Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

by Lawrence Schiller

  Gently, Schuler explored whether Burke thought his sister had sometimes been a bad girl and gotten mad at people. They discussed which people she got mad at and whether she had been mean and nasty to those people. Schuler asked Burke if his mother and father ever got really mad at his sister. Burke said he didn’t think so. Schuler’s most important question, never asked directly, was whether JonBenét had ever done something to bring about her death. Again Burke answered no. Had she fallen and hit her head? He didn’t remember her doing that.

  The most delicate part of the interview was getting Burke to answer questions without revealing what the police knew. First he was asked if he ate any pineapple and when he went to bed. He didn’t remember. What did he and his father talk about when they played with his Christmas gift that night? Just that it was time for bed. Then Schuler asked what had happened after Burke went to bed. Did he have any dreams? Did he hear anything in his sleep? Burke said he had heard voices, in the distance. Maybe it was a dream; maybe not. It was so long ago, he said.

  Without mentioning the 911 tape, Schuler asked Burke when he got up that morning and how he awakened. He did not want the Ramseys to learn what the police knew. The plan was to confront them about the tape during their own interviews, which would probably take place later in the month.

  Burke said he remembered waking up and hearing a loud conversation from down the hall or on the front stairs. Maybe his mother had come into his room, but he was sure he stayed in his bed and pretended to sleep. Even when his dad came in, he said, he pretended to be asleep. He was concerned while he pretended, he said. Burke told Schuler he was awake when his mother made the phone call. His parents might have thought he was asleep, but he wasn’t, he said. When he was asked if he spoke to his parents that morning before being awakened at seven to be taken to the Whites’ home, he said no. He said that he had stayed in his room the whole time. The 911 tape seemed to say otherwise. Had Burke been coached, or had his thinking changed independently since his January 1997 interview? The detectives wondered.

  On the third day, Schuler asked Burke if he had any questions, anything he wanted to know. By the way, that Rolex watch you have on, Burke asked, how much did it cost?

  Back in Boulder, several of the detectives watching the videotapes thought Burke’s credibility hinged on one answer he gave. Schuler asked the boy how much he and his parents had talked about JonBenét during the last year or so. Burke said that they didn’t talk much about what had happened to JonBenét. More than one detective felt that this wasn’t plausible. Experience told them that any child of Burke’s age was inquisitive and that he must have asked his parents about his sister’s death; it would be natural for him to believe that his parents knew things he didn’t. This reply of Burke’s, combined with his not remembering leaving his bedroom and talking to his parents at the time of the 911 call, led the Boulder investigators to believe that some reorientation—coaching or coaxing—had taken place during the intervening period.

  Later in 1998, Jim Jenkins would be asked about the 911 tape by a reporter covering the story. Burke’s lawyer said that the boy’s answer was not inconsistent with what one would expect a child to remember under traumatic circumstances. Jenkins suggested a scenario to the reporter: “Patsy came into Burke’s room, turned on the light, saw her son was OK, and turned her attention back to her missing daughter. She rushed back downstairs, where John had gone to read the ransom note. Maybe she left the light on in Burke’s room and the conversation between her and John downstairs was emotional and loud. If so, it very well could have been overheard by the boy. And if he overheard it, Burke could very well have gotten up and gone to the head of the stairs. I’m not saying that this is Burke’s memory of what happened. I’m just saying that it’s entirely consistent. I’m saying that Burke never told anyone he was asleep the whole morning. And I believe he was awake when the 911 call was made.”

  Jenkins also told the reporter that if there was any notion of Burke being a suspect, the interviews with Schuler had ruled out the possibility.

  Tom Koby had attended the department’s presentation of the Ramsey case to the DA’s office though he had less than a month left on the job. A new director of police services would be announced shortly. On June 10, Koby sent an e-mail to city employees, friends, and business associates.

  From:

  TOM KOBY

  To:

  COBO1.IS.SPRINT

  Date:

  6/10/98 5:19pm

  Subject:

  “What a Long Strange Trip it has Been”—Who said that?

