Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (37 page)

In July 1993, Patsy Ramsey was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. It was just one month short of JonBenét’s third birthday. The child, who went to stay with her grandmother Nedra, regressed in her toilet training and eating habits. Suzanne Savage, a baby-sitter, began to help Nedra care for JonBenét.

At three years and one month, JonBenét was brought to see the doctor. Her buttocks were chafed red from diarrhea, as was her vaginal area.

Two months later, JonBenét was back in the doctor’s office with a cough and a stuffed nose. She was sleeping poorly, was grouchy from fatigue, and had bad breath. She appeared to have chronic sinusitis. At the end of 1993, JonBenét, at age three, was still drinking from a bottle, and
Patsy and John were having problems weaning her.

On October 5, 1994, when JonBenét showed up at the doctor’s office for a checkup, she had a scar on her left cheek. She’d been hit accidentally by a golf club when the family was in Charlevoix. A week later a plastic surgeon in Denver was consulted. There was no injury to her cheekbone, nothing to worry about. Beuf was told that she was getting along with her brothers and older sister. But she was wearing Pull-Ups at night because she sometimes wet the bed. That same day Patsy filled out a developmental questionnaire. She said there were no aspects of JonBenét’s behavior or sex education she needed to discuss. JonBenét was four years and three months old.

At Alfalfa’s food market on May 8, 1995, JonBenét fell and landed on her nose. It was not broken. Seven and a half months later, she tripped and hit her head above her left eye. At the time, she had a stuffy nose and bad breath and was coughing.

Almost a year later, in March 1996, JonBenét was coughing a lot, and two months later she bent the nail back on the fourth finger of her left hand in another fall. Though it was swollen and painful, there was no bruising.

Three months before JonBenét’s death, on August 27, Patsy told Beuf that JonBenét was a good sleeper, wasn’t hard to get to bed, and was easily awakened in the morning. She wasn’t interested in the opposite sex, behaved modestly in public, and didn’t engage in sex play with her friends. She was, however, asking about sex roles and reproduction. She was not rude or afraid of either parent. She didn’t seem to be bossy with her brother, Burke, didn’t react with tantrums, and was active. She loved fruit and some vegetables. Patsy said she was delightful and doing very well. Burke had his annual checkup the same day.

In October, two months before her murder, JonBenét had a stuffy nose and bad breath. She was diagnosed with
allergic rhinitis. On November 12, JonBenét was checked for the last time by Beuf. She had a runny nose and a cold sore and was sneezing. Three weeks later her eyesight was checked by Dr. Marilyn Dougherty. In early December, JonBenét missed a pageant appearance because she was sick, but she didn’t see Dr. Beuf.

Dr. Beuf told a reporter covering the story that JonBenét had had an average number of physician visits for a child her age.

The police now had to collate the medical data with other information before any conclusions could be drawn.

I got to know Suzanne Savage from church. When she was totally overwhelmed by her workload at the Ramseys’, I helped out. Ended up staying for almost three years. After I left the Ramseys’ on Labor Day of 1995, Linda Hoffmann-Pugh started to work for them. The Ramseys weren’t warm and affectionate people. They were very professional, very down to business. They communicated with each other like two people who are amicably divorced.

I was working for them when Patsy got sick with cancer and after she recovered. During that time, Nedra moved in and was caring for the children. Then Patsy had what she called her divine intervention and was cured of her cancer. After Patsy finished decorating the house, Burke became her favorite child. She spent all of her time at his school. He was her first project.

At that time JonBenét was too young to do anything spectacular. She hardly got Patsy’s attention. Suzanne Savage was in charge of her. JonBenét wasn’t in school yet, and her world revolved around adults, whereas Burke’s life revolved around his friends.

Then, when JonBenét started school, she became Patsy’s second project. The children really were like projects to her. I’m afraid that after JonBenét became Patsy’s focus, she also became her obsession.

I think that to Patsy, nothing and no one had the right to be imperfect. Everything had to fit Patsy’s image of what it should be. So JonBenét was under immense pressure to fit the image Patsy had of her new project.

