Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

by Lawrence Schiller

In the early 1990s, Boulder’s “rape crisis team” studied 116 cases of incest and sexual assault on both children and adults. Hunter’s office claimed a conviction rate of 84 percent. In cases involving children, sixty defendants pleaded guilty to some charge, but it was found that only one out of sixty convicted sexual offenders went to state prison. Moreover, Hunter’s office was found to be counting deferred prosecutions and deferred sentences as convictions. Plea bargains that sent first-time rapists into therapy rather than prison enraged Hunter’s opponents. Some speculate that Hunter’s political skill may have served to mute critical voices.

  Some judges agree with Alex Hunter’s opponents that because of the way he runs his office, his deputy DAs don’t have the necessary courtroom skills. With so few cases taken to trial and even fewer courtroom battles in Hunter’s jurisdiction, there is little opportunity for the DA’s staff to acquire courtroom experience. According to criminal court judge Murray Richtel, Hunter’s office is “rehabilitationand treatment-oriented on a conscious level. It’s not a trial-oriented system. The skills aren’t there. That’s not in any sense a criticism; it’s just a fact.”

  One of Hunter’s lessons about the law came from an earlier case involving a child’s murder. Elizabeth Manning’s three-year-old son, Michael, had became what one newspaper called “a punching bag” for Manning’s live-in boyfriend, Danny Arevalo. On December 19, 1982, Manning helped wrap her son’s body in a green blanket and a shower curtain and hid it in an air-conditioning vent. The body was later carried to an irrigation ditch in the dead of winter.

  Before Christmas, neighbors noticed that the child had disappeared and informed the police.

  While the winter snow was still on the ground, Manning was brought before Judge Murray Richtel in a civil proceeding and ordered to tell the police where her child was. She said her son was with friends but refused to say where for fear that social services would take the child away, she said.

  Richtel sentenced Manning to jail for contempt of court, but she still wouldn’t talk. As she sat in jail and refused to disclose her child’s whereabouts, the public was aghast.

  Three months later, on April 8, Manning was released pending an appeal of her sentence. As she left the jail, the police officer in charge of the case, Detective Greg Bailey, told her, “Betsy, you can either be a witness in a murder case or you can be a suspect in a murder case. It’s up to you.”

  The next day, Manning decided to talk.

  “I am going to interview you as a witness in this thing,” Bailey said to Manning. “Because I am not going to advise you of your rights, they [the DA] cannot prosecute you for this.”

  “I’ll do whatever I have to do,” she replied, “to make sure he [Arevalo] pays for what he did to Michael.”

  “Go ahead and tell me what you’ve got.”

  “Mikey’s dead.”

  “Elizabeth,” Bailey said, “you don’t really mean that.”

  “Yes, Danny beat Michael to death.” Manning told Bailey that she had played a major role in her son’s death and had helped hide the body.

  Hunter, knowing that Manning had not been given the Miranda warning and that her statement could not be used against her, took the position that his office “hadn’t agreed to immunity for anyone.”

  The public outrage over the murder and the fact that this mother sat in jail when she knew her son’s body lay exposed in the snow convinced Hunter to file murder and child abuse charges against Manning as well as Arevalo. He took the position that discovery of the body would inevitably have occurred when the snow melted and that the shower curtain would have linked Manning to the crime. She would have been charged, Hunter said, statement or no statement.

  The court ruled against Hunter. Manning’s statement was deemed inadmissible, and all evidence uncovered as a result of her statement, including her son’s body, was excluded. Hunter spoke out publicly against the judge and the judiciary.

  All Hunter could do now was charge the defendants with felony child abuse and assault. Manning, furious with Hunter for prosecuting her, pled guilty and was out in a year. At Arevalo’s trial she refused to testify, and he received ten years for felony child abuse.

  Politically, Hunter had lost.

  For his part, Hunter said that after this and a few similar experiences, he no longer allowed himself to be swayed by public sentiment into trying an unwinnable case, because in the end no one wins. He also believed that to charge an innocent person with a serious crime—and virtually destroy his life—was worse than not filing charges at all.

