JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (39 page)

I didn’t answer. Sergeant Wickman had told them earlier that we wished we could replace Alex Hunter with a special prosecutor.

A train wreck was about to happen. There was absolutely no way to stop it.

The Whites’ two-thousand-word letter was printed in the local paper on January 16. In it they called for Alex Hunter to be replaced by a special prosecutor and cited what they viewed as indiscretions, poor judgment, improper relationships, and overall incompetence.

“There is a strong impression that the … district attorney has acted improperly by sharing evidence and other information with attorneys and other parties not officially involved in the investigation,” the Whites wrote. They hammered at Hunter’s tight relationships with defense lawyers, his historic lack of aggressiveness, and his leaks to the media and questioned his ability to conduct a successful prosecution. They wanted Governor Romer to intervene, although he had already backed away in private and now was forced to do so in public.

The Whites were responding, in my opinion, as the parents of the murdered child should have, but their claims were dismissed out of hand. Hunter suggested that Fleet White needed to be investigated further.

Two key witnesses had gone to war with the DA’s office, and their battles would continue alongside the Ramsey investigation for months to come.

Detective Jane Harmer lay in a hospital bed recovering from surgery, and I took her some flowers. She was pale and in obvious pain, but all she wanted to talk about was the case. “I’ll be back in a week,” she promised, giving my hand a weak squeeze. Stress was killing us, but no one was giving up. I headed for New York.

27

I finally heard the magic words while seated in the book-lined office of Don Foster, an Elizabethan scholar and professor at Vassar College in upstate New York, who just happened to be a hell of a linguistic detective. “Steve,” said Foster, “I believe I am going to conclude the ransom note was the work of a single individual: Patsy Ramsey.”

Tall and trim, with wire-rimmed glasses and a slight mustache, Foster had the look of a mild professor, but if I were a criminal, I wouldn’t want him after me. When only a University of California graduate student in 1984, he found an elegy to a murdered actor, “the late Vertuous Maister William Peter of Whipton neere Excster,” and after several years of painstaking work, proved it to be a lost work of William Shakespeare from the year 1612. Anyone that dedicated tends to finish what he starts.

Since discovering the Bard’s elegy, Foster had refined his techniques and made the news again when he unmasked the anonymous author of the highly publicized book
Primary Colors
. That led the FBI to use him to identify the Unabomber as Theodore Kaczynski. These days Foster’s telephone was ringing off the hook as police and the corporate world sought his singular expertise in textual analysis. He was the best in the country at what he did.

District Attorney Alex Hunter enlisted his help in the Ramsey case, sending Foster a copy of the ransom note and the writing samples of various people, then following up with telephone calls. Foster told me that Hunter was particularly interested in Santa Bill and Janet McReynolds, and when the professor reported, “They didn’t write that ransom note,” Hunter seemed to lose interest.

The DA’s office turned him over to the police, Beckner assigned him to me, and I ferried out to New York stacks of various people’s writing samples. He explained that his work was based on much more than just one letter looking like another. Even the slightest things, such as the use of periods or the space before the start of a paragraph, could create a distinctive linguistic fingerprint. After all, it was the unconventional use of commas that had spurred his original theory about the Shakespeare fragment.

“We can’t falsify who we are,” Foster told me. “Sentence structure, word usage, and identifying features can be a signature.”

Throughout the month, I furnished Foster with a wide range of material from a number of suspects so we would not be accused of stacking the deck. One of the first things he picked up on was Patsy’s habit of using acronyms and acrostics in her communications. She often signed off with her initials, PAPR, and used such phrases as “To BVFMFA from PPRBSJ,” which meant, “To Barbara V. Fernie, Master of Fine Arts, from Patricia Paugh Ramsey, Bachelor of Science in Journalism.” That, I thought, might somehow link to the mysterious SBTC acronym on the ransom note.