  If my memory serves me correctly it was the Grateful Dead. However, knowing that I am entering into the senility time of life, who knows for sure.

  Still it has been an interesting seven years that I would enjoy sharing with folks, excluding media types, over a few beers next Thursday, June 18th, at the West End Tavern, 936 Pearl, from 4:30PM-7:00PM. So stop by if you would like to, “Say Hello, I must be going,” (Phil Collins said that,) before I slip away into the void.

  Feel free to extend this invitation to anyone outside the city who might not get this e-mail but who I might have encouraged, discouraged, pleased or abused over the last seven years. The only requirement is that they like to drink beer while enjoying the humor in all that we tend to make so serious in our lives.

  Two of Koby’s friends couldn’t make it to his going-away party. His closest friend, Tim Honey, former city manager of Boulder, had already sold his house and was in Budapest advising city managers in emerging Eastern European democracies. John Eller had already moved to Florida to look for a job as police chief in a small city.

  Some forty people showed up at the party on June 18. None of the Ramsey case detectives or police union leaders attended. Only two reporters showed up, and Jeff Shapiro was one of them. Alex Hunter and Phil Miller were there on behalf of the DA’s office. It was a sad affair for Hunter, who considered Tom Koby a friend. The DA didn’t have much to say that night.

  CHIEF CANDIDATE SEES LACK OF CONFIDENCE

  The past 18 months haven’t been easy for Boulder police.

  JonBenét Ramsey’s unsolved murder, Susannah Chase’s unsolved murder and student riots in the University Hill area have put the department in an unflattering spotlight and have caused the public to question the department’s competence.

  But even more troubling, said Cmdr. Tom Kilpatrick, is what is happening inside the department.

  The unsolved murders, the negative attention, the riots all have exacerbated the problem, Kilpatrick said.

  “But it has its roots in how we do our work, how we prioritize.” To restore the confidence, Kilpatrick said, “we need to roll up our sleeves and do good work. We need to reaffirm our commitment to basic police work—how we investigate crime scenes, how we staff the street.”

  He acknowledges there are union-mandated constraints on supervisors, “but the chief and the union have to get together on this.”

  Kilpatrick…said working in patrol, as he does now, “is tremendously rewarding” because patrol officers interact directly with the public. “It is the essence of policing.” But as a commander, he has noticed a gulf between the rank-and-file officers and management.

  Management staff, he said, is too far removed from the work. Kilpatrick doesn’t quarrel with the decision, made in the early ’90s, to adopt a community-oriented approach to police work, in which officers are involved in programs like mentoring troubled kids, working with community groups to prevent crime, and participating in educational programs.

  “With the best of intentions, we have created a monster in the minds of patrol officers and convinced them that community-oriented policing” was an obstacle to doing their jobs.

  —Karen Auge

  The Denver Post, June 15, 1998

  John and Patsy’s attorneys were now talking to Hunter’s staff about scheduling their interviews. The city of Broomfield’s police headquarters was chosen as the location. Simultaneous interviews c
ould be conducted there without John and Patsy ever seeing each other in the large facility. It was important that the Ramseys not be able to consult with each other—or each other’s attorneys—during the day’s questioning. Hofstrom told the couple’s attorneys that the interviews would take at least three days and maybe longer. The Ramseys chose to arrive at the Jefferson County Airport, which was close to Broomfield and where a private plane could land without attracting undue attention.

  Beckner and Wickman weren’t told the dates and location, presumably for fear of a leak to the media. Nevertheless, the detectives could sense the interviews were imminent from the flurry of activity in the DA’s office. The detectives were furious at being shut out, because they thought they were the only ones familiar enough with the case to interview the Ramseys properly. When Wickman raised the issue of the interviews, one deputy DA said, “This ain’t your ball game anymore.”

