It’s been 50 years since Sarah ‘Cindy’ White set fire to the home of the family who hired her to babysit. Now the longest-serving inmate of the Indiana Women’s Prison meets with Court TV to share her remorse. Does her life sentence reflect justice or has her time in prison been long enough for reform?
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00:00You know, I'm not a monster, not a bad person.
00:13I done a bad thing.
00:18The state said you and Roberson were lovers, and that when you felt jilted, you lashed out by setting the fire.
00:26You say it was a cry for help and a way to escape a desperate situation, an abusive situation.
00:35A live-in babysitter sets the house ablaze and then escapes, killing four young children and their parents.
00:42I did it. I struck that match, and I set that fire.
00:48But it wasn't to kill anybody. It wasn't.
00:52Don't understand us, the babies.
00:53Michael, Dale, Gary, and Rita all choked to death by that smoke in terror.
01:02I ran to the bedroom, and I told them the house is unfair. God help me.
01:07I tried to get them out.
01:09Almost 50 years later, Indiana's longest-serving female inmate, Sarah Cindy White, answers for setting that fatal fire and saving herself.
01:21You got yourself out the window.
01:24I fell out. I'm assuming I can't remember.
01:26How do you explain the fact that you remember everything up to then and then everything after that?
01:32I can't explain it. I really can't.
01:37Three psychiatrists told the court that you're a pathological liar.
01:41You lied on the polygraph you took.
01:43Mm-hmm.
01:44You lied at the sentencing.
01:46You lied about setting the fire.
01:48Yes, I did. Yes, I did.
01:50But am I lying today?
01:52No.
01:53I set the house at fire, not meaning to kill anybody.
01:57God knows I didn't mean to kill him.
02:01Now, she's making accusations of her own and pointing the finger at one of her victims.
02:06He says, if you run or cry to get away from me, he says, I will drive by and I will kill her.
02:13But the only evidence is her own word.
02:16Would you believe you?
02:19Yes.
02:20Would you forgive you?
02:22No.
02:23Would you free you?
02:25That's a good question.
03:44Now, more than anything, Sarah Cindy White says she just wants to be believed.
03:51With growing calls to release Indiana's longest-serving female inmate, White has a controversial story to tell.
03:59Thank you, guys.
04:00I want to hear her out and get a glimpse into the mind of this convicted murderer.
04:07Once a known liar, can she ever be believed?
04:11We're really here to understand the mindset and motivations behind your actions so long ago.
04:19It's my job to embody the skepticism of the viewer.
04:24I have a duty to probe the way you would want me to if you were on the other side of the TV trying to figure out what to think.
04:33Does that make sense?
04:33Yes.
04:35White is 67 years old, wheelchair-bound and frail.
04:39Why are you here today talking to us, Cindy?
04:42And there's also a unique sensitivity at play that calls for a gentle tact.
04:47I'm here today because there are little Cindy's out there going through what I went through.
04:55And if they hear my story and they can find other ways to handle the situation that I did, they don't have to end up in here.
05:06White says her story begins with child sexual abuse.
05:10It happened to you at a time when most victims suffered in silence.
05:17Yeah.
05:18Right?
05:18Exactly.
05:19I lived the abuse that my father gave me from being a daddy's girl to being daddy's special little girl.
05:26And that's when the secret started.
05:28That's also when the damage started.
05:30Yes.
05:31It just went too far to where his hand was glowing on my shorts.
05:35And that just was not right.
05:37But I loved him.
05:38That was my dad at the age of eight.
05:41He says, this is our little secret.
05:43White says her father's home was a living hell.
05:47And she began inventing ways to avoid it.
05:51The brain is wired to cope.
05:54And at one point, you took to pretend fainting.
05:57The weekends were horrible.
05:59You know, the cyclone would happen in the house.
06:02And he would just...
06:03And I was like, I can't do it, you know.
06:06To have a tooth knocked out.
06:08And, you know, it was just one thing after another.
