Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (7 page)

Eller spoke softly—he sounded like a whispering Baptist preacher, according to one reporter—and didn’t say much. He pointed out that his detectives were facing a “delicate and sensitive” investigation. “The death was clearly the result of a criminal act,” he stated. No one had been identified or eliminated as a suspect yet.

The commander wouldn’t tell reporters where in the basement JonBenét’s body had been found, what she was wearing, or the condition of her body. He confirmed that she had been discovered by a family member, although he didn’t say which one.

Reporters pressed him. Why didn’t the police find her earlier if she was in the house?

“We had no reason to believe the child would be in the house at the time,” Eller replied. “The initial efforts of the police were directed toward preparing to comply with the instructions in the ransom note.”

So far, no reporters had spoken to the Ramseys, but they all knew that the family was staying with “friends.” Eller stated that a police officer was staying with them for “security,” and he revealed that his detectives had not yet conducted interviews with the family.

“The parents are going through a tremendous grieving process, we expect,” was all Eller would say. “We’re going to have to work our interviews and those kinds of things around it.” While he said very little about the Ramseys themselves, reporters noted that Eller said the “victim’s family was well connected with Boulder society.”

As for JonBenét, he said, “It truly is a tragedy. This was a beautiful little girl, as you can see—very vibrant and, from what we can tell, very precocious and a wonderful child.”

When reporters asked about the ransom note, Eller said little. He insisted the police hadn’t ruled out the possibility that JonBenét might have been killed during a “bona fide” kidnapping. “We have no reason to believe that it was [a kidnapping] or not at this time,” he explained. “It’s too early in the investigation to start ruling things out.” When reporters pressed for more details, Eller said only that the note had demanded money and referred to “future demands.”

“The ransom note was a typical—if there is such a thing—kidnapping ransom note, the kind you’d find in any movie,” he added.

After Eller concluded the press briefing, one reporter looked in his notebook. He’d jotted down the commander’s description of the ransom note. He’d called it “typical” but in the same breath likened it to something in “any movie.” What was Eller really saying? Was he unwittingly revealing something?

At Boulder Community Hospital, John Meyer concluded his autopsy at 2:20
P
.
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., and after the press conference, Eller was briefed by Detectives Arndt and Trujillo about the coroner’s findings.

There was a linear fracture on the right side of the child’s skull, running about 8½ inches from the front to above her right ear. Near the back of her skull, at one end of the linear fracture, there was a displaced rectangular section of skull, about ¾ by ½ inch. A heavy blow had caused the fracture.

The coroner had found small amounts of dried and half-dried blood at the entrance to JonBenét’s vagina and reddening in the vaginal walls, most notably on the right side and toward the rear. What remained of the hymen was a rim of tissue running from the 10 o’clock to the 2 o’clock position. There was also an abrasion on the hymeneal orifice at about the 7 o’clock position.

During the autopsy, Meyer had told Arndt and Trujillo that JonBenét had suffered an injury consistent with vaginal penetration—digital or otherwise. In his opinion, she’d sustained some kind of genital trauma that could be consistent with sexual contact.

Arndt told Eller that before the internal examination began, Tom Trujillo had passed a black fluorescent lamp over JonBenét’s naked body. This would reveal traces of semen—if there were any—not visible to the naked eye. The light also revealed numerous traces of dark fibers scattered over her pubic area, similar to fibers found on the outside of JonBenét’s outer garment. Under the black light, the coroner saw a residue on the child’s upper thigh that could have come from semen, though residue from blood and even from certain kinds of soaps could appear the same way under the black light. Nevertheless, the detectives conjectured that they were semen traces.

In addition, JonBenét’s underpants bore stains that appeared to be blood. The corresponding areas of her skin in the pubic area, however, showed no matching stains. The coroner told the police that the blood smears on the skin and the fibers found in the folds of the labia indicated that the child’s pubic area had been wiped with a cloth. The blood smears also contained traces of fibers.

Eller knew the police had found no evidence that an intruder had entered the Ramsey home, and John Ramsey had said to Fleet White it was he who had broken the basement window—months earlier. Also, one officer had noticed three strands of a spiderweb at that spot. It extended from the edge of the grate covering the well outside the broken window to the window itself. This seemed to indicate that nobody had entered through the broken basement window recently. Other doors and possible points of entry had been locked or covered by spiderwebs. Outside, much of the grass was topped with snow, and Sgt. Paul Reichenbach had noted
in his report that there were no footprints. A south-facing door in the solarium showed a fresh pry mark near the dead-bolt, but detectives had found no corresponding wood chips or splinters. They concluded that the door hadn’t been breached. Pry marks were also found on the exterior door leading to the kitchen, but detectives told Eller the lock had been set from the inside. So far, no clear sign of forced entry had been found anywhere on the premises.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which was studying the ransom note and the writing samples John Ramsey had given the police before JonBenét’s body was found, called the Boulder PD with an initial finding: the ransom note had been written on paper torn from one of the pads that John Ramsey had given to Detective Patterson. The pad contained a sample of Patsy Ramsey’s writing.

