Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

by Lawrence Schiller

  “If you keep talking like that, we’ll kick you guys out of the case,” Eller replied furiously. Wise thought Eller was behaving like a kid threatening to take his bat and ball and go home.

  Wise then suggested a way to cope with the “Arndt problem.” He proposed telling selected members of the media that a list of “housekeeping” questions had been submitted to the Ramseys via their attorneys, as an interim measure until formal interviews could be conducted—such questions as “When is milk delivered to your house?” “How many times has Federal Express delivered a package?” “When was the handyman last at your home?” These were, of course, all fabrications, including the date when the police had submitted the questions. The press was sure to gobble it up, but Wise was troubled. He had never before deliberately misinformed the press.

  That same afternoon, Pat Korten, the Ramseys’ press representative, met with John and Patsy at the Fernies’ home. Korten’s job was to take the pressure off the lawyers so that they could concentrate on lawyering; he would deal with the media.

  The Ramseys told Korten they wanted to release several nonpageant photos of JonBenét so the public could see her as she really had been—a sweet, normal kid, not much different from any other little girl her age. Korten told them that given a choice, all the media—newspapers, magazines, and TV—would use a pageant photograph. It was simply too late to manage JonBenét’s image. Korten pointed out that all the TV networks and tabloid shows had representatives in town. He told the couple that their daughter’s murder was sure to become the next media circus after the OJ business.

  Korten then asked whether John and Patsy planned to attend church the next day. By now he knew that they were enthusiastic and regular attendees of St. John’s. He also knew that their presence or absence would make news. His first suggestion was that Patsy and John stay home, but Patsy wanted to go to church to thank her friends for supporting her. Korten said he would see to it that their appearance didn’t get out of control.

  Later that afternoon, Korten called the major media outlets and asked what their intentions were for covering the services. Almost all of them said that if the Ramseys attended church, they would be there. Many journalists felt the call was an invitation.

  Korten then visited Rev. Hoverstock and offered to help keep the press under control. He said he would do what he’d done hundreds if not thousands of times in his career: he would tell the press, “You’re here to get a picture. I’m here to see that everything is done in a way that doesn’t cause embarrassment or turn this into a zoo. Let’s work together.”

  Korten arranged with Hoverstock to have the entire congregation leave the church by the front door, which opened onto the street, not the side door, which was usually used. That way the press would get their pictures and the integrity of the service would be preserved.

  On Sunday, January 5, I attended church, and again I was late. I parked in the back and walked around the building. There, standing out by the side, was Jim Barbee, a parishioner. He gave me a hug—something he’d never done before. As we hugged, I looked over his shoulder and saw a sea of cameras. Behind them was another sea of satellite trucks.

  I was taken aback. I’d never have imagined it. I was speechless.

  Jim stayed outside, and I went upstairs to the balcony. That Sunday, the bishop was there. Later I found out that Burt Womack, the bishop’s right-hand priest, had been scheduled to visit and bless the new members, but he had a medical emergency. That’s why the bishop was at St. John’s that week.

  The bishop said he was there to support Rol. He talked about the dignity of suffering, that God was with the family, and that God was also with the person who had committed this murder.

  Rol’s voice was husky that day, as if he had a cold. He said the only things holding him together were his cup of tea and his cross. Then he told the congregation that there had been a lot of unkind talk on the radio. He wanted us to know that the Ramseys had nothing to do with the death of their daughter. He asked the congregation to form a corridor along the path outside the front door of the church to show support for the Ramseys as they exited.

  When the service was over, Barbara Fernie came out with Patsy on her arm. John and the rest of the Fernies were behind them. I left the balcony.

  As I walked out the front door, I saw everyone lining up. A stranger was helping them form a line. I later learned that he was the Ramseys’ press representative. I was startled. I stood aside, and without really thinking, I became part of the corridor and the gawkers.

  The Ramseys stopped at the front door and talked to the bishop before they walked down this corridor formed by the congregation. They looked devastated. Patsy was limp, possibly because she was sedated. But what really broke my heart was seeing Burke. He came out first, with a little friend. These two little boys with all these crushing people around. That wasn’t fair.

