The Robersons became her refuge. White would later testify that she once ran to them after a severe beating from the male relative who’d been abusing her, and the Robersons paid her mother $75 so she could stay with them for two days.

White had always seen herself as “short, fat and dumb.” She’d never had a boyfriend. But the flattery, according to her, gave way to fear and repulsion in the months she lived with the family.

White claimed Charles Roberson forced her to view pornography while his children were asleep, and his wife was at work. Their interactions escalated, White alleged, into bizarre and sometimes violent sex acts and nude photoshoots. Sometimes, she said, Carole Roberson was involved, and Charles Roberson threatened her if she tried to leave or tell anyone.

White did not talk about the alleged abuse before or during her trial. Many of the Robersons’ family members have died, and IndyStar was unable to contact living relatives who are willing to comment. But Cerna, White’s younger sister, would later testify at a post-conviction hearing that White had told her about the abuse.

To Cerna, she lost her sister as soon as she moved in with the Robersons. The two, who are six years apart, used to play and take long walks together, but White became withdrawn while living with the Robersons.

“I remember seeing her one day and saying ... ‘You have this new family and you don’t even love me anymore,’ ” Cerna said. “She broke down and started crying and told me that it’s so far from the truth. She told me there were some things she couldn’t tell me.”

One day, Cerna came over to the Robersons and tried to convince her sister to leave with her. White told her she couldn’t. And then, she revealed why. She showed Cerna a rubber sex device and said the Robersons were using it to abuse her.

“I tried to tell her to just leave,” Cerna said, her voice breaking. “And she said she couldn’t.”

Desperate, White said she prayed as she tried to figure out how to escape yet another abusive situation. “God, I’ve got to find a way,” she pleaded. “I can’t keep doing this or I’m going to kill myself.”

Then, as if her prayer had been answered, her sister-in-law told her about her grandmother’s Christmas tree catching fire a few days earlier. No one was hurt, but the damage forced her family to move out temporarily.

That phone conversation with her sister-in-law took place Dec. 31, 1975, and it gave White an idea.

The New Year’s Eve fire

The Robersons and their children went to bed before midnight flipped the calendar to 1976. White stayed up later, that phone call still fresh in her mind. Around 10 p.m. she turned off the TV and crawled on the couch, where she usually slept.

As she looked at the family’s Christmas tree, White thought to herself: “If I set a small fire, then that’s my answer.”

She envisioned the house being damaged, but insisted she never considered the possibility of anyone being hurt. Instead, everyone would be forced to move out, just like what happened at her grandmother’s home. To White, it would be the ticket out of another abusive situation.

She got up from the couch and picked up a newspaper. She crumpled it into a wad and placed it behind the recliner next to the tree. And then, she set it on fire with a lighter.

Almost immediately, the house was filled with smoke, White said, and the flames spread up the wooden paneling and through the house.

White would later testify that she rushed to the master bedroom to wake up the Robersons. She tried to call the fire department, but as the operator was connecting her, White hung up because she couldn’t breathe. Panicking, she rushed to the bedroom where the older children slept. Carole Roberson was already there.

By then, White recalled, the house was completely filled with smoke. They couldn’t get out the bedroom door to escape. The only way to safety, it seemed, was the window. White said Carole Roberson told her to climb on the kids’ top bunk bed, open the window and climb down so she can hand the kids to White.

White managed to get out, according to her trial testimony, and started reaching for the boys. But that was the last time she saw anyone from the family alive.

The next thing she remembered, White said, she was lying on her stomach thinking it was all a bad dream.

Greenwood police chief: ‘Handle this as a homicide’

Lynn Coon first saw flames shooting from the Robersons’ big front window. Then, she saw White coming from around the side of the house. Her face was burned, and her hands were black.

“She was screaming … she was just hollering to try and help her to get ‘em out,’” Coon testified in court.

Police officers and firefighters restrained White as she screamed over and over, “Get them out, there’s other people in there, get them out,” Phillip Wayne Hommell, of the Greenwood Police Department, testified.

Lt. Junice Moran, who was off duty that night but came to help, saw the fire from a mile and a half away. Greenwood Fire Chief Dick Van Valer arrived at 10:55 p.m., seven minutes after the alarm came in.

By then, flames were shooting 30 to 40 feet into the air.

“It was a conflagration of the entire house,” he testified.

The family’s bodies were found that night in various locations in the house. All seemed to have tried to get out. Charles and Carole Roberson, ages 45 and 41, respectively, died of smoke inhalation. So did 7-year-old Michael, 6-yearold Dale, 5-year-old Gary and the youngest, Rita or “Sissy,” who was 4.

White’s face, arms and hands were covered with second- and third-degree burns. Her forearms were so badly burned that doctors gave her a shot of painkiller while they removed the scorched flesh, according to court records.

That night at the hospital, White kept asking how the children were, according to Jane Testa, a nurse at St. Francis Hospital.

“That’s mostly what she said most of the night,” she Testa testified.

White remembers being told everyone was fine. She remembers going to sleep, thinking they’d all made it out safe. When detectives later visited her in the intensive care unit, where they had to wear masks and hospital gowns, White again asked about the family.

She’ll never forget what one of the officers said: “Cindy, they all died.”

Investigators initially thought the fire may have been caused by faulty Christmas tree wiring. But court testimony from Greenwood police officer Alan Clark revealed police suspected foul play almost immediately.

Less than an hour after the fire started, Ed Stephens, whose term began that midnight of 1976, gave one of his first orders as Greenwood police chief.

“Something does not appear right here,” Stephens told Clark. “Something’s wrong. Handle this as a homicide.”