JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (33 page)

The crime was an incredibly risky one for an outsider to undertake, the profilers said, and was committed by someone who had a high degree of comfort inside the home. The note was created to misdirect law enforcement and focus attention elsewhere and was a cathartic act that allowed the offender to “undo” the murder in one’s own mind.

Their bottom line was that there had never been a kidnapping attempt.

CASKU further said that placing JonBenét in the basement was consistent with a parent not wanting to put the body outside in the winter elements. The familiarity with and relocking of the peg on the white cellar door were noted. The ligatures, they said, indicated staging rather than control, and the garrote was used from behind so the killer could avoid eye contact, typical of someone who cares for the victim. They had the gut feeling that “no one intended to kill this child.”

The following day the profilers had some pointed questions for the DA’s staff.

Why hadn’t phone records been gathered?
Damn good question
, I thought.
Why did everyone but the DA’s office understand the importance of those documents?
Only fifteen days before, Deputy DA DeMuth had rejected our affidavit to do just that, and now he said the police warrant “was shit.”

Hofstrom chimed in, “Let’s just ask the Ramseys” for permission, a response that left the FBI agents incredulous. Many months would pass before we discovered that the DA’s office had not overridden the Ramsey attorneys’ request to maintain an “island of privacy.” Our prosecutors should have handed them a grand jury subpoena on the spot, demanding the records, and they never explained to us why they would not do so.

The FBI also wondered, since the police had not been offensive or confrontational in December 1996, why had the parents lawyered up so fast? Hofstrom answered that the attorneys only came aboard after “a police supervisor” had tried to “ransom the body” to get an interview. That was false, since Mike Bynum was giving advice and more lawyers and private investigators were being brought aboard long before the body became an issue.

An agent wanted to know why Patsy, who had volunteered to take ten polygraphs, had not been given the opportunity to do so. No one had an answer.

Did “anyone look good on the handwriting?” Detective Gosage said that of the dozens of people examined so far, Patsy Ramsey could not be eliminated as the author of the note. Deputy DA Hofstrom said handwriting analysis was an art, not a science, and had the gall to describe to disbelieving agents how “John and Patsy” had been invited into his own home to give a handwriting example. They just stared at him.

I thought we all must look like total amateurs to these professional law enforcement officers. This case had become a black eye and an embarrassment to cops everywhere.

Hofstrom then took the offensive, saying that if the police would bring the DA’s office a case, they would look at it. It was Catch-22, and everyone there knew it, because how could we deliver a case while the same DA’s office hindered our investigation?

The FBI encouraged the district attorney’s representatives to convene a grand jury immediately and assist the police department. Get the Ramseys in there to testify under the hammer of perjury. Don’t “ask the Ramseys” for anything, just issue the warrants and subpoenas and take the evidence. It should have been done long ago. The world is watching, and the right thing needs to be done. You have a responsibility, CASKU said. The language was blunt.

Despite the animosity, apparently Pete Hofstrom heard at least some of what was said and privately ventured an acceptable goal. If experts could determine prior vaginal abuse, and we could get an expert to identify the author of the note, then the investigation would have reached “a turning point” toward prosecution. Given his track record, however, I took his promise with a grain of salt.

Throughout the FBI sessions, Lou Smit said not a word about his Intruder Theory. But he ducked out early on the final day to fly secretly to Tennessee and fetch back to Boulder, in manacles, an itinerant worker named Kevin Raburn, whom he and investigator Steve Ainsworth had decided was an intruder candidate. Raburn was held for a while on an unrelated charge, then released when his alibi checked out. He had nothing to do with the death of JonBenét.

The open contact that the district attorney was having with the media had been known to us for some time, but the claims of
Globe
reporter Jeff Shapiro went beyond cozy press relations and into possible criminal wrongdoing. Chief Koby did not believe Alex Hunter would do anything unprofessional, so we were authorized to get Shapiro’s candid comments on tape. I was reluctant to burn my confidential informant, but there was no other way to shake Koby awake. When the chief heard what was recorded during our “sting,” he stepped into the realm of questionable activity himself by ordering the evidence destroyed.

