Alicia Renee Machnik, a 29-year-old White/Caucasian woman, was found shot to death on January 14, 2026, inside a room at the Port Motel on West Appleton Avenue on Milwaukee’s northwest side, near Timmerman Airport. Machnik and her partner, Lance Devon White, had checked into the motel on January 12 and had reportedly been staying in motels together with some regularity. On the morning of January 14, a motel employee went to their room at about 11:30 a.m. to clean it.
Machnik answered the door and told the employee she intended to remain another night. The employee instructed her to go to the front desk to pay for the additional night, but she never arrived there.
Surveillance footage became a critical part of the investigation. Cameras showed White leaving the room at approximately 11:36 a.m., only minutes after the employee had spoken with Machnik. Investigators said no one else was recorded entering or leaving the room after White departed. A little more than three hours later, at approximately 2:38 p.m., the motel employee returned, received no response at the door and entered the room. Machnik was found lying on the bed with a gunshot wound to the head and was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators recovered a spent 9mm cartridge casing and an intact bullet that appeared to have blood on it. They also discovered numerous belongings connected to White, including identification documents, a birth certificate, debit card, Social Security card and other personal items.
Police quickly focused their investigation on White. Surveillance evidence placed him in the room with Machnik shortly before her death and showed him leaving before her body was discovered. Later that day, White reportedly contacted his mother and asked her to come home. According to the criminal complaint, she found him outside her residence looking disheveled and dirty and believed that something was wrong with him. After he showered, she took him to St. Luke’s Hospital. Police were contacted, and White was arrested there at approximately 8:30 that evening.
During questioning, White allegedly admitted that he had fired the fatal shot. However, he gave investigators an unusual explanation for what happened. According to the criminal complaint, White claimed Machnik feared that the father of one of her children, who White said was expected to be released from prison in approximately 11 months, was going to kill them. White told detectives that Machnik asked him to shoot her in the area of her face where his name had been tattooed. He claimed that he fired a single shot into her head and then fled the motel room in shock. Authorities did not treat that account as justification for the killing.
White also allegedly told investigators what he did after leaving the Port Motel. According to the complaint, he discarded the firearm in a sewer near an apartment complex and walked to another nearby motel, where he attempted to rent a room. He was reportedly turned away because he did not have identification, consistent with investigators later finding his identification and other important documents still inside the Port Motel room. Investigators also obtained footage showing a person prosecutors identified as White attempting to check into the second motel.
The investigation also revealed concerns surrounding Machnik’s relationship with White. Her mother told detectives that the two had married roughly a year earlier and expressed concern about changes she had observed in her daughter during that period. Family members publicly described Machnik’s death as an act of domestic violence. In the aftermath, relatives organized a fundraiser for the two children she left behind and called for justice in her killing.
Prosecutors charged Lance Devon White with one count of first-degree intentional homicide. At his initial court proceedings, a judge set cash bond at $300,000. The charge carries the possibility of life imprisonment if White is convicted. The prosecution's case, as outlined in the criminal complaint and subsequent reporting, rests heavily on the motel surveillance footage, the physical evidence recovered from the room, White's presence with Machnik shortly before the shooting, his movements afterward and, most significantly, his alleged admission to detectives that he fired the shot that killed her.
