Two and a half months after the Boulder police began investigating John Andrew and Melinda Ramsey, they received the final pieces of evidence that cleared Ramsey’s older children of any involvement in JonBenét’s murder. Bryan Morgan wrote to Detective Thomas on March 4 stating that John Andrew had made an ATM transaction at the QT Store on Roswell Road, in Marietta, Georgia, at 9:00 P.M. on December 25. His friend Brad Millard had been present. To support his claim, Morgan enclosed the ATM transaction slip. He also repeated that Melinda had awakened her brother in the early morning hours of December 26, in time for him to stop at a store and still make an 8:30 A.M. flight to Minneapolis. It was impossible for John Andrew to have flown from Atlanta to Boulder, whether by commercial or private aircraft, commit the murder, and return in time to be awakened by his sister in the presence of Brad Millard, who had stayed overnight in John Andrew’s room.
Morgan also wrote that John Andrew hadn’t been in Charlevoix, Michigan, on either the Memorial Day or the July Fourth 1996 weekend. The accusation of a onetime police informant that John Andrew had tried to stage an “accidental death” in order to kill JonBenét was clearly preposterous. Morgan again requested an official announcement that John Andrew was no longer a possible suspect.
By now the police had received the test results from John Andrew and Melinda’s hair, blood, and handwriting. At the time, the only possible match to evidence found at the crime scene was the pubic hair found on the white blanket in the basement, which held some slight similarities to Melinda’s. But her alibi was even tighter than her brother’s, and it was not likely that she had used the same blanket when she stayed with the family. The next day the police informed the DA’s office that they would make a public statement regarding Ramsey’s older children within the week.
Pete Hofstrom was encouraged to hear that the Ramseys’ attorney was corresponding directly with the police. He hoped he would no longer have to be a go-between. Then, Chief Koby received a letter from Bryan Morgan. Presumably, Morgan wanted to deal with Eller’s boss because the Ramseys still hadn’t gotten over the commander’s attempt to withhold JonBenét’s body. Morgan requested a meeting to discuss the pending issues, among them John’s and Patsy’s interviews and the possible waiver of attorney-client privilege in any meeting between the Ramseys, their lawyers, and the police. Koby passed the letter on to Hofstrom, placing him back in the middle. Hofstrom told Morgan that topics discussed in such a meeting would not be used against the Ramseys in court. However, any lead developed or evidence discovered as a result of any discussion could be used in a future prosecution. Hofstrom told Hunter he hoped that these exchanges would lead to the formal interviews the police wanted.
When Hunter returned home on the evening of March 4, he turned on his TV to see district attorney Bob Grant, a member of his task force, on Larry King Live, hosted by Wolf Blitzer. Appearing with Grant were Janet and Bill McReynolds, along with Charlie Brennan of the Rocky Mountain News and Dan Glick of Newsweek. The McReynoldses were responding to rumors that they were suspects in JonBenét’s death. They addressed parallels between their own daughter’s kidnapping, Janet McReynolds’s play Hey, Rube, and the murder of JonBenét.
As the hour progressed, Janet McReynolds became increasingly preachy: “I feel that…the media is saying to this collective community…in some ways she [JonBenét] deserved to die. That, at least, is a message that I am getting: She deserved to die because she was too beautiful. She deserved to die because she was from an affluent family. She deserved to die because she lived in an upscale community. She deserved to die because her family taught her gestures which might be interpreted as sexually suggestive. She deserved to die because she was in beauty pageants…. And to me, that is a crucifixion of an innocent victim.”
Janet McReynolds’s fervent outburst led the police to take an even harder look at her family. They began to search for their old handwriting samples as they awaited the results from the McReynoldses’ blood samples.
POLICE CLEAR ADULT KIDS
HALF BROTHER, HALF SISTER ELIMINATED AS SUSPECTS IN JONBENÉT’S MURDER
John Ramsey’s adult children from a previous marriage officially have been cleared of suspicion in the murder of their half sister, 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey, a city spokesperson said.
