Though not all inclusive, the following were the additional documents that I intended review in order to gain a baseline acquaintance with the investigation:
The Boulder Police Department Case Synopsis (February 2001)
Bill Nagel’s draft summary of the facts known in the case, complete with annotations from the various investigative reports.
Analysis and review of the autopsy report
Analysis and review of the reports and interviews of the expert witnesses who consulted with the Boulder County Coroner’s Office on the autopsy protocol and its related documents.
Analysis and review of the previous medical treatment of JonBenét.
Analysis and review of the physical and trace evidence that was collected over the course of the investigation and the forensic analysis of items submitted to government laboratories.
Analysis and review of crime scene photographs and videotapes.
Analysis and review of the statements supplied by family and key witnesses to the event.
Specific topic: Review of polygraph results
Specific topic: Review forensic examination of duct tape; neck and wrist bindings, analysis of handwriting on ransom note, latent fingerprints
Review of the behavioral analysis opinion offered by the FBI Child Abduction Serial Killer Unit (CASKU)
Review of the behavioral analysis opinion offered by retired FBI agent John Douglas, a consultant hired by the Ramsey family.
Given the size of the investigative file, the task of becoming familiar with the details of the case seemed daunting. Nevertheless, I set about the process of pulling binders from the library and began to read. I somehow found time to review materials during the workday when caught up on my caseload. I frequently would sit at my desk over my lunch break and pour over reports and interviews. It was not unusual to remain after-hours to finish up an interview or report, and I sometimes took binders home on the weekends.
I scribbled questions and notes to myself, and attached sticky notes to various binders indicating the dates of my review. It was not long before I was leaving different colored sticky arrows in various binders that corresponded to different questions I had about the case: i.e. Suspects marked for further inquiry, pieces of physical and trace evidence that I had questions about, witness statements that contained questionable information, or observations that seemed to be “key” to the inquiry. It was a quick way of cataloging and marking information for further follow up.
The more I read, the more questions I had about the details of the case. I became a voracious reader, and continued to try to focus my attention on what I considered to be the “core” documents that contained the key elements of the offense.
There was a box in one of the cabinets that contained a handful of VHS video tapes. I scanned a number of these and found them to contain some video clips of JonBenét’s beauty pageants, news media coverage of the murder investigation, and what appeared to be a surveillance video of the Ramsey neighborhood dated from the day of the kidnapping. Boulder investigators were recording vehicles parked in the area.
One particular news media video caught my attention, and it featured Lou Smit speaking to NBC news anchor Katie Couric in a multi-part series for The Today Show. He was pointing to the remote and isolated location of the window well in the back yard of the residence, declaring it to be a perfect place for an intruder to enter the home undiscovered.
Photo 18 - Ramsey Home: Rear South West entrance. Den is pictured to the left, JonBenét’s bedroom and balcony is located above the Den; Train Room window grate is located behind the grill on right. Source: Boulder PD Case Files / Internet
Smit demonstrated the actions of the intruder by pulling up the metal window grate, and sliding into the window well, continued through the frame of the middle window on the backs of his legs and buttocks. Smit was not a large man, and I noted that his legs and hips totally filled the space of the small window frame as he scooted into the basement room.
The image of Smit’s entry through the basement’s Train Room window well stuck with me, and I would review the video clip on a number of occasions over the course of my investigation.
Over the coming weeks, I would learn that some of the evidence that Smit had pointed to as belonging to an intruder had been explained. For example, the latent fingerprint found on the outside of the Wine Cellar door, still unidentified when Smit first joined the case, had subsequently been identified by CBI technicians as a palm print belonging to Patsy Ramsey.
Photo 19 - Exterior view of the window grate above the Train Room window well. Source: Boulder PD Case Files / Internet
One other latent print from the same door had also been identified as belonging to her, and another belonged to John Andrew.
A latent print lifted from the frame of the Train Room window was identified as belonging to John Ramsey. There were no other unknown latent fingerprints collected from that window.
One particular sample of hair collected from the blanket that had been wrapped around JonBenét’s body had initially given the appearance of being a pubic hair. Investigators thought this might belong to a male perpetrator. The FBI was later able to identify this as an axillary hair (underarm, back, chest) and determined it did not come from the pubic region of the body.
Mitochondrial DNA tests were run on this hair, and the FBI technicians determined that the hair shaft did not belong to an unidentified stranger. Patsy Ramsey could not be excluded as the source of the hair, and it was noted that it could have come from either her or someone else in her maternal lineage.
During a meeting with Sgt. Tom Trujillo, I was shown a handful of Polaroid photographs of hiking boots collected over the course of the investigation. One such pair had been collected from Ron Walker, the Denver FBI supervisory agent who had responded to assist Boulder Police on the morning of the kidnapping.
