She’d spend more time with the children, she said.
No, no, look at the bigger picture, I told her. You can do things to help other women who are suffering the same way. You need to get out and tell your story, how you licked it.
So she offered support to other women. She called them and talked. She’d send people the book that inspired her.
Patsy took this step forward and then took two steps backward. She returned to all her social stuff and pretty much dropped her cancer stuff. She spent a lot of time building up their position in the community. And she worked at her children’s school relentlessly.
One day, in ’95 or ’96, Nedra took me upstairs. “Judith, you’ve got to see this.” She showed me Patsy’s closet. Nearby there was a display—almost a shrine. Pictures of Miss West Virginia. Patsy in every phase of her pageant days. Lots of paraphernalia on the walls. It surprised me.
Then there was the time Nedra pulled this little cowboy outfit out of the closet.
“This is not JonBenét’s,” I said. “What’s it for?”
“Well, Judith, we’re just getting JonBenét into a few pageants.”
“Why would you do something like that?”
“You know, she’s not too young to get started.”
“And what if JonBenét isn’t willing?” I asked. “What if she says, ‘I’m not going to do it!’ How would you respond to that?”
“Oh, Judith, we would never consider her saying no. We would tell JonBenét, ‘You must do it. You will be a Miss Pageant.’”
It was sort of eerie. A little scary. The inevitability of it—from grandmother to mother and now to daughter.
Another time, Nedra was so excited about this little antique chair that JonBenét had picked out in Denver. JonBenét and Nedra had been shopping, and JonBenét insisted on buying this chair. Nedra was so happy that the child had selected something, that her granddaughter was showing signs of exquisite taste.
It was obnoxiously expensive. Thousands. For a child’s chair.
“Well, as long as Mr. Ramsey brings the money in,” Nedra said, “we’ll spend it.”
John would have been happy living in a cabin with log furniture. He often said that in conversation.
Early last November, there was a surprise birthday party for Patsy. Her birthday is in late December, but the family was going to be back east, so the party was in November. Priscilla White organized the entire thing. John told her, “Wherever you want it to be—the sky’s the limit.”
We all met at the Safeway Shopping Center and were loaded into a large bus—all kinds of people. Nedra, Don, John, Patsy’s sisters, the Whites, Walkers, Stines, Fernies, Reverend Rol Hoverstock, and Patsy’s entire softball team. Then the bus drove to their home and parked while John went up to the door. Patsy was flabbergasted.
“Should I change?” were her first words.
“No, no, come along right now,” he told her.
Lots of laughing. Patsy didn’t have a clue where we were going. Patsy and John sat in the back. There was an open bar.
At the Brown Palace in Denver, we had a private room. Fifty people. A band called the 4-Nikators. Sit-down dinner, open bar, huge bottles of Dom Perigon, and even cigars on the tables for everyone. Patsy was striding around big as life, puffing on a cigar like she owned the place.
The MC was a guy in drag—tiara, fluffy fur around his collar. Talked in a southern accent and did a monologue on Patsy—the Patsy Paugh Experience, from birth to the present. The family must have coached him. Lots of in-jokes and innuendo that I didn’t understand. Then at midnight we were back on the bus. Patsy opened her presents on the way back. Everyone else was dropped off along the way, and Patsy and John were left alone on the bus.
That was probably the last time I saw JonBenét alive. Early that evening, before we left Patsy and John’s home, both kids got on the bus to say hello to their grandparents and their aunts and uncles.
—Judith Phillips
Writer: I understand you were out of town when JonBenét was murdered.
Judith Phillips: I was in Chicago over the holidays.
Writer: What did you think when you heard she’d died?
Judith Phillips: I wasn’t surprised that it happened. We’re all given chances to learn significant lessons in our lives, and if we don’t complete that learning process, we will be given that same lesson again—in spades. The death of Beth and then Patsy’s illness affected John and Patsy temporarily, brought them some growth, but they went back to their old routines. They haven’t changed their behavior. If you don’t learn the lesson the first time, it comes back worse the second time, and maybe the third time. It’s always bigger.
