JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (45 page)

We prepared the presentation under the guidance of our Dream Team attorneys. “Aim at Hunter,” they advised. Pete Hofstrom and the usual array of advisers would be on hand, but the ultimate call had to be made by the Boulder County District Attorney.

We designed a subtle, dispassionate approach to let the facts and evidence tell the story. Instead of a who-did-what scenario, we would show that no intruder could have committed the crime and would prove a compelling need for a grand jury.

It wouldn’t be just a group of detectives doing the talking, either. Our attorneys armed us with computer graphics and all the tools of the modern prosecutor to display our case. We were totally confident in our material.

Two days before we were to go onstage, we got some surprising big news when the Colorado Bureau of Investigation lab told us that the acrylic fibers found on the duct tape that covered JonBenét’s mouth were a “likely match” for Patsy’s blazer. We were ready.

Since none of the district attorney’s prosecutors were deemed able to run a grand jury, there would be a welcome new face in the room for the presentation.

The DA had hired attorney Mike Kane, a former assistant U.S. Attorney who was said to be a grand jury wizard, to handle the case. Kane had deep Colorado roots and had worked for the Denver district attorney. He currently worked in Pennsylvania.

Commander Beckner told us, however, that Deputy DA Hofstrom remained in charge. Kane, a lean and studious man with a fine record in prosecuting murder cases, was no higher than number three on the totem pole, no matter how aggressive he might be. And that was only if the DA decided to use a grand jury at all, which was far from a certainty.

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It was show time for the Boulder detectives. Everything up to now was in preparation for what we would do on June 1 and 2, 1998. We had spent weeks putting together our presentation, refining our scripts, arranging slides and photographs, running through dress rehearsals, minutely going over every detail. We knew it could very well be the last time we touched the case, and we wanted to do the best job possible. The pressure on each of us was immense, for there was no room for error. But we were ready and confident in our skills and in agreement that our material was more than powerful enough to convince the district attorney to call a grand jury. “We’ll kick their ass with this stuff,” Sergeant Wickman boomed enthusiastically during a final rehearsal.

The media swirled about the Coors Events Center at the University of Colorado, where we would be meeting, long before it was time to start. It was a visible reminder of how closely the world was watching.

The seats in the conference room were arranged in tiers and were generally divided between the police, primarily seated on the right side, DA Alex Hunter and his staff in the middle, and everyone else—agents from the FBI’s Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, representatives from the state attorney general, our three Dream Team attorneys, Hunter’s DA advisers, lab experts, and others such as Dr. Henry Lee and DNA expert Barry Scheck sprinkled between. In all, some forty people had gathered to hear our presentation. Deputy DA Pete Hofstrom sat in the back row, ready to take notes with his legal pads and green, blue, and red pens. Our files and displays were arranged within easy reach around the stage.

I set the tone in my opening statement by flashing on the screen behind me a series of huge photographs—JonBenét with her brother, Burke, on Christmas morning, 1996; JonBenét with her Christmas bike; and JonBenét at the side of her mother, Patsy Ramsey, who was four days shy of her fortieth birthday. Patsy’s fingers tightly gripped her daughter’s arm. The picture remained up while I gave the overview, then gave way to a series of slides.

For more than an hour I painstakingly went over the sequence of events on the morning of December 26, pointing out discrepancies along the way, and ended with a description of how the Ramseys, for the most part, had avoided being questioned by the Boulder police while making controlled media appearances.

During a break I met Barry Scheck, the DNA expert from the O. J. Simpson defense team, and asked him to tell us if we were full of shit on this thing. Scheck replied, “To tell you the truth, I’m leaning your way. I’m more of a friend than you think.” He encouraged me to hang tough in the face of the media barrage. “Until somebody has been in one of these firestorms, they can’t appreciate what it’s like,” he said. He should know.