  In the battle zone, Michael Kane emerged as the figure the detectives could communicate with. He had talked to a number of them privately and had managed to avoid offending them, even when he told them that they hadn’t yet run everything into the ground. Kane understood that somewhere, deep in the recesses of some detective’s brain, might lie the key to this case. For their part, when talking to Kane, the detectives understood that there was still work to be done.

  Soon there would be a new list of tasks. Kane wanted to revisit Janet and Bill McReynolds, who, according to Trip DeMuth, hadn’t been properly cleared. Lou Smit wanted Randy Simons, Chris Wolf, Linda Hoffmann-Pugh, and her husband to be looked at again. There were still interviews to be done with Patsy’s family in Atlanta. Kane needed foot soldiers. Hofstrom and DeMuth wanted to rehire Steve Ainsworth from the sheriff’s department, and he was ready to come back, to spend weekends and nights if need be, but his wife was less enthusiastic. Hunter thought of asking for help from the Colorado Springs Police Department, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, or even the CU police. It irritated Bill Wise that the Boulder PD hadn’t asked for extra help earlier. If they had, he felt, they wouldn’t be months behind now.

  It had become clear to Hunter as a result of the presentation how little he really knew about the case. He began to work on weekends.

  Preparing for the interviews with the Ramseys, Kane and Hunter knew they would need balanced teams of interrogators and decided that Patsy and John would each be questioned by a team made up of one investigator and one lawyer. Lou Smit and Michael Kane would handle John, while Trip DeMuth and Tom Haney would take on Patsy.

  Haney, a veteran detective, had conducted interviews in the front seats of police cars, while standing on corners, even while standing over dead bodies—but this case troubled him. Soon after he arrived to work for Hunter in late April, he realized that no one theory of the murder accounted for all the evidence. Whenever the puzzle seemed to be complete, there were always more than a few pieces left on the table.

  Now, preparing for the new interviews, Haney studied the Ramseys’ CNN interview of January 1, 1997; the transcripts of the police department’s April 30, 1997 questioning, and the Ramseys’ May 1, 1997, press conference in Boulder. As he reviewed them, something struck him about Patsy. Her answers were never satisfactory. A new question always emerged after she had responded to a query. Haney kept that in mind as he prepared. For his interviews, he decided to work from a broad outline rather than pre-designed questions. Over the years he had learned to listen intently to interviewees’ answers and to let them be his guide to follow-up questions.

  Haney spent a week talking to the detectives. He knew Wickman and Gosage from the period when they had worked at the Denver PD; he’d played softball against Gosage over the years. Haney also spent time with Thomas and Trujillo, who had conducted Patsy’s first police interview. Thomas’s insights were particularly informative. Like Patsy, he came from down South, and that gave him an insider’s understanding of her. Haney was also impressed with Thomas’s thoroughness and enthusiasm despite eighteen months on the case.

  Lou Smit, who was intimately familiar with the case, still thought it was solvable, though he admitted it was the most difficult one he’d ever investigated. “Look how much evidence was left behind,” Smit said to Wise. “The ransom note, the garrote, the tape.” What he found most disturbing was that the police had never taken the time to develop suspects, as he had been taught to do. These detectives had asked people a series of questions—such as “Where were you on Christmas?” “What’s your mother’s phone number?” “Was your friend with you?” Then, often after making a few phone calls and visits, they’d said thank-you and good-bye. He would have spent time finding out about the behavior of the suspect—even about the behavior of the suspects’ alibi witnesses—how they related to children JonBenét’s age, for example. The detectives had done that type of work on John Andrew and a few people close to the Ramseys, but once they locked onto their target, they stopped developing other suspects. Yet Smit had to admit that he didn’t have a gut feeling about anyone.

  In their preparation, Kane and DeMuth sought advice from Henry Lee, Steve Pitt, the FBI, and the police. As they finalized their plan, Hofstrom and Kane decided that the detectives should screen videotapes of each two hours of questioning daily and make suggestions to the interrogators before the next day’s session began.