The announcement about the Ramsey children marked the first time in the 10-week investigation that police have removed any name from the list of suspects.
Pat Korten, the Ramsey media consultant, posted on his Web site: “The Ramsey family is grateful that police have announced that John Andrew and Melinda are not suspects in the case.”
Other developments in the case…The former lead detective [Larry Mason] in the case was cleared of allegations that he leaked information to the media.
—Elliott Zaret
Daily Camera, March 7, 1997
Although Eller had pushed the FBI out of the day-by-day investigation on the afternoon JonBenét’s body was found, the Bureau’s forensics labs had been analyzing the evidence for the police since January 19, and its Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit (CASKU) was evaluating and profiling the crime scene.
On March 7, Special Agent Gregory Bishea of the FBI’s Chemistry Unit completed his initial examination of the black duct tape, including the yarn/scrim count and the percentage of calcium filler in the adhesive. With this data, the FBI and the police hoped to discover where the tape had been manufactured and when it was distributed. Previously, microscopic fiber trace evidence had been lifted by the FBI from the duct tape, and the source of the fiber was also being investigated.
The efforts of CASKU were not scientifically precise, but its work was important nonetheless. Its profilers studied the physical evidence and all the known circumstances of homicides in order to provide a probable portrait of the perpetrator.
JonBenét was at home in bed on Christmas night in an affluent neighborhood while her parents were supposedly sleeping, which by the profilers’ standards put her at extremely low risk of encountering a stranger who intended harm. Her risk for murder by a stranger was also low because she hardly ever interacted with strangers, her circle of playmates and friends was constant, and she hardly ever played on the street unsupervised. Several of her parents’ friends told police that JonBenét was always with a known adult.
Appearing in child beauty pageants, however, increased JonBenét’s potential risk for meeting death at the hands of a stranger. Pageants exposed her to more potential suspects, including known pedophiles. Even though JonBenét had been found dead at home, the pageant connection couldn’t be ignored. Had some stranger been attracted to her?
Pedophiles are persuasive by nature; they use attention, affection, and gifts to seduce a child, usually over an extended period. Force and violence are rarely involved, and the molester is not usually a stranger to the victim.
But if a stranger had murdered JonBenét in her home, he took a big risk that family members might wake and discover him.
The FBI believed that JonBenét’s vaginal trauma was not consistent with a history of sexual abuse, and they had turned up no evidence of any other type of abuse. The sexual violation of JonBenét, whether pre- or postmortem, did not appear to have been committed for the perpetrator’s gratification. The penetration, which caused minor genital trauma, was more likely part of a staged crime scene, intended to mislead the police.
Kidnappings are almost always committed for money or sex. Rarely can another motive be found. The FBI concluded that if the duct tape over JonBenét’s mouth had been used to silence her during an attempted abduction, the kidnapper would have taken her out of the house immediately. There would have been no reason to stay where the kidnapper could be discovered at any moment. Instead, they theorized, the duct tape too was probably used as part of a cover-up, along with the loosely tied cord found around JonBenét’s right wrist. Whether the duct tape had been placed on JonBenét’s mouth before or after her death could be determined by an examination of the bod
y and tape. Skin trauma would be evident if she had been alive when the tape was applied. Applying the tape after her death would not produce noticeable skin markings. Coroner Meyer had not reported any trauma to the skin around JonBenét’s mouth.
The probable behavior of the offender was an important factor. If the killer did not intend to kidnap JonBenét, he or she must have been there for a reason, perhaps to assault her. But if there had been no intent to kidnap, why did the killer write the ransom note?
The FBI profilers who scrutinized the overall crime scene, the autopsy findings, and the fingerprints, fibers, and blood evidence told the police that the ransom note was the most important piece of behavioral evidence in the case. Of all the elements of the crime, it probably took longest to complete.
The police believed that if the ransom note was written before JonBenét’s murder, that left the door open to the possibility of an intruder, but if it was written after she was killed, it was unlikely an intruder would have stayed to write it. But the FBI and the police could not determine when the ransom note was written.
