John Ramsey and a friend later found JonBenét strangled in the basement. The killer had sexually assaulted the girl, covered her mouth with duct tape, looped a nylon cord around her neck, and fractured her skull.
I considered the possibility that this early release of information could have been the source of Burke’s speculation about the “hammer” strike to his sister’s head, but he had combined this comment with his mention of a “stabbing” as well. Why speculate about two methods of injury if he was truly conversant with his sister’s injuries.
I spoke to media people who were more closely associated with the daily reporting of events at the time and became aware that some minor references regarding the injury to JonBenét’s skull had also been discussed by retired FBI agent John Douglas on Dateline NBC on the evening of January 28, 1997.68
As noted previously, Douglas had been hired by the Ramsey family, and subsequently provided a profile of the person believed responsible for the abduction and murder of their daughter. The Dateline NBC interviewer, Chris Hansen, attributes the following statement to John Douglas during a voiceover on the program:
Hansen: “Douglas says JonBenét was brutalized, that she had duct tape on her mouth. She suffered severe head wounds. And she was strangled and sexually assaulted.”
The late date of this public broadcast didn’t explain Burke’s reference to the head injury, however, and I attempted to determine what exactly had been known by the family in advance of Burke’s DSS interview.
The Ramseys were not conversing with Boulder investigators at the time, so I reached the conclusion that, as the parents of a murdered child, members of the either the Coroner’s Office or D.A.’s office were probably sharing this information with Ramsey attorneys. I thought it likely that they were advised of this information fairly early in the investigation and long before it became general public knowledge.
The parents had maintained that they never spoke to their son about the circumstances surrounding JonBenét’s death, and had indicated over the following months that they had made every effort to limit his exposure to the media coverage taking place about the murder. At one point, Patsy had actually asked the manager of a supermarket to remove the tabloid newspapers from the racks of the business. She didn’t want her son to be confronted with that type of sensationalist coverage of the murder while waiting in the checkout line of the grocery store.
I again thought it feasible that he may have overheard his parents talking between themselves about the head injury. Or, similar to the conversation he had with Doug Stine about the strangulation, Burke may have been conversing about the details of the investigation with playmates and learned of the head injury prior to the DSS interview.
This was certainly within the realm of possibilities, but I was still asking myself the following questions:
Why would Burke tell Dr. Bernhard that he knew what had happened to JonBenét and not mention her strangulation? He clearly was aware that strangulation had been involved due to the conversations he was overheard having with Doug Stine not more than two days after the murder of his sister.
Additionally, if Burke had truly become aware of the circumstances surrounding the murder, why would he be mentioning a stabbing when there had been no such injury sustained by his sister?
As illustrated here, the first media report issued on the murder specifically stated that JonBenét had not been stabbed.
Those were troubling questions, and I wondered whether Burke deliberately misled Dr. Bernhard regarding the exact knowledge he had of the circumstances surrounding his sister’s death, and why he would feel the need to do so.
Taking all of those things into consideration, I wondered if perhaps this was merely another strange coincidence that would continue to muddy the waters of the investigation.
On the other hand, I couldn’t help but contemplate the possibility that Burke had just physically demonstrated first-hand knowledge of the lethal blow that had been struck to the head of JonBenét.
Boulder Police investigators were effectively being sidelined by the late spring of 1998, and the D.A.’s office had successfully negotiated another series of interviews with the Ramsey family. The fact that a grand jury investigation was looming seemed to play a role in getting the Ramseys back to the interview table, but this time the man who had given birth to the intruder theory would be directly involved.
Boulder Police were aware that interviews were going to take place, but the D.A.’s office would not reveal where they would occur. Investigators were provided the opportunity, however, to review the videotapes between the interviews that had been scheduled over the span of three days in June, 1998.
Transcripts of the interviews conducted with John and Patsy Ramsey had subsequently been prepared, but I couldn’t find any written record of the interviews conducted with Burke. I was eventually able to obtain DVD copies of these videotapes.
It was my impression that Burke continued to display a distant and detached attitude toward the events surrounding JonBenét’s death, and he frequently appeared bored by the investigator’s questions. When queries finally began to center around the details of his sister’s disappearance, Burke retreated into his chair in a fetal-like position, and he seemed to become agitated and nervous.
Again, I thought that this body language seemed to suggest anxiety and distress. I had initially thought that he might have been withdrawing unconsciously into a position of fetal protection, but later observed that he was calling out that the hour of the interview was nearing an end. This to me resembled the behavior of a reluctant psychiatric patient monitoring the clock for the conclusion of a counseling session.
I was not able to review the third and final segment of these interviews due to a faulty DVD disk, but I was advised by Tom Wickman that, at the conclusion of the last interview, Burke was asked if he had any questions regarding the investigation into the death of his sister. Provided this opportunity, did Burke inquire whether police were any closer to catching the person who had brutally murdered his sister?
