Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (2 page)

On Thursday morning, December 26, 1996, at about 7:30
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., Pete Hofstrom, head of the felony division of the Boulder County district attorney’s office, called Bill Wise, the first assistant district attorney, at home. The moment Wise heard Hofstrom’s voice, he knew something serious had happened. Nothing else would warrant a call at that hour. Hofstrom said they had a report of a child kidnapping. The mother had called 911 at 5:52
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. There was a ransom note, which threatened that the child would be killed if the police were brought in.

Hofstrom told Wise he had asked the police when the FBI would be arriving, only to be told they hadn’t even been called. Hofstrom had told the cops to notify the Bureau. Bill Wise could hear the frustration in his colleague’s voice when he added that the police had asked him to join them at the crime scene. Hofstrom had to point out to them that in a kidnapping, the protocol was to set up a command post
away
from the victim’s home, in case the perpetrators were monitoring the residence.

But the damage had already been done. The officer had told Hofstrom that marked police cars were parked in front of the home of John Ramsey, at 755 15th Street.

Earlier, Rick French, the first police officer to respond to the mother’s 911 call, had immediately searched the house for the child and for any sign of forced entry, but he found nothing. Then he read the ransom note:

By the time the second police officer got to the house, friends of the family, whom the child’s parents had called, began to arrive. Meanwhile, four detectives were paged and assigned to the investigation, and three additional patrol officers were sent to the house. Even before the first detective arrived at the crime scene, police officers, family friends, and a victim advocate who had responded to an officer’s page were wandering through the house trying to make sense of what had happened.
*

At police headquarters, Sgt. Bob Whitson was the on-duty supervisor. In an emergency, Detective Sgt. Larry Mason was to be called at home to serve as acting commander. Mason’s boss, John Eller, head of the detective division, was at home, officially on vacation. There was less than a skeleton crew working.

That morning, Detective Jane Harmer, who’d attended a seminar taught by the FBI’s Child Abduction Serial Killer Unit, was also on vacation. Sgt. Whitson knew that Harmer had a copy of the Bureau’s manual on procedures to follow in a kidnapping case, but he had no idea where she kept it.
More than a year after the Boulder PD had sent Detective Harmer to the seminar, the department had not officially adopted the FBI protocol. They saw no need to make the agency’s recommendations part of their own procedures. Sgt. Whitson knew that county sheriff’s Lt. James Smith had also attended the FBI seminar. He phoned Smith, and half an hour later, the Boulder police had the FBI manual.

Hearing reports about the kidnapping ended Commander Eller’s vacation. He wasn’t happy about it; he had a house full of family and friends from back home in Florida. He was also annoyed to find out that nobody of substantial rank was on duty. In his irritation, the commander completely forgot he had approved Detective Mason to be on call at home.

Judging by what Eller heard from officers at the scene, the Ramseys appeared to be part of Boulder’s elite. “Credible millionaires” was a phrase one officer used. Obviously, Eller felt, these were people you had to treat with respect, not people you wanted to offend.

The Ramseys lived in University Hill, a neighborhood that boasted many older, stately houses. A half mile or so east of their home was the University of Colorado campus. An equal distance to the west was the entrance to Chautauqua Park, with sweeping meadows, a hundred-year-old dining hall, cottages, and a rustic concert facility. Beyond that were the towering Flatirons and the foothills of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

When Detective Linda Arndt arrived at the Ramsey house at 8:10
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. with fellow detective Fred Patterson, she found a crowd. Friends of the child’s parents, Priscilla and Fleet White and Barbara and John Fernie, were there, along with the family’s minister, Reverend Rol Hoverstock. Patrol officer Rick French and crime scene investigator Barry
Weiss were also there with two victim advocates, Mary Lou Jedamus and Grace Morlock. Detective Arndt learned that the Ramseys had another child, nine-year-old Burke, who had been taken to the Whites’ home by John Fernie and Fleet White.

The mother, Patsy Ramsey, was out of control. She kept saying she wanted to trade places with her daughter. “Please let her be safe. Oh please, let her be safe.” She was tormented, incoherent. Her husband, John Ramsey, was saying he should have set the burglar alarm.

Earlier, Arndt had stopped at police headquarters to pick up a hand-held tape recorder and her notebook. There, she had read the ransom note which had just been brought in by Officer Veitch. It was written on white lined paper with a black felt-tipped pen. Arndt had three copies of the note made before it was booked into Property. She gave one copy to Paterson, another was placed in a sealed envelope and left on her desk and the third she took with her. Later the original note would be shown to the FBI.

After Arndt attached her tape recorder to the phone in the family’s den, John Ramsey was instructed to answer all telephone calls. When the kidnappers called, he was to say he couldn’t get his hands on the ransom money until 5:00
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. and had to talk to his daughter. At the same time, the police ordered a trap on the Ramseys’ phone.
*

Some officers were already upstairs checking the bedroom of the missing child, whose name was JonBenét, for fingerprints. Detective Arndt began to question John Ramsey about whether he could think of anyone who might be involved in the kidnapping. Ramsey gave the detective the names of several ex-employees of his company, Access
Graphics. Patsy Ramsey, who was sitting with Rev. Hoverstock in a corner, was at times confused and dazed. She mentioned to Arndt that her housekeeper, Linda Hoffmann-Pugh, had asked to borrow some money just a few days before. Linda had a key to the house and had major money problems. Patsy planned to make out a check for $2,000 that morning and leave it on the kitchen counter for Linda to pick up on her next scheduled cleaning day, December 27.

