Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

by Lawrence Schiller

  Though Hunter remained calm, Wise could see that it took great effort on his part.

  “I can’t believe how you respond to those people,” Eller continued, referring to Hofstrom’s handling of the Ramseys’ attorneys. “You’re such a Goody Two-shoes.”

  The way Hofstrom remembered it, Eller had asked him to get a second handwriting sample from the Ramseys, who didn’t want to cooperate with the police because of Eller’s attempt to withhold their daughter’s body. Hofstrom had met with Bryan Morgan, and on January 4 Patsy Ramsey had given the detectives her second handwriting sample at a neutral location, Pete Hofstrom’s home. Now the commander was turning the incident against Hofstrom.

  Wise could see that Hofstrom was furious. Meanwhile, Koby sat there Buddha-like, as if he were a disinterested party rather than the chief of police presiding over an increasingly notorious and baffling homicide, the same chief whose answering machine chirped, “Hi, this is Tom Koby. It’s a beautiful day here in Boulder, and I hope it’s beautiful where you are too. Leave a message, and I’ll call you back.”

  “I can’t believe you used written questions,” Wise felt obliged to say, referring to Arndt’s December fax to Bryan Morgan, even though by now Wise had learned that Hofstrom had approved Arndt’s actions. Eller ignored him and said to Hofstrom, “You’re so clubby. The handwriting samples should have been taken at police headquarters, not at your house.”

  Hofstrom barely said a word. Finally Hunter spoke up. He asked Eller to explain how exactly the police and the DA’s office would move ahead with day-to-day business.

  The police would do what they determined was right, Eller told him. If they had any questions or needed any legal advice, they’d call. But they would no longer share information.

  Hunter knew he was facing a common problem. A colleague of his had once put it this way: “The cops are where the rubber meets the road, but the DA is where the Constitution meets the cops. The conflicts are endless.” Endless, yes. But not usually so acrimonious.

  On February 6, Alex Hunter’s elderly mother, Virginia, died suddenly in the Boulder nursing home to which she’d just been moved. A diabetic, she had been given a glass of prune juice, which has a high sugar content. She had died almost immediately. Hunter’s two sisters flew in from the East Coast to attend the memorial service, but he felt unable to grieve for his mother properly amid the almost hourly crises of the Ramsey case. After the family had spread their mother’s ashes in the mountains along the Continental Divide, Hunter went back to work. It wasn’t long before he was comparing his own situation with John Ramsey’s.

  When Ramsey had lost his daughter Beth, he wasn’t under public pressure and, as Hunter understood the situation, had been able to grieve properly. Now, after JonBenét’s death, he appeared composed in public, though more than likely he couldn’t grieve properly either, thought Hunter. Patsy, on the other hand, expressed her pain openly—anytime, anywhere.

  Sheriff’s patrol deputy Kevin Parker was working traffic on February 10 when he responded to a possible felony–menacing call. As Parker pulled into the parking lot at 4939 North Broadway, just north of Boulder city limits, he found Jay Elowsky handcuffed and sitting in the backseat of a Boulder police car. A silver baseball bat and a 40 Caliber Sig Saur pistol had been found in a search of his BMW. Most cops knew Jay Elowsky, who owned Pasta Jay’s restaurant on Pearl Street.

  The Ramseys had been staying at their friend Jay’s house since returning from JonBenét’s burial, and the media had been relentless, constantly shooting photographs through the windows of his home from a dirt berm nearby.

  Lee Frank, a soundman working that day for NBC News, and his cameraman had been standing on the berm that morning, waiting to see if the Ramseys would come out. When they saw Elowsky’s BMW back out of the driveway, they returned to their van parked in a lot behind the berm. Just then Elowsky pulled into the lot, got out of his car, and started screaming and cursing. He was wielding a baseball bat. Frank took refuge in a nearby engineering firm and called 911. His cameraman ran in the opposite direction. A moment later, two men left the engineering firm and Elowsky mistook them for the men from NBC. One of the men, after seeing Elowsky with a bat, picked up a pipe and went after him. Elowsky ran back to his car and buckled on his fanny pack, which held a gun, just as the Boulder police responded to Frank’s 911 call. Elowsky was immediately apprehended.