JONBENÉT ALL OVER THE WEB
About 1,000 miles east of Boulder, a computer in Kenosha County, Wis., is linked to other computers around the country to bring breaking information to the JonBenét Ramsey Homicide Web Sites—perhaps the world’s most inclusive page on the young beauty-queen’s murder.
The World Wide Web site, created by Ken Polzin Jr., a sheriff’s department detective and city alderman, brings a mass of information to one locale:
Users can peruse stories and timelines on the case.
Video and audio clips are available to those with appropriate software.
A photo gallery brings who’s who images to the screen.
And a variety of news organizations are a click away from followers who prefer unmoderated views on the murder mystery.
—Kieran Nicholson
The Denver Post, February 17, 1997
On February 17, Alex Hunter’s office filed a motion in Boulder County court to prevent the search warrants obtained by the police from being made public until the investigation was complete and charges were filed. Also filed was a fourteen-page brief supporting the motion. It stated, “The owners of the property subject to these searches have not been eliminated from suspicion.”
This was the first time any law enforcement official had gone on record to say that the Ramseys were suspects in their daughter’s death.
In their opposing briefs, attorneys for the media did not sway Judge MacDonald from supporting the DA’s position. “There is a substantial likelihood that disclosure of investigatory information at this initial stage of the investigation would compromise the integrity of the people’s investigation,” MacDonald ruled six days later. The warrants, affidavits, and inventory would be sealed for another ninety days or until an arrest was made. Included in the protective order was the phrase “other documents.” This referred to a list of the people who had traps and taps placed on their telephones by the police.
e-mail Mon, 17 Feb 1997 14:32:28—0700 (MST)
From: Hal Bruff, Dean of the CU Law School
To: Criminal Law Faculty
Alex Hunter has suggested to me that a Ramsey trial might provide a unique opportunity for the Law School to study a trial in depth as it unfolds, draw conclusions about the criminal justice system, and produce an archive of teaching materials. He would cooperate fully; of course we cannot know now whether a defense team would do so. Whaddaya think?
On February 19, Boulder County’s police chiefs and sheriff held their monthly meeting. After the gathering, Sheriff Epp spoke with Tom Koby privately. “You’re appearing to be arrogant with the media,” Epp told him, “so if you’ve made mistakes, they will get you.” Koby said he appreciated the advice, but Epp had the distinct feeling that Koby hadn’t really heard him. That was a shame, Epp thought. In his opinion, Koby was heading for a fall.
Meanwhile, despite Alex Hunter’s continued optimism, time had done nothing to improve the relationship between Pete Hofstrom and John Eller. Hofstrom got the impression that Eller wanted all requests for copies of police reports in writing. In a letter on February 18, Hofstrom had to resort to formal language, notifying Eller that on two prior occasions his requests had gone unanswered. This level of antagonism suggested to one deputy DA that the flow of information from the police was about to st
op.
The investigation continued, however. Detectives Thomas and Gosage were back in Roswell, Georgia, reinterviewing family members. They learned that during World War II James Ramsey, John’s father, was a pilot and received the Distinguished Flying Cross. His mother, Mary Jane Bennet, was a housewife. After the war, Ramsey’s father ran the airport at Michigan City, Michigan, and later became the state director of aeronautics. A strong-willed man, he was known as Czar Ramsey. The family spent their summers in Charlevoix, where they purchased the house that now belonged to John.
Ramsey met his first wife, Lucinda, at Michigan State University and they married before he went into the navy and was stationed at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Before long, they had three children. After John’s mother died and Lucinda’s father died, Ramsey’s father married his wife’s mother. The family remained close until the late 1960s, when Lucinda was prompted to ask for a divorce after John had an affair. Close contact soon resumed, however, and when Lucinda met Patsy, the women became friends.