06:13It got to the point that around Friday...
06:16Yeah.
06:17I would either be delivering my newspapers or something like that.
06:21And my last newspaper would be delivered.
06:23And I knew what I had to go home to.
06:24And it just got to the point that I would make myself fall.
06:33And it happened on Friday to avoid the weekend terror.
06:36Yeah.
06:36You know, I was faking falling off my bike.
06:39One day I fell and my leg was actually numb.
06:42I could not...
06:43I couldn't feel a thing.
06:44And later on, they diagnosed it as hysterical paralysis.
06:49Around 16, it got so bad that you were institutionalized for almost a whole year.
06:55Yeah, for 10 months.
06:57They diagnosed you for an extreme stress condition known as conversion reaction.
07:03Basically a psychological injury with physical manifestations.
07:08They never explained that to me.
07:11There was also a diagnosis that you had a tendency to exaggerate and distort facts.
07:19Yeah.
07:20It says that she has marked difficulty in telling straightforward stories.
07:24Does that ring true to you?
07:25Does that make sense to you?
07:26It does make sense.
07:28But I've never heard this before.
07:30All of this is from the case record.
07:32You're right.
07:33It sounds like a compulsion.
07:34And do you think that that's a coping mechanism that your brain sort of devised to somehow reconcile the world that you lived in?
07:45It could.
07:47It's very, very, very possible.
07:50Is that still something that you want to do at times?
07:55Could that be part of the lasting damage you've sustained, that sometimes your mind, you know, bends what happens in order to protect yourself emotionally?
08:07No, nothing like that now.
08:09In fact, I'm a very straightforward person.
08:12It's also totally relevant to the case because it cuts against your credibility, right?
08:18Yeah.
08:19Yeah.
08:19As she was coming of age, White languished in a psychiatric hospital.
08:25But one local family had become a saving grace, the Robersons.
08:30You had already met the Robersons.
08:34Yes.
08:34I met them on my paper route.
08:36So they watched you grow up in a way.
08:38Yeah.
08:39And in fact, they would ask me to babysit a couple of times.
08:42She says Charles and Carol Roberson had even taken her in as a younger teen when she needed safe harbor from her own family.
08:52And she would help care for their four young children.
08:56At that point, by all appearances, they seem like well-meaning, decent folk.
09:00They were.
09:01It was fun.
09:03And it was just wonderful.
09:04And that's when I started fantasizing of Charlie because he was being kind to me.
09:10He was, you're pretty.
09:13You know, look at you.
09:14You are a really pretty woman, you know.
09:17And I have never been told that.
09:19And so, therefore, I was infatuated with him.
09:22How old were you at that point?
09:23I was 15.
09:24That's where the romantic feelings started.
09:27Yeah, they did.
09:28Even before you were institutionalized.
09:30Yes, yes.
09:31They kept in touch with you when you went to LaRue.
09:34They did.
09:35They would come see me.
09:36They would even come visit.
09:37Really?
09:38Yes.
09:39White says she was finally released from the psychiatric hospital just as she was turning 18.
09:45And soon landed in the one place she'd felt safe, the Roberson home.
09:49By then, according to investigators, White and Charles Roberson were exchanging these sexually charged letters.
09:56October 1975, the month she moved in, she tells him, I wish I could have you all to myself, and that she wants him to be her first.
10:08He writes her, you're at a legal age, when you can have sex with me with no problem.
10:16Did you fall in love with him?
10:18In a child's mind, yeah.
10:20In an adult mind, no.
10:22You were 18 at that point.
10:23I was still a child.
10:25I was so damaged.
10:26And he would flirt with me, and he would tell me things that everybody wants to hear.
10:32Can you describe it to me, what you felt for Mr. Roberson?
10:34I got excited when I seen him.
10:40I would giggle when he would say something.
10:43You know, and as I think back now, it would be just, you know, a kid thing.
10:49I didn't want sex really at the time.
