Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (19 page)

Our families went on getaways together, sometimes into the mountains, where we stayed at our family’s condo. We did the usual things families do—we skied, we cooked our own meals. Just hung out. In the summer we hiked. There was never any display of money on John’s part. John enjoyed being outside. He loved Boulder. He loved his kids, and whenever I saw them, he always gave JonBenét and Burke equal time. He invited my family over for dinner several times. Patsy cooked.

The speculation that I ended on bad terms with John is just not true. In October, just before JonBenét died, I was trying to get John on
our
board of directors, but our bylaws limited the number of directors. At the same time, he was in discussions with Lockheed about possibly reacquiring Access Graphics and going public. So all this other stuff is just gossip, innuendo, and gross speculation. When I left, Jim Hudson was just coming back to run the European and Canadian operations.

I’d blow into town every couple of months and I’d call John or whoever was in town and we’d have dinner. I’d hoist a few.

—Mike Glynn

During the following week, Thomas and Gosage continued their interviews with Access Graphics employees. Michael Minard and Jason Perkins, who Don Paugh had noticed at the dinner at Pasta Jay’s, were questioned. Curtis Fisher, a close friend of John Ramsey’s and a consultant to Access
Graphics, was also interviewed. The police had heard that Fisher and Ramsey had a disagreement, and they found it interesting that Fisher left Access Graphics just before Christmas. In their interviews with him, however, Fisher said he had left the firm on friendly terms. On the morning of December 26, he had been on his way to San Antonio.

When they reached the end of their interviews with company employees, the police had not yet uncovered any evidence to suggest a link to the murder of JonBenét.

Though the Ramseys were the unofficial target of the police investigation, less and less of the forensic evidence turned out to point to them. At the same time, none of it pointed to anyone else.

Since the autopsy, the police had thought there was semen on JonBenét’s upper thighs. Then, on January 15, the CBI came back with the analysis. The substance thought to be semen was in fact smeared blood. There was no semen. JonBenét’s body had been wiped clean, leaving a residue that was visible under the flourescent light at the autopsy.

This news changed everything, drastically.

The DA’s staff knew the police now had to delete “slam dunk” from their vocabulary. Clearly, the CBI’s findings disturbed Commander Eller even more than they did Pete Hofstrom. There was no evidence that John Ramsey or any other sexually mature male had ejaculated on the body. But the vaginal injuries the coroner had found, as the police detectives observed, certainly suggested sexual contact.

For his part, Hofstrom saw that the case seemed to be slipping away from the police, that there would be a very bumpy road ahead before the perpetrator could be identi
fied, indicted, and convicted.

THE RAMSEY TEAM

PARENTS OF SLAIN GIRL HAVE AT LEAST 9 PROFESSIONALS WORKING ON THE CASE

On January 19, I was sitting on a bench by the church’s side entrance with a friend of mine. The photographers were still camped outside.

My friend was talking about our lining up the day the bishop had come. “You would like to say that we did something wrong.”

“I think we should have given quiet comfort,” I replied, “but not public comfort.” I knew the police were now looking at John Ramsey.

My friend started crying. “You know, that Pat Korten,” she wept. “We were all taken aback…I think of what that child went through…” Then she really broke down and cried.

“You know,” I said, “when all this is over, we will still be here.” That is how our conversation ended.

I decided to write an editorial for my paper. It was entitled “Ramsey Case Shook a Boulder Church to Its Foundations.”

I discussed how the church had been caught in the eye of a storm, the crush of the media. How we as a church would have liked to be observed. How, on the other hand, snowballs and eggs were thrown at journalists, while other reporters offered cash, and some posed as church newcomers to probe for information. How the media wanted to bend the bond between clergy and parishioner. I noted that good journalism can only happen when reporters listen quietly and with compassion for suffering. I pointed out that the media had to be sensitive to any community it serves by writing stories that are rich in fact, skimpy on speculation, and slow to judgment.

I said we cannot choose our tragedies, but we can approach them with dignity and grace. We can reexamine our faith. I said that if we learned nothing else from our ordeal, it is that faith accounts for little if it is never tested.