During the trip the detectives re-interviewed Nedra Paugh and asked for a third handwriting sample.
By now the officers had learned from several baby-sitters that JonBenét had regressed in her toilet training during Patsy’s battle with cancer. In this interview, Nedra confirmed to police that at age six, her granddaughter was still in the habit of asking adults to wipe her when she was on the toilet. It didn’t matter where she was or who the adult was—anyone within shouting distance would do. Some adults, thinking she was old enough to do this herself, stopped answering her calls, and it resulted in soiled underpants. JonBenét’s apparent lack of embarrassment about adults wiping her made the detectives wonder if it had somehow invited activity that led to vaginal penetration.
Did Nedra think JonBenét would have fought an intruder? the detectives asked. “I guarantee you,” she replied.
I’m from Ellenboro, West Virginia. Maybe a thousand people. Two or three churches, a restaurant, and three stores. I lived there before television, and when we got one, all the people on our street would come to our house and watch it. We couldn’t see much, sometimes just shadows.
Patsy was not brought up with a deep religious faith. Actually, the healing power of Jesus didn’t come to us until Patsy moved to Boulder and she met Betty Barnhill, who lived across the street. She’d had a healing experience. It had to do with a dreadful allergy problem. She gave Patsy lots of literature to read, and then one day Patsy was cured of her cancer. She believes she had a divine healing. I’d always heard about divine healing, but we weren’t taught that in the Methodist Church.
John has always believed that what you receive, you should give back to the Lord. He doesn’t attend church without giving. He was raised an Episcopalian, and when they settled in Boulder, John gave St. John’s lots of things they needed—like a new sound system. And when Beth died, he established a children’s Sunday school atrium in her name. JonBenét got her training there from Barbara Fernie.
It was wonderful when we lived in Boulder. You could hear the college band playing from Patsy’s upstairs room. I loved the atmosphere. Patsy and John were beginning to like Boulder. None of the traffic and concrete that there is in Atlanta. They could run out and do an errand in ten minutes. In Atlanta it takes half a day.
Patsy was growing anxious about High Peaks, the school JonBenét and Burke were going to. There were children in some classes who would never be self-sufficient, physically handicapped, but they were being mainstreamed into the classroom. They have a right to be educated, but there were these other intelligent little boys and girls who were growing up to make a living, pay taxes, and they were sitting and waiting. The teacher told me her first obligation was to those handicapped children. And you just wonder how much time in the course of a day is spent on the children who need to be learning so that they can take their place in society. I know the teacher wanted to do more, but there was only one of her and an aide.
JonBenét started to read when she was about three. At first she wanted to be a ballet dancer, then an ice-skater, and finally she told someone she might like to be a veterinarian. On her last trip to New York, in November ’96, she saw Grease, and the MC invited her to dance on stage before the show started. Nobody would ever pass her up. She just had that gleam in her eye. She and her partner didn’t win, but they were runner-ups.
I made several trips to Boulder that last month. One was for the Boulder Parade of Lights that JonBenét rode in. It was cold. I didn’t go to John and Patsy’s Christmas party, because I was in Roswell. Don, my husband, was there and flew back standby on the 24th so we could spend Christmas Eve together.
I spoke to JonBenét Christmas morning on the phone. She was excited.
“What do you like the most about Christmas?” I asked.
“Baking cookies.”
Like her mother, JonBenét loved to bake and decorate cookies. That afternoon she was supposed to make some plastic jewelry with her friend Daphne. My daughter Polly got her that gift for Christmas. And she was excited about going on the big red Disney boat after a few days in Charlevoix. Everything was packed.
I can tell you one thing. Whoever killed that child knew JonBenét’s dog wasn’t going to be in the house that evening. Sometimes Jacques would stay at the Barnhills’ for a few hours and then he’d come back. He was always going back and forth. The killer knew the dog had already been taken across the street to stay with the Barnhills since the family was leaving the next morning for their winter vacation.
