Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

by Lawrence Schiller

  My scalp tingled and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. I got really upset. Cried. Then my parents told me that Priscilla White had called but didn’t leave a message. When I called her back, she told me it was true. I couldn’t think of any explanation for what had happened.

  —Suzanne Savage

  Charles Elbot, the principal of JonBenét’s school, called Susan Stine and Roxy Walker, two close friends of Patsy’s, whose children also attended High Peaks Elementary School. Elbot wanted them to get a message to Patsy and John: “Let’s get Burke back to school as soon as possible so he can have a normal school experience.”

  Through their friends, the Ramseys expressed serious concern about the school’s security, even though the police had assured the principal that the buildings were safe. The Ramseys had hired a security firm in Denver, which suggested that someone should be with Burke at all times. That wasn’t appropriate during school hours, Elbot said, because it would send the wrong message to the other kids. A compromise would have to be found.

  Toward the end of January, Patsy and John, their security advisers, and a number of lawyers met with Elbot at the Ramseys’ attorneys’ offices in Boulder. Patsy was in a panic about Burke’s safety, and she was also afraid of what the media might do to get to Burke. She told everyone that whoever had committed the crime against her daughter was still at large and might be waiting for an unguarded moment to take action against her son. “I’ve lost one child, and I don’t want to lose my other child,” she said several times.

  Elbot wanted Burke back in class, but he certainly didn’t want the school turned upside down. He pointed out that Burke’s classroom was self-contained and there were no doors opening to the streets. Elbot knew Burke would be safe, but he also knew he had to create an environment where Patsy would feel that Burke was safe.

  By the end of the meeting, they had agreed that an electronic alarm system would be installed at the school. Parents who regularly volunteered their time to the school would each carry a small transmitter that could signal both the police and the school office. Burke’s teacher only had to push a button in her classroom and someone would be there.

  A volunteer parent would stand guard outside Burke’s classroom door. At recess and lunch, when he was outdoors, another volunteer would be within a few feet of him at all times. These precautions would continue until the last day of school.

  After Burke was interviewed on January 8, the police wondered if he had held back any information about JonBenét’s death. Burke’s return to school sent a strong message to the police and the FBI. They were certain that parents who knew their child had relevant but concealed information would not allow him to get involved in a situation where he could talk freely to others. If he had secrets, Burke could easily share them with classmates he trusted. Burke’s return to school seemed to close the door on the possibility that he knew something he hadn’t told investigators.

  BEAUTY QUEEN’S NANNY TELLS ALL

  SHOCKING SECRETS BEHIND THE DOOR OF MILLIONAIRE’S HOUSE OF HORROR

  “My hand trembled and my blood ran cold as I wrote out the word ‘BEHEAD’ in a felt-tipped pen while the police hovered over me. I knew then that JonBenét’s killer had threatened to cut off the head of the beautiful child in his chilling ransom note.”

  In a wide-ranging exclusive ENQUIRER interview, Linda [Hoffmann-Pugh] unveiled intimate details of life in the Ramsey house—and new disclosures about the investigation into the murder that’s sickened America.

  National Enquirer, January 28, 1997

  On January 28, Jacqueline Dilson, who worked at the Dakota Ranch, a small New Age retreat and conference center near Lyons, Colorado, sat in the office of her attorney, Larry Mertes. She was telling Detectives Wickman, Gosage, and Thomas and Pete Hofstrom that her boyfriend, Chris Wolf, might be involved in the death of JonBenét. Her description of Wolf’s behavior seemed to fit the profile of someone who had recently committed a crime.

  Wolf had moved in with Dilson in her trailer in July 1995. He had a master’s degree in journalism and worked as a reporter for the Colorado Daily and Boulder County Business Reports. He’d once interviewed Cheryl McGraw, an administrative assistant at Access Graphics, for a business travel story. In December 1995, Dilson said, Wolf had moved out of the trailer, but they continued to see each other. On Christmas Day 1996, Wolf was back living with Dilson. They went to a party together, Dilson said, but later Wolf refused to have dinner with her and her family. At about 10:00 P.M., Dilson said, she went to bed alone. She woke the next morning, about 5:30 A.M., just as Wolf was getting out of the shower. She noticed that his jeans and sweater, which were lying on the floor, were very dirty.

  That evening, December 26, Dilson and Wolf were watching the late news. When JonBenét’s death was reported, Wolf said he hoped “the fucker dies. He was sexually abusing her.” Dilson said he was referring to the girl’s father. The next day, Dilson said, Wolf was extremely agitated. He paced her house all day long.

  Two days after meeting with Dilson, Detective Thomas asked Dilson how he could get in touch with Wolf. That same day, at 11:00 A.M., Wolf was stopped for a traffic infraction by the Boulder police after he left Dilson’s home and just as he entered the city limits. The officer took him to the Boulder police headquarters to be interviewed by Thomas and Gosage, and not the sheriff’s department. By the time Wolf was in the small windowless room with the detectives, he was agitated and uncooperative.