Once JonBenét had been murdered, the only reason to write the note or to leave it behind was to provide a false motive for the crime. And, to give credibility to the ransom note and a bogus kidnapping, the offender had to make the police believe that JonBenét had been restrained and silenced. That was called staging within staging.
The moment JonBenét died and her body was left in a place where it would be found, the ransom money was lost forever to the kidnapper. If it was a real abduction gone sour, why leave the ransom note? After all, the handwriting might lead the police to the killer. The only reasonable conclusion was that the note had been left behind in an attempt to hide the killer’s identity and the real reason for JonBenét’s death.
If the killer was a stranger, why did he wrap JonBenét’s body in a blanket? Why try to comfort someone who was no longer of use? The dominant sign of hostility toward JonBenét was the use of the noose. Its elevation at every point around the neck was equal in distance from the shoulders, indicating that it had not been tied during a struggle. The FBI had never before encountered this type of violence in a child homicide. No parent who killed a child had ever used a “garrote” for strangulation.
The note, the cord around the wrist, the tape over the mouth, the noose around the neck, and the possibility of penetration all suggested that the killer had no fear of discovery during the crime, though John, Patsy, and Burke Ramsey were asleep in the house. A further analysis of the crime elements led the FBI to conclude that the killer felt comfortable and secure inside the Ramsey home. Few crime elements suggested an intruder or a stranger. Some of the FBI experts thought that the hard blow to JonBenét’s head had been intentional. The injury did not have the characteristics of an accident. Besides, when accidents happen, people usually call for medical assistance. Still, the FBI noted, the blow to the head had not produced any bleeding and might not have been noticed at first. The experts considered an alternate explanation: the offender might have intended to hit a third party, missed, and hit JonBenét by mistake.
The police knew that when all the factors were considered, one scenario would be more compelling than the others. Various pieces of evidence might suggest other theories, but all the facts together could allow for only one. The FBI told the police that whatever theory they settled on must be fact-driven: They could change the theory as new facts emerged, but they could not twist the facts to fit a preexisting theory.
Regardless of the conclusions reached by the FBI profilers, the police were constrained by Colorado law. Behavioral profile analysis was admissible as expert analysis of a crime scene, but nothing about the personality of the presumed offender was admissible in court.
SNOW AT RAMSEY HOUSE LACKED FOOTPRINTS
Police who went to JonBenét Ramsey’s home the morning she was reported missing found no footprints in the snow surrounding the house, sources said Monday.
This is one of the earliest details that caused investigators to focus their attention on the slain girl’s family, police sources said.
—Charlie Brennan
Rocky Mountain News, March 11, 1997
John Fernie was angry when he read Charlie Brennan’s story about footprints. Like many media stories, this one came from an unnamed source and made the Ramseys look guilty. Fernie wondered if the source had provided the reporter with all the facts. He knew that his own footprints were there in the snow that morning. He had driven up the back alley to the Ramseys’ house just after 6:00 A.M. in response to Patsy’s frantic call that terrible morning. He remembered walking along the brick sidewalk to the patio door, looking through the glass panel, and reading a line or two of the ransom note, which was lying on the floor just inside the door. Then he had run through the snow-covered grass, around the south side of the house, to the front door. If the cops had been looking, they would have found his footprints. A year and a half after JonBenét’s death, Fernie told a reporter that the police still had not checked the shoes he wore that day, though a shoe imprint had been discovered next to JonBenét’s body.
Carol McKinley, a reporter for Denver’s KOA-AM Radio, disliked the way some reporters used the word source without further identification. She also noted that nobody was questioning it. In fact, McKinley knew that it was the official silence and resulting information vacuum that had created these endless “sources.” After reading Brennan’s no-footprints-in-the-snow story, McKinley knew that she had to develop sources of her own. One of her friends who was close to a Boulder officer investigating the case agreed to introduce her to the detective.
“I don’t want to know anything you don’t want me to know,” McKinley told him. “I just want to know what this case is doing to your life, what you’re thinking. Let me do a profile on you.”
