On Tuesday, April 29, the day before the scheduled police interviews, all of the Ramseys’ attorneys walked into the Access Graphics offices on the Pearl Street Mall and went directly to John Ramsey’s fourth-floor office, with its view of the Rockies. They were soberly dressed in black and navy. Shortly afterward, Patsy and John arrived. They seemed nervous as they made their way upstairs.
Before long Patsy left her husband’s office and walked aimlessly down the hall. Then she went back in. Forty-five minutes later she was pacing the halls again. Before noon, she left the building by a fourth-floor exit to the alley. When she returned, she found the door locked. She banged on it, but a security guard refused to admit her—she didn’t have company ID. She had to walk around the building and enter through the front door, where the receptionist knew her.
By dinnertime, the meeting had disbanded.
Meanwhile, Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo were at police headquarters consulting with the FBI’s Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit personnel, who had come to Boulder to assist the detectives. The Boulder PD had waited months for this opportunity to question the Ramseys.
Along the way, the detectives had been divided in their opinions about the parents’ culpability. For example, Trujillo and Wickman had at one time speculated that John Ramsey and JonBenét had some type of sexual relationship, but Thomas and Gosage didn’t believe it for one moment. By now, however, all the detectives felt that Patsy was involved in JonBenét’s death and that although John Ramsey had nothing to do with the actual murder, he was likely to have contributed to its cover-up.
All the detectives agreed that one major mistake had been made in the first weeks, even before the CBI determined that there was no semen on JonBenét’s body: Patsy had not been arrested. The detectives were sure that if only Hunter had agreed to jail Patsy—even for a short time—she would have caved in. Every time they themselves walked into a cell and heard the heavy steel doors clang shut behind them, a fear of never being able to return to the outside world hit them. If Patsy’d had to face that kind of dreadful uncertainty about her future, she would have broken down and the case would have been solved that very day, the detectives believed.
The detectives and Hofstrom had also long been divided on how to deal with the Ramseys—whether to push them or soften them up. Now that the interviews were imminent, they had to talk strategy. Thomas and Gosage met with Hofstrom. As expected, the police and the DA’s office still had opposing views on how to handle the questioning. Hofstrom wanted to use the interviews to “build bridges” with the Ramseys. It would be wrong, he indicated, to challenge them during the interviews and let them see that they were the sole target of the investigation. Better to make them feel that the police were sincerely interested in finding the killer—as they were. Then sometime in the future, if they were the killers, they would let their guard down and be caught.
The police had a different approach. They thought it was better to lock the Ramseys into their stories of what they remembered about Christmas night and the morning after. Then take them through every minute and make them prove that they were innocent. For example, on December 26 John Ramsey had told Rick French that he’d carried a sleeping JonBenét to her room and then read her a book. Patsy had told the same officer that JonBenét never woke up after being put to bed, even when Patsy changed her clothes. Which story was correct? Since this was the first—and maybe the only—interview that the police would conduct with the Ramseys, the detectives were in favor of using a tough approach: challenge everything the Ramseys had said and would say.
Everyone agreed it was imperative that the detectives not reveal to the Ramseys and their attorneys what had been uncovered in the police investigation. At the same time, they had to find out what the Ramseys knew and remembered—and, most important, see how it stacked up against what the police had learned. The detectives had to decide which questions to ask and which to avoid.
They agreed, for example, that they wouldn’t directly mention the pineapple found in JonBenét’s intestines. The police thought it was better to lock the Ramseys into the story they had told on December 26—that the sleeping child had been taken upstairs and put right to bed for the night—and confront them later with any possible conflicts. The audiotape of Patsy’s 911 call would also be off-limits for the interview. Better to leave the Ramseys—and the DA’s office—unaware of what the detectives now knew.
The detectives also wanted to hear once more from Patsy what she had done after she left her bedroom that morning. She’d told Officer French that after leaving her room, she first checked JonBenét’s room and found it empty; then she went downstairs to see if her daughter was there and instead found the ransom note; then she returned to the second floor, cried out for her husband, and went to see if JonBenét was in Burke’s room. Later that day, however, Patsy told Detective Arndt a different version of the story—that she’d first stopped just outside of JonBenét’s bedroom to do some washing in the sink and had then gone downstairs and found the ransom note. Only then, she said, did she return to JonBenét’s room and find it empty.
Which was the truth? That, among other questions, preoccupied the detectives as they prepared for the minefield of the interviews.
On April 30 at 9:05 A.M., Patsy Ramsey began her scheduled formal interview with the police. Detectives Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo asked the questions. Pat Furman, Patsy’s attorney, led her by the hand into the DA’s conference room at the Justice Center. He seated her, then pulled up a chair next to her. Ramsey investigator John Foster sat with his back to the wall on Patsy’s side of the room. Pete Hofstrom observed from a corner of the room.
John Ramsey would be interviewed later in the day, when the detectives were done with his wife. The other attorneys for the Ramseys waited in Hofstrom’s office.
For six hours Thomas and Trujillo sat face-to-face with Patsy Ramsey and led her through the pertinent events of the days leading up to and following Christmas. More often than not, her answers were ambiguous and selective.
The detectives asked her about what had happened when the family returned from the Whites’. She said that JonBenét had been carried directly to her room and put to bed for the night. She hadn’t awakened. What was the last thing JonBenét ate that night? Patsy didn’t remember. Earlier in the year she had answered the same question posed to her in writing by Detective Arndt. She had replied in writing through her attorneys, “Cracked crab at the Whites’.” Two hours later, after a break in the interview, Trujillo returned to the same question, and this time Patsy remembered that her daughter had eaten cracked crab at the Whites’. The detectives now had her locked into an answer in conflict with the findings of the autopsy. Asked whether anyone in the family had snacked after they returned home that night, Patsy said she knew nothing about any food eaten by anyone. The detectives did not reveal that fingerprints—hers and Burke’s—had been found on the bowl containing pineapple on the dining room table. Later they speculated that the only explanation for the discrepancy was that the children—either alone or together—had eaten the pineapple without their mother’s knowledge and that Patsy’s fingerprint dated from an earlier time. It was also possible, however, that Patsy now knew about the pineapple—the information had been released in the edited autopsy report—and thought it was better that she stick with her earlier written statement.
The detectives asked Patsy what happened after she found the ransom note—whether she turned the light on in Burke’s room when she went to look for JonBenét. She didn’t remember. Did she awaken Burke to find out if he knew where his sister was, or did he awaken by himself? No, she was sure he stayed asleep until John got him up for the move to the Whites’. The detectives asked her the same question several times during the six hours, and each time she gave the same story, though it conflicted with what they had just discovered on the enhanced audio tape of Patsy’s call to 911.
Since fibers had been found on the duct tape, JonBenét’s body, t
he white blanket, and the floor of the wine cellar; Patsy was asked about her clothes. She said that she wore the same red sweater, black slacks, and jacket on Christmas night and the morning after. She said she had put them on that morning because they were lying where she had left them the night before. The police thought it was odd that a well-groomed woman like Patsy would wear the same clothes two days in a row—they had understood that she hardly ever left her bedroom without fresh makeup.
Patsy was asked about the ransom note. How did she feel about the fact that some handwriting experts believed she wrote it? She didn’t know that to be the case, she said. What about the fact that her pen was used to write it? She replied: “It was?” Thomas asked why the handwriting looked like hers. “It looks that way because it may have been written by a woman,” she answered.
“I did the best I could. I just put her to bed,” Patsy said in answer to one question. “I just don’t know that,” she would say again and again.
There were several breaks before lunch, during which Hofstrom allowed Patsy and her attorneys to use his office. Thomas worried that they were telling John Ramsey what his wife was being asked, to make sure that his story would not be at odds with hers.
After the first break, she was asked if she would take a polygraph. “I’ll take ten of them,” Patsy replied. Later, when the detectives requested that a test be administered to her, Patsy’s attorney and Pete Hofstrom were unable to agree on the terms.
In the afternoon, Thomas asked Patsy if she or any member of her family had purchased duct tape or cord prior to the murder. They knew she might have bought tape at Home Depot in Athens, Georgia, or at McGuckin Hardware in Boulder. Patsy couldn’t remember buying such items. She’d have no need for them, she said. Her answer was no.
Patsy was shown a photo of the flashlight that had been found on the kitchen counter—which detectives surmised might have been used in the blow to JonBenét’s head. Patsy said the family owned one like it but she couldn’t tell from the photo if this was the one.
Patsy was not only vague, Thomas felt, but coy and charming, even flirtatious, her eyes wide and her head cocked to one side. Thomas, who had grown up in the South, was familiar with the demeanor. Thomas knew better than to be influenced by it. He was also trained to be circumspect. He was sure that Patsy was involved in her daughter’s murder. He just didn’t know how.
When Patsy’s interview was over, it was John Ramsey’s turn. Dressed casually, he sat down, crossed his legs, and put his hands in his lap. He was at ease. His attorney, Bryan Morgan, sat next to him.
The detectives took Ramsey through his previous statements. When they questioned him about putting JonBenét to bed and reading to her, he said that she had been asleep and that Rick French was mistaken—he hadn’t said, “I put her to bed and read her a book.” What he had said was, “I put her to bed and then I read a book.” Ramsey also told the detectives that Burke had slept through the events of that morning until he was awakened for the short ride to the Whites’.
John Ramsey said that he had gone down to the basement at around 10:00 A.M. that morning. It was the first the police had heard about this. None of Detective Arndt’s reports indicated that Ramsey had visited the basement before the body was found. Ramsey now told the detectives for the first time about his finding the broken window open, which had surprised him. Taken aback by the revelation of Ramsey’s visit to the basement, Thomas asked him why he didn’t report what he found to Detective Arndt since someone could have entered through the window. Ramsey said he didn’t know why. He just didn’t know, he said a second time. When asked if he also went into the boiler room and checked the wine cellar, he replied that he didn’t go into that area of the basement.
