John Ramsey nixed the idea, and I wondered why he didn’t want to take advantage of his pilot’s offer to shortcut the uncertainty of the availability of flights that would divert the kids to Colorado. I gave thought to the idea that perhaps he had declined this offer because he wanted to be assured of his private plane being accessible for a quick departure from the state. What came later seemed to confirm that piece of speculation.
It seemed incomprehensible to me that John Ramsey, within less than an hour of the discovery of the body his daughter, would be making arrangements to take his family and leave the state by private plane. When overheard making these arrangements with his pilot, Ramsey told Detective Bill Palmer that he had an important business meeting to attend in Georgia.
Like many of the Boulder investigators, I pondered the question:
How could a business meeting in Georgia outweigh the need to work with authorities in their attempt to identify the person who had just murdered his daughter?
Red flag: Why was John Ramsey so anxious to leave the state?
I subscribe to the notion that, for the most part, as human beings we tend to act instinctively in certain situations. It is part of the survival instinct of the human “fight or flight” response that has been programmed into our genes over the millennia.
There was one other major discrepancy discovered by investigators as they continued to evaluate John Ramsey’s behavior, and statements. Stewart Long had arrived at the Ramsey home in a taxi with his fiancé, Melinda, and John Andrew, just as police were clearing the house for a search warrant following the discovery of JonBenét’s body. All three of the older kids joined the family in a vehicle that was headed to the home of John and Barbara Fernie.
As they departed the area, John Ramsey told Long that he had found JonBenét’s body at 11:00 a.m. that morning. Long recounted this conversation to Detective Thomas when interviewed as a part of the follow-up investigation.
Thomas, knowing that Ramsey had gone to the basement at the request of Detective Arndt at 1:00 p.m. that day, pressed Long on his recollection of the time of discovery as stated by John Ramsey. Long was adamant that Ramsey had stated that he had found JonBenét at eleven o’clock that morning.
Considering the time-line of events, this was smack dab in the middle of the time frame during which John Ramsey had disappeared from Detective Arndt’s view, and a full two hours before she had directed him to search the house.
The red flag here was John Ramsey’s stated timing of the discovery of the body of his daughter. If this was not just a miscommunication and he had truly found her body two hours before he had been directed to check the home, why didn’t he immediately reveal this critical discovery to the police detective on the scene?
What could have accounted for his decision to delay telling authorities about his finding the body of JonBenét?
Barbara Fernie had raised another flag when she decided to contact investigators in early January, 1998. She and her son had seen photographs of golf clubs in a tabloid story about JonBenét while shopping in a grocery store and her son recognized the set of clubs as belonging to Burke. The sight of the golf clubs spurred her memory about an odd comment that John Ramsey had made to someone while the family was staying at the Fernie residence, after the discovery of JonBenét’s body.
It was in this time frame that authorities had granted permission to Pam Paugh, Patsy’s visiting sister from Georgia, to enter the Ramsey home and retrieve a number of JonBenét’s personal belongings. This was during the time that investigators were still processing the crime scene for evidence, and the Ramsey family was permitted access to gather some items that were intended for the funeral services being arranged in Georgia.
Mrs. Fernie recalled that John Ramsey had asked a strange question of the person stopping by her home one evening: He asked if they had remembered to “get his golf bag” from his house.
Mrs. Fernie recalled that the individual replied that they had not been able to retrieve the bag, as the police would not let them downstairs.
Given the emotional condition of everyone in her home after JonBenét’s murder, John Ramsey’s request for his golf clubs seemed out of the ordinary to her. His daughter had just been murdered and it was the dead of winter in Colorado. For what purpose would he be asking that his golf bags be retrieved from his home?
The red flag waving for me was this: I doubted Ramsey was planning to play a round of 18 holes at any time in the near future, even in Atlanta, and I wondered if he were interested in the retrieval of the golf bag because it contained something other than sporting equipment.60
Mrs. Fernie shared one additional tidbit of information with investigators that had been bothering her. She indicated that late in the summer, or early fall of 1996, she had observed damages to the latch area of an exterior screen door located on the rear, south side of the Ramsey home. Mrs. Fernie was concerned that perhaps a burglary attempt had been made to the home, and shared this information with Patsy.
They inspected the door, and determined that the interior door exhibited no damages whatsoever. Patsy expressed no concern about the damaged screen door and suggested that perhaps John was responsible for the marks. He reportedly was always forgetting his keys and had broken into the house on other occasions.
Mrs. Fernie indicated that she had seen a photograph of this same screen door displayed in an advertisement running in one of the Denver newspapers shortly after the murder. The advertisement, placed by Ramsey attorneys and taking up at least half of the page of the newspaper, purported that this may have been a possible point of entry used by the kidnapper of JonBenét.
