Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (30 page)

I remember that the moment we got off the train in Denver, I was disappointed—no cowboys and Indians. But I soon discovered there were lots of fields to play in, an airport where you could watch planes, and an irrigation ditch you could tube down. All that was wonderful.

In 1960 I applied to Stanford and didn’t get in. So I ended up at CU, which had been my third choice. Actually it was a kid’s dream. The university was a kind of magic place. It had either the largest or second-largest number of astronauts among its alumni. Robert Redford used to be a waiter at the Sink. I studied history as an undergraduate and science in graduate school, but I really majored in student activism. I have to point out that I opposed the Vietnam War back when public opinion polls showed that only 1 percent of the country favored withdrawal.

Boulder was much more isolated than Denver, although the Denver-Boulder turnpike had just opened. Boulder had the main hallmark of a boomtown, the feeling that all things are possible. In those days there were lots of transient hippies and drugs. One anti-Vietnam protest on U.S. 36 turned into a kind of bloodbath. There was lots of
tear gas. The liberals didn’t seize the government until 1971, when I was thirty-five, and the present establishment wasn’t locked in until the 1976 elections. Back then, I was always in the minority, but it didn’t bother me. I understood things were changing.

The Danish Plan was my big contribution to Boulder and was adopted by referendum in 1976. It determined the growth rate for the town by controlling the number of building permits issued every year, with just a few exceptions and grandfatherings. The number of permits allowed was based on certain criteria, like the birth rate. The city had already voted in a height limitation for new buildings. There was also the “blue line,” a zoning law which said that a building above a certain elevation couldn’t get town water. Now, of course, the city owns almost everything up in the foothills. It’s a wonderful place to live. I live just six blocks from the Rocky Mountains.

—Paul Danish

The city of Boulder became an island with a moat of undeveloped land around it, isolated from the other communities in Boulder County and from Denver and its surrounding municipalities. One former county commissioner called Boulder “twenty-eight square miles encircled by reality.” The restricted growth of Boulder’s residential areas led to steadily rising real estate prices. In the late 1990s, an average home cost $337,994.

Adding to Boulder’s good fortune is the presence of a federally funded scientific research institute at the University of Colorado, whose students and staff constitute almost a third of Boulder’s population. Over 36 percent of the city’s adults have a college degree, and 26 percent have five years or more of higher education. Seven of ten Boulderites own bicycles. The result is above-average prosperity and
relatively few residents whose lives are desperate enough to turn them to crime.

I’m now the director of public information at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I used to be the city’s flack. I ran the press office. I could see everything that was happening in city government; I attended every city council meeting. The first mayor I worked for was Ruth Correll, and during her tenure the character of the town changed. Paul Danish was pushing slow growth, which attracted attention that this town had never had before. And I saw it all from the inside.

I helped promote the green belt. We built this buffer zone around ourselves because we didn’t want to be part of the metroplex. We paid for that protection with our own taxes. Of course, it’s like building a cedar fence. When you go to the other side of that fence, it looks quite different from the outside. We always sat in here and looked at what we were building and just didn’t realize that the people on the outside were watching us build the fence.

So Boulder became an isolated conclave.

We have always viewed the world outside with a certain detachment, but we never seemed able to see ourselves with the same objectivity. At heart we are still a small town. Now the media comes from a place where TV news trucks are as common as taxicabs. Here in Boulder, we don’t have cabs. Or so few they’re barely visible.

I used to walk out my front door every morning and get my newspaper, pick up my milk, and say hi to my neighbor and the kid mowing the lawn. That was my window on the world. Then there was the Simpson thing, the Susan Smith thing—all far away. Except now there’s the Ramsey thing.

Here in Boulder, we believe we are smaller than we really are. Then when the TV lights and telephoto lenses come in, we have to realize that we aren’t as small as we thought.

—David Grimm

This privileged community, whose people have little reason to fear crime—this complacent community—was an ideal environment for innovators like Alex Hunter and Peter Hofstrom to calibrate law enforcement to the needs of the residents.

