Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (26 page)

“Yeah, that sounds good,” she answered. But we never got one.

“Linda is not here to pick up,” Patsy’s mother would say. “She’s here to clean. How do you expect her to do a good job if she’s picking up?”

“OK, Mom, I’ll work it out.”

Patsy’s clothes went into the laundry chute. I never had to pick up after John. Maybe once—a pair of shoes. Patsy changed purses once a week. She’d lay her purse on the spiral staircase, and I’d clean it out and put it in the closet. She had maybe forty of them, and even more pairs of shoes.

I think the problem with the children was they didn’t have any responsibility. They were spoiled. Burke had this red Scout knife and always whittled. He’d never use a bag or paper to catch the shavings. He’d whittle all over the place. I asked Patsy to have a talk with him. She answered, “Well, I don’t know what to do other than take the knife away from him.” After Thanksgiving I took that knife away
from him and hid it in the cupboard just outside JonBenét’s room. That’s how that problem was solved.

These weren’t naughty children. They dressed themselves, and Patsy did JonBenét’s hair. All her daughter’s clothes were organized in drawers. Turtlenecks in one drawer, pants in another, nighties and panties in one, socks in another. Days of the week on all their underclothes.

“Just go away and leave me alone,” JonBenét said when I tried to help her with her boots. Sometimes she acted like a spoiled brat.

“No, don’t you answer the door,” she’d say when someone went to open it at a luncheon Patsy gave. “I’m answering the door.”

JonBenét spent a lot of her time sitting on her bed watching Shirley Temple movies on her VCR. She loved them all.

She also loved being in pageants. If she didn’t want to go, Patsy didn’t make her. Nedra used to bring lots of things for JonBenét to wear. Nedra did most of the pageant planning. JonBenét would have to practice singing and dancing. Nedra and Patsy’s sister Pam would decorate JonBenét’s shoes, her gloves, put sequins on her hats. Some dresses were made from scratch, but they had fun altering most things. They prepared differently for each pageant. Sometimes it would take a month. They were always reworking something.

JonBenét played a lot with Daphne, the Whites’ little girl. They were real close. And Burke had his friends, the Walker and Stine children.

When the Ramseys traveled, I started taking the children’s dog, Jacques, home with me. It would always yip, yip, yip, and I couldn’t take it. Joe Barnhill, the elderly neighbor from across the street, started watching Jacques, and they got attached to each other. Before long the dog was always running across the street to the Barnhills’ house.
Jacques started staying there, and when JonBenét wanted to see her dog, she went over and played with him.

In the summer of 252

96, JonBenét started wearing those diaper-type underpants—Pull-Ups. She even wore them to bed. There was always a wet one in the trash. By the end of the summer, Patsy was trying to get her to do without them. Then JonBenét started wetting the bed again. Almost every day I was there, there was a wet bed. Patsy said she wasn’t going to use Pull-Ups again. She just put a plastic cover on the bed. No big deal to her. By the time I’d come in the morning, Patsy would have all the sheets off the bed and in the laundry. JonBenét’s white blanket would already be in the dryer. The Ramseys had two washer-dryers—one in the basement and a stackable unit in a closet just outside JonBenét’s room.

Patsy started to take a painting class, and JonBenét drew a lot with crayons and markers. People and flowers. They had a big easel, but most of the time JonBenét painted on a card table in the butler’s kitchen. Patsy had her paints and brushes in a white paint tote. Sometimes she asked me to take her paints down to the basement when she was having some kind of party. That’s what she’d say about everything, any kind of clutter: “Just take it down to the basement. I don’t want to see it.” On the day of the Ramseys’ Christmas party, I took the paint tote downstairs.

Evenings were for the family. They did homework and had dinner together. Patsy worked on school projects with the kids. She was always doing something for the children on her computer. She read to them at bedtime. Sometimes she asked me to baby-sit if she couldn’t find a sitter.

Patsy spent a lot of time alone in the house while John was away on business. She never kept a baseball bat under the bed, or Mace. Never even set the alarm. She didn’t like it, because it went off accidentally and it drove the police
crazy.

The last month I was there, nothing was different. Patsy went to New York with her family and some friends. JonBenét even ice-skated at Rockefeller Center. When they came back, they got ready for another pageant. Patsy was always putting things off until the last minute.

