JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (42 page)

Commander Beckner suggested instead that Detective Jane Harmer try to continue her “telephone relationship” with Patsy.

Meanwhile we had found out that while the Ramseys would not talk to us, they were giving interviews for a film being cobbled together by a University of Colorado journalism teacher and two
Newsweek
reporters. It became known as their “crockumentary.”

Don Foster from Vassar, the top linguistics man in the country, made his conclusion firm in March. “In my opinion, it is not possible that any individual except Patsy Ramsey wrote the ransom note,” he told a special briefing in Boulder, adding that she had been unassisted in writing it.

With his sterling academic reputation and a track record of 152—0 in deciphering anonymous writings, this should have been a thunderbolt of evidence, but the DA’s office, without telling us, had already discredited and discarded the professor. His coming to Boulder was a big waste of time.

In our case, Foster examined hundreds of writing samples from people ranging from family members to Internet addicts, from neighbors to Chris Wolf to the McReynolds family, and a library of books, films, and videotapes.

Patsy Ramsey wrote it, he said. “Those are her words.”

While Foster made that dramatic statement, Deputy DA Pete Hofstrom read a book and didn’t look up. He occasionally rubbed his head and ignored the expert. I believed Hofstrom had already decided that Foster, with his definitive report, would never go before the grand jury, and he never did.

But that day in March, he built a wall of linguistic evidence before our eyes, brick by brick.

He explained that language is infinitely diverse and that no two people use it in quite the same way. They do not have the same vocabulary, use identical spelling and punctuation, construct sentences in the same manner, read the same books, or express the same beliefs and ideas. Ingrained and unconscious habits are virtually impossible to conceal, even if a writer tries to disguise his identity, he said. “Individuals are prisoners of their own language.”

Foster dissected the ransom note, explained that the wording contained intelligent and sometimes clever usage of language, and said the text suggested someone who was trying to deceive.

The documents he studied from Patsy Ramsey, in his opinion, formed “a precise and unequivocal match” with the ransom note. He read a list of “unique matches” with the note that included such things as her penchant for inventing private acronyms, spelling habits, indentation, alliterative phrasing, metaphors, grammar, vocabulary, frequent use of exclamation points, and even the format of her handwriting on the page.

Chief Koby was so impressed that over lunch he confided in total seriousness, “You know, this is exactly what Hunter has thought from day one—that Patsy did it.”

In the afternoon session, Foster explained why the “foreign terrorists” claim was “transparently inauthentic” and that the $118,000 ransom demand could have had its genesis from three points: the Ramsey home computer held the net liabilities figure of $1,118,000; Patsy Ramsey referred to Psalm 118 in some of her writings; and she had access to the pay stub containing that almost precise bonus figure. A stranger would not have had such inside information.

He pointed out how the odd usage “and hence” appeared both in the ransom note and in her 1997 Christmas letter.

The professor examined the construction of the letter “a” in the ransom note and in Patsy’s handwriting and noted how her writing changed abruptly after the death of JonBenét.

In the decade prior to the homicide, Patsy freely interchanged the manuscript “a” and the cursive “
a
.” But in the months prior to December 1996, she exhibited a marked preference for the manuscript “a.” The ransom note contained such a manuscript “a” 109 times and the cursive version only 5 times. But after the Ramseys were given a copy of the ransom note, Foster found only a single manuscript “a” in her writing, while the cursive
“a”
now appeared 1,404 times!

That lone exception was in the sample that her mother had unexpectedly handed to Detective Gosage in Atlanta.

Not only did certain letters change, but her entire writing style seemed to have been transformed after the homicide. There were new ways of indenting, spelling, and writing out long numbers that contrasted with her earlier examples, and she was the only suspect who altered her usual preferences when supplying writing samples to the police.

Foster used an overhead projector to describe Patsy Ramsey’s habit of creating acronyms and acrostics, which she did with astonishing frequency.