  Pete Hofstrom, conservative by nature, agreed, and when the DA’s lawyers wanted to file a case that he thought would be lost in court, he usually convinced them not to.

  Despite some horrifying local crimes, the position taken by Hunter and Hofstrom has remained unchanged. In 1990 Michael Bell, an escapee from the state penitentiary, murdered four people indiscriminately. Hunter, who is not opposed to the death penalty, talked to the families of the victims. He explained how the death penalty works in reality—how few murderers are sentenced to death, how many appeals are filed, how many years the process takes. In the end he accomplished something unprecedented: he and Hofstrom persuaded Michael Bell to plea-bargain to life in prison without parole—and saved the victims’ families years of agony during the interminable appeals process.

  Such strategies and philosophies are not to everyone’s liking, but the community has kept Hunter in office. Boulderites seem to agree that he is serving them well.

  Speaking about JonBenét’s murder, Alex Hunter told a friend, “This crime doesn’t have a statute of limitation. We’ll wait as long as it takes to develop a solid case.”

  “You won’t need very much evidence in light of what they’ve done to make your case,” his friend replied, referring to the Ramseys.

  It was at this moment that Hunter understood how emotionally involved local residents had become in the case—and how strong their opinions were. But he also knew that those opinions were based on very little relevant information and no hard evidence, and this frightened him.

  What also bothered the DA, in the final days of February, was that the case was getting harder to solve, not easier. John’s and Patsy’s lives provided no easy answers, no pathology, no pattern of abuse, no skeletons in the closets—in fact, no closets.

  Hunter knew that the detectives were putting in long hours, working six days a week. Some were still in Atlanta, interviewing every member of the family and many of their friends and former business associates. In Boulder they were talking to employees of Stevens Aviation, which maintained John Ramsey’s plane, and Merry Maids, the cleaning company that serviced the Ramseys’ house. The investigation was moving along, but the lack of concrete physical evidence against the Ramseys still hadn’t led Eller to look elsewhere for suspects—not seriously.

  John Andrew Ramsey and his friend Brad Millard had given pubic hair samples, which did not match the hair found on the white blanket covering JonBenét’s body. The investigation of John Andrew and Melinda Ramsey was nearly over. As far as Alex Hunter knew, the older children were no longer suspects, and the Ramseys’ attorneys were demanding that they be publicly cleared so they could get on with their lives. Hunter agreed. It was unconscionable to ruin the lives of these young people because of baseless suspicion.

  It was clear to Hunter that he had no choice but to get his own investigators, who would pursue the case as he and Pete Hofstrom saw fit.

  4

  PATSY RAMSEY HIRES SECOND ATTORNEY

  JonBenét Ramsey’s mother has hired a second attorney, sources close to the investigation said Friday.

  Patrick Furman, a criminal law professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, has joined attorney Patrick Burke to represent Patsy Ramsey, the sources said.

  —Charlie Brennan

  Rocky Mountain News, March 1, 1997

  The Ramsey defense team now included Patrick Burke and Patrick Furman, who represented Patsy, whi
le Bryan Morgan, Hal Haddon, and Lee Foreman represented John. Morgan was the lead attorney for John’s team, and Burke headed Patsy’s team. Among themselves, the attorneys joked that the media were incorrectly thrusting Haddon into the number one spot, but no one minded, because Haddon had the most experience with the press, having been a key advisor to Gary Hart’s failed presidential campaign. Nevertheless, the team worried, because Haddon sometimes lost his temper with the press and held grudges. He looked like a man who could deliver a punch as well as take one.

  The team decided to divide up the media chores. Haddon talked to The Denver Post, Morgan handled the Daily Camera, and Patrick Furman dealt with the Rocky Mountain News.

  “What I need now is a good digger in Boulder,” Tony Frost, the executive editor of the Globe, said to me in my uncle’s Boca Raton home. I was intrigued by the Ramsey case and asked him if I was the type of person he might hire.

  “Yes,” he said immediately. “I take one look at you and I don’t think anyone would think you’re a reporter. At least, not one of our reporters.”

