At every opportunity, the Ramseys insisted that an intruder had entered their house, citing publicly the missing home keys, pry marks on the doors, and the broken window in the basement. The police felt strongly, however, that none of these points of access had been used. During their initial inspection of the exterior of the house on the day JonBenét’s body was found, detectives had noticed several strands of a spiderweb on the grate covering the window well in front of the broken basement window. It extended from the edge of the grate to some nearby rocks, and this seemed to confirm that nobody had entered through that window recently.
If the police could prove that the partial spiderweb found on the grate had been present before nightfall on December 25 and had not been disturbed during the night, they could rule out the possibility that somebody had used the broken window to enter the house. They also had to know whether it was possible for a partial web to be spun in the time between possible entry by an intruder on December 25 and discovery of the strands by police on December 26. If that was possible, they would have to consider that the window was a likely point of entry for an intruder.
On April 2, Detective Michael Everett of the Boulder PD called entomologist Dr. Brent Opell of the Virginia State University Department of Biology, who was known as Mr. Spider Man. Opell told the police that there are two general types of spiderwebs. The first, which are called cob or funnel webs, once established are constantly reworked and added to by the spider. The second, manufactured by orb-weaving spiders, is regularly replaced by the spiders and can be completed at any hour of the day, in less than twelve hours. The police also learned that if the grate covering the window well had simply been lifted and the web damaged, the type of web would be hard to identify, but if something the size of a man had passed through the web, it would have been destroyed. Everett sent Dr. Opell an enlarged photo of the type of web in question. The entomologist said it appeared to be of the funnel type.
Six months later, on October 25, Everett traveled to Vancouver Island and met with another expert, Dr. Robert Bennett of the British Columbia Ministry of Forests. The detective had with him a newly enlarged and enhanced photograph of a the strands of the web that had covered part of the window grate. Bennett confirmed that it was a funnel web.
Photographs of spiderwebs and spiders have been used as evidence in court cases. Different types of spiders build different types of webs. The varieties of design and the behaviors associated with web-building are well understood.
Spiders hibernate in the winter in temperate zones. Boulder is definitely a temperate zone. Therefore, during winter, there is markedly less or no activity at all by the spiders normally found in Boulder.
If a spiderweb is destroyed in winter, a spider will emerge if it’s warm enough. This often happens on a warm day, particularly if the spider is in a spot with southerly exposure. Indoors, spiders are active all winter. Heat or rising temperatures produce activity. Some species are active at very low temperatures, only slightly above freezing, while others need higher temperatures to become active.
In your situation—Boulder, winter snow falling, then melting away, then falling, the weather warm enough—the spider would definitely be out.
If a web is disturbed, a spider would drop out of the web on a silk dragline, wait, climb back up the dragline, and be back where he first started from.
Again in your case, a web was broken one night when someone came by. The temperature rose the next day, and that day or thereafter, a new web could have been spun. Let me tell you a true story about a spiderweb.
In the 1600s, Robert the Bruce, one of Scotland’s national heroes, was injured and being pursued by the British. The Bruce crawled into a cave to hide. The next day the British came upon the cave, saw a spiderweb across its mouth, and figured that nobody was there. In fact, a spider had spun the web overnight. Robert the Bruce lived to fight another day.
—Robert Bennett
Dr. Bennett confirmed that if the temperature rises sufficiently, spiders can come out of hibernation. In Boulder, on Christmas night 1996, the temperature reached a low of 6 degrees, but it rose the next day to a high of 51. And the grate faced southwest—toward the sun. Perfect conditions for a hibernating spider to wake up and repair a damaged web. In October 1997 Detective Everett would learn from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration that it was impossible to determine the condition of the dew frost or snow cover on the ground around the Ramsey residence during the night of December 25 and into the morning of December 26.