When the police interviewed me, they asked if the kids wet the bed a lot. I said yes. Detective Harmer asked if I thought that was unusual, and I had to say, “Not really. Not at that age.” Burke wore Pull-Ups until he was six, and JonBenét always wore them. But I also told the police it was curious to me that Burke stopped wetting the bed when he stopped being the focus of Patsy’s attention. And that was when JonBenét became a chronic bed wetter. But you know if you have little kids around that age, they are bed wetters. When I left in September of 1995, they were both still wetting their beds.

Then the detectives asked me about the Bible on John’s desk in the bedroom. The cover was embossed
JOHN AND PATSY RAMSEY
. Sometimes it was by the bed. It was always being read. I know, because I never had to dust it. I told the police that I never saw it open; it always had a bookmark in it.

I don’t remember if I told them about the large photograph John had of an aircraft carrier. On the bottom of the picture in fancy writing were the words Subic Bay Training Center. The script was faint because it blended in with the water, so the words were hard to read. It used to hang behind his desk in the bedroom.

—Linda Wilcox

Every media outlet was eager to interview the Ramseys, but the only time John and Patsy had talked to the press was on New Year’s Day. Like most of the networks, CNN was still camped out in Boulder. Mike Phelan, a CNN producer who had been in Boulder for two months, called Pat Korten daily asking for an interview. It was a small ritual. Every day Korten would say no.

Phelan’s network had set up an office with a full workstation and a library of 186 related videotapes, including the unedited version of the Ramseys’ New Year’s Day interview, which the Boulder police had wanted since January 1.

On March 12, John Eller learned that two copies of the unedited tape were in Boulder. He consulted the police department’s legal advisers, who told him that the tape was in their jurisdiction. On March 26 Detective Thomas obtained a search warrant to enter CNN’s hotel room at Marriott’s Residence Inn Hotel and take possession of the tape. When Thomas showed up at the door, Michael Phelan called CNN’s attorneys in Atlanta.

The network was prepared for this move from the police, and a deal was struck. In return for CNN’s turning over the tape, the police department agreed that it would make it available only to law enforcement personnel working on the case. Bob Keatley, the police department’s legal adviser, signed the formal agreement with CNN, which protected CNN’s copyright. Two days later, CNN turned over the videotape to Thomas, who made copies for the department.

Now, for the first time, the Boulder detectives could look not only for inconsistencies with the Ramseys’ previous statements to police but for behavioral patterns. A copy of the tape was sent to the FBI for analysis by CASKU.

When word reached the Ramseys’ attorneys that the police had the videotape, they asked Hunter’s office for access to it, too. It would be almost a month before Tom Kelley, representing CNN, authorized the DA to provide a copy to Haddon, Morgan and Foreman.

The Ramseys’ attorneys had made some changes in their approach to the press. Pat Korten was let go. It was an effort to simplify logistics and reduce costs, they said. Later one Ramsey attorney would say that the hiring of Pat Korten was the single biggest mistake they had made in the first
months of the case. Rachelle Zimmer, an attorney in Haddon’s office, would now handle the media’s questions.

Meanwhile, Alex Hunter was thinking of designating a press representative to deal with the eighty-two individuals from national TV networks and papers throughout the country who called his office regularly.

Journalists, of course, were being pressured by their editors and producers. Reporters from the Denver papers were told to look for a story every day because public interest was growing. Some writers without many sources fed what information they had to Hunter’s office, hoping to get something in return.

To Hunter’s staff it sounded as if the information they were getting had come from the police, but when they checked their set of police files they came up short. Hunter surmised that Eller and his detectives were withholding information—specifically, test results. Hunter speculated that the police wanted the press to hear directly from them and were sending a clear message: they didn’t trust Hunter.

The tabloids began offering money to people close to Hunter’s staff in exchange for information, and Hunter wondered if the police were getting similar offers. When the tabs called Bill Wise, he always treated them cordially but said little. To get him to talk, they started feeding him information, which proved reliable. Again it looked as if it came from the police department. Again, some of it was unknown to Hunter’s staff.

