JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (20 page)

Bespectacled, mustached, and looking like comedian Martin Mull, the district attorney promised, “You will not get away with what you have done.”

He disclosed the Scheck and Lee hirings and said he was being advised by four other area district attorneys, whom he called his Expert Prosecution Task Force.

I wondered what the hell he was doing up there. That tough talk was coming from a man who had not even read the Ramsey case file. Our district attorney was never the law-and-order sort, but most people didn’t know that this rhetoric didn’t match his track record. Around the police department, we likened Hunter’s fierce words that day to the sort of loud blather that comes before a match in the World Wrestling Federation, and it became known as Hunter’s WWF speech. I remembered President Reagan’s Cold War jabs at Soviet Premier Gorbachev, “Deeds, not words,” and realized the district attorney was playing politics. Hunter would later explain that he was just trying to “smoke out the killer.”

Koby was so shaken by the DA’s broken agreement that by the time he took the podium, he could hardly say much more than “We are in this for the long haul.”

Then once again he alienated journalists by belittling a reporter with the memorable remark “I don’t answer stupid questions.”

While the press conference was making news in one building, more headlines were being generated in another one nearby by First Assistant District Attorney Bill Wise, who was telling the Boulder County Commission that Alex Hunter needed extra appropriations because “one of the suspects has money.” We weren’t allowed to call them suspects, but the number two man in the DA’s office had carelessly done just that.

Then he knifed us by saying that the district attorney needed a good, experienced homicide investigator of his own, someone who would do “a real live investigation.” It was a direct insult to the police.

“Doesn’t Pete [Hofstrom] do some of that?” asked one commissioner.

“That’s part of the problem,” Wise responded. “He’d like to do a lot of that, and the Boulder Police Department says, ‘Get out of our business.’ They don’t like lawyers sticking their noses into their investigation.

“I’m not going to criticize the Boulder Police Department, but I’d sure like to,” Wise added.

When his comments were published, Wise was removed from the case and the district attorney spewed apologies. “Mister Wise regrets any statement that would indicate displeasure with the Boulder Police Department’s investigation,” said Hunter.

While we were in disarray, Team Ramsey was running like the proverbial well-oiled machine, and they were kicking our butts. John Ramsey had gotten his money’s worth. His people were absolutely relentless, and no matter what they were given, they always asked for more.

Pat Korten, Ramsey’s PR man, peddled the spin that the Ramseys had never been asked to take a polygraph and were in daily contact with the “authorities.” Those “authorities” to whom he referred did not mean the police.

The Ramseys had not been asked to take a polygraph because Hofstrom never made the request. He and DeMuth said they “didn’t believe in” lie detector tests.

On top of that, we learned that it had been disclosed to Patsy’s lawyer, Patrick Burke, that our experts were saying Patsy’s handwriting looked very much like that on the ransom note. It was a huge concession. Team Ramsey immediately started rounding up specialists of their own to dispute the damaging findings.

One day Burke rushed up to me in the police department lobby, and after I grabbed Detective Trujillo to be a witness, I listened to his demands. Always referring to his client as “my lady,” he wanted (1) a first-generation copy of the ransom note and to know (2) whether semen had indeed been discovered, (3) whether there was in fact a practice note, (4) how many detectives were working the case, and (5) if we had accounted for a couple of “prime suspects” they had named.

We stared hard at each other. I was insulted that he thought I would hand over confidential case information just because he demanded it. I told him that if the parents had worked with us, they might have been cleared by now. “Tell your lady to come by any day or every day,” I said.

He simply went around me and got the information elsewhere. Few secrets were held for very long.

Another Team Ramsey lawyer, Bryan Morgan, had me meet him at the police department on a Saturday to tell me of a major development. They had just learned of Father Rol’s theory about Psalm 118 and wanted us to check it out. I said we had already done that. Soon they would be wanting to know why the detectives were asking about Psalms 35 and 36.

