Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (39 page)

But the Ramseys hadn’t been charged, Wickman and Eller insisted—they were only suspects. The police were furious that they’d had to wait so long for interviews. Now, on top of the delay, the Ramseys wanted to see their prior statements to the police. Wickman and Eller thought it would compromise the interview process, if not the entire case. Reminded of what they had told the police earlier, the Ramseys could tailor their new answers accordingly.

But Hunter could understand why their attorneys wanted the Ramseys’ earlier statements—it was likely they were already looking at their clients as charged defendants. “These people aren’t right off the boat,” was how the DA put it. “It was obvious they were prime suspects from the first days of the investigation.” There was nothing out of the ordinary about the police having to wait to interview the
Ramseys—any good defense lawyer would have tried to delay his clients’ interrogation.

Hofstrom negotiated with the police, and Eller and Koby grudgingly agreed that the DA could release the statements the Ramseys had made to the police, though not the entire contents of the officers’ reports. The police would hand over a total of twenty-six pages. The decision infuriated Steve Thomas, who had been selected to interview Patsy. It would be like having one hand tied behind his back.

The interview was set for Wednesday, April 23, at 9:30
A
.
M
. From Hunter’s point of view, the process was moving forward.

Within a day of the agreement, Patsy gave the police a fourth handwriting sample and agreed to identify her prior writings. The Ramseys also gave the police permission to search their home again. Then Smit gave Trip DeMuth copies of the requested statements from his set of police files, which DeMuth delivered to the Ramseys’ attorneys.

That same week, Carol McKinley’s source in the Boulder PD told her that he and his colleagues were outraged that the police had to bargain with the Ramseys. It was the last straw, he said.

John and Patsy’s participation in a meeting with Hofstrom and Wickman suggested to Hunter’s office that Ramsey was becoming more active in the day-to-day decision-making in the case. He was also back at Access Graphics full-time. Gary Mann, the parent company’s vice president, had taken the position that John Ramsey was innocent until proven guilty, so Ramsey was still running the company for Lockheed Martin. Mann saw that although Ramsey was under enormous pressure, he didn’t miss a beat when it came to work. Sales and profits at Access Graphics
were increasing, and the company was ahead of last year’s record. With those results, Lockheed decided that now was the time to sell the company. Management had first discussed that possibility with Ramsey during the summer of 1996. At the time, Ramsey had mentioned buying the company himself, but with JonBenét’s death, he dropped the idea. Mann told Ramsey that he could stay with Lockheed Martin if he wanted to.

With the sale of Access Graphics imminent, Ramsey decided to move his family back to Atlanta. The family had imposed on Jay Elowsky and the Stines long enough. It was time for their friends’ lives to return to normal. In Atlanta the Ramseys’ day-to-day movements would be less noticeable, and the media would have other stories to cover. Also, Patsy would be close to her parents and sisters, who could help care for Burke when she and John traveled. There was no reason to stay in Boulder any longer.

Gary Mann considered John Ramsey a big asset for Lockheed, and he wanted to keep him in the corporation after Access Graphics was sold. Lockheed Martin was primarily in the airplane business, however, and it had no information division in the Atlanta area. It was unclear where Ramsey would work when his company was sold.

J
ON
B
ENÉT
KILLING ATTRACTS FOLLOWING OF INTERNET USERS

Nine months before JonBenét was murdered, the company I worked for was absorbed by a conglomerate. I found myself retired at forty. I became a voracious reader of nonfiction, taught myself to bake excellent French bread, and wall-papered the master bath. And I discovered the Internet. I surfed the Net in earnest, but with no real goal—just for information. I was in the kitchen washing dishes when I heard about JonBenét’s murder on the radio. The next morning I found Denver-area newspapers on-line and read about the case. One of those papers, the Daily Camera, already had a bulletin board devoted to JonBenét’s murder. I joined dozens of people on-line who followed the case on a daily basis. It was almost like joining other kids on a playground. Those of us who had been around longer would be irritated by “newbies,” who would surf in, post something like “I think the older brother did it,” and then have the gall to be offended when we verbally ripped them to shreds.

I was amazed by the lack of curiosity. Many people on-line showed no motivation to seek out facts on the case. As an early riser, and with the added benefit of being on the East Coast, I took it upon myself to inform people. Each morning I would get up and go straight to the computer. I had a route that took me to each of the major dailies that could be counted on to have Ramsey stories. I looked at over thirty-five Web sites that I maintained as bookmarks on my hard drive. When there was interesting information, I posted the Web address, along with a one-sentence synopsis of the item, on
the Boulder News Forum. Others needed only to look at my morning posting to find out what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Then I began my route again in preparation for the next day’s postings. My friends were counting on me. I had a goal.

It’s not always easy on-line. In the summer of 1997 our community of bored housewives on the Boulder forum was invaded. The hackers harassed us and made it impossible for our discussions to continue. It was a difficult experience. But if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have my Web page. Because the hackers made it tough for people to find my daily postings, a benefactor offered to set me up with my own Web page. Mrs. Brady’s URLs, as the page is called, gets about 750 hits a day.

