Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

by Lawrence Schiller

  When Lou Smit reflected on what he’d been observing, he saw one of the roots of the problem. Over the years, the DA’s office had never bonded with the police. Where he came from, and in most jurisdictions, the DA’s investigators were ex-cops. The detectives on the police force were their buddies. They played softball, drank beer, and went to sports events together. By contrast, Alex Hunter hired a former police officer only once in a great while. These days, the closest was Tom Wickman’s ex-wife, who was now one of Hunter’s investigators.

  It wasn’t long before the daily status meeting, where each detective and deputy DA brought the group up-to-date, fell apart. Nobody wanted to reveal anything for fear of leaks by the other side. The daily reports became monotonous: “Haven’t done anything. Nothing on tap for today.” Some detectives were even afraid to use the phones in the war room for fear the DAs would hear who they were talking to—the pay phones in the halls of the Justice Center were in constant use.

  The media made this not only a police case but the DA’s case. Hunter was no longer in a peripheral position. The case was thrown into disarray by the fact that there were three cameras and four tape recorders operating every time anybody opened his mouth.

  The war room became a liability when it acquired a media life. It had been designed as a setting for open communication, but suddenly the media depicted it as the setting for potential breakthroughs—a place from which truth would emanate. It became a liability.

  —Bob Grant

  On April 22 the FBI’s Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit heard about the terms for the Ramseys’ scheduled interviews. They told the police that “the conditions would not likely lead to a productive investigative interview.” The FBI proposed open-ended interviews for Patsy and John and no breaks between the sessions for the Ramseys to consult each other or their attorneys. The venue should be a bare room in a law enforcement establishment, not an attorney’s office. Providing the Ramseys’ attorneys with police reports was also a mistake, the FBI said, but it was too late to do anything about that because they had been delivered the day before. Convinced that the FBI was right, Eller canceled the interviews one day before the agreed-upon date. Patrick Burke was informed by phone. Both Hunter and Koby foresaw disaster—not only for the investigation but in terms of public relations.

  The next day, April 23, attorneys Haddon and Burke wrote the following letter to Hunter on behalf of their clients and released it to the media with several pages of supporting documents.

  VIA HAND DELIVERY

  Alexander M. Hunter

  Boulder County District Attorney

  Boulder County Justice Center

  1777 Sixth Street

  Boulder, Colorado 80306

  Re: John and Patsy Ramsey

  Dear Mr. Hunter:

  By this letter, we express our profound dismay at yesterday’s actions by the leadership of the Boulder Police Department. After representatives of the Boulder Police Department and your office requested and agreed to a format for separate interviews of John and Patsy Ramsey beginning at 9:30 A.M. today, we were advised at approximately 4:00 P.M. yesterday afternoon that the interviews were canceled because Boulder Police Department leadership no longer agreed to the format of the interviews—despite previous statements to the contrary.

  This action is incomprehensible in light of the previous history of this issue. The Police Department, directly and through a campaign of leaks and smears, has portrayed the Ramseys as unwilling to grant police interviews or assist the investigation. Although we know this innuendo to be false, we have avoided criticizing the police because we believed that it would only fuel a media war which would be counterproductive to the overarching goal—finding and prosecuting the killer of JonBenét Ramsey. Yesterday’s actions make further silence untenable.

  The letter went on to chastise the police, and then restated almost the entire lengthy history of Ramsey/police negotiations from the Ramseys’ point of view. The lawyers revealed that the police had tried to withhold JonBenét’s body in return for interviews with the Ramseys—the first of many insensitive and incomprehensible actions, the attorneys said. By addressing this letter to Hunter, the Ramseys drew a line in the sand. The last paragraph made it clear how they would proceed in the future.

  It is apparent that the leadership of the Boulder Police Department lacks the objectivity and judgment necessary to find the killer of JonBenét Ramsey. Mr. Hofstrom told John and Patsy that he wanted their help to solve this crime. They remain willing to meet with Mr. Smit, Mr. Ainsworth or any other member of your office to that end.