Agent Walker had accompanied Sgt. Mason to the basement to inspect the Wine Cellar after the discovery of JonBenét’s body. He had been wearing a pair of Hi-Tec hiking boots at the time, and it was thought that the poon of his boot could have been responsible for the intruder’s footwear impression in the mold of that room.
Though I hadn’t read the reports yet, Trujillo told me that they believed Burke had also owned a pair of Hi-Tec brand hiking boots, and he could have been responsible for the intruder footprint evidence in the Wine Cellar.
BPD investigators had been contacted by a store clerk in Vail who believed Patsy Ramsey had purchased a set of Hi-Tec brand hiking boots before the murder. They had also been told by one of Burke’s playmates that he owned a pair of this brand of boot.
These were significant pieces of information, but didn’t lend themselves to helping investigators identify the exact set of boots responsible for the evidence located in the Wine Cellar. The boots purportedly owned by Burke were never recovered. Moreover, the imprint of the poon of the boot bore no distinguishing wear marks that would have allowed its comparison to any set of boots collected in the investigation.
As I moved forward in my examination of the evidence in the case, it seemed plausible that an explanation for the boot imprint in the Wine Cellar had been established, and that it didn’t necessarily belong to an unknown intruder.
Trujillo shared some other information regarding trace evidence collected from the home and JonBenét’s body. He advised that investigators had been asking for the clothing articles worn by John and Patsy on December 25th since the first days of the investigation. Christmas photos had depicted the items worn by the family, and investigators needed the items for elimination purposes.
It would take a year before the black and red Essentials brand jacket Patsy was photographed wearing was finally delivered to them. It was frustrating. The clothing articles seemed to trickle into their office a piece or two at a time. In one instance, a sweater – that Patsy was said to be wearing under the jacket – was delivered that looked like it had just come off the shelf of a retail clothing store.
The fold marks were crisp and clearly present, suggesting it had never been worn.
Trujillo advised me that lab technicians had identified eight different types of fibers on the sticky side of the duct tape used to cover JonBenét’s mouth. They included red acrylic, gray acrylic, and red polyester fibers that were subsequently determined by laboratory examination to be microscopically and chemically consistent to each other, as well as to fibers taken from Patsy Ramsey’s Essentials jacket.
Further, fibers from this jacket were also matched to trace fibers collected from the wrist ligature, neck ligature, and vacuumed evidence from the paint tray and Wine Cellar floor.
Some intruder theorists thought that the transfer of Patsy’s jacket fibers to the duct tape may have taken place after John had removed it from JonBenét’s face, and placed it on the white blanket in the cellar. They believed it possible that prior contact taking place between the blanket and jacket could account for the transfer of these fibers to the tape.
Lab technicians had conducted experiments with the same brand of duct tape, by attempting to lift trace fibers from the blanket recovered in the Wine Cellar. Direct contact was made in different quadrants of the blanket. There was some minimal transfer of jacket fibers made to the tape during this exercise, but Trujillo told me lab technicians didn’t think that this type of transfer accounted for the number of jacket fibers that had been found on the sticky side of the tape. It was thought that direct contact between the jacket and tape was more likely the reason for the quantity of fibers found on this piece of evidence.
BPD investigators looked to the other jacket fibers found in the Wine Cellar, in the paint tray, and on the cord used to bind JonBenét as physical evidence that linked Patsy with the probable location of her daughter’s death – the basement hallway and Wine Cellar.
The paint tray was reported to have been moved to the basement about a month prior to the kidnapping, and investigators doubted that Patsy would have been working on art projects while wearing the dress jacket. The collection of jacket fibers from all of these different locations raised strong suspicions about her involvement in the crime.
Investigators also learned that fibers collected from the interior lining of the Essentials jacket did not match control samples from the sweater that had been provided to police by Ramsey attorneys. Investigators thought that this suggested she had been wearing some other article of clothing beneath the jacket.
But there were still other trace fibers that had yet to be accounted for. Brown cotton fibers had been found on four items closely associated with the body of JonBenét and implements used in her murder. Lab technicians thought the fibers similar to a pair of cotton work gloves.
Had the gloves gone the way of the cord, duct tape, practice notes, and stun gun when the perpetrator left the home that night?
I returned to my office and contemplated the sheer size and volume of the Ramsey library of materials awaiting my review. I realized that coming to understand it all was going to be one of the biggest challenges I had ever faced.
It would be an understatement to say that I was genuinely surprised by what I eventually discovered.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Revisiting the Point of Entry
I reviewed the same 35 mm photographs in the files that Lou Smit had reportedly studied, and I think we only agreed on one point. It appeared to me that there were fresh smudge marks in the dirt on the exterior windowsill of the north, ground floor bathroom window. The interior photographs of this window revealed it to be locked and no debris or other signs that this may have been a point of entry were present.