After I published my editorial in the
Daily Camera,
the comment got back to me that as a member of the church’s inner circle, I had betrayed the congregation.

I called Rol and asked for a meeting—just the two of us. We sat at this little wrought-iron table just outside his office. We had coats and sweaters on.

He wasn’t upset or angry. He was exasperated. He looked like a man who had been hunted down.

I told him that to the media, the church looked as if it was hiding something. He could defuse things perhaps, simply by saying that he was in a privileged position and couldn’t talk.

“There might be an arrest soon,” I added. “I just want to forewarn you.”

He looked hard at me. “Do you think it is the person
everybody is talking about?” He meant John Ramsey.

“It might be true,” I said.

He looked out into space for a long, long time. He was stunned.

Then he said, “We just don’t need to get our name in the newspaper all the time.”

I had to smile. That was his whole response to my editorial.

—Niki Hayden

Though the media were still hounding him, in mid-January John Ramsey attempted to return to work. Gary Mann told Ramsey that the company was fine and could run without him for a while longer if he wanted to wait. Sales projections were up, a testament to the effort Ramsey had put in over the years. He could afford to take some time off—particularly now. But Ramsey wanted to try.

He was ashen the day he walked into the Pearl Street Mall offices. As he walked through the office thanking people for their support, his colleagues noticed that he seemed unsure of himself, distracted. Ramsey told one director that he didn’t want anyone to be afraid to talk to him, and he certainly didn’t want to be shut off from his employees. In the few meetings he attended, however, it was clear he had
to work hard just to concentrate. To one executive, he looked like a man still in trouble.

Karen Howard, director of worldwide communications, thought that Ramsey needed someone to talk to—besides all his lawyers. Howard, who had known him for years, felt he knew something about JonBenét’s death but couldn’t talk about it. She thought it was something he didn’t have anything to do with, but she also saw a man who didn’t know how to help his wife deal with their daughter’s death.

That week, Carl Whiteside, director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, called Alex Hunter and asked if the two of them could meet with police chief Tom Koby to discuss the request from the Ramseys’ attorneys to have one of their representatives present during the CBI’s testing of evidence. Whiteside told Hunter that since the day after the murder, Koby had not returned his calls, and he felt the chief had no interest in what he had to say. Whiteside also thought the Boulder police were using his staff inefficiently. It looked as if the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. Koby’s officers were always dealing with different people at the CBI. By now the DA’s staff had made their own inquiries, which should have been coming through the police department, and often Detectives Wickman and Trujillo, who were handling the evidence, didn’t even know what information the DA’s office had requested. It was a mess. Whiteside wanted someone on the CBI’s staff to act as liaison and to handle all the evidence.

Whiteside also wanted Hunter made aware that the police had requested that none of CBI’s findings be shared with the DA’s staff for fear the information would be leaked or shared with the Ramseys’ attorneys. It was standard procedure for Hunter’s office to receive lab test results when the police did, even in cases where charges had not yet been filed. Whiteside was concerned that the
police and Hunter’s office were not on the same page.

Hunter arranged to hold the meeting in his office at the Justice Center, but when Whiteside arrived, Chief Koby excused himself. He said he had to be somewhere else. Whiteside was upset, but he agreed to stay and discuss some of the issues with Hunter and his staff. When Hunter learned that the CBI’s analysis and test reports were being withheld, he was outraged. Whiteside agreed to provide Hunter’s staff with copies of the reports at the same time they were given to the police.

Whiteside also told the DA that he didn’t want the Ramseys’ representatives in his labs—he wouldn’t want to deal with
any
uncharged person’s delegate.
*
That was CBI policy, and that was how he read the law. Unless the Ramseys were charged, he saw no reason for defense attorneys to know the test results—or even what type of evidence they were testing. In his opinion, law enforcement’s advantage was seriously diminished if the target of an investigation knew what the police had before formal charges were filed. It gave the defense extra time to plan an effective strategy.

Hunter replied that they were trying to be cooperative with the Ramseys’ attorneys, and often honey worked better than vinegar.