On a rainy September evening at Chautauqua Park, only five blocks from the Ramsey house, Detective Gosage and I bought some beer and invited Shapiro to join us in my undercover car. A cordless microphone in Gosage’s baseball cap connected us with the wireless receiver and recorder in a nearby van.

Shapiro, only twenty-four years old, told us he and the district attorney spoke at least every other day, sometimes in Hunter’s office, and for up to three hours. Shapiro said he would occasionally answer his cell phone and hear a familiar voice say, “Hey, buddy, it’s Alex,” then launch into a discussion involving anything from investigative strategy and theories to what other reporters were doing.

“He’d bounce ideas off of me,” Shapiro said, opening his loose-leaf binder. “I’ve got notes.” What did Shapiro think of Patsy being the killer? What about Fleet White? How would the public react to a certain position? And Hunter wanted to be sure Shapiro kept their contact secret, telling him, “Just keep this between us boys.”

Shapiro said the DA fed him confidential evidentiary information. Once when Shapiro complained about a problem with an editor, the DA said, “Here’s something you might want to look at”—if the Ramseys woke up at 5:30 A.M., as they said, and were scheduled to leave at 6:15, they would never have made their flight. This was deep inside stuff, the police conclusion on the time line, and it became a story of the week for a tabloid newspaper, apparently courtesy of the DA himself.

“This is a good story,” Shapiro said he told the DA.

“That’s why I gave it to you,” replied Hunter. Shapiro said the DA also told him about the paintbrush fracture match and information about the garrote, long before those subjects became public. He quoted the district attorney as saying the detectives “ain’t got shit” for evidence.

The DA had held closed-door sessions with Patsy’s friend Pam Griffin, and she had described the meetings to Shapiro. According to Jeff, Griffin said, “Alex has told me that it is not John’s DNA beneath her fingernails. It is not any of the Ramseys’ DNA, and he didn’t think the Ramseys did it.”

In return for tips, Shapiro performed secret assignments for the DA. “He’d tell me it would be interesting to check this out, like the next time you talk to Pam Griffin, ask about JonBenét’s bed-wetting. Things like that.” Then Hunter dangled Fleet White as a possible story, adding, “You ought to fly to California for that.” Even Shapiro balked. “Alex, I don’t think it’s a good idea to treat your main witness as a suspect. Are you serious?”

“I just want to know about this guy,” Hunter was quoted as replying. “He’s strange. I want to know about his past.”

Following another Hunter suggestion, Shapiro flew to Michigan to thoroughly background John Ramsey.

The very mention of John Eller’s name would work Hunter into a rage. “He’s a fucking prick,” Shapiro quoted Hunter as ranting. “He’s an overweight storm trooper Nazi guy. I hate the guy! I don’t know what his fucking problem is.” He insulted Eller’s hobby of painting. “Half art but half fuckin’ lunatic. What kind of guy is this? That paints?”

When Shapiro suggested that the
Globe
do a story on Eller, the DA smiled and declared, “I think it’s
his time … .
Everybody gets their turn at being torn apart.” Hunter volunteered to hand over Eller’s confidential personnel file and mentioned charges of incompetence and sexual harassment. However, Shapiro and other journalists who had been given the same information found no basis for those accusations.

Long before the text of the ransom note became public, Shapiro’s boss, Craig Lewis, had gone to see Hunter’s top aide, Bill Wise, wanting something to publish. A following issue of the
Globe
contained a previously unseen phrase from the note.

Shapiro said that Hunter called him, frantic to discover the source. Where did they get it? the DA had asked.

You remember when Lewis went in to see Wise a few days ago?

No.

Well, he did.

Are you saying that Bill Wise was the one who … ?

Yes, Shapiro replied.

