Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (14 page)

“Yeah, but all the people…the world wouldn’t care.”

“That’s not true.”

“The reason people care about JonBenét is because she was rich, and pretty, and things like that.”

It struck me, listening to this child, how much of her self-worth was affected by the media attention to this story. I suppose if you grow up with TV, then what’s important is what the media says is important. And the question is how deeply self-worth is influenced by that. To that little girl, being noticed or ignored by the media was more powerful than the attention of significant people in her life.

The next day, a teacher ran into my office. A Japanese TV crew was on the playground and starting to interview the kids. A local crew had told them it wasn’t right, but the producer ignored them.

I put a stop to it. I asked the two Japanese producers to come to my office, then I called the police. Two hours went by and the police didn’t show up, so the producers
left. The tabloids called. I was offered money to appear on talk shows. I found reporters walking around the halls of the school and had to escort them out.

When the media throws this spotlight on you, the appearance of things begins to change. Instead of giving you a clearer picture, the media transforms the situation. This little girl’s death became so much more complicated because of the impact of the media. It seems that respect for people’s lives, a certain level of common decency, is sometimes lost in the struggle for the story.

These are a few of the things I learned from being involved in this tragic event. I’ve never had occasion to deal with the media to this extent before. And I wonder how my life has been altered by this.

As a result of this difficulty, there was a deeper sense of community within the school, among both the kids and the adults. We shared a real loss and some real sorrows and fears.

In May, before the school year ended, the Student Council held a tree planting ceremony. Patsy and John came. We wanted to honor the life and death of JonBenét. We needed to find a way to touch her and to let go.

—Charles Elbot

I started to worry that the media would be knocking on my door. The people from
Time
and
Newsweek
were reasonably polite. I told everyone I didn’t have any comment. There were days I turned off the phone. At school, they even photographed the children through windows. It really felt as if we were under siege.

You know, when you pay reasonable taxes as we do here, you ought to have a reasonably professional police
department. At first I thought they had this case under control. I felt there would be an arrest in the first four or five days. The police didn’t say much, and I thought that was good. They were getting the job done.

I knew they were having long visits with lots of people. All the questions they asked concerned possible child abuse or sexual abuse.

Then the police left a message at school that they wanted to talk to my daughter. No rush, they said.

After school one day, Detective Linda Arndt came to our home with her partner. I didn’t give Megan a lot of warning, didn’t want her worrying about it. I just told her to answer the questions as best she could. We all sat down on the family room floor and introduced ourselves.

They showed her their badges and she held them. That was kind of nice. Then they got out their tape recorder. Which didn’t work.

Finally they decided to go on without the recorder. They told Megan that they wanted to find out who did this to JonBenét and that it would help them to learn more about what JonBenét liked to do, what games she enjoyed playing.

Megan started describing different games. They weren’t familiar with any of them. Pearl beads—they’d never heard of that until we showed them. Then they asked about make-believe games.

“We were going to play Kitty,” Megan said.

“What’s that?”

Kids have all sorts of different names for games, but these officers didn’t seem to know any of them.

“Did you ever have any secrets?” they asked. “It’s OK to have secrets. But now that JonBenét is dead, you don’t have to have any secrets.”

Then they wanted to know what the girls did in the
bedroom, what they did in the bathroom. They even talked about bath salts and bath oil and shampoo.

Had they ever been down in the Ramseys’ basement? Megan said they’d been down there once, but it wasn’t a place they played in regularly.

What struck me was that these detectives obviously didn’t have kids. They didn’t seem to understand that a child’s automatic first response to a lot of questions is “I don’t know.” Who broke the glass? I don’t know. As a parent, you learn to ask follow-up questions if you really want to get information.

Then I sent Megan outside to play so I could talk to them privately.

By then, Bill McReynolds—Santa—had been on TV, and I remembered what JonBenét had told me about Santa visiting her. He just kept looking weirder and weirder to me on TV. I told them what JonBenét had said—that Santa was going to pay her a special visit after Christmas.

