Defense Case in Whitelaw Child-Stealing Trial : Wife Made Death Threats, Witnesses Testify

Six close friends of Ronald Whitelaw, testifying in his defense at his trial on child-stealing charges, said Monday that his ex-wife threatened his life repeatedly over a six-year period.

One of them, Nancy Valdes, testified that Whitelaw’s ex-wife, Faith Canutt, also threatened to kill Valdes’ husband and make her children “disappear.”

Whitelaw has contended that, in 1978, he took his two daughters, then ages 6 and 3, from their mother because she had threatened to kill him and the girls if he did not give up his battle for custody.

Whitelaw dropped his custody suit four months before he failed to return the girls to Canutt after a weekend visitation in April, 1978.

He was arrested in August in Oregon, where he was found living with his daughters and his second wife under an assumed name.

The witnesses who testified on Monday did so under the terms of a ruling made last week by San Fernando Superior Court Judge Howard J. Schwab. He forbade defense attorney Harland Braun from using a so-called “necessity defense” for his client, ordering instead that the alleged death threats against Whitelaw be used only in an attempt to discredit Canutt’s testimony.

Braun may not use any alleged threats against the girls, Schwab ruled.

Canutt testified last week that she never made any death threats against her ex-husband.

Several of the witnesses testified Monday that Canutt told them she had been hearing satanic voices ordering her to kill Whitelaw at least five years before the couple’s divorce in 1977.

“She was becoming a born-again Christian, and she was involved in a very radical church,” Joanne LaLone, a long-time friend of the Whitelaws, testified.

“She believed it was Satan’s power keeping her from Jesus,” LaLone said, referring to the voices Canutt allegedly said she heard.

Another of Whitelaw’s friends, Virginia Hilton, testified that she heard Canutt threaten Whitelaw’s life shortly after he disappeared with the children. She said Canutt made that threat at a North Hollywood bar as she sat having drinks with Hilton and Joanne and Michael LaLone.

“She said, ‘If he was here right now, I’d blow his brains out,’ something like that,” Hilton said. “I said, ‘You don’t really mean that.’ And she said, yes, she did. She seemed matter-of-fact. She scared me.”

Valdes, whose husband, Larry, was Whitelaw’s real estate broker when Whitelaw lived in Santa Barbara, testified that she “terminated” her friendship with Canutt when Canutt told her that “I could wake up one morning soon and I would find my husband dead on the garage floor and my children gone.”

Canutt later named Larry Valdes in a civil suit as one of the people responsible for the disappearance of her children. Valdes was dropped from the suit, which last year led to a $1.5-million judgment against Whitelaw. It was the nation’s first civil damage award involving parental child stealing.

Whitelaw’s trial is expected to conclude today.