Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (10 page)

One day in the spring of 1996, Pam Griffin, who had met Patsy and JonBenét at a pageant, telephoned Kit Andre, a dance instructor she knew. “I’ve got a great child for you,” Pam said.

“Wonderful,” Kit replied.

The following week, Patsy and JonBenét drove to Kit Andre’s dance studio in Westminster, twenty minutes southeast of Boulder. Kit had danced in the Broadway companies of
Hello, Dolly!
and
Peter Pan
and had ballet credits in Paris and London, including a featured role under Dame Margot Fonteyn.

Patsy began by saying, “My little girl’s name is JonBenét. I’d like her to learn to dance and sing.”

Kit was impressed by Patsy. She was attractive and outgoing. However, JonBenét, who wore ordinary play clothes, was very plain-looking, she thought.

“Hello, JonBenét,” Kit said. “How are you?”

JonBenét answered, “Hi,” and smiled.

Patsy told Kit that JonBenét participated in pageants and she herself had been in pageants when she was
younger. She’d brought an audiotape of music—“I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart.”

There was no time for JonBenét to learn the basics of ballet or tap, Patsy said, they needed a song and dance by summer. “And whatever it takes, I’ll pay for it,” Patsy added. Private lessons were $100 each, Kit told her. That was no problem, Patsy replied.

The following week when JonBenét came in, she was dressed in shorts and sandals. Kit still didn’t see anything special about her, though of course she wasn’t made up and her hair wasn’t styled.

“Can I join you?” Patsy asked.

Kit told her it would be better if she didn’t, and Patsy stayed in the reception room.

Kit had three dance studios, mirrored and with 12-foot ceilings. She took JonBenét into the “small” one, which she used for private lessons—it was almost a thousand square feet.

First the two of them talked about music, then Kit played the audiotape Patsy had brought. She suggested a few movements to JonBenét—a little rhythm, then a few steps.

This child can dance, Kit thought. She’s good.

“Now let’s try this.” A few more steps.

“Now try this,” JonBenét said with a laugh, mimicking Kit.

The hour went by fast.

“How’s she doing?” Patsy asked when the two of them emerged from the studio.

“She’s going to be wonderful,” Kit said.

“Can she sing?”

“Well, not really,” Kit admitted. “We’re going to have to work on that.”

“Can you see her tomorrow?”

Kit scheduled three lessons a week. Patsy was deter
mined that JonBenét would be ready for the summer pageants.

During the third lesson, Patsy knocked on the studio door. “It will be better if I’m here,” she insisted. “I’ve done this before.”

Kit could see that she was miserable in the reception room and was eager to show her
exactly
how the routine should be staged.

Kit watched, and she thought that Patsy wasn’t great but she was OK. She knew every note, every step, and every gesture. From that moment on, Kit couldn’t get Patsy out of the studio.

As Kit taught JonBenét, Patsy would tap her feet, take notes about the movements, and then write down the words “I want to be a da-da-da cowboy” so that JonBenét could practice at home.

One day during the second week of lessons, Patsy got up and danced with JonBenét, showing Kit what she wanted. Side by side, mother and daughter. Suddenly Kit could see that Patsy wanted to be up there herself, wanted JonBenét to perform the way she longed to do. Kit now knew that she’d have to teach the song Patsy’s way.

Finally Kit said, “Patsy, you’re a pest. Teaching is my job. Sit down and be quiet.”

Then one day Nedra, JonBenét’s grandmother, showed up. She frequently came to Boulder to visit her family. Kit thought she was adorable—a small woman with a big personality. Nedra sat in a director’s chair and couldn’t stop talking about when Patsy was a little girl in the pageants and then when she was Miss West Virginia and competed in the Miss America pageant.

For her part, JonBenét was eager to learn and a quick study. Never once did she say, “I don’t want to. I’d rather go play.”

“You’re going to be a star,” Kit told her. “But if you
want to be a star someday, you have to be a star right now.”

