Nor did he mention his immediate concerns about the suitcase to Fleet White when they were inspecting the train room window well together. According to White there was some discussion about the “possibility” that someone could have come through that window but Ramsey said nothing about his concerns regarding the suitcase.
I would point out that this information only materialized after the D.A.’s office had provided police reports to his defense attorneys in preparation for the April 1997 interview.
Of further interest, the theory regarding the use of the Samsonite suitcase being evidence connected with a possible point of entry and exit for the intruder(s) wasn’t espoused by investigators, or the Ramseys, until after Lou Smit joined the investigation in mid-March, 1997. This particular aspect of the case was troubling and gave me pause.
I found it intriguing that John Ramsey did not introduce the chair into the intruder equation until June 1998, nearly eighteen months after the murder of his daughter. In concert with the suitcase, was there no thought given to the fact that CSIs may have been able to collect latent fingerprints or trace DNA from such valuable pieces of evidence?
If John Ramsey’s version of events is to be believed, then one has to accept that one or more perpetrators were able to successfully remain concealed in the Ramsey home for some period of time after police had responded to the family’s 911 call reporting the kidnapping of their daughter.
In this leap of faith, if one follows the evidence, it must be concluded that the “foreign faction” involved in the abduction and murder of JonBenét were truly an exceptional and clever group of criminals.
Chapter Thirty-Five
WWPWS
I regret that I cannot recall the specific circumstances of this event, but we had been ensconced in the confines of a large conference room that contained a white dry-erase board upon one wall. Black capital letters, “WWPWS”, had been scrawled across the board.
Sitting with me were Mary Lacy and Peter Maguire, and we were discussing some important case that was being set for trial.
I occasioned to ask the significance of the letters displayed on the board.
My query about the letters led to a brief explanation about a guiding principal regarding the practices of governmental agencies, and apparently, the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office.
The acronym stood for this: “What Would Paula Woodward Say?”
For those of you not familiar with the Denver news media, Paula Woodward was an investigative reporter for Channel 9 News, and she frequently reported on the questionable activities of government employees. What immediately came to mind was her work in an unmarked van that had exposed Denver Public Works employees sloughing off on the job. Prime time news video captured too many coffee breaks at the expense of taxpayers.
Fast forward to current events:
As noted previously, I had written Mark Beckner in October 2008 regarding my views of the case, and was soon preparing to participate in a review of the case through the efforts of a newly formed Cold Case Task Force.
Events in the case would take another twist before the task force had an opportunity to convene, however. In the waning days of her term, Mary Lacy announced the results of new DNA testing.
More than two years had passed since leaving her service, and I was mildly interested in her declaration that “Touch DNA” had effectively cleared the Ramsey family of any involvement in the death of their daughter.
She authored an official letter of public apology to the Ramsey family, and many thought that this final act in office precluded the incoming District Attorney from taking future action against family members.
Lacy Exoneration Letter
Lacy reported that the new technology of Touch DNA revealed that the perpetrator believed responsible for the kidnap and murder of JonBenét had also handled the leggings worn by her on the night of her abduction. DNA originally found in her underwear now matched microscopic traces of male DNA found in the interior waistband of these leggings.
She considered it proof positive that an intruder was responsible for this crime.
The media’s response to Lacy’s letter of exoneration was less than complimentary. It was one thing to announce the findings of new DNA testing results, but it was quite another to take the next step and publically clear the family of any involvement in the death of their daughter.
The Boulder Daily Camera wrote, “Lacy has ruined her public and professional reputation through her collective actions in the Ramsey case…The consensus, overwhelmingly, is that (the public and other attorneys) think she is incompetent. Quite frankly, I think they are stunned and confused about the entire way she has handled the Ramsey case.”79
University of Colorado Law Professor Paul Campos declared the letter a “reckless exoneration.” He went to state, “Everyone knows that relative immunity from criminal conviction is something money can buy. Apparently another thing it can buy is an apology for even being suspected of a crime you probably already would have been convicted of committing if you happened to be poor. That at least is one explanation for the letter Lacy sent John Ramsey last week, absolving the Ramsey family of any involvement in the killing of his daughter, and apologizing for contributing to the ‘public perception that (anyone in the family) might have been involved.’”80
Craig Silverman, a defense lawyer and former Denver prosecutor, called the move to exonerate the Ramsey family “extremely unusual.” “Nothing is out of the realm of possibility in this case…anything could happen.”81
Reporter James Baetke, a staff writer at the Boulder Daily Camera, went on to report that touch DNA wasn’t necessarily new, but technology had improved its ability test for “increasingly small genetic samples.”82
The article included an advisory note of caution about touch DNA from an Oakland, California forensic mathematician, Charles Brenner: “Some controversy surrounds this kind of collection; the sample can be so small, it’s hard to be reliable.”83
It was not disclosed during the task force presentation the exact strength of these markers, or how they compared to other samples previously discovered on JonBenét’s body (i.e. The male and female DNA collected at autopsy from beneath her fingernails), but it did not prevent the outgoing DA from exonerating the Ramsey family in this murder investigation.