Whiteside didn’t like Hunter’s approach but admitted that the evidence wasn’t his. It was the Boulder PD’s and Hunter’s. They could test it somewhere else, if they wanted. They could go to Cellmark Diagnostics in Maryland. Then he’d be out of it. Hunter said his staff would discuss the matter with the Ramseys’ attorneys.

That same day, Koby met with Eller to discuss the problems he was having with the DA’s office and the media. Now that the search of the Ramsey home was complete, Koby wanted to know if Hunter’s people were still dissatisfied with the job Eller was doing. Yes, Eller replied. In
fact, now they were suggesting interview subjects for his detectives.

Koby, who had come close to replacing Eller after he tried to withhold JonBenét’s body from her parents, now told the commander that he would back him against both Hunter and the press. These problems overshadowed whatever early mistakes Eller might have made, and this was
their
case.

Koby then told Eller, mainly in jest, that with all the meticulous notes he was taking, they should write a book someday and tell their side of the story.

On January 20, Detectives Thomas and Gosage went to McGuckin Hardware to await the expected call from John Ramsey. The detectives planned to use the local phone company’s *57 feature, which was available to the police, to trace the call.

The call came in at 10:45
A
.
M
. “I called last week looking for some receipts,” he said.

“I’ve got one, and I need the number verified,” Hanks replied.

Today Ramsey seemed calm and composed. When he gave the account number, however, Hanks said it wasn’t correct.

“But you were able to pull a purchase on an AmEx on December 2 for $46.31 and on December 9 for $99.88?”

Hanks said that she had receipts for those amounts but on a different American Express account. Patsy’s name was on the card that was used, Hanks said, and it had a different account number. Hanks asked Ramsey to fax her a signed request for the receipts so that she could release them. After Ramsey hung up, the police traced the call to 303–573–5294, which was listed to Touch Tone, Inc., in Denver. Detective Thomas called the number immediately, but it was busy.

A few minutes later, Ramsey called Hanks to ask if she’d received his fax. She said that she had and agreed to
fax the receipts to the telephone number he provided.

“Is there an itemized invoice available?” he asked.

“I do have the itemized [receipts],” Hanks replied. “I will get those off to you right now.”

When the police used *57 on Ramsey’s second call, the trace was unsuccessful. They called the U.S. West telephone company to trace the fax number Ramsey had given. It turned out to be an MCI 800 number, and it was traced to Georgia and back to Denver, Colorado, and then to Touch Tone, Inc. Eventually the police found out that Touch Tone was a “skip tracing” firm—a company that locates deadbeat debtors. The phone technology it uses is designed to hide a caller’s location and identity.

The police were suspicious. Why would John Ramsey want to conceal where he was calling from? Or if the caller wasn’t Ramsey, where did he learn about Ramsey’s American Express bills? Thomas and Gosage decided to investigate Touch Tone. The police would also request from the Ramseys their credit card statements and purchase receipts.

Meanwhile, the detectives had made some progress. Thomas discovered that the store’s computerized sales slips did not list the name or item number of what was purchased next to the price, only the section of the store the item came from. The items listed on Patsy’s receipts included one for $2.29, which came from an area of the store that displayed rope. There was also an unspecified item that cost $1.99, which came from the department where duct tape was sold. But there was no way of proving from the store’s purchase records that Patsy had bought the tape or cord on December 2 or 9.

The next step for the detectives was to see if McGuckin’s in-store antishoplifting security cameras had recorded Patsy looking at or picking up duct tape or rope or placing the items on the checkout counter on either December 2 or December 9. When Thomas screened the videotapes, he discovered that
McGuckin recycled the tapes after thirty days. The tape of December 2 had been recorded over on January 2, and the tape from December 9 had been reused on January 9. Unless she provided the police with the information, there was no way to find out what Patsy had purchased.

The detectives’ list of questions for the Ramseys was growing daily.

BEAUTY QUEEN’S NIGHTMARE LIFE OF SEX ABUSE

LIE DETECTOR PROVES DAD HIDING TRUTH FROM COPS