Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (67 page)

Soon there would be a new list of tasks. Kane wanted to revisit Janet and Bill McReynolds, who, according to Trip DeMuth, hadn’t been properly cleared. Lou Smit wanted Randy Simons, Chris Wolf, Linda Hoffmann-Pugh, and her husband to be looked at again. There were still interviews to be done with Patsy’s family in Atlanta. Kane needed foot soldiers. Hofstrom and DeMuth wanted to rehire Steve Ainsworth from the sheriff’s department, and he was ready to come back, to spend weekends and nights if need be, but his wife was less enthusiastic. Hunter thought of asking for help from the Colorado Springs Police Department, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, or even the CU police. It irritated Bill Wise that the Boulder PD hadn’t asked for extra help earlier. If they had, he felt, they wouldn’t be months behind now.

It had become clear to Hunter as a result of the presentation how little he really knew about the case. He began to work on weekends.

Preparing for the interviews with the Ramseys, Kane and Hunter knew they would need balanced teams of interrogators and decided that Patsy and John would each be questioned by a team made up of one investigator and one lawyer. Lou Smit and Michael Kane would handle John, while Trip DeMuth and Tom Haney would take on Patsy.

Haney, a veteran detective, had conducted interviews
in the front seats of police cars, while standing on corners, even while standing over dead bodies—but this case troubled him. Soon after he arrived to work for Hunter in late April, he realized that no one theory of the murder accounted for all the evidence. Whenever the puzzle seemed to be complete, there were always more than a few pieces left on the table.

Now, preparing for the new interviews, Haney studied the Ramseys’ CNN interview of January 1, 1997; the transcripts of the police department’s April 30, 1997 questioning, and the Ramseys’ May 1, 1997, press conference in Boulder. As he reviewed them, something struck him about Patsy. Her answers were never satisfactory. A new question always emerged after she had responded to a query. Haney kept that in mind as he prepared. For his interviews, he decided to work from a broad outline rather than pre-designed questions. Over the years he had learned to listen intently to interviewees’ answers and to let them be his guide to follow-up questions.

Haney spent a week talking to the detectives. He knew Wickman and Gosage from the period when they had worked at the Denver PD; he’d played softball against Gosage over the years. Haney also spent time with Thomas and Trujillo, who had conducted Patsy’s first police interview. Thomas’s insights were particularly informative. Like Patsy, he came from down South, and that gave him an insider’s understanding of her. Haney was also impressed with Thomas’s thoroughness and enthusiasm despite eighteen months on the case.

Lou Smit, who was intimately familiar with the case, still thought it was solvable, though he admitted it was the most difficult one he’d ever investigated. “Look how much evidence was left behind,” Smit said to Wise. “The ransom note, the garrote, the tape.” What he found most disturbing was that the police had never taken the time to develop sus
pects, as he had been taught to do. These detectives had asked people a series of questions—such as “Where were you on Christmas?” “What’s your mother’s phone number?” “Was your friend with you?” Then, often after making a few phone calls and visits, they’d said thank-you and good-bye. He would have spent time finding out about the behavior of the suspect—even about the behavior of the suspects’ alibi witnesses—how they related to children JonBenét’s age, for example. The detectives had done that type of work on John Andrew and a few people close to the Ramseys, but once they locked onto their target, they stopped developing other suspects. Yet Smit had to admit that he didn’t have a gut feeling about anyone.

In their preparation, Kane and DeMuth sought advice from Henry Lee, Steve Pitt, the FBI, and the police. As they finalized their plan, Hofstrom and Kane decided that the detectives should screen videotapes of each two hours of questioning daily and make suggestions to the interrogators before the next day’s session began.

On Sunday, June 21, Steve Thomas and his wife and sisters spent Father’s Day with his dad, who was in failing health. Driving home, he was troubled. He knew the Ramseys’ interviews were imminent and that he would not be involved. For the first time in eighteen months, he had no goals to work toward. He felt alone and adrift, no longer involved in the battle to get justice for JonBenét.