In 1984 Hunter announced the formation of “domestic violence teams” to make recommendations following arrests in domestic abuse cases. Shortly afterward, he initiated a program where police officers would no longer act as referees in domestic fights but would arrest on probable cause. Then Hunter’s office would prosecute abusers, even when the victim refused to file charges.

When six deaths from domestic violence occurred in Boulder County, outside of the city of Boulder, in the first seven months of 1993, Hunter named Kathy Delgado to head a specialized prosecution unit. Faced with the fact that by the time of trial, most domestic violence victims are no longer on the prosecutor’s side, Hunter urged making arrests mandatory in all cases when the police are called in a domestic violence dispute. The controversial bill, signed into state law on June 2, 1994, was designed to break the back of domestic violence.

Hunter established hard policies on sexual assault and domestic violence. Perpetrators were sent to jail overnight or over a weekend, with no possibility of posting bond, until there could be a hearing. Hunter relented when defense attorneys argued that reputations on domestic violence cases could be ruined and civil liberties could be violated. He made no such provisions for sexual assault cases, however, and the defense bar believes that the DA’s “tuna net” has swept up many innocent people, jeopardizing their jobs and reputations. They fault Hunter for neglecting to build in fail-safes to ensure that only true criminals are targeted.

In the early 1990s, Boulder’s “rape crisis team” studied 116 cases of incest and sexual assault on both children and adults. Hunter’s office claimed a conviction rate of 84 percent. In cases involving children, sixty defendants pleaded guilty to some charge, but it was found that only one out of sixty convicted sexual offenders went to state prison. Moreover, Hunter’s office was found to be counting deferred prosecutions and deferred sentences as convictions. Plea bargains that sent first-time rapists into therapy rather than prison enraged Hunter’s opponents. Some speculate that Hunter’s political skill may have served to mute critical voices.

Some judges agree with Alex Hunter’s opponents that because of the way he runs his office, his deputy DAs don’t have the necessary courtroom skills. With so few cases taken to trial and even fewer courtroom battles in Hunter’s jurisdiction, there is little opportunity for the DA’s staff to acquire courtroom experience. According to criminal court judge Murray Richtel, Hunter’s office is “rehabilitationand treatment-oriented on a conscious level. It’s not a trial-oriented system. The skills aren’t there. That’s not in any sense a criticism; it’s just a fact.”

One of Hunter’s lessons about the law came from an earlier case involving a child’s murder. Elizabeth Manning’s three-year-old son, Michael, had became what one newspaper called “a punching bag” for Manning’s live-in boyfriend, Danny Arevalo. On December 19, 1982, Manning helped wrap her son’s body in a green blanket and a shower curtain and hid it in an air-conditioning vent. The body was later carried to an irrigation ditch in the dead of winter.

Before Christmas, neighbors noticed that the child had disappeared and informed the police.

While the winter snow was still on the ground, Manning was brought before Judge Murray Richtel in a civil
proceeding and ordered to tell the police where her child was. She said her son was with friends but refused to say where for fear that social services would take the child away, she said.

Richtel sentenced Manning to jail for contempt of court, but she still wouldn’t talk. As she sat in jail and refused to disclose her child’s whereabouts, the public was aghast.

Three months later, on April 8, Manning was released pending an appeal of her sentence. As she left the jail, the police officer in charge of the case, Detective Greg Bailey, told her, “Betsy, you can either be a witness in a murder case or you can be a suspect in a murder case. It’s up to you.”

The next day, Manning decided to talk.

“I am going to interview you as a witness in this thing,” Bailey said to Manning. “Because I am not going to advise you of your rights, they [the DA] cannot prosecute you for this.”

“I’ll do whatever I have to do,” she replied, “to make sure he [Arevalo] pays for what he did to Michael.”

“Go ahead and tell me what you’ve got.”

“Mikey’s dead.”

