Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet?

by A. James Kolar

  It is much harder to fashion a falsehood than it is to tell the truth, and I would submit that there were many examples of this hypothesis sprinkled throughout the investigation that proves this. Many of the statements provided by the Ramsey family pointed to deception and collusion rather than cooperation, and this was one of the very reasons police investigators continued to suspect their involvement in the crime.

  We could enter into a continuous debate about how we think the parent of a murdered child should act, but the fact of the matter is that most parents who have experienced the horror of this type of situation have not sequestered themselves behind high-priced attorneys without justifiable cause. Innocent parents are typically the first people standing in line to be cleared of any suspected involvement by police so that investigators can get straight to the task of looking for the real perpetrators.

  It is important to understand, however, that in our system of justice, the innocent frequently take advantage of legal counsel, and this is especially the case when they can afford to do so. But John Ramsey’s explanation of the timing of attorney involvement didn’t correspond to the facts when the details of witness statements came to light. Mike Bynum’s attempt to explain the timing and the reasons behind attorney involvement betrayed his clients’ ulterior motives in my view.

  It appeared to me that the Ramseys were fortifying the ramparts within hours of the discovery of JonBenét’s body, so that they could tactically manage not only the police inquiry, but the heat the media was soon bringing to bear to the investigation.

  I watched with some degree of amusement, and anger, as the parents of 6-year-old Aronne Thompson took the same tack in Aurora, Colorado several years ago. Her parents reported that she had gone missing one day after a family argument in November 2005 and called police to seek their assistance in finding her.

  The events described by the parents didn’t quite ring true to investigators, however, and the parents soon were considered to be persons of interest in the investigation, something that I would describe as being similar to falling under the umbrella of suspicion. Lawyers coming to the defense appeared to be taking the same approach as Team Ramsey, and had at one point, sought a court order to obtain copies of police notes and reports while the case was still under active investigation. Prosecutors in this instance didn’t cave to the defense bar, and successfully fought the motion to produce the records.

  The disappearance of Aronne was a case that eventually was proven to involve real parental abuse. Interviews with the remaining siblings revealed that Aronne had mysteriously disappeared from the home well over a year previous, not on the afternoon that the parents called police to report her family tiff.

  The body of Aronne was never found, but the parents were subsequently indicted by a grand jury on numerous counts of criminal conduct. The mother passed away just before the indictments were released, and Aronne’s father was eventually sent to prison for her murder.

  I considered this a prime example of where a police department and the prosecutor’s office worked in partnership with one another to solve the disappearance and suspected murder of a small child. Unfortunately, this collaborative effort was virtually non-existent in the case involving JonBenét Ramsey, and it is my hope and desire that there is a lesson to be learned in all of this.

  Some readers who are familiar with the details of this case may note that I never fully addressed the issue of Santa’s secret visit in the body of this work. It had been reported by Barb Kostanik, the mother of one of JonBenét’s friends, that she (JonBenét) was excited about a secret visit Santa had promised to make to her after Christmas day. When questioned about it by this mother, JonBenét had been explicit in her belief that Santa Claus was going to give her a special gift sometime after Christmas.

  Intruder theorists believed this secret visit had been arranged by the pedophile who ultimately was responsible for kidnapping and murdering JonBenét. It was thought to have been someone close to the family, and who would have had easy access to her in order to speak to her about the secret visit.

  I, after leaving the D.A.’s office, later became aware, that Mary Lacy and many others strongly believed that Bill McReynolds was the secret Santa who allegedly had made arrangements to meet with JonBenét after Christmas. Lacy was so convinced that McReynolds was the perpetrator, she resurrected him as a suspect on one or more occasions after police had already cleared him of involvement.

  I proposed another theory in the correspondence that I sent to Mark Beckner in the fall of 2008. I suggested that the secret Santa referred to by JonBenét was not a person, but an event.

  Patsy Ramsey, in her attempts to preserve and prolong the magical image of Christmas in the life of her young daughter, had to explain Santa’s Christmas presents that were going to show up in Charlevoix for John Andrew, Melinda, and her fiancé, Stewart Long.

  Additional presents were likely to be presented to JonBenét and Burke, so Patsy offered the explanation to her daughter that Santa was going to be making a secret appearance in Michigan after the immediate family had already celebrated the Christmas holiday in Boulder. The second Christmas experience in Charlevoix would be the opportunity for JonBenét to receive her special gift.

  Evidence that tended to support this hypothesis was found in the family’s holiday photographs and Boulder P.D.’s crime scene photos. A Christmas morning photograph of JonBenet and Burke depicted unwrapped gifts in the background as they posed by the tree with her new bicycle. Two presents bearing the same wrapping paper were later photographed in the Wine Cellar after JonBenet’s body had been found.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if one of these presents, which remained hidden in the basement during the family’s Christmas morning celebration, contained Santa’s special gift for JonBenét.