  On Sunday, June 21, Steve Thomas and his wife and sisters spent Father’s Day with his dad, who was in failing health. Driving home, he was troubled. He knew the Ramseys’ interviews were imminent and that he would not be involved. For the first time in eighteen months, he had no goals to work toward. He felt alone and adrift, no longer involved in the battle to get justice for JonBenét.

  That evening, Thomas learned that the interviews were about to begin. He didn’t even know where they were being held. The next day, Monday, he went to see Lou Smit. They met in the parking lot of the Justice Center. Thomas wanted to know why the police hadn’t been included in the planning. It was their case, he told Smit again and again. The investigator had to remind him that on June 2 it had become the DA’s case.

  “But not to let us know when and where is an insult,” Thomas fumed.

  “Hunter’s office thinks you guys will leak it,” Smit replied.

  “The leaks are over at the Justice Center,” Thomas protested.

  “You’re right. Alex Hunter is the worst,” Smit answered. “I feel bad that you guys get blamed for all the leaks.”

  This made Thomas take a step back. “You have to go after them with hard questions,” he said. “Don’t softball them.”

  Smit said he would try.

  Now Steve Thomas was certain he would no longer be consulted. Beckner had told him that he wasn’t going to be sworn in as a grand jury investigator. Hunter, he was sure, would fold under pressure from the Ramseys’ attorneys and use the grand jury as a device to let the Ramseys off. He could see that the case was moving away from an indictment.

  Thomas was tired of hitting his head against a brick wall. He was a bundle of nerves. The twenty-seven pounds he’d lost over the last year were starting to show. He had no energy. His medication was making him sick to his stomach. That afternoon, June 22, Thomas went to see Tom Koby, who was still acting chief, and told him about his illness. He requested some vacation time. Koby suggested that he apply for a work disability. The chief said he’d go to bat for him, but when Thomas put in his claim, the city denied it, stating that his medical problem was not work-related.

  His physical condition, Alex Hunter, Lou Smit’s view that the Ramseys were innocent—it all infuriated him. He was sure that JonBenét’s parents were involved. Nobody, he told himself, would fight for that little girl the way he was prepared to do.

  That same night, June 22, Carol McKinley, on behalf of Fox News, asked Hunter’s office if interviews with the Ramseys were in the works. Suzanne Laurion replied that they would eventually speak to that issue. To McKinley, the answer suggested that the interviews had already begun. She was rig
ht.

  The interviews began, without restrictions. Everyone understood that the process would be open-ended. Patsy and John each had an attorney and an investigator present.

  As Haney began, he knew that Patsy would be vague—it was her style, as he had discovered by watching the videotapes. In her earlier interviews she had been medicated, and it had affected her responses. Now, when she was asked if she was still taking medication, she said yes. But she said she hadn’t taken anything to calm her for these interviews. Haney had been warned by Steve Thomas that Patsy would crank up the charm and could become religiously charismatic at times. Haney knew he’d have to ignore it. He wanted to look into her eyes and get direct answers. That was what he would try for.

  In the first two days, Haney went through Patsy’s story of what had happened on December 25 and 26. As these interviews were open-ended, Haney had the luxury of time. Photographs taken by the police at the Ramseys’ house after the murder had been assembled into several thick books. Haney took Patsy through nearly all of them. She said she saw nothing really out of place except for a few things in JonBenét’s room. Again Patsy noticed the small white toy bear dressed in a Santa suit in one photograph. It was still missing.

  For the first time, she was asked about the conversation with Burke that the police had discovered on the 911 enhanced tape. She knew nothing about it, she said. Her story remained the same: Burke was asleep. When did JonBenét eat the pineapple? Again her story was the same: Her daughter had been taken directly to bed. She knew nothing about JonBenét eating any pineapple. For two days, Pasty was polite and charming. She would do anything to help find the killer of JonBenét. She repeatedly denied any involvement in her daughter’s murder. “I just did my best,” she kept saying. “I took her to bed, I just did my best.”