Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

by Lawrence Schiller

  The physical layout of the house was reviewed. It appeared that all the doors were locked that night, yet it shouldn’t be forgotten that there were still several keys missing as of June 1998. There had been no indication of forced entry. The pry marks discovered on two doors had not produced evidence of splintering on the ground below, and Barbara Fernie, a close friend of Patsy’s, had told the police that she had seen the pry marks before the murder and at that time they were already old.

  Mike Everett discussed the spiderwebs found on outside windows and particulary the one on the grate in front of the broken basement window. Spiders didn’t build new webs during winter, he told the audience. He explained how little force it would take to break the partial web that had been found across the window grate.

  Deliberately, it seemed, the police had organized the information to negate an intruder theory. Would an intruder have tied the cord so loosely on JonBenét’s arm? Would an intruder cover her with a blanket? Would an intruder wipe off her body and redress her? Would an intruder have used Patsy’s paintbrush to tighten the noose? Wouldn’t an intruder have written a ransom note in advance? If he intended to write a note, wouldn’t he bring paper? His own pen? Would an intruder travel easily and freely through a mazelike house? One observer later said he could almost imagine this intruder saying, “Oh, fuck! My comrades and I, in our small foreign faction, forgot to bring a pad and a pen. Shit! We forgot to bring a garrote, some rope, and duct tape. What else did we forget?”

  The police listed twenty-five indications that pointed away from an intruder: Lab tests showed that the fine-line Sharpie pen with which the note was written was one that Patsy had used before. Also, the pad, the note, and the flashlight were all discovered in close proximity of each other. The pen in a cup with other Sharpies right beside the phone in the kitchen where Patsy always kept them. The detectives admitted that even though the handwriting analysis did not show definitively that Patsy had written the note, the evidence indicated that Patsy couldn’t be eliminated as the author. Moreover, the police said, Donald Foster had determined—although not scientifically—that she had written and may have composed the note. Comparisons of phraseology and punctuation were shown to the audience. Of everyone interviewed, Patsy was the only one who was not eliminated as the author of the ransom note.

  Possible scenarios, speculation, and conjecture about what might have taken place Christmas night in the Ramsey home came up during breaks in the presentation. The police had presented no motive or theory, but almost everyone agreed it was unlikely that a mysterious intruder, heretofore unknown, would emerge as the killer. There was speculation that perhaps JonBenét had wet her bed or soiled her clothes and that Patsy had reacted violently but had not intended to kill her. Then perhaps she and her husband had conspired to cover it up and make it look like something else.

  The police listed all the reasons why the case should be presented to a grand jury. They mentioned sixteen people who should be questioned under oath on twenty different topics. Some of them had so far been uncooperative. In other cases they simply didn’t know what real information, if any, people had, as with Fleet White. Also, some school, phone, and credit card records that were necessary could be obtained at this late date only by order of a grand jury.

  Finally, in closing, Steve Thomas listed over a dozen reasons, in no particular order, why the police suspected the Ramseys. Some of them had been mentioned during the discussion of other categories.

  1. The date engraved on JonBenét’s headstone was December 25, not December 26, 1996, which indicated they knew she did not die in the early morning hours. December 25—that is, before midnight—was the earliest approximate time of death judging from the state of the pineapple found in her small intestine.

  2. Sound tests conducted by the police indicated that the scream heard by Melody Stanton across the street should have been heard by the parents in their bedroom.

  3. The behavior of Patsy and John after Rick French arrived at their house was not in keeping with a kidnapping but more the way people would respond after a death.

  4. The phone call placed by John Ramsey to arrange for a pilot to fly his entire family to Atlanta that evening was made within thirty-five minutes of his finding his daughter’s body.

  5. Prior vaginal trauma was unlikely to have been caused by a person outside the immediate family.

  6. The flashlight, the writing pad, and the Sharpie pen were all found in the kitchen area. The flashlight—which may have caused the head injury—was left on the kitchen counter.