  It is unlikely that we’ll ever know what secret gift Patsy may have intended to give her daughter. The content of the wrapped presents found in the basement was not revealed during the investigation. Moreover, investigators did not obtain a search warrant for the contents of John Ramsey’s plane, which had been packed full of things on Christmas day in preparation for the flight to Michigan.

  My alternate theory about the secret Santa was a matter of speculation, but I thought it a plausible explanation for the events that had been scheduled for the family’s second holiday celebration in Michigan.

  I have to report that I had also struggled with interpreting the facts surrounding John Ramsey’s involvement. I was puzzled by his use of binoculars in Burke’s room to scan the alley behind the Barnhill residence, as well as his subsequent 1998 revelation that he had observed a suspicious van parked there, and another vehicle driving by the front of the house.

  Crime scene photographs captured the image of a set of binoculars in the kitchen, so it seemed plausible that he actually had been scanning the neighborhood through the second floors of the home during the time that Linda Arndt lost track of his whereabouts.

  But why not report the van and car driving by to officers when they were first observed that morning? Was he trying to cover his use of the binoculars for another reason?

  I thought it possible that he had been checking the trash cans in the alley across the street behind the Barnhill residence because that is where the remnants of the duct tape, cord, and practice notes had been deposited. The alley was clearly visible from Burke’s second floor bedroom windows. Was he scanning that alley to see if the evidence of the crime had yet been hauled away?

  It wasn’t until Steve Thomas reminded me that John Ramsey had stated he had found JonBenét at 11:00 a.m. that morning that I considered the possibility that he was not initially involved in any cover-up. This was a spontaneous utterance made to his daughter’s fiancé upon their arrival at the Ramsey home that afternoon, and I considered this to be a truthful statement, spoken under emotionally charged circumstances.

  There would have been no plausible reason for him to have fabricated the statement concerning the disco
very of JonBenét’s body at the time. It went against his penal interest and suggests that he was deliberately concealing information about the death from authorities.

  Under those circumstances, I had to wonder whether John Ramsey was aware of the events surrounding the death of his daughter at the time he made this statement to Stewart Long. The changing story line revealed over the history of his statements led me to believe that it was only later that he became involved in the web of deception that became apparent after the discovery of his daughter’s body.

  I realize that the tongue-in-cheek nature of the “Last Lead” chapter may appear to some to be cruel and uncaring, but I want to make it clear that this chapter was crafted as an ultimate expression of the frustration that has constantly trailed my participation in the investigation of this murder. It speaks to the incredible lack of judgment that some people exercised when pursuing and interpreting leads in this case, and I carried an internal debate for many weeks before deciding to include this as a closing chapter of this book.

  Make no mistake. The murder of this little girl was horrific and tragic, and there is nothing funny about that.

  Nor is it funny when you consider the damage done by the Ramsey family when they intentionally chose to point the finger of suspicion at other people. It is with some degree of restraint that I don’t expound on the travesty that this family has visited upon their friends, and other innocent bystanders, as they took steps to divert attention away from themselves, and their disingenuousness when it came to covering up the circumstances that surrounded the death of their daughter.

  In retrospect, and I have to acknowledge that hindsight is always 20 - 20, Alex Hunter’s office appears to have been outmaneuvered by defense attorneys when he agreed to permit the family their island of privacy. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that his office has provided this type of concession to the defense bar.

  And despite having information that discounted the elements of the intruder theory, Mary Lacy’s office chose not to seek credible information for the sole reason that she didn’t want to ‘harm her relationship’ with the Ramsey family.

  If I have interpreted this correctly, it would appear that the Ramsey family, and their cadre of defense attorneys, have successfully subverted the system of laws that purportedly were crafted to speak for, and protect the rights of, the innocent.

  They embarked on a path to ridicule and defame the men and women of the Boulder Police Department when it finally became apparent that the grand jury would not be issuing an indictment or a formal report following their lengthy deliberations. Emboldened by the lack of criminal charges, the Ramseys were bent on destroying anyone who suggested that their family might have played a role in this murder.

  They sued many people who dared to speak out, and, regrettably, these folks didn’t know the weakness of the case against anyone outside the family.

  John Ramsey continues to take disparaging shots at the Boulder Police Department to this day and recently expressed his anger at the members of the department for their mishandling of his daughter’s murder investigation.

  In his recently released book, The Other Side of Suffering,85 he indicates that “The police had made up its mind on day one and were not about to be swayed by facts or evidence. Police are supposed to investigate a crime and turn the results of the investigation over to the prosecuting attorney. They are not empowered to determine guilt or innocence.” 86

  Ramsey refers to interviews that the family conducted with Barbara Walters and appearances made on Larry King Live, CNN Early Primetime, and other internationally broadcast programs as proof of their effort to see the case solved. He goes on to state: “We wanted to do whatever we could to find the killer of our daughter…We wanted to keep the pressure on the police to do the right thing and not just throw our daughter’s murder in a cold case file.”

