Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (73 page)

The seventh was the ransom note. Did Patsy write the note
was a question that handwriting experts were battling over. None could say for sure. Even more mystifying, the ransom note itself showed no fingerprints or signs of handling, creasing, or damage. Patsy said she saw the three sheets of paper comprising the note spread across the entire width of a step as she descended the spiral staircase. She said she stepped over the three pages before turning around to read their contents. The pages showed no indication that they had been stepped on. This seemed plausible until the police recreated the scenario Patsy described. The detectives found it was impossible, while descending this spiral staircase, to skip any of the steps without losing one’s balance and almost falling forward.

Not on the list but equally puzzling were the questions about the duct tape and the cord. The cord had a frayed end and had been cut, but it couldn’t be determined how recently. The tape had been ripped from a roll. How recently that had taken place was also unknown. Why were all the other leftovers from the crime—such as the stick used in the “garrote,” the Sharpie pen used to write the ransom note, and the writing pad—left behind and not the roll of tape and the remainder of the cord? Only the killer knew the answer to that question.

Four days later, a jury convicted David Gordon of first-degree murder. In Colorado a first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory life sentence without the chance of parole.

By December 1998, Michael Kane was calling civilian witnesses. Before anyone appeared, Kane and his staff would conduct extensive interviews. Michael Archuleta and Linda Hoffman-Pugh and her husband, Merv, were called. Fleet White had probably become less paranoid about his own involvement in the events of December 26; in any event, he agreed and testified twice. He was cordial with prosecutors and told the grand jury what he knew. As he left he informed one deputy DA that he was still upset at Hunter for releasing a photo of his daughter and JonBenét to a tabloid. White’s accusation was without merit. The photographer had supplied the photograph to a third party who gave it to the paper. Barbara and John Fernie were next to testify.

Steve Thomas heard that Kane was afraid to call him, fearing an episode like Linda Arndt’s testimony. Kane, according to the rumor, was convinced Thomas would attack Hunter and his office for their handling of the case. Lou Smit also wanted
to testify, but he refused to meet with Kane beforehand. Nevertheless, he hoped Levin or Morrissey would convince Kane to call him regardless. Maybe then he could present the evidence he thought would clear the Ramseys.

In early February, it was likely that Michael Kane felt he saw an indictment coming from the grand jury. He and Alex Hunter released the five alternate jurors. There didn’t seem to be any need for them, since only nine of twelve votes were needed for a true bill charging someone in the murder of JonBenét. As Kane walked twice weekly from the DA’s office to the grand jury courtroom he looked like a happy camper. The work with the grand jury was winding down.

In March 1999, Lou Smit couldn’t sit on the sidelines any longer. He went to Alex Hunter and requested that he be called before the grand jury to present his findings. Believing the Ramseys were innocent, he wanted to make sure all the exculpatory evidence had been heard by the grand jurors. Smit reminded the DA that he’d solved more than 150 murder cases during his career. He would become the devil’s advocate. Alex Hunter agreed to call Smit before the grand jury, and Kane went along with the DA.

It took two days for Smit to present his findings to the grand jury.

The presentations made by Lou Smit and John Douglas—the former head of the FBI’s behavioral science unit in Quantico, Virginia, who had been hired by the Ramseys early in the case and who believed in their innocence—started some of the grand jurors thinking differently about the case. Now the jurors started giving out assignments to the DA and Boulder PD. They wanted more DNA samples taken from friends and associates of the Ramseys. Newer methods of testing DNA, not existing two years earlier when the case began, were now available, and the DA began to run many of the past forensic tests all over again. The grand jury felt more investigating needed to be done. As one grand
juror put it, “The work on this case is not over yet.”

In May 1999, upon request, the Ramseys brought their son, Burke, back to Boulder to testify before the grand jury. After a full day on the witness stand, Alex Hunter publicly cleared the child of any involvement in the death of his sister.

For the next four months the grand jury did not meet while the Boulder PD continued the inquiry on behalf of its members. Alex Hunter told the media that work on the case might not be completed by October 20, when the grand jury was required by law to disband. If any indictment, a grand jury report, or a no finding verdict was the result of this grand jury’s work, another grand jury, he said, would continue the investigation, or his office would file charges without a grand jury if the evidence presented itself. But for now, Hunter added, the examination into the death of JonBenét was continuing.

Michael Kane, who was still sleeping on a cot in the war room, and Alex Hunter worked over the Labor Day holiday weekend. Some reporters speculated they were writing a report for the grand jury—others were sure they were preparing their closing presentation.

On September 13, just days before the one year anniversary of the beginning of the grand jury’s deliberations, former detective Linda Arndt broke ranks with her fellow officers and appeared on ABC’s
Good Morning America
. She told her side of what had happened in the Ramsey house during the first hours of the investigation. After pronouncing JonBenét dead, and while kneeling next to the child’s body, she and John Ramsey, just inches apart, had a non-verbal exchange, Arndt said. At that moment, looking at Ramsey, Arndt knew what had happened. Her fear was so great that she tucked her gun close to her and counted out the eighteen bullets in her weapon, not knowing if everyone in the house would still be alive when her fellow officers arrived. To some watching her appearance, it seemed that the murder of JonBenét had irrevocably changed her life. Steve Thomas disagreed with Arndt on many issues, especially who killed JonBenét. He was sure it was not John Ramsey as Arndt indicated. Thomas told a friend, “I’m sure Patsy did it, but the case against her can’t be proven to twelve jurors beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Lou Smit stood firm. The evidence, and his experience, told him that John and Patsy Ramsey couldn’t have killed JonBenét. If they did, then nothing made sense.

What neither Thomas, Smit, Hunter, Eller, Hofstrom, nor anyone else connected with the investigation could explain was the use of the noose on JonBenét. The garroting did not connect to any other element of the crime. The FBI had no record of a young child being strangled with one, let alone by a parent.

After JonBenét’s skull was fractured she would have slipped into unconsciousness quickly. It would have been just as easy to end her life by smothering or strangling her by hand. There was no explanation why anyone would even think of making a noose—which takes time—slip it around her neck, and use it to kill her.

Death by this method is gruesome and horrifying. It does not come quickly. The person pulling the cord and tightening the noose little by little around JonBenét’s neck would not even have been able to look away. He or she would have had to eventually look into the child’s face, to be sure that she was dead.

It was so merciless to that child who had once asked, “Do roses know their thorns can hurt?”

If someone is ever charged with JonBenét’s murder and the case comes to trial, only then will a jury have the right to pass judgment. We should not consider John or Patsy Ramsey anything less than innocent unless and until a guilty verdict is pronounced on one or both of them by twelve of their fellow citizens. I know it is hard to maintain that level of objectivity when confronted with the facts of a six-year-old’s death, an exceptionally beautiful and charming six-year-old. The urge to blame someone is deep-seated. But we are obliged to remember the presumption of innocence. For, whoever may ultimately be charged with JonBenét’s death is absolutely entitled to a fair chance for an impartial trail—the startling notion, rooted in English common law, that holds every man and woman equal, and equally innocent, before the bar of justice.