10:50I just wanted someone to tell me I was pretty, to tell me that I amandered to something more than a piece of ass.
10:59You wanted love.
11:00Yeah, something that I've never, never received, other than from the kids.
11:06Is it possible, in your damaged mind at the time, that you were overinterpreting some of these things that he would say?
11:18I don't think so. I don't think so.
11:21And then, according to you, things suddenly get very dark.
11:27Yeah.
11:27White alleges, both Charles and Carol Roberson became her lovers and then her captors.
11:36It first started off with, he got porn.
11:40The three of us sat there, and I sat and picked with my fingers, and they kept telling me, look up at the screen.
11:46Both of them?
11:47Yes.
11:47It was to the point that I didn't know what else to do.
11:56But did it never cross your mind, Cindy, that if I light this match, I could kill everyone in the house?
12:02I didn't, I didn't, I didn't contemplate on it that long.
12:06As a teenager, Cindy White was committed to a psychiatric hospital, and diagnosed as prone to distort and fabricate facts.
12:20Mental illness she attributes to an abusive childhood home.
12:23So, after being released from the hospital, she turned 18 and took refuge with a local couple, for whom she used to babysit, the Roberson's.
12:33You've described two very different experiences in their home.
12:39Yes.
12:39You said, oh, if I could imagine what Disneyland would be like, that would be it, because I was so loved.
12:45Yeah, I felt it.
12:47The kids, oh my, you know, they were just, you know, there's Aunt Cindy, there's Aunt Cindy.
12:53And, I mean, they would come running, they'd see me coming on my bike.
12:58The four of them.
12:58The four, and you know how puppies are when they see you, and they're, like, jumping up and down, wanting to be picked up.
13:03So excited.
13:04That's exactly what I got.
13:05Hmm. Wow.
13:07And I loved every bit of it.
13:09The Roberson's young children, Michael, Dale, Gary, and Rita, had known White for most of their young lives, as a trusted babysitter.
13:18What were your duties? What did you...
13:21I would help Carol clean. Carol was a clean freak.
13:24Mm-hmm.
13:24She, I mean, she, um...
13:33Sorry.
13:34It's okay. Take a minute.
13:38Find some tissue here.
13:41I love those kids.
13:45You need a minute? We can take as much time as you need.
13:49Please, just for a second.
13:50What's up? What's up?
13:58There you go.
13:58All right.
14:03The kids, we would go...
14:05The school wasn't very far from the house, and I would take them at least once a day.
14:10That was their little reward for being good.
14:12And we would go and play on the recess activities.
14:16Playground.
14:17Yeah.
14:17And we'd play in the sprinkler before it got too cold.
14:21Mm-hmm.
14:22And, uh, you know, little kid stuff.
14:24But White says soon after she arrived, the Robesons' home somehow transformed from a safe haven into a hellhole.
14:37And then, according to you, things suddenly get very dark.
14:44Yeah.
14:45It first started off with he got porn.
14:48And Charlie would say, come and watch this with me.
14:51And I said, I don't want to see that.
14:53And he grabbed me.
14:54And he grabbed me hard.
14:55And he said, yes, you are.
14:57You're going to sit here and watch it.
14:59White's account of this three-month-long stay with the Robesons describes a litany of outlandish horrors and abuse.
15:06Now, impossible for her victims to refute.
15:10And I'm like, Carol will die if she hears this.
15:15And then one day, she walks in and she says, what are you doing?
15:19And she said, oh, you're watching porn.
15:21And so she sat down and the three of us sat there.
15:25And I sat and picked with my fingers, and they kept telling me, look up at the screen.
15:29Both of them?
15:30Yes.
15:31And so then Charlie decided he wanted to make some movies.
15:37Pornographic movies?
15:38Pornographic movies.
15:39Was Carol in on that, too?
15:41It was Carol and I that he made.
15:43And that was my first lesbianism experience.
15:47I see.
15:48You say he invited other sexual partners to join in.
