Christina Lee White

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Asotin County Sheriffs Department (WA)

Missing From:

Asotin, WA

Summary:

Christina Lee White was 12 years old when she vanished on April 28, 1979, during the Asotin County Fair in Asotin, Washington. At 2:30 p.m., she called her mother from a friend's house to say she was feeling sick from the heat. All of the cases remain unsolved.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Disappearance:

On the morning of April 28, 1979, Christina attended the fair before riding her brand-new white 10-speed Schwinn bicycle—equipped with a front basket and distinctive three-inch wing nuts—to a friend's house on the 500 block of 2nd Street, where she planned to assist with a horse. At 2:30 p.m., she called her mother from a friend's house to say she was feeling sick from the heat. Her mother wasn't able to get her because she didn't have access to a car, and told Christina to put a wet towel on her neck and lie down and rest, and to come home when she felt better. Investigators have a person of interest in all those cases, a man who has never been publicly identified. He lived at the home where Christina was just before she disappeared and was one of the last people known to have seen her, he was active at the Lewiston Civic Theater, and he admitted he worked at the theater that night. He has never been publicly identified, but he's been interviewed many times by police. Christina's schoolwork was discovered in pieces at a field outside of Asotin a few weeks after she vanished.

Additional Details:

Authorities believe Christina's disappearance may be connected to the 1982 disappearance of Steven Pearsall and the murders of stepsisters Kristina Nelson, 21, and Jacqueline A. "Brandy" Miller, 18, as well as the 1981 murder of Kristin David, a University of Idaho student whose dismembered body was found in the Snake River eight days after she vanished on a bike ride. Pearsall, Nelson and Miller all disappeared from Lewiston, Idaho on the same night; the women were last seen walking to a grocery store and Pearsall vanished from the Lewiston Civic Theater, where he worked. In 1995, Lewiston police announced that Nelson, Miller, and Pearsall may have been murdered together inside the Lewiston Civic Theater by another theater employee named Lance Voss. Voss admitted to investigators that he had seen Christina before she disappeared. The police report said that Voss refused a polygraph test. Investigators did conduct a "voice stress analysis," which reflected deceptive answers. The person of interest refused to take a lie-detector test at the time on his attorney's advice and moved to North Carolina in the late 1990s. In 35 years, the missing 12-year-old has never been forgotten, but Nichols' employment at the sheriff's office brought new life to the investigation. She devotes any time she can spare from new crimes that flood the small department to looking at old, unsolved cases, particularly that of the missing little girl. It's closest to her, she said, perhaps because of White's age and the total absence of any indication of where she and her bicycle ended up 35 years ago. "My hope in the Christina White case is that a resolution in one of those cases could bring a resolution in the Christina White case," Nichols told KLEW-TV in April 2022.

Case Last Updated:

Apr 30, 2026