Smit had pointed to a baseball bat being present on the ground just a few feet from this window, and I think he may have been suggesting that this might be linked to JonBenét’s head injury. Another bat was found in another part of the yard, and I thought these the remnants of childhood play and explainable. I thought it possible that some of Burke’s playmates were responsible for the smudges observed on the sill of this window due to the close proximity of the baseball bat.
Our opinions diverged considerably at that point.
In his Power Point presentation, Smit spent a significant amount of time pointing out smudge marks, leaves, vegetation, and other debris located in and around the Train Room window well. The smudges he pointed out in these photographs did not appear to be as fresh as those observed on the exterior of the north bathroom windowsill, and it was my opinion that these had been created that summer when John Ramsey had broken into the house. Yes, there were definite signs of disturbance in the area of this window but there appeared to be a film of dirt on this sill that was not present at the bathroom window.
Photo 20 - Smudging on exterior window sill of Train Room window well. Source: Boulder PD Case Files / Internet
More importantly, there was no way to properly date the placement of the mark on the wall below the window, and I believed it entirely possible that John Ramsey was responsible for that “intruder” evidence. Ramsey told investigators during his April 1997 interview that he had stripped down to his underwear before climbing through that window, but had worn his dress shoes. The darkened mark on the wall looked like it could have been created by the sole of this type of shoe.
For the sake of clarity, I think it is important to understand the positioning of the Train Room window well, and the relation of the window bank to the interior of the storage room of the basement.
The window grate sits level with the ground and is located just outside a south facing door that opens to the rear south-west yard of the home. This door provides access to the rear kitchen hallway and can be viewed from the windows of the den. The grate is difficult to see from the alley running behind the residence, and a large covered bar-b-q grill further obscured its view from the rear of the home.
The metal grate was not secured to the foundation and one could easily lift it and drop into the narrow window well, thus gaining access to a series of three windows that provided subterranean light and air to the basement Train Room. The window well was a confined space, measuring 77 inches in length, 16 inches in width, and 45 inches deep.
From the interior view, there were a series of three wooden windows that ran horizontally across the face of the west wall of the storage room, and they butted up against the ceiling of the room. The bank of windows extended across approximately six feet of the wall and was situated approximately four feet above the floor. Each window contained four separate panes of glass.
It was the middle window that John Ramsey had chosen when forcibly entering his home the previous summer, and the upper left window pane had been partially broken out when he had unlocked the window, and climbed into the basement. The BPD diagram showed that the exterior width of this window frame was 20 inches.
This particular window was hinged on the right side and swung to the interior of the room when opened. Each window was secured by an old-fashioned latch that turned 90 degrees to latch into hardware attached to the frame.
The interior dimensions of these windows were not generous, but an adult could maneuver in the tight spaces of the window well and manage to scoot through the frame and drop to the floor of the room. The dimensions of each window, as documented by Boulder CSI’s, measured approximately 25 inches high by 20 inches wide.
With regard to the intruder’s access through the window grate, Smit specifically pointed to vegetation that was growing between the cement foundation of the wall and the metal frame- his premise being that the grate had been lifted by the perpetrator to gain access to the basement and had pinned the plant material beneath it. Yet, in the same photograph, he ignored clusters of pine needles that were sitting atop the grate. These certainly would have been displaced if the grate had been recently lifted as he was theorizing, and I didn’t understand how he could dismiss evidence that was clearly in plain sight.
Photo 21 - Window grate depicting leaves and pine needles above, and vegetation growing beneath. Source: Boulder PD Cas
e Files / Internet
I found it puzzling that he didn’t present any photographs of the cobweb situated in the lower left hand corner of the window frame. My review of the 35 mm still photographs suggested this triangular-shaped web to be of significant size and very likely would have been destroyed by someone climbing through the window. I couldn’t fathom why he neglected to include this as a part of his presentation of the intruder theory.
Up to that point, I had only studied the 35 mm still photographs of the crime scene and had not been able to locate a device to play the mini-cassette video recording taken by CSIs during the execution of the search warrant. BPD came through again and was able to copy the crime scene video to a CD / DVD for my examination.
The crime scene video documented the return of the Boulder Police Department to the Ramsey home at approximately 2036 hours on the evening of December 26, 1996, after having secured a search warrant for the premises. I reviewed the video on a number of occasions, but in this particular instance the recording of the Train Room window drew my attention.
It is a commonly shared experience by all of us in this past century that a “still” photograph represents a very minute slice of time. We have all gazed in amusement at our childhood pictures and tried to remember what was going through our minds at the moment that the snapshot momentarily captured our image and our essence. We have similarly contemplated the same things when viewing historical photographs that reach beyond our life span.
And it goes without saying that the film that captures our physical movement has captivated our imagination since the early 1920’s, and Hollywood has turned this technology into a billion dollar industry. Strips of celluloid have permitted us to visit the places of our dreams.
Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? Page 20