15:53Who were they?
15:54People that he knew.
15:55In fact, I myself thought I'd seen a couple of them on the police, of course.
16:03Investigators later concluded that White and Charles Roberson were having a consensual affair,
16:09but found no evidence to corroborate her claims of abuse.
16:15There's also a story about forcing you to have sex with an animal?
16:20A dog.
16:22He wanted to videotape it.
16:23And he dictated exactly what it was that I was supposed to do.
16:29I was supposed to allow the dog to lick me.
16:33The family pet?
16:34Yeah, he was the family pet.
16:36I take the issue of sexual abuse very seriously.
16:41And it is not my practice to question the accounts of victims.
16:48You obviously have no reason to lie about what happened in your home with your father.
16:56However, you do have a reason to lie about the Roberson's.
17:00They were among your murder victims.
17:02They were among your murder victims.
17:04And the worse you can make them look, the more sympathy and consideration you might get.
17:13Is that fair?
17:15Oh, it's fair what you're saying, but it's not.
17:19No, it's not the truth.
17:21I would not rake someone's name through the coals like that.
17:27I would not falsely accuse anybody of anything, especially something of that nature.
17:34Obviously, they're not here to defend or speak for themselves.
17:39I know. I know that.
17:39Nor do we have any other information that implicates them in wrongdoing apart from your own accusations.
17:49That came many years after the fact.
17:52At no point between your arrest and a decade or so later, did you ever note for the record or even tell your own attorneys about the abuse by the Roberson's?
18:06I clammed up. I was scared. I was ashamed.
18:09You also say there were some very brutal acts of intimidation, including a chilling story about a kitten.
18:17Yes, the kitten.
18:18What happened there?
18:20I said, I'm going to go see my grandmother.
18:21He said, you're not going anywhere.
18:24And he grabbed me and he pushed me against the wall and the kids are screaming.
18:28And so he let go of me and he went out and got the kitten.
18:32He said, I'm going to show you what I'm about.
18:35And he said, and jerked the head off.
18:38What do you mean? He literally removed the head from the kitten's body?
18:41The kitten was like this.
18:43He had the kitten like this.
18:44He took the head and he ripped it and he pulled the head off the kitten.
18:49It was horrible.
18:51That was one of the first times that I ran.
18:55White says to prevent her from leaving the home, Charles Roberson threatened to murder her sister, who lived nearby.
19:02He takes me down my grandmother's street and my baby, baby sister, which is Kristen, she's four.
19:11She's out in the front yard.
19:13She's playing.
19:14He says, if you run or get away from me, he says, I will drive by and I will kill her.
19:20And I believed him.
19:23I mean, look what he did to the cat.
19:26And I said, I wasn't coming over here.
19:28And he said, yes, you were.
19:29And he slapped me.
19:30He backhanded me.
19:31This is a man who, along with his wife.
19:34Yes, who I felt safe with.
19:38But it just started, I mean, everything just started unraveling.
19:43These explicit letters were found by investigators dated during the first two months of White's stay with the Roberson's.
19:50In them, she makes no reference to any problems apart from Charles's marriage.
19:57Still, White now claims that during the third and final month she lived with the family, she was desperate for a way out.
20:05That's when, she says, late one night, a dangerous idea came to her.
20:10So I go on to bed and then we get the phone call in the middle of the night.
20:14It's your grandmother's house, caught on fire, but they all got out and everybody's okay.
20:23And I said, that's it.
20:26If I set a small fire, one to smoke it up to where everybody gets out, I can leave.
20:34So, by your account, all this leads up to New Year's Eve, right?
20:41December 31st, 1975.
20:46Cindy, in as much detail as you can remember after all these years, tell me what happened that night.
20:53On New Year's Eve, 1975, an 18-year-old live-in babysitter crouched beside the family Christmas tree with a matchbook and a terrible idea.
21:12Asleep in their bedrooms were Charles and Carol Roberson and their four small children, Michael, Dale, Gary, and Rita.