They said thanks. They would check into it, they said. Again, no follow-up questions. No probing for details that I might be forgetting.

I’m not a professional, but those officers didn’t seem highly competent. I read a lot of mysteries, but I also know life isn’t like a mystery novel.

Later I found out that they had never interviewed any of JonBenét’s inner circle. Two other kids who were close to her seemed to have fallen between the cracks.

So I called some close friends of the Ramseys, and they had the Ramseys’ investigator call me. I told him the whole story. He seemed much more interested. He had a lot more questions about JonBenét’s demeanor than the police ever had.

—Barbara Kostanick

Bill McReynolds, who had been Santa at the Ramseys’ Christmas party for three years, was placed on the list of suspects the day after the murder. Patsy and John told the police that he was close to their daughter.

The police learned that McReynolds had arrived at about 5:00
P
.
M
. for the Christmas party the Ramseys gave on December 23. Christmas was a big production for the family. There were decorated artificial trees in every room on every floor, and the living room tree was covered with magnolias. The previous year, JonBenét had taken McReynolds on a tour of the house—to her bedroom and even down to the basement, to show him where the family kept their Christmas trees. She showed him her scrapbooks and called McReynolds “old Sam.”

This year McReynolds, still frail from the open-heart surgery he’d had a few months earlier, brought his wife, Janet, along. He mixed with the guests, read little poems about each of the children, gave them their gifts, and spoke with most of the guests. An hour and a half later, he and his wife left the party.

On January 3, Detectives Pat Wyton and Nathan Vasquez interviewed McReynolds. He told the officers that on Christmas Day, his daughter Jo and her children had come to visit at their cabin near Nederland, in the mountains twenty miles west of Boulder. Later that day, Janet’s daughter, Vicky, her husband, Al, and their daughter, Willow, arrived. A number of friends stopped by as the day went on, McReynolds said. Then he and his wife went to bed at about 10:00
P
.
M
. They confirmed each other’s story that neither of them had left the house that night. The next morning, December 26, they rose about 8:00
A
.
M
., they said, and stayed home all day. Without some indepen
dent corroboration, Bill and Janet McReynolds remained suspects.

In the early evening of January 6, neighbors gathered at 789 15th Street, the home of Patrick and Mary Vann, who lived three houses away from the Ramseys. They were meeting to discuss the implications of JonBenét’s murder for their neighborhood.

The Vanns had been away in Texas on a holiday visit when JonBenét was murdered and had returned on December 27. Mary Vann knew Patsy reasonably well. They had met through various charities in which they were both active, such as the University Women’s Club. Over the years, the two couples had met at a few parties. The Vanns’ yard was the furthest point on the block where JonBenét was allowed to play alone. Patrick Vann used to see JonBenét rollerblade up to their house and then circle back home.

Mayor Leslie Durgin, who worked with Mary Vann at Chautauqua Park, had suggested that police chief Tom Koby be invited to this gathering of neighbors.

“Do we have cause to be anxious?” they asked him.

“There is no murderer loose,” Koby said. “I am fairly confident of that.” He updated the twenty or so guests on the investigation but never said directly that the Ramseys might be involved. Before Koby left, he invited anyone who might have questions in the future to contact him directly.

Pat Vann felt the chief had calmed everyone. Nevertheless, the next day Vann called a Denver burglar alarm company and had a system installed in the house and on its perimeter.

ANOTHER GRIEVING DAD CRITICIZES RAMSEYS’ ‘DEFENSE’ CONDUCT

CALIFORNIA MAN RAPS HIRING OF PUBLICIST, CNN INTERVIEW

On Tuesday, January 7, two detectives went to the Ramseys’ hangar and interviewed Michael Archuleta, John Ramsey’s private pilot: Richard Bjelkovig, his copilot; and other personnel. The officers learned that the Ramseys had planned to leave for their Christmas vacation at 7:00
A
.
M
. on December 26. Archuleta mentioned that they had expected to leave their home for the Jefferson County Airport at about 6:30. Archuleta said he woke at about 4:30
A
.
M
. and left for the airport at around 6:00.