That evening, Thomas learned that the interviews were about to begin. He didn’t even know where they were being held. The next day, Monday, he went to see Lou Smit. They met in the parking lot of the Justice Center. Thomas wanted to know why the police hadn’t been included in the planning. It was their case, he told Smit again and again. The investigator had to remind him that on June 2 it had become the DA’s case.

“But not to let us know when and where is an insult,”
Thomas fumed.

“Hunter’s office thinks you guys will leak it,” Smit replied.

“The leaks are over at the Justice Center,” Thomas protested.

“You’re right. Alex Hunter is the worst,” Smit answered. “I feel bad that you guys get blamed for all the leaks.”

This made Thomas take a step back. “You have to go after them with hard questions,” he said. “Don’t softball them.”

Smit said he would try.

Now Steve Thomas was certain he would no longer be consulted. Beckner had told him that he wasn’t going to be sworn in as a grand jury investigator. Hunter, he was sure, would fold under pressure from the Ramseys’ attorneys and use the grand jury as a device to let the Ramseys off. He could see that the case was moving away from an indictment.

Thomas was tired of hitting his head against a brick wall. He was a bundle of nerves. The twenty-seven pounds he’d lost over the last year were starting to show. He had no energy. His medication was making him sick to his stomach. That afternoon, June 22, Thomas went to see Tom Koby, who was still acting chief, and told him about his illness. He requested some vacation time. Koby suggested that he apply for a work disability. The chief said he’d go to bat for him, but when Thomas put in his claim, the city denied it, stating that his medical problem was not work-related.

His physical condition, Alex Hunter, Lou Smit’s view that the Ramseys were innocent—it all infuriated him. He was sure that JonBenét’s parents were involved. Nobody, he told himself, would fight for that little girl the way he was prepared to do.

That same night, June 22, Carol McKinley, on behalf of Fox
News, asked Hunter’s office if interviews with the Ramseys were in the works. Suzanne Laurion replied that they would eventually speak to that issue. To McKinley, the answer suggested that the interviews had already begun. She was right.

The interviews began, without restrictions. Everyone understood that the process would be open-ended. Patsy and John each had an attorney and an investigator present.

As Haney began, he knew that Patsy would be vague—it was her style, as he had discovered by watching the videotapes. In her earlier interviews she had been medicated, and it had affected her responses. Now, when she was asked if she was still taking medication, she said yes. But she said she hadn’t taken anything to calm her for these interviews. Haney had been warned by Steve Thomas that Patsy would crank up the charm and could become religiously charismatic at times. Haney knew he’d have to ignore it. He wanted to look into her eyes and get direct answers. That was what he would try for.

In the first two days, Haney went through Patsy’s story of what had happened on December 25 and 26. As these interviews were open-ended, Haney had the luxury of time. Photographs taken by the police at the Ramseys’ house after the murder had been assembled into several thick books. Haney took Patsy through nearly all of them. She said she saw nothing really out of place except for a few things in JonBenét’s room. Again Patsy noticed the small white toy bear dressed in a Santa suit in one photograph. It was still missing.

For the first time, she was asked about the conversation with Burke that the police had discovered on the 911 enhanced tape. She knew nothing about it, she said. Her story remained the same: Burke was asleep. When did JonBenét eat the pineapple? Again her story was the same: Her daughter had been taken directly to bed. She knew nothing about JonBenét eating any pineapple. For two
days, Pasty was polite and charming. She would do anything to help find the killer of JonBenét. She repeatedly denied any involvement in her daughter’s murder. “I just did my best,” she kept saying. “I took her to bed, I just did my best.”

At first Haney had the impression that Patsy might be acting, but she was hard to assess. She seemed to have moments of real emotion. Still, he doubted her sincerity.

The videotapes of the ongoing interviews were sent to the Boulder police headquarters twice daily, where the case detectives screened them. They thought Haney was doing a good job, considering what little he knew. Patsy often seemed to retreat into herself. She’d close her eyes as she talked, not wanting to look directly at Haney or DeMuth. Steve Thomas noted many inconsistencies in what he called “Patsy’s southern belle routine.” One minute Haney would be talking to a sophisticated, articulate Miss America contestant, Thomas observed, the next, she’d be trying to charm him. One moment she’d be earnest and naïve; the next, she’d be chattering away as if holding court with her friends over lunch.

