Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

by Lawrence Schiller

Keep in mind that you reach a point where, without police powers, you can’t go further. For legal reasons, a lot of what I’m talking about had to be put on the shelf.

  —Pat Korten

  On Saturday, January 4, Alex Hunter returned from his vacation in Hawaii. The DA knew he wasn’t coming home to a case that would be solved in a few weeks. That same day, the police finished their search of the Ramsey house. For nine days they had fingerprinted, vacuumed, and gathered evidence. All of it would be analyzed and tested by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the FBI in the coming months. The initial search warrant had been extended three times, and over eight hundred items were taken into custody. Detective Byfield, for example, had found duct tape that looked similar to the tape found in the wine cellar on the back of two paintings, one of which hung in JonBenét’s bedroom. The police would later learn that this tape had been placed on the frames by Better Light Photography Studio in 1993 and didn’t match the tape Ramsey said he had ripped off JonBenét’s mouth.

  The Ramseys’ home, which had a red brick Tudor façade, contained 6,866 square feet of living space, and nearly filled a half-acre lot. There was no fence surrounding the property. The front of the house was built in 1927, and the rear was added later and had been remodeled several times over the years. A back elevator had been replaced with a spiral staircase when the Ramseys renovated the house in 1992. The floor plan was a maze, and the decorating was unusual: flowered carpets, thick white moldings, vivid colors.

  The living room furniture was reproduction French provincial, and the walls were hung with 19th-century French and English oil paintings. A floor-to-ceiling Christmas tree stood on a handmade rug. Just beyond the living room was the sun room, with leaded-glass windows, which looked out on the street. Its walls were covered with a forest landscape mural. A Chippendale dining table was 10 feet long. A wrought-iron sideboard had a marble top. Patsy told many of her guests that it had been purchased from Tiffany’s in New York, though Tiffany’s sells jewelry, table settings, and decorative pieces but no furniture. At the rear of the house was the family room, with a Chinese needlepoint rug, silk-covered club chairs, and wall units in which family memorabilia were displayed.

  In the white-and-gray kitchen there was a large built-in refrigerator and an island counter. Copper pots hung from a ceiling fixture, and there was an eating area with three bar-height chairs. To the side was a butler’s pantry. The garage held the usual assortment of drills, saws, and tool chests. Skis hung from a ceiling rack.

  Behind the kitchen, just inside the patio door, a spiral staircase led to the second floor. On the second floor landing were a stacked washer and dryer in a closet, a sink, an ironing board, and a microwave on a countertop. From this landing there was direct access to two bedrooms and a playroom. A staircase led to the third-floor master bedroom.

  JonBenét’s second-floor bedroom, with a porch overlooking the south yard and patio, was closest to the spiral staircase. The room had a hand-painted hat motif, and the nursery rhyme “Hey, Diddle, Diddle” was painted on a carved corner cabinet. The police had removed a small piece of carpet in front of the night table between the matching English burl walnut single beds. To the left of the bed, the detectives had removed two additional pieces of carpet. At the foot of JonBenét’s bed there was a hand-painted locker that matched the fabrics in the room. All of JonBenét’s sheets, pillowcases, and bedcovers were taken into custody by the police. Fingerprint powder was everywhere except on the painted hooks of a trompe l’oeil hat rack stenciled on the closet doors.

  JonBenét’s closet was stuffed with clothes. A small TV set with a built-in VCR sat on a shelf inside her closet. Other shelves held dozens of cartoon and Shirley Temple videos. To the right of the closet stood a pageant trophy as tall as the light switch. Another trophy was even taller. There was a floor-to-ceiling Christmas tree in the room too. In her bathroom hung an original pastel, called Tea for Two, by a Boulder artist.

  JonBenét’s pageant costumes were stored in her half-sister Melinda’s bedroom. There, skirts, hats, boots, and dresses filled the closets and shelves. The drapes, daybed, and walls were done in a matching pattern of pink bows and vines. The book The 7 Spiritual Causes of Ill Health lay on a hand-painted table. John Andrew’s room, color coordinated with vertically striped fabrics, was next door to JonBenét’s. There, the police removed two more pieces of carpet.

