Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (62 page)

On March 3, Beckner met with Hofstrom and said he wanted to put about a dozen witnesses before a grand jury: Fleet and Priscilla White; John, Patsy, and Burke Ramsey; friends of the Ramseys; and various Access Graphics employees. Hofstrom explained that the commander couldn’t use the grand jury as an extension of his authority. The jury didn’t work for the police, and it wasn’t an investigative arm or an extension of the district attorney’s mandate.
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Hofstrom repeated what he was sure Beckner knew: that the purpose of the grand jury was to indict if there was a question about probable cause or if
the DA’s office didn’t want to reveal its evidence at a preliminary hearing before a judge.
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Hofstrom acknowledged, however, that as part of the grand jury process, evidence could be preserved until a trial took place.

The current grand jury’s term was to expire on May 30, and by that date a new jury would have to be seated. Colorado law required that the selection process and the names and addresses of jurors be made public. Though Denver DA Bill Ritter had occasionally petitioned the court for secret selection of a grand jury and had been granted his request, Hunter saw a public relations value in doing things according to the letter of the law in the Ramsey case. He welcomed the public scrutiny and an open selection process. It would help rebuild his credibility, he thought.

In early March, chief district judge Joseph Bellipanni picked April 22 as the date the selection process would begin for a new grand jury. A panel of about 150 Boulder residents would be summoned, selected from motor vehicle and voter registration records. Twelve jurors and five alternates would be selected by the judge in consultation with the DA.

At about this time, Trip DeMuth told Pete Hofstrom that the DA’s office still didn’t have all the police department’s files. For example, he was missing the detectives’ handwritten notes, and typed reports were not sufficient for a thorough review of the case. Also, six of the police department’s thirty binders hadn’t been handed over.

On March 5, Hofstrom wrote to Commander Beckner.

• a. Has this person been interviewed by the Police in the past?
  
• b. If not, why not?
  
• c. If the person has been interviewed, how many times has he or she been interviewed?
  
• d. Have you attached a transcript of each interview, and a copy of each report, or witness information sheet or relevant notes for that person to the list?
  
• e. If not, why not?
  
• f. Why does the person have to be called before the Grand Jury instead of simply being interviewed by law enforcement personnel?
  
• g. What do you expect that this person will testify to before the Grand Jury if called to testify?
  
• h. Why do you expect that the per
  son called to testify would provide the testimony referred to ing) above?
  
• i. What is the relevance and materiality of that testimony to the issue of whether or not there is sufficient admissible evidence to file a charge against an identifiable person in this case?
  

The next day, Hunter told Koby he did not want to wait until his office was handed the case to receive the six missing binders. Koby told him that if he wanted support in getting the files, he should support Beckner’s request for a grand jury. To Koby, Hofstrom’s letter looked like an attempt to block the request for a grand jury. Hunter was noncommittal; he said he’d have to keep his options open for now.

Indeed, Hofstrom was a stumbling block for Hunter too. He had said it might take six months to reinvestigate the entire case after they received it from the police. Hunter had told Pete there was no way he could afford to take six months. “But look at how many other cases I have,” Hofstrom protested. When Koby heard about the six-
month estimate, he went directly to Hofstrom. “The media is going to be all over you, like they were all over us,” the chief told the deputy DA.

Bob Grant, who for a year had acted as spokesman for Hunter, said on TV that once the DA’s office was handed the case, evaluation of the police files would take around thirty days.

DA HINTS RAMSEY CASE HEADED FOR GRAND JURY

On Thursday morning, March 12, Koby and Beckner paid a visit to Hofstrom. They would respond to his letter in due course, they said, but they wanted to move the process along. Within hours, they would announce that they were asking the DA’s office to submit the case to a grand jury. Hofstrom was sure the detectives’ pro bono attorneys had suggested this.

“You guys don’t have it,” Hofstrom told Koby. “Why
don’t you be honest? Put it out on the table.” He pointed out that if they asked for a grand jury, they would lose control of the investigation.

Beckner asked if a Boulder police detective would be used as an investigator for the grand jury. Hofstrom explained that it might be improper. Beckner said he didn’t understand why and said he would consult their own attorneys about what the law required.
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A few days later, a deputy DA commented, “If the cops think they’re still going to be running around investigating this case, they’re wrong. It’s ours now. They’re out of it.” Most likely, the DA’s staff was unenthusiastic about involving the police in the grand jury investigation because they had little faith in the department’s ability to carry out tasks properly and professionally.