  Sincerely,

  [signed]

  Harold A. Haddon

  [signed]

  Patrick Burke

  This letter became the number-one story in Colorado and was publicized nationally as well. For the next several days, even mainstream media headlines had a sensational tone:

  INTERVIEW PLAN BLOWS UP

  SNARLING STARTED BEFORE

  FBI SAVES PROBE FROM DISASTER

  RAMSEYS DENOUNCE POLICE

  WAR OF WORDS ESCALATES RAMSEY STANDOFF

  COPS, DA RESPOND TO RAMSEYS

  BOULDER AUTHORITIES, RAMSEYS NEGOTIATING

  Every TV outlet scrambled for any scrap it could get about the battle between the police and the Ramseys. Phil LeBeau, of Denver’s KCNC, Channel 4 TV, snagged an interview with Patrick Burke and Hal Haddon at their respective law offices in Denver. He wanted to know: What kind of police department would withhold the body of a child and delay her burial?

  When LeBeau concluded his live report at 4:15 P.M., the newsroom staff told him that Patsy Ramsey had called the station and asked to talk to him. They’d given her the news van’s direct phone number.

  A minute later, the phone rang.

  “I’m glad that our side of the story is finally getting out,” Patsy said. “We’ve been sitting here taking it for three months, keeping our mouths shut while the cops are basically portraying us to be a couple of killers—uncaring parents, uncooperative.”

  LeBeau asked to call back since he was about to do another broadcast.

  “You call [a third party], and they’ll get to me,” Patsy replied.

  LeBeau broadcast his 5:00 P.M. report, in which he didn’t mention Patsy’s call, and then called the person Patsy had named.

  “Thank you again for your report,” Patsy told him when she came to the phone. “John is here, and he appreciates the fact that you’re being honest about what’s happening.” LeBeau made a pitch for an on-the-record interview the next morning.

  Patsy called early the following day.

  “Are the Boulder police framing you and your husband?” LeBeau asked her.

  “I can’t talk about that. I pray we can still work this out, that the killer of JonBenét be found.”

  “Why won’t you cooperate with the police?”

  “We’ll sit and talk with them for twenty-four hours a day,” Patsy replied, “if that’s what they want.” The police had just called off the interviews, she added. “You’d think if they think we’re guilty, they’d want to talk to us.”

  Finally LeBeau told Patsy he was going to put together a report based on their on-the-record conversation. The station started promoting “A Conversation with Patsy Ramsey” the same day.

  Meanwhile, Pete Hofstrom, Alex Hunter, John Eller, Tom Wickman and Tom Koby worked all night and into the next day to save what was left of their relationship with the Ramseys’ lawyers. “We acknowledge the unfortunate miscommunication,” Hunter and Koby said in an open letter to the attorneys, “and we’re encouraged to hear you indicate a continued willingness to accomplish the critical interviews with Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey.”

  The police listed their requirements and released them to the media so as to preempt a charge of Hofstrom’s so-called “chummy” negotiations with the Ramseys’ attorneys. Eller, who had never liked Hofstrom’s style, was now dealing directly with the Ramseys’ attorneys by way of the media. I
t was Eller’s way of reminding everyone that this was his case.

  On Friday, April 25, The Denver Post published a list of police demands:

  John and Patsy Ramsey will be interviewed separately.

  Patsy Ramsey will be interviewed first.

  There will be an open-ended time frame for the interview.

  The interviews will be tape-recorded.

  The interviews will be conducted by two Boulder police detectives selected in consultation with Hunter.

  The interviews will be conducted at a neutral location, such as the Child and Family Advocacy Center in Niwot.

  The conditions are “consistent with standard police interview techniques.”

  After this was published, Hunter told the press again that though the Ramseys were the focus of the investigation, they were not the only suspects. It was a deliberate attempt to appease the Ramseys so that negotiations could continue. By Saturday evening, the Ramseys had agreed to all but two of Eller’s conditions. The interviews would take place at the DA’s offices, which they considered more neutral, and Pete Hofstrom would be present during the questioning.