  Now, sitting in the patrol car, he still didn’t understand that he had gone after the wrong men. The man with the pipe said Elowsky had threatened him and his friend with a gun. He wanted Elowsky jailed.

  Sheriff’s procedure required Kevin Parker to talk to those inside Elowsky’s house to find out what had preceded the incident. Since the Ramseys were involved, Parker’s captain told him to call Pete Hofstrom in the DA’s office.

  The officers would have to speak to Patsy Ramsey, who, according to Elowsky, was at home in his house. Hofstrom reached Patrick Burke, Patsy’s attorney, in his car. As it turned out, Burke had just left Elowsky’s home with Patsy. Burke explained the situation to Patsy, and she said that she would talk. The Boulder police had wanted to talk to the Ramseys for weeks, and now Patsy was coming in to speak to the sheriff’s department. Kevin Parker knew he had a hot potato on his hands.

  Since January 3, John, Patsy, and Burke Ramsey and Don Paugh and his daughter Pam had all been living in Jay Elowsky’s home. Nedra and her daughter Polly would also come and go. Elowsky didn’t mind giving his life over to his friends. At a time when the Ramseys were unable even to set foot in a market to do their own grocery shopping, he offered them the full use of his large home and spent hours talking to John and Patsy.

  John told Jay about selecting JonBenét’s casket and about how he’d wept when his brother had asked him to choose the color. When they were alone, Jay held John in his arms. They talked about God and how He would provide for them and how God was caring for JonBenét even now. Jay would repeat again and again that the promise of her life had not been lost with her death.

  Sometimes members of St. John’s stopped by and brought food, and on most days Rev. Hoverstock visited. One day Patsy saw someone on a TV talk show say that she should be arrested. The studio audience cheered. Patsy cried.

  Jay tried hard to cheer up his friends. Once in a while he would open the door and holler out to Patsy and John, “Honey, I’m home!”

  Now, Patsy entered the Justice Center by the backdoor with her attorney. She was wearing sunglasses, a sweatshirt, and jeans and was obviously trying to avoid looking like the well-groomed Patsy Ramsey familiar to TV viewers. Jeff Hendry, a sheriff’s sergeant working with Parker, thought that nobody would recognize her if she walked down the street in those clothes. To Hendry, she didn’t look like a former beauty queen.

  Hofstrom, Patsy, Hendry, Parker, and Patrick Burke were all squeezed into Hofstrom’s modest office, which was neutral territory for this high-profile witness. Parker sat on one side of Hofstrom’s desk, and Patsy took a guest chair on the other side. Her lawyer, Burke, sat on the edge of the credenza.

  With her sunglasses off, Patsy looked drawn and medicated, Parker thought. He knew that Patsy had lived in Atlanta, but she didn’t know that he was from Marietta. He began by telling her what had happened: Jay was in jail. Parker said he had to know what had happened before Jay left the house. He asked if she’d seen any media people outside the house.

  Patsy said she didn’t like the press and started to cry. She said that she hated being followed and photographed through the window blinds at Jay’s house. She couldn’t go to a store without being photographed. Enough is enough, she kept saying.

  To Parker it was clear that Patsy couldn’t deal with the interview, and he let her know that he was there to help with her problems.

  Burke, her attorney, was silent and let Patsy talk.

  Patsy told Parker that Jay had left the house to take a box of sandwiches to a homeless shelter. She didn’t see him take a bat. Later when she heard pol
ice cars and saw Jay’s car being towed away, she called her attorney.

  Hendry could see that Parker was working Patsy well. She was talking freely.

  Then she told Parker that someone had broken into her house and killed her daughter. “There is still a murderer loose in the city,” she said. “You know, my little girl was murdered. All these people are hounding us instead of trying to find the murderer. Somebody broke into our house, you know, killed my little girl,” she repeated.