  Burke’s bedroom was also on this level but was separated from the landing by the children’s playroom. His wallpaper depicted World War I fighter planes, and a large wooden propeller hung over the small windows, which afforded minimal daylight. Two TV sets and a VCR shared a bookcase with a fish tank. Learning programs such as Practicing Landing and First Few Hours of Voyage sat beside his computer on a shelf.

  The third-floor master bedroom had a cathedral ceiling and a view of the Flatirons. A framed print of red flowers hung over the fireplace. The king-size bed had a 4-foot-high hand-carved headboard. A Rider workout machine sat beside an exercise bicycle. A corner desk held a computer. Displayed on the floor and shelves were twenty-three of JonBenét’s pageant trophies. In a children’s play area stood a 5-foot-tall pageant trophy next to one that measured 8-feet-1.

  A bookshelf contained such titles as Children at Risk, Children All Wide World Straight Talk, Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, It Ain’t as Easy As It Looks, and The National Geographic Society Index. On another shelf: The Cancer Conqueror: Incredible Journey to Wellness, New Cures for Almost Every Major Disease, and FBI profiler John Douglas’s 1995 memoir, Mind Hunter. On a night table were When Goodbye Is Forever: How to Deal with the Death of a Child and Learning to Live Again after the Loss of a Child, by John Bramblet. Apparently John Ramsey had explored a good deal of popular literature on death and mourning since the loss of his oldest daughter, Beth.

  In every room of the cluttered basement, the police found the cast-off possessions of six people: old lamps, toys, beach balls, Easter bunny outfits, pageant decorations, a painter’s easel from Patsy’s recent art classes at CU, a Halloween lantern. Nothing was put away neatly. In the basement hallway, a scarecrow was pinned to a wall.

  The police removed the suitcase they had found beneath the three side-by-side windows at the rear of Burke’s train room. They also removed the windows themselves and the exterior window grate. The suitcase had no dust on it, yet a few pieces of broken glass lay on top of it. Inside, they found a blanket with what turned out to be John Andrew’s semen on it.

  A little carousel rocking horse and child-size blue-and-red chairs stood against one wall. The train set was mounted on a platform in the center of the room. On one wall were three framed movie posters: Star Trek, Somewhere in Time, and a third poster of Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra in The Devil at 4 O’Clock. Leaning against the wall was a poster of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. In the small storage closet where Fleet White and John Ramsey had looked just before JonBenét’s body was found, the police found a plaque with the words Subic Bay on it.

  Down a short hall was the boiler room, which had a chest freezer and an exposed ventilation duct leading to the street. At the rear of that room, a door led to the wine cellar. The door and its painted jamb and frame were removed by the police. Just outside the room, they found two partial sets of golf clubs belonging to John Ramsey. Inside the room was a large corrugated box with six partly used cans of interior paint and seven more gallon-size interior paint cans. Built into the floor was a safe. A greenish-blue tarp lay over it. A bicycle missing its front wheel was propped up in one corner beside some lumber and other construction material. Throughout the house the police had ripped out every toilet, looking for evidence in the plumbing traps.

  The evidence taken in the search was itemized on thirteen handwritten pages, which were signed by Detective Byfield. Every notepad and pen in the house was taken. Among the 132 items in the first inventory were the Avalanche sweatshirt and the blanket that had covered JonBenét’s body. Detective Everett photographed
a shoe imprint that was discovered in a powder-like substance next to where JonBenét’s body had been lying. Inside the wine cellar, fibers, hair, and the pink Barbie nightgown were collected. Just outside the room, there were wooden shards near an artist’s paint tray that also held part of a broken paintbrush; several paintings, one of which Patsy had done in Michigan, of flowers in a box on her porch; rope; string from a sled; and down the hall on a counter, a red pocket knife. Black sheet metal, wire, vacuumed hair and fibers from almost every room of the house, bedding, street clothes, underwear, prayer books, Christmas gifts, pieces of glass from the broken window, toilet tissue, toilet seats and lids, books, and newspapers were also collected. The list grew longer by the day. Patsy’s and John’s clothing, camera, computers, and 180 videotapes were hauled away in box after box. Before the police left, they photographed every inch of the house and all its remaining contents. On January 30,1997, a judge signed another warrant allowing the police to search for pornography on the hard drives of the seized computers. During the last days of June 1997, there would be a third search of the Ramseys’ house.