  On Monday all parties were back on board with an agreement that the interviews would take place on April 30 beginning at 9:00 A.M. Charlie Russell, another of the Ramseys’ media representatives, called handpicked members of the media to tell them that everything was back on track.

  On April 23, Detective Melissa Hickman returned to Boulder from the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California. In addition to its work for the government, the company did sound and photographic enhancement on a nonprofit basis for law enforcement agencies, using state-of-the-art technology. Hickman had taken the audio tape of Patsy Ramsey’s 911 call to the Southern California firm. The tape included a few additional seconds of sound along with Patsy’s frantic call for help, sounds that may have been recorded when she replaced the headset improperly. The police had been unable to decipher the additional sounds.

  In February, Detective Trujillo had sent a copy of the tape to the U.S. Secret Service, but their attempt to enhance the recording had not succeeded. Aerospace used a different technology, and voices in the background could now be heard more clearly.

  Hickman listened to the tape and wrote down what she heard.

  “Help me Jesus, help me Jesus.” That was clearly Patsy’s voice. Then, in the distance, there was another voice, which sounded like JonBenét’s brother.

  “Please, what do I do?” Burke said.

  “We’re not speaking to you,” Hickman heard John Ramsey say.

  Patsy screamed again. “Help me Jesus, help me Jesus.”

  And then, more clearly, Burke said, “What did you find?”

  This snippet of conversation was obviously important. Patsy and John had told the police, and CNN on January 1, that when they found JonBenét missing, they checked Burke’s room for their daughter, who sometimes slept there. They had never said what they found in Burke’s room. Later, Patsy said they did not awaken Burke until about 7:00 A.M., when her husband roused him to have him taken to the Whites’ home.

  In Boulder, Hickman and her colleagues debated the scenarios. They couldn’t believe that John Ramsey would have forgotten to mention to the police that his son had gotten up and spoken to him and his wife that morning after Patsy checked on him and before the police arrived. Perhaps it was conceivable that she didn’t remember because she was so distraught. But on the tape, John had directed a statement directly to Burke. How could he have forgotten talking to his son? The Ramseys’ credibility was now seriously in question.

  The police decided not to tell Hunter or anyone on his staff what they had learned. They feared leaks of this valuable evidence. The police also decided not to ask John or Patsy Ramsey about the 911 call in their scheduled interviews, for fear of tipping their attorneys to what they had discovered. More than a year would elapse before the police told Hunter’s staff about the enhancement tape of the 911 call.

  When Burke had been interviewed on January 8, he was not questioned about his whereabouts that morning. But even in that interview, the boy had not told the police that he was asleep when the 911 call was made. The police needed to know what he remembered about that morning and if his memory differed from Patsy’s. The detectives would have to wait until June 10, 1998, when Burke was interviewed again, to ask him.

  7

  James Thompson, known to his friends as J. T. Colfax, worked for M&M Transport in Denver. His job was to pick up cadavers and deliver them to funeral homes. On April 28, he went to pick up a body from the morgue at Boulder Community Hospital. The cadaver was having its eyes removed for donation to an eye bank, and Colfax was told to come back later.

  At around 1:00 A.M., Colfax went back to the morgue, just to hang out. On a whim, he leafed through the log book, came to the month of December, and tore out the pages with an entry about JonBenét. Later that morning, he photocopied the log pages, wrote “All in a Night’s Work” on the copies, and mailed them to friends in New York and California.

  That afternoon, low on cash, Colfax tried to shoplift a photo-finishing order he had placed at Safeway Photo Processing. He was arrested. The police looked at the evidence—twenty-seven photos—and discovered that the pictures were of cadavers. Colfax found himself in a police car en route to the Denver PD. Which one of those people had he murdered, the cops wanted to know. None, Colfax said, he just liked to photograph dead people. Did you murder JonBenét Ramsey? No, he said, he had been in Vancouver, Canada, on December 26, at the Royal Hotel on Granville Street. One officer shouted that he was a pervert.