  Burke seemed nervous, but he let Patsy continue. Hendry noticed that she cried when she talked about the media but not when she talked about her child’s killer. Patsy kept going back to JonBenét’s death. “Somebody breaks into my house, kills my little girl.” Then she said it again in a flat, matter-of-fact way, as if by rote, Hendry thought. If Patsy wanted to talk, Parker and Hendry certainly weren’t going to stop her.

  Suddenly, Burke got up and placed himself between Parker and Patsy. He didn’t say a word, just looked hard at Patsy while she pulled herself together. That ended the interview.

  Burke had been there to make sure that Patsy didn’t say too much, and Hendry had been there to make sure that Parker couldn’t be accused of overreaching. Patsy was being interviewed as a witness, not as a suspect. They accepted that whatever she had said about JonBenét that afternoon could not be used against her if she were put on trial.*

  During the interview, Hendry felt that Patsy had knowledge of the crime and wanted to talk. He thought John and Patsy were responsible for their daughter’s death somehow, but which one killed her and which one was covering for the other—that, he didn’t know.

  It would be Hofstrom’s job to charge Elowsky. John Stavely, a Boulder attorney, represented him. During the precharging negotiations, Stavely laid out all the mitigating factors: he began with a story of the poor guy besieged by the media.

  Hendry had heard this kind of thing before, and he knew that only rarely was someone in Boulder charged with what he had really done. As for how often a criminal was convicted for what he had really done…well, that was even more rare. Hendry was a cop. He believed that if you broke the law, you should be punished, and without that—well, according to Hendry, without that, you have Boulder.

  Two months later, the Daily Camera published an editorial on Elowsky.

  PASTA JAY AND THE LAW

  Did Jay Elowsky receive special treatment when he ran afoul of the law in Boulder?

  With all due allowance for the pressure Elowsky was under, there’s no excuse for his actions as described by the police.

  Under a proposed agreement with the Boulder D.A.’s office, Elowsky would plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of menacing.

  The charge is hardly trivial—penalties can include time in jail—but it generated charges of favoritism and “justice for the rich.” Seizing on the remark of an assistant D.A., who reportedly told one of the victims that a felony conviction could cost Elowsky his liquor license and jeopardize a business loan, some complained that this man was treated differently because of his wealth and connections.

  But hold it. The only way to know whether Elowsky received special treatment is to ask a simple question: Compared to what? How are other cases treated in Boulder? If the critics had asked, they’d know that he wasn’t treated differently at all.

  The usual practice in Boulder is this: If you didn’t commit the crime with a gun or a knife, and if you have no prior criminal record, you’re likely to end up with a misdemeanor charge the first time around.

  There’s not a scrap of evidence that this agreement was reached because a liquor license was involved. They did for Elowsky what they have done for many other defendants, and what any competent, reasonable district attorney’s office should do: They treated him as a human being.

  In 1996, according to prosecutors’ records, 65 of 151 menacing cases involved defendants who, like Elowsky, had no prior record and didn’t use a gun or knife. All 65 resulted in misdemeanor menacing charges.

  You can argue that the usual practice is a mistake. You can argue that it was a mistake in Elowsky’s case even if it was the right call in 65 others. But the only way to back up the charge that Elowsky’s case was tainted by favoritism is to ignore relevant facts.

  Elowsky received a year’s probation and was required to spend two weekends on a Boulder County Jail work crew performing community service.

  Back in ’90, I met CU’s football coach, Bill McCartney. I knew he was a religious man. I’d read his book, and I went and heard him speak. He was talking about men who give up their souls for financial gain. That sounded like me. I had been raised a Lutheran, but I was still living an immoral life while trying to find something. What do they say? I was burning the candle at both ends. Then one day I dropped to my knees. My heart literally gave out. I’d had a heart attack.

  Coach Mac was there when I needed him. He made a vow to me that he would see me once a week to guide me to Christian maturity. And he kept his promise. Nothing happens overnight. It took years for me to change. I always knew about God, but I never pursued a relationship with Him. Mac was somebody who could teach me how to do that. Mac was Moses to me. He sought God’s heart and commands and taught those to me. He taught them to a lot of football teams. Now, through the Promise Keepers, he’s teaching them to men all over the world.