Kit soon discovered that JonBenét had a wonderful personality. She understood how to gesture and use her shoulders as she danced. Kit was struck by how smart and talented she was. But she also understood that JonBenét was performing because her mother wanted her to, not because she wanted to. JonBenét wasn’t one of those kids who had seen someone dance and decided, That’s what I want to do.

JonBenét died that winter. I never saw her in a pageant. Never saw her in the cowboy costume. Never saw her do the routine I taught her until I saw that pageant video on TV.

I saw Patsy at the memorial service in Boulder. She was pathetic. She was nothing. She was all gone. And that was the first time I ever saw John Ramsey. He was talking about what had happened. Kind of matter-off-actly. Calmly. Patsy was crying in the chapel aisle—some friend was holding her up. I wasn’t going to intrude on her—she was too distraught. But then she came over to me. Of course I went to her and hugged her.

“She was a fabulous child,” I told her. “She was a star.”

I’ve looked at that pageant video several times. They made JonBenét look like a clown. Someone else taught her those pseudo-adult movements, the provocative walk, the poses, all of it.

The pageants were Patsy’s gig. JonBenét was her alter ego. Patsy had the money, she had the costumes, and she had the kid. She could relive her own pageant thing. You got the picture right there. Patsy didn’t have a sense of proportion about how this should fit into her child’s life. What I saw on the pageant video…you don’t do that to a six-year-old.

—Kit Andre

On Thursday afternoon, January 2, Denver police chief David Michaud attended a meeting of the Colorado Consortium for Community Policing, of which he and Boulder police chief Tom Koby were board members. Michaud was surprised when Koby walked in. If the Ramsey case had been his, he would have skipped this meeting. Michaud understood that Koby was facing the biggest case of his career. His own department had three hundred detectives on call and over eighty homicides a year. Koby probably had sixteen detectives in Boulder, and if he had two homicides a year, that was a lot.

Michaud also knew that expertise came with volume. When Koby left the meeting early, Michaud followed him out the door.

“If there’s anything we have that you need,” he told Koby, “feel free to ask. We’ll give you anything we’ve got.”

“Thanks,” Koby replied, and continued down the hall.

On Friday, January 3, Bill Wise learned about the list of questions Detective Arndt had faxed to Bryan Morgan before the Ramseys left for Atlanta. Arndt’s questions had put both the police and the DA’s office in an embarrassing position. If the press ever got hold of the list, it would look as if the police were counting on the Ramseys’ attorneys to help them interrogate the prime suspects. Also, Arndt may have asked one question too many: “What had JonBenét eaten before she went to bed?” That was enough to tip off the Ramseys’ lawyers that the autopsy findings may have contradicted information the couple gave Detective Arndt on December 26.

Pete Hofstrom and the police considered the Ramseys prime suspects. There was no evidence of an outsider in the house when JonBenét was murdered. No one in the neigh
borhood had seen or heard anything suspicious—other than the reported scream that had come from the direction of the Ramseys’ home. More important, the police had told Hofstrom that the autopsy showed semen on the corpse. To the police this suggested John Ramsey’s involvement. The ransom note had been written on the Ramseys’ own pad of paper, and since there was no evidence of an intruder, who besides one of the Ramseys could have written it? Even so, Hofstrom knew it was still too early to focus
only
on the Ramseys.

It bothered Hofstrom that Eller had pushed the FBI out of the case and that Koby had rebuffed Sheriff Epp. Hofstrom knew the Boulder police needed all the help they could get. He didn’t yet know that Koby had also rejected an offer of help from the Denver police.

In Hawaii, DA Alex Hunter was briefed on the autopsy, though John Meyer wouldn’t be submitting a written report for weeks. Hunter was told that his staff members DeMuth and Pickering had very different impressions of the autopsy findings than Detectives Linda Arndt and Tom Trujillo, who had observed the procedure for the police. The detectives apparently thought they had a clear-cut “Gotcha!” DeMuth and Pickering said the results of the forensic tests might be weeks away. Until then, it was less than certain that the case would come together.