We had never found a satisfactory explanation for the S.B.T.C. sign-off on the ransom note until Foster drew our attention to John Ramsey’s Bible, which was found open at Psalms 35 and 36 on his desk. Aloud, Foster read the first four verses:

Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me.

Take up shield and buckler; arise and come to my aid.

Brandish spear and javelin against those who pursue me.

Say to my soul, “I am your salvation.”

He pointed to the first letter of each verse and showed that they produced the acronym CTBS—the reversal of SBTC. Those letters appear in that arrangement nowhere else in the Bible, in either sequence. It was difficult to believe that the terrorists who killed the child had also been up in the third-floor study reading the Ramsey Bible.

On and on Foster probed, racing through numerous compelling points that left little doubt the ransom note came from Patsy’s hand. The Vassar scholar explained that as people change over time, they incorporate some of what they read and experience into their language. “The Ramsey library contains many books that were sources for Patsy Ramsey’s nineteen ninety-five and ninety-six writings, many of which also contain startling verbal or other detailed parallels with the Ramsey homicide and attendant staging, including language that appears in the ransom note,” he said.

When Foster was done, DA Alex Hunter said he “needed time to digest” the mass of information that had been presented. Pete Hofstrom closed his book and walked away, seemingly bored.

I was totally engrossed by the presentation and thought Foster had thoroughly tied Patsy to the ransom note. It was a bombshell of evidence. So why did the DA’s office seem so dismissive?

The district attorney continued to call Foster privately over the coming weeks, and Foster told me he was puzzled by Hunter’s reluctance to move forward. “How can anyone still think this was the work of an intruder? This case appears solved. Now it needs to be prosecuted.”

The answer came several weeks later when Pete Hofstrom sent over a package from an Internet junkie named Susan Bennett, who had been in contact with Lou Smit.

Her material indicated that back when Foster was just another Internet observer without access to official information, he had gotten involved in an Internet chat about JonBenét with Susan Bennett, who used the name of Jameson on the Net. Foster once guessed incorrectly that the anonymous Jameson was really John Andrew Ramsey, the oldest son of John Ramsey.

Then Foster wrote a letter to Patsy Ramsey, suggesting that he thought she was innocent. Those statements were made
before
Foster was brought aboard to look at the case file, after which he changed his conclusion 180 degrees. To me, that only strengthened his position, not weakened it, for it showed he had no anti-Ramsey bias. Once the professor had access to the actual case documents, he changed his mind.

Bob Keatley, our in-house counsel, then pointed to the postmark on the envelope,
July
1997.

One detective yelled, “They’ve had these fucking documents for ten months!” It had lain in the DA’s case file all year, while I was working with Foster, and Hunter himself was calling the professor with suggestions.

The DA’s office knew all about the damaging information before the professor conducted his studies or came to Boulder and even while Hunter was pumping him about other possible suspects. In my opinion, Foster apparently had value until the moment he pointed his finger at Patsy Ramsey.

I believed that if Foster had said Santa Bill McReynolds or Chris Wolf or any of a dozen other suspects wrote the note, the DA’s office would have been off and running after them. But now Pete Hofstrom dismissed Foster with a terse “The defense would eat him alive.”

They should have fought to use Foster’s expertise as the premier linguist in the nation, and explained to the jurors the totally different conditions under which he made his earlier statements. That’s what courtroom argument is for. Take your best shot, and let the jury decide. The defense might have eaten him alive, but Foster might have taken a bite out of them instead.

With Foster’s conclusion and the panel of doctors who confirmed prior vaginal trauma, we felt we had met the criteria set by Pete Hofstrom for prosecution.

Instead Foster was consigned to the DA’s junk pile. Losing him was a devastating blow.

30

Police Chief Tom Koby was forced from office by a junta of the acting city manager, the new mayor, and the city council, and wheels were set in motion to replace him by June. He was transferred to the office of the city manager at his full annual salary of $102,353 to work on “special projects.” Koby saw it differently. “I was fired,” he told me.

