Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? (23 page)

Tom set about the task of briefing me on the status of the investigation and the leads that he had pursued over the course of his involvement in the case. A few weeks later, I was being sworn as a grand jury investigator so I could review materials gathered in 1998 and 1999 when there had been a grand jury inquiry into the murder of JonBenét.

Tom took me on a tour of the Ramsey room and explained how the materials and binders had been stored in the cabinets lining the walls. It was my first glimpse into the “library” of investigative documents that had been compiled by the Boulder Police Department. It would be an understatement to say that I was awestruck by the sheer number of binders that filled the room.

The “murder book” that documented the investigation into the death of this little girl had evolved into a full-blown mini-library of materials. The last count of pages, revealed during the Cold Case Task Force meeting held in February 2009, indicated that approximately sixty thousand (60,000) pages of documents had been collected during the course of the investigation.

Tom proceeded to show me how to operate the I-Legal computer program that contained all of the investigative files. Every piece of paper in the case had been scanned to this program, and it held an incredible search engine that permitted an investigator to find anything in the massive file by just entering a few keystrokes on the computer screen. It would prove to be an incredible time-saving resource as I began to familiarize myself with the details of the case.

It seemed a blink of the eye before Tom had parted company with the office and I was filling his shoes as chief investigator for the D.A. in the Ramsey case. I was continuing to carry a full felony caseload for the prosecutors in our office, supervise the other members of our investigative unit and soon began to learn of Tom’s frustration. The leads that streamed into my office on JonBenét were nothing less than goofy and bizarre:

A woman sent in a child’s craft kit for a small loom that made kitchen hot-pads. No explanation provided.

Lengthy, indecipherable audio tapes were accompanied by dozens of unreadable chicken scratches of handwriting.

What could only be described as “manuscripts” were submitted that outlined intruder theories, identified traders of child sex pornography, and participants engaged in kinky sex rings.

The names of ex-boyfriends and spouses were provided because they were acting “weird” around the 1996 Christmas holidays.

I could go on, but I think you probably get the nature of the majority of “leads” that were being sent to our office.

There were a few things that came in that seemed to deserve further inquiry, however. In one instance, a local merchant called my office to explain that a customer had left some papers with him during a business transaction. I can’t recall the exact details at this writing, but he described handwritten notes on the back of the papers that described details about the death of JonBenét. They apparently were disturbing, and he thought he should report the information to our office.

I subsequently contacted the author of the notes, an elderly gentleman living in a retirement complex in south Boulder. It turned out he was thinking about writing a book about JonBenét and had been scribbling notes about his theory of events. He didn’t have all of his facts straight. The lead was a dead-end, but one of those that I felt deserved a little more attention than just surrendering it to a file box after applying a date stamp.

There were a couple of other leads that were generated by the public, but none that were particularly noteworthy once they had been chased down.

In any event, what is important to note is that when I first inherited the responsibility of handling this case, I felt it was necessary for me to become fully acquainted with the details of the investigation. I believed that I needed to know these details first-hand and not fall into the trap of assuming something based on a previously held perception. Moreover, I felt it was my responsibility to fully understand all of the elements of the case so that I would be in a position to fully evaluate all of the leads coming into my office.

I decided to get a fresh start by reviewing events that began at day one.

F
rom the outset of my involvement in this case, I felt it was absolutely critical that I bring an objective viewpoint to the inquiry into this matter, and I did not take that responsibility lightly.

Despite my previous affiliation with the Boulder Police Department, I felt it was my professional obligation to fully evaluate all of the evidence that had been gathered over the course of the investigation into JonBenét’s murder, and to reach my own conclusions as to who may have been involved in her untimely death. To have moved forward in any other fashion would have been irresponsible.

Stepping into this role, I was aware that there existed two different and contrasting theories that accounted for the events surrounding JonBenét’s death. The first theory outlined her mother’s obsession with perfection, and her anger with JonBenét for returning to a pattern of bed-wetting. In a fit of anger, Patsy was purported to have struck out in rage, killing her beloved daughter. A cover-up of the circumstances then followed in an attempt to lead investigators away from the embarrassment of family involvement. The ransom note, for which Patsy could never be eliminated as authoring, became a focal point for this hypothesis.