  7. The ransom note was written on paper torn from a writing pad that belonged to the Ramseys.

  8. The Sharpie pen used to write the note was not found close to where the pad was discovered; but in a cup next to the kitchen phone where the pen was kept.

  9. The writing pad was discovered close to where the ransom note was allegedly found.

  10. Patsy Ramsey had not been eliminated as the author of the ransom note.

  11. The enhanced 911 tape contradicted the version of the events of that morning told by both Patsy and John Ramsey on several occasions to different police officers.

  12. Patsy’s statements about when she discovered that her daughter was not in her room and John’s statements about what he did with his daughter after taking her to bed on December 25, 1996, were inconsistent.

  13. The paintbrush used in the “garrote” was linked to Patsy.

  14. The confusing layout of the home would make it difficult for a stranger to commit all the aspects of the crime and its cover-up without fear of discovery.

  15. The elements used in the aftermath of the crime and its staging, such as the blanket were obtained from places in the house known to the parents.

  16. When the first officer arrived at the house Patsy answered the door fully dressed wearing the same jacket as the previous night and with her makeup on.

  17. Fibers from her jacket were found on the duct tape John Ramsey said he tore from JonBenét’s mouth.

  A question-and-answer session followed the presentation. All the detectives sat at a table at the front of the room. Beckner was to one side, behind the lectern. Dr. Lee maintained his usual professional demeanor, but his frustration was clear nonetheless. He would pose a question and then add, “I asked you a year ago for this information. I still don’t have it.” DAs Bob Grant and Bill Ritter also remarked to each other that despite their best efforts, the police investigation seemed to have fallen short.

  By the time Barry Scheck had to leave, Hunter’s group was saying that there wasn’t a filable case. Ritter, Peters, Grant, Lee, Scheck, and Hunter agreed. Not even close, was their verdict: 95 percent of what they had heard was already public knowledge, the remaining 5 percent wasn’t enough even for a runaway grand jury to indict. They all agreed that the intruder theory, given the existing evidence, was untenable.

  Daniel Hoffman, one of the lawyers working pro bono for the police, remarked to Bill Ritter during an earlier break, “Looks like they got it.”

  “Got what?” Ritter countered.

  “Felony murder,” Hoffman said confidently.

  Ritter didn’t see it. The felony-murder statute in Colorado allowed for a murder conviction even when the intent to kill couldn’t be proved, if it could be shown that the death occurred during the commission of a felony such as arson, burglary, or sexual assault. Ritter knew that none of those secondary felonies could be proved in the Ramsey case—not even sexual assault. If JonBenét was penetrated after death, it wasn’t a sexual assault; it was abuse of a corpse. But that wasn’t Ritter’s main reservation about Hoffman’s suggestion. Even if the evidence someday proved that a sexual assault had preceded the child’s death, the prosecution would still have to prove which parent was responsible for the assault. That left prosecutors with the troubling question of which parent—if indeed either parent—had knowingly caused the child’s death. Until investigators could identify each parent’s individual actions, two suspects
meant no suspects.

  After Henry Lee and Barry Scheck had left, Beckner, accompanied by the detectives who had brought the case to this juncture—Thomas, Gosage, Trujillo, Harmer, Weinheimer, Everett, and Wickman—faced the press. Standing behind the microphones, Beckner reviewed where they had been: 590 people had been formally interviewed, 1,058 pieces of physical evidence investigated, some thirty thousand pages written up for the case file, twenty-two thousand man-hours spent on the investigation, seventeen states visited, sixty-eight people studied as possible suspects, and thirty different reasons given for why the department was justified in asking that a grand jury be convened.

  Then Beckner answered a reporter’s question: “I have an idea who did it, yes.” Nothing in his body language or words suggested that he had a mystery suspect in mind. Reporters felt they heard a door slam shut on the intruder theory.