  I don’t remember being out Christmas night. The first I remember of the Ramsey case was reading about it in the Daily Camera on December 27. I never heard of JonBenét. I’ve written for the Business Report all these years and never heard of Access Graphics, and I had no connection to anyone connected with the murder.

  I learned about the sexual abuse of children through a family member who had experience dealing with the subject. That’s why I followed the story. When the Ramseys said on CNN that they wanted to get on with their lives, I thought it was awfully soon for them to be making that kind of statement. I didn’t have much sympathy for them.

  Then one morning, I was driving from Lyons to Boulder and I was stopped by the police just after I passed the intersection where Highway 36 goes left and Broadway goes right. The cop car was just waiting for me. When she came up to me, she already knew my license was suspended for a traffic ticket in June of ’96. I sat there not saying much. She said I had to come down to the police department to get everything straightened out. It sounded a little fishy.

  I got mad when she cuffed me. For a speeding ticket?

  I told her she should be looking for the killer of JonBenét and not pulling me over for speeding. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in an interrogation room with two detectives.

  Thomas and Gosage tried to calm me down, but I was mad. I just went on and on about my suspended license.

  “You do this for us, we’ll do this for you,” was Thomas’s pitch. Otherwise I’d be in jail. Thomas was the negotiator, Gosage the tough guy.

  Thomas pulled out a couple of sheets of paper with typewritten words on them, a blank line underneath each word. The first one was Mr. Ramsey. Then it hit me. I knew exactly what was going on. I just said, “No.”

  I shoved the paper back at them.

  Thomas left the room, and Gosage started playing thug with me. He threatened and tried to intimidate me. “If you don’t have anything to do with this crime,” Gosage said, “what are you afraid of?” It was like he was going to arrest me for murder.

  Thomas came back with a Polaroid camera. That’s when I turned to the wall, turned my back to him. He never photographed me. Someone cuffed me again, twisted my wrists, and I yelled at the top of my lungs. “We’re going to book you for obstruction of a police investigation,” one of the detectives said. Next thing, they were taking me to jail. My wrists hurt for a while.

  I just pretty much went through the process. I was given a ticket for driving without a license, and an hour later I was ou
t.

  A few weeks later, I went to get a copy of my police report and Thomas invited me in. I sat across the table from him and John Eller. “We have no interest in you,” Eller said. I could tell he felt it was his responsibility to say that.

  “Did someone give you my name?” I asked.

  “Yes, someone did.”

  I didn’t want to know who. I just wanted to get the cops out of my face.

  —Chris Wolf

  Chris Wolf would remain a police suspect. Soon he would join the Ramseys’ list of suspects.

  Meanwhile, the Ramseys’ attorneys went on the offensive to counter the public’s growing perception that John and Patsy were involved in the death of their daughter.

  John Douglas, a former FBI criminal profiler, who now worked for the Ramseys, appeared on NBC’s Dateline. His 1995 book Mind Hunter recounted some of the more famous cases he had handled, and it brought him national attention as an authority on profiling. His appearance on Dateline was timed to coincide with the publication of his new book, Journey into Darkness.

  Douglas told Dateline’s Chris Hansen that he had sat across the table from some of the country’s, if not the world’s, greatest liars and that when he had met with the Ramseys for four hours, he left with the opinion that they did not kill their daughter.

  In his new book, he wrote that parents who kill their children usually report them missing and leave a staged scene. When asked by Hansen if this fit the Ramsey case, Douglas said he couldn’t see any staging by the Ramseys. In his entire career, he had never seen a case where a parent put a ligature around a child’s neck or duct tape over a child’s mouth. Also, Douglas told Hansen, parents who kill their children take pains to avoid being the person to find the body.

  “From what I’ve seen and experienced [in this case],” Douglas said, “I say they [the Ramseys] were not involved.”

  Asked about the unusual amount of the ransom demand—$118,000—Douglas said that Patsy didn’t even know the amount of her husband’s yearly bonus. It was deposited electronically into a 401-K pension plan account. “This begins to tell me more about the person who’s responsible,” Douglas said. “This person has a very unique, intimate knowledge about his [Ramsey’s] financial workings. Therefore, the person would have to be somehow related to his employment.” This left a strong intimation that the murderer was probably someone John Ramsey knew.

  10

  On January 30, deputy county attorney Madeline Mason petitioned the court to seal the contents of the autopsy report. The coroner was still working on it, she said, and could not make it public.

  Mason also argued, in a three-page motion, that the police investigation would almost certainly still be in progress when the report was completed and that its immediate public disclosure would probably hurt the investigation. The report, Mason pointed out, would corroborate or debunk various witness statements. If the public—including, of course, the murderer—had all the information, it would be far less useful to the police.

  John Meyer planned to complete his report by February 11, one day before the scheduled hearing on the motion to seal the document.

  EXPERT: KILLER KNEW JONBENÉT

  JonBenét Ramsey knew her killer, and the killer had ready access to the family home, a renowned criminologist told The Denver Post.

  Robert Ressler, who for 16 years was a profiler for the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and the first manager of the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, told the Post that his study of the case—including a visit to Boulder this week—convinces him that the 6-year-old was not killed by a stranger.

