Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (44 page)

I lied through my teeth.

He said, “Jeff, don’t say these things. It’s not going to serve your purposes.” If I wanted to clear my name, he said, all I had to do was let him take a copy of my driver’s license and he’d show it to the police.

“Do you feel comfortable with that?” he asked.

I gave him my license and he copied it.

Then I left, and Hoverstock asked to see Harrell.

—Jeff Shapiro

After Jeff left Hoverstock’s office, I met with Father Rol privately. I told him I worked for the Globe and that I believed the Ramseys were involved in the death of their child. Then I asked, “Have they asked you for confession?”

For a moment he didn’t answer. Then he said, “I have no respect for what you do for a living. You lie about everything.”

“No we don’t, Father. We don’t lie,” I replied.

I could see this strong man biting his lower lip. For a moment I thought he might throw me out of his office.

“As a forgiver of sins, the church is a house for all sinners,” I said. “So I should be one of the first welcomed into your congregation.” He remained silent and I continued. “You should not turn your nose up at any of God’s children.” He still did not respond.

“Don’t you feel that if the Ramseys are responsible you have to do something about it?” I asked.

Finally he replied, “This is a sanctuary. I have to treat everyone in my church in an appropriate way. They came here to seek God and that is what they will find.”

I could see he was offended that I was asking him about matters he considered privileged.

“I am here to find the truth,” I told him. “If there are two murderers loose in your congregation, I would have no qualms
about stepping over the boundaries of the church protocol to put them where they belong.” Then I said I hoped he would steer the Ramseys in the right direction. Hoverstock stood there quietly for a second or two. I seemed to have caught his interest.

“The greatest sin of all is taking another’s life,” I continued. “I would not want to have your job. Mine is much easier. I can catch the killers and turn them over without any struggles of conscience. I understand that you can’t. You have to save their souls.”

“That is my job,” Hoverstock said.

“Have you saved their souls?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer.

Then he asked me to leave, but in a nice way. “I do love you,” he said. “Come here, my brother,” and we hugged.

Then I left.

—Ken Harrell

The next Sunday, Ken Harrell didn’t go to church with Jeff Shapiro. When Shapiro entered St. John’s, he saw John Ramsey sitting alone, so he sat down right behind him, a couple of feet away. Shapiro even shook his hand when Rev. Hoverstock said everyone should take the Peace.

I took communion with him, drinking my wine as he drank his.

Rol came up to John and put his hand on his shoulder as if to say, “You’re going to make it through this. You’re going to survive. You didn’t do this.”

Then he came to me, looked into my eyes, and said, “May you accomplish everything the Lord has sent you here to accomplish.”

After the service, I talked to Hoverstock.

“I work for the Globe,” I told him.

“I’ve heard that.”

“When I’m undercover as an investigative reporter, I don’t tell anyone. I needed time to think out what I said to you last Sunday. I respect you, Father; you deserve to know the truth.”

“I respect you for telling me,” Hoverstock said, “but you lied to all of us.”

“I didn’t lie,” I told him. “I’m undercover.”

“What’s the difference?”

“There’s a big difference,” I explained. “If I were an FBI agent, you’d understand. But reporters have a role in a democratic society to find out the truth. That’s what I’m here to do.”

“That may have some merit. But what it comes down to is that I feel deceived.”

Then I showed Hoverstock a picture of JonBenét in makeup. She looked sad.

“That’s not the little girl I knew,” he said.

“But this is what this case is about. I’m here to avenge that girl.”

“So you’re telling me that you’re some holy avenger? No. You’re a predator. You’re all predators.”

“I’m here to make a difference. Someday you’ll understand I’m a good person.”

“You are a good person,” Hoverstock said. “But I don’t like the fact that you’re on John’s case all the time.”

“I’m not. I’m on Patsy’s case. We’re not in heaven,” I continued. “We’re still on earth, and God has given us our own laws to follow here.”

As I left his office I recited from the Bible a verse that Chris Darden quoted to the Simpson jury: “For the Lord doth hate these things: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood.”

Hoverstock looked hard at me.

Then I added, “Let justice be done though thy heaven fall.”

—Jeff Shapiro

After church, Jeff Shapiro called Frank Coffman, an occasional contributor to the
Colorado Daily
. Coffman, a friendly guy about to turn fifty, had first met Alex Hunter in 1982 during a citizens’ meeting and was currently writing articles on the Ramsey case. Coffman agreed to meet Shapiro at the Trident bookstore and café on Pearl Street, next door to the Rue Morgue mystery bookstore.