Given the apparent presence of semen on JonBenét’s body, Eller concluded that he had no choice but to consider John Ramsey the most likely perpetrator. Now he knew that the parents had to be questioned without delay. The Ramseys were the prime suspects.

So long as the Ramseys were not taken into custody Eller knew they could be questioned without a
Miranda
warning,
*
and any admissions they made could be used as evidence. Later Eller admitted that he had always felt intimidated by the
Miranda
decision;
Miranda
warnings can turn the search for criminals into a fox hunt in which a clever suspect might escape capture, he said.

After the autopsy briefing, Eller ordered that John
Ramsey’s office at Access Graphics be sealed and an officer be posted until a legal search could be conducted. The Ramseys should be interviewed without delay, he told Mason and Arndt.

At 9:30 that evening, Detectives Mason and Arndt arrived at the Fernies’ house to interview John and Patsy Ramsey. Patsy was heavily sedated. She was in shock, could barely talk, and couldn’t sit up or stand. An interview was out of the question.

In the Fernies’ basement office, the detectives sat with John Ramsey, his brother, Jeff, Dr. Francesco Beuf and his friend and broker, Rod Westmoreland. Michael Bynum, Ramsey’s lawyer, sat at the opposite side of the room but close enough to hear what Mason was saying. The detectives decided that under the circumstances, it would make more sense to schedule later interviews with the Ramseys. Earlier Mason had told Ramsey how important his and Patsy’s contribution to the investigation would be. Now he said their assistance would be vital to finding their little girl’s killer. Ramsey said he could not set a time and date for the interview. Arndt asked him a few questions, but his answers were so vague that the detectives soon left.

After the police departed, Bynum and Westmoreland sat beside their friend, holding him as he wept. It was 2:00 in the morning before Ramsey fell asleep. A few minutes later he was up again, sobbing.

That night, John Meyer returned to the morgue. With the coroner was Dr. Andrew Sirotnak, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences Center. The two men reexamined JonBenét’s genitals and confirmed Meyer’s earlier findings that there was evidence
of vaginal injury. Meyer knew that JonBenét’s death could be traced to strangulation and a blow to the head, but the facts surrounding the sexual assault of the child were unclear. In the event of a trial, the physical evidence about that would be open to interpretation.

On Saturday morning, December 28, seventy parents and children showed up at High Peaks Elementary School. The administrator had arranged for therapists to come in to talk to the kids and their parents. The school was in a U-shaped red brick building whose interior had been scrubbed clean and spruced up by dedicated parents. Now, many of these same adults gathered around the small tables in the library and talked in groups. Some of them were grateful to be temporarily separated from their children. It would give them a chance to express their own sadness and anxiety freely.

In the kindergarten classroom, children of various ages were gathered, some of them hyper, some of them relaxed, all of them full of questions. Charles Elbot, the principal, got their attention and then sat in one of the little chairs and read aloud from a book entitled
Lifetimes, the Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children
.

He told the children that there was no right or wrong way to feel at a time like this and that they should not be afraid to talk to their parents or teachers. “You need to know that tonight you should feel safe,” he said. “What happened doesn’t usually happen in Boulder.”

“Yeah,” one third grader responded, “JonBenét’s parents would have told her that too.”

“That’s true,” Elbot said. “But you need to understand it’s a rare occurrence.”

He told the children that this was like crossing the street—an accident can happen, but it’s not likely to happen.

Elbot knew the children were terrified.

He suggested to them that they make some drawings. Jo-Lynn Yoshihara-Daly, the school’s social worker, helped the younger children. Some of the kids painted pictures of JonBenét’s family. Some drew JonBenét. Some added words to their pictures.

A few of us parents thought we should only tell our children that JonBenét died. Others thought we should say she had been murdered but
not
that she had been murdered in her own house. By Saturday morning there was a huge amount of speculation about the cause of JonBenét’s death. Some parents had heard JonBenét was strangled. My daughter was in JonBenét’s kindergarten class and hadn’t heard anything. But some of the older children had seen news reports on TV.

The school psychologist told us he would tell the kids the facts that were known, but he assured us he
wouldn’t go near the subject of whether JonBenét was sexually assaulted. He would talk mostly about safety, about how you could feel safe. He wanted to focus on what the kids needed most.

The art therapy took forty-five minutes, maybe an hour. There were about twenty-five kids in two groups—younger children in one group, the older kids in another. Jo-Lynn dealt with the kindergartners.