  At coffee, I saw the Ramseys as people for the first time. They were surrounded by friends and well-wishers. I didn’t speak to either Rol or the Ramseys. Somehow I felt there was something shameful about all of this. All of it—the case, the press, the church’s place in it. Even if you had nothing to do with it directly, it wasn’t good. Then John Fernie pulled his car around in the alley and they all left.

  A few minutes later, everyone was talking about the media, calling them sharks. I remember that there was a universal disgust.

  When I left by the back door, suddenly somebody with a camera jumped out at me from behind a bush. I look nothing whatsoever like Patsy.

  As I drove home, I started to understand the terrible conflict of interest I felt. I thought church members would feel ill at ease talking to me. If you’re devoted to the free access of information in this society—which you are if you work for a newspaper—and you also have confidential information from fellow church members, there’s a direct conflict of interest.

  That night I saw the TV coverage of the scenes at church. I was appalled. It looked so staged. I felt sorry for Rol. He seemed to be a fly caught in a web. I didn’t know what to think of John and Patsy. Everyone looked horrible. What happened at St. John’s that Sunday was clearly orchestrated. It was not spontaneous. The church had been used.

  But the media became the thing the members focused on. And that’s when my conflict became the most excruciating. I felt violated. By the press. By my own church. I felt like my church was just looking for somebody to hate. They really wanted to hate whoever had committed this crime, but they didn’t know who that was, so the media was the next best target.

  Later I asked a reporter friend of mine, “How did this happen?” He told me he’d gotten a call from Pat Korten, the Ramseys’ press representative, telling him to arrive at St. John’s at a certain time. He said everyone had been called.

  The hypocrisy was clear: Korten had us form a cordon in order to shield the Ramsey family from the media circus that he himself had instigated. I felt the church had fallen into the hands of a master manipulator.

  —Niki Hayden

  I was standing out there that Sunday, taking pictures for my paper. I knew Pastor Rol. He looked at me the same way he was looking at all the media—with complete contempt.

  When most of the press had left, he came over to me. “Why do you have to do this?” he asked. I told him that this was my job. I had to put food on my family’s table.

  He didn’t respond. He seemed not to understand me. Then I added, “I’d much rather be photographing elk in the mountains. That’s what I really like to do.”

  —A news photographer

  7

  On Sunday morning, January 5, John Ramsey was still angry about what Patsy had been put through the previous day when she gave her second handwriting sample at Pete Hofstrom’s home. However, as he had promised, he gave four of his own samples to the police before going to church with his wife.

  Now that the Colorado Bureau of Investigation had determined that the ransom note was written on a pad that came from the Ramseys�
�� house, the police had to obtain unsupervised and casual handwriting samples from the family and their friends. Analysts would need a variety of specimens to compare with the ransom note. Just before the Boulder detectives left Georgia, they asked the Roswell police to search Don and Nedra Paugh’s garbage for the family’s handwriting samples and any other useful evidence that John and Patsy might have left behind.

  Meanwhile, Detectives Gosage and Harmer had gone to Charlevoix, Michigan, to search the Ramseys’ summer house, a two-story white Victorian overlooking Round Lake, where they moored a powerboat, the Grand Season. They kept their sailboat, the Miss America, at nearby Lake Charlevoix. The detectives were looking for evidence that someone had attempted to contact the Ramseys with the intent of harming them. The police hoped that the Ramseys’ caller ID telephone devices, answering machine tapes, computers, or mail might hold some clue about who might have murdered JonBenét. Perhaps there might be other evidence related to the crime scene. Also, they would contact several people about the Charlevoix Little Miss pageant. The police were hoping to learn more about JonBenét’s pageant activities. In all, the detectives stayed in town for three days. They discovered nothing useful.