Over coffee, they talked about the case and eventually reached the topic of the garrote stick. In the photo the
Globe
had published, the wood looked like a manufactured item, slightly glossy and tapered. Then they looked at the autopsy and crime scene photos, which Shapiro had been given by his editor. Coffman said he’d once seen some white cord at the Boulder army-navy store that looked similar to the cord around JonBenét’s wrist.

That afternoon, Shapiro visited the store Coffman had mentioned, which was just a few blocks from the Access Graphics offices. Sifting through the boxes of white cord, he found some that matched what he’d seen in the autopsy photo. Shapiro asked the cashier if John or Patsy Ramsey had ever been in the store.

“Not that I can recall,” the clerk said.

That evening, Shapiro wrote a letter to Alex Hunter. He mentioned what he’d found and said that according to the clerk, the police had never visited the store to inquire about cord.

“People like you are going to make a difference,” Hunter told Shapiro on the phone after receiving his letter. “Other journalists come in to get information. You come in to give
me
information.” The comment gave Shapiro a huge boost.

Meanwhile, his editor was pushing him to develop a police source. Call Steve Thomas, Mullins said. Shapiro
thought he was joking, since Mullins had blown Shapiro’s cover by calling Thomas earlier in the year.

Nevertheless, Shapiro called Thomas and left a message, saying he had information the cops might need. Surprisingly, Thomas called back.

“I still have a working file on you,” the detective said. “I look forward to seeing whatever it is you have to tell me.”

Shapiro dropped off a note for Thomas at police headquarters. In it, he mentioned the white cord he had found—and also that the movie
Speed
contained a line similar to one rumored to be in the ransom note: “Don’t try to grow a brain John.”

“Jeff, I’m not interested in your theories,” Thomas told Shapiro the next day on the phone. “I’m not going to give you any information in exchange. This relationship is going to be a monologue. That’s all it will ever be. You talk to us. I say nothing.”

“I just want to help,” Shapiro said.

That afternoon, he went to police headquarters to introduce himself to Thomas. Shapiro was impressed with Thomas’s appearance—he was in his mid-thirties and looked a bit like Clark Kent, in jeans and a T-shirt. On his way home, Shapiro stopped at the army-navy store again. He learned that after he’d delivered his letter to Thomas the previous day, the detective had visited the store and purchased all their white cord, forty-five pieces in all. Shapiro felt as if he’d accomplished something.

On May 19 I met with Steve Thomas. This time he was more professional-looking, in a white shirt and tie.

He took me into this little ice-cube room—nothing but a desk, a tape recorder, and couple of chairs on both sides. I put my $750 Zero Halliburton briefcase on the table.

“Does that need to be up here?” Thomas asked.
“Would you mind if I opened it?” He searched my case, then said, “Mind if I pat you down and do a search?”

“No problem,” I answered.

“I trust you don’t have hidden wires on you that I don’t know about.”

“No.”

Then Thomas introduced me to his partner, Ron Gosage. Gosage didn’t say a word. You know—good cop, bad cop. Then Gosage turned on the tape recorder.

“Jeff, this is going to be a formal interview,” Thomas began.

They wanted to know how I’d noticed the line from Speed. I watch a lot of movies and have a good memory, I said. All the while Gosage just sat there with his arms folded.

I told them about the movie Rising Sun, and autoerotic asphyxiation—enhancing sexual pleasure by cutting off the oxygen supply. I’d been convinced for some time that the ligature had been used on JonBenét for that purpose. That interested them.

Finally they asked me about the tabloids. They wanted to know if I had sources in the DA’s office or the police department. I said I didn’t.

They smiled and thanked me for coming in. I could tell they were interested in me.

—Jeff Shapiro

By spring there was much talk in the press about the mistakes the police had made in the first hours of the case and even more speculation about who was to blame for them.
Because of Chief Koby’s protracted silence about virtually all aspects of the investigation, most of the detectives working the case weren’t known to reporters. In April, however, Kevin McCullen and Charlie Brennan of the
Rocky Mountain News
read the search warrant the police had obtained for CNN’s videotapes and learned that Detective Linda Arndt had been the first detective on the scene and that she had arrived two hours and eighteen minutes after Patsy called 911. It was the first proof obtained by Brennan’s newspaper that she had worked on the case. Then on May 14, Alli Krupski of the
Daily Camera
reported that both Arndt and Detective Melissa Hickman had been dropped from the case.

On June 8, the
Rocky Mountain News
published a scathing attack on the Boulder Police Department’s investigation of the Ramsey case, using phrases like “series of missteps,” “omissions,” and “not-so-simple twists of fate that could enable the police chief’s ‘guy’ to walk after all.” Before publishing his story, Charlie Brennan had attempted to get the reaction of police chief Tom Koby. The chief declined to be interviewed or to address the issues. Brennan had made no attempt to contact Linda Arndt, though police policy would have prevented her from responding anyway.