The kids decided what had happened. They figured it out all by themselves. They drew pictures of JonBenét and her house. Then they came back to us parents with their drawings and their conclusions.

They said that JonBenét’s family went to bed and forgot to make sure that all the doors were locked. Then a bad man had snuck in and murdered JonBenét. They decided that if a bad man came into their homes, they would have to make a lot of noise to scare him away. They decided they all wanted whistles. They said that no bad man could stand having a huge whistle blowing in his ear.

On the way home, I bought my daughter a whistle that she could hook to her pillow. She wanted her friends to have them too, so I bought whistles for them. Other parents I know got whistles for their kids. Our kindergarten kids latched on to the whistle idea pretty strongly.

For weeks, my daughter wouldn’t go to sleep without the light on, the bedroom door open, and the whistle clipped to her pillow.

She didn’t sleep through the whole night for months afterward.

Now I always make sure I turn on the house alarm that I hadn’t used in two years. I don’t think there’s a night that’s gone by since this happened that I haven’t had our alarm on.

I was happy that my child grasped that whistle. It was something that gave her some comfort, some sense of power. You realize that it’s absolutely futile, but you’re never going to tell your child how futile it is.

—Barbara Kostanick

By Saturday morning, having been present at Mason and Arndt’s abortive attempt at an interview the evening before, Michael Bynum realized that the police were targeting his friend and client John Ramsey. His instincts told him to make sure the Ramseys had every protection the law provided. Bynum, in his early fifties and a longtime resident of Colorado, was born in Arkansas and retained faint overtones of the South in his soft-spoken speech. Like so many who eventually settled in Boulder, he had attended the University of Colorado. Bynum also got his law degree at CU and worked briefly as a deputy DA in Boulder before becoming a specialist in business planning, acquisitions, and commercial transactions. Bynum had a saying: when it comes to murder, it doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or innocent—you need an attorney.

Shortly after noon that Saturday, without consulting John or Patsy, Bynum told Detective Arndt that the Ramseys would not give any more testimonial evidence without a criminal attorney present, and they would no longer share privileged information with the police. Since he was no longer a criminal attorney, Bynum called Bryan Morgan of Haddon, Morgan and Foreman in Denver, one of Col
orado’s top firms. By Saturday evening, the Ramseys had retained Morgan.

Arndt then checked with Pete Hofstrom in the DA’s office about the non-testimonial evidence the police still wanted from the Ramseys.
*
It was likely, Arndt knew, that according to court rulings, the Fifth Amendment and its protection against self-incrimination did not include physical evidence such as blood, hair, saliva, fingerprints, and handwriting samples.

Hofstrom then called Michael Bynum, who confirmed that although John and Patsy refused interviews at this time, the entire family—including Burke, John Andrew, and Melinda—would give blood, hair, fingerprint, and handwriting samples. Bynum agreed that Detectives Arndt and Kim Stewart could speak to John Ramsey’s older children and his brother, Jeff, who were at the Fernies’ house.

John Eller was unhappy with Bynum’s position. The commander acknowledged that a suspect had the right to an attorney once he was arrested, but he thought the investigative process was hindered by the courts’ liberal reading of the Sixth Amendment, which says that any person interviewed by law enforcement is entitled to counsel. For Eller, this court ruling was an unnecessary obstacle.

Just after noon on Saturday, Boulder County DA Alex Hunter, who had been in Hana, a remote area on the island of Maui, without a phone or pager for the last two days, checked in with first assistant DA Bill Wise and learned about the murder. Hunter, who had been the Boulder DA for twenty-five years, often read the business section of the
Daily Camera
, but he didn’t recognize the family’s name and didn’t recall ever having met John or Patsy Ramsey. When Wise mentioned that Ramsey had hired private attorneys, Hunter wasn’t surprised. A man as apparently wealthy as John Ramsey would automatically retain coun
sel. And if the victim’s father had been Joe Schmo, Hunter knew that Boulder’s proactive public defender’s office would be right there advising Mr. Schmo just as John Ramsey’s attorneys were now advising him.

Meanwhile, as Pete Hofstrom was talking to attorney Michael Bynum about the schedule for taking the Ramsey family’s blood, hair, and handwriting samples, he received a call from the police. Eller wanted the Ramseys to give the police formal interviews before they left to bury JonBenét in Atlanta, which he had learned was their intention. Eller told Hofstrom that he would withhold the child’s body until he got his interviews with the parents.

“You didn’t get your statements in the first three days,” Hofstrom told Eller bluntly. “You may not use this method to get your statements now. It’s just not legal to withhold the body.” It was obvious to everyone that the commander wanted to rectify the mistakes made in the first hours of the case. But holding the child’s body hostage was unacceptable. “It’s illegal. It’s another mistake,” Hofstrom said. Eller said nothing.