“Elizabeth,” Bailey said, “you don’t really mean that.”

“Yes, Danny beat Michael to death.” Manning told Bailey that she had played a major role in her son’s death and had helped hide the body.

Hunter, knowing that Manning had not been given the Miranda warning and that her statement could not be used against her, took the position that his office “hadn’t agreed to immunity for anyone.”

The public outrage over the murder and the fact that this mother sat in jail when she knew her son’s body lay exposed in the snow convinced Hunter to file murder and child abuse charges against Manning as well as Arevalo. He took the position that discovery of the body would inevitably have occurred when the snow melted and that the shower curtain
would have linked Manning to the crime. She would have been charged, Hunter said, statement or no statement.

The court ruled against Hunter. Manning’s statement was deemed inadmissible, and all evidence uncovered as a result of her statement, including her son’s body, was excluded. Hunter spoke out publicly against the judge and the judiciary.

All Hunter could do now was charge the defendants with felony child abuse and assault. Manning, furious with Hunter for prosecuting her, pled guilty and was out in a year. At Arevalo’s trial she refused to testify, and he received ten years for felony child abuse.

Politically, Hunter had lost.

For his part, Hunter said that after this and a few similar experiences, he no longer allowed himself to be swayed by public sentiment into trying an unwinnable case, because in the end no one wins. He also believed that to charge an innocent person with a serious crime—and virtually destroy his life—was worse than not filing charges at all.

Pete Hofstrom, conservative by nature, agreed, and when the DA’s lawyers wanted to file a case that he thought would be lost in court, he usually convinced them not to.

Despite some horrifying local crimes, the position taken by Hunter and Hofstrom has remained unchanged. In 1990 Michael Bell, an escapee from the state penitentiary, murdered four people indiscriminately. Hunter, who is not opposed to the death penalty, talked to the families of the victims. He explained how the death penalty works in reality—how few murderers are sentenced to death, how many appeals are filed, how many years the process takes. In the end he accomplished something unprecedented: he and Hofstrom persuaded Michael Bell to plea-bargain to life in prison without parole—and saved the victims’ families years of agony during the interminable appeals process.

Such strategies and philosophies are not to everyone’s
liking, but the community has kept Hunter in office. Boulderites seem to agree that he is serving them well.

Speaking about JonBenét’s murder, Alex Hunter told a friend, “This crime doesn’t have a statute of limitation. We’ll wait as long as it takes to develop a solid case.”

“You won’t need very much evidence in light of what
they’ve
done to make your case,” his friend replied, referring to the Ramseys.

It was at this moment that Hunter understood how emotionally involved local residents had become in the case—and how strong their opinions were. But he also knew that those opinions were based on very little relevant information and no hard evidence, and this frightened him.

What also bothered the DA, in the final days of February, was that the case was getting harder to solve, not easier. John’s and Patsy’s lives provided no easy answers, no pathology, no pattern of abuse, no skeletons in the closets—in fact, no closets.

Hunter knew that the detectives were putting in long hours, working six days a week. Some were still in Atlanta, interviewing every member of the family and many of their friends and former business associates. In Boulder they were talking to employees of Stevens Aviation, which maintained John Ramsey’s plane, and Merry Maids, the cleaning company that serviced the Ramseys’ house. The investigation was moving along, but the lack of concrete physical evidence against the Ramseys still hadn’t led Eller to look elsewhere for suspects—not seriously.

John Andrew Ramsey and his friend Brad Millard had given pubic hair samples, which did not match the hair found on the white blanket covering JonBenét’s body. The investigation of John Andrew and Melinda Ramsey was nearly over. As far as Alex Hunter knew, the older children were no longer
suspects, and the Ramseys’ attorneys were demanding that they be publicly cleared so they could get on with their lives. Hunter agreed. It was unconscionable to ruin the lives of these young people because of baseless suspicion.

It was clear to Hunter that he had no choice but to get his own investigators, who would pursue the case as he and Pete Hofstrom saw fit.