  —Howard Pankratz

  The Denver Post, January 31, 1997

  When the Star received a tip on February 5 that John Andrew Ramsey had tried to arrange the death of his half-sister, JonBenét, they passed the information to the Boulder police.

  A sometime police informant had told the tabloid that on the weekend of either Memorial Day or July Fourth 1996, while the Ramsey family was vacationing in Michigan, John Andrew had offered him $10,000 to ram a power boat into a smaller boat that would be carrying him and JonBenét. Supposedly, John Andrew would jump overboard to safety just before impact and JonBenét, he hoped, would be killed. The informant told the Star that he had rejected the offer.

  Detective Jane Harmer was assigned to follow up on the tip. The informant was interviewed by local police in Waterford, Michigan, where he repeated the story he’d told the tabloid. Two weeks later, the Boulder police discovered that the informant had a dubious history. A check of Michigan police agencies revealed that he had come under suspicion—first for possibly planting drugs in an alleged dope house and second for refusing to take a polygraph test to confirm information he had provided in a cocaine investigation. By the end of February, Boulder police had decided that the informant’s accusations were unfounded, and yet another lead in the Ramsey case would go nowhere.

  In Denver, on Wednesday, February 5, Michael Tigar, the lead attorney for accused Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, and Jeralyn Merritt, attorney for Timothy McVeigh, were arguing the reliability of handwriting analysis before federal judge Richard Matsch.

  Alex Hunter took great interest in the proceedings, since he considered the handwritten ransom note the single most important piece of evidence in the Ramsey case. Besides, Michael Tigar was associated with Ramsey attorneys Hal Haddon and Lee Foreman, so his motion in the Oklahoma City case might offer insight into the Ramsey team’s thinking.

  The two defense lawyers representing Nichols and McVeigh were attempting to exclude testimony from the government’s expert witnesses, who would tell jurors that McVeigh’s handwriting matched that of a “Robert Kling” who had signed a rental contract for the truck used in the Oklahoma City bombing. In his oral argument, Tigar told the court that handwriting analysis was “junk science.”

  During the hearing, Judge Matsch said, “The problem with handwriting is that there is no verification-type testing of these opinion results. In addition, there has never been within the discipline any agreement on how to express the results.” The judge added, “There is no standardized nomenclature. Therefore, it seems to me that we should draw the distinction between somebody getting on the stand and saying ‘Yeah, written by the same person, or no, not written by the same person’ versus ‘These are the similarities or these are the dissimilarities,’ and the jury can decide.”

  Judge Matsch asked Merritt whether she would object if a government witness were instructed to note only similarities or discrepancies.

  “I object to it because it is too subjective,” the attorney replied. “When we question these handwriting experts on the stand, you will see that they cannot answer basic questions, such as how many differences does it take before you will say that this is an irreconcilable, significant difference?”

  “That’s the point I made earlier,” Matsch replied, “that there are no standards. And because there are no standards, it’s not verifiable.”

  Later in the proceedings, Merritt added, “It’s not science; and it’s not science because it cannot be empirically tested. It isn’t subject to peer review or publication. There is no known error rate. There is really a dearth of studies.”

  Attorney Tigar added: “The problem is that handwriting analysis, like hair analysis, is one of those fields invented by a small group of people. These people did not have any outside folks criticizing their work. There is the danger of oversell.”

  In the end, the judge ruled that he would not bar the government from presenting a witness to testify about similarities between the signature of “Kling” and McVeigh. But he would not allow any testimony offering definitive conclusions.

  Weeks later, the court issued an even more restrictive ruling, and federal prosecutors dropped their plans to call handwriting analysts.

  In Boulder, Alex Hunter asked his staff to study the limitations they might encounter in presenting handwriting evidence in court.

  On February 7
, Detective Arndt reinterviewed Bill McReynolds and his wife, Janet, upon their return from a long-planned trip to Spain. Again they said they had been at home the night of JonBenét’s death. When Arndt asked what McReynolds knew about JonBenét’s statement to Barbara Kostanick—that Santa would pay her a secret visit the day after Christmas—McReynolds said that though he was Santa at the Ramseys’ Christmas party, he had never spoken to the child about meeting her. McReynolds agreed to give the police handwriting, hair, and blood samples. Several days later, Detective Gosage began a series of interviews with the family members who, according to the McReynoldses, had visited them on Christmas Day.

  That same week, Koby and Eller met with Alex Hunter in his office at the Justice Center. Hofstrom and Wise joined them. Chief Koby said that his department would no longer share critical information on the case with the DA, because Eller thought that they might pass it on to the Ramseys’ attorneys. Hunter was about to defend his office when Eller cut him off. Staring at Pete Hofstrom, he said, “We have the power to kick your ass out of this case, and we may exercise it.”

  Hofstrom knew Eller had the law on his side.*

  “When our job is done,” the commander continued, “we’ll bring it over and deposit it on your doorstep.”

  Hofstrom said nothing.

  “What are you going to do,” Wise asked, “bring us twenty thousand goddamn pages some Friday night and say, ‘We’re arresting somebody Monday morning’? That’s not a good way to run an investigation.”