Later that morning, the police would obtain copies of checks endorsed by Hoffmann-Pugh from the Ramseys’ bank for handwriting comparison. The Ramseys’ housekeeper would become the first suspect.

As the morning wore on, the victim advocates, Jedamus and Morlock, decided to go out and get bagels and fruit for everyone. With fewer people hovering around, Arndt noticed for the first time that Patsy and John rarely sat together.

When Larry Mason’s pager went off at 9:45
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. he was at home, relaxing over a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Looking down, he read: “FBI agent is looking for Bob Whitson.” Mason didn’t stop to wonder why he had received a message for somebody else on his pager. He called police communications immediately and learned of the kidnapping. Light snow was on the ground when Mason left his home in Lyons for the twenty-five-minute drive to police headquarters in Boulder.

At headquarters, Mason met Special Agent Ron Walker, who had just arrived from the Denver FBI office with a four-man kidnapping team. The special agents were working with some police officers to set up phone taps and traps, which would give them immediate access to all incoming and outgoing calls at the Ramsey house. Agent Walker was treating the case as a kidnapping, but the ransom note was unusual. It made him wonder.

Walker was an experienced FBI profiler. He knew
this was not the time to decide whether or not the ransom note was genuine. Certainly, the amount demanded was strange—not the usual round numbers. The reference to “a small foreign faction” was another red flag. How many ways would a group—foreign or not—divide up $118,000?

Then there was the length. At two and a half pages, it was the
War and Peace
of ransom notes. To Walker this suggested that the author might be trying to leave a false trail. Walker knew a ransom note required only a few sentences. We have your kid. It’s going to cost you x millions. We will be in touch. Period.

At the house, John Ramsey gave the police a roll of undeveloped film taken at their Christmas party on December 23. He said it might contain an image of Linda Hoffmann-Pugh. A few minutes later, it was taken to Mike’s Camera on Pearl Street for processing. The photos would be ready at noon.

Right before 10:00
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., alone, John Ramsey went downstairs to the basement, where Officer French had searched for his daughter. In the room where his son Burke’s train set was kept, Ramsey found a broken open window. He closed it before going back upstairs.

When 10:00
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. came and went without a call from the kidnappers, Arndt thought it strange that nobody in the house commented. It wasn’t long before John Ramsey became more distraught. He sat by himself nervously tapping his foot, leaning his face on one hand as if he was trying to figure something out. Patsy Ramsey kept repeating, “Why did they do this?”

At the detectives’ request, John Ramsey provided a handwriting sample as well as shopping lists and writing pads that contained his and his wife’s handwriting. One of the pads contained ruled white paper similar to the ransom note paper.

Just before 10:30
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., Detective Patterson ordered JonBenét’s bedroom to be sealed. Then he and Detective Arndt decided to clear the house of nonessential persons. The six other police officers would leave. Patterson himself would return to headquarters to brief Commander Eller. Arndt, the Ramseys, the Whites, the Fernies, Rev. Hoverstock, and the two victim advocates would stay. They were all to remain on the first floor, in the rear study—behind the kitchen, breakfast, and dining room area. Before Patterson left, he declared the rest of the house off-limits to everyone.

Very soon after Patterson’s departure, Arndt began to have trouble keeping everybody confined to the designated area. John Ramsey wandered out of sight. Arndt had to find him and lead him back into the study, leaving the others unsupervised. Meanwhile, Priscilla White was trying to keep her friend Patsy from fainting. She seemed to be in shock; she was vomiting and hyperventilating. Arndt was supposed to keep her eye on everyone and at the same time monitor the phone for a possible call from the kidnapper.

Half an hour after Larry Mason arrived at police headquarters, he was paged by Detective Arndt. She said she needed detective backup—urgently. She was now the only police officer in a fifteen-room, three-story house with nine civilians, all of whom were in emotional distress.

During this period of time Fleet White left the house to obtain a roll of film he’d taken at the Ramseys’ Christmas party, returning 30 minutes later. At the same time John Ramsey began to open his mail in the kitchen. A short time later Arndt asked Ramsey and his friends to review the contents of the ransom note with her. Ramsey said little. One person said the amount of $118,000 was odd. John Fernie told Arndt the amount was relatively insignificant
compared to John Ramsey’s wealth. The ransom could have easily been $10,000,000, and that amount could be obtained, he added. Someone said the author of the note had to be educated, since the note contained words like “hence” and “attache.” To another, the reference to John Ramsey being from the South indicated the writer didn’t know John since he was originally from Michigan. Nobody could understand the meaning of “Victory! S.B.T.C.” Later Patsy asked Arndt why the author of the note had not asked for a larger sum of money, or at least a round sum of money. She also couldn’t understand why the author of the note thought her husband was a Southerner. Then she started to again cry. “Why didn’t I hear my baby?”