This did not sit well with Mrs. Fernie, because Patsy was fully aware that these damages had been inflicted upon the screen door weeks or months prior to the murder of JonBenét. The use of this particular photograph seemed to be an attempt to mislead the public about the evidence associated with the crime and the Fernies indicated that they severed their contact with the family following their observation of that advertisement.
There were other behavioral aspects of Patsy Ramsey’s actions that didn’t ring true to me and that seemed out of sync for the circumstances.
For example, Patsy indicated during interviews that she initially was confused about whether the ransom note was referring to JonBenét or John’s oldest daughter, Beth. This didn’t quite make sense because Beth had been killed in a traffic accident a couple years prior to the kidnapping.
In any event, Patsy stated that she never finished reading more than the first few lines of the ransom note and immediately went to check on JonBenét. Opening the door of the bedroom, Patsy stated that she did not see JonBenét in her bed, and had immediately screamed John’s name.
It did not make sense to me that a mother would not have screamed her daughter’s name and searched the room for her.
In spite of the presence of a ransom note, maternal instinct and the stress of the moment should have sent her beyond the threshold of the door, and into the entire bedroom and bathroom. Not finding her there, I would have expected a search to have been made of Burke’s room, and that he would have been awakened and asked if he knew his sister’s whereabouts.
The Ramseys stated publicly on more than one occasion that Burke was asleep, and they never asked him if he had seen JonBenét, or whether he had heard anything unusual that night.
More importantly, what parent would not be screaming their child’s name as they searched the house for her?
It was only Fleet White who stated that he had called for JonBenét as he checked the house after being summoned to the home that morning. This specific behavior on the part of the parents lacked a certain legitimacy for me, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but Patsy’s accounting of these events on their first nationally televised interview seemed scripted.
I was also perplexed by Patsy’s behavior exhibited upon the discovery of JonBenét’s body. As noted in police reports, Fleet White charged up from the basem
ent shouting for someone to call an ambulance after he and John Ramsey had found JonBenét’s body in the Wine Cellar.
In this setting, I think it is reasonable to presume that most of us would be thinking that someone was injured, and in need of immediate medical attention. Why else would White be shouting for an ambulance? Apparently, Barb Fernie and Priscilla White thought the same thing, for they immediately rushed out of the solarium to see what was going on.
Not Patsy Ramsey, however. According to Detective Arndt’s reporting of events, the mother of the missing and kidnapped child remained in the solarium during all of this commotion, and it was not until she directed John to retrieve his wife did she enter the living room to encounter the lifeless body of her daughter.
In Patsy’s interview conducted on April 30, 1997, she stated that she had heard White’s screams for an ambulance. She kept asking, “What is it? What is it?”, but never took the initiative to leave the room to find out. She claimed to have been restrained in the solarium by family friend Barb Fernie.
A big red flag flew up the pole on this particular behavioral clue. I would have expected a mother to have rushed into the fray to determine if her child had been found, and be asking why an ambulance was being called to her home. I didn’t believe anyone would have been able to hold back a mother under these circumstances.
To me, Patsy Ramsey’s actions in this specific instance were counter-intuitive.
So, under those circumstances, I had to ask myself:
Why did Patsy remain behind in the solarium when Fleet White was shouting for an ambulance?
Was it because she already knew that her daughter was dead?
If that was the case, how did she come to know that information?
Further, if she already knew of her daughter’s death, did she play a role in that crime?
In our constitutional system of jurisprudence, people are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. It is the responsibility of the defense attorney to represent their client’s best interests, and this necessarily requires them to make the prosecution prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
One of the tactics commonly used by the defense bar is to counsel their client to deny at the outset, any and all accusations of criminal conduct. In their attempt to divert attention away from the actual conduct and behavior of their client, defense attorneys are forever searching for plausible deniability and circumstances that will muddy the waters.
When the facts are in dispute, the first line of defense is frequently to deny, deny, deny.
When the facts are incontrovertible, then it is time to move to the next tactic, and raise questions about the process by which those facts were established. It is their intention to undermine the foundation of the presentation of the physical evidence that would be used at trial. Succeed at throwing out the defendant’s bloody fingerprint found at the scene of the crime, and it is likely that no conviction will follow.
If those first two tactics are not successful, the next strategic move is to attack the honor and credibility of the men and women who are tasked with seeking the truth of the matter. Evidence linking the defendant to the crime was “planted,” and the cops are lying about investigative procedures.
Or, as witnessed in JonBenét’s case, Boulder Police lacked the expertise to investigate a murder case on their own.
We witnessed the successful implementation of these tactics in the O.J. Simpson trial, and I thought it curious that Patsy Ramsey would specifically refer to the O.J. “situation” during her CNN interview.61
To place this in perspective, Brian Cabell had offered the following observation during the interview:
Cabell: “Inevitably, speculation on talk shows will focus on you. It’s got to be sickening…”
John Ramsey: “It’s nauseating beyond belief.”