  When DA Alex Hunter was briefed about the case, he took an interest in the pageant aspect. He learned that Pam Griffin, who sewed JonBenét’s pageant costumes, had been the first to shed light on the subject, when Mason interviewed her the day after the murder. Since then the police had discovered that a dozen or so families in Boulder County participated in pageants. Hunter asked to see the pageant video of JonBenét that was making headlines. He knew nothing about children’s beauty pageants and had never seen such a display. The tape made him blush.

  The police had found out that few of JonBenét’s school friends or their parents had been invited to watch her compete. The pageants were a separate world from the rest of the Ramseys’ life.

  During the winter of 1995 and the first months of 1996, JonBenét had competed in her first pageant, at the Twin Peaks Mall, just twenty minutes from Boulder. The judges ignored her. Not long afterward, Patsy entered JonBenét in the Colorado State All Star pageant in Denver. John, Patsy, Nedra, and Burke were in the audience to cheer her on.

  Pam Griffin told the police that when she first spotted JonBenét performing at the All Star pageant, she saw that Patsy didn’t know how to apply pageant makeup or style her daughter’s hair. When JonBenét presented herself in front of the judges, she mouthed oohs and aahs and rolled her eyes in a very amateurish way. Even so, Pam thought she showed promise. Pam, who was there to watch another six-year-old whose costumes she’d designed, introduced herself to Patsy, and they realized they lived only twenty minutes from each other. Pam suggested that she could make a few alterations to the party dress JonBenét was wearing. Patsy accepted the offer. “Do whatever you need to do to make it look better,” she said.

  Patsy enjoyed visiting Pam Griffin’s simple home in Longmont. She would walk in, kick off her shoes, and watch several seamstresses assemble costumes in Pam’s basement workshop. Sometimes Patsy would bring lunch for everyone. Other times she would sit out on the patio with Pam and talk about her battle with cancer or her worries over JonBenét’s incontinence. Patsy told Pam that JonBenét often waited until an emergency was imminent and as a result was still having accidents. Pam said that when her own daughter, Kristine, was small, she also used to wait until the last possible second and sometimes miscalculated. Patsy complained that JonBenét had frequent infections that were hard to clear up because her underpants were always wet. JonBenét would often fall asleep in her bedroom in front of the TV set, she said, and Patsy would wake her up at around midnight to make sure she used the bathroom. Sometimes Patsy was just in the nick of time, but sometimes she was too late. Pam understood how aggravating that could be for a mother.

  In all, Pam Griffin made half a dozen outfits for JonBenét, some of which cost as much as $600. Several of the outfits were not typical pageant attire but more like theatrical costumes. One day Patsy’s mother, Nedra, who occasionally came to Pam’s house with Patsy, showed her a photograph of an outfit with marabou and glitter. Nedra said it was just right for “Patsy’s doll baby,” as she liked to call JonBenét. She thought it would be perfect for the “Anybody from Hollywood” category at the next pageant, where the children could dress as Shirley Temple or Charlie Chaplin or any other star—or, for example, a Las Vegas Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, which Nedra thought would be perfect for JonBenét.

  When JonBenét was at Pam’s house, she loved to look over Kristine’s collection of pageant crowns. One was displayed in a cabinet by the Griffins’ front door, and two others sat under a blue light in a waterless fish tank near the stairs to the basement workshop. Soon JonBenét knew all about the various types of crowns. Standard crowns, metal circlets with scalloped top borders, often elaborately decorated, were usually awarded to division winners. Kristine’s pink “bucket crown,” a standard crown with a fabric cap enclosing the center, was the prize of all prizes, presented only to the overall pageant winner.

  Kristine, a high school senior, loved to coach JonBenét. She taught her the walk, the wave, and the pageant poses on a small mock runway in her basement. The girls giggled, surrounded by the hundreds of costumes Pam was working on for girls all over the country. Off to the side was one of Kristine’s 8-foot-high trophies. When the girls got tired of pageant practice, they would plop down on the couch and play Nintendo, even though Patsy was paying Kristine $20 an hour for pageant lessons.