Brennan wrote that on the morning of December 26, the cops failed to consider the “wealthy parents as possible suspects,” were not “skeptical enough about the kidnapping,” and failed to follow basic police procedure in questioning the parents.

Researching the story, McCullen and Brennan, having learned about Arndt’s compassionate nature, began to speculate that she might have influenced some of Eller’s decisions that morning. Maybe she had been protective of the Ramseys—and particularly of Patsy, who Arndt had discovered was recovering from cancer.

Brennan mentioned some of this in print. He quoted attorney Craig Silverman, who had been a top Denver prosecutor for fifteen years: “If there is fault, you can blame her with the fault of compassion.” Brennan’s report also alluded to the fact that a detective had “rebuffed a patrol officer’s suggestion [that the flashlight on the kitchen counter should be seized as evidence], telling him to keep his nose out of the detectives’ affairs, sources say.” In addition, Brennan wrote, “A female detective at the Ramseys’ home that day allegedly ordered that a sheet be placed over JonBenét as she lay dead on the living-room floor, according to unattributed sources cited in a May 30 report on ABC’s
Nightline
.” Brennan went on to say that some investigators feared the sheet might have picked up important trace evidence from the body.

After Brennan’s story was published, Arndt asked Eller to stand behind her and correct falsehoods that were being repeated publicly about her role in the investigation. Eller refused. Soon the media were reporting that Arndt had moved the body and that she had asked Rev. Hoverstock “to gather everyone into a circle around the child and lead them in prayer,” two facts that were true. One article charged that “in the first week of January, without permission from the department, Arndt gave Ramsey attorney Patrick Burke a copy of the ransom note.” Despite Arndt’s position that these were inaccuracies, she remained silent in her own defense.

Although the DA had hired Suzanne Laurion to shield him from the media, he still talked to journalists who had strong opinions about the case. Stephen Singular and Hunter spoke regularly. After their first meeting on April 15, they met again on April 29. At that meeting, Singular mentioned some witnesses he thought the police had failed to interview properly. He had been told the police were focused
only on the behavior of the Ramseys. Had anyone seen Patsy hit JonBenét? the detectives would always ask. The answer was always no. Singular told Hunter that the police had failed to inquire about possible inappropriate behavior by others who knew JonBenét, for example, Randy Simons, who had photographed her. Several mothers of child pageant contestants, who had known Simons for years, found it hard to reconcile his strange behavior after the murder with the man they had known before. Two mothers claimed that Simons called them late at night and talked about how JonBenét had been sexually abused.

Hunter called investigator Steve Ainsworth into the meeting with Singular so that the detective could hear directly what some of the mothers had said. Later the DA called Pam Griffin to ask about the photographer. She said that Simons had once asked for permission to take her daughter’s face and transpose it to a sexy body in a photograph. It was out of character for Simons, Pam said.

Hunter told Singular that he was having trouble getting the police to pursue the line of inquiry Singular was suggesting, and he asked the writer to see what he could learn about the people JonBenét saw
outside
her immediate family. Hunter wanted to know how she acted when she was not in the company of friends and family. The DA also wanted handwriting samples from the people that Singular thought should be considered. Finally, Hunter asked for help in finding potential sources of the ligature. He didn’t care if it pointed to the Ramseys or someone else, he said. He wanted the information. Hunter was so intent on finding something everybody else had missed that some of his deputies had begun to refer to him as Dick Tracy.

Lou Smit and Steve Ainsworth read over the reports of the police interviews with Randy Simons. It appeared that he’d never been questioned in depth. Yet who better than a photographer to familiarize them with the fringe world of beauty
pageants? On May 14 they drove to Genoa, Colorado, where Simons was living. The next day Simons granted Ainsworth an interview but was unable to shed much light on the case.

Still, because he was a professional photographer who sometimes photographed nudes, they investigated him as well. Without the photographer’s knowledge, Hunter’s office obtained handwriting samples and a sample of his saliva from a cigarette butt. A month later, on June 17, Ainsworth also interviewed pageant photographer Mark Fix. Eventually Ainsworth concluded that neither photographer had been involved in the death of JonBenét. Whether someone else connected with pageants had been involved was still an open question.

Stephen Singular returned home late the night he saw Alex Hunter. He stepped into his daughter’s bedroom and stood in the dark, just listening to her peaceful, even breathing. He’d done the same thing every night for a couple of months after JonBenét had been murdered. He would wake up at two or three in the morning, walk to her room, and stand there listening to her breathing for a few minutes. He knew that what had happened in Boulder could happen anywhere.