There were so many beautiful and wonderful people in Boulder, like the Barnhills, but now I can’t tolerate even thinking of that place. It just makes me ill to even think that someone killed JonBenét in that place.
Now Patsy can never be happy on this earth. But she has to live someplace. We all have to live someplace.
—Nedra Paugh
For seven weeks the police had been interviewing the Ramseys’ family, friends, and business associates without turning up any real suspects. They had finished their background checks on John Andrew and Melinda and had verified commercial airline schedules and private plane flight plans and found no record that either of them had traveled the night of December 25. Their alibis were solid. Besides the Ramseys, the only people apparently still under investigation were “Santa” Bill McReynolds and his wife, Janet; housekeeper Linda Hoffmann-Pugh; part-time reporter Chris Wolf; Bud Henderson, who owed $18,000 to Access Graphics; company executive Gary Merriman; and the Ramseys’ friends Fleet and Priscilla White.
Next would come interviews with pageant photographers Randy Simons and Mark Fix, who had taken pictures of JonBenét. The police wanted to check the two men’s whereabouts the night of the murder; they were also interested in finding out more about Patsy’s and JonBenét’s involvement in the pageants.
On February 20, Detective Harmer interviewed Randy Simons. Simons told her that on June 5, 1996, he had spent an entire day photographing JonBenét. Since JonBenét’s death, his shots and Mark Fix’s runway snaps had been sold to over two hundred magazines and newspapers, and now Simons was being pressured by the media for photographs of JonBenét in more provocative poses. He had never taken such shots, he told the police.
The night of the murder, Simons said, he had been at home alone in Genoa, 120 miles from Boulder.
Simons, a native of Denver, had been a professional news photographer since 1970 and had once worked for the Associated Press as a stringer. Several times he’d almost been killed while covering fires. In 1979 Simons decided he could make a better living—without risking his life—in fashion and advertising photography. When he opened his studio in Denver, upscale retailers like AP&S, Joslins, Fashion Bar, and Miller Stockman became his clients. When she was three, Kristine Griffin became his second child client. By the time she was nine, Kristine’s annual income from modeling probably exceeded his, Simons said.
In May 1996 Kristine’s mom, Pam Griffin, referred Patsy Ramsey to Simons, and she booked h
er daughter for a June 5 shooting. Because JonBenét was only six, Randy set aside only half a day. He knew he’d be lucky to get an hour or two from a child that young.
Patsy brought more clothes than I had ever seen a parent bring. In the makeup chair, JonBenét appeared quiet and shy, not scared. She kept looking at her mother.
In the studio, I shot close-ups with a cowboy hat first, then shots with flowers in her hair, which eventually adorned covers all over the world. Before noon, Patsy went out and got pizza for everyone, and then all of us went on location. I photographed the dance outfit with the polka dots next, then the harlequin dance costume. By one o’clock, JonBenét was tired of wearing the tap shoes, but she never complained about the heat or the bright sun. At the residential subdivision Ken Caryl Ranch, I did the Little House on the Prairie dress—that playful shot of JonBenét hiding behind the tree.
The half-day booking become a full day, and I got tired faster than JonBenét. At the Wilson White Fence Farm in Lakewood, which has a gazebo and carousel horses, JonBenét played peek-a-boo. She giggled and laughed. The wind began to blow, so I made Patsy my assistant. She held a reflector when we did the Little Red Riding Hood photograph. By then, I’d photographed JonBenét in eleven different outfits. She was a neat kid.
It wasn’t long before the tabloids were saying that Patsy had forced JonBenét into some excruciating shots. I never saw anything like that.
I was paid $590 for the day. Patsy gave me a tip of $45. A month later, she ordered $960 worth of hand-retouched prints.
Perfect Murder, Perfect Town Page 24