Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (32 page)

When Detective Harmer had searched the Ramseys’ Charlevoix home in January, she had noticed several handwritten items. Now, with Ubowski’s report in hand, the court granted a second search warrant. On March 5 Harmer left for Michigan. It took her only an hour and fifteen minutes to collect thirteen recipe cards, an address book, two small legal pads, three notes from a kitchen corkboard, and a photo album with printing. The next day she returned to Boulder and placed the “historical” writings into evidence.

At the time, the entire contents of the ransom note had not been released to the media and the public. The police were investigating all possible influences on whoever had written it. They found, for example, that the note contained several phrases similar to snippets of dialogue in recent movies. On November 29, a month before JonBenét’s death, the movie
Dirty Harry
had aired on TBS in Boulder. In the
movie, a kidnapper tells Clint Eastwood, “If you talk to anyone, I don’t care if it’s a Pekingese pissing against a lamppost, the girl dies.” JonBenét’s ransom note threatened, “If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies.” In
Dirty Harry
the kidnapper says, “It sounds like you had a good rest. You’ll need it.” JonBenét’s ransom note said, “The delivery will be exhausting so I advise you to be rested.”

In the movie Speed, a terrorist played by Dennis Hopper says, “You know that I’m on top of you. Do not attempt to grow a brain.” The ransom note contained the following: “You and your family are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities. Don’t try to grow a brain John.”

On the night JonBenét was murdered, the movie
Nick of Time
aired at 7:30
P
.
M
. on a Boulder cable channel. The story centers on an unnamed political faction that kidnaps a six-year-old girl. The victim is told, “Listen to me very carefully.” Bill Cox, who was staying with Fleet and Priscilla White, told the police he remembered watching the movie that night. The ransom note begins, “Listen carefully!”

The ransom note would become public only in September 1997. Karen Howard, an employee of Access Graphics, said that she was struck by the words “you are not the only fat cat around.” Howard remembered that Patsy’s father, Don Paugh, used the word
cats
all the time; for example, “Those cats down in marketing.”

Once the CBI’s handwriting analysts no longer needed the ransom note, the lab turned its attention to lifting fingerprints from the paper. Technicians would have to immerse the pages in various chemical solutions, which would react with the amino acids, fats, and waxes that are transmitted to objects by human hands. The pages would then be dried so that the chemicals could react with and expose any latent fingerprints or palm prints. The CBI told the police and Pete Hofstrom that the process would make the paper fibers swell, forever
altering the relationship between the ink and the paper surface. As a result, further examination and analysis of the indentations in the paper, a critical component in handwriting analysis, might become impossible. The ink might run. Some of the tests might even cause the document to turn black.

Hofstrom knew that if the Ramseys were eventually charged in the murder, they would want their own handwriting experts to testify, and any reputable analyst would have to examine the original note to make an assessment. Hofstrom felt the Ramseys should have the same chance to review the documents that the police had.

He told Patrick Burke about the situation, and in a letter the lawyer registered a formal objection to destructive testing of the ransom note. Burke presented Hofstrom with a set of conditions to be met before he would allow the CBI to test the note for the police. He wanted access to the ransom note for the Ramseys’ own handwriting experts. In addition, he wanted a first-generation copy of the note and 4 x 5 inch negatives of each page. Later the Ramseys’ attorneys set further conditions: they wanted to see the ligature and the “garrote” used to murder JonBenét. They soon discovered what the media did not know. The cord tied around JonBenét’s neck was not a classical garrote in which both ends of the cord are attached to a turning device such as a stick. In this case, the cord had been placed around JonBenét’s neck like a noose, the cord pulled through a knot, and a stick tied to the cord 17 inches from the knot. The coroner was unable to determine if JonBenét’s killer had turned the stick in garrote fashion to cause the strangulation or had used the stick only to pull the noose tighter around the child’s neck to suffocate her.