Apparently, Beckner still believed he could use the grand jury solely as an investigative tool and interview only those witnesses the police wanted to call. Hofstrom and Hunter met with him again and explained painstakingly that once
the process began, the grand jury—not the police and not the DA—was in charge. The jury could call whomever they wanted, ask to hear all the evidence, and send out their own investigators. In the midst of this conversation, Hunter realized that his own staff didn’t know everything there was to know about the law pertaining to grand juries. He had been putting it off, but now it was time to hire an expert. On April 3, Hunter would call Michael Kane, the grand jury specialist Bill Ritter had recommended. Kane told Hunter he was interested and said he would respond in writing within a week.

On March 13, the day after the Boulder PD announced its request for a grand jury, attorneys Bryan Morgan and Patrick Burke paid a visit to Hunter and Hofstrom. Hunter, having heard that the Ramseys were to be the subject of a British documentary, brought up the subject. How could the Ramseys grant extensive interviews to the foreign press while they avoided the Boulder PD? Was there any hope of cooperation between the police and the Ramseys? No, said their attorneys.

By now, Hunter preferred that the Ramseys testify before a grand jury. If nothing else, it would show the public that his office had clout and meant business. He set about making his case to the couple’s attorneys. The Ramseys should testify before a grand jury if called, he said, because they are their own best witnesses about their innocence. The lawyers listened in stony silence. The next day, Saturday, March 14, Morgan and Burke met with Pete Hofstrom. Hunter had left for a short vacation. The Ramseys’ attorneys were seeking assurances that the DA’s office would present objective evidence to a grand jury. Hofstrom told them that the office had a moral if not a legal obligation to introduce all evidence, including anything exculpatory.

In a letter dated March 16 and addressed to Hunter, the attorneys stated that they saw the case moving into “the hands of competent and unbiased professionals” and that they “welcomed it.” Noting that the grand jury should be presented with an impartial view of the evidence, since the police were unable to be objective, they said, “No sane persons would continue to deal with a police department bent on scapegoating them.”

Hunter and Hofstrom considered the letter a signal that the Ramseys were ready to cooperate with the DA’s office and would either grant interviews when the case was turned over to the office or would testify before a grand jury if called.

Hunter hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be a hollow victory. He had his fears about asking a grand jury to bring an indictment on the basis of flimsy evidence. Both the setting and the rules governing grand juries were very different from those governing courtroom proceedings, since defense attorneys were not permitted to cross-examine witnesses. Also, the grand jury could conduct its own investigation, follow all sorts of leads, and call many witnesses whose testimony might not be admissible in court. In that climate, hearing so much damning evidence and no counterarguments or alternate scenarios, the grand jury might run away and indict, and the DA’s office might be left with a case that it couldn’t prove in court. For those same reasons, Hunter’s staff was still debating whether the case should be taken to a grand jury. Hunter warned them that it was easier not to present the case and suffer the wrath of the public than to wind up with a case they couldn’t win in court. Nevertheless, taking all these factors into consideration, the inclination of most of his staff was to go ahead and convene a grand jury.

The detective who had called the writer earlier in the month called again one Saturday afternoon, from his desk
at police headquarters. The journalist wasn’t in, so the officer left a voice mail message. He wanted the writer to know that he cared tremendously about JonBenét, a little girl he had never met. He really hoped the case was moving in the direction of a grand jury.

The writer was struck by the urgency in the detective’s tone. He realized that the police wanted the public to know how they looked upon their work now that the case was almost out of their hands. Though prevented from speaking to the media by the chief of police, the detective seemed nevertheless to want to reach out. He was bursting to talk about what the detectives had been through.

When Sherry Keene-Osborn called Alex Hunter about the grand jury announcement, she also told the DA about the British documentary that was under way. Its main thrust, she said, would be an indictment of the media, which had convicted the Ramseys in the court of public opinion. Director/producer David Mills and coproducer Michael Tracey, she said, had just finished three days of on-camera interviews with the Ramseys and their family members in Atlanta. Keene-Osborn told Hunter that she and Dan Glick were freelance consultants on the film and that
Newsweek
would get first publication rights to the story at the time the documentary aired.

By then, Mills had met with most of the Ramseys’ attorneys and persuaded those who didn’t want their clients to make the documentary to come around. Mills thought that Tracey’s decision to hire Glick and Keene-Osborn was excellent. Since most of the
Newsweek
reporters’ coverage of the case had been slanted toward the couple, it
almost insured the Ramseys’ cooperation. At first Keene-Osborn had been wary about the project, but then she signed on. In the intervening months, Britain’s Channel 4 had backed out of the project over creative differences, and Mills was financing the film himself, at a cost of about $260,000. Tracey, Mills, Glick, and Keene-Osborn would split the profits from the broadcast rights.

When the British crew arrived in Atlanta, Keene-Osborn and Glick were shaping the questions the Ramseys would be asked. Then, just days before filming was to begin, the Ramseys’ attorneys decided to place restrictions on what their clients would talk about—or could be asked about—on camera. Things got tense. David Mills reminded them of the written agreement, which stipulated that there would be no restrictions. John and Patsy broke the deadlock, saying they would be open to all questions and that their friend Susan Stine would do their makeup.

