Todd Sears, the lead detective, had edited down tens of hours of video into a catalog of San Juan’s dealers, which he planned to use in court. On a Friday, when the department was poised to arrest the some thirty dealers, none of them showed up. The street had cleaned itself up overnight. As Sears tried to figure out what had gone wrong, his supervising officer dropped on his desk the edited videotape he’d made. Eventually Sears discovered that Koby had, without his knowledge, shown it to police liaison Ron Brambila, a member of the minority issues coalition. For Sears, Koby’s action not only subverted the arrest of the drug dealers but violated police and union procedure, which stipulated that evidence cannot be made public during an ongoing investigation. According to Sears Koby may even have been involved in obstruction of justice. Sears filed charges against the chief with the department’s internal affairs sergeant, Mark Beckner. After an investigation, Sears’ allegations were sustained, and Koby’s boss and friend, city manager Tim Honey, was required to discipline him. In typical Boulder style, Honey ordered Koby to attend counseling with Honey and to explain his actions to the department’s officers. When the narcotics team eventually arrested the drug dealers, Ron Brambila, to whom Koby had originally shown the videotape, appeared in court to support one of the dealers.* Sears resigned from the Boulder PD shortly afterward.
The May 2 riots had brought long-simmering resentments to a boil. The rank and file were so fed up that no one attempted to defend the chief’s policies. One union official later said that the Boulder officers had turned into a lynch mob.
Though they didn’t want to ask for Koby’s dismissal, the police did want to take a vote by secret ballot. Seventy-eight members voted no confidence, thirty-one opposed, and six abstained. The no-confidence vote had passed by two to one. Though union officials didn’t understand how their vote would be interpreted, the Boulder City Council would see it as a sign that the rank and file wanted Koby removed.
Within days of the meeting, the press reported that city manager Tim Honey was on his way out. According to the Rocky Mountain News: “Honey’s performance recently has been criticized by at least four of Boulder’s nine council members…. Honey’s critics on the council have voiced concern about personnel issues. Honey also had defended police chief Tom Koby, who this week lost a vote of confidence conducted by the Boulder Police Benefit Association.”
For six years, Tim Honey, with a master’s degree in political science from Georgetown University, had seemed to be the perfect city manager for politically progressive Boulder. Its leaders thought of themselves as innovators, looking for solutions to the complex issues facing local governments. Honey was hired to bring stability, vision, and direction to what some local residents called Utopia.
When he arrived in February 1991, he found a priority list of 104 items. Most issues in Boulder centered around the city’s growth: Should there be more or less? What would be the impact of growth? In a style endemic to Boulder, combatants argued and fought long after a vote was taken, the losers trying to find a way to save whatever they had lost.
Seven months after he took the job, Honey hired Tom Koby as chief of police. Honey felt that Koby’s twenty-five years in law enforcement had given him a real understanding of the relationship between public safety and other community issues. Within a year, Koby told the city council that police resources were inadequate. With the approval of Honey and the city council, he restructured the department, removing several layers of bureaucracy and creating management teams in their place. Once that system was in effect, he started his push for community policing, where civilians would work with the police to fight crime.
A week after the Rocky Mountain News published its story about Tim Honey’s problems, he resigned. The police union was moving against Tom Koby, and the media were criticizing every move the police made in the Ramsey case. At the same time, Mayor Leslie Durgin told the press that she would not seek reelection. For unrelated reasons, the city’s planning director left his post, and so did Boulder’s superintendent of schools.
The official face of paradise began to collapse. Boulder would soon find itself without the stable day-to-day leadership it had taken for granted for seven years.
I got elected to the Boulder City Council in November of 1987 and I stayed until 1996. I was even deputy mayor for a while. The council hires the city manager, and he hires the fire chief and police chief. The council can’t direct either of them to do anything, but we can certainly make our feelings known to the city manager—and there is nothing wrong with that.
The whole region north of Denver has boomed. There is now traffic congestion. People are getting short-tempered. And wealthier. That’s always a bad sign. Wealthy people are very impatient.
Boulder became a city for people whose lives are not dependent on where they live. They can afford to live anywhere. You have to keep in mind that this place isn’t real life. This is dreamland.
Before long, almost everyone that worked for the city of Boulder was forced to live outside the city because it became so expensive to live here. Like the cops. They live outside the city they are protecting, and they don’t like that. Tom Koby was unable to give the rank and file the type of police department they wanted, and that wasn’t good, either.
When I read in the Daily Camera that this little girl was killed, I would never have predicted that the world was going to descend on Boulder. What surprised me is that as a city, we never got together to protect ourselves. The police, the city council, the mayor, and the district attorney never sat down together and said, “Look, we’ve got something that is snowballing. And the snowball is running down the hill.” We do that for every other problem we have to solve. I’m not talking about solving the case. I’m talking about how to deal with the snowball when it hits Boulder.
—Matt Appelbaum
JOHN RAMSEY TARGET OF PRANK POSTER
The Pearl Street Mall area in downtown Boulder was visited before daylight Tuesday by pranksters who hung posters that label the father of JonBenét Ramsey a killer.