Foster was concerned that Alex Hunter still occasionally called to introduce his own theories and ideas and had told Foster there was “no way the parents did this.” To disclose such opinions to an independent examiner exposes them to attack in court, but Hunter didn’t seem to care. The DA further risked tainting Foster by sending him copies of work done by other linguistic experts, but Foster refused to open those packets. In my opinion it was as if Hunter was trying to torpedo his own witness.

“Steer clear of him. You work for the Boulder Police Department, not the DA’s office,” I told Foster.

Foster told me, “He’s just desperately trying to find an intruder. I’m not sure he has the resolve to pursue this in the direction that I’m seeing.”

Team Ramsey severed all ties with the police department with a scathing communication that accused the Boulder detectives of one of the most serious charges that can be leveled at a cop, manipulating evidence in a murder case, which is a Class II felony. They said we were trying to pin the murder on the Ramseys in order to salvage our careers and avoid being sued for libel. We felt the threat was designed to have a chilling effect on our work.

But we had heard it all before. Despite the sideshows and what the defense lawyers may have wished, evidence was still coming in that indicated Patsy Ramsey was involved in the death of her daughter.

Detective Kim Stewart learned that the white cellar door had been painted in November 1995. That meant we could quit chasing anyone who had been through the basement before then and limit our search for the owner of the unidentified palm print to the thirteen months between that point and December 26, 1996. That still left us with about two thousand people to eliminate.

We also resolved the issue of pry marks being seen on a back door of the Ramsey home. Team Ramsey had carried on quite a bit about the marks, which they said indicated an intruder. But a witness came forward to report that she had pointed out those very marks to Patsy Ramsey months before the murder. There was no intruder entry there, and the Ramseys knew it all along.

Then, while reviewing a list of book titles from the Ramsey home at the request of Don Foster, I dug out the Polaroid photographs from the Evidence Room. Using magnifying glasses, evidence tech Pat Peck and I compared the titles on the list with what the pictures showed. Entire shelves of books had been overlooked.

When we checked the photos from a big manila envelope marked as evidence item #85KKY, I almost fell out of my chair, and Peck inhaled in sharp surprise. A picture showed
Webster
’
s New Collegiate Dictionary
on a coffee table in the first-floor study, the corner of the lower left-hand page sharply creased and pointing like an arrow to the word
incest.
Somebody had apparently been looking for a definition of sexual contact between family members.

Ever so slowly, our accumulated circumstantial evidence grew.

Deputy DA Pete Hofstrom met with Fleet and Priscilla White in late January, carrying out the threat to “get their heads on straight.” I sat back to watch the prison guard “work his magic,” knowing that Hofstrom was out of his league in the Whites’ living room.

Commander Beckner had accompanied us and asked the couple to list their concerns. “I think our letter said it all,” replied Priscilla.

Hofstrom launched into an oral résumé. Fifty-two years old, born and raised in New Jersey, left home at seventeen for California, attended junior college and worked as a guard at San Quentin. “I was the youngest guard ever promoted to sergeant,” he boasted and unrolled a few prison stories. The Whites and I wondered when he was going to talk about the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.

Instead Hofstrom droned on about coming to Colorado, working in the Boulder County Jail, getting a law degree, and starting at the DA’s office. Another San Quentin story, then how he didn’t have much money and could look forward to only a small pension after committing his life to being the chief trial deputy and overseeing the felony division. The Whites glanced at me.
Weren’t we supposed to discuss the Ramsey case?
He spoke of being in poor health and having to take four medications because of his high blood pressure. He called himself “an evidence man” and “passionately committed to solving the Ramsey murder.”

When Priscilla couldn’t stand it any longer, she pointed her finger at him. “We served that little girl her last meal. She was our daughter’s best friend. We were among the last to see her alive. So don’t tell us about commitment and passion,” she seethed. “Don’t ever think your office will carry the same kind of passion and commitment to this case that we have.” The room went silent.

Hofstrom told of the hundreds of living rooms in which he had explained the criminal justice system in arranging plea bargains. He said that once the Whites understood what was happening, they would return to the fold. Fleet was unmoved. “We won’t cooperate until changes are made,” said White. “We want an outside prosecutor.”