21:20Yeah. New Year's Eve, right? December 31st, 1975.
21:27Now, this is going back 50 years or so.
21:31How much can you remember about that period?
21:34I remember everything.
21:35You do?
21:36I do. I've got a very good memory as far as that goes.
21:39Cindy, in as much detail as you can remember after all these years, tell me what happened that night.
21:47It was below freezing, snowing, and we had went shopping, and I had gotten a pair of the footie pajamas.
21:54We had all gotten some throughout the day, and I had those on, and I got ready to unplug the Christmas tree because they had went on to bed.
22:02And I said, that's it.
22:04If I set a small fire, wanted to smoke it up to where everybody gets out, I can leave.
22:13At that point, that you're so desperate, you're about to light the house on fire.
22:19Yeah.
22:20Wouldn't it have been better to just walk out the door and take your chances?
22:24I couldn't take my chances with my family because he showed me what he was doing.
22:30He showed me what he was about.
22:33And I prayed to God before I struck that match, and I said, God, if this is your will, let it happen.
22:41But if it's not your will, please, please don't let it happen.
22:45That's not really how God works, is it?
22:48Now I know that.
22:49I know that now.
22:52When I struck that match, and it went up, and it went up the walls so fast, I ran to the bedroom, and I got Charlene.
23:01And I told them, the house is on fire.
23:03God help me.
23:04We went to Gary and Sissy's room, and I got them, and Carolyn went to the back bedroom.
23:11And she got in there, and I had Gary and Sissy, and they pulled away from me, and I couldn't.
23:16The smoke was so thick that I couldn't find them.
23:21So we go in the bedroom, and Carol tells me to open the window, and it was a larger window, and I tried to open it, and it wouldn't.
23:30It was, it just wouldn't.
23:32And the smoke was, I mean, everybody was just.
23:34And she told me to get up on the top bunk, because there was this high window.
23:44And she said, I'm going to hand you the kids.
23:46Open it, and I'm going to hand you the kids.
23:48Were the kids all there in the room at that point?
23:50I couldn't find Gary and Sissy, because the smoke was too thick.
23:54So, I got up on the top bunk, and the next thing I know is I'm laying on the ground, and I don't know how I got out.
24:05Your memory fails.
24:06I don't know how I got out.
24:09Right at that point, you remember everything up to that point.
24:12Yes, and I don't, and I want to know how I got out, because it was a small window.
24:17I tried to get them out.
24:20You got yourself out the window.
24:23I fell out.
24:24I'm assuming, this is what I'm assuming.
24:26I don't know for a fact.
24:27I don't know.
24:28I can't remember.
24:28How do you explain the fact that you remember everything up to then, and then everything after that?
24:34I can't explain it.
24:36I really can't.
24:37The last thing I remember is I was on the top bunk.
24:41Right.
24:42Opening this window.
24:43And then I'm laying on the ground, and I'm hearing these sirens and things like that, and I'm thinking it's a bad dream.
24:55Was there a moment at which you realized, oh my God, what have I done?
25:01Yes, I did.
25:03I was like, oh my God, they're still in there.
25:07Yes, I did.
25:09I was like, my God, what happened?
25:11What happened?
25:12I kept trying to get back in the house.
25:15I kept trying to go up there and get in the house, and they wouldn't let me, and they left me standing there.
25:21The neighbors had to restrain you.
25:23Yes.
25:24It was a lost cause at that point.
25:26Were you at that point wracked with the feeling, I'm responsible for this?
25:31No, I didn't, not until I was in the hospital and I had a chance to just put things together.
25:38At that point in time, no.
25:42Prosecutors later argued that White set the fire when she felt jilted by Charles Roberson.
25:48Then immediately abandoned the house and the family to burn.
25:53White insists that's not true.
25:56There is no way that I, you know, that I set the fire and I ran around the house because I wanted to get rid of them.
26:04I wanted help.