  In Atlanta, the visiting Boulder detectives found they couldn’t escape the media even in that city. If they so much as drank coffee in a restaurant, some reporter would appear beside them. When they called CNN producer Mike Phelan to request transcripts of the Ramseys’ New Year’s Day interviews, Art Harris, an investigative reporter for the network, called back. Harris told Larry Mason he’d be more than happy to deliver the transcripts. That evening, January 2, in the restaurant of the detectives’ hotel, Harris sat down, opened his laptop, and started questioning Mason about the Ramsey case as Detectives Thomas and Trujillo looked on. Mason scolded Harris for misrepresenting his intentions, and Harris apologized. Then he handed Mason a transcript of the edited videotape, which the police could easily have downloaded from the Internet.

  Steve Thomas, a former SWAT team officer and a by-the-book detective who was conducting his first murder investigation, was furious when he saw Mason and the CNN reporter together. That evening, in his phone report to Eller, Thomas mentioned Mason’s meeting with the CNN reporter.

  Thomas and Mason had already been quarreling. Soon after they arrived in Atlanta, Thomas needed some colored pens and paper and asked Mason to get them. Mason refused. “Look, I’m the supervisor,” Mason said. “If you don’t like it, I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.” The case was nearly a week old, and with the pace and pressure, tensions were getting to both officers. They had known happier times together. When Thomas was involved in a shooting as a member of the SWAT team, it was Mason who signed the recommendation for Thomas to receive a medal of valor.

  During the three days that the Boulder detectives were in Atlanta, they interviewed John Andrew and Melinda Ramsey. Then they visited Lucinda Johnson, John Ramsey’s first wife and Melinda and John Andrew’s mother; Lloyd Sandy, a friend of Nedra’s; Rod Westmoreland; and several former neighbors of John and Patsy Ramsey. Before they went back to Boulder, they also spoke with Nedra and Don Paugh and with Rev. Harrington at the Peachtree Presbyterian Church and visited the funeral home in Marietta and JonBenét’s grave.

  On Saturday, January 4, when the detectives’ work was almost completed, Mason, with Eller’s approval, gave an interview to a local reporter and issued a press release provided to him by the Boulder PD.

  January 4, 1997

  Press Release

  [Boulder Police Department in Atlanta]

  During our investigation the news media and local press have also researched the Ramsey family and their ties to the Atlanta area. If any of you have uncovered information that may be of value in this case, we would appreciate your forwarding the information to the investigators at the Boulder Police Department. We are asking that if any citizen has information that could be of assistance in this case, that they call 1–800–444–3776.

  When Mason returned to his hotel room that night, he found a fax from Eller telling him to cancel the interview. Eller gave no explanation. Mason phoned his boss and said he’d already done the interview. He had received the fax after the fact, he said. Eller said he didn’t believe him. Meanwhile, unknown to Mason, CNN, citing an unnamed source, had reported that the Ramseys had agreed to an interview with the Boulder police.

  When the Boulder detectives returned home and reported to headquarters the next evening, Eller called Mason upstairs to Chief Tom Koby’s office. As soon as Mason saw Sgt. Robert Thomas, Jr., of internal affairs, he knew he was in trouble. When Greg Perry, the police union president, walked in a few minutes later, his fears deepened.

  Eller told Mason to sit down. “I’m fine standing up,” Mason replied. Eller again ordered Mason to sit down. This time he did.

  Eller accused Mason of leaking to CNN the fact that the Ramseys had agreed to an interview with the Boulder police. This was information Eller said he had personally given to Mason on the phone when Mason was at the Roswell, Georgia, police department the night before. It was, said Eller, information that nobody else knew. Mason denied the charge. He said he had not released any unauthorized information.

  “You’re lying,” Eller said. “I know for a fact you did.”

  “I’m not lying,” Mason shot back. “You’re absolutely wrong.”

