JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (53 page)

It is normal for authors to give interviews for their books, but it was surprising how long the Ramseys chose to remain in the public eye. Drawn like moths to the flame, they just wouldn’t shut up, and it brought them trouble.

Their publisher rushed their book to the stores, reportedly to be out before mine, although I was never in a race. My book would be done when it was done, but the Ramseys knew it was coming. When the Ramsey tome reached the stands first, interviewers were not armed with specific facts revealed later in my book. The tactic worked temporarily, for their media interviews, particularly with Barbara Walters, were of the softball variety. Even so, it seemed that every time the Ramseys opened their mouths, they hardly helped their own cause.

When my book was published, it began a most unreal experience for someone with little previous media experience. I was a cop and a carpenter, and the sudden spotlight was overwhelming. However, I was grateful for the chance to tell my story. Journalists from around the world called as the murder of a little girl in tiny Boulder, Colorado, continued to transfix the planet.

Then came the first of several media collisions between myself and the Ramseys. They had told Barbara Walters that they were never asked to take a polygraph examination, and promised her on national television that they would do so. In our interview three years earlier, I had put that very subject to them, and when my book came out detailing that episode, they had to back down. They argued semantics about the way I had phrased my request, but a police interview is to elicit information, and Patsy had volunteered to take ten lie detector tests, while John said he would be insulted if even asked to take one. Now they suddenly were trapped, and had to take a polygraph to sustain credibility. They covered their earlier promise to Walters with caveats, and refused to take any polygraph administered by the Boulder Police Department or even by the FBI, claiming the federal agency was tainted because of its involvement in the investigation into the death of their child.

After carefully arranging for their own self-sponsored polygraph session to be administered by their hand-picked questioner, something no law enforcement officer would consider genuine, they failed to pass it; the Ramseys explained the results were “inconclusive.”

John and Patsy then took more tests, with a different examiner, until they were able to give their lawyer the desired results. They held a press conference in Atlanta to announce they had “passed” their own polygraph, while continuing to refuse a test administered by law enforcement.

Shortly thereafter, the Ramseys resorted to public appeals in a search for a “suspect” once envisioned by a dead psychic who produced a composite sketch. One newpaper noted, “Law enforcement officials in Boulder don’t seem impressed.” A Boulder police official remarked, “They have said they are interested in improving their public image. This is a publicity campaign on their part. It has no effect on the case or the investigation.” Private investigator Ellis Armistead, disturbed by “the events that are taking place in the media,” resigned from Team Ramsey. Criminal defense attorneys from Team Ramsey in Denver also quietly bowed out that spring, and the Ramseys were now in the hands of an Atlanta attorney.

Alex Hunter spent the remainder of the year 2000 finishing out his timid reign as Boulder’s supreme politician and district attorney, after announcing that he would not seek re-election. I attributed his resignation to his office devastating, and then being unable to resuscitate, the Ramsey case. Decades of deal-making, waffling with the winds of political correctness, and assembling a stable of deputies who curtsied before defense attorneys eventually sank his little ship of state, which in reality was only a rust-bucket that came apart in the storm.

After publication of my book, Hunter was comical, in my opinion, as he dashed about to defend his indefensible actions. I was an inexperienced homicide investigator, he said, which missed the point that the Boulder Police Department does not have a homicide investigation unit or any detective assigned full-time to homicide investigations.

JonBenét may have been my first murder case, but I had conducted hundreds of investigations in my thirteen years as a police officer and was the detective who was trusted enough to prepare the master affidavit, to conduct the undercover operations, to interview a couple of hundred witnessess, and to question the Ramseys.

The hypocrisy of his charge was that it was Alex Hunter, after almost thirty years in office, and his entire staff, who were inexperienced in prosecuting murderers. The business of prosecuting crime in Boulder often took a back seat to political expediency.

The DA’s office, reeling from criticism that it would not pursue a murder case to trial, finally did so in mid-2000, only the second time in ten years that a first degree charge was taken before a jury. Deputy Trip DeMuth, needing to polish his law-and-order record for his candidacy to succeed Alex Hunter, was the prosecutor, and actually got a conviction. That showed that a court victory could be reached, flying in the face of the deal-making record of Hunter’s prosecutors for the past thirty years. It should be pointed out that in convicting the defendant of killing his wife, DeMuth sent to prison an indigent Hispanic house-painter from nearby Longmont represented only by two taxpayer-financed public defenders. The trial was in no way comparable to having him square off against a rich, white Boulder business executive and his wife who were surrounded by talent, money and connections of a Team Ramsey, had the Ramseys ever been indicted.

The Ramsey case should have been a pretty straightforward investigation. Perhaps the most amazing aspect was not that the case was so baffling (because in my view it wasn’t, if one carefully followed the evidence), but that Alex Hunter managed to convince people that his handling of the inquiry was some sort of accomplishment, instead of a dismal failure. In my opinion, if Hunter had done his job correctly, we could have uncovered a great deal more information and, perhaps, even had a resolution. A prosecutor can do a lot with probable cause short of arrest; it can open the door to search warrants, wiretaps and other investigative avenues. Hunter’s failure to aggressively pursue any of these options, when he knew the forensic case had holes, was inexcusable.

In just one example, I shook my head in dismay when I read a newspaper report about another crime that “Phone calls, credit cards lead police to suspect.” Denver police had cracked a tough homicide case by tracking toll calls and Visa receipts, the same sort of items the DA had obstructed us from procuring in the Ramsey case.

Hunter’s explanations rang hollow, and a funny thing happened—nothing. His office went through my book with a finetooth comb, and although he was dismissive of my charges, not once did he offer proof that my book was wrong, instead, deflecting the criticism with the mantra of “grand jury secrecy.” When Hunter claimed I ruined the case, I responded, “What case?” According to him, I was a “rogue cop” who had spilled all of the secrets, although it was his own office that long ago had made sure that no secret went unshared with Team Ramsey.