On December 23, JonBenét was playing with makeup. “JonBenét, you are not going anywhere with all that on,” Patsy told her. “You take some of it off.” JonBenét did. At one o’clock she went to play with some friends and was back by four o’clock. Late that afternoon, she didn’t want to wear a dress for their Christmas party. Patsy got a little agitated. Finally, JonBenét put on a velvet one with short sleeves.

I stuck around with my daughter Ariana to see Santa. We hadn’t planned to stay, so Ariana wasn’t dressed up. Patsy gave my daughter a Christmas sweater and a vest. Even lent her a pair of her shoes. At the last minute, Patsy wrote a little verse about Ariana for Santa to read.

At 5:30
P
.
M
. Santa showed up. By then the Barnhills, the Fernies, the Stines, Pinky Barber, and the Whites, who came with Priscilla’s parents, had all arrived. Maybe eight couples and their children. Most of the men gathered by the spiral staircase. John made drinks for everybody from the butler’s kitchen. The kids played in the living room by the big Christmas tree. That’s where Santa read his little verses about everyone. This year Mrs. Claus was there too. Santa looked kind of sick.

I was supposed to come back the next day, December 24, and clean up. I called Patsy and said I couldn’t. I told her I had a fight with my sister and needed some money to pay the rent. I asked Patsy for a $2,000 loan. I told her I would pay it back $50 each week.

She didn’t hesitate. “Sure.” Said she’d leave it for me on the kitchen counter for my next regular visit on December 27.

The more I think about it, JonBenét could not have been killed by a stranger. I didn’t even know that room was there. How could a stranger know to go there? How in the world did this happen?

—Linda Hoffmann-Pugh

By mid-February the FBI and the CBI forensics technicians had concluded part of their fingerprint typing and fiber analysis. CBI told the Boulder police that no prints had been found on the black duct tape that John Ramsey said he removed from his daughter’s mouth and none were found on the broken artist’s paintbrush used to make the “garrote” found around JonBenét’s neck. The CBI had been able to identify two fingerprints found on a white bowl on the dining room table that contained uneaten pineapple. One print belonged to Burke and the other to Patsy. Since partly digested pineapple had been found in JonBenét’s small intestine at the autopsy, the police wondered if the Ramseys had been less than candid about JonBenét’s bedtime activities and what time she fell asleep. Patsy and John had never mentioned with whom, where, or when their daughter had eaten pineapple.

A palm print on the wine cellar door was identified as belonging to Patsy, and another of Patsy’s prints was found on the door to Burke’s train room, the room with the broken window. A print on the west patio door on the main floor belonged to John. The location of the prints meant very little, since Patsy and John, living in the house, often visited these rooms and fingerprints are almost impossible to date. Another fingerprint on the west patio door was later identified as belonging to Barbara Fernie. Eventually
the CBI told the police that they had been able to match almost all the fingerprints the detectives had collected to people from whom the police had collected physical evidence. However, another palm print found on the wine cellar door still remained unidentified.

The CBI had already determined that the stain on JonBenét’s underpants—which appeared to be blood and turned out indeed to be blood—was not solely hers. A D1S80 DNA test showed that the stain came from at least two different sources.
*
After receiving the report, the police contacted the parents of JonBenét’s playmates to see if any of the children had ever exchanged clothes with her. Priscilla White said she could not remember her daughter, Daphne, trading clothes with JonBenét, but Daphne told Detectives Arndt and Harmer that she and JonBenét sometimes wore each other’s clothes. During their interviews, the police were told that Fleet White had sometimes changed JonBenét’s panties. Months later, Pam Paugh, Patsy’s sister, told a TV reporter that she knew White had changed her niece’s clothes.

The new information meant a lot of follow-up work for the police in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile the duct tape was sent to the FBI, which had a large database for matching purposes. Special Agent Douglas Deedrick, an FBI hair and fiber specialist who had testified in the O. J. Simpson criminal case, notified the Boulder PD that he had found what seemed to be red and black microscopic fiber traces on the duct tape. The four fibers would have to be analyzed further to determine what kind they were. Shortly afterward the FBI began a chemical analysis of the adhesive on the duct tape. Eventually they hoped to be able to locate the manufacturer and possibly even find out the approximate
date of fabrication. They told the police they might even be able to trace the tape to where it had been bought.

In February John Ramsey met with Robert Phillips, his Boulder estate attorney, to deal with the financial matters relating to JonBenét’s estate, which included a trust in her name to which he and Patsy had contributed $10,000 yearly. During the meeting Ramsey mentioned that he and Patsy were now staying at the Stines’ house, where they had moved at the beginning of February and planned to stay until Burke’s school year ended. Ramsey suggested that Robert and his wife, Judith, whom Patsy knew, join them at a restaurant. When Phillips told his wife about the invitation, she was astonished that the Ramseys could think about eating out with the media following them everywhere.