No. He asked instead if the brand of wristwatch being worn by the detective was a Rolex.
The demeanor, and continued lack of “affect” exhibited by Burke during this series of interviews was unsettling. It appeared to me that he had no interest whatsoever in the progress of the investigation regarding the death of his sister.
Another item of interest that came to my attention were issues that related to Burke’s late age of bed-wetting. A short-term housekeeper had reported to police investigators that Burke was having problems with urinating in bed in 1993, and the parents were having problems with him at the time. Burke seemed reluctant to acknowledge the extent of the issue to Dr. Bernhard during the DSS interview in early January 1997.
Let me again make it perfectly clear. I was not proposing that what little we knew demonstrated that Burke was sociopathic or had a personality disorder. I fully realized that more than this was needed to prove any theory of his involvement, but at the time, those were red flags that began to pique my attention as I continued my review of investigative files.
I had discovered during my review of case files that, with the apparent consent of prosecutors, there were medical records that Ramsey attorneys withheld from the District Attorney’s Office in 1998, and I believed it conceivable that they spoke to the very issue of family involvement and a cover-up regarding the circumstances of JonBenét’s death.
If the family was involved in any fashion, I believed those records were key to solving the mystery of this child’s death, and it was one of the leads I had attempted to convince Mary Lacy to pursue in January 2006.
There was one more peculiar aspect of Burke’s outward behavior that left me uneasy. At one juncture during my tenure at the D.A.’s office, I had met with Tom Trujillo, and we were going over some materials in one of the investigative binders at his office. We happened upon three individual Polaroid photographs of Burke and his parents. I had previously seen duplic
ates of these in the D.A.’s files.
I asked Trujillo about them, and he informed me that he had taken the photographs on the afternoon of Saturday, December 28, 1996, when he was collecting non-testimonial evidence from members of the family.
I took a few moments to silently study each of the photographs.
John Ramsey looked tired, haggard, and despondent.
Patsy Ramsey was hard to recognize. Her hair was pulled back tightly against her head; she was pale and without makeup and looked as though she had aged a hundred years. The beautiful woman I had seen in many other photographs was barely recognizable, and there was no doubt in my mind that she was consumed by anguish.
Like his parents, Burke was seated in a chair and he leaned back slightly, with his right arm slung casually over a nearby table.
Burke looked directly into the lens and smiled for the camera.
It was puzzling. Here he was, providing handwriting exemplars, fingerprints, and DNA samples to police investigators in their investigation into the murder of his sister. It had to be a stressful and extremely painful time for everyone.
I couldn’t help but wonder why Burke was smiling.
Chapter Thirty-Three
SBP and Beyond
There were several significant developments that took place over the late fall of 2006 and early winter of 2007.
One of them was a tip I had received from a reporter who called from time to time. He had shared some fairly interesting things with me during my work on the case, and he was now informing me that the FBI was considering taking over the investigation. It was reported that there might be a federal angle of some sort that would permit their entry into the case, and they were determined to prevent a repeat of the Karr disaster.
Call me a Doubting Thomas, but this didn’t seem very likely to me. I couldn’t fathom any law enforcement agency wanting to step in and take responsibility for this homicide investigation. Nevertheless, he insisted on giving me the name and telephone number of an agent in the Bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) located in Quantico, Virginia and urged me to call.
There would be many occasions over that winter when I would ask myself what the hell I was doing. I had left the D.A.s office nearly eight months previous and was somehow still involved in this damn case.
I had already gone out on a limb when I had written Mary Lacy at the end of October 2006 and asked her to permit me the opportunity to present my theory to a set of outside prosecutors. I had requested that members of the BAU participate as well, so it didn’t seem to be out of line to call this agent and chat with him. In for a penny, in for a pound I figured.
I ended up speaking with FBI Supervisory Special Agent James Fitzgerald. I identified myself and work history to the agent and made it clear that I no longer had any investigative authority or responsibility in the matter and that I was calling as a private citizen who once played a lead role in the case.
It didn’t take long to confirm my suspicions. The FBI had no interest in taking over the JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation from Colorado authorities.
We started talking about current events and my attempt to get the D.A.’s office to pursue what I considered to be a handful of viable leads. He soon had me fleshing out the details of my discoveries, and then he dropped the other shoe.
SSA Fitzgerald informed me that, along with being a criminal profiler, his particular area of expertise in the BAU was forensic linguistics and that he had testified as an expert witness in state and federal courts on a number of occasions. One of the investigations he had participated in was the Ted Kaczynski “Unabomb” case.
Though he was aware of Professor Foster’s work on the Ramsey ransom note, and had reviewed the written opinion of the professor’s findings, he had not been provided the opportunity to personally evaluate the note and writing exemplars collected from any of the suspects in the matter.