Several news articles about Internet interest in the case quoted psychiatrists saying we “had no life.” But later articles were more accurate. One even noted how the Boulder County District Attorney’s office and the Boulder Police Department used the Internet community as a resource.

We weren’t just kooks with nothing else to do. We had a genuine interest in the case.

There is still bickering in our cybercommunity. Theories are still debated, and rumors abound. But the crusade continues, and newbies are still arriving. I just got an e-mail from a new computer owner, who says that one of the reasons he/she bought the computer was to stay abreast of the Ramsey investigation with other interested parties. “Let me know how I can have an ongoing chat with other interested sleuths regarding this case,” the e-mail said.

—Mrs. Brady

After much agonizing, Alex Hunter and Bill Wise finally decided that too much of their time was being taken up by the press. They needed an experienced press representative who understood the criminal justice system and could get
along with reporters, write press releases, and provide appropriate general information about past cases and the office. Jana Petersen, who worked for the county commissioner’s office, was Hunter’s first choice, but the county wouldn’t release her. Soon résumés started pouring in.

Suzanne Laurion’s letter caught everyone’s eye. Laurion had a Ph.D. in mass communications from the University of Wisconsin, where she had specialized in exploring how news stories affected audiences. She had worked in broadcasting as a reporter. Now she was an adjunct professor at CU. She saw the job as an opportunity to expand her teaching abilities. Laurion told Hunter and Wise that she wanted to be involved in a historic media situation like the one in Boulder. By the end of April, Hunter announced that Suzanne Laurion had been hired to field all media inquiries.

RAMSEYS MAY MOVE TO ATLANTA

COPS FIND MURDER WITNESS

…HE REVEALS DADDY’S SECRET

Since Fleet White and John Ramsey’s loud argument in Atlanta on December 31, the day of JonBenét’s funeral, the two men had been at war. It was rumored that White had accused Ramsey and that John had accused Fleet White. It was also rumored that White was a suspect in the murder of JonBenét.

In the first weeks after JonBenét’s death, TV tabloids scanned the Whites’ phones. Conversations they had with family members and close friends ended up in print. The media were a constant presence in their life, knocking on their door and camping outside their home.

To those who knew Fleet White, it was obvious he found this treatment unbearable. By the time the
National Enquirer
published the “Cops Find Murder Witness…He Reveals Daddy’s Secret” cover story, White was at the breaking point.

At forty-seven, Fleet White was close in age to John Ramsey, who was fifty-three when JonBenét died. White’s children were roughly the same age as JonBenét and Burke. Since moving to Boulder in 1994, White had been good friends with Ramsey. White’s daughter, Daphne, often played with JonBenét. It was the Whites’ home where
Burke was taken on the morning of December 26.

The DA and the police knew that Fleet and Priscilla White had never accused the Ramseys of the murder. The couple had, however, provided valuable information to the police. White had been just a few steps behind John Ramsey in the basement when Ramsey first saw JonBenét’s body, and he had followed Ramsey into the wine cellar and even touched her dead body. That entire day he was privy to Ramsey’s actions, many of which had never been observed by the police. The police also thought that White had insight into the Ramseys’ general behavior and possible motives.

During the first week of April, Fleet and Priscilla went to see police chief Tom Koby, outraged at what was happening to them. They asked for the chief’s help in getting the media off their backs and clearing their name. The chief refused. There was still a question about why White hadn’t seen JonBenét’s body when he opened the door to the wine cellar early on the morning of December 26, although John Ramsey had seen it six hours later. Koby said that if he publicly cleared one suspect, everyone would be camping outside his door. Then the Whites walked into Alex Hunter’s office unannounced. Bill Wise could see that White was close to the edge. After a short conversation, Hunter introduced Priscilla White to Lou Smit while he talked privately with Fleet.

On April 15, the
National Enquirer
wrote that White “told investigators…[that John Ramsey] tried to keep White from opening the door to the small basement room where JonBenét’s body was found.” The tabloid added that “White and Priscilla have made some awful allegations to Boulder police about John and Patsy and the Ramseys will never speak to them again.” It was after reading this that Fleet White stormed into Koby’s and then Hunter’s office and demanded to be publicly cleared as a suspect. Hunter
said that he had never seen such anger. “We can clear the guy,” Pete Hofstrom suggested to Hunter. “And then later on, if we decide he’s not clear, we’ll unclear him.” Hunter talked to Koby about White. He told the chief that unless they did something to appease White, they might lose an important witness. Koby reluctantly agreed. He would talk to Eller, and hoped the commander would agree to clear the Whites.

When Hunter saw a draft of the Boulder PD’s intended public statement, however, he objected to the wording. The Whites, he felt, should not be “cleared” of any suspicion, because Fleet White’s demeanor after JonBenét’s murder was still open to interpretation. It might be better to use the words “are not suspects” rather than “cleared.” White would later learn about Hunter’s involvement in the wording of the press release and hold it against him.

The next afternoon, April 16, the police department included the following statement from Chief Koby in the City of Boulder’s Ramsey Update No. 40:

Fleet and Priscilla were the first people to be named key witnesses, when the Ramseys themselves had not officially been named suspects.