Knowing the history of Mary Lacy’s announcements, I should not have been surprised when D. A. Investigator Andy Horita shed further light on the Touch DNA test results during the Cold Case Task Force meeting held in February 2009.
I had supervised Horita during my stint as chief investigator at the D.A.’s office, and it was my opinion that he had a promising future ahead of him. He had no experience as a police officer, but he was an extremely intelligent young man. He looked decidedly dejected as he delivered the news about the additional DNA test results.
Horita confirmed the public announcements Lacy had made about matching DNA found in the leggings worn by JonBenét.
He went on to report, however, that additional samples of trace male DNA had been discovered on the cord used in the wrist bindings, and the garrote that had killed JonBenét. These trace “Touch DNA” samples were genetically unique from one another, and were believed to belong to different individuals.
It took several moments for this information to be absorbed by the cadre of law enforcement experts filling the room before one of the female laboratory technicians voiced her observation.
It went something like this:
“Are you telling me, based on trace Touch DNA testing results, that we are now looking at six different people being involved in this murder?”
Horita reluctantly nodded his head.
We collectively recapped the DNA evidence that had been analyzed in this investigation, and it included the following:
1.) There had been trace DNA samples collected from beneath JonBenét’s fingernails of both hands during autopsy that was identified as belonging to her.
2
.) There had been trace DNA samples collected from beneath her left fingernails during autopsy that belonged to an unidentified male.84
3.) There had been trace DNA samples collected from beneath her right fingernails during autopsy that belonged to another unidentified male, and a female. (JonBenét could not be eliminated as a possible contributor of the female DNA.)
4.) There had been trace DNA samples located in the crotch and waistband of her underwear that belonged to an unidentified male. This became known as Distal Stain 007-2.
5.) The new technology of Touch DNA identified trace samples in the waistband of the leggings that matched the unidentified male DNA (Distal Stain 007-2) in the underwear.
6.) The new technology of Touch DNA had located another sample of DNA located on the wrist bindings that belonged to a different unidentified male.
7.) The new technology of Touch DNA had located another sample of DNA located on the garrote that belonged to yet another unidentified male.
By our count, we were looking at six separate and independent DNA samples that belonged to unknown individuals, comprising a group that consisted of five males and one female.
But there was more.
Horita indicated that Touch DNA testing had discovered traces of genetic material on the pink Barbie nightgown found in the Wine Cellar with the body of JonBenét. This Touch DNA belonged to Patsy and Burke Ramsey.
No surprise there: they all lived in the same house.
So, what is the takeaway that we may derive from this information?
In my view, it demonstrates the advances that our scientific community has made in the application of the forensic sciences.
A hundred or more years ago it was a stretch to make people understand that the ridges on the tips of our fingers were uniquely identifiable. It wasn’t long before the technology of fingerprinting exploded, however, and there are now over seventy-one (71) million sets of fingerprints on file with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
We were only first exploring the identifying characteristics of genetic markers twenty years ago, and in many states across the nation convicted felons / arrestees are now required to provide a saliva swab so that we may compare their DNA identity to the unknown samples collected in open and unsolved cases.
It has been repeatedly demonstrated that technology frequently outpaces the slow moving constraints of the criminal justice system. This was illustrated by the case study presented in the sexual assault investigation that I oversaw in 1990’s. RFLP DNA testing technology available at the time indicated that there was a statistical chance of one in ten thousand that our suspect was the contributor of the semen left at the scene of this assault.
DNA testing conducted pursuant to new PCR technology a year later advanced these numbers to one in nine-hundred billion!
The point to be made is that Touch DNA is relatively new technology, and we are still trying to understand the parameters of its capabilities.
Does the discovery of the additional samples of “touch” male DNA on implements used in JonBenét’s murder truly mean that we should be searching for an entire group of individuals who participated in this crime?
Or should we interpret this trace evidence in another manner?
Is it possible that new technology is capable of identifying trace evidence, naked to the human eye, which has nothing to do with the transfer of DNA evidence that occurred during the actual commission of a crime?
Is it possible that these trace samples of DNA were deposited on these items of evidence at a time prior to the murder of this little girl?
There are numerous examples across the nation where courts have thrown out critical physical evidence due to some type of contamination taking place during laboratory testing. A technician forgets to change a pair of gloves, and microscopic trace evidence from one crime is transferred to the evidence of another.
