Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (51 page)

Hal Haddon, one of John Ramsey’s attorneys, told the
Daily Camera
, “The autopsy details released [Wednesday] confirm what we have known for some time—that this vicious mur
der was well-planned. The person who prepared the ligature and the garrote obviously put a lot of thought into this murder.”

After the release of the autopsy report, Bryan Morgan, another of John Ramsey’s attorneys, sat down with Ramsey to explain its contents. Throughout his professional life, Morgan had done this with many of his clients, most of them guilty of the crimes they were charged with. The attorney went through every detail of the coroner’s findings with Ramsey, who became despondent and broke down. Morgan, who was likely to have had his doubts about Ramsey’s innocence, watched his client closely. That was when the attorney discovered that Ramsey did not even know how JonBenét had died. What Morgan observed told him that John Ramsey had not killed his daughter.

In fact, the Ramseys’ attorneys had, from the beginning, treated their clients as if they were guilty. It wasn’t until one journalist confronted Hal Haddon and told him so that the attorneys started to think differently. Keeping the Ramseys isolated did not help, the reporter told Haddon. Also, adding Lee Foreman to the team—an attorney who more often than not defended guilty clients—sent the wrong message to the police and Alex Hunter.

Meanwhile, Ann Bardach of
Vanity Fair
continued to call Alex Hunter, who was still refusing to grant her a second interview. Bardach told Suzanne Laurion that according to her sources, the DA’s office had stepped across the prosecutorial line and damaged the case irreparably. The word
malfeasance
had been used, she added.

Laurion once again tried to get Bardach to submit her questions in writing but to no avail. On August 16, the fact checkers for
Vanity Fair
called Laurion, which meant that Bardach had turned in her article. While Alex Hunter and his staff waited for the worst, Laurion sent Bardach a fax.

That same day, Dick Woodbury of
Time
magazine put some questions to Hunter in writing. Laurion suggested how he might respond.

Q. What is Hunter’s reaction to the escalation of the Ramseys’ own investigation?

A. Whether the Ramseys’ motivation is to uncover evidence or to enhance their public image, or a combination of both, it is their prerogative to take the actions they are taking.

Q. Haddon says he wants to publish the ransom note but Hunter’s office doesn’t want it released.

A. It’s true that my investigators do not want the ransom note published.

Q. Haddon says he warned Hunter of impending escalation of the family’s own investigation and Hunter grudgingly went along.

A. Yes, Haddon alerted me to the family’s plans to print more ads and distribute fliers. It was not my place to either go along or not go along. The decision had already been made by the Ramsey attorneys.

Q. Exactly what is the purpose of the D.A.’s trip to Quantico?

A. Our purpose in visiting Quantico is primarily to get the FBI’s per-spective on the breadth and depth of the evidence collected by the Boulder Police Department.

On August 18, just after midnight, Sherry Keene-Osborn of
Newsweek,
who had developed a telephone relationship with Hunter, left a message for him, advising him to be careful in upcoming interviews:

ARE POTENTIAL JURORS AFFECTED BY ADS?

Since the alleged break-in at the war room, the detectives were even more disheartened because Koby hadn’t supported them or Eller in this dispute with the DA’s office. By now even the officers were also calling the chief Dead Man Walking.

Carol McKinley reported how the detectives felt about Koby without mentioning the chief by name—she used the
word
management
. After the broadcast, her police source called. “You should have said more,” he said. She told him it would have been impossible to tell the full story without exposing him. He understood—he wouldn’t want to be discovered as the source of a leak and lose his badge.

That same week, Fox TV offered McKinley a job covering the West Coast. She asked her police source if she should take it. Taking the job would be selling out, she said, and she knew he would never compromise himself that way, but she was a single mother and could use the money.

“Do it,” he said. “Take the money and run.”

She stayed put, partly because she felt she’d be abandoning him. She also didn’t want him to think she’d simply been using him as a stepping-stone in her career. When she told him she’d declined the job, he said, “Good for you.”

On Friday, August 29, Tom Wickman told Hunter that not all of the physical evidence would be sent to the FBI for review. Some of the items had not been fully tested and evaluated by the CBI.