  Frost was in his jogging outfit. I wore my Washington uniform—suit and tie. He’s sweating and I’m sweating. Nevertheless, Frost reminds me of Pierce Brosnan. In his own way, he’s James Bond.

  —Jeff Shapiro

  Jeff Shapiro had told his uncle, Richard Sachs, that he wanted to be a reporter. When Sachs arranged for Jeff to meet Tony Frost, Shapiro rolled his eyes. He didn’t think much of the Globe. He thought its publication of the Ramsey autopsy photos was unethical—sickening, in fact. A few days later, however, Shapiro, twenty-three, a graduate of Florida State University, was on the Globe’s payroll and on his way to Boulder as an undercover investigator. His job was to infiltrate the Ramsey family by getting close to John Andrew, then a student at the University of Colorado.

  On March 2, 1997, Shapiro arrived in Boulder with $2,000. His contact was Craig Lewis, a Globe writer who was already in town. Lewis, a laid-back guy who wore black jeans, black leather jackets, and sunglasses, found Shapiro a rental car and gave him some pointers about Boulder. Then Shapiro was on his own.

  When Shapiro first drove by the Ramseys’ house, he was surprised to see how close it was to the student hangouts on University Hill. Then he discovered that John Andrew’s fraternity house, Chi Psi, was at 1080 14th Street, just five blocks from his father’s home. Shapiro realized that he’d never read that simple fact in any of the press stories. By midday he’d found a room at a youth hostel for $27 a day: no bathroom, white tile floor, a little narrow bed, and a night table. Not very elaborately appointed, but it had a perfect view of John Andrew’s fraternity house. Settling in, he developed a routine. Every evening he visited every bar on the Hill looking for Ramsey’s son. His cover was that he had graduated with a political science degree, couldn’t find a job, and had decided to go to law school at CU.

  Soon he learned that John Andrew was no longer living at the fraternity house, so he moved out of the hostel and into a place at the University Court Apartments that he shared with a couple of students. He liked the small-town campus atmosphere—it was like being in school again. Still, he wasn’t making much progress in finding Ramsey’s son. Then one day, leafing through John Andrew’s high school yearbook, he came across the name Allison Russ. On a hunch, he looked her up and discovered her phone number in the CU directory.

  On the phone Shapiro introduced himself to Russ as Matthew Hayworth, a law student at CU, and said he was interested in the Ramsey case. She was reserved and laughed a little nervously when Shapiro told her that he wanted to help because he thought the Ramseys were probably innocent. “You saw what the LAPD did to O. J. Simpson,” he told her, implying that the Boulder cops might be setting the Ramseys up. Russ soon became a little more chatty. Shapiro gambled. He told her he’d heard from a friend that lubricant had been found on JonBenét’s body, in the vaginal area, and that it was complicating the DNA testing process. He asked Russ to take this information to John Andrew, who could then pass it on to his father’s investigators. Allison said she would.

  Shapiro still had many places to visit in Boulder. Next on his list was Pasta Jay’s. There, he applied for a job—again as Matt Hayworth. He was filling out his application when a college student wearing an Atlanta baseball cap walked in.

  “Hi, I’m John Ramsey,” the student said to the manager.

  Shapiro was in luck. His prey was standing not 10 feet away asking to fill out a job application. Then John Andrew caught him staring.

  “I’m sorry,” Shapiro said. “You just look like someone.”

  “Who do you think I look like?”

  “Are you John Ramsey’s son?”

  “That’s right,” John Andrew said, then asked if Shapiro was a journalist.

  Shapiro said he wasn’t and added, “I think the police are doing to your dad the same thing the LAPD did to OJ. The police can play a lot of games with you. But I’m sure you’ve already found that out.”

  “I know,” John Andrew replied.

  Shapiro completed the job application and left Pasta Jay’s.

  He was furious with himself. He was sure John Andrew would figure out that he’d been the one who called Allison Russ. The next morning he called her and explained a bit more. He didn’t tell her he worked for the Globe, only that his name wasn’t Hayworth.

  “Jeffrey Scott is my real name,” Shapiro said. Then he told her that he’d run into John Andrew. “He’s a nice kid.”