  Someone reminded Beckner that six months earlier, he had said the Ramseys were under the “umbrella of suspicion.” In what way, if at all, had that changed?

  “There are certainly fewer people under the umbrella of suspicion now than there were in October,” Beckner said. “The umbrella is not quite so big.”

  Another reporter asked Beckner if the case could now be considered Alex Hunter’s. Had the baton been passed? Beckner conceded that the biggest decision—whether or not to take the case to a grand jury—was now in the DA’s hands. The commander pointed out that his detectives would still be working on various details of the case.

  At the same time, inside the Events Center, Hunter was holding a meeting with his staff, the FBI, and the police department’s pro bono attorneys.

  “Now that the case is ours,” Hunter told the group, “we are moving ahead with interviewing the Ramseys.” He wanted to plan strategy. “The Ramseys need to fish or cut bait,” Hunter said. Dan Schuler said he was going to interview Burke “properly,” which seemed to some like a jab at the detectives’ prior work. The FBI objected to the interviews, saying it was time to put the Ramseys under oath before a grand jury, let the threat of perjury hang over their heads. Hofstrom said that the Ramseys were cooperating; the interviews were going to take place. Most likely he thought there was no alternative but to question the Ramseys, since he didn’t see a case worthy of going to the grand jury. One FBI agent said it was insane to question them now, in the presence of their lawyers, who would easily figure out what the prosecutors knew by the questions being asked. In a grand jury proceeding, the Ramseys’ attorneys would not be allowed to cross-examine or raise objections. The Ramseys had been protected by their attorneys long enough.

  Hunter didn’t want to hear it. He was going to rely on his “trusted advisers” on this, he said.

  “With no disrespect to your position as DA,” said Bill Hagmaier of the FBI, “I know the grand jury is your call—”

  “Yes, it’s my call,” Hunter said, cutting him off. “And I’ll make that decision after I’ve considered all the alternatives—”

  “But this little girl has been dead and buried for over eighteen months,” Hagmaier continued in a firm voice.

  Hunter turned red. “This is a political decision,” he said. “It is not a police decision.”

  Pro bono attorney Bob Miller said to Hofstrom that the DA’s office had an obligation to listen to the FBI. Trip DeMuth shouted at Miller that they were going to interview the Ramseys. They had made the commitment. “Don’t ever raise your voice to me,” Miller said pointedly.

  “We’ve always wanted to help,” Hagmaier put in, “but considering what is going on here in Boulder, there’s no purpose in continuing here today.”

  At that point the FBI agents left. Minutes later, Pete Hofstrom walked alone to his car.

  When Beckner’s press conference was over, Hunter strode toward the cluster of microphones. His tough-guy expression was evident, but only briefly.

  “This is the kind of weather that brings us all here,” he began cheerily, gesturing toward the cloud-free skies, the brilliant late afternoon sun. “How many of you are here from out of state?”

  Clutching a legal pad with his notes, Hunter told the press that he thought it made sense to take the case to a grand jury. But, he added, no final decision had been made. People should make no assumptions about what was going to happen next. Even his rough timetable—that there would be a public decision within thirty days—could change, he warned.

  “We do not have enough to file a case, and we have a lot of work to do,” he said. He was choosing his words much more carefully now than when he held his first press conference in February 1997.

  “I will go back to my people and analyze what we heard and make sure it is sensible to ask Boulder citizens to spend the time it takes to run a grand jury.”

  Two days after the presentation, New York radio commentator Don Imus was talking about the first game of the NBA finals between the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz and said that the Bulls would have been better off to have “pulled Michael Jordan and substituted for him with Alex Hunter.” A friend told Hunter he was on the verge of becoming as well known as Kenneth Starr.

  6

  On Wednesday, June 3, the police detectives began to transfer the voluminous case file to Hunter’s office at the Justice Center. Two days later Hunter, Kane, DeMuth, Beckner, and Wickman met. Beckner said the police wanted to direct the continuation of the investigation.