The poster reads: “$100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer John Ramsey.”
—Charlie Brennan
Rocky Mountain News, May 7, 1997
The police told Alex Hunter’s office that a quick review by the FBI of the transcripts of the Ramseys’ police interviews and videos of their May 1 press conference and January 1 CNN interview had produced significant insights about how each parent dealt with the death of their daughter but nothing that would break the case open. There were few inconsistent statements between Patsy’s and John’s stories but many discrepancies between their stories and the facts surrounding the events of December 26. The police believed the Ramseys had been coached to protect their rights rather than feeling free to cooperate in finding the killer of JonBenét.
The Ramseys renewed their advertising campaign and again offered a $100,000 reward for the arrest and indictment of the killer of their daughter. Clearly implied in the move was that they would no longer wait for the police to solve the crime.
The advertisement, which appeared in the Daily Camera on Sunday, May 11, sought help in locating “an adult male approaching young children in Boulder in late 1996.” On Friday, May 9, a reporter for the Associated Press heard that the advertisement would refer to a suspect and asked Hunter’s office for a statement, since this was the first time a description—no matter how sketchy—had been published. Suzanne Laurion responded in what the AP journalist considered her professorial voice: “Why would we have a comment? It’s not our ad.” This led the reporter to believe that the lead had been uncovered by the Ramseys’ investigators and that the DA’s office had nothing to do with the ad. On May 10, the day before the ad was to be published, Alex Hunter bumped into Bryan Morgan at a children’s soccer game. The attorney for the Ramseys told the DA that his deputy, Trip DeMuth, had approved the ad. This put the DA’s office in a precarious position. Now not only was Hunter’s s
taff consulting with the Ramseys, they were acknowledging leads the police were investigating and giving them more credibility than was warranted. When Hunter confronted him, DeMuth apologized to his furious boss, but it was too late. By Monday, the day after the ad appeared, the Ramseys were publicly thanking Alex Hunter for acknowledging the involvement of his office in the ad campaign. Now the public knew for sure that the Ramseys had developed a dialogue with the DA’s office while they kept the police at arm’s length.
Within hours of the Ramseys’ appearance before the media on May 1, several of the tabloids sent new reporters to Boulder hoping to get interviews with the couple or their friends. Ken Harrell, a Globe writer from Florida, was one of the first to arrive. On May 11, the same day the Ramseys’ advertisement appeared in the Daily Camera, Ken Harrell and Jeff Shapiro went to services at St. John’s. Ken, an Episcopalian, even took along his Bible.
Unknown to Harrell, Steve Thomas was in church that day too, and seated next to him. Thomas, of course, didn’t know Harrell. The two men shook hands when the congregation took the Peace.
When the service was over, Rev. Hoverstock asked Shapiro to step into his office. Harrell waited outside.
When I went into Rol’s office, he said, “People are saying things about you. I just want to know the truth. Don’t bullshit me. They say you’re undercover, that you’re working on the case.”
I lied through my teeth.
He said, “Jeff, don’t say these things. It’s not going to serve your purposes.” If I wanted to clear my name, he said, all I had to do was let him take a copy of my driver’s license and he’d show it to the police.
“Do you feel comfortable with that?” he asked.
I gave him my license and he copied it.
Then I left, and Hoverstock asked to see Harrell.
—Jeff Shapiro
After Jeff left Hoverstock’s office, I met with Father Rol privately. I told him I worked for the Globe and that I believed the Ramseys were involved in the death of their child. Then I asked, “Have they asked you for confession?”
For a moment he didn’t answer. Then he said, “I have no respect for what you do for a living. You lie about everything.”
“No we don’t, Father. We don’t lie,” I replied.
I could see this strong man biting his lower lip. For a moment I thought he might throw me out of his office.
“As a forgiver of sins, the church is a house for all sinners,” I said. “So I should be one of the first welcomed into your congregation.” He remained silent and I continued. “You should not turn your nose up at any of God’s children.” He still did not respond.
“Don’t you feel that if the Ramseys are responsible you have to do something about it?” I asked.
Finally he replied, “This is a sanctuary. I have to treat everyone in my church in an appropriate way. They came here to seek God and that is what they will find.”
I could see he was offended that I was asking him about matters he considered privileged.
“I am here to find the truth,” I told him. “If there are two murderers loose in your congregation, I would have no qualms about stepping over the boundaries of the church protocol to put them where they belong.” Then I said I hoped he would steer the Ramseys in the right direction. Hoverstock stood there quietly for a second or two. I seemed to have caught his interest.
“The greatest sin of all is taking another’s life,” I continued. “I would not want to have your job. Mine is much easier. I can catch the killers and turn them over without any struggles of conscience. I understand that you can’t. You have to save their souls.”
“That is my job,” Hoverstock said.
“Have you saved their souls?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer.
Then he asked me to leave, but in a nice way. “I do love you,” he said. “Come here, my brother,” and we hugged.
Then I left.
—Ken Harrell
The next Sunday, Ken Harrell didn’t go to church with Jeff Shapiro. When Shapiro entered St. John’s, he saw John Ramsey sitting alone, so he sat down right behind him, a couple of feet away. Shapiro even shook his hand when Rev. Hoverstock said everyone should take the Peace.