Patsy Ramsey: “You know, America has just been hurt so deeply with the…this…the tragic things that have happened. The young woman who drove her children into the water, and we don’t know what happened with the O.J. Simpson…and I mean, America is suffering because we have lost faith in the American Family.
We are a Christian, God-fearing family. We love our children. We would do anything for our children.”
Patsy Ramsey’s reference to high-profile murder cases was intriguing, and I wondered why she had chosen these two cases in particular. Why not summon remembrances of the horrific crimes committed by the likes of the Son of Sam, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Theodore Bundy?
The public sentiment following O.J.’s acquittal seemed to be one of astonishment. The “dream team” of defense attorneys had completely twisted the physical evidence collected in the case, and focused their attention on the destruction of the credibility of the investigators of the crime. Their arguments ultimately set O.J. free, but a civil jury would not be so easily misled.
In the case of Susan Smith, Patsy was calling into her court the cold-blooded details of a South Carolina mother who had intentionally driven her two young boys into a lake, and left them to drown. Susan then concocted the story of a carjacking, and proceeded to blame a mysterious black man for the crime. She shed plenty of tears during her broadcast-television interviews, and pleaded with the public to help track down the kidnapper who had taken her children from her.
The deception of Susan Smith would not survive the skepticism of investigators, however, and she ultimately confessed her sins to Union County Sheriff Howard Wells. The black “carjacker” who had kidnapped her children was non-existent, and it was Susan who had driven her two young boys into the lake, and left to drown.
In my viewing, Susan Smith’s tearful pleas for help were strangely reminiscent of Patsy Ramsey’s accounting of events on CNN, and I couldn’t help but feel that there was a similarity between the two events.
Patsy Ramsey’s proclamation of innocence due to her God-fearing, Christian status seemed too convenient. It was the type of alibi often used by those attempting to divert attention from their guilt, and was classic material drawn from the text of police interrogation manuals: The argument being that a loving, Christian family would be incapable of committing horrendous crimes of violence. For those crime historians among you, I suspect that this line of reasoning holds little weight, for our prisons are full of Christians convicted for their participation in similar crimes of violence.
More to the point, Patsy’s spontaneous reference to these two murder cases gave me pause. In her prescription-induced, medicated state, was she subconsciously aligning herself with people who had brutally murdered members of their own family?
I looked to the possibility that this dialogue consisted of a “spontaneous utterance,” the unguarded words we speak that sometimes reveal the workings of our internal thoughts.
Detective Steve Thomas had made note of an additional utterance made by Patsy during the collection of non-testimonial evidence on Saturday, December 28, 1996. To put the statement in perspective, I cite the entry from his book, JonBenét – Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation. 62
Patsy was unsteady as I had her lift the sleeves of her loose denim blouse so I could check her for bruises or scratches on the fronts and backs of her hands and arms. Then I checked her face and neck and found nothing unusual. We were standing in a row at the counter, with Patsy in the middle, when she shifted slightly and whispered to [Detective] Gosage, “Will this help find who killed my baby?”
He carefully replied, equally softly, “I hope so.”
Patsy looked at her inked fingers and spoke again. “I didn’t kill my baby.” The [Ramsey] lawyer apparently did not hear her, but my head snapped around as if on a swivel. Colorado Revised Statute Procedure 41.1 spelled out that we couldn’t ask investigative questions during this evidence collection, but we could certainly listen if anything was said voluntarily, and the mother of the murder victim had blurted out something totally unexpected. I directed my comment to Gosage. “What did she just say?”
Patsy Ramsey repeated, to me this time, �
�I didn’t kill my baby.”
The lawyer lurched away from the wall, placed his hands on her shoulders, brought his face to within inches of her ear, and whispered emphatically. She didn’t say another word during the entire session, but what she had already said hung like thunder. I didn’t kill my baby.
No one suggested that she had.
There were a couple red flags raised in this instance, the first being that John Ramsey and his attorneys had continued to characterize this December 28meeting with Boulder Police as an “interview” and evidence of their continuing “cooperation” in the investigation.
For the lay public, it is important to understand that this collection of non-testimonial physical evidence could be viewed as cooperation, but in no way should it be construed as an interview with authorities.
The attorneys and private investigators accompanying the Ramseys on that day made certain no interview or testimonial evidence would be collected by police investigators, and I viewed the Ramsey’s representations of cooperation as a continuing part of their media spin.
Why would they strive to buttress the perception that the parents had been cooperating with authorities, when clearly, they halted any productive communication with Boulder investigators as soon as they left their home on the afternoon of December 26, 1996?
Secondarily, Patsy Ramsey was stating to investigators that she did not kill her baby. At that point in time, Boulder investigators were still gathering facts, and had no clue as to who had actually been involved in the murder of JonBenét.
A ransom note had been left by her kidnappers, and evidence of her restraint and abduction were readily apparent. Why would Patsy feel it necessary to proclaim her innocence in the death of her daughter?
Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? Page 28