I made it back to headquarters just as Beckner was telling the detectives that “Pete Hofstrom did a fantastic job with the Whites.” I wondered if we had been at the same house.

“They didn’t like him at all, Mark, and they aren’t going to cooperate without a special prosecutor,” I said.

“Well, screw them. Let’s just write them off,” Beckner fumed. He held a thumb and forefinger close together. “The Whites are about that far away from an obstruction-of-justice charge.”

The detective team briefings had grown brutal in January, filled with accusations and acrimony, and this one was no different.

Detective Harmer said she agreed with the Whites and thought a special prosecutor was needed.

“It’s not even an option,” Beckner said, his face turning red. “The DA has this case, and that’s just the way it is.” He was livid as he realized he had lost control of still another briefing. “I don’t want to hear any more bitching coming from you. I’m tired of it!” he barked. Detective Kim Stewart opened the door and hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the knob.

Beckner shocked us by declaring that within three to six months the investigation would wind down. Game over. Then he told us that he wanted an alibi for
every
person involved in the case. Everybody? I considered this straight out of the Hofstrom-DeMuth playbook and quite impossible because the list would be in the thousands.

The commander had reversed his pledge to allow us to stop chasing obvious dead-end leads, causing further resentment among his detectives. Tips were still flooding in from all over the country. A former Connecticut state senator told us that a serial child killer was involved with a nationwide bomb and extortion plan. A call from California alerted us that John Ramsey’s “abandoned son” worked as a restaurant short-order cook. The wackos were sucking up our investigative time. Detective Gosage demanded, “How long are we going to chase every freak and psychopath out there?”

“We’ve got to run these people down and clear their alibis,” the edgy Beckner replied.

The detectives were getting hot too. “Don’t you think we’re human?” asked an exasperated Detective Jane Harmer, who had come up empty after checking out all forty-seven registered pedophiles in Boulder County and had prowled the kiddy beauty pageant subculture, where parents knew each other and any pedophile would stand out like a sore thumb. “Don’t you think we’d love to find an intruder? To find that a parent didn’t commit this horrible crime? With suspect after suspect we hope to find that one link that would put some monster inside the house. But that’s not where the evidence is leading us.”

“If we had the same evidence against an intruder, his ass would be upside down in the county jail by now,” I said. “Why do we have no clear goal or clear mission or target?”

Beckner was now beet red. “There is direction in this case!” His voice rose to a near-shriek. “There is a big picture! Does anyone in this room think we have enough proof beyond a reasonable doubt?”

“That’s just it,” another detective responded. “We’ll never get there if we keep chasing every possible intruder who comes along.” He held up an anonymous letter from Altoona, Pennsylvania, that offered a screwball theory. “This stuff won’t crack the fuckin’ case.”

Beckner admitted that he had reached a “bond of trust” with Pete Hofstrom in the DA’s office and “we can share everything.” Someone laughed out loud at that, goading the commander to shout at us to shut up.

The commander had decided to bypass our Dream Team and was now taking his cues from Hofstrom. The detectives felt there was no mystery about why. If Beckner wanted to become chief, he needed to work with the DA’s office and was already parroting their line of “acceptable concessions” the police could make to lure the Ramseys to the interview table.

He had done a complete flip-flop, abandoned us, and in my opinion, he never came back.

On the last day of January, Day 400 of this eternal investigation, Detective Harmer discovered that only ten days before the December 23, 1996, party at the Ramsey house, there had been another function there, with caterers serving eighty people. More than six dozen new potential suspects, and Beckner’s orders were to “check every one,” even though we didn’t know who the hell they were.

28

In the first week of February the Ramseys added their eleven-year-old son, Burke, to the stable of relatives being represented by Atlanta attorney Jim Jenkins, then went on vacation to Spain; Detective Linda Arndt sued the police department, citing emotional distress and a sullied reputation; and without warning and for no reason I could ascertain, Commander Beckner told a briefing of patrol officers that there were only two suspects and that an arrest warrant was drafted.