  On June 1, 1996, JonBenét appeared in the Royal Miss state pageant in Denver and a month later in the Gingerbread Productions of America pageant, where she won her division title, Mini Supreme, Little Miss Colorado. JonBenét loved hanging out at pageants and playing with the other kids. When Nedra was there, she would give each of the children playing with JonBenét a dollar to buy cookies. Patsy gave presents of hand lotion to all the little girls.

  Most pageants include a “Most Photogenic” or “Photo Portfolio” category, where the entrants are judged solely on their photographs. Pasty decided it was time for JonBenét to have a portfolio, and Pam Griffin recommended a photographer, Randy Simons, who could make a six-year-old look twenty. When a pageant favored the seductive look, Pam told Patsy, Simons was the best.

  On the July Fourth weekend, Patsy entered JonBenét in the Royal Miss pageant in Denver’s Sheraton Hotel. Patsy, her sister Pam, and Nedra all attended. During the three-day pageant, Patsy did a lot of socializing with the other mothers. There was a pizza party, a “Your Favorite Star” party, and a party where all the mothers and daughters dressed alike. Tammy Polson, one of the mothers, talked to Nedra, who chatted cheerfully about “her girls.” That’s how Polson learned that Patsy and her sister Pam had both competed in the Miss America pageant.

  In the Denver event, JonBenét’s song and dance routine and makeup were perfect. Everyone at the pageant considered her a strong competitor. Mark Fix, a photographer, could see that she wanted to win. He couldn’t put his finger on how he knew it, but her desire to win was obvious, he said.

  JonBenét won overall in her division but missed the best-in-pageant prize that she wanted. Though she was disappointed that she took home only a small trophy, she didn’t cry.

  The Gingerbread nationals were scheduled for August 1996. Pam offered to take JonBenét to the pageant, since it conflicted with the Ramseys’ family reunion. Patsy said no thanks, Pam told the police. JonBenét had to be with her family, Patsy said. This would be true for any pageants that conflicted with family events. Moreover, when the Royal Miss nationals moved to Las Vegas, Patsy told Pam that John didn’t want his six-year-old daughter exposed to Vegas.

  The Ramseys spent the summer of 1996 in Charlevoix and Atlanta, where JonBenét entered the Sunburst pageant, which cost Patsy over a thousand dollars in entry fees. JonBenét was first runner-up in each of the nine categories in her division, but once again she missed out on the overall title. Her perform
ance, Pam said, was still a big accomplishment. It was her first experience competing against top-of-the-line entrants—southern girls who already held numerous titles.

  After Sunburst, both Patsy and Nedra called Mary Clark, the pageant director. They wanted to dissect every detail of JonBenét’s costumes, music, and performance. Exactly what were the judges looking for? How could they hone a competitive edge for JonBenét? It was obvious to Clark that Patsy was ready to spend any amount of money, go to any length, to ensure a win for her daughter.

  Kristine said that JonBenét often gave her prizes away to newcomers who hadn’t received any. But unlike many regulars on the circuit, she didn’t appear at pageants she’d previously won simply to present trophies to new winners. Instead, Patsy had JonBenét compete all over again at those pageants.

  One day Patsy suggested to Pam Griffin that they make a few dresses to have on hand for kids who showed up in “civilian” clothes. Patsy said she didn’t want some little girl to feel humiliated. Pam felt that Patsy was a genuinely kind person but also knew that Patsy always wanted to make the best possible impression on people.

  On December 17, JonBenét entered the All Star Kids Christmas pageant at the Airport Holiday Inn outside Denver. Her parents watched her win several titles, including Little Miss Christmas. When it was all over, John carried all her trophies and costumes to the car. It would be her last pageant

  I’ve thought a lot about JonBenét’s death. It’s true that if a child is found dead in her own home, that alone makes the parents suspect. I don’t understand why the police didn’t immediately have officers come and examine John and Patsy’s bodies for scratches or whatever. Why would you not do all that? I was a registered nurse; I know it’s not wrong to suspect a family in a case like this.