Detective Everett presented the biography of JonBenét, noting particularly that the girl had made thirty-three visits to the Boulder pediatrician in three years and that the doctor received three calls from Patsy on December 17, for some reason we did not know. Then Detective Jane Harmer gave the family overview, and Detective Trujillo explained the autopsy information. Trujillo carefully recited the conclusions of experts who effectively knocked down the stubborn issue of the stun gun, which the detectives believed never existed and which had become a cornerstone of the Intruder Theory.

The critical pineapple evidence was discussed by another detective. “The $118,000 question is this: When and where was that fresh pineapple consumed?” he asked. There were three theories—that she ate it before leaving the house at 5 P.M., at the Whites’, or after she returned home.

If the fruit was consumed before she left for the Whites’ party, then given the rate of digestion that obviously stopped with her death, the evidence would indicate that she was probably killed shortly after she arrived home. This would have been the very outside edge of the time frame for the time of death. An intruder would have been incredibly bold to do it this way as the rest of the family prepared for bed.

We knew pineapple was not served at the Whites’ party, which ruled out the second option.

That would indicate that she ate it between the time she returned home about 10 P.M. and the time she died. But if that were the case, then she wasn’t carried straight to bed, asleep, as her parents claimed. She ate the pineapple, it was digested, and then she was killed. This was the only way the evidence made sense.

Another part to the theory that she ate it after returning home seemed even more incredible to me. This scenario would have her awakened sometime during the night after being put to bed, eating the pineapple, digesting it for two to five hours, and then being killed by an intruder at some time before Patsy found the note.

Detective Harmer presented a surprising anatomy lesson on vaginas to a meeting attended primarily by men. She showed a picture of the vagina of a normal healthy six-year-old girl and contrasted it with a photo of the vagina of JonBenét. Even to the uninformed the visual difference was apparent, and Harmer cited the experts who said there was evidence of “chronic sexual abuse,” although the detectives referred to it only as “prior vaginal trauma.”

Then we presented information on the paintbrush, the handle for the garrote, the paint tray, and the matching paint on the handle and the broken brush. The splinter in the vagina had caused a disagreement among the examiners. Some examiners said it had been in the vagina as long as a week, but the detectives sided with Dr. Spitz’s conclusion that it was inserted about the time of death as a part of the staging.

Doctor Lee warned us that Team Ramsey could be expected to fight back with their own expert opinions. “You get one expert to say something, defense gets two,” he said.

As anticipated, Detective Trujillo’s presentation of the DNA evidence led to a long discussion between Scheck, Lee, and an expert from the CBI that sounded like Latin to the rest of us. Unknown DNA was present, but it could have been from anybody, and there were serious issues of possible contamination of the samples. The use of the same clippers for all of her fingers during the autopsy, and maybe even other subjects’ as well, could have caused a problem. More work clearly needed to be done, but we needed subpoena power to do it. Scheck said later that he saw a lot of potential questions but felt by instinct that some sort of “contaminant” may have caused the unidentified DNA. He said the CellMark tests raised more questions than they answered.

Trujillo presented the news that four red acrylic fibers on the duct tape covering JonBenét’s mouth were consistent with Patsy’s blazer. The room came to a jarring halt for a moment, since it was the first the attendees had heard of that result.

Trujillo added that fiber testing was still incomplete because we were unable to obtain Patsy’s red turtleneck, slacks, footwear, and fur clothing, although we still had not identified the beaver hair from the duct tape. When the audience learned that we did not have the credit card and telephone records, one of Hunter’s task force of metro DAs asked Commander Mark Beckner why. “That’s some pretty basic stuff,” Adams County DA Bob Grant said. Beckner, instead of laying the blame on Hunter’s office, where it belonged, shrugged, “We just didn’t,” leaving listeners to believe it was a police screwup.

Detective Everett presented the crime scene, and we got a glimpse of the analytical mind of new prosecutor Mike Kane and liked what we saw. Questions were raised when detectives described the dispute about whether the spiderweb at the basement window was elastic enough to have been stretched. No photographs had been taken, and there were contrary opinions on whether the metal grate was moved. Kane simply asked if a police officer could testify to seeing the web intact on the morning of December 26. Everett said several could, and Kane nodded in approval.