  Earlier in 1992, I met John Ramsey. He was moving his business to Boulder and came into the restaurant quite often. He became interested in my place. Said he’d like to open a restaurant like mine in Atlanta. Something that could be franchised. I said to myself, Boy, that is exactly what I want to do. I want to be the next McDonald’s! I showed him the kitchen. Took him to my other place, in Breckenridge.

  John is a gentle man, very soft-spoken. Very smart. He started an operation in his basement in Atlanta and built it into a billion-dollar business in less than ten years. I was, like, thirty when I met him. And someone like him was interested in what I was doing. Blew me away. I said, Holy cow, this is someone I can learn from. When I had my heart attack, after my surgery he flew me to Michigan so I could recover at the home of my parents.

  John’s a great family guy. And we talked about that. “The second time around,” he said, “you know, it’s great. It’s really great.” He enjoyed his kids. It was never rush here or rush there or the kids are taking too long to get ready, the kids are taking too long to eat. None of that. He was just enjoying the moment. He is a man with a lot of patience.

  He was also, like, a business consultant to me. We’d discuss how to plan and structure growth. Ramsey gave me a lot of time, and he wasn’t even a partner. Then John and Mike Bynum set up an advisory board for me, which included eight high-powered businesspeople. Our mission was to make Pasta Jay’s grow.

  I started to try to be like them. I knew I had a good product. The sauce was the key. You could put my sauce on dog food and people would eat it.

  In 1996 my lease ended; I had to move. For a while, I scrambled. By then I’d opened four other places, and the Boulder place was carrying them, supplying all the expansion money. But I had to close Boulder, and I had to pay vendors and meet payroll. I had a sense of impending doom.

  John and Mike stepped up and said, “We’ll loan you the money. We’ll invest in you for a portion of the business.” And I was able to open a new place at the foot of the Pearl Street Mall.

  That was a relief. I’m not alone now. I’d been making decisions alone for nine years, standing or falling by them. Now I have partners. We have a game plan. We’re going to sink or swim together.

  And by then I had my religion. That was one common bond between John Ramsey and myself.

  After JonBenét died, the Ramseys stayed in my home for almost eight weeks. It was a difficult time for all of us.

  —Jay Elowsky

  INTERVIEW SITE AT ISSUE

  Boulder police have declined to meet with the parents of JonBenét Ramsey unless they come to police headquarters, which they will not do, Ramsey family
spokesman Pat Korten said.

  “Are we willing to negotiate the terms of such an arrangement? Of course we are, and we always have been,” he added. “While we’re happy to talk, we’re not going to come to police headquarters.”

  —Kerri S. Smith and Mary George

  The Denver Post, February 11, 1997

  When The Denver Post reported that negotiations were taking place for the Ramseys to be interviewed, John Eller immediately told Pete Hofstrom that he suspected leaks to the media were coming from the DA’s staff. The cord tied loosely around JonBenét’s right wrist, the near-perfect match of Ramsey’s bonus to the ransom amount demanded, the inclusion of the acronym SBTC in the ransom note, and the fact that the killer seemed to have wiped JonBenét’s body with a cloth—all this confidential information had ended up in print. The police, Eller insisted, hadn’t leaked anything.

  When the press heard about Eller’s accusations, they weren’t surprised. In mid-January, Charlie Brennan of the Rocky Mountain News had discovered from an Access Graphics employee that people close to Ramsey were being asked to give handwriting samples containing the acronym SBTC. It was significant because when Ramsey was in the military, he was stationed at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Some investigators thought that SBTC might be a reference to Subic Bay Training Center, although that was not the name the facility was known by.

  Still, Brennan had a hunch that the ransom note might contain the acronym, and he asked Hunter’s office for a confirmation before publishing the story. A member of the DA’s staff confirmed the fact. By John Eller’s standards, that was a leak.

  COPS ASK RAMSEY ‘SANTA’ FOR HAIR SAMPLE

  Bill McReynolds, a former University of Colorado professor who portrayed Santa Claus at a party in John and Patricia Ramsey’s Boulder home December 23, said detectives visited him Friday and collected “non-testimonial evidence” for testing.