  At this point, Koby had to calm him down. And then the chief suspended Mason. A few weeks later, he would be reassigned to patrol.

  “Don’t sell your house,” Mason said to Eller as he left. On the spot, he had decided he would sue both Eller and the department for false accusations and wrongful suspension.

  As Mason drove home, he brooded on the Ramsey case. He wanted to interview JonBenét’s brother, Burke. His own children often didn’t remember awakening during the night and being put back to bed. Mason wanted to ask Burke about his dreams that night. Sometimes kids wake up to something and go back to sleep believing they’ve had a dream. That was the kind of question he wanted answered.

  The next day, Monday, January 6, Bryan Morgan, one of John Ramsey’s attorneys, told Eller that someone from “his [Morgan’s] side of the table” had disclosed the information to CNN. Despite this information, and though Eller had information that could have caused him to believe he had wrongly accused Mason—and though news of Mason’s suspension had not yet been released to the media—he did not change course. That afternoon Mason retained Marc Colin, an attorney who specialized in representing police officers. Two days later, Colin discovered that the Roswell police, unknown to Eller or Mason, routinely taped all incoming and outgoing phone calls. That information was relayed to Boulder internal affairs investigator Robert Thomas, who learned from the tapes that Eller had in fact told Mason nothing about the information that CNN aired.

  Despite this evidence of Mason’s innocence and Eller’s duplicity, it would take a year before Larry Mason was completely exonerated. He had been relieved of his duties so early in the investigation that he hadn’t yet transcribed his taped interviews or completed his report for the period after JonBenét’s murder when he was on the case—December 26, 1996, to January 5, 1997. Not until December 1997 would Chief Koby publicly apologize for Mason’s suspension. It would be another six months before Mason was asked to submit his report.

  In contrast to what occurred with Mason, John Eller had bonded with most of the rank-and-file officers. Even though he had risen to become part of management, he had never forgotten his days as a street cop. Unlike many of the commanders, Eller still wore his gun. Every New Year’s Eve he would hold a party and invite the entire department. None of the brass showed up, but his home was always wall to wall with officers. They’d eat, drink beer, and sing while Eller played the guitar. He took an interest in his officers outside of work and knew the names of their wives and kids. In the coming weeks and months he would use his own credit card for purchases that detectives needed on short notice. He opened an account at the Red Robin restaurant so they could eat around the clock. Eller would tell the detectives, “Forg
et about what you’re seeing on TV or reading in the papers. Do your job.” He would shield them not only from the press but from his growing problems with the DA’s office.

  On Saturday, January 4, Eller had met with the DA’s staff to discuss a number of subjects, including the escalating media coverage. The press was stepping up its accusations of sloppy police work done during the first days of the case, allegations that Alex Hunter’s staff felt were justified. Even though some of the reports were inaccurate, Eller told the DA’s people that rather than correct them, Chief Koby wanted his department to provide as little information as possible to the press. Everyone on the law enforcement side—from the coroner to the DA’s office to the police department—knew that the integrity of the case had to be protected. What they disagreed on was how to go about protecting it from the media.

  By now, the press had reported that JonBenét’s skull had been fractured, that she’d been garroted, that the ransom amount was an odd figure, and that the paper used for the note had come from inside the house. During the meeting, Eller said that these leaks would jeopardize the case.

  He said flat-out that he suspected Hunter’s office of the leaks. He didn’t trust them. Bill Wise, who had dealt with the media for twenty-five years, told Eller that he and Chief Koby were overreacting. The DA’s office, he admitted, had always been more open with the press than the Boulder PD. Hunter, who had just returned from his Hawaiian vacation that day and had not yet been completely briefed, suggested that his office could take some of the pressure off the police by using its open relationship with the media. Chief Koby called Hunter later in the day and agreed.

  The most sensitive potential problem facing the police was the fax that Detective Arndt had sent to the Ramseys’ attorney. It was sure to leak and to embarrass not only the police but Hunter’s office as well. Bill Wise, who could hardly disguise his contempt for the Boulder PD, told Eller that Arndt’s fax was an even dumber mistake than trying to withhold JonBenét’s body. And by the way, Wise added, he understood that the press might already have wind of it.