A few weeks later, before the dinner was arranged, the Phillipses’ daughter, Lindsey, said that she wanted to play with Burke, so Judith drove her over to the Stines’ house, which was just around the corner from her own home. She rang the bell, and a moment later, two little eyes peered out through the blinds. When a housekeeper opened the door, Judith saw Patsy, fully dressed and made up, sitting on the living room sofa, and talking to a woman who was visiting from Atlanta. Lindsey went off to play with Burke and some other children, and Patsy greeted Judith, who could now see that despite her attempt to look composed, Patsy was in fact distraught under the thinnest veneer of normalcy. Judith thought she might be heavily medicated. Soon Patsy was crying on Judith’s shoulder.

“If only I had woken up. If
only
I woke up,” Patsy repeated. “Why didn’t I wake up?”

Later Judith asked Patsy whether she had seen Priscilla White.

“Oh, no, I can’t,” Patsy said.

“Why not?”

“Those memories…I just…I can’t even go into their home. I can’t.”

Judith knew that the Ramseys had been making derogatory comments about some of their friends—particularly Priscilla and Fleet White—and had also been told by their mutual friend Roxy Walker that the Whites were questioning whether the Ramseys were involved in JonBenét’s death.

Judith was a friend of Priscilla White’s and knew that the situation had been devastating for everyone. Susan Stine had called Judith and said, “Either you’re on the Whites’ side or you’re on
our
side,” as if this were a divorce. Susan Stine and Roxy Walker were “Patsy’s pit bulls.”

Like many Boulder mothers, Judith was infuriated when Patsy said in her CNN interview, “Hold your babies close to you because there’s a killer out there.” Judith’s daughter, Lindsey, wouldn’t sleep in her bedroom for six weeks after she heard Patsy say that on TV. Judith couldn’t understand how Patsy could be so callous as to arouse everyone’s worst fears.

She was certain that John and Patsy knew more about JonBenét’s death than they were saying. She couldn’t imagine Patsy murdering JonBenét, but she
could
imagine Patsy being involved in a cover-up.

Like JonBenét, most of the Ramseys’ friends’ children attended High Peaks Elementary. At High Peaks, kids were seen not as numbers but as individuals, each with his or her own special possibilities. To make this work, the school relied heavily on volunteers.

Patsy was generous with her time and commitment to High Peaks. During the 1995–96 school year, Patsy had been in charge of the science fair, in which 138 children in kinder
garten through fourth grade had participated. She created an environment in which students could discuss their projects with professional scientists so that even the scientists felt their time was well spent. She found three judges to review each project. For a meteorology project, Patsy got a meteorologist, for biology, a biologist. Charles Elbot, the principal, said that Patsy’s science fair had been arranged with “thoughtfulness, finesse, and generosity of spirit.”

Many parents who worked with Patsy said that she dared to think big. She was audacious, bold, and a natural leader. A born manager. Her friend Roxy Walker, more of a detail person, rounded up a group of parents to implement Patsy’s ideas.

Patsy would call and say, “I need paper plates that will hold wet spaghetti and cups that people can drink from. Forks and knives. For fifty people. Can you bring that? Yes? No? Tell me, because I’m going to depend on you.” She was effective—or arrogant, depending on your point of view.

The Good Fairy project was one of Patsy’s ideas.

Instead of asking people to raise money in the usual ways—sales drives, auctions, or donations—in Good Fairy, teachers were to make a list of things they needed for their classrooms, items ranging in price from $3 to $200. The teachers would specify the item, where it could be bought, the catalog number, and the total price. Patsy then put together spreadsheets and sent the parents copies of each teacher’s list.

Good Fairies were designated for each class. They called families and merchants and encouraged them to look over the list with their own kids and pick something to donate. The entire school was decorated in the fairy theme, with pink streamers hanging everywhere. Patsy and Roxy made it an event, and the arrangements became very elaborate—too elaborate for some people. Many parents disliked all the folderol that accompanied Patsy’s projects.
They would have preferred to write a check and be done with it. There were also some parents who thought that Patsy had made too big a deal of an elementary school science fair. But most people involved with High Peaks Elementary were dumbstruck by Patsy Ramsey’s ambitious and well-executed projects.