In fact, the police department had never told the DA that all the evidence would be given to the FBI. Hunter had just assumed that to be the case. He had arranged to make a swing of the East Coast after the Quantico meeting to see Donald Foster at Vassar and Henry Lee and Barry Scheck. But without an evaluation of all the evidence by the Bureau, the meetings with Lee and Scheck would be a waste of time, he thought. He would now have to backtrack and tell the public that this was just another step in a process and that there was still more to be done.

On Saturday morning, August 30, just days before his scheduled departure for the widely publicized conference, Hunter told Carol McKinley that he wouldn’t be going to Quantico.

“They have half a loaf,” Hunter told the reporter. “It’s
not enough for me to go.” That afternoon, Hunter issued a press release noting that he wasn’t going but that Hofstrom, DeMuth, and Lou Smit would meet with the FBI.

The next day, McKinley’s police source told her that the department was frustrated by Hunter’s decision. They had told the FBI that the DA was coming. Now they were going to look unprofessional.

“We’re having a party,” McKinley’s source told her, “and the guest of honor decided it wasn’t worth it.”

On Saturday evening, August 30, Boulder, like the rest of the world, learned that England’s Princess Diana had been seriously injured in an auto accident in Paris. Four hours later, in the early hours of Sunday morning, August 31, her death was announced. The media put JonBenét Ramsey on the back burner.

Vanity Fair
, which was about to publish Ann Bardach’s story on the investigation, considered postponing distribution of the magazine until after the funeral of the princess. For the moment, the cause of her accident was the mystery everyone wanted solved. The role of the paparazzi—who had been following the princess’s car in the hope of photographing her—was the subject of almost every news broadcast. The involvement of the European and American tabloids in the tragedy was the subject of intense media scrutiny, since they paid the paparazzi handsomely for exclusive photos.

On September 2, the topic on
Larry King Live
was the paparazzi, tabloid coverage of celebrities, and the death of Princess Diana. On the show, the
Globe
’s editor, Tony
Frost, who had once paid an exorbitant sum for photographs of the princess and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, on a yacht, vowed that he would never publish Diana’s death-scene pictures. During the show’s final commercial break, Larry King’s staff told him that he had an important call.

“With us on the phone—she has called in—is Patsy Ramsey, the mother of the late JonBenét Ramsey, who obviously has something to say,” King told his audience. “Patsy, can you hear us?”

“Yes, I can.”

“What prompted the call?”

“I am watching your show this evening,” Patsy said. “I am just appalled and heartsick that you have stooped to the level of having Tony Frost on your program. He sits there so piously and says he will never print photographs of the late Princess Diana. Well, I’ll have you know that he purchased illegally photographs of my sweet JonBenét, the autopsy photographs.”

She and her family, Patsy said, were just normal everyday Americans, not famous like Princess Diana.

“These tabloid photographers have ruined our lives,” she said. “They are printing false information. They stalk us. They stalk my child. It is just unbearable!”

“I guess no one can understand the pain of having a death,” King said. “What’s the latest? Is anything happening in the investigation that can clear you and get this over with for you?”

“I am not at liberty to talk about that,” Patsy said. “I didn’t call you to talk about that.”

“But that’s the only way this is going to stop—with you,” King replied.

“The only way this is going to change is if a law is passed,” Patsy said. She went on to credit her husband with a “wonderful” idea—a law requiring photographers to obtain a signed release before taking pictures of public figures.

“I took my son to a local department store to buy school supplies,” she said. “As we were checking out, he looked to his left at his eye level. There was a photograph of his murdered little sister with the most horrible headline accusing his parents. I mean, I wanted to just—I didn’t know whether to cry, be angry—you know, this is hurtful…. He looked at me like, you know, he tried to pretend he didn’t see it. But how can you not see it when it is at a child’s eye level?”

Soon time had run out, and King went off the air.

Charlie Russell, one of the Ramseys’ attorneys’ press representatives, happened to be watching the King show when Patsy called in. Later he told one reporter that Patsy was like Jell-O—the tighter you tried to hold on to it, the more likely it was to slip between your fingers.

