We Have Your Daughter Page 18

  Notes regarding planning for Burke Ramsey’s interview by Boulder Social Services.

  Following quotes are from portions of Dr. Suzanne Bernhard’s Interview—Boulder Department of Social Services “Evaluation of the Child” report on Burke Ramsey—January 8, 1997:

  The parents refused to allow DSS [Department of Social Services] and the police to interview Burke. They agreed that Burke could be interviewed as long as a psychologist conducted it.

  Although Burke is just shy of his tenth birthday, he appears younger than his years. Initially he was rather reserved and then later “warmed up’” during the interview. He was articulate and bright. His answers to questions were rather brief, as he did not elaborate. It was clear that the parents did not discuss with him how JonBenét died. Burke stated that “she was probably stabbed with a knife.” At one point in the interview, Burke described a nightmare he has had since his sister’s death. Burke said he had a dream that he and his mother were tied up and a big axe was above them, swinging back and forth above them, getting closer and closer, “like it was going to cut us in half.”

  Dr. Bernhard talked with Burke Ramsey about his relationships in the family:

  “When asked, Burke said he didn’t think he received any more or less attention than JonBenét.”

  “He wants to be a pilot like his dad. His dad works long hours and his mom takes care of him.”

  “Reportedly both JonBenét and Burke were bedwetters, but during the interview Burke denied that he had a problem with wetting the bed.”

  “Burke also denied any sexual touch between him and his family members.”

  From the psychologist: “I reviewed both JonBenét and Burke’s medical records. Their pediatrician is Dr. Beuf. The medical records did not indicate any history of abuse of either child.”

  The interview with Burke elicited a strong opinion about any possible involvement the brother may have had in his sister’s death and was included in the Human Services “Evaluation of the Child” report: “From the interview it is clear that Burke was not a witness to JonBenét’s death. He does not appear fearful at home. However, he seems somewhat disconnected and isolated in his family. According to Dr. Bernhard, it seems as though Burke has not begun to grieve his sister’s death.”

  Two weeks after JonBenét’s death, in his first public question-and-answer session with the media in which he met with five selected reporters, Boulder Police Department Chief Tom Koby defended his department’s investigation of the Ramsey murder case with some startling statements. His department had come under scrutiny for the way the investigation was being handled. The Rocky Mountain News published a related article on January 10, 1997 that featured the following headline and direct quotes from Koby:

  I’ve been in communication with police personnel around the country and most legal experts will tell you we’ve done it just right.

  There is nothing that’s been done either by us or the Ramsey family that is out of order.

  The article also stated that, according to Koby, BPD “detectives do not consider the Ramseys’ decision to hire attorneys incriminating,” and “to insinuate the girl’s parents are guilty … ‘is totally unfair.’”

  That comment by Koby contradicted what his commander on the case, and some of his detectives, were telling reporters “off the record” about the Ramseys hiring attorneys.

  Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter had watched the Koby news conference on television. He and Koby were good friends, but the police chief’s “we’ve done it just right” statement unsettled Hunter. There were also several editorials published in local newspapers that disagreed with the “we’ve done it just right” statement. Hunter had been fortunate in his several terms in office to have good media relations and few controversial cases in his county. He had been hopeful that Koby’s news conference would help him out as well. But by the end of the news conference, he did not think it had gone well at all.

  “The police were still keeping quiet officially and denying the obvious,” he would later state. “I decided I needed to attempt to talk more to the reporters and keep up good relations.”

  Within weeks, Hunter was meeting with mainstream reporters, tabloid reporters, even the editor of the Globe tabloid.

  “I was very careful not to tell the media specifics on the case,” Hunter said. “I needed to try to handle the media better and get to know them on a personal basis so I knew who I could trust and who I didn’t. That’s one of the reasons I did it.” He also enjoyed the celebrity, according to someone in his office who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

  Ramsey attorney Hal Haddon has said, “Alex’s biggest mistakes on the case were he tried to be all things to all people. He could have taken control of it early on by putting this grand jury on and that would have had the effect of controlling the police, controlling the rumors that became endemic in the case. Which would have put him in charge. But it ended up that nobody was in charge. The police envisioned they were in charge. The prosecutors thought they were in charge. They worked at cross purposes.”

  By state statute in Colorado, the chief law enforcement officer in a judicial district is the district attorney. This meant Hunter should have been in charge of the Ramsey murder case. His leadership in the case was so lacking, however, that he was criticized publicly in multiple media editorials for “not taking charge.”

  Hunter was Boulder County’s District Attorney for seven terms for a total of twenty-eight years. He looked like the ideal grandfather, was charming in a politician’s way and his “Aw, shucks” persona worked in Boulder. It did not, however, work in national news conferences with their unrelenting focus. Hunter could be temperamental, but those in his office at the time have suggested he might have behaved that way for show. He fretted over the Ramsey media coverage and how it portrayed his office and the Boulder Police Department, yet wasn’t sure what he should do to correct it other than to visit more with reporters in order to promote “good will.” During all his years in office, Hunter was considered a hands-off district attorney who let others in the office handle day-to-day operations while he dealt with politics.