26:06I wanted some, I wanted to try to remove the house so I could leave.
26:11I did not intentionally do it to hurt anybody.
26:17Let's take a minute.
26:18I wish I got it and it never happened.
26:30But if it happened, I wish it could have been in this day and time because it would have never happened because people would have known the right questions to ask.
26:39And I'm not blaming them, but, but I am because I'd done what I only thought was right.
26:49And how could I say setting a fire was right?
26:54Because it was to the point that I didn't know what else to do.
27:00Did it never cross your mind, Cindy, that if I light this match, I could kill everyone in the house?
27:05I didn't, I didn't contemplate on it that long.
27:10I didn't, I really and truly, David, I really and truly 100% believed that they were getting out.
27:19How could you believe that?
27:21Because I thought that I could get them out.
27:24Excuse me, but I'm up here.
27:26It's up.
27:27I know it is.
27:28And it's hard to believe that.
27:30I have no reason to lie right now.
27:33I have nothing.
27:34I'm, I'm doing life.
27:37After the blaze was extinguished, White pretended to be the miraculous sole survivor of a Christmas tree fire.
27:45Then, arson investigators found evidence of an accelerant.
27:49And she was charged and convicted of murder in 1977.
27:53All the while maintaining her innocence.
27:57In fact, for the first decade or so of your sentence, you still denied the crime.
28:03I did, because I was ashamed.
28:06I, A, I mean, I don't want to admit that I've killed, you know, six people by accident.
28:11That is horrible.
28:13That is a long time to, to, to lie about it.
28:17Do you think your, your past excuses the murders?
28:22No.
28:23Do you think your past trauma explains the murders?
28:29In a sense.
28:30In a sense.
28:32It shows how damaged from the age of eight.
28:39To the age of 18.
28:41If none of this have happened, and none of this, I was never damaged.
28:50I don't know what my life would have been.
28:52Isn't it fair that the court set aside all of the things that you point to as kind of mitigating factors?
29:00Your trauma, your youth, your, your, your, your hardship for the purpose of rendering a judgment.
29:09Yeah.
29:10Guilty or not guilty.
29:11Yeah.
29:12You agree with that?
29:12Yeah.
29:13I said that the prosecutor done a good job, because he done his job.
29:18You are legally an adult.
29:19We're all responsible for what we do.
29:21Yes.
29:22Three psychiatrists evaluated you during the trial, and told the court that you're a pathological liar.
29:30With your record of lying and distortion, how can we believe you?
29:41She's had a lot of years to think about this, and to think what would sell.
29:46Johnson County, Indiana, prosecutor Lance Hamner represents the people of his jurisdiction, including six members of a family burned to death when Cindy White intentionally set a house fire 50 years ago.
30:00He says White's belated claims that she was being abused in the home are calculated to garner sympathy.
30:08I think there's been a lot of concern about sexual abuse of young people, but we don't see any evidence of that having happened here.
30:15What we see is that there was an affair going on, and it looks to me like she was angry when that affair ended.
30:23She could have walked away.
30:28She didn't walk away.
30:30Setting fire to a house with a bunch of sleeping people in it is not going to get you out any better than if you just simply walked away and called the police.
30:39It took her 10 years to come up with this story, and it seems awfully convenient that you've killed off the only two people who could rebut that.
30:53It's so hard.
31:01And I'm like, if someone, one person would say, Cindy, I believe you.
31:12I feel sympathy for you, but I still don't know what to think, because there's been, along the way, a lot of lying, Cindy.
31:22Consistently, it harkens back to that diagnosis, the propensity to distort and lie and exaggerate.
31:31Two years before the fire, the police said they had a lot of problems with you, including 21 emergency calls involving you in 1973 alone.
31:41One officer said about you, she had to be the center of attention.
31:45She's a con artist and one of the best I've seen.
31:48I had to be the center of attention to stay away from my home.
31:52I was faking falling off my bike so I could stay in the hospital, so I didn't have to go home.
