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By Root 1687 0

holidays. On December 22, Heather Cox, Priscilla’s niece, and her husband, Bill, and the Whites had driven five hours to Aspen and spent the night. The next day they returned to Boulder, and the Whites attended the Ramseys’ Christmas party with Priscilla’s parents. JonBenét had hung up the guests’ coats, White said. There were gingerbread houses for each family to decorate with gumdrops. On Christmas Day, the Whites were up early opening presents with their kids and Priscilla’s parents. That afternoon at about 4:30, the Ramseys, with JonBenét and Burke, arrived at the Whites’ house. They would join the Whites, the Coxes, and Allison Shoeny, Priscilla’s sister, and her boyfriend, Cliff Gaston, for Christmas dinner. Afterward, the adults, along with the kids, played on the floor. Then some neighbors came over for Christmas caroling. Fleet White and the kids joined the group in singing. At around 9:30 P.M., White said, the Ramseys left, saying that they were going to drop off gifts for other friends, the Stines and the Walkers. By 11:00 White was in bed, he said. Priscilla and her sister talked in the kitchen until 2:00 in the morning. By then Cliff Gaston was asleep on the couch in the family room, and the Coxes were also asleep, in the Whites’ daughter’s room.

At 6:00 A.M. the telephone awakened Cliff Gaston. It was Patsy Ramsey. Priscilla took the call, and within minutes the Whites were dressed and on their way to the Ramseys’ house. When they arrived, the police and John Fernie were already there. Patsy was on the floor, hysterical, and her husband was trying to comfort her. It was still dark outside.

White told the detectives that he had been there only a few minutes when he started to search the house. Alone, he went down to the basement, found some of the lights on, and started calling out JonBenét’s name. It was so cluttered down there—with boxes stacked everywhere and shelves overflowing with odds and ends—that he could hardly see any open spaces where she might be. He started in Burke’s train and hobby room, where he saw a suitcase sitting under a broken window. On the floor under the window, he found small pieces of glass. He placed some of them on the windowsill. Then he moved the suitcase a few feet to get a closer look at the window. White said he was sure the window was closed but unlatched. After he left the train room, he turned right, into the boiler room. At the back of the room, he said, he saw a door to what the Ramseys called the wine cellar. He turned the closed wooden latch and opened the door. The room was pitch-black, he said. He didn’t enter, and he saw nothing. When he couldn’t find a light switch, he closed the door and went back upstairs. He did not remember whether or not he relatched the door. Later, when White saw John Fernie, he told him that a window downstairs had been punched open. The police wondered why White had not seen JonBenét’s body and later Ramsey had, since they both stood at the same spot after opening the door to the wine cellar.

At 6:45 A.M., White said, his wife called home and told her niece that JonBenét had been kidnapped. Her niece, Heather, woke the other adults in the house and told them why Fleet and Priscilla were with the Ramseys.

White told the police that the Ramseys decided to wake their son, Burke, at around 7:00 and move him to his house. Fleet White and John Fernie, with Burke in hand, first picked up the Fernies’ children from their home and then took all the kids to the Whites’, where his guests looked after them. Forty-five minutes later, the two men returned to the Ramseys’.

White remembered that just after 7:00, the Ramseys’ pastor, Rev. Rol Hoverstock, arrived.

Meanwhile, Ramsey had called Rod Westmoreland, his friend and Merrill Lynch broker, at home in Atlanta and told him what had happened and that he needed cash. Westmoreland started to make arrangements to transfer money from one of Ramsey’s cash management accounts—where he had over a million dollars—to a Boulder bank. Fleet White told the police that when the Lafayette branch of John Fernie