In Boulder on April 2, Detective Steve Thomas spoke to Sergeant Tom Athey of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) Police Department. Athey told Thomas that they had a suspect in custody who might have been involved in the murder of JonBenét. On March 21, John Brewer Eustace had allegedly kidnapped a two-year-old child from a ground-level apartment. The child had then been violently sexually molested and found with a cloth in her mouth. Entry to the apartment had been made through a small ground-level window that was covered with a screen while a baby-sitter was within earshot of the baby’s crib.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg police had found in Eustace’s residence a kind of shrine full of JonBenét’s photos carefully cut from newspapers and magazines. Eustace admitted to masturbating while viewing the photographs. Within two days Steve Thomas and Ron Gosage were on a plane to North Carolina to interview Eustace, now a suspect in the death of JonBenét.
At 2:20 P.M. on April 5, Thomas and Gosage arrived at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and met with Detective Chris Fish. Gosage, who had a two-year-old, became ill when he saw the photographs of the toddler. At 7:30 that evening, the detectives met John Eustace. After two hours of refusing to answer questions, he waived his rights and agreed to be interviewed by the Boulder detectives. Eustace said he wasn’t in Colorado on Christmas night and had never killed anyone. He even pulled hairs from his head and gave them to Thomas and Gosage. He also gave them a handwriting sample. When asked for a pubic hair sample, however, he refused. Later, while Eustace and the detectives took a break to visit the prison toilet, Thomas again asked him for a pubic hair. Again Eustace refused. Gosage pointed out to Eustace that he’d agreed to cooperate. Finally, the prisoner lowered his pants—to show Thomas and Gosage that he couldn’t give them the sample they wanted: he was clean-shaven not only around his penis but throughout his lower extremities. He said, “I know all about pubic hair and DNA. I’m too smart to leave anything behind.”
The next day Thomas and Gosage discovered that at midnight on December 26, Eustace had been working at the Qualex Plant in Charlotte. Between midnight and six in the morning, a coworker remembered talking to him. At 9:37 Eustace clocked out and left for the day.
John Eustace, with his airtight alibi, was just another of the forty-three possible suspects the Boulder PD would interview within the first four months of the investigation. It would take almost a year to check on another fourteen.
While Lou Smit and Steve Ainsworth were trying to locate Kevin Raburn, the released convict who seemed to have disappeared, they continued to search for new leads. Daily, Smit looked at the crime scene and autopsy photographs and read police reports, hoping to discover overlooked clues. He had solved several cases simply by reading and rereading old police files.
On Wednesday, April 9, as Smit was looking at the autopsy photographs yet again, he noticed something unusual about several marks on JonBenét’s body. In one photograph, he noticed two dried rust-colored abrasions on her lower back; in a second photograph, just below her right ear and at a right angle to her cheek, he saw another set of rust-colored abrasions; and a third photograph showed two marks that looked like scratches on her lower leg. Smit asked Trip DeMuth and Ainsworth to look at the photos. They agreed with him that the three sets of abrasions appeared to be identical. In the final coroner’s report, they would be described as “rust-colored to slightly purple” discolorations of unequal size. The investigators agreed that there was about t
he same distance between the symmetrical marks.
To Smit the marks looked as if they had been made by the two electrodes of a stun gun. Stun guns, about the size of a TV remote control, are used primarily by police and security officers to immobilize people with a charge of electricity. In 1991 the LAPD’s officers had been caught on videotape trying to incapacitate Rodney King with a stun gun.
On Friday, April 11, Smit, DeMuth, and Ainsworth went to the coroner’s office and laid out the photographs for John Meyer. “Are these abrasions consistent with a stun gun or taser?” they asked. Meyer wouldn’t commit himself to a definite answer. DeMuth asked Meyer for a complete set of autopsy photographs and had some of them enlarged to life size.
Someone might have used a stun gun to subdue JonBenét during the crime. It was also possible, however, that Patsy or John or some third party had used such a device on their daughter for perverse reasons. Either way, the detectives now had to investigate the possibility that a stun gun had been used on the child.