During a conversation with a local reporter, Wise learned that Chuck Green, a featured columnist for
The Denver Post
, was about to publish a story about Pete Hofstrom’s breakfast meetings with Bryan Morgan. Whoever leaked this information to Green had suggested that Morgan and Hofstrom had a social relationship, that they were “chummy.”

Wise asked Hofstrom to review his appointment calendar since the beginning of the case. It showed that Hofstrom had four breakfast meetings with Morgan—all in
restaurants. Then Wise called Green to offer him the facts. He provided the columnist with the dates and locations of the meetings and added that the police had
asked
Hofstrom to negotiate with the Ramseys’ attorneys on their behalf for additional handwriting samples and interviews. Green decided not to run the story.

In reality, Pete Hofstrom was speaking to the Ramseys’ attorneys whenever the police needed his assistance, mostly with Bryan Morgan. They had a cordial and respectful understanding: you be honest with me, and I’ll be honest with you. Hofstrom had a much more difficult time dealing with Eller. It became particularly frustrating when he began to suspect that the police weren’t giving his office all the facts. He’d resigned himself to the reality that Eller was part of his life, but he probably would have agreed with the deputy DA who characterized the commander as one more cop who liked to beat up on prosecutors. Hofstrom wanted the police to let the evidence lead the investigation wherever the hell it was going to lead them, without obstruction and subterfuge, so that the DA’s office could eventually prosecute the charged suspects confidently.

Hunter could see that Hofstrom was under stress. Pete had chronic blood pressure problems, and they appeared to be worsening. He had begun jogging to work off some tension, but it didn’t seem to help. Bill Wise noticed that his door was now always closed. This was not the Pete Hofstrom they had known for twenty-three years.

Hofstrom’s first full-time job, at age twenty-six, was at San
Quentin. He was just over 5-feet-4, and going to school at San Francisco State while working the four-to-midnight shift at the prison. Hofstrom wanted to become a lawyer. Eugene Ziemer, his lieutenant at San Quentin and a Colorado native, told him there was a great law school in Boulder that he should aim for.

San Quentin, the prison that once housed Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, had its problems in the 1970s. The general population included the Mexican mafia, the Aryan Brothers, and the Black Guerilla Family. On one occasion the inmates killed six people.

Hofstrom’s first assignment at San Quentin was to lock up the cellblocks. Because he’d had polio and walked with a distinct limp, his nickname was “March of Dimes.” But nobody dared call him that to his face: he was gutsy and bold. Another one of his jobs was to keep the inmates in line—literally. He was in charge of the chow line and the line to and from the cells. “You’re just like a cop on the street,” Ziemer told him. “The inmates pick up on your confidence—or lack of it—right away.” Pete Hofstrom was known for not backing down.

But he was thoughtful and self-motivated. When he had difficulty with an inmate, he would read the guy’s file and then go and talk to him. Before long, this unusual approach got him noticed, and he was promoted to correctional counselor. Hofstrom actually loved to talk with the inmates and to make his own evaluation of their behavior. He often picked up on changes in behavior that warranted his lieutenant’s attention.

Following Ziemer’s advice, Hofstrom moved to Boulder to attend law school at CU. It was 1971. Alex Hunter would be elected DA the following year.

Boulder was undergoing a sea-change: young people were moving into public office, replacing the older law enforcement officers from the pre-
Miranda
, pre-
Escobedo
days.
*
Hunter
and Dave Torke, who would later become a judge, worked in both the sheriff’s department and the police department introducing officers to post-
Miranda
law enforcement.

While he attended law school during the day, Hofstrom worked nights as a jail supervisor, where he met Sheriff Brad Leach. Hofstrom was always saying, “It’s how you treat people, how you communicate, that matters.” When the department wrote a new policy on inmate visitation, Hofstrom recommended extending visiting hours to three nights a week because it would have a calming effect on the inmate population. The department tried it out, and Pete was right. His reputation grew as someone who did not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to people, not even to criminals.