Kane was bothered about why the unidentified pubic hair had not been tested in the past year and a half. The DA’s office said the testing had not begun because the FBI would not allow Team Ramsey to be present in the lab.

Ransom note inconsistencies were discussed, and we pointed out that none of the expert document examiners, not even those hired by the defense, could eliminate Patsy Ramsey as the author. The CBI examiner explained that of the seventy-three persons whose writing had been investigated, there was only one whose writing showed evidence that suggested authorship and had been in the home the night of the killing and could not be eliminated by no less than six document examiners—Patsy Ramsey. I followed that up with a lengthy description of the findings by linguist Don Foster, who had concluded that Patsy wrote the ransom note.

Detective Gosage discussed the cord and described how the duct tape on JonBenét’s mouth bore a perfect lip impression, indicating that she did not struggle against it. He also described his search for the Hi-Tec boot print and the still unidentified palm print on the cellar door. We ended the first day with the powerful review of the 911 emergency call enhancement, which proved that Burke was awake, not asleep as his parents claimed.

As we left the auditorium, the detectives could feel the current of excitement. The state attorney general’s office and our Dream Team were lobbying for Don Foster to be used as a witness in court. One member of Hunter’s task force of metro DAs observed that it seemed as if all the evidence that could be marshaled for a Ramsey defense could be explained away. Another of his DA advisers exclaimed, “I’d love to try this case.” These were Hunter’s own people talking! I walked out of there pretty optimistic.

The following day I presented the Atlanta overview, our trips to other states, and the covert grave-site surveillance operations and said we still had work to do in Georgia, ranging from getting palm prints from Patsy’s parents and sisters to interviewing the former mistress about John Ramsey’s infidelity. Detectives Gosage and Harmer went over the Access Graphics interviews and other suspects in the case, including Boulder County’s known pedophiles, domestic help, contract workers, Santa Bill McReynolds, and Chris Wolf.

“Is anyone going to talk about Fleet White?” The question came from Bill Wise, Hunter’s first assistant district attorney, who was being allowed to officially reenter the case.

“What do you want to know?” Harmer asked.

“Is he cleared?”

“Yes.”

The time flew by. We hardly needed our notes as we carefully laid out the case we had lived with for so long. I had wanted to deliver my closing for more than a year, and stepped to the podium to give the first blow of our one-two punch. I would list the reasons to believe the Ramseys knew about and were involved with the murder, while Sergeant Wickman would follow with an attack on the Intruder Theory.

I said that more than a dozen points led us to the Ramseys. Prior vaginal trauma came first. Then I went through the ransom note, the pen, pad, handwriting, and practice notes, as well as the textual analysis and Don Foster’s conclusion that Patsy was the author.

To that list I added the 911 enhancement, which, contrary to what the Ramseys had said, showed Burke was awake; the inconsistent statements, such as when John Ramsey challenged the independent recollections of three police officers who claimed to hear him say the house was locked and the statement that he had read to JonBenét that night; and the link between the paintbrush garrote murder weapon and the paint tote inside the home.

There was the confusing architecture of the house to consider; the staging aspects of the crime, deliberately meant to misdirect the detectives; the pineapple source and fingerprints on the bowl; the time of death in our estimate being within the date of death noted on the headstone (December 25, 1996); the scream heard by a neighbor but not by the parents in the house; the odd behavior of the parents, such as Patsy fixing her hair and putting on fresh makeup but wearing the same clothes from the day before; the parents having the opportunity no other suspects had, since they were at home all night; and finally, the fibers found on the tape.

That, I felt, established the major points. It was time to let Sergeant Wickman confront the Intruder Theory.

“The prominent red flag in the big picture is the utter illogic of such an intruder’s actions and behaviors,” Wickman said. “For one to believe an intruder committed this crime, one would also have to believe all of these things.” Enumerating conflicting points, Wickman asked, “Would an intruder”: