Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (45 page)

DNA TESTS DONE, OFFICIALS MUM

In Denver, Carol McKinley sat in her living room listening to her frustrated police source, who was calling from a pay phone. Chief Koby was still refusing to defend his detectives from press attacks, and both Hunter and Hofstrom were a lost cause, he said. The DA’s office seemed more interested in protecting the rights of the Ramseys than in putting them in jail. John Eller was the only law enforcement official strong enough to stand up to the Ramseys’ lawyers. Eller, he said, would never give up.

What had really gotten to the detectives, the officer said, was that they were coming up against witnesses who could help the investigation but wouldn’t cooperate. Under Colorado law, the police had little leverage. They couldn’t force anyone even to return a phone call.

In another conversation, McKinley’s source told her that some detectives believed the war room was simply a place from which Hunter’s people intended to steal information about the case. Though the computers were protected by passwords, it was possible to get around them. One detective wanted to store all the information on a Zip drive and take it with him each time he left the war room.
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The officer said that Eller had decided not to share with Hunter’s staff some of the results of the DNA testing that
were now coming back.

At times Carol McKinley felt as if she’d become a psychotherapist. Her source needed to vent, and he needed someone who would listen.

Lou Smit was another problem, though the detective didn’t reveal the reasons to McKinley. He wouldn’t listen to them and had his own ideas—like his nutty stun-gun theory. Smit thought there was a strong possibility that an intruder had entered the house. He kept talking about the pieces of glass that had been found on top of the suitcase under the broken basement window, about the shoe imprint they’d found near JonBenét’s body, and about the unidentified palm print on the wine cellar door. The police had learned that the imprint was from a Hi-Tec shoe. But whenever the police came up with a good idea—like the question of how a stranger could even find the light switch to the basement—Smit ignored it. In the detectives’ eyes, he was old, out of touch. Smit kept saying to them, “I want you guys to prove it to me.” It was irritating, and the detectives resented him.

On May 19, Suzanne Laurion, who had been on the job as Hunter’s press representative for less than three weeks, wrote him a memo: “One of the roles of the media is to listen to, organize and direct the public’s response to political actors (e.g., Koby and Hunter). Hence, we can view…commentaries from this weekend as important to our understanding of how the general public may be feeling…. This is the sort of thinking we could address in a piece on the prosecutor’s ethical obligations to contain trial publicity, and our commitment to serve and preserve the criminal justice system.”

She enclosed two articles as examples of what she meant:

Laurion told Hunter that “Koby’s stock is plunging at the moment” and that his own image needed immediate rehabilitation. It would take about two weeks of hard work, but he’d be pleased with the results, she said. Laurion then listed for her boss the upcoming stories that the DA’s office should be prepared to respond to:

Laurion also told Hunter that his staff should give thought to how information should be released and the effect of releasing information. Her memo stated that the DA’s office “needed to get comfortable with a system for information dissemination.” The staff should consider whether information would harm the case if released, whether it would advance the case if released, and whether it was information the public had a right to know. She also pointed out that Hunter had to be concerned at all times with the effects of what he said on “police detectives work
ing the case, Hunter’s own office, an eventual jury pool, the general public, news reporters, leakers, the Ramsey camp, spectators-turned-actors, those who will judge the Hunter legacy and the Boulder County voters.”

Until now, Hunter and his staff had merely been reacting to events, playing catch-up—and none too effectively—with the press. With Laurion on board, they finally had someone who not only saw their predicament clearly but could also plan ahead.

Meanwhile, Steve Thomas visited McGuckin Hardware, which John Ramsey—or someone impersonating him—had called in January. In the sporting goods department, Thomas found white nylon cord similar to the cord around JonBenét’s neck. He bought four packages of Coghlan’s Cord, for $2.29 each. In addition, he found black duct tape with the brand name Suretape. Both items sold for the same price and came from the same department that appeared on Patsy Ramsey’s December 1996 sales slips.

A week after Thomas made his purchases, Dave Williams, an investigator for the Ramseys, called Joanne Hanks at McGuckin and asked for itemized receipts of Patsy’s December 2 and December 9 purchases, only to discover that the police had them. In Patsy’s April 30 police interview, Thomas had asked her about the purchase of duct tape, and Williams was following up for his clients.

Now both the police and the Ramseys’ investigators knew that the items could have been purchased by Patsy just weeks before JonBenét’s murder.