Five days later, on April 16, Lou Smit drove to Lakewood, just outside Denver, to see CBI inspector Pete Mang, who had begun his career at the FBI. Mang suggested that Smit talk to Sue Kitchen, another CBI investigator, who had worked on a murder case in Steamboat Springs in which a stun gun was used. Two days later, Kitchen told the investigators that in her opinion, the small abrasions could have been made by a stun gun. She referred them to Arapahoe County coroner Mike Dobersen, who had solved a murder involving a stun gun in 1993. The device had been found in a suspect’s car, and the body of the victim was exhumed eight months after burial. Tissue from the corpse was tested for evidence of electric shock, and it proved positive. The suspect and her boyfriend were later charged and convicted.
After viewing the photos, Dobersen told the investigators that the abrasions on JonBenét’s body could have come from a stun-gun injury but that there was no way to know for sure without checking the skin tissue under a microscope. Before taking the extreme step of exhuming JonBenét’s body, Dobersen advised them to find a stun gun or taser with prongs spaced the same distance apart as the marks on JonBenét’s body and compare them to a life-size photograph.
By the end of the month, Smit had tracked down several Air Taser stun guns whose measurements and characteristics were consistent with the marks in the photos. He had even discovered a local distributor, Upper Edge, in Greeley, northeast of Boulder. There Ainsworth and DeMuth photographed different types of Air Tasers.
When the investigators had collected enough information on the subject, they decided to inform the police. Eller’s detectives derided Smit’s theory as “hogwash,” perhaps because it presupposed an intruder. Hunter thought the police might have rejected the idea because it would be hard to convince a jury that the Ramseys had used such a device on their daughter.
Nevertheless, Smit wanted to ask the Ramseys and their family if any of them had ever owned, borrowed, or seen anyone with a stun gun.
By April 11, Hofstrom thought that his attempt to broker a deal for the Ramseys’ formal interviews with the police had progressed far enough, and he suggested a meeting. Patsy and John Ramsey, their attorneys, and Tom Wickman of the Boulder police met to see if the deadlock could be broken. Wickman, representing Eller, was a far less adversarial presence than the commander. Hofstrom began by saying that they all had to work together to move the investigation onto a new track. Wickman agreed, telling the Ramseys they had been treated unfairly in the past and that the police needed their help to solve JonBenét’s murder.
The attorneys suggested conditions under which their clients would grant interviews to the police: John and Patsy would be interviewed separately, each for no more than two hours. There would be a two-hour lunch break between their interviews, when the Ramseys could consult with their attorneys, advisers, and experts. Under the law, they could have their attorneys present, and the questioning would take place in the office of a neutral Boulder attorney. The most important condition was that the Ramseys’ attorneys be given copies of all written police reports that contained statements made by their clients between December 26 and December 28.
After the meeting, Hofstrom and Hunter discussed the conditions. The DA told Eller and Wickman that he saw little point in withholding the documents that had been requested. If the Ramseys were charged, Hofstrom told the police, they would obtain the documents anyway, as part of the discovery process.*
But the Ramseys hadn’t been charged, Wickman and Eller insisted—they were only suspects. The police were furious that they’d had to wait so long for interviews. Now, on top of the delay, the Ramseys wanted to see their prior statements to the police. Wickman and Eller thought it would compromise the interview process, if not the entire case. Reminded of what they had told the police earlier, the Ramseys could tailor their new answers accordingly.
But Hunter could understand why their attorneys wanted the Ramseys’ earlier statements—it was likely they were already looking at their clients as charged defendants. “These people aren’t right off the boat,” was how the DA put it. “It was obvious they were prime suspects from the first days of the investigation.” There was nothing out of the ordinary about the police having to wait to interview the Ramseys—any good defense lawyer would have tried to delay his clients’ interrogation.
Hofstrom negotiated with the police, and Eller and Koby grudgingly agreed that the DA could release the statements the Ramseys had made to the police, though not the entire contents of the officers’ reports. The police would hand over a total of twenty-six pages. The decision infuriated Steve Thomas, who had been selected to interview Patsy. It would be like having one hand tied behind his back.
The interview was set for Wednesday, April 23, at 9:30 A.M. From Hunter’s point of view, the process was moving forward.