  Two days later Colfax made bail, was given a court date, and became an item in the Denver papers. Mike O’Keeffe, a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, was told by a friend of Colfax’s about the morgue log pages. O’Keeffe passed the information on to his colleague Charlie Brennan, who was covering the Ramsey case. Brennan in turn called the morgue to inquire about the log pages, not mentioning Colfax’s name. That afternoon, when the pages were discovered missing, the sheriff was called. Until then, no one had noticed they were gone.

  Meanwhile Colfax, who was becoming a minor media celebrity, confessed to the press that he’d stolen some morgue log pages containing JonBenét’s entry—as a souvenir. When the Boulder police heard Colfax’s tale, they assigned Detective Ron Gosage to pay him a visit.

  It was raining when Gosage arrived at Colfax’s Denver apartment. The log pages from the morgue were lying on the floor. Within minutes he was arrested. On the way to Boulder, Gosage chatted with Colfax. Out of the blue, Gosage asked, “What do you think—are people born gay or do they become gay?” The conversation was so casual, it was like talking to someone at a party. “I was born gay,” Colfax replied. “Nobody wants to be gay.” Suddenly it occurred to Colfax that homosexuality might have something to do with JonBenét’s death. Gosage asked him if he knew JonBenét’s brother, Burke. No, Colfax replied. What about John Andrew? He didn’t know either of them, Colfax said.

  Colfax understood he was a suspect. Later that afternoon he was formally interviewed. The police asked him to describe the morgue. It was orange, he said—no, it was governmental green or gray—shit, he couldn’t remember the color. Then they got around to JonBenét’s death. Did you know the Ramseys in Boulder? In Denver? Colfax said he’d lived in Atlanta but that he didn’t know Patsy Ramsey. Gosage grilled him for two hours. Then Colfax gave the detective the hair evidence he requested.

  Gosage cut his hand pulling hair samples from Colfax’s head. While Colfax completed his handwriting samples, the detective sat there wringing his hands while blood flowed from between his fingers. Next, Colfax’s inner cheek was swabbed for a DNA sample. Then he was booked for criminal mischief and theft. Bond was set at $1,000.

  Two months later, Colfax still had not been sentenced for stealing the morgue log pages. He was out on bail. One morning he visited Alli Krupski at the offices of the Daily Camera and told her she’d look good as a dead
body. He’d been drinking. Then he walked 2 miles to the Ramseys’ house. Along the way, two tourists stopped and asked him where Patsy Ramsey lived. “I think it’s up here,” he said, motioning them to follow him. When they arrived, the tourists took his picture in front of the house. Then he walked down to University Hill and tried to call Gosage through 911. Believing that the police were after him, he wanted to meet the detective. After he left the message, he walked back to the Ramseys’ house. At around 11:30 P.M., he considered breaking in and spending the night but then decided against it. Better to write the Ramseys a note.

  “If you hadn’t killed your fucking baby,” Colfax wrote, “this wouldn’t have happened.” He stuffed the note and some pages from a paperback book, Interview with the Vampire, into the front door mail slot, took a matchbook, printed Gosage’s name on it, and set fire to the paper. He watched it scorch the inside wall from a nearby window, hoping that because it was made of brick, the house wouldn’t burn down.

  The next morning he called Gosage again. This time he confessed to trying to burn down the Ramseys’ house, which the police knew nothing about. Within an hour he was arrested. Six months later, on January 16, 1998, Colfax was sentenced to twenty-four months’ probation for first-degree arson, a class-three felony. For stealing the morgue log pages, he was sentenced to two years in the county jail, with no credit for the seven months he had sat in jail after turning himself in for the arson. By then, Lou Smit and Trip DeMuth had interviewed him several times. Colfax’s alibi for December 26 checked out.