We spoke about the elements of crime scene staging, and references in the note to the lines of dialogue that were in headliner movies before, or at the time of JonBenét’s murder. Like agents Gregg McCrary, and John Douglas, he felt that the use of movie script dialogue suggested an amateurish attempt to misdirect the course of the investigation. This was not how kidnappers operated in the real world.
SSA Fitzgerald agent expressed his personal views about the contents of the ransom demand, but the extensive analysis required to issue a professional opinion on the possible identity of the author of the note had not yet taken place.
During several discussions with the agent, he expressed disappointment over the outcome of Professor Foster’s involvement in the investigation. Foster had developed a reputation as a literary detective and made some interesting discoveries during his academic research. But the professor was not a trained law enforcement officer, and the letter he sent to Patsy Ramsey before being asked to officially become involved in the investigation had potentially jeopardized his objective standing in the matter. SSA Fitzgerald was not aware of the earlier letter to Patsy Ramsey until notified by the Boulder P.D., after Foster’s report was received by them.
Professor Foster apparently didn’t recognize the need to disclose the previous correspondence, and the agent felt that this probably should have precluded his involvement in the analysis of the writing samples gathered in the case.
SSA Fitzgerald was very interested in my theory and wanted to know if I’d be willing to come to Quantico to share it with the members of his team. The opportunity sounded very attractive, but at that juncture, I was not comfortable with taking that step. My allegiance was still to the Boulder D.A.’s office, and I wanted to give them every opportunity to be the ones who would break this case wide open.
I would have several more conversations with the BAU supervisory staff over the course of that fall and we talked about the manner in which their participation in the case might be accomplished: An official request needed to come from the law enforcement agency of primary jurisdiction, and it had to originate with the FBI’s Denver field office. Only then could the Quantico office participate in the investigation.
I kept Mark Beckner informed about my progress, or lack of progress that winter, but could never convince him to invite the BAU in for another consultation on the case. He had turned over primary investigative authority for the case to the D.A.’s office in 2002, and he seemed to be only mildly amused at my efforts to budge Mary Lacy from her fortified position on the Ramsey case.
One could only imagine the level of my frustration.
[Author’s note: I spoke again to SSA Fitzgerald in March, 2012. He had since retired from the FBI and indicated that he had written to Chief Beckner in early 2009, not long after Boulder Police had taken back the case from the DA’s Office. He was offering to put together a small team of forensic linguistic experts from around the nation to take another objective look at the ransom note. One of his peers from the United Kingdom had volunteered to participate as well, and it was posed to Chief Beckner that the analysis work would be performed pro-bono. Chief Beckner reportedly thanked the agent, but for unknown reasons, turned down the offer.
Fitzgerald continues to practice as a forensic linguist, and went to work for the Academy Group, Inc., located in Manassas, VA following his retirement from the FBI. He has been involved in a number of high-profile cases since leaving the BAU that have involved the field of threat assessment, and textual analysis.69
There have been many intervening cases over the years that have validated the foundation for this type of criminal investigative work, and notwithstanding Chief Beckner’s decision to decline Fitzgerald’s earlier offer, I think it would be interesting to see what a new panel of experts would determine as far as authorial attribution of the ransom note.]
The second important event to occur that winter involved additional discoveries that were related to the behavioral symptoms of a childhood disorder.
While working on the written case outline that was completed in October 2006, I became awa
re of a childhood behavioral disorder that revolved around the issue of sexually aggressive children. I learned about clinical research that had been conducted on the topic of children with a behavioral disorder commonly referred to as “Sexual Behavior Problems”, or “SBP.”
I had obtained a copy of the book, Sexually Aggressive Children, Coming to Understand Them,70 and other research materials on that topic late that fall and began to review them in my spare time. Araji’s book, in particular, provided a comprehensive overview of national research that had studied sexual abuse perpetrated by children 12 years of age and younger.
Approximately two months had passed since the mailing of my letter to the D.A.’s office, and I had finished my study of the SBP text book. It was incredibly enlightening, and the case studies only served to strengthen my belief that developed from my analysis of the case that indicated some form of family cover-up.
This information is not all-inclusive but provides an overview of the behavioral symptoms seen with this childhood disorder:
Research into sexually aggressive children was described as being in its “infancy” in the mid1990s. (It appears that the earliest studies on this topic only dated to 1980.)
The average onset of preadolescent sexual behavior problems (SBP) are between the ages of 6-9 years
Although the term “sexual” is used, the children’s intentions and motivations for these behaviors may be unrelated to sexual gratification.
Children act out for many varied reasons. Some may have been the prior victims of sexual abuse. Some may act out due to other behavioral problems related to PTSD, anger, fear, or emotional detachment. Sexual acting out has been linked to anger, rage, loneliness, and fear.
FBI UCR reports in 1979 revealed 249 rape arrests for children less than 12 years of age. Sixty-six of those children were under the age of 10.
Early research conducted in the 1980s provided evidence that preadolescent children’s behaviors can be as aggressive and violent as those of adolescents and adults.
Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? Page 31