The other camp favored the intruder – pedophile theory. A clever man, intimately familiar with the family, had entered the Ramsey home on Christmas night and sexually assaulted the object of his desire. To throw investigators off his trail, he took the time to craft a ransom note from writing materials found in the home, pointing police to a disgruntled group of foreigners who had originally intended to take John Ramsey’s daughter for ransom. A stun gun had been used to render JonBenét unconscious during the kidnapping, and this is why no one else in the household had been alerted to her abduction.

There may have been some other theories floating around out there at the time, but these seemed to be the two primary and prevailing theories that explained the circumstances surrounding JonBenét’s death.

I determined to set aside any misconceptions, and prior thoughts I may have had about the case, and began the task of reviewing the investigative files that had accumulated over approximately nine (9) years’ worth of effort. It was my intention to review and evaluate the evidence that had been gathered up to that point in time, with the primary objective of becoming sufficiently familiar with the details of the case so that I could intelligently and properly screen the new leads regularly streaming into my office.

I began the process by reading the reports of the officers and investigators who were first on scene that morning. I wanted to know first-hand what they saw and what they did. This included the reports completed not only by uniformed officers, investigators, and crime scene technicians, but the recorded statements of the Victim Advocates and civilians who were present in the home that day…the family friends who had been summoned to the Ramsey home for a “family emergency” by Patsy.

Though not all inclusive, the following were the additional documents that I intended review in order to gain a baseline acquaintance with the investigation:

• The Boulder Police Department Case Synopsis (February 2001)
  
• Bill Nagel’s draft summary of the facts known in the case, complete with annotations from the various investigative reports.
  
• Analysis and review of the autopsy report
  
• Analysis and review of the reports and interviews of the expert witnesses who consulted with the Boulder County Coroner’s Office on the autopsy protocol and its related documents.
  
• Analysis and review of the previous medical treatment of JonBenét.
  
• Analysis and review of the physical and trace evidence that was collected over the course of the investigation and the forensic analysis of items submitted to government laboratories.
  
• Analysis and review of crime scene photographs and videotapes.
  
• Analysis and review of the statements supplied by family and key witnesses to the event.
  
• Specific topic: Review of polygraph results
  
• Specific topic: Review forensic examination of duct tape; neck and wrist bindings, analysis of handwriting on ransom note, latent fingerprints
  
• Review of the behavioral analysis opinion offered by the FBI Child Abduction Serial Killer Unit (CASKU)
  
• Review of the behavioral analysis opinion offered by retired FBI agent John Douglas, a consultant hired by the Ramsey family.
  

Given the size of the investigative file, the task of becoming familiar with the details of the case seemed daunting. Nevertheless, I set about the process of pulling binders from the library and began to read. I somehow found time to review materials during the workday when caught up on my caseload. I frequently would sit at my desk over my lunch break and pour over reports and interviews. It was not unusual to remain after-hours to finish up an interview or report, and I sometimes took binders home on the weekends.

I scribbled questions and notes to myself, and attached sticky notes to various binders indicating the dates of my review. It was not long before I was leaving different colored sticky arrows in various binders that corresponded to different questions I had about the case: i.e. Suspects marked for further inquiry, pieces of physical and trace evidence that I had questions about, witness statements that contained questionable information, or observations that seemed to be “key” to the inquiry. It was a quick way of cataloging and marking information for further follow up.

The more I read, the more questions I had about the details of the case. I became a voracious reader, and continued to try to focus my attention on what I considered to be the “core” documents that contained the key elements of the offense.

There was a box in one of the cabinets that contained a handful of VHS video tapes. I scanned a number of these and found them to contain some video clips of JonBenét’s beauty pageants, news media coverage of the murder investigation, and what appeared to be a surveillance video of the Ramsey neighborhood dated from the day of the kidnapping. Boulder investigators were recording vehicles parked in the area.

One particular news media video caught my attention, and it featured Lou Smit speaking to NBC news anchor Katie Couric in a multi-part series for
The Today Show.
He was pointing to the remote and isolated location of the window well in the back yard of the residence, declaring it to be a perfect place for an intruder to enter the home undiscovered.