I took communion with him, drinking my wine as he drank his.
Rol came up to John and put his hand on his shoulder as if to say, “You’re going to make it through this. You’re going to survive. You didn’t do this.”
Then he came to me, looked into my eyes, and said, “May you accomplish everything the Lord has sent you here to accomplish.”
After the service, I talked to Hoverstock.
“I work for the Globe,” I told him.
“I’ve heard that.”
“When I’m undercover as an investigative reporter, I don’t tell anyone. I needed time to think out what I said to you last Sunday. I respect you, Father; you deserve to know the truth.”
“I respect you for telling me,” Hoverstock said, “but you lied to all of us.”
“I didn’t lie,” I told him. “I’m undercover.”
“What’s the difference?”
“There’s a big difference,” I explained. “If I were an FBI agent, you’d understand. But reporters have a role in a democratic society to find out the truth. That’s what I’m here to do.”
“That may have some merit. But what it comes down to is that I feel deceived.”
Then I showed Hoverstock a picture of JonBenét in makeup. She looked sad.
“That’s not the little girl I knew,” he said.
“But this is what this case is about. I’m here to avenge that girl.”
“So you’re telling me that you’re some holy avenger? No. You’re a predator. You’re all predators.”
“I’m here to make a difference. Someday you’ll understand I’m a good person.”
“You are a good person,” Hoverstock said. “But I don’t like the fact that you’re on John’s case all the time.”
“I’m not. I’m on Patsy’s case. We’re not in heaven,” I continued. “We’re still on earth, and God has given us our own laws to follow here.”
As I left his office I recited from the Bible a verse that Chris Darden quoted to the Simpson jury: “For the Lord doth hate these things: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.”
Hoverstock looked hard at me.
Then I added, “Let justice be done though thy heaven fall.”
—Jeff Shapiro
After church, Jeff Shapiro called Frank Coffman, an occasional contributor to the Colorado Daily. Coffman, a friendly guy about to turn fifty, had first met Alex Hunter in 1982 during a citizens’ meeting and was currently writing articles on the Ramsey case. Coffman agreed to meet Shapiro at the Trident bookstore and café on Pearl Street, next door to the Rue Morgue mystery bookstore.
Over coffee, they talked about the case and eventually reached the topic of the garrote stick. In the photo the Globe had published, the wood looked like a manufactured item, slightly glossy and tapered. Then they looked at the autopsy and crime scene photos, which Shapiro had been given by his editor. Coffman said he’d once seen some white cord at the Boulder army-navy store that looked similar to the cord around JonBenét’s wrist.
That afternoon, Shapiro visited the store Coffman had mentioned, which was just a few blocks from the Access Graphics offices. Sifting through the boxes of white cord, he found some that matched what he’d seen in the autopsy photo. Shapiro asked the cashier if John or Patsy Ramsey had ever been in the store.
“Not that I can recall,” the clerk said.
That evening, Shapiro wrote a letter to Alex Hunter. He mentioned what he’d found and said that according to the clerk, the police had never visited the store to inquire about cord.
“People like you are going to make a difference,” Hunter told Shapiro on the phone after receiving his letter. “Other journalists come in to get information. You come in to give me information.”
The comment gave Shapiro a huge boost.
Meanwhile, his editor was pushing him to develop a police source. Call Steve Thomas, Mullins said. Shapiro thought he was joking, since Mullins had blown Shapiro’s cover by calling Thomas earlier in the year.
Nevertheless, Shapiro called Thomas and left a message, saying he had information the cops might need. Surprisingly, Thomas called back.
“I still have a working file on you,” the detective said. “I look forward to seeing whatever it is you have to tell me.”
Shapiro dropped off a note for Thomas at police headquarters. In it, he mentioned the white cord he had found—and also that the movie Speed contained a line similar to one rumored to be in the ransom note: “Don’t try to grow a brain John.”
“Jeff, I’m not interested in your theories,” Thomas told Shapiro the next day on the phone. “I’m not going to give you any information in exchange. This relationship is going to be a monologue. That’s all it will ever be. You talk to us. I say nothing.”
“I just want to help,” Shapiro said.
That afternoon, he went to police headquarters to introduce himself to Thomas. Shapiro was impressed with Thomas’s appearance—he was in his mid-thirties and looked a bit like Clark Kent, in jeans and a T-shirt. On his way home, Shapiro stopped at the army-navy store again. He learned that after he’d delivered his letter to Thomas the previous day, the detective had visited the store and purchased all their white cord, forty-five pieces in all. Shapiro felt as if he’d accomplished something.
On May 19 I met with Steve Thomas. This time he was more professional-looking, in a white shirt and tie.
He took me into this little ice-cube room—nothing but a desk, a tape recorder, and couple of chairs on both sides. I put my $750 Zero Halliburton briefcase on the table.
“Does that need to be up here?” Thomas asked. “Would you mind if I opened it?” He searched my case, then said, “Mind if I pat you down and do a search?”
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