Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

by Lawrence Schiller

  It’s not always easy on-line. In the summer of 1997 our community of bored housewives on the Boulder forum was invaded. The hackers harassed us and made it impossible for our discussions to continue. It was a difficult experience. But if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have my Web page. Because the hackers made it tough for people to find my daily postings, a benefactor offered to set me up with my own Web page. Mrs. Brady’s URLs, as the page is called, gets about 750 hits a day.

  Several news articles about Internet interest in the case quoted psychiatrists saying we “had no life.” But later articles were more accurate. One even noted how the Boulder County District Attorney’s office and the Boulder Police Department used the Internet community as a resource.

  We weren’t just kooks with nothing else to do. We had a genuine interest in the case.

  There is still bickering in our cybercommunity. Theories are still debated, and rumors abound. But the crusade continues, and newbies are still arriving. I just got an e-mail from a new computer owner, who says that one of the reasons he/she bought the computer was to stay abreast of the Ramsey investigation with other interested parties. “Let me know how I can have an ongoing chat with other interested sleuths regarding this case,” the e-mail said.

  —Mrs. Brady

  After much agonizing, Alex Hunter and Bill Wise finally decided that too much of their time was being taken up by the press. They needed an experienced press representative who understood the criminal justice system and could get along with reporters, write press releases, and provide appropriate general information about past cases and the office. Jana Petersen, who worked for the county commissioner’s office, was Hunter’s first choice, but the county wouldn’t release her. Soon résumés started pouring in.

  Suzanne Laurion’s letter caught everyone’s eye. Laurion had a Ph.D. in mass communications from the University of Wisconsin, where she had specialized in exploring how news stories affected audiences. She had worked in broadcasting as a reporter. Now she was an adjunct professor at CU. She saw the job as an opportunity to expand her teaching abilities. Laurion told Hunter and Wise that she wanted to be involved in a historic media situation like the one in Boulder. By the end of April, Hunter announced that Suzanne Laurion had been hired to field all media inquiries.

  RAMSEYS MAY MOVE TO ATLANTA

  The parents of slain beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey plan to sell their Boulder home and may move to Atlanta, family friends said Monday.

  “There is no way they ever want to live in that house again, so they’re going to put it on the market,” a family friend said. “Right now, people know about it through word of mouth, but (the Ramseys) should sign a listing contract soon….

  There are just too many bad memories in their house since (JonBenét) died.”

  —Alli Krupski

  Daily Camera, April 15, 1997

  COPS FIND MURDER WITNESS

  …HE REVEALS DADDY’S SECRET

  A secret witness has been found in the JonBenét murder investigation. And police believe this man could provide key evidence against her father John Ramsey, an ENQUIRER team has discovered.

  He’s John’s best friend, Fleet White, who was at Ramsey’s side when the 6-year-old’s beaten, molested body was found. He alone knows Ramsey’s actions in the moments surrounding that gruesome discovery.

  National Enquirer, April 15, 1997

  Since Fleet White and John Ramsey’s loud argument in Atlanta on December 31, the day of JonBenét’s funeral, the two men had been at war. It was rumored that White had accused Ramsey and that John had accused Fleet White. It was also rumored that White was a suspect in the murder of JonBenét.

  In the first weeks after JonBenét’s death, TV tabloids scanned the Whites’ phones. Conversations they had with family members and close friends ended up in print. The media were a constant presence in their life, knocking on their door and camping outside their home.

  To those who knew Fleet White, it was obvious he found this treatment unbearable. By the time the National Enquirer published the “Cops Find Murder Witness…He Reveals Daddy’s Secret” cover story, White was at the breaking point.

  At forty-seven, Fleet White was close in age to John Ramsey, who was fifty-three when JonBenét died. White’s children were roughly the same age as JonBenét and Burke. Since moving to Boulder in 1994, White had been good friends with Ramsey. White’s daughter, Daphne, often played with JonBenét. It was the Whites’ home where Burke was taken on the morning of December 26.

  The DA and the police knew that Fleet and Priscilla White had never accused the Ramseys of the murder. The couple had, however, provided valuable information to the police. White had been just a few steps behind John Ramsey in the basement when Ramsey first saw JonBenét’s body, and he had followed Ramsey into the wine cellar and even touched her dead body. That entire day he was privy to Ramsey’s actions, many of which had never been observed by the police. The police also thought that White had insight into the Ramseys’ general behavior and possible motives.

  During the first week of April, Fleet and Priscilla went to see police chief Tom Koby, outraged at what was happening to them. They asked for the chief’s help in getting the media off their backs and clearing their name. The chief refused. There was still a question about why White hadn’t seen JonBenét’s body when he opened the door to the wine cellar early on the morning of December 26, although John Ramsey had seen it six hours later. Koby said that if he publicly cleared one suspect, everyone would be camping outside his door. Then the Whites walked into Alex Hunter’s office unannounced. Bill Wise could see that White was close to the edge. After a short conversation, Hunter introduced Priscilla White to Lou Smit while he talked privately with Fleet.