  RAMSEYS ENTER PLEA ON INTERNET

  JonBenét Ramsey’s family has gone online to urge Boulder police to clear her older half-brother as a suspect in the slaying of the 6-year-old beauty princess.

  “It should be made perfectly clear by the Boulder Police Department that John Andrew is not a suspect in this horrible crime,” the family urged in a statement posted Sunday on the Internet.

  “To continue to refuse to do so is cruel to a fine young man and the rest of our family,” said the statement, which was signed by the 20-year-old’s father and stepmother, John and Patsy Ramsey, and his mother, Lucinda Ramsey Johnson.

  —John C. Ensslin

  Rocky Mountain News, March 3, 1997

  As the nation became obsessed with the Ramsey case, some turned to the Internet to keep up with developments. Finding information on-line was easy because of JonBenét’s unusual name. By early 1997, a user could type it into a search engine and receive between three hundred and a thousand matches.

  Most of those who logged on were housewives between the ages of thirty and fifty. Many of them went on-line just after the Ramseys appeared on CNN on January 1, 1997. Some men participated as well. At first everyone simply searched for information from newspapers and other sources. Then people sought out—or created—Web sites and began participating in discussion forums and message boards devoted to the case. There were even parody Web sites, including Gone with the Spin—a look at how the Ramsey camp manipulated the media—and Patsy’s Postcards from Prison—which had photos of Patsy’s prison pageant. Soon there were three hundred Web sites devoted to the Ramsey case.

  Most of those who followed the case on-line had children of their own and were haunted by JonBenét’s death. The regulars became emotionally invested in the case and in their cybercommunity. They supported their on-line friends through events in their “real lives,” but they also bickered about the case. By spring 1997, the regulars had split into groups—the Pro-Rams and the Anti-Rams. Everyone wanted to recruit those in the third group, the Fence Sitters.

  The first discussions started on a bulletin board run by the Daily Camera, with a core group of about two hundred participants, though it often seemed like more. In cyberspace, it’s easy to steal names and hide true identities, and everyone began to wonder if the killer was among the participants. As is typical in cyberspace, conspiracy theories emerged. Pro-Rams were accused of being on the Ramsey payroll and of trying to control the news spin on the Internet.

  By the summer of 1997, ther
e were about a thousand people following the Ramsey case on-line, and they were dedicated. They dug through both mainstream media reports and the tabloids for nuggets of information, and they theorized endlessly. When the Ramseys appeared on television on May 1, 1997, the Boulder News Forum conducted its first real-time transcription of a TV event. The first message transmitted was, “Patsy has a mustache.”

  At 10:00 A.M. on March 3, Bill McReynolds, who was still considered a suspect by the police, met with Detectives Thomas and Gosage at police headquarters for his fourth interview. This time the proceedings were tape-recorded. By now the detectives had finished their background checks on the McReynolds family and friends, and they wanted to see if they had missed something. When this interview was over, however, they hadn’t discovered anything new. Still outstanding were results of McReynolds’s blood and hair samples and an analysis of his handwriting.

  There’s this feeling in Boulder that we’ve got to be protective of our Eden. We can’t have this violation of our community. It means we’ll be cast out of the garden. Boulderites are always looking at their image first—what this story is doing to the image of their town.

  Almost everyone has written stories about me—the Denver papers, the tabloids, and even CNN. I’ve been on lots of TV shows. It’s too late. There’s nothing I can do about it. Lots of people think that I killed JonBenét, that Santa killed an angel.

  Back in ’72, my wife and I led a publicity campaign for George McGovern, which was run by Common Cause. That’s when I met Paul Danish and Ruth Correll. They were among the group that started to clean up the city. Boulder became a place where you could have an aesthetic experience. But maybe it’s been overdone.

  Recently the Boulder Dinner Theater was performing Grand Hotel. Now the city has an ordinance against smoking in public places. They threatened to close down the play because there were one or two smoking scenes. Sometimes I think Boulder is overregulated. Everything is protected. Overprotected. Boulder has become just too precious.