The interviews covered every aspect of their married life—the children, JonBenét’s involvement in beauty pageants, rumors of sexual abuse, and a tabloid publication’s assertion that John had had an affair while Patsy was ill with cancer. Ramsey admitted that he had once visited a pornographic bookshop, though not in Boulder. He denied ever having an affair since marrying Patsy. Tracey’s questions covered every aspect of the day of the murder—including John’s finding his daughter’s body. Describing how Barbara Fernie had led her toward JonBenét’s body, Patsy cried. The couple discussed how they felt about the media and how they looked upon the mistakes they’d made with the police and the press.

Michael Tracey thought the Ramseys had been honest with him. One night while he was working on the documentary, he had a very vivid dream. JonBenét knocked on his bedroom door and woke him up. “Michael, you have to go to work now,” she said. When he awoke he saw it was
6:29
A
.
M
. He had set his alarm for 6:30.

Geraldo Rivera, Peter Boyles, and reporters for the tabloids refused to sit for Mills’s cameras. Chuck Green and
The Denver Post
also passed up the invitation. However, Charlie Brennan of the
Rocky Mountain News
and Julie Hayden of Denver’s ABC affiliate responded on camera to the charges that Tracey leveled against them.

When Keene-Osborn realized the scoop the filmmakers had landed with these interviews, she called contacts to see about marketing the film in the United States. Because of the agreement with the Ramseys not to air the film while a grand jury was considering the case, time was of the essence in making a deal. Mills’s agent, Barry Frank, started by asking for a million dollars and creative control for his client. After long deliberations, NBC and CBS finally said no. U.S. news departments were extremely reluctant to cede editorial control. With no takers, the price dropped to $250,000, which ABC was willing to pay. Then the network retracted. England’s Channel 4, after seeing some interview footage, purchased the British and non-U.S. rights, reducing Mills’s financial risk. The show would air on July 9 in Great Britain, with no simultaneous broadcast in America. In time, Dan Glick’s involvement in the documentary and his many TV appearances would lead other journalists to believe that he had almost become a PR rep for the Ramseys. Keene-Osborn’s lower profile spared her such criticism.

Alex Hunter saw the documentary as the Ramseys’ way of trying to influence the grand jury or a potential jury.
Jury poisoning
was the term the media used. Bill Wise pointed out to one journalist that since no one had been arrested, charged, or indicted, it wasn’t possible to impose sanctions for jury poisoning.

At the end of March, Donald Foster, the Vassar linguistics expert, delivered his written report to the Boulder police. It was almost a hundred pages long and concluded that Patsy Ramsey had written the ransom note. It was key evidence, Beckner told DeMuth. He went on to explain how Foster had come to his conclusion. DeMuth pointed out that it would not be admissible in a Colorado court.

“My guys think you’re an asshole,” Beckner said to him, “but we’re going to need an asshole to fight for us.” He asked DeMuth to persuade Hofstrom and Hunter to use Foster’s report and conclusions as evidence before the grand jury. DeMuth remained neutral; he agreed only to discuss Foster’s findings with his colleagues. Later that afternoon, Hunter, Hofstrom, and DeMuth met. They decided to draft a letter to Beckner stating that the DA’s office could not accept Foster’s conclusions as evidence of Patsy Ramsey’s culpability.

In taking this hard line, it was likely that Hunter was buying time until his grand jury expert came on board. Only then, and with the complete case file in hand, could the DA’s office decide conclusively which pieces of the puzzle would be presented.

Not long afterward, Hunter’s staff reviewed Foster’s report and the documents he had based his conclusions on. They discovered that many of the writing samples he used had been taken from the family’s computer. However, the document files from the computer had been obtained under a search warrant that didn’t extend to their use for linguistic analysis. The search warrant granted the police the right to search the hard drive and floppy discs only for child pornography downloaded from the Internet—which at the time they had believed was relevant to the case. They had not requested the right to search text files to use for a comparison to the ransom note.

Hofstrom and some other deputies thought that under
the circumstances, which pointed to inadmissibility in court, the professor’s report and conclusions should not be presented to the grand jury.

It was his voice in the ransom note and her hands. I can see it in my mind. She’s sitting there. We need paper, we need a note. He’s dictating and she’s doing. Like he’s almost snapping his fingers. She grabbed her notepad and her felt-tip pen. That is not her language. But the essence of her is there, like the percentages: “99% chance” and “100% chance.” That is how she talked because of her cancer or how you talk when you are around someone with cancer. And the phrase “that good southern common sense of yours.” John wasn’t from the South, but Patsy and Nedra always teased him about being from the South.