Hunter was surprised to learn that John Ramsey was being represented by Morgan and Haddon and that Patsy had retained a separate attorney, Patrick Burke, a sole practitioner with offices in both Boulder and Denver. Hunter wouldn’t have expected a legal team of this caliber to be assembled so soon. Also, Haddon, one of the most powerful lawyers in the state, had hired Pat Korten, a former spokesman for the Department of Justice, as a press representative for the Ramseys. It was clear to the DA that
the Ramseys’ attorneys were looking not just to protect their clients’ rights but also to influence public opinion.

A few days earlier, the police had asked Hofstrom to help them persuade Patsy Ramsey to give them a second handwriting sample. The value of her first sample was questionable because she had been heavily sedated when it was taken. In his role as go-between, Hofstrom called Bryan Morgan on behalf of the police, and the two met for breakfast. The meeting was cordial, but Morgan said he’d have to talk to Patsy. By Saturday, January 4, the Ramseys had returned to Boulder from Atlanta, and Morgan called Hofstrom to say that Patsy had agreed to give another handwriting sample as long as it was not taken at any law enforcement facility. Morgan said that Patsy would be available in an hour and suggested Hofstrom’s home in Boulder. The Ramseys, Morgan said, didn’t want to be seen by the media as suspects buckling under to the police. When Hofstrom hung up, he called Eller, who agreed to Morgan’s conditions. Within the hour, several detectives met Patsy and John Ramsey at Hofstrom’s home.

In the dining room of Hofstrom’s 1950s-vintage ranch-style house, the police asked Patsy to write out the text of the entire ransom note, including the passage about JonBenét being beheaded. When she got to that passage Patsy broke down. She couldn’t finish, and John Ramsey became testy—not because his wife was being ill-treated but because she had to write the same thing again and again. Under the circumstances, the police agreed that he could give his third handwriting sample the next day, Sunday, January 5.

That same evening, Priscilla and Fleet White, who had returned to Boulder the previous day, were interviewed again by Detective Arndt. Priscilla told her that Patsy was affectionate with her children and was always with them. She also said that John and Patsy weren’t big drinkers but
may have had one or two glasses of wine at their Christmas dinner. White told the police he now remembered that when John pulled open the door to the wine cellar, he might have shouted out “Oh my God, oh my God” a split second or so before he turned on the lights. It was likely that his eye was caught by the white blanket on the floor, reflected in the ambient light. Yet, White told the detectives, when he had looked into the darkened room earlier that morning, he had not seen anything.

Arndt asked if she and Detective Harmer could interview the Whites’ children, Daphne, six, and Fleet Jr., seven. The Whites agreed, and the interviews were held a few days later. Since the Whites had a key to the Ramseys’ home and because of Fleet White’s angry outburst at John Ramsey after the funeral, the Whites were asked to give blood, hair, saliva, and handwriting samples, which they willingly provided. The Whites would soon become the most cooperative witnesses. Some detectives believed they might unknowingly hold the answers to key questions. Over the next two months, the Whites would be interviewed eighteen times, often at their own request.

RANSOM NOTEPAD FOUND

I spent four years as a spokesman for the Justice Department. I’m accustomed to working with lawyers and major criminal cases. I’ve handled a number of terrorism cases: an airline hijacking, the
Achille Lauro
case, the Cuban riots at the Atlanta federal penitentiary. In cases like this, you’re always faced with strategic considerations.

There are things I would like to have done in the Ramsey case that, for legal reasons, were impossible. I had to bite my tongue.

Even before I arrived in Boulder, the Ramseys had decided that their friends should not become involved. The hope was that this might prevent the case from turning into the media circus it nonetheless became.

I flew to Boulder on January 2 from Washington, D. C., to meet John and Patsy Ramsey. The firm I was working for, Rowan and Blewitt, had been hired by Haddon, Morgan and Foreman, a criminal law firm that had been retained by the Ramseys’ business attorney, Mike Bynum, the day after the body was discovered.