About ten minutes after Patsy Ramsey called 911 and three minutes after Officer Rick French arrived at the Ramseys’ house, John tried to call Archuleta at the airport. Instead he reached copilot Bjelkovig. Ramsey told Bjelkovig that JonBenét had been kidnapped. Archuleta was still en route to the airport. Bjelkovig reached Archuleta’s wife at home to tell her the news.

By 6:05 the police, the Fernies, the Whites, and the Ramseys’ pilots all knew about the kidnapping, though the ransom note had threatened that JonBenét would die if Ramsey informed anyone. The police were puzzled about why John Ramsey was in such a hurry to tell his pilot that his daughter had been kidnapped.

When Ramsey finally talked to Archuleta that morning, he instructed the pilot not to fly to Minneapolis. Instead, Archuleta was to notify the commercial airline on which Ramsey’s children were arriving from Atlanta and leave word for them to call their father. At 1:30
P
.
M
., just twenty-five minutes after JonBenét’s body was found, John Ramsey called Archuleta again, at his home.

“She’s gone,” Ramsey said. “They’ve killed her.” Then he told Archuleta to ready the plane for a flight to Atlanta that evening. Fleet White then called Archuleta at 3:00
P
.
M
. to say that the trip to Atlanta was canceled. Ramsey’s flight plans raised more questions for the police: Why had Ramsey called Archuleta so soon after JonBenét’s body was found, and why did he want to leave Boulder?

Like so many other questions, these would remain unanswered until the Ramseys could be interviewed.

Also on Tuesday, January 7, Pete Hofstrom and Trip DeMuth were in the courtroom of Boulder County judge Diane MacDonald requesting that the search warrant and supporting affidavits, which included facts about the crime and a list of everything taken from the house by the police, be sealed from the public for ninety days.

Hofstrom argued that in the midst of an ongoing investigation, disclosing crime-scene details known only to the killer and to the police would hamper both the investigation and resolution of the case. Bruce Jones, a Denver lawyer experienced in First Amendment issues, responded on behalf of ABC KMGH—Channel 7 TV and other media outlets. He said that the public deserved to know how the case was being handled. They had been leaked only bits and pieces, and the public was seriously concerned. Tom Kelley, representing the
Daily Camera
, echoed that sentiment. He told the court that the public would only be confident in the investigation if they were given the facts.

Judge MacDonald decided to seal the documents for thirty days or until an arrest was made—whichever came first. A month later, on February 4, Trip DeMuth would ask for another thirty days. Judge MacDonald would grant fifteen.

By now the Ramseys had agreed that JonBenét’s nine-year-old brother, Burke, could be interviewed about what he remembered from the night his sister had been murdered. At 9:00
A
.
M
. on January 8, Detectives Harmer, Arndt, and Gosage arrived at the Child Advocacy Center in Niwot to observe the interview. The detectives stood behind a one-way glass window as Boulder child psychologist Dr. Suzanne Bernhard talked to the boy. Patsy Ramsey waited in another room, sobbing, her shoulders shaking. There was no attorney for the family in the room with Burke. Still traumatized from the events of the last thirteen days, the child seemed indifferent. His lack of affect was pronounced. He didn’t want to talk about his sister’s death. As they played games, Bernhard asked Burke about how they all got along in the family. Delicately she touched on the topics of sexual and child abuse. He didn’t respond as a molested child might. When they talked about secrets, Burke said pointedly that if you told someone a secret it was no longer a secret. He didn’t seem to be holding anything back, and he appeared to be dealing with the absence of his sister in the expected way. There were several breaks during the two-hour interview, and the detectives took the opportunity to suggest additional topics to the psychologist.