Ramsey was asked to tell the detectives how he had found JonBenét’s body. He said that after he opened the door and as he was still reaching for the light switch, he saw to his left the white blanket and his daughter’s hands protruding. Then he screamed and went inside. He didn’t remember exactly when the light was turned on. He wasn’t sure he saw the blanket while the room was still dark.
“When you opened the door, did you see the blanket and JonBenét before or after you turned on the light?” Ramsey was asked again. He said he didn’t remember. He didn’t remember turning on the light. He just didn’t remember. He didn’t indicate whether he’d stepped into the room before seeing his daughter on the floor. It had all happened so quickly, he said.
Then Thomas told Ramsey that Fleet White had been in the basement early that morning and had opened the wine cellar door but seen nothing in the room. Ramsey was surprised. He said he had no knowledge about White being in the basement earlier that morning. How did he explain the fact that White opened the door to the wine cellar, looked in, and didn’t see the blanket and the body, whereas he had seen them both almost immediately? I just don’t know, Ramsey said. I can’t explain it.
By now the police had asked Vahe Christianian, the co-owner of Mike’s Camera in Boulder, to measure the ambient and reflected light inside the wine cellar with its door open and the lights out, to verify what could and could not be seen during a quick glance inside the room. The test showed that there was not enough light to see anything in the dark unless the viewer had spent time getting accustomed to the darkness or his eyes adapted quickly to the surroundings.
However, there was a possible explanation. JonBenét’s body was inside the room and to the left. It might not have been visible to White standing just at the threshold and blocking reflected light from entering the room. Yet if someone stood 5 to 10 inches inside the threshold, more reflected light would have entered. Then, looking directly to the left, the person might have seen the white blanket in the dark room. Maybe there was enough reflected light from just outside the door.
The detectives asked Ramsey why, just minutes after finding JonBenét’s body, he had called his pilot to have his private plane take him and his family out of state that afternoon. Ramsey said that he had wanted to get back to Atlanta—where he and his family would be safe. Reminded that he had made the phone call within twenty minutes of finding his daughter’s body, Ramsey repeated that he had felt his family would be safer in Georgia.
Finally, he was asked what he thought of polygraph tests. He said, “If they are accurate, I’m for them.”
“What if I asked you to take one?” Thomas said.
“I have never been so insulted in my life as by that question,” Ramsey said angrily.
“Will you take one?” the detective asked.
“No,” was Ramsey’s answer.
John Ramsey’s interview lasted just over two hours. The detectives felt no need to go into a second day.
After the tapes of the interviews were transcribed, the police evaluated the Ramseys’ interviews. It became clear to them that Patsy didn’t want to revisit the unpleasant events of December 25–26, 1996, and couldn’t be shaken from her picture-perfect view of her life and family. John Ramsey seemed more realistic in his attitude toward the tragedy. The detectives felt confirmed in their belief that Ramsey was probably not involved in the actual murder of his daughter. But Patsy was—the officers were sure of it.
Like all investigators, Thomas and Trujillo would like to have found a motive—or at least a reason—for JonBenét’s murder. Maybe the child’s bed-wetting had gotten to her mother. Maybe the fact that the six-year-old still demanded help in the bathroom had somehow precipitated the events of that night. Nothing was evident, however. Of course the police knew that they weren’t required to find a motive. Their job was to connect evidence to a suspect.
The following day the Boulder PD again asked Alex Hunter to file charges against Patsy Ramsey. The police said they had discovered enough inconsistencies in both John and Patsy’s stories—combined with Patsy’s handwriting analysis—that there was now probable cause to arrest Patsy. Again Hofstrom pointed to the fact that the police had no eyewitnesses, had ambiguous forensic evidence, had parents with no histo
ry of mistreating their children, and—maybe most importantly—no evidence of a motive. Hunter said he wanted to see evidence beyond reasonable doubt. A case he was sure he could win in court. The DA said their would be no arrest warrant issued at this time.
8
RAMSEYS FINALLY GIVE INTERVIEWS
“It was a full day,” Sgt. Tom Wickman said as he left the Boulder Justice Center late in the afternoon.
“It’s extremely important that you say this is an open-minded investigation,” [Alex] Hunter said. “You can’t have on blinders.”
—Marilyn Robinson and Mary George
The Denver Post, May 1, 1997
Charlie Brennan of the Rocky Mountain News was one of the reporters who had staked out the Justice Center the day of the interviews, hoping to see the Ramseys and their attorneys. All he got was a quick glimpse of John Ramsey arriving after 3:00 P.M. He didn’t see the Ramseys or their attorneys leave. When he checked his voice mail the next day, he heard, “Call me as soon as you get this. Give me a phone number where you can be paged or called Thursday morning.” The message had been left the previous evening by Rachelle Zimmer, a spokeswoman for the Ramseys.
Like a few other reporters, Brennan had been told by Charlie Russell, another Ramsey spokesperson, that he shouldn’t leave town. An hour after hearing the voice mail message, he was in Boulder with a photographer, waiting in front of Dot’s Diner, at 8th and Pearl. When his cell phone rang, Rachelle Zimmer gave him a password—“subtract”—and designated a place where they should meet.
Perfect Murder, Perfect Town Page 36