vallarta street children a windfall if they would claim to have met and had sex with White.
In 2009, Replogle and Garcia were arrested, initially for fraud against Palm Springs retiree Clifford Lambert, and eventually for his murder. Both were eventually convicted in Riverside County court of capital murder and related fraud charges and are serving sentences of life without parole in state prisons.
In an interview last month with La Jornada, Stewart Haverlack, described as the coordinator of Thomas White’s legal team in both Mexico and the United States, disputed many of the reports that have been published in recent years regarding his client.
Haverlack stated that White has never been sentenced for the sexual abuse of minors in Mexico. The crime for which he was sentenced to six and a half years in prison was for supplying drugs to minors, he said.
In the interview, Haverlack concluded by saying, “Thomas knows that justice will soon prevail and he is happy about that.”