Hofstrom thought some of Burke’s requests were fair, and he also saw a bargaining opportunity for his office. He proposed that in exchange for giving the Ramseys’ experts access to the note, Hunter’s staff wanted to hear their firsthand analysis. This way Hunter’s office could assess the
opposition—see how good their experts were.

Burke agreed, but then Hofstrom had to convince the police that the Ramseys should be allowed to see and assess the rope, the “garrote,” and the ransom note. Hunter consulted Bob Grant, a member of the task force he had assembled, who reminded him to look at the exchange only in the context of
his
case, not from the investigative perspective of the police. Grant said that Hunter should compare what would be lost and what would be gained before making a decision. It took some time, but eventually they got Eller to agree to the conditions. All the items could be examined in protective covers. In mid-April, Detective Trujillo delivered to Patrick Burke the requested first-generation copy of the note and 4 x 5 inch negatives. On May 18, at Mike Bynum’s law offices, the Ramseys’ experts—Howard Rile, a former handwriting analyst for the CBI now based in California, and Lloyd Cunningham, a retired San Francisco police handwriting expert who had worked on the Zodiac serial murders—pored over the original note from 9:00
A
.
M
. to 12:30
P
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M
. Detectives Thomas and Trujillo and evidence technician Pat Peck observed for the police. At the same time, the Ramseys’ attorneys and their experts also examined the rope and the “garrote.” Pete Hofstrom and Trip DeMuth, representing the DA’s office, showed up in the afternoon with sheriff’s detective Steve Ainsworth.

Just after 2:00
P
.
M
. Rile and Cunningham made their presentation. They had noted resemblances to some of Patsy’s lettering as well as some variances. Their verdict: Patsy didn’t write the note. The variables outnumbered the simularities. Hofstrom and DeMuth listened carefully. The experts’ presentation seemed to have some merit. Hunter’s staff concluded that at least one of these experts would make a fine witness for the Ramseys.

Several weeks after the meeting, attorney Lee Foreman informed Hunter’s office that since they’d had an
opportunity to review the original ransom note, the Ramseys had no further objection to the police proceeding at once with the potentially destructive fingerprint tests.

Alex Hunter told Sheriff Epp that he thought a more objective investigation was still needed. The police were not looking hard enough at the possibility that an intruder had murdered JonBenét, and they hadn’t even interviewed Boulder’s registered sex offenders. When Hunter approached Koby about Eller, the chief wouldn’t discuss the issue. The attention of the media had intensified Koby’s initial resolve. He wasn’t going to add to the frenzy by replacing Eller and confirming what the press was saying about the investigation. Eller would get the job done. Hunter could see that Koby wouldn’t budge.

For his part, Epp thought that many of the problems in the investigation had arisen as a result of police union policies and the structure of the Boulder PD. A deep polarization between management and the rank and file had developed in the late 1970s over salary increases, benefits, and holiday time, which had resulted in a strong police union. Then, when Tom Koby became police chief in 1991, he downsized and completely restructured the department. The rank-and-file officers believed that Koby had done this to impress his friend Tim Honey, the city manager, and the city council. The union still talked about Black Monday, the day Koby’s changes took effect. No longer could an officer climb the ladder to lieutenant and then to division chief. The positions no longer existed. Koby had combined them into a single management level called commander, and this one person would make decisions that in the past had been made by three people.

In the process, Koby got rid of many of the law-and-order-oriented officers that his predecessor, Jay Propst, had hired over the years from other jurisdictions. Commanders like Jerry Hoover, Glen Kaminsky, and Bob Etzkorn left the department. In their place, Koby brought in more liberally educated officers, and added laypeople like Virginia Lucy and Kris Gibson, who had no practical law enforcement experience, to the command structure. Almost all of Koby’s
recruits were more open to Boulder’s unusual system of justice. Up through the ranks came people like Commander Mark Beckner, Tom Wickman, Linda Arndt, Tom Trujillo, and Carey Weinheimer—officers who had virtually no experience with big-city crime. There were deep divisions within the department about how to deal with Boulder’s criminals.