He lashed out before he left with a department-wide e-mail, chiding officers who let “everyone else do the work” and to “grow up and join the real world.” Zen had collapsed.

The firing of Koby left the entire city hierarchy in flux. The mayor had resigned, the city manager quit, the police chief and a police commander were fired, and the deputy city manager slot was vacant, as were the positions of planning director and director of human resources.

District Attorney Alex Hunter was untouched by the chaos, his position unassailable.

Lou Smit and I picked up regular coffees at Peabody’s coffee shop and took a table. It was good to see him again, although he was not totally recovered from a three-week bout with meningitis. At a quiet table we went round and round on the Ramsey case, from the 911 call to the grand jury, and did not change our opinions.

For the first time I put my personal theory into words. I did not think John Ramsey was involved in the death itself, because we had found nothing to indicate that. I now viewed him as a man standing by his wife, insulating her with lawyers. There was no doubt in my mind that Patsy wrote the note. “I believe she committed the murder,” I told Smit and proceeded to lay out what I thought had happened that night.

In my hypothesis, an approaching fortieth birthday, the busy holiday season, an exhausting Christmas Day, a couple of glasses of wine, and an argument with JonBenét had left Patsy frazzled. Her beautiful daughter, whom she frequently dressed almost as a twin, had rebelled against wearing the same outfit as her mother.

When they came home, John Ramsey helped Burke put together a Christmas toy. JonBenét, who had not eaten much at the Whites’ party, was hungry. Her mother let her have some pineapple, and then the kids were put to bed. John Ramsey read to his little girl. Then he went to bed. Patsy stayed up to prepare for the trip to Michigan the next morning, a trip she admittedly did not particularly want to make.

Later JonBenét awakened after wetting her bed, as indicated by the plastic sheets, the urine stains, the pull-up diaper package hanging halfway out of a cabinet, and the balled-up turtleneck found in the bathroom. I concluded that the little girl had worn the red turtleneck to bed, as her mother originally said, and that it was stripped off when it got wet.

As I told Smith, I never believed the child was sexually abused for the gratification of the offender but that the vaginal trauma was some sort of corporal punishment. The dark fibers found in her pubic region could have come from the violent wiping of a wet child. Patsy probably yanked out the diaper package in cleaning up JonBenét.

Patsy would not be the first mother to lose control in such a situation. One of the doctors we consulted cited toileting issues as a textbook example of causing a parental rage. So, in my hypothesis, there was some sort of explosive encounter in the child’s bathroom sometime prior to one o’clock in the morning, the time suggested by the digestion rate of the pineapple found in the child’s stomach. I believed JonBenét was slammed against a hard surface, such as the edge of the tub, inflicting a mortal head wound. She was unconscious, but her heart was still beating. Patsy would not have known that JonBenét was still alive, because the child already appeared to be dead. The massive head trauma would have eventually killed her.

It was the critical moment in which she had to either call for help or find an alternative explanation for her daughter’s death. It was accidental in the sense that the situation had developed without motive or premeditation. She could have called for help but chose not to. An emergency room doctor probably would have questioned the “accident” and called the police. Still, little would have happened to Patsy in Boulder. But I believe panic overtook her.

John and Burke continued to sleep while Patsy moved the body of JonBenét down to the basement and hid her in the little room.

As I pictured the scene, her dilemma was that police would assume the obvious if a six-year-old child was found dead in a private home without any satisfactory explanation. Patsy needed a diversion and planned the way she thought a kidnapping should look.

She returned upstairs to the kitchen and grabbed her tablet and a felt-tipped pen, flipped to the middle of the tablet, and started a ransom note, drafting one that ended on page 25. For some reason she discarded that one and ripped pages 17-25 from the tablet. Police never found those pages.

On page 26, she began the “Mr. & Mrs. I,” then also abandoned that false start. At some point she drafted the long ransom note. By doing so, she created the government’s best piece of evidence.