The officer agreed to be interviewed, but only after McKinley turned off her tape recorder did the real story begin to emerge. She could see that the detective needed to talk about his frustrations. He told her about the problem between Eller and the DA’s office, and how leaks to the press were hurting the investigation, how some of his colleagues had been maligned in the press for months, and how the Ramseys’ attorneys seemed to know everything the police were doing. “You must never reveal my name to anyone,” he told the reporter. McKinley agreed.
“Keep this all under your hat,” the officer told her. Never once, however, did he say that John or Patsy had murdered their daughter.
Before long, McKinley, like other reporters, had found additional sources in the DA’s office, among the Ramseys’ attorneys, and at the CBI. The information she had as a result permitted her to maintain a balance in her reporting. She leveraged information from one source and confirmed it with another.
The day Brennan’s no-footprints-in-the-snow article was published, the CBI gave the Boulder police Bill McReynolds’s DNA test results: On the surface the report seemed to exclude him. His DNA did not match the DNA found on JonBenét’s underpants. Nor did it match some DNA that the CBI had found under her fingernails, which coroner Meyer had clipped and preserved. However, the CBI pointed out that the material found under her fingernails showed signs of contamination and the markers on the DNA typing were weak. The origin of the contamination had yet to be determined. Since handwriting and hair analysis for McReynolds still hadn’t been completed, and Janet McReynolds’s DNA test results were still pending, the couple remained suspects.
While Detective Thomas was reviewing the McReynolds file, his phone rang. It was Allison Russ, John Andrew Ramsey’s friend. She told the detective about the calls from Matthew Hayworth and Jeff Scott. She also mentioned the different phone numbers he had given her. Later in the afternoon, Detective Harmer couldn’t find “Matthew Hayworth” at the youth hostel where Shapiro had first stayed.
At 8:45 the next morning, Thomas tried the second phone number. “I’m Steve Thomas, a detective for the Boulder Police Department, and I’m looking for Jeffrey Scott,” he
said.
Only half awake, Shapiro replied that he’d hoped to hear from a Ramsey investigator, not the police.
“Well, Jeff, I’m sorry,” Thomas said with a laugh. “I’ve heard you have some interesting information. I’d like you to come in so I can interview you, see if it’s important information. And we’re not going to shine any bright lights on you.”
“Do you know about the DNA results?” Shapiro asked.
“I can’t discuss that with you,” Thomas replied.
“Are you aware that someone is saying that John Andrew once tried to hire someone to run a boat over JonBenét?”
“I’ve heard that,” Thomas answered. “Those are the kinds of things I’d like to ask you about. And, Jeff, I need to make sure you’re not any kind of journalist or reporter before I let you into this department.”
Shapiro told Thomas that he knew some guys from the Simpson case, but he wasn’t a journalist. He’d think about a visit to police headquarters.
When Shapiro hung up, he called Joe Mullins, his editor at the Globe, and said that he’d made contact with Allison Russ, John Andrew, and the police. He also said he’d used a false name in identifying himself.
“You lied to the cops?” Mullins asked.
“I’m undercover.”
“You can’t lie to the police. What’s this cop’s name?”
That same evening at Kutztown University in Allentown, Pennsylvania, John Douglas, the former FBI profiler who had been hired by the Ramseys, held a press conference before giving a scheduled lecture. In answer to reporters’ questions, he said he had been hired to determine whether John Ramsey was capable of killing JonBenét, at a time when, according to Douglas, Ramsey’s attorneys weren’t sure if their client was innocent. Douglas said he had never been asked to focus his attention on Patsy and therefore hadn’t profiled her. And the Ramseys’ attorneys, Douglas said, hadn’t asked him if Patsy fit any of his criteria for the murderer. Journalists following the case assumed that Douglas doubted Patsy’s innocence and wanted to protect his reputation now that handwriting analysis had not excluded Patsy—and in fact suggested that she might have written the ransom note.
Perfect Murder, Perfect Town Page 29