  “He rarely came to the office,” said one of his colleagues, “until the Ramsey case. Then he was here nearly every day. At his very core, during those many years in office, he was a politician.”

  Within a few weeks of Koby’s news conference, Hunter found out that the Ramsey case commander and his detectives were not sharing forensic results from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, including the DNA report from JonBenét’s body, with his office. Hunter went from being temperamental to furious. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which was analyzing the reports, agreed to copy Hunter’s office on the reports they had analyzed for the BPD, but having to resolve such difficulties between two agencies that should have been working together took more time away from the investigation. The situation also underscored the difficulties that existed between the Boulder District Attorney’s Office and the Boulder Police Department.

  Although most police agencies share investigative material with their county’s district attorney’s office, according to homicide experts, they are not obligated to do so until a case is offered for criminal filing or another criminal proceeding. Sharing information, experts say, however, is the best practice.

  By this stage in the Ramsey murder investigation, the manipulators had become the manipulated. The Boulder Police Department and the Boulder District Attorney’s office were actively using and trying to control each other, while both were manipulating the media. Also by this point, the Ramsey attorneys had become aware they needed to get involved and fight back using the media.

  JONBENÉT

  © John Ramsey.

  JonBenét and Burke on his birthday. © John Ramsey

  JonBenét on bicycle. © John Ramsey.

  JonBenét taking piano lessons. © John Ramsey.

  © John Ramsey.

  © John Ramsey.

  Family on Fo
urth of July in Michigan. © John Ramsey.

  Last photo John Ramsey took of his daughter. It’s on Christmas Day after the family had finished opening Christmas presents. JonBenét and her mom were relaxing together. This is approximately fourteen hours before she was killed. © John Ramsey.

  CHAPTER 15

  CHILD BEAUTY PAGEANTS

  The contrast between JonBenét, the pageant contestant and JonBenét, the little girl throwing rocks into the lake. © John Ramsey

  CHILD BEAUTY PAGEANT PHOTOS AND VIDEO became the criminal record the Ramseys didn’t have.

  Initial shock at the murder of a child was quickly overridden with broadcasts of the pageants of the dead girl. According to then-Adams County District Attorney Bob Grant, who was asked in 1997 by Colorado Governor Roy Romer to become involved in the Ramsey murder investigation, “Those tapes caught fire and people rose to that publicity bait like hungry jackals. Those in the case and on the periphery. Anyone who was seeking a moment of media spotlight or wanted to be a hero. It was a call of ‘all aboard’ and there was a scramble to see who could be the most important. The investigation was competing with that.”

  Five days after JonBenét’s body was discovered, her child pageant videos and still photographs were shown nationally by NBC and CBS on their evening newscasts. Two days later and a week after her body had been found, the videos and photos were broadcast again on January 2 by NBC and CBS. ABC began using JonBenét’s child pageant videos on January 3 and CNN on January 5. From then on, all four national newscasts used the pageant videos and photos of JonBenét in some format nearly continuously for weeks. Local television stations throughout the country got the JonBenét pageant videos and photos from their national affiliates. Photographers who had originally recorded the videos and shot the photos sold them to the media. The Ramsey family did not own any of these rights, nor provide any of the videos or photos.

  “Pageants were put on trial,” Betsi Grabe, PhD, a professor of Mass Communications at Indiana University-Bloomington, who studies the effects of news images on public opinion, has said. “If pageants were evil, then who is putting these children into them? The parents. That made them bad parents. The Ramseys were made into ‘look what they made their child do.’ Then you can make the next step in their guilt. It’s a very slippery slope, especially when the video of JonBenét is playing over and over and over on television.”

  The underlying apprehension and, in some cases, rage that others possessed regarding John—and especially Patsy—Ramsey were soon on full display. In private conversations and very public radio talk shows, the public demanded to know why a parent would subject their child to the demands of the beauty pageant circuit. “Isn’t there enough pressure in children’s lives already?” people asked. “What kind of lesson does a child learn when they earn success based on how they look?”

  The answers did not give a caring portrait of the Ramseys as parents. According to NewsLibrary.com, more than 125 negative articles were written and published throughout the country on child beauty pageants in January and February 1997. At least twice that number referred to JonBenét Ramsey as the “murdered child beauty queen.” The Kansas City Star ran an editorial on January 19, 1997, about John and Patsy entitled “Pillars of a community? These parents are creeps.”

  According to Hilary Levey Friedman, PhD, a Harvard sociologist who has studied child beauty pageants as well as JonBenét Ramsey’s involvement in pageants, “This combination of wealth, attractiveness, the mystery of the murder and then the child beauty pageant angle made [the Ramsey murder investigation] a national and international story. The child pageants weren’t something that people were very aware of until JonBenét’s murder. Their reactions to what they saw on television were that the child pageants were extreme and crazy.”