I even accepted an invitation to debate the district attorney on national television, although he refused to appear with me one-on-one. The district attorney had described the case as “an intellectual challenge.” I saw it as something more. Viewers were appalled by the smirking, laughing district attorney. Hunter soon faded away, perhaps because even while he was accusing me of taking “blood money” by writing a book, sources were telling me that he was sniffing around for opportunities on the lecture-for-profit circuit after his retirement. In fact, during the summer of 2000, while the case was presumably still being investigated, Hunter was out on the road. The DA was in Alabama addressing a group of attorneys at their beachside convention as a keynote speaker, lecturing on “Managing the High Profile Child Murder.” I could only hope he was teaching others how not to repeat the grievous mistakes, rather than acting as some sort of authority on the subject.

His resignation enabled him to tiptoe through his final months without a recall attempt, for the most often heard term was, “He’s leaving anyway.” By quitting, he avoided the supreme test of going before the voters one more time. For no matter how many straw men and intermediaries this district attorney put between himself and the Ramsey case, the simple fact remained that it all happened under his jurisdiction. His embarrassing legacy and absence of duty should pursue him forever.

In the words of one grateful editorial writer: “The one good thing that has come out of the JonBenét case is that it helped convince Hunter that twenty-eight years in office is enough … . For that, everyone can be grateful, not just Boulderites. We trust the next district attorney will be more circumspect in his or her comments, and perhaps more effective in bringing criminals to justice.”

The local newspaper, the
Daily Camera,
continued its sterling job of protecting Hunter by virtually ignoring my book, apparently just wishing it would go away. Letters poured in to me from across the nation and the Internet hummed with comment, but the
Camera
played down the growing controversy. Even as America read about the outrageous actions of the district attorney, the
Camera
ran a front-page photo of Hunter handing out minor civic awards.

In another twist, the chief of the editorial page started playing investigative reporter, and the newspaper ran a banner headline story about a California woman with a history of providing questionable information to police who claimed to possess tabloid-esque information about the case involving a pornography ring. The newpaper went beyond normal journalistic standards of independence by arranging a meeting between the woman’s lawyer and the district attorney, after which Alex Hunter said he found the comments of the surprise witness to be “very believable” and demanded a thorough police investigation. The
Rocky Mountain News
in Denver called Hunter’s response “worse than bizarre” in an editorial piece and cited his behavior as “a public official behaving no better than a gossip monger.”

Three months later, the
Camera
headline was: “No Ramsey link found.” The publisher admitted the episode “tested our best editors and news judgment.” If that was the test, they failed miserably. The alleged witness was just another wild goose for police to chase, and her claims masked only another unwarranted attack on the reputation of one of Hunter’s most severe critics, Fleet White, and his family.

The
Daily Camera,
which carries the motto of “Give light and the people will find their own way,” seemed to me to intentionally keep its readers in the dark. As author Jacques Barzun once said: “Institutions get caught. They forget their original purpose, or are no longer able to fulfill them. Many are disconnected. There is moral relaxation.” To which I thought: Keen, assertive prosecutors. Smart, confident detectives. Competent leadership, and a criminal justice system that safeguards its citizens. Isn’t that what a community wants?

The
Larry King Live
television show eventually got the Ramseys and me on the same stage, for a “debate” at the height of the controversy about our two books. I had entertained hopes that the meeting, the first between us since my interviews with them three years earlier, might shed some light on who they thought murdered JonBenét, and why. It turned out to be a rather sad and anti-climactic meeting with little accomplished. Their stance remained simply that some unknown intruder did it for reasons unknown.

We were carefully kept apart until we actually walked onto the set, where the atmosphere was tense and brittle. No one knew what was going to happen, but the show degenerated into the confrontational and antagonistic approach the Ramseys had displayed toward law enforcement since shortly after the murder. I would have preferred an actual debate, and soon realized their apparent strategy was to interrupt and talk over me. My points were limited. John Ramsey conducted a diatribe that did little other than show viewers that he was outraged. He seemed to be more angry at me than at the killer of his child.

Patsy rarely spoke. This woman with whom I had become so familiar through the long investigation actually reached over to touch my sleeve at one point, softly saying “We’ve got to work together.” Patsy also asked me to look at her and tell her what I thought. I did. “I’ll look you right in the eye. I think you’re good for this.” Patsy denied it, but seemed rattled by the exchange.

When John Ramsey demanded that federal law enforcement should be required by law to investigate all child murders, but criticized the FBI heavily for assisting in the case involving his daughter, I asked, “Who do you want to investigate it, the Border Patrol?” Ramsey suggested that the FBI had a vested interest and was not impartial. He also refused to commit to a legitimate FBI polygraph.

But I did get them to pledge to Larry King and his vast audience that they would appear in the Boulder Police Department the following Monday morning, with their private investigators, to exchange information. Once again, they broke another seemingly open promise to cooperate. The vow was sidetracked by excuses and conditions. In my opinion, if they ever appear at the doorstep of the BPD, it will be behind a curtain of caveats that will render any discussion into another public relations ploy.

And, surprisingly, John Ramsey and I actually agreed on something. Both of us believe that the writer of the ransom note is also the killer of JonBenét. We disagreed strongly on who wrote the note. I pointed out that of more than seventy suspects from whom police had taken handwriting samples during my time on the case, including from people deemed by Team Ramsey to be most likely to have some knowledge of the crime, it was Patsy Ramsey’s handwriting which showed evidence to suggest authorship of the note. John Ramsey insisted the unnamed intruder wrote it.