Shapiro said that Hunter, Bill Wise, and another Ramsey attorney, William Gray, owned a building together. “This is a serious Boys’ Club,” the reporter commented, then read from his notes a list of the DA’s political and financial relationships. In Colorado, a district attorney should recuse himself at the mere
appearance
of conflict of interest. In my opinion, Hunter had gone far beyond the mere appearance.

One day when Shapiro telephoned Hunter, he said, the DA whispered, “I’m in the middle of something right now. Why don’t you call me back a little later?” Shapiro did, and the district attorney said he had been unable to talk because “I had that fucking Koby in my office.”

The reporter quoted Hunter as saying that the chief of police was a nice guy but “He told me when this is all over, he wants to open a bicycle repair shop.” The district attorney had laughed in derision, Shapiro recalled. “Is that who you want running a murder investigation?”

Shapiro later said Hunter had such a tight relationship with the
Globe
that he and the tabloid’s editor, Tony Frost, giggled like boys as they paged through a
Playboy
magazine together in the DA’s office. The name of the magazine was unimportant. It was the presence of the editor of a tabloid inside the DA’s office that was a breach of Hunter’s official responsibilities, particularly since he had prosecuted several fringe players in the Ramsey investigation for peddling pictures and information to those same journals. Hardly any district attorney in the country would have placed himself in such a situation.

I still had a hard time believing this kid had compromised the district attorney so thoroughly. But when I challenged Shapiro to confirm his close contact by telephoning Hunter, he punched in a number on my mobile speaker phone without hesitation. After five rings we heard some chimes, then a voice say, “This is the Hunter residence.”

We had enough. I told Shapiro we had to get home, but before getting out, he gave us a final story. Shapiro had been busted by the sheriff’s office for pestering a lady he was trying to question. The DA’s office would prosecute the case, and Shapiro wanted guidance straight from the top guy, his “buddy,” Alex Hunter.

“Whatever you do,” advised the district attorney, famous for his plea bargains, “don’t plead guilty.”

I was out of town when Commander Eller and Detective Gosage played the Shapiro tapes for Chief Koby, who paled when he heard Hunter ridicule that “fucking Koby” for wanting to own a bike repair shop. He knew the tapes were real and documented a range of questionable and possibly illegal acts, from giving up confidential personnel files to assigning secret investigations to funneling confidential case information to a tabloid.

But instead of being angry at the district attorney, Chief Koby chastised Eller and Gosage. He asked if any copies had been made of the tape. Eller said just one and pulled it from his pocket. Koby ordered the commander to destroy the tape in his presence, and Eller reluctantly unspooled it into a trash can. Police preserve backups of important tapes specifically to prevent vital evidence from disappearing if something happens to the original. But the chief could not be certain that all copies of the tapes had been destroyed, and he had to assume that the information might someday become public or be put before a judge or a bar committee.

Koby said that Hunter’s acts might not actually be illegal but were certainly unethical. He took possession of the original tape and once again told the detectives, “I need to talk to Alex.” Exactly the wrong thing to do. A better conversation would have been with a U.S. Attorney or the state attorney general or someone else with oversight capability.

Chief Koby later chewed me out for recording the informant. I believed the chief’s conduct was unprofessional and absurd. We had eyewitness corroboration of an elected official’s misconduct, in addition to the serious ethical questions that begged answers, and Koby went after his own cops instead of squaring off against the district attorney. It was such bullshit. I was told to get on the team, quit rocking the boat, be a good little detective, and don’t sniff around the political landscape of the district attorney.

Once again a feeling of impotent rage engulfed me. Nothing, absolutely nothing, ever seemed to go right in this investigation. At lunch I read an article in a weekly newspaper about a city council candidate who had wanted a recall vote on the district attorney until Alex Hunter called him in and “laid the blame right where it belonged, at the feet of the Boulder Police Department.”

Other than burning two detectives and a confidential informant, the sting operation that documented multiple violations of the public trust by the district attorney was quietly buried. But I realized that Koby was in a delicate position, for how could he censure me, a whistleblower, without risking that I would blow the whistle even louder? He admitted that I had created “a real problem.”

PART FOUR