JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (38 page)

The clue turned out to be not the tape itself but what was
on
it.

Back in February 1997, several fibers were taken from the sticky side of the tape that had been against JonBenét’s face.

When Team Ramsey finally gave us the clothing purporting to be what John and Patsy were wearing on December 25 and 26, one of the bagged items was Patsy’s red-and-black-checked jacket.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation labs ran comparison tests and reported that four fibers that had been discovered on the tape were chemically and microscopically consistent with the fibers of Patsy’s jacket.

John Ramsey had pulled the tape off JonBenét’s mouth when he found the body and left the tape in the basement. Patsy did not go down there on the morning of December 26.

So how did four fibers apparently from her jacket get on the sticky inside of the tape that gagged her daughter?

I would leave it to the lawyers to quibble over how the fibers were transferred from Patsy’s jacket to the tape, perhaps claiming she had worn the garment when she went downstairs to fetch Christmas presents, or perhaps there was a transfer to the blanket when she tucked JonBenét into bed. There were a myriad of distant possible arguments. Had the tape been removed from her mouth during the autopsy, the argument of transference would have been diminished.

But while the discovery of a single fiber might be argued, we had four!

Had the clothing been in our possession immediately after the crime, that connection would have been made in time for the April interviews. I would have sprung this on an unsuspecting Patsy Ramsey.

Even more devastating than the time delay on the jacket was the deal that was made to get the clothing. Beckner insisted there was no negative result, but I had watched Team Ramsey pull this trick too often, and demanded to know what we had to surrender this time. Beckner told us the asking price: the evidence photographs of the Ramseys in December, full access to all exculpatory evidence concerning the Ramseys, and for the police department to state publicly that there had been no evidence of prior vaginal abuse of JonBenét. They did get some photos out of it. We would have preferred to get the clothing through a search warrant that was already in preparation by Detective Kim Stewart, but that one never got off the ground either.

We gathered for the annual detective bureau luncheon on January 8, which was also the farewell salute to Eller. Twenty-five detectives showed up, Mark Beckner and Linda Arndt not among them. We had collected $410 to buy Eller a special golf club, a Big Bertha driver, as a going-away gift.

Eller spoke of our successes, the cases that had made a difference in the community, and, despite what had been done to him, he refused to say anything against the department. Detective Jane Harmer presented him with a plaque and a picture of his entire crew of detectives, except for me. I had been watching an Atlanta cemetery when it was taken.

A few days later in his office, Eller gave me a quiet warning. “The real reason that I was fired was for authorizing you and Gosage to meet and tape that informant,” he said, referring to the Jeff Shapiro recordings about Alex Hunter. “Steve, those tapes saved you,” Eller said. “Koby and Hunter were scared, and are still scared, about that.”

He was packing his career into cardboard boxes, and I realized how much of a Renaissance Man he actually was, rather than the hard-nosed brute being portrayed by the media. Classical music always played softly in John Eller’s office, his shelves contained philosophy books in addition to manuals on police procedures, and the walls were decorated with tastefully framed photographs. “My conscience is clear,” he told me. “I tried to do the right thing.”

He left Boulder soon thereafter, so totally broken that he did not even have enough money to hire a moving company. I helped him drive two trucks loaded with furniture to Miami on what we called “The Grapes of Wrath Tour.”

Patsy Ramsey sent a back-channel invitation in early January for the Boulder Police to come to Atlanta for an interview without the lawyers. It sounded too good to be true, and it was. Other than duping her messenger, Father Rol Hoverstock of St. John’s Church, nothing came of it.

“Why don’t you meet with the Ramseys?” he had asked when I visited the church one day.

“That’s what we’re trying to do,” I replied.

“No, no. They
want
to talk to you,” said Rol. “The Ramseys want to meet privately, in Atlanta, and answer questions without attorneys present. Not as suspects, but to help with any information, such as which lights were on and that sort of thing.”

“That would be a good start,” I replied, and promised to run the idea by my superiors. Father Rol was trusted by both sides. Perhaps something might come of this. The next day I told him that the police department was willing, and all the Ramseys had to do was choose a time. “If they agree, we’ll be out there on the next thing smoking,” I said.