31:58Those are the incidents?
31:59Yes.
32:00I see.
32:01Three psychiatrists evaluated you during the trial and told the court that you're a pathological liar.
32:08The most sympathetic one, Dr. Schuster, noted that this was a coping mechanism and a character trait.
32:17Part of her personality is that she's a liar, he said.
32:21Many of her distortions of the truth are defensive in nature and are based in fantasy.
32:27You lied on the polygraph you took.
32:29Mm-hmm.
32:29You lied at the sentencing, pleading your innocence in a dramatic outburst.
32:35The state said you and Roberson were lovers and that when you felt jilted, you lashed out by setting the fire.
32:44You say it was a cry for help and a way to escape a desperate situation, an abusive situation.
32:51Either way, an entire family was slaughtered.
32:55Damn.
32:56With your record of lying and distortion, from a time perhaps when you were a different person, how can we believe you?
33:08I can't give you a pill to do it.
33:11There's not enough time to try to convince you.
33:15What I can say is this.
33:18I have no reason to lie.
33:21Back then, yeah, I did.
33:23I did. I lied about falling off my bike, but am I lying today?
33:28No.
33:30You lied about setting the fire for a long time.
33:32Yes, I did. Yes, I did.
33:35And then you finally confessed your crime.
33:40Yeah.
33:40That's a long time to lie about something so consequential.
33:47Yeah.
33:47How do you account for that?
33:53Maybe if I lied
33:55and let him believe that it was the Christmas tree, then maybe I could get out.
34:03To get out?
34:04You lied to get out?
34:06Yeah.
34:07I wanted my freedom.
34:09Because I couldn't tell the truth right then.
34:12The whole truth.
34:15Ten years into her prison sentence,
34:17White admitted that she did in fact intentionally set the fire.
34:21You do confess.
34:23Why?
34:25It was to the point that I just couldn't live with it.
34:28I got so tired of the lies because I couldn't keep them straight.
34:34I couldn't keep them straight.
34:36And from that day forward, I have never told another lie.
34:42When I admitted to setting the fire,
34:49and I knew that this is where I'm going to stay.
34:54This is, you know, until I take my last breath.
34:57I set the house the fire, not meaning to kill anybody.
35:01God knows I didn't mean to kill him.
35:02I'm sorry.
35:09Sorry.
35:11If I could bring back those lives, I would.
35:21You've publicly expressed remorse.
35:24You've publicly apologized.
35:27You've publicly begged forgiveness from your fallen victims.
35:31Yes.
35:32There is one thing you've never done.
35:36You've never accepted your punishment.
35:41How many appeals and clemency applications have made?
35:46A lot. A lot.
35:48I count at least ten between 1978 and 2016.
35:59What does that say about your contrition or remorse?
36:03When I became prosecutor in the 1990s,
36:18there was a petition for clemency that was filed by Sarah White,
36:22and we opposed it.
36:24My job as prosecutor is to speak on behalf of the people of the state of Indiana,
36:29our residents, and for the dead victims who can't speak for themselves.
36:33Lance Hamner has been a prosecutor and judge in Indiana for 35 years.
36:39And throughout that time, Sarah Cindy White has been trying to get out of prison.
36:44She set a fire knowing that they were asleep.
36:48Think about that for a minute.
36:50She set a fire in a house knowing that they were asleep.
36:55Four little children in that house.
36:57You've made an admirable life for yourself in prison.
37:10Four semesters of college at Martin.
37:13GED.
37:15You're a licensed cosmetologist.
37:18Certified in health occupation.
37:20Certified in accounting.
37:22Certified in business math.
37:25You've learned sign language.
37:27Yes.
37:29You tutor deaf people.
37:33Yes.
37:34You are certified in blood pressure technology.
37:38Yes.
37:38You've also, on a regular basis, engaged in various treatments and therapies.
37:45Survivor 1, 2, and 3.
37:47Incest survivors group.
37:49Grief group.
37:50Anger group.
37:52One-on-one therapy.
37:53Are these, in your mind, part of your atonement, acts of contrition, remorse, expressions of remorse?
38:04Yeah.
38:05How so?
38:06In order for me to move on, because I'll never forgive myself, I do all these things that you listed to try to make a difference in someone else's life, to show them, to tutor them, to help someone.
38:30Service to others?
38:32Yeah.
38:32I wish I'd die instead of them.
38:38I do.
38:39And it's not the fact because I'm here.
38:42It's not.
38:43It's because, especially the kids.
38:47You know what I'm saying?
38:48It's the babies.
38:49If I could give my life for this, I would.
38:53Seven-year-old Michael.
38:58Six-year-old Dale.
39:01Five-year-old Gary.
39:02And Rita, who was just four, all choked to death by that smoke and terror.
39:12If I could give my life for this, I would.
39:15It doesn't matter.
39:16I'd probably done better if I could.
39:18I know it doesn't matter because they can't come back.
39:21And it doesn't make, it doesn't lighten the thing, what I did.
39:24Cindy, if anyone else had lit that fire and hurt them, what sentence would you give them?
39:34Life.
39:35Life.
39:36Forfeit their freedom forever.
39:38Yeah.
39:39Not on death row because that's too easy.
39:43That's too easy.
39:44Too easy.
39:45They need to live with it every single day, just like I do.
39:49The prison I'm in is not here on Girl School Road.
39:53The prison I'm in is, and I want that.
39:57I want this help because this is what I deserve.
40:01You've publicly expressed remorse.
40:03You've publicly apologized.
40:06You've publicly begged forgiveness from your fallen victims.
40:11Yes.
40:11There is one thing you've never done.
40:15You've never accepted your punishment.
40:18How many appeals and clemency applications have you made?
40:25Oh, a lot.
40:26A lot.
40:27I count at least 10 between 1978 and 2016.
40:31As early as 1978 you've been trying to get out.
40:35After doing, what, a couple of years.
40:38So what does that tell us about your remorse?
40:41I could still have remorse and wonder what freedom is about.
40:50Remorse is accepting and grieving and dreading the thought of what you did.
40:59There are people who think that you should be released.
41:03Not, you know, more than a few.
41:05Who think that you've served your time.
41:09I'm doing this interview to try to help people.
41:12I'm doing this interview to stop someone before they act like I did.
41:16There are also people who believe that you do something like this, you should forfeit your freedom forever.
41:26You told me the same thing a few minutes ago.
41:28Would you believe you if you were a third party looking on to the story?
41:38Right, today?
41:40Yeah.
41:40Yes.
41:41You would?
41:41Yes.
41:43Would you forgive you?
41:45No.
41:46Would you free you?
41:49That's a good question.
41:52A part of me wants to say yes and a part of me wants to say no.
41:56Because I don't deserve it.
42:00What's the part of you that wants to say yes?
42:02To have something I've never had.
42:04What is that something?
42:06How would you put it?
42:07Freedom.
42:08Freedom.
42:09There's still a part of me that would love to go home to at least die outside of these prison walls.
42:17Not to die alone.
42:26As I left the interview and drove away from the prison, I turned my back on a woman filled with lies, regrets, and pain.
42:39She told me she was still contemplating one last bid for clemency in what is now her 50th year of incarceration.
42:46Whether or not she's ever released, Cindy White will have to live and die with the burden of the six lives she took in that fateful decision a lifetime ago.
42:59That's not a person that she's ever burdened.
43:08So that's why we need to travail to go.
43:11To be continued…
43:11So that's why we're the crew.
43:13To be continued…
43:15How do we want to physical and military work?
43:18We're our best Poké.
43:20In Watson, it's okay.
43:22So that's why we're now to be done.
43:24We're all about physical and mental problems and mental and mental health.
43:26We're a good person, and we're the ones that we do not have enough help from us.