  On April 15, the National Enquirer wrote that White “told investigators…[that John Ramsey] tried to keep White from opening the door to the small basement room where JonBenét’s body was found.” The tabloid added that “White and Priscilla have made some awful allegations to Boulder police about John and Patsy and the Ramseys will never speak to them again.” It was after reading this that Fleet White stormed into Koby’s and then Hunter’s office and demanded to be publicly cleared as a suspect. Hunter said that he had never seen such anger. “We can clear the guy,” Pete Hofstrom suggested to Hunter. “And then later on, if we decide he’s not clear, we’ll unclear him.” Hunter talked to Koby about White. He told the chief that unless they did something to appease White, they might lose an important witness. Koby reluctantly agreed. He would talk to Eller, and hoped the commander would agree to clear the Whites.

  When Hunter saw a draft of the Boulder PD’s intended public statement, however, he objected to the wording. The Whites, he felt, should not be “cleared” of any suspicion, because Fleet White’s demeanor after JonBenét’s murder was still open to interpretation. It might be better to use the words “are not suspects” rather than “cleared.” White would later learn about Hunter’s involvement in the wording of the press release and hold it against him.

  The next afternoon, April 16, the police department included the following statement from Chief Koby in the City of Boulder’s Ramsey Update No. 40:

  Mr. and Mrs. Fleet White, Jr., are not suspects in the JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation. They are considered key witnesses. The Boulder Police Department appreciates the full cooperation they have received from the Whites since the beginning of their investigation. I feel this response is necessary due to the inaccurate portrayal of Mr. and Mrs. White in certain media publications.

  Fleet and Priscilla were the first people to be named key witnesses, when the Ramseys themselves had not officially been named suspects.

  Ever since watching Tom Koby’s January 9 press conference from the lobby of the Boulder Public Library, Stephen Singular had often thought about the peculiar nature of the Ramsey case. He had spent fifteen years writing true-crime books, and of course JonBenét’s murder interested him. Soon he began to talk to some of th
e Ramseys’ acquaintances. During one conversation Pam Griffin talked to him about Fleet White, whom she met while she was caring for Patsy on December 27 at the Fernies’. Pam understood how distraught Patsy and John must be, but it was White’s behavior that caught her attention. She got the impression that White was trying to control and manage things that day, and he seemed not to want Pam to be alone with Patsy. Of course White didn’t know who Pam was or how close she was to Patsy; nor did she know at the time how close the Whites were to the Ramseys. Still, she had an uneasy feeling about Fleet White. For his part, Stephen Singular couldn’t stop thinking about White as he drove from Denver, where he lived, to Boulder for a meeting with Alex Hunter. He had read the National Enquirer that morning, but he was apprehensive about bringing up White’s name at this first meeting with the DA.

  Like most Americans who were following the case, Singular thought the Boulder police had little homicide experience. He surmised that so far the cops had dealt only with the surface, that they hadn’t gone deep.

  In his own investigations, Singular had learned that inevitably the perpetrator’s prior behavior foreshadows the crime. Though there seemed to be no sign of aberrant behavior in either John’s or Patsy’s background, Singular understood that seemingly good people can sometimes do terrible things.

  As he followed the story, he saw that during the first weeks, the media implied that John Ramsey was a child molester who had killed his own daughter. Then Patsy was put in the hot seat, portrayed as a religious fanatic who read the Bible compulsively. To Singular, it was obvious that the media were considering only two possibilities—that one or both parents had killed their child or that an intruder had entered the house and killed JonBenét. Singular believed there were numerous other possibilities, which was why he had contacted Hunter. On TV the DA seemed reasonable, bright, and sensitive—not like most prosecutors, who tend to swagger. Singular had sent Hunter a fax, saying that he was the author of a book about talk-show host Alan Berg, who had been murdered in Denver, and Hunter had asked him to come in and talk.

  The meeting with Hunter and Bill Wise took place on April 15. Hunter was more open and friendly than Singular had expected him to be, and Singular told them what he had learned about people on the periphery of the Ramseys’ life—acquaintances connected to the world of pageants.

  “Have you looked at the Internet?” Singular asked. “What do you know about the pageant world?” Hunter admitted he knew very little. Singular gave Hunter the names of Pam Griffin, Randy Simons, Trish Danpier, a former Miss Colorado, and pageant director LaDonna Griego, among others. Hunter knew about Griffin and Simons from police reports.

  Singular suggested that JonBenét’s murder might have originated outside the family, in the pageant world, which was a mixture of children, sexuality, and business opportunities. The exploitation of children for economic gain was at the underbelly of America, Singular said, and JonBenét Ramsey could have been one of the victims.

  As a pageant participant, JonBenét had been photographed many times in her life. Singular wondered if maybe the child had been taken from her home on Christmas night to be photographed again, without one parent’s knowledge, and been brought home dead. He intimated that one of “Boulder’s public officials” might possibly be involved in child pornography with one of John Ramsey’s friends.