  Ramsey continues, “Our real priority was to get the case moved from the Boulder Police Department to another jurisdiction. Any other jurisdiction would be better. We believed that until a competent authority took over, the murder would never be solved. We learned the Boulder police rarely followed up on any of the hundreds of leads that came into their department. Even the district attorney asked our private investigators to follow up on a lead he had received perhaps because he knew the police would not.”87

  I can fully understand Ramsey’s motivation for wishing to see the investigation assigned to another agency. As illustrated here, Boulder PD investigators were not so easily misled when it came to interpreting the facts and evidence that had been unearthed in the case. He and Patsy had to be very concerned that, at some point, the detective’s inquiries would fully penetrate their carefully crafted smokescreen and eventually determine the underlying motive for a cover-up of JonBenét’s death.

  In their attempt to misdirect the course of the criminal investigation, the Ramsey family perpetuated a deception that cost the Boulder Police Department thousands of hours of manpower; resources that could have been assigned to the victims of other crimes were instead expended in pursuit of a phantom intruder. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars were wasted in pursuit of this matter.

  The real travesty, however, is that, as a law enforcement community, we failed in our duty to find justice for a murdered child. It seems to me that when we do that, we have somehow failed them all.

  Undoubtedly, there may be some who will question why I chose to break silence after all of these years, and some will criticize the decision to publish this work. I have frequently asked myself the same questions and have had to clarify, for my own conscience, where my allegiance in this matter should stand.

  In the final analysis, given the preponderance of the evidence that was presented in this matter, I felt that it was my responsibility to pursue, and eventually reveal, the untold truth about the circumstances surrounding the murder of a 6-year-old child. Secondarily, my allegiance was due the agencies involved in the investigation.

  Some may likely disagree with this position and argue that I should have continued to maintain my silence. I will leave it to the historians to eventually pass judgment on the matter.

  An author must eventually bring his work to a close, and in so doing, I would like to state that my goal in preparing this manuscript was to provide a straight forward, factual accounting of as many of the pertinent details surrounding this case as was possible. I wanted to reveal to the reading audience the steps I took to investigate this murder, and to share the discoveries that had been made during my review of the documents that had been painstakingly prepared by the law enforcement personnel who worked this case.

  Moreover, I felt compelled to explain the thought processes and reasoning used to reach the investigative theories that I had developed about the circumstances surrounding JonBenét’s death.

  My beliefs, conclusions and opinions, are stated fairly clearly and were based upon the information provided herein.

  More importantly, I wish to stress that I undertook this work as a private citizen, who once played a lead role in this investigation. Nothing stated herein should be interpreted as being representative of the opinions of any other specific law enforcement agency, entity, or individual who may have played a part in this investigation.

  With that said, I thought it appropriate to conclude this work by repeating Sherlock Holmes’s investigative dictum:

  “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  Expressed in another way, I would propose that we have a responsibility as criminal investigators to consider all of the possibilities that present themselves in a case, but we should carefully weigh the probabilities as we go about the task of investigating and eventually solving a crime.

  I would, therefore, encourage you, the reader, to consider the same information that I pondered as I struggled to understand the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of a 6-year-old girl. You are free to either acc
ept, or reject, in whole, or in any part, the beliefs and opinions that I have presented in this work.

  The discoveries made during my inquiry are now in your hands, and you are free to draw your own investigative conclusions.

  Lastly, I feel it is necessary to point out that thousands of children continue to be victimized each year in this country by people, young and old, who by their actions perpetuate the violence associated with the abhorrent crimes of sexual abuse, exploitation, cruelty, and neglect. It is my feeling that prevention begins with education and foreknowledge, and it absolutely begins with parents and relatives who are willing to take steps to recognize the early warning signs of abuse and then do something about it.

  As a police chief, I once had the opportunity to attend an executive training session sponsored by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, located in Alexandria, Virginia.88 The mission of this private, non-profit organization is to help prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation, aid in the recovery of missing children, and assist other children who have been victimized by these types of crimes.

  They are the frontrunners in addressing the issues of violence that directly affect the children of our communities, and a donation from the proceeds of the sale of this book is being directed to the NCMEC center to aid in their endeavor.

  Ultimately, it is our children who represent the full embodiment of our future, and a positive change for tomorrow begins with what you decide to do today.

  Persons of Interest

  There were a large number of people involved in this investigation, and the following is a listing of the investigators, witnesses, and other named individuals who are mentioned in this book. It is by no means an exhaustive accounting of every person who may have played a part in the ongoing saga of this murder investigation.