On the second day, Haney asked Patsy if she had talked to her husband about the previous day’s interviews. “No,” she said. “We didn’t talk about what went on.”

“You didn’t talk about anything I asked you or about anything John was asked, what kind of questions he got?” Haney inquired. “You didn’t say, ‘How did it go, John?’”

“Yes, we did. But we never discussed what was asked,” she replied.

Patsy’s performance was not making a good impression on Tom Haney. On the third day, he went all-out.

What would you do if I told you we had evidence that shows you’re not being truthful? he said, looking directly into her eyes.

Let’s see it, Patsy said, as if she had been brought up on the streets of Brooklyn.

We’re not in a position to show it to you now, Haney replied. You have lied to me, he added.

Pal, you don’t want to go there. Don’t start that, she snapped.

The tougher the questions became, the tougher Patsy became. Once, she raised her hand across the table in front of Haney’s face and said, You’re going down the wrong road.

When Haney took the offensive, Patsy Ramsey was ready for him. She had the answers, and she didn’t care if he liked them or not.

When the detectives viewed the tapes of the third day, they gave Haney four stars. He’d gotten to the real Patsy, they believed. She had exhibited the hard side of her persona. A side, they believed, capable of doing harm to her daughter.

By contrast, Thomas and his fellow detectives were outraged to see Lou Smit shake John Ramsey’s hand and engage him in chitchat. He was so friendly with Ramsey, it was if the two men were on the same team. Smit had his pet intruder theory written all over him. Meanwhile, when Ramsey was taken through the photos of his home, he claimed to find something out of place in almost every one. More than once, he said that what he saw in the photo was evidence that an intruder had been there. In a photo of the basement bathroom window, he pointed to a smudge on the window frame and said it looked like the dust had been disturbed. He wanted to know if the police had checked it out. In a picture of the broken basement window, he saw some messed-up dirt near the window frame, also an indication that someone might have entered the house at that point.

Looking at a photograph taken near his upstairs desk, Ramsey suddenly asked, “What’s that, what’s that?” Pictured was a copy of a local journal, the
Boulder Business Report
. Clearly visible on page 1A of the October 1995 issue
was a story, “People vs. Profits,” that featured photographs of Mary Ellen Vernon, Jirka Rysavy, Jeffrey Kohn, and Ramsey, winners of the journal’s Esprit awards. Someone had drawn a “NO” over each of the faces except Ramsey’s, which had a flower design around it. Startled, Ramsey said he’d never seen that in his house. He had no way to explain it, but it was something out of the ordinary, he told the investigators. He was sure it had been brought in by a stranger. That evening the police remembered that Chris Wolf, who was a suspect at one time, had worked for the newspaper. He would have to be reinterviewed.

When Ramsey was asked about JonBenét, he would introduce his remark by saying, How could I do something like that to a loving, beautiful child that I cared so much about? I didn’t kill her. To the cops, it looked as if Ramsey was selling an image of himself as a father. Only rarely did he answer with a straightforward “No” or “I didn’t.” He seemed to ask almost as many questions during the interviews as were asked of him.

Asked whether Burke had talked to him at the time of the 911 call, he said he was sure Burke was in his room and asleep. There had been no conversation between them. Asked about the pineapple, Ramsey said that he took his daughter directly to bed and that he was sure she hadn’t eaten any pineapple.

On the second day, Ramsey began by telling Kane and Smit that he wanted to correct a statement he’d made the previous day about the pineapple.

Last night it hit me like a brick, Ramsey said. I remembered hearing that there was an agreement between Santa and JonBenét to meet that night, he continued. If an intruder had come into her room, she would have kicked and screamed, but she knew Santa and she would have hopped out of bed and gone with him. One person who might have been able to coax his daughter downstairs to eat
some pineapple without his or Patsy’s knowledge was Santa—Bill McReynolds, Ramsey said. JonBenét trusted him and would have done whatever he suggested. The police should question McReynolds again. According to profilers he had hired, Ramsey said, McReynolds fit the description of a possible kidnapper. He doesn’t have two nickels to rub together, he added.