  “It’s a federal issue. I’ll speak to the FBI,” Hunter said. “I am not going to give this to the cops. I don’t want them to screw it up. I know work needs to be done in that area.” Singular got the impression that Hunter was giving him an assignment: look into the child pornography business and get back to me.

  While he saw that Hunter was trying to keep an open mind about who had killed JonBenét, Singular also couldn’t help but notice that the DA was overwhelmed. He was receiving an enormous amount of attention, and that could be very seductive.

  On April 18, Hunter gave Jennifer Mears of the Associated Press an interview. It was the first time the DA had publicly acknowledged that the Ramseys were at the center of the investigation.

  DA CONCEDES RAMSEYS ARE “THE FOCUS” OF INVESTIGATION

  The parents of JonBenét Ramsey are “obviously the focus” of the investigation into the child beauty queen’s slaying, Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter acknowledged Friday.

  Hunter stressed that John and Patricia Ramsey have not been named suspects, but said: “Obviously the focus is on these people. You can call them what you want to.”

  —Jennifer Mears

  Associated Press, April 19, 1997

  The story became front-page news. Hunter, who so far had been careful not to go on the record about his interest in the Ramseys, called the AP within hours of the story’s publication.

  “I’m not upset with the story,” he said. “It’s the quotes. They make me sound stupid.” It was the first time a public official had ever called Mears to discuss the way his quotes portrayed him.

  INSIDE THE “WAR ROOM”

  They call it the “war room.” Behind the locked doors of a converted conference room, its windows masked with paper to insure privacy, prosecutors and investigators pursue paper trails and plan strategy in the hunt for the killer of JonBenét Ramsey.

  Not even janitors can enter the 18-by-21-foot room in the district attorney’s first-floor quarters in the Justice Center. Steps have been taken to safeguard security of the two computers in the room, both of them tied into the Boulder Police Department computers.

  On a typical day, Lou Smit, a retired Colorado Springs detective hired by DA Alex Hunter…can be found poring over 13,000 pages of reports. The pages are gathered in 15 loose-leaf notebooks, each with a laminated picture of the 6-year-old beauty queen on its cover.

  —Marilyn Robinson and Kieran Nicholson

  The Denver Post, April 19, 1997

  By mid-April, the war room on the first floor of the Justice Center had been outfitted with a large conference table, computers, and cubicles. There was a small adjacent room and lots of wall space for charts, and even a toaster oven where you could bake a small cake. No matter how well appointed it was, however, Steve Thomas knew that the war room wasn’t going to work out. Lou Smit, the police, and the prosecutors each had different roles in the case, and each group saw the same data differently. There were ongoing personality clashes. It wasn’t long before Smit was telling the detectives that he wasn’t so sure the evidence against the Ramseys was strong. As he reviewed the officers’ reports and compared their contents, he could see there was a strong possibility that an intruder could have entered the house and killed JonBenét.

  The police detectives were particularly irritated at Ainsworth, who was acting as Hunter’s devil’s advocate, looking at the evidence from a defense perspective. He was supposed to be a cop—on their side.

  To break the deadlock, Koby suggested to Hunter that they use a professional mediator to explain to his officers that the way lawyers operate doesn’t damage the integrity of police work. Hunter, who had used mediators in the past to iron out policy conflicts, was all for it. Hofstrom felt it was a waste of time. Nevertheless, they turned to Richard Rianoshek, who had been a cop in Chicago and a detective and police chief in Aspen. He specialized in helping organizations work more effectively. Rianoshek knew that all DAs and police departments face essentially the same problem. It was endemic to law enforcement: prosecutors were often at odds, and the police were frustrated by legal hair-splitting. Throw some controversy into the mix, and the problems would be magnified. In the Ramsey case, given the enormous pressure from the media, Rianoshek knew it would be a miracle if anything worked.

  The mediators first met with each side separately, in a small conference room on neutral ground at the University of Colorado. Then there were two meetings with both sides. Hunter, Hofstrom, DeMuth, and Smit attended these meetings, as did all the police detectives plus Wickman, Eller, and Koby. Each session lasted four hours.

  Many grievances came to the surface. For example, t
he cops couldn’t get past Hofstrom’s four breakfasts with Bryan Morgan. Consorting with the enemy! It was like Hofstrom’s notorious precharging negotiations, which were just one step away from plea bargaining. Hofstrom could have accomplished his job with simple phone calls, a detective said. Steve Thomas repeated that Hunter’s staff was interested only in proving that an intruder had killed JonBenét. Hunter’s staff, on the other hand, was convinced that the police were determined to build a case against the Ramseys and refused to look elsewhere.

  Rianoshek painstakingly showed both sides that their perceptions were inaccurate. He clarified what the police had said: they might be leaning toward the Ramseys, but if evidence appeared pointing to someone other than the couple, the evidence would prevail. Rianoshek repeated the DA’s position: they weren’t fixated on an intruder. They also thought the Ramseys had committed the crime, but they wanted the police to investigate every possibility. Nevertheless, the meetings deteriorated into mutual accusations, and in the end nothing changed. The inhabitants of the war room were never going to be friends.