Hofstrom, balding, affable, and stocky, a former San Quentin prison guard, was exasperated by Eller’s thinking. If he had been the commander’s boss, he probably would have taken Eller off the case.

When Eller hung up after this unpleasant conversation with Hofstrom, he told Larry Mason he was going to withhold the body. “John, you can’t do that,” Mason protested. “You’re violating their rights.”

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Eller snapped. “You either get on board or get out.”

Larry Mason could see that Eller had no idea how to handle this kind of investigation. His inexperience, bravado, and stubbornness were making a bad situation worse.

On Saturday afternoon at the Justice Center, while the
Ramseys were providing their various samples, Michael Bynum learned of Eller’s plan to withhold JonBenét’s body until John and Patsy agreed to be interviewed. The lawyer took Pete Hofstrom aside and told him that whether or not his clients had killed their daughter, they were still JonBenét’s parents. They had the right to bury their child. Bynum decided not to tell the Ramseys of Eller’s plan for the time being.

When the police asked the coroner to hold JonBenét’s body until they had interviewed the Ramseys, he refused. There was no reason for his office to maintain custody of the body, John Meyer said. The police department’s legal adviser, Bob Keatley, agreed with Hofstrom and said so.

Hofstrom would never say it publicly, but he had now lost all confidence in John Eller. According to Larry Mason, Hofstrom was a strict judge of character. Eller had clearly failed to measure up.

At 4:37
P
.
M
. a heavily sedated Patsy Ramsey gave the police her first blood, hair, fingerprint, and handwriting samples on the second floor of the Justice Center, a sprawling two-story sandstone building that contains not only the county courts but the sheriff’s department and the DA’s and coroner’s offices.

“Will this help find who killed my baby?” Patsy asked Detective Arndt while her fingerprints were being taken. Then she added, “I did not murder my baby.”

Meanwhile, Melinda Ramsey, John’s twenty-five-year-old daughter from his first marriage, arrived at the Justice Center. She had been called for a formal interview about her movements over the last few days. An hour later, her brother would be interviewed at the same place.

The Ramseys’ attorneys and the police had agreed on this location as neutral territory. The police would have pre
ferred to see them at headquarters, but since John Andrew and Melinda were cooperating without independent counsel, the detectives accepted the Justice Center as a reasonable compromise.

Detective Kim Stewart interviewed Melinda for almost two and a half hours. Detectives Ron Gosage and Steve Thomas questioned her brother from 6:00 to 8:00
P
.
M
.

Twenty-year-old John Andrew was obviously upset, but he was composed enough to explain that he was a student at CU and had been in Boulder until December 19. Then he had gone to Atlanta to spend the first part of his vacation with his mother, Lucinda Johnson, and his sister and friends. Then the plan was to continue his vacation with his sister, father, stepmother, and their children. He said his father had arranged to meet him and his sister in Minneapolis at about 10:30
A
.
M
. on December 26, and from there they would all continue to the house in Charlevoix, Michigan.

In the months that followed, the police would confirm that John Andrew, his mother, and her friend Harry Smiles had attended the Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta on Christmas Eve and that John Andrew had returned to his mother’s home at 1:00
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.

Melinda, who worked at a hospital in Marietta, Georgia, finished her shift at about 7:00
A
.
M
. on Christmas Day. That afternoon, John Andrew, Harry Smiles, Melinda, and her boyfriend, Stewart Long, exchanged gifts at Lucinda’s home in Marietta. In the afternoon they all went across the street to a neighbor’s for dinner.

Melinda and Stewart Long left the dinner party about 7:00
P
.
M
., and Melinda started to pack for an early flight the next day. At 9:00 they went to visit Guy Long, Stewart’s uncle, and after visiting other friends were home by midnight.

At about 8:30
P
.
M
., John Andrew went to his friend Brad Millard’s home in Marietta to play video games. After
an hour, they left to catch a 10:30 show at the Town and Country Movie Theaters in Marietta with another friend, Chris Stanley.

John Andrew said that after the movie he went back to Brad Millard’s house to get his car and arrived back at his mother’s house at 1:00
A
.
M
. The next morning he left his mother’s house with Melinda, who had come there to pick him up. Together they boarded a flight to Minneapolis at 8:36
A
.
M
. local time. That was forty-four minutes after Patsy called 911 to report that JonBenét was missing.

Could John Andrew, with one or more of the friends who provided his and his sister’s alibis, have left Marietta, Georgia, flown to Boulder, Colorado, and returned in time to be seen by his sister’s boyfriend, Stewart Long, at about 6:15
A
.
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. when John Andrew and Melinda left for the airport?