That same day, September 2,
Globe
writer Craig Lewis received a faxed copy of Ann Bardach’s as yet unpublished
Vanity Fair
article, “Missing Innocence,” from a source in the magazine’s distribution chain. Though it was only partly legible, Lewis called Alex Hunter and told him he had a copy. Lewis then went to the Justice Center, where Hunter and Wise waited nervously.

As Hunter read the story, he could see at once the impact it would have on the case. Bardach had launched a direct attack on both the Ramseys’ innocence and on the DA’s dealings with their attorneys and the Boulder PD. She revealed information from secret police reports and printed the full text of the ransom note—the first time it had been published in its entirety. Bardach cited as one of her sources a “deep throat” police officer.

Bill Wise was surprised that the full ransom note hadn’t leaked before. The Ramseys, their lawyers, their investigators, their close friends, every detective on the case, the coroner, the city attorney, six people in Hunter’s office,
even Sherry Keene-Osborn of
Newsweek
—all had seen it, and some had copies. With all the money the tabloids threw around, it was ironic that it turned up in a publication that hadn’t paid for it. Wise gave copies of the article to Hofstrom, DeMuth, and Smit. Bardach had attacked Hofstrom’s integrity, made him look foolish and unprofessional, and implied that he was in awe of the Ramseys’ attorneys. She also reported that Lou Smit had been called “a delusional old man” by an unnamed police source.

At the same time, Wise made the article available to several Denver reporters. He saw no harm in giving them a good scoop.

That evening, Carol McKinley called her police source and told him to turn on his TV—Paula Woodward of Channel 9 was reading the ransom note on the air. McKinley’s source, who had been watching coverage of Princess Diana, was puzzled and angry about its publication. He assumed the Ramseys’ attorneys had leaked it—after all, they had been after the police to make the document public.

The next day, September 3, the
Rocky Mountain News
and all of Denver’s radio and TV stations carried the full text of the ransom note, crediting
Vanity Fair
’s as yet unreleased story. But the story was buried under the obsessive coverage of Princess Diana’s impending funeral.

The following day, Charlie Brennan reported some additional facts from Bardach’s story.

PATSY RAMSEY INCONSISTENT ON DETAILS

Jeff Shapiro, who had also obtained a copy of the
Vanity Fair
article, worried that Steve Thomas might be implicated as the police source Bardach mentioned. On Friday, September 5, he called the detective.

That evening, Thomas called Shapiro back from Quantico, where he had just arrived to consult with the FBI. The detective was outraged and angry.

“Who is fuckin’ doing this to me?” Thomas said. He was crying.

“All I know is that Bill Wise told one of our guys that he thought you did it.”

“Those fuckers! Those fuckers!” Thomas yelled. “Do you know what will happen if it’s on national TV that I’m the source?” He kept crying. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

“You have to,” I told him.

“I’ve been talking to my wife. I didn’t sign up for this,” he went on. “I’m just a blue-collar working detective trying to get justice for this little girl. I don’t understand all this politics and stuff.”

“You have to do your job. You can be cool,” I said.

He kept crying. “I can’t do it.”

“This little girl needs you. God chose you to be her avenging angel and put you here for a reason,” I told him. “You cannot walk away from it.”

The roles had changed. I was now his big brother.

Then I started to cry.

“If I ever come forward to tell the world the truth, will you stand by me?” he asked. “Will you tell what you know about Hunter and the DA’s office?”

“Yes,” I answered. Then he said thanks and good-bye.

—Jeff Shapiro

Carol McKinley, who was attending a conference in Florida, called her police source while he was in Quantico to give him the public’s reaction to the
Vanity Fair
article. When she reached him, he was scared—scared that he would be accused of leaking the information to Bardach. Still, he told her, Bardach’s source shouldn’t be blamed. “We’ve never had a voice,” he said. McKinley agreed. Who could criticize any of them for wanting to vent their frustration?

Having read the entire
Vanity Fair
article several times, Alex Hunter saw that it was now almost impossible for the
Ramseys ever to win in the court of public opinion. The mainstream media had now taken the same position that the tabloids had staked out from the beginning: who but the Ramseys could have killed JonBenét? Hunter wondered how he could obtain an impartial jury if the Ramseys were charged.