—Linda Wilcox

CITY GOING IN-HOUSE
FOR NEW CHIEF

Later in the month, the city council changed the title police chief to director of police services. In May the city council held community meetings to find out what the citizens of Boulder wanted in a new director. In late May, the candidates made their presentations to the community, and in early June a panel composed of incoming city manager Ron Secrist, acting city manager Dave Rhodes, fire chief Larry Donner, and acting director of human resources Joann Roberts-Stacy conducted the final candidate interviews. Boulder would have a new director of police services by late June.

By the first week in April, the police had completed all but twenty-four of the seventy-two tasks on the to-do list, which left some of the detectives with nothing to do. The inactivity was wreaking havoc on Steve Thomas, who was always tired. By four o’clock in the afternoon, he could barely stay awake. He started drinking more coffee and Coke and was a bundle of nerves. He kept wondering if Hunter’s office would really take the case to the grand jury. He had heard the DA say more than once that there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute the Ramseys, and Pete Hofstrom and Trip DeMuth were saying the same thing. Recently Thomas had gotten into an argument with the two of them about whether or not he’d be involved in the case if it went to the grand jury. He now avoided them whenever possible. Every time he talked to them, he felt sick to his stomach.

Some of the detectives hated DeMuth. They felt he
always talked down to them and that he didn’t know the case. They respected Hofstrom’s intelligence and skills, but his gruff approach was a real turnoff. His attitude was, You guys are well paid and you get all this overtime, so get on with your work. Plus, he was the guy who had given the store away to the Ramseys’ attorneys.

Hunter would soon ask Beckner to present the case officially to the DA’s office. The thirty thousand pages of case files would have to be organized, summed up, and presented orally. With this in mind, Beckner and the detectives met with their pro bono attorneys, who invited the cops to use the equipment in their offices to put together their presentation. They should make it a tour of the case and use visual aids—blowups of written reports, enlargements of still pictures of the evidence, videos of the Ramseys’ house, and so forth. No one was going to read thirty thousand pages, the lawyers felt.

The detectives were elated by the assignment, which gave them something concrete to do. Steve Thomas was assigned to open and close the presentation. He would present an overview of the case, including everything that had happened on December 26. Finally, he would get the chance to do something for JonBenét.

But his chronic fatigue was worsening. Some days he drank five or six cups of coffee every couple of hours and could still hardly stand on his feet. Thomas knew that something was wrong with him. He visited his doctor, who did a workup of his blood. She told him he had an autoimmune problem and that further testing would be needed. Thomas thought she was hinting he had AIDS, but he was afraid to ask if that was what she meant. For three days he waited in
anguish for the results.

He learned that his body was producing antibodies that were attacking his thyroid.
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He would have to take a thyroid-replacement medicine for the rest of his life. A review of his medical history did not reveal the cause of the problem. It might be work-related, he was told. If he continued his eighteen-hour-a-day job, he would be risking his life. He was to change his environment. His job, the doctor said, was to sleep late, go to bed early, and take it easy. Thomas refused to quit the department. The Ramsey case had to be presented to the DA’s office, and he felt that no other detective knew it the way he did.

Thomas’s mother, who had died when he was a young child, had had Addison’s disease,
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he learned from his sister. His thyroid problem might be hereditary. He began to experience the side effects of his medicine. He was often sick to his stomach, but he told nobody. By the end of April, he began to regain some of his energy.

EX-MARSHAL ADMITS TO KILLING

On April 8, Alex Hunter received a formal letter of interest from Michael Kane, the grand jury specialist he had sought out. After reviewing Kane’s letter, he knew he had the right man. Kane had studied criminal law at CU, worked in the Denver DA’s office, and been cocounsel on a case in 1984 that involved the kidnap, rape, and murder of a bookkeeper by Christopher Rodriguez and his brother. It had been the first death-penalty case in Denver in over a decade, and the defendant was convicted and given a life sentence. That same year, Kane had prosecuted the Gjertsen murder case, in which a nine-year-old child had been killed in his bed at one o’clock in the morning. Kane obtained a conviction despite the absence of eyewitnesses and a murder weapon. In 1991, Kane conducted a grand jury investigation into the death of another nine-year-old, a boy who had burned to death in his mother’s home in what was originally called an accident. In the end, the mother plea-bargained to third-degree murder.

On April 9, Alex Hunter told his staff that he would ask Michael Kane to join them in reviewing the Ramsey case for prosecution and presentation to a grand jury. He had concluded that there was no alternative unless the evidence clearly pointed to some other suspects than the Ramseys. It troubled him that he could not find one piece of evidence connecting the Ramseys—in their lifestyle, their personali
ties, or their histories—with the killing. As Dr. Lee had advised him, the only way out was a grand jury.