Within a day of the agreement, Patsy gave the police a fourth handwriting sample and agreed to identify her prior writings. The Ramseys also gave the police permission to search their home again. Then Smit gave Trip DeMuth copies of the requested statements from his set of police files, which DeMuth delivered to the Ramseys’ attorneys.
That same week, Carol McKinley’s source in the Boulder PD told her that he and his colleagues were outraged that the police had to bargain with the Ramseys. It was the last straw, he said.
John and Patsy’s participation in a meeting with Hofstrom and Wickman suggested to Hunter’s office that Ramsey was becoming more active in the day-to-day decision-making in the case. He was also back at Access Graphics full-time. Gary Mann, the parent company’s vice president, had taken the position that John Ramsey was innocent until proven guilty, so Ramsey was still running the company for Lockheed Martin. Mann saw that although Ramsey was under enormous pressure, he didn’t miss a beat when it came to work. Sales and profits at Access Graphics were increasing, and the company was ahead of last year’s record. With those results, Lockheed decided that now was the time to sell the company. Management had first discussed that possibility with Ramsey during the summer of 1996. At the time, Ramsey had mentioned buying the company himself, but with JonBenét’s death, he dropped the idea. Mann told Ramsey that he could stay with Lockheed Martin if he wanted to.
With the sale of Access Graphics imminent, Ramsey decided to move his family back to Atlanta. The family had imposed on Jay Elowsky and the Stines long enough. It was time for their friends’ lives to return to normal. In Atlanta the Ramseys’ day-to-day movements would be less noticeable, and the media would have other stories to cover. Also, Patsy would be close to her parents and sisters, who could help care for Burke when she and John traveled. There was no reason to stay in Boulder any longer.
Gary Mann considered John Ramsey a big asset for Lockheed, and he wanted to keep him in the corporation after Access Graphics was sold. Lockheed Martin was primarily in the airplane business, however, and it had no information division in the Atlanta area. It was unclear where Ramsey would work when his company was sold.
JONB
ENÉT KILLING ATTRACTS FOLLOWING OF INTERNET USERS
The nation’s obsession with computers and the JonBenét Ramsey slaying have converged on the Internet.
At least 30 Web pages have sprung up, offering information, speculation and photographs related to the 6-year-old Boulder girl’s death.
One is sponsored by a Kenosha, Wis., alderman and police detective. Another is an informal poll on who committed the crime. A “scientific laboratory” has a page analyzing John and Patsy Ramsey’s use of words during their interview on CNN.
—Burt Hubbard
Rocky Mountain News, April 13, 1997
Nine months before JonBenét was murdered, the company I worked for was absorbed by a conglomerate. I found myself retired at forty. I became a voracious reader of nonfiction, taught myself to bake excellent French bread, and wall-papered the master bath. And I discovered the Internet. I surfed the Net in earnest, but with no real goal—just for information. I was in the kitchen washing dishes when I heard about JonBenét’s murder on the radio. The next morning I found Denver-area newspapers on-line and read about the case. One of those papers, the Daily Camera, already had a bulletin board devoted to JonBenét’s murder. I joined dozens of people on-line who followed the case on a daily basis. It was almost like joining other kids on a playground. Those of us who had been around longer would be irritated by “newbies,” who would surf in, post something like “I think the older brother did it,” and then have the gall to be offended when we verbally ripped them to shreds.
I was amazed by the lack of curiosity. Many people on-line showed no motivation to seek out facts on the case. As an early riser, and with the added benefit of being on the East Coast, I took it upon myself to inform people. Each morning I would get up and go straight to the computer. I had a route that took me to each of the major dailies that could be counted on to have Ramsey stories. I looked at over thirty-five Web sites that I maintained as bookmarks on my hard drive. When there was interesting information, I posted the Web address, along with a one-sentence synopsis of the item, on the Boulder News Forum. Others needed only to look at my morning posting to find out what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Then I began my route again in preparation for the next day’s postings. My friends were counting on me. I had a goal.
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