I was a schoolteacher in Chicago and got bored with teaching. Got divorced. Got into the computer business and moved to Dallas. Met my second husband, Robert Phillips, who was the author of a software program. He lived in Atlanta, and before long I joined him there. It was a fairy tale.

Ten years ago we moved to Boulder. My husband changed his profession at age forty-four. He went to law school and passed the bar. I tried painting, then some sculpting, and soon discovered I wanted to be a photographer. A black-and-white portrait photographer. I love to photograph women.

I met Patsy and John back in ’84, in Atlanta. They were already married, but none of us had moved to Boulder. Patsy worked with my husband at Hayes Micro Computer in Millcrest, Georgia. She was in charge of marketing his product, a sophisticated management system. Patsy was definitely a career woman.

She was friendly, lots of fun, a happy person, and a workaholic. She had the ability to make people like her. Whenever she was introduced, it was always, “This is Patsy Ramsey—she’s the former Miss West Virginia.” She loved it.

We all became fairly close. One year all four of us were on different business trips in San Francisco. Then we ended up going to Napa Valley together afterward.

Patsy and John were a close couple, very much in love. You felt the closeness. John was very attentive to Patsy and she to him. Lots of hand-holding, hugging. They adored each other.

John dressed casually, and Patsy always wore fine clothes. “When you go outside your home,” she always said, “you dress up. Full makeup.” In fact, she was always a little overdressed.

In ’87 Patsy got pregnant. She loved that too. It would be her parents’ first grandchild. John was the type of guy who would say, “Patsy, whatever you want. If you want to be a businesswoman, fine. If you want to be a mom, fine. Do whatever turns you on.”

Patsy quit her job and started working with John in his computer business. She ran all the marketing out of the basement of their home, where John worked with Patsy’s parents, Nedra and Don Paugh. It was a family thing. Patsy’s sisters and their husbands were also involved.

The stairs to the basement had these little strings of lights. It was like walking into a movie theater. You went down to a large television room, and Patsy worked in a back room.

When Burke was born, John built an addition to their house so Burke could have his own room, plus quarters for a nanny. The sky was the limit.

Then John merged his business with one in New Jersey and one in Boulder. The new firm, Access Graphics, located its operations out west. By then, I was already living in Boulder.

Whenever they had sales meetings, Patsy took over, organizing the catering and all the other details. Burke and my daughter, Lindsey, played together, and the four of us adults would often see each other for dinner. Then some big company invested in Access and John became president.

I never thought John could get Patsy to move out west. But she turned out to be open-minded, and that surprised me.

They first lived in a condo on Pearl Street at 19th until they found a house. Like all of us, they went through “sticker shock.” It’s hard coming from huge, magnificent
homes in the East that cost very little compared to the prices here.

Patsy liked one home in a new development outside of town, in Rock Creek, because it had streets and sidewalks where kids could play and ride bicycles. JonBenét had just been born, and Patsy didn’t want to go through remodeling an old house. She wanted something brand-new.

John leaned more toward an older property, on 15th Street. He wanted to be in the city because he needed to establish himself and his family in the heart of the community where he was locating his company. When they asked us for advice, we said 15th Street was a better investment. The value would increase there far faster than out in the Rock Creek development. When they bought the house on 15th Street, they knew it had to be renovated. It was almost three stories, with an elevator that had to go.

John was busy running the business, and all the reconstruction was left to Patsy—dealing with builders, painters, and decorators, all of it. She always looked tired.

Then John lost his oldest daughter in a car accident in Chicago. It was devastating, and suddenly he looked like he was always hunched over. He started reading a lot of metaphysical books, on life after death. All kinds of spiritual books. Patsy told me he was trying to find answers to why this could possibly happen, and she was concerned for him. Patsy wanted to help, but she felt powerless to do anything for this person she really cared about. It frustrated her.

About that time, Burke started school and Patsy started volunteering at his school. She volunteered for anything and everything—fund-raising, parties, room mother. She organized magnificent parties for the children. She met the Stines, and they became close. Then the Walkers. She started to develop good friendships in places where she wanted to be.

Patsy was put on a pedestal by her friends. Roxy
Walker would always say Patsy this and Patsy that, as if there were no higher authority than Patsy’s opinion. Once I had to tell her, “Patsy is just a person.” A person, of course, carrying a heavy load. It was, like, fix up the house, take care of the children, pull all the loose ends together in a city where she didn’t know anybody. But she never complained.