Koby had also moved the department toward community policing, a concept the city council approved, in light of the low street-crime rate in Boulder. Community policing emphasizes officer interaction with the public. The union objected that such “socializing” disrupted real police business—intervention in assaults, rapes, and the like. The hard-line officers didn’t like “sitting around at ice cream socials.” That wasn’t why they’d become cops.

The union contract stipulated that officers would be rotated rather than kept in core positions. This meant that the position of detective was not a permanent rank, not a promotion, but a rotating job. When an officer was rotated out, it wasn’t a demotion. There was no stigma in being sent “back to patrol.” As the union saw it, more officers gained detective experience this way, and it raised morale. Patrol officers rotated into the detective division got their turn at the benefits that went with the job. They worked five days a week and got Christmas, New Year’s, and Thanksgiving off. With one or two murders a year, the city of Boulder didn’t need seasoned homicide investigators, the police union said. As a result, these rotating detectives never developed expertise.

Sheriff Epp thought that the Boulder PD’s mandate to enforce the law had taken second place to the union’s agenda. He himself ran his detective division in a more traditional way. Having gained a wealth of expertise in his eight years as a detective before becoming sheriff, he kept the majority of his officers in core positions. Some of his officers had been detectives for twenty years.

Epp felt that the union requirements benefited the police more than the public. Still, it was not union-stipulated matters that had prevented the Boulder PD from doing a good job on the Ramsey investigation. John Eller had to assume a share of the blame. From what Epp knew of Eller, it seemed that the commander didn’t work well with people. Union leaders admitted privately that Eller had acted rashly in suspending Larry Mason, for example. And he was impatient and abrupt. “I don’t have time to talk about it,” Eller would sometimes snap. “Go out and do it now!”

Epp shared these views. He also believed that the commander was looking for confirmation of his preconceptions about the Ramsey case. That he wanted answers was understandable, but Epp objected to his refusal to look at other scenarios.

In the first days of the investigation, Epp had been told by his officers that Eller couldn’t get organized. Of course, failure to secure the crime scene and failure to separate and interview the witnesses—including the Ramseys—could not be blamed entirely on Eller. The first officers at the scene had ignored or bungled procedures that were taught the first day at the police academy.

Epp wrestled with himself about what his department should do. After all, the sheriff’s department shared jurisdiction for the city of Boulder. It was supposed to serve the same citizens.

Sitting around the conference table in Epp’s office in a closed door session, Captains Shomaker, Hopper, McCaa, and Pringle of the sheriff’s department discussed their role in the Ramsey case with Epp. What should we
do?
What should we do? The obvious answer was to start their
own
investigation into JonBenét’s death, starting with the premise of an unknown killer, someone not living in the house. Following all the leads, they would allow the evidence to show them the path to JonBenét’s murderer.

But Epp worried that a separate investigation might ruin relations with the Boulder PD. Worse, it might be seen by Boulderites as political maneuvering at the expense of the police. Epp and his captains let the idea drop, but they continued to stew.

Alex Hunter hoped that a citizen would come in, write a letter, or call the tip line with information that would break the Ramsey case. It had happened in other cases. Sometimes he actually sat alone in his office waiting for a call from the police saying they’d found a smoking gun, something to hang the case on the Ramseys.

The tabloids had become just as restless as they ran out of negative items to print about the Ramseys. The
National Enquirer
worked on “Daddy’s Secret Porn Life,” in which it would claim that Ramsey had been seen leaving a house of prostitution in the red-light district of Amsterdam, where Access Graphics had a satellite office. When such stories appeared, the Boulder police weren’t far behind, following leads as they appeared in print.

One tabloid reporter had called over two hundred escort services in the Colorado area looking for anyone who might have had contact with John Ramsey. After a stripper who called herself Sharon contacted the Boulder police to inform them about the reporter’s investigation, Detectives Thomas and Gosage spoke to the Arapahoe County DA’s office and the Aurora Police Department and met anonymously with several prostitutes the tabloid reporter had called, following leads supplied by the reporter. They found no indication that John Ramsey had been involved with local prostitutes.