Their main successes in January, however, were stalling the requested interviews and blocking the testing of evidence. That underscored my belief that they had moved away from any pretense of finding a killer and were deep into trial defense preparation. I feared they would hinder the investigation whenever possible.

I hand-delivered a letter to Commander Eller from attorney Patrick Burke that laid out their conditions for us to interview the Ramseys. The points, which were plainly unacceptable, included having the session take place the very next day in the office of another Ramsey lawyer. Patsy would have both a doctor and a lawyer at her side, probably be available for only one hour, and be questioned only by Detective Arndt. They wanted Peter Hofstrom of the DA’s office present.

Hofstrom and Trip DeMuth told us that we were being pigheaded by rejecting the offer. They said we should be willing to meet the Ramseys anytime, anywhere, and under any conditions.

Negotiations to arrange interviews of suspects are commonplace between prosecutors and defense attorneys, for under the Constitution, a person cannot be compelled to speak. Police officers know and accept that fact. The difference in this case was the wide gap between what the cops and the DA’s office viewed as acceptable conditions for the interviews. They did not seem to understand that police do not like it when suspects dictate when, where, how, and with which detective they meet.

Eller wasn’t about to let them stack the deck. The short lead time of less than twenty-four hours would give us no time to prepare, and we refused to walk in unprepared. He countered with an alternative suggestion—simultaneous interviews the following week at police headquarters, with Eller assigning any detectives he wanted to do the questioning. The interview would continue until police were satisfied, would be videotaped, and Hofstrom was not welcome.

Team Ramsey came right back with a diatribe. How dare we turn down their guidelines? This was another example of the “cruel and insensitive treatment” of their clients by police. Anyone could see that the anguished Ramseys had nothing to do with the death of their daughter, and it was inexplicable why police continued to treat them as suspects.

These exchanges were only the opening shots, and the interview issue remained unresolved. As far as the detectives were concerned, the Ramseys were being treated like suspects because they had done nothing to convince us they weren’t.

Father Rol came by on his way to lunch with the Ramseys and asked if I had any “good news.” The minister described Patsy as devastated that the proposed interview had been canceled. She was seeing a therapist and “wanted to come out of hiding.” John was “very down.” Hoverstock said they
wanted
to talk, but their attorneys were forcing them to remain quiet. I felt sorry for this well-meaning man, so I didn’t tell him that both parents were silent by choice, not edict.

Team Ramsey also made a full assault on the testing of forensic evidence but suffered one of their rare setbacks.

The lawyers argued that they be notified in advance of any testing so that they might
approve
or
participate in
such examinations, and they raised concerns about specific and technical points and the testing methods themselves. Team Ramsey wanted their experts present for any DNA testing, serology, and swab splitting, among other things.

I was surprised Hofstrom was even entertaining these demands, but he was doing more than that. He disclosed to Team Ramsey that testing had begun without their being notified. He should not have done so, because we were under no obligation to provide that information. The DA’s chief trial deputy then suggested that an officially designated “suspect” would have the right to observe the CBI lab work. With Hofstrom’s interpretation of the law in hand, the defense attorneys agreed to allow their clients to be called “suspects” for that one specific purpose. It looked as if they were going to get inside the labs.

By tracking every test, their own experts would make careful note of every single step of the process. Armed with such knowledge, a good defense attorney could impeach the lab’s findings in court by challenging the methods used, all of the results, and even the qualifications of the scientists doing the tests.

Finally, the no-nonsense director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, Carl Whiteside, stomped on them. He pointed out that there were no charged defendants in the Ramsey homicide, and until someone was charged, no defense representatives would be allowed in his CBI lab for evidence testing.

Attorney Patrick Burke soon replied that “if my earlier comments have delayed the testing in any way, they are withdrawn.” All it took was for someone in authority, instead of interpreting the law to benefit Team Ramsey, to just say no.