The court’s protection of the search warrants for the Ramsey house was due to expire Sunday, May 25. Hunter’s office told Judge Diane MacDonald on May 22 that nothing had come to light to remove the Ramseys as suspects and that there was no “smoking gun,” but his office still objected to the release of
the warrants. “Damaging as any particular leaks may have been,” Hunter’s office argued, “it would be much more destructive to the investigation to release to the media, and through the media to the killer or killers, the sworn documents which present in such highly organized and formal form the information in the hands of the police and the thought processes underlying the investigation.”

Hunter prevailed. “The court finds that there can be no more compelling governmental interest than the arrest and prosecution of her killer,” Judge MacDonald said, and ordered the documents sealed for an additional 120 days, or until the time of an arrest.

On May 12, deputy county attorney Mason had asked Judge Glowinsky to extend her seal on the balance of the coroner’s autopsy report. Mason argued that the case was active, still in the investigation stage, and that the report contained a lot the public didn’t know—including the position of the body when found, how JonBenét was dressed, details about the wounds and injuries she’d suffered, and evidence that had been found at the crime scene. If the information was released, it would make it that much harder for the police to weigh the credibility of witnesses’ statements. Detective Sgt. Wickman provided an affidavit to support the coroner’s request.

Judge Glowinsky ruled on May 15 that all but six brief sections of the report would be released on May 21; the entire document, on August 20. On May 20 Mason appealed the ruling, and on June 2 the Colorado Court of Appeals rejected the appeal. However, the appeals court gave Mason time to file for another hearing of the issue. Eventually the court denied Mason the rehearing but allowed her to take her request to the Colorado Supreme Court, which ordered the seal on the balance of the coroner’s report to remain in place, pending its decision on whether to hear her last-resort petition.

On May 28, Detectives Thomas and Gosage finished their investigation of who had called McGuckin in January to request copies of Patsy’s bills. The detectives were told by an informant that the calls had been made by an employee of Touch Tone, Inc., who had impersonated John Ramsey. The police were told that the employee had photocopied Ramsey’s signature for the faxed authorization he’d sent to the hardware store.

Touch Tone employed several “investigators.” Some of them had obtained various records belonging to John, Patsy, and John Andrew Ramsey, including bank account signatures, bank statements, and credit card receipts. In addition, they had obtained telephone records and banking information regarding the Ramseys’ housekeeper, Linda Hoffmann-Pugh. Touch Tone employees had also obtained the names, addresses, home phone numbers, and toll records of the Boulder detectives working the Ramsey case.

The informant was an investigator for Touch Tone. He told the police it was common practice at the company to assume the identity of the person being investigated, which made it easier to obtain copies of personal and confidential records.

On May 29, Judge Morris Sandstead signed Detective Thomas’s request to search the offices of Touch Tone. There the police found personal records relating not only to the Ramseys but to Jay Elowsky; to John Ramsey’s first wife, Lucinda; and even to the Ramseys’ chief investigator, Ellis Armistead. No one was ever prosecuted, for fear that rights to discovery in a court trial would force the DA’s office to turn over a large part of the police file in the Ramsey case.

What the police didn’t know was that Touch Tone’s services had been paid for by a private investigator in California, who in turn had been retained by a tabloid TV program.

Also on May 29, Ann Louise Bardach, known for her investigative reporting, called Suzanne Laurion to introduce herself. She was coming to town to do a ten-thousand-word article for
Vanity Fair
on “this dreadful story,” she said. Laurion called back an hour later and said that Hunter would meet with Bardach for a few minutes on June 2.

During the last week of May, Hunter, DeMuth, Ainsworth, Smit, and Detectives Trujillo, Harmer, Thomas, and Gosage met with Dr. Henry Lee to review a list of items that would need additional attention if the Ramseys’ house were ever searched again. Lee also thought it was important to gauge the timing of JonBenét’s head injury and strangulation and the injury to her hymen, to learn whether it had occurred before or after the blow to her head. Lee said that forensic pathologists should be consulted and recommended several.

By now the police were receiving forensic test results almost daily but withholding some of them from Hunter’s office for fear of leaks to the Ramseys or the media. Over four dozen people had given blood, hair, and handwriting samples, all of which were tested, but none of them matched the forensic evidence from the crime scene.