I did not mention that Commander Beckner had asked if it could wait fourteen days so we could get a better airfare.

A week later Father Rol showed up at our headquarters. Beckner joined us in a conference room, and I asked, “Any good news?”

Rol pursed his lips and shook his head. Team Ramsey lawyer Bryan Morgan had learned of the proposal and insisted on being at any meeting between the Ramseys and the Boulder cops. The pastor said he was “reamed” by the lawyer for becoming involved and had become so annoyed with the whole process, he vented his anger on all of us. “Enough of the bullshit,” Rol said.

But instead of an interview, all he could now offer was a meeting over coffee in the Ramseys’ living room. “That’s unacceptable,” I said. We weren’t about to fly to Georgia for a coffee klatch with a lawyer. “We’re back to square one.”

I pushed back in my chair, confirmed in my belief that they had never intended to meet us unprotected by their wall of lawyers but had just been telling the good-hearted minister, who believed in their innocence, what he wanted to hear.

The next day the headline was “COPS REJECT RAMSEY OFFER TO TALK IN ATLANTA.”

Despite the unofficial overture, we had held firm on a January 9 deadline of 5 P.M. for a response from Team Ramsey about whether their clients would submit to more interviews. At nineteen minutes before five o’clock, the answer was delivered—“No.” They would not do it without seeing our evidence and reviewing the questions in advance. No police agency would agree to such terms.

Beckner put a personal letter from John Ramsey to DA investigator Lou Smit, dated December 18, on my desk. It had been mailed to Smit’s house, and long weeks had elapsed before it reached us. “Patsy and I are so very thankful you came into our lives at this time,” Ramsey wrote to Smit. It looked to me as if the investigator was being seduced.

Ramsey spent almost an entire single-spaced page fingering Santa Bill McReynolds as the killer. Was SBTC really supposed to be SBJC—Santa Bill and Janet Claus? Santa Bill wasn’t as frail as he might seem, Ramsey suggested, and the ransom note indicated the cleverness of a real writer, such as Janet McReynolds.

I later telephoned Bill McReynolds, and again he answered all my questions. “I’ll help with anything you need,” he said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Although we had cleared the McReynolds family months ago, the DA’s office and Team Ramsey would remain fixated on him.

John Ramsey suggested in his letter to Smit that other suspects might emerge. It could be anyone who read a newspaper article about his company passing the billion-dollar mark in sales, or someone who saw JonBenét riding in the Christmas parade, or maybe it was one of the customers of Access Graphics. That expanded the suspect list by another thirty thousand or so. For good measure, he threw in his loyal supporter Jim Marino as a possibility. Later in January, Marino received a voice mail message from his old pal, complimenting him for “doing such a good job [defending Ramsey] on TV.” Ramsey ended the call with, “Love ya, brother!”

Fleet and Priscilla White, more former Ramsey friends, had stirred up a hornet’s nest by openly criticizing DA Alex Hunter. Sensitive information they had given Hunter had appeared the very next week in a tabloid newspaper almost verbatim, and they were furious. They no longer believed that Hunter would ever take the case to trial and wanted him replaced by a special prosecutor. I thought that was a great idea.

These were witnesses to be prized, for Fleet had been in the cellar with John Ramsey when the body was discovered, and Priscilla had been with Patsy throughout the morning of December 26. Instead of being supported by the law enforcement officials, who needed their testimony, the couple were pilloried because they opposed the DA’s office.

They had met with Chief Koby, who vouched for Hunter’s integrity and competence. If the DA acted improperly, the chief said, he would be the one leading the charge to have Hunter removed from office. That one made me laugh, since the chief had ordered the destruction of the Shapiro sting tapes that had documented just such improprieties. In my opinion, Koby would be the last, not the first, to attack Hunter.

The Whites had been deeply hurt by the Ramseys’ naming them as possible suspects in the murder of a little girl they loved almost as much as their own daughter. Then when Fleet challenged John Ramsey in Atlanta after the funeral, their friendship ended, and the Whites became targets of a savage attack. Not only did John Ramsey suggest that Priscilla White might have used a stun gun on JonBenét, but a Ramsey pit bull defender named Susan Stine slipped police thirty-one elaborate reasons why suspicion should fall on the Whites. The preposterous claims of suspicious behavior ranged from the entire Ramsey family possibly being drugged during the Whites’ Christmas party to Priscilla enjoying room service at the Holiday Inn in Atlanta. The Whites were in the crosshairs of an assault designed to smear their credibility.

Priscilla and Fleet had both received kind notes from John and Patsy Ramsey, filled with cheery personal best wishes. The letters arrived just about the same time the Ramseys were pointing their fingers at the Whites as murder suspects. “I love you,” Patsy wrote to Priscilla, who commented, “I only knew her for two years. We never loved each other.” We would learn that similar notes were received by many other former friends who were also put on the list of suspects.

Detective Jane Harmer and I had formed a trusting relationship with the Whites over the previous months, handling them as gently as a couple of skittish thoroughbreds, but we knew they were reaching a boiling point. They asked, Why is the system failing? Why can’t we get rid of Alex Hunter? Can we get a special prosecutor? Priscilla said the DA had told her he thought the Ramseys were involved in the crime.

The Whites said they would never again speak to the district attorney and if called before a Hunter-led grand jury would volunteer nothing. “What are they going to do?” Priscilla asked. “Throw a Boulder housewife in jail?” Fleet said he wanted to punch Alex Hunter “right in the nose.”

Fleet told us that Ramsey lawyer Mike Bynum had called them shortly after the body was discovered. Surely he was talking about December 27, the night John Ramsey talked with Bynum at the Fernie house. White found his notes and said, “No, it was the day before, on the afternoon of December 26.” You sure of that date? I asked. White checked his notes again. Yes.

The minds of two detectives went into overdrive. The body of JonBenét was found at 1:05 P.M., and John and Patsy left the house at about 2:30 P.M. Now White was saying that an attorney was already in play, calling witnesses, only a few hours later. WOW!

Fleet added that he was also interviewed by three people associated with Team Ramsey the following day, December 27, when he didn’t know any better than to speak with them. The private investigators weren’t out canvassing the neighborhood for an intruder but were pinpointing the Ramseys’ best friends while the police were being stalled.

Commander Beckner was disturbed that Harmer and I would not share our information from the Whites with the district attorney. He suggested bringing Pete Hofstrom into our protective circle around the Whites. All I could do was blink. “Mark, the Whites will not cooperate with this district attorney’s office, and for good reason,” I said. “That, if anything in this case, is an absolute. Do not try to bring Pete Hofstrom into this equation. Absolutely not.”

The Whites met privately with Governor Roy Romer and with State Attorney General Gale Norton, but neither would commit to intervening. Chief Koby said that Romer had called him to talk about “the crazy Whites.” I could not believe how they were being treated.

Alex Hunter, Tom Koby, and Mark Beckner spent an entire afternoon huddling over the way Fleet and Priscilla were rocking the boat. They decided to take a hard line and send the prison guard, Pete Hofstrom, over to the Whites to “get their heads on straight.” If the couple still refused to cooperate, said Beckner, then spending some time in the Boulder County Jail might change their minds. I found that suggestion outrageous.

It was ridiculous to think that someone like Hofstrom could intimidate Fleet White, and to threaten them with jail was absurd, for
they hadn’t done anything wrong!
The reason for getting tough on the Whites had nothing to do with the pursuit of justice. The vendetta was the result of their openly criticizing the district attorney.

At breakfast one morning Fleet White showed me a three-page letter-to-the-editor he had written. He wanted to take the fight public. He smacked a big fist into his palm and said, “The whole thing stinks.” Then he asked my opinion.

“I can’t be part of any attempt to overthrow the district attorney,” I replied, taking a careful sip of coffee to stall for time while my mind absorbed this idea of witnesses storming the ramparts.

“But personally?”

I didn’t answer.

“None of the detectives would be sorry to see him go, would they?”