I can’t help but wonder, what the hell makes this case so different? Why are we not giving consideration to the possibility that all of these pieces of trace evidence were in place long before these articles came into contact with JonBenét Ramsey? Are we afraid to even consider other options in our evaluation of this case, and in our pursuit of the truth?
By way of another example regarding the collection of physical evidence at a crime scene, I again refer to the sex assault investigation I oversaw in the early 1990’s.
The suspect had worn gloves during his entry to the apartment where the assault took place, but removed one of them during the assault. He unplugged the telephone when leaving, and we collected a decent latent fingerprint from the plastic covering of the phone. We thought it possible that he had handled the phone with the ungloved hand and had left us a tangible clue.
We submitted the latent print for comparison to the national AFIS database and were extremely disappointed when we received no hit. Whoever had left the print on the phone was not in the system, and had no record of arrest.
The inked fingerprints of friends and family of our survivor were collected for elimination purposes, and we gathered nearly two dozen cards for review by technicians.
Again, there was no match of the latent fingerprint to any of the known inked cards we had collected for elimination purposes. It was an extremely frustrating setback.
The latent fingerprint, thought to possibly belong to our perpetrator in the early stages of the investigation, was never identified as belonging to anyone associated with our inquiry. It was one piece of physical evidence that the defense attorney continued to point to as evidence of his client’s innocence until the DNA test results came back.
Ultimately, as noted above, the case was made on the DNA evidence left at the scene. The suspect had ejaculated during the assault, and we had plenty of this type of physical evidence to link our perpetrator to the crime.
The point to be illustrated here is that physical evidence may be collected from a scene that has no connection whatsoever to the perpetrator of a crime. There will frequently be unanswered questions about this type of evidence, and each piece must be carefully scrutinized and weighed as to its probative nature. It is critical that we keep an open mind, however, and properly evaluate every piece of evidence that we have collected over the course of an investigation.
As of this writing, I have been unable to determine the strength of the genetic markers that were identified as the Touch DNA samples found in the leggings worn by JonBenét at the time of the discovery of her body. Horita reported that they were weaker than the partial sample identified as Distal Stain 007-2.
The strength of the loci (genetic markers) observed in the cord of the wrist bindings were reported to be 6 markers, and those of the male in the garrote were 7. Both of these samples were less than the partial sample of 10 markers identified as Distal Stain 007-2.
What I viewed as significant however, was the revelation that Horita had disclosed during the task force meeting held in February 2009:
Touch DNA testing discovered the presence of two additional, unknown samples of male DNA on the implements that had been used to kill JonBenét.
Mary Lacy made the decision to withhold this information from the public when she apologized to, and exonerated, the Ramsey family.
For what it’s worth, here is my personal observation and my takeaway:
For reasons beyond my comprehension, there has been a total lack of objectivity on the part of the prosecutor’s office regarding the DNA in this case, and I have a difficult time understanding why the totality of the Touch DNA testing evidence was not released to the public by Lacy when the family was exonerated in the death of their daughter.
Why was Mary Lacy’s office so unwilling to look at all of the evidence that had been collected over the course of this investigation?
Finally, and more to the point, I can’t help but wonder what Paula Woodward would say if she were conversant with all of the details surrounding these new, Touch DNA “discoveries.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
; Theory of Prosecution
Not yet half-way through his first term in Boulder, Stan Garnett had decided to throw his hat in the ring for the Colorado Attorney General’s office. The campaign trail had brought him to the Western Slope on a couple occasions during the summer and fall of 2010, and the first time we were able to get together was over a cup of coffee in my kitchen as he was on the way to the airport. He was in the company of his chauffeur, so we didn’t have an opportunity to speak confidentially about the status of the JonBenét investigation.
I emailed him later that week and asked if he thought if anyone would ever be prosecuted in this murder investigation. He replied by telling me that Boulder Police had not yet provided him with a “theory of prosecution.”
I was aware that Boulder investigators had been following up on some of the leads that had been suggested at the task force meeting, and that there had been an effort to gather DNA samples from JonBenét’s and Burke’s classmates to determine the possibility of a match with the unknown sample in her underwear.
Garnett’s last trip to Telluride was approximately two weeks prior to the November election, and this time we were able to speak for a few minutes. He advised me that he had received virtually no communication from Beckner’s office about their progress on the case, and he knew of no plans for calling the task force back together.
He indicated that he, and Ryan Brackley, his first assistant district attorney, had been intending to make a trip to Telluride to chat with me further about my theory, but his first 18 months in office had been a busy time. Five full-blown murder trials had resulted in five convictions, and they just hadn’t been able to find the time to drive to my far corner of the state.
Garnett suggested that we get together after the election, and we tentatively pinned down a date in mid-November when I would be in Denver on other business. Before parting ways, I told him that I would give some thought to putting together a theory of prosecution for his consideration.
Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? Page 35