Then there was the attack on his office—particularly on Hofstrom and himself. Words Hunter had heard so often from Eller—
chumminess
and
web of influence
—was what Bardach implied in her story. The article accused the DA of incompetence and of favoritism toward the Ramseys’ well-connected attorneys. For the first time in Alex Hunter’s career, he was facing suggestions of professional impropriety.

“In all my political life,” Hunter said, “these kinds of allegations have never been raised. I’ve been accused of excessive plea bargaining, and I’ve learned to deal with that in a healthy way. But this challenge to my integrity, I confess, has gotten my attention. No question, there is now a shadow hanging over me, and I don’t know how dark it is. I wake up at night to the problem, stew about it, and then go back to sleep.”

On September 6, Pete Hofstrom, Lou Smit, and Trip DeMuth left for Quantico. Hofstrom, sporting a University of Colorado sweatshirt, was more relaxed than usual with the local reporters who were on the same flight. He joked about the
Vanity Fair
story, introducing Smit as Delusional Old Man, a description lifted from Bardach’s article.

In Quantico, Detectives Thomas, Gosage, Harmer, Trujillo, and Wickman; their pro bono lawyers, who had accompanied them; and Hunter’s team were driven to FBI headquarters in blue vans with tinted windows.

By now the Bureau’s Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit was quite certain that JonBenét’s killer had never commit
ted a murder before. The experts thought that the ransom note was written by someone intelligent but not criminally sophisticated. Someone who had planned a kidnapping in advance would have tried to impress the parents with how great a threat he or she posed. Words like
we
and
us
,
my group
,
we’re large
, and
we’re big
were absent. In the note, the kidnappers called themselves a “small foreign faction.” That raised the question, foreign to whom? From whose point of view were they writing? Real foreigners would not refer to themselves as foreign. Here the author of the note had made a mistake, showing some weakness. There were also some inconsistencies: the note began formally, addressing “Mr. Ramsey,” but toward the end addressed “John.”

The FBI experts pointed out that every item involved in the crime seemed to have come from inside the house, including the pad, the pen, and the broken paintbrush. They believed the duct tape and the rope for the ligature had most likely been purchased by Patsy Ramsey sometime in December. Nothing seemed to have come from outside the house. There was no evidence that anyone had turned on the lights during the crime, trying to find their way around an unfamiliar house. One agent told the assembled group: Is this an offender who came to the scene totally unprepared to do anything? If you were to believe that a stranger killed JonBenét, it would have to be someone very comfortable at the scene—which is very atypical. Kidnappers are usually in and out in a heartbeat. Just look at the Polly Klaas case. They don’t kill and then hang around to write a two-and-a-half-page bogus note. And why choose, of all nights, Christmas, when someone else, maybe a guest staying with the family, could wander in? If the perpetrator had enough time to write the note at the Ramseys’ home, he had enough time to take the victim alive or to take the dead body somewhere else. Then there was the scream. If it was loud enough for a neighbor to hear, a stranger wouldn’t
have hung around. After all, the parents might hear it and respond to their child’s cry for help. Maybe the family dog would wake the sleeping parents? After all who knew besides those living inside the house that that night the dog would be staying with the Barnhills?

To the FBI profilers, the time spent staging the crime scene and hiding the body pointed to a killer who had asked, “How do I explain this?” and had answered the question: “A stranger did it.” The staging suggested a killer desperate to divert attention.

Moreover, there was staging
within
staging: The loop of cord around one wrist was not a real indication that JonBenét had been restrained. The ligature that suffocated JonBenét—though she would eventually have died from the head injury—was in their opinion an unusual cover-up attempt, if that was what it was. The way the cord had been made into a noose—with the stick tied 17 inches from the knot—suggested staging rather than a bona fide attempt to strangle JonBenét. It suggested that the killer was a manipulative person, with the courage to believe that he or she could control the subsequent investigation. In short, everything about the crime indicated an attempt at self-preservation on the part of the killer.