14

The ransom note had been very specific in telling John Ramsey that the “gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you.” We wanted to find out who these gentlemen were, but as Detective Ron Gosage and I launched into another road trip, we learned that no matter where we went, we were still one step behind Team Ramsey.

Weeks before our plane took off from Denver in mid-February, I had contacted Lucinda Ramsey Johnson, the first wife of John Ramsey, to offer an exchange of information. I would help clear their son, John Andrew, if she would give me the name of the woman with whom John Ramsey had an affair. She was clearly uncomfortable speaking with me, and the day before the interview she canceled it.

“I’ve got an attorney,” she told me by telephone.

“Why? You aren’t suspected of anything.”

“It seems like the thing to do.”

I offered her a sweetheart deal and dropped my condition to get the name of the mistress: If she would help us clear their children John Andrew and Melinda, I would go public to say they were not involved. I didn’t like it, but moving them off the table would let us get on with more promising leads.

The next day in Atlanta I called her new lawyer, Jim Jenkins. Yes, he said, my proposal was quite attractive. No, there could be no interviews of Lucinda Ramsey Johnson or her daughter, Melinda Ramsey, because the scheduling had come too fast. I reminded him we had made the appointments well in advance, but he countered that since he had just come aboard, he would need to see “all prior statements” before his client spoke to us.

Giving witnesses a chance to review previous statements to police is one of the worst things that can happen before an interview. It totally removes the element of surprise from future questions, telegraphs what you’re looking for, and gives witnesses and their lawyers time to study the documents carefully and plan strategy. Unless legally required to do so, as in the discovery process before a trial, a cop would rather eat glass than hand over previous statements. The tactic would be used time and again by Team Ramsey, often successfully and with terrible results for us.

Two months would pass before we finally got to interview Lucinda Ramsey Johnson. In the meantime, we learned that John Ramsey was paying both for his first wife’s lawyer and for the mortgage on her house. There was no doubt about her loyalty.

Gosage and I had been in Georgia less than twenty-four hours before the telephone started ringing on the desk of our boss in Boulder, Commander Eller. The Ramsey attorneys were seething that we were asking about infidelities and personal details. To hell with them, I replied. If they don’t want us searching all over God’s green earth for former lovers and mysterious enemies, all they have to do is give us the information firsthand.

In the following days, we documented the whereabouts of John Andrew Ramsey on the night his little stepsister was killed. Although the family had been of minimal help, Gosage and I backtracked through interviews, records, friends, and associates to put him officially in the Atlanta-Marietta area, except for about six hours when he was presumably asleep at his mother’s home. Unless there was a far-reaching conspiracy or a Harrier jet in the backyard, he didn’t do it.

The strangest moment of the trip came when we emerged from interviewing one of Lucinda Johnson’s neighbors on Turtle Lake Drive and found her and her son, John Andrew, standing directly across the street in their own driveway, looking at us. Fifteen hundred miles from Boulder, and two of the people we most wanted to talk to about the murder of Jon-Benet stood right in front of us, and wouldn’t even say hello. It was surreal.

On the last day of the month, I wrote in an exhaustive report that “one can conclude John Andrew Ramsey’s whereabouts have been reasonably accounted for.” A few days later the city spokesperson announced that both John Andrew and his sister Melinda had been cleared of suspicion.

That was a huge gift to the Ramseys. Once the older kids were cleared we had no more leverage in Atlanta, and it was a milepost in the sham of cooperation.

To me, it seemed that their priorities were seriously out of order.

One morning I listened to the radio as the father of another murdered girl called for the Ramseys to take lie detector tests. Marc Klass, the father of Polly Klass, had a special perspective on our case since he had gone through a similar hell when his daughter was slain and he was considered a suspect. Despite negative publicity, the man had almost lived at the police station during his ordeal, baring his soul to detectives, helping in any possible way. He urged the Ramseys to do as he had done and
ask
to be polygraphed so that police would not have to waste any more time investigating them. That was the sort of response I had always expected but never got from John and Patsy Ramsey, their relatives, and their defenders.