  “This is our case now. Stay away from it,” Hunter said at the outset. “You’ve had eighteen months to do it yourself, and you haven’t done it.” Wickman remained calm as he reminded the DA that there were close to two dozen tasks still to be completed, let alone the interviews of John, Patsy, and Burke. To calm things down, Kane said that he’d come away from the presentation with the notion that there might be a case against Patsy.

  Later in the afternoon, Beckner met privately with Hunter and Hofstrom to argue his position. He pointed out that it was important for the grand jury to subpoena the Ramseys’ credit card and telephone records before they were interviewed. In their April interviews they had said that they had never bought duct tape or cord. Maybe the records would show otherwise. “Get the hard evidence and confront them with it,” Beckner said. Hofstrom replied that they would go ahead without the records. The interviews with the Ramseys were more important. Beckner said he would tell his officers.

  “Look, we’ve done all we can do. It’s no longer our case,” Beckner told his assembled detectives an hour later. “Go back and resume your lives. Make your summer vacation plans. And don’t worry about this case anymore.”

  The officers were distraught. Some of them felt that Beckner didn’t want to challenge Hunter because he was concentrating on becoming chief and believed that a street fight with the DA wouldn’t help his cause.

  “If this isn’t our case,” Gosage said to Thomas, “then there is no case.” Another officer told a friend that he felt as if he’d handed over his baby to a stranger and wasn’t even allowed to change its diaper anymore.

  Beckner assigned Tom Wickman, the case officer, to be the liaison with Kane and the DA’s office. Later, he would be sworn in as primary grand jury investigator.

  On Tuesday, June 9, as agreed, Pete Hofstrom and Dan Schuler traveled to Atlanta to interview Burke Ramsey. In preparation, they consulted the FBI and the Boulder detectives and reviewed the videotape of Burke’s January 8, 1997, interview. The interviews were to be conducted at a local district attorney’s office and videotaped. On three consecutive days, June 10, 11, and 12, for two hours each day, JonBenét’s brother would be questioned by Schuler, a police officer with a gift for talking to kids, a cop who didn’t like guns and never carried one.

  In Atlanta, attorney Jim Jenkins had obtained written consent from Patsy and John and made sure they understood that they would not be allowed near the interview room. John Ramsey had previously told the attorney that he wanted to cooperate fully with Hunter’s staff and supply them with everything they needed.

  Jenkins knew i
t was inappropriate to prepare Burke for the sessions. For his part, Jenkins didn’t want to know what Burke had to say, and he had never attempted to discuss the events of December 25 and 26 with the boy. Jenkins told him only one thing: “The people who are coming are trying to solve the murder of your sister, and you need to help them.” Then he added, “The conversations are going to be serious.” The last thing Burke wanted to do, now that school was out, was to sit in a room for three days. Nevertheless, he said OK. Jenkins told the child he’d be nearby if he needed any help.

  When Hofstrom and Schuler arrived, Jenkins could see that they didn’t have an agenda, that they were only interested in factual and accurate information. Hofstrom still wasn’t committed to one theory or another. He and Jenkins watched the sessions from another room on a video monitor. Patsy, who had brought her son, stayed elsewhere in the building.

  Burke was polite and bright, but it was understandably difficult for him, because he didn’t want to talk about the death of his sister. Like any child, he was defensive, which indicated that he wanted to forget the past. Within a short period of time, however, he developed a rapport with Schuler, who sensed that Burke was adjusting to the loss of his sister, had made new friends, and was doing well in school.

  Each day the videotapes were taken to Jane Harmer’s hotel room in Atlanta. In keeping with Hunter’s agreement that the police would not be involved, Harmer wasn’t allowed to observe. The tapes were shipped overnight to Boulder so that Kane and the Boulder PD detectives could make recommendations to Schuler for the next day’s interview sessions.

  When Schuler asked Burke if his mother and father had prepared him for their conversations, he said no.