Photo 18 - Ramsey Home: Rear South West entrance. Den is pictured to the left, JonBenét’s bedroom and balcony is located above the Den; Train Room window grate is located behind the grill on right. Source: Boulder PD Case Files / Internet

Smit demonstrated the actions of the intruder by pulling up the metal window grate, and sliding into the window well, continued through the frame of the middle window on the backs of his legs and buttocks. Smit was not a large man, and I noted that his legs and hips totally filled the space of the small window frame as he scooted into the basement room.

The image of Smit’s entry through the basement’s Train Room window well stuck with me, and I would review the video clip on a number of occasions over the course of my investigation.

Over the coming weeks, I would learn that some of the evidence that Smit had pointed to as belonging to an intruder had been explained. For example, the latent fingerprint found on the outside of the Wine Cellar door, still unidentified when Smit first joined the case, had subsequently been identified by CBI technicians as a palm print belonging to Patsy Ramsey.

Photo 19 - Exterior view of the window grate above the Train Room window well. Source: Boulder PD Case Files / Internet

One other latent print from the same door had also been identified as belonging to her, and another belonged to John Andrew.

A latent print lifted from the frame of the Train Room window was identified as belonging to John Ramsey. There were no other unknown latent fingerprints collected from that window.

One particular sample of hair collected from the blanket that had been wrapped around JonBenét’s body had initially given the appearance of being a pubic hair. Investigators thought this might belong to a male perpetrator. The FBI was later able to identify this as an axillary hair (underarm, back, chest) and determined it did not come from the pubic region of the body.

Mitochondrial DNA tests were run on this hair, and the FBI technicians determined that the hair shaft did not belong to an unidentified stranger. Patsy Ramsey could not be excluded as the source of the hair, and it was noted that it could have come from either her or someone else in her maternal lineage.

During a meeting with Sgt. Tom Trujillo, I was shown a handful of Polaroid photographs of hiking boots collected over the course of the investigation. One such pair had been collected from Ron Walker, the Denver FBI supervisory agent who had responded to assist Boulder Police on the morning of the kidnapping.

Agent Walker had accompanied Sgt. Mason to the basement to inspect the Wine Cellar after the discovery of JonBenét’s body. He had been wearing a pair of Hi-Tec hiking boots at the time, and it was thought that the poon of his boot could have been responsible for the intruder’s footwear impression in the mold of that room.

Though I hadn’t read the reports yet, Trujillo told me that they believed Burke had also owned a pair of Hi-Tec brand hiking boots, and he could have been responsible for the intruder
footprint
evidence in the Wine Cellar.

BPD investigators had been contacted by a store clerk in Vail who believed Patsy Ramsey had purchased a set of Hi-Tec brand hiking boots before the murder. They had also been told by one of Burke’s playmates that he owned a pair of this brand of boot.

These were significant pieces of information, but didn’t lend themselves to helping investigators identify the
exact
set of boots responsible for the evidence located in the Wine Cellar. The boots purportedly owned by Burke were never recovered. Moreover, the imprint of the poon of the boot bore no distinguishing wear marks that would have allowed its comparison to
any
set of boots collected in the investigation.

As I moved forward in my examination of the evidence in the case, it seemed plausible that an explanation for the boot imprint in the Wine Cellar had been established, and that it didn’t necessarily belong to an unknown intruder.

Trujillo shared some other information regarding trace evidence collected from the home and JonBenét’s body. He advised that investigators had been asking for the clothing articles worn by John and Patsy on December 25
^th
since the first days of the investigation. Christmas photos had depicted the items worn by the family, and investigators needed the items for elimination purposes.

It would take a year before the black and red Essentials brand jacket Patsy was photographed wearing was finally delivered to them. It was frustrating. The clothing articles seemed to trickle into their office a piece or two at a time. In one instance, a sweater – that Patsy was said to be wearing under the jacket – was delivered that looked like it had just come off the shelf of a retail clothing store. The fold marks were crisp and clearly present, suggesting it had never been worn.

Trujillo advised me that lab technicians had identified eight different types of fibers on the sticky side of the duct tape used to cover JonBenét’s mouth. They included red acrylic, gray acrylic, and red polyester fibers that were subsequently determined by laboratory examination to be microscopically and chemically
consistent
to each other, as well as to fibers taken from Patsy Ramsey’s Essentials jacket.