  Patsy had represented West Virginia in the Miss America Pageant, entering the pageant when she was in college and winning an award on the national level for dramatic interpretation. She had been in pageants growing up, and her mother had been a big part of this experience with her. “It was fun and we got very close to each other,” Patsy would later say.

  JonBenét was first exposed to pageants in 1993 when Patsy was invited to host a Miss West Virginia Pageant and brought her family with her. Patsy also performed a song at the event. It was after this pageant that JonBenét told Patsy she wanted to dress up and dance and perform “like you do, Mom.”

  Jeff Ramsey, John’s brother, remembers a family talk during which Patsy asked others about whether JonBenét should be allowed to be in pageants at so young an age. Patsy had started in pageants when she was older than her daughter, who was three at the time. Patsy was reluctant about it, Jeff said, but they all agreed it would be fine for JonBenét to enroll in singing and dancing lessons. What started as singing and dancing lessons soon evolved into pageants.

  “Once she made up her mind to do something, she was very committed,” Patsy later explained. “I can assure you if Johnnie-Bee didn’t want to do something, she simply wouldn’t. The pageants were another bonding experience for us.” At home, JonBenét and her girlfriends would play a game of presenting each other to an imaginary audience and pretending to walk across a stage. JonBenét would also do other activities with these same friends, like playing dolls or going sledding.

  In the book she and John wrote, Patsy said, “In two years, JonBenét participated in nine pageants. Only two of these were national pageants, an earlier Royale Miss and the Sunburst.” JonBenét primarily competed locally in Colorado and Georgia.1

  In June 1995, a few months short of her fifth birthday, JonBenét was voted “Little Miss Charlevoix” in a contest that welcomed girls of all ages. Her competition had been two other girls her age. JonBenét rode in parades that same summer as “Little Miss Charlevoix.” In October 1995, when she was five years old, she won “Little Miss Colorado,” which resulted in her riding in the Boulder Christmas Parade that year. In the first months of 1996, JonBenét competed in a contest at a local Colorado mall, but didn’t place.

  According to available records, JonBenét’s participation in pageants increased in 1996. In April, she was in the Colorado All-Stars Kids State Pageant, which awarded all participants a prize. JonBenét won for Cover Girl.

  In July 1996, JonBenét was in the Gingerbread Productions of America and won a division title as “Mini Supreme Little Miss.” Also that summer, she won an award in the national America’s Royale Tiny Miss competition and competed in the Sunburst Beauty Contest in Atlanta. She then competed at the national level in the same contest in Atlanta. JonBenét was in a beauty pageant in early November in Denver, and in Georgia’s Dream Star Pageant over the Thanksgiving break.

  The many trophies that had been on display outside JonBenét’s bedroom at the time of her death suggest she had won or placed in several pageants. On December 22, 1996, JonBenét also participated in a performance with other children in the Denver metropolitan area as part of AmeriKids, a local non-profit focused on children.

  “A couple of times Patsy didn’t want to go to a pageant,” John would later say, “but JonBenét was so excited they decided that yes, they would.” Patsy said in private conversations that child beauty pageants were mostly a Southern activity. “The girls who competed and were serious about it usually did so every weekend,” she added.

  John and Patsy Ramsey were deeply affected by how the media portrayed their daughter after she was murdered. As John put it: “A huge amount of the public knew her and formed opinions of her after she was killed because the only pictures and video they saw were those sold by the photographers who had videotaped them at the pageants so they owned the rights to them. We had no say in what was published. We were stunned that we had no rights to the video or the still pictures we hadn’t taken ourselves, but it was something that never occurred to us until then.”

  “It was a part of her life that became her identity because it was what the media focused on—the murdered child beauty queen,” s
aid Patsy. “Can you imagine what it was like to have her killed and then her image and who she was reshaped and taken from us, too? In reality, she was our darling girl, and a normal everyday busy child who happened to be in pageants and a lot of other activities because we all enjoyed them.”

  According to Dr. Friedman, there is “a range of child beauty pageants.” She puts them into four types with the following descriptions:

  Natural beauty pageants: “No makeup is allowed. These pageants are not as prevalent as they once were.”

  Hobby Glitz beauty pageants: “They’re local. The children have their hair made up and use makeup. JonBenét participated in these pageants.”

  National beauty pageants: “JonBenét participated in these pageants. Qualification is necessary. Hair is professionally made up and makeup is used.”

  High-Glitz pageants: “These are the ones you see on television with the current focus on the 2012 television show Toddlers and Tiaras. They wear makeup, including false eyelashes, hair falls, and fake embellishments. There is more award money in these pageants, and it is definitely part of the pageant circuit. Some parents have pageant businesses they’ve developed on their own. This supports the pageant habit.” Dr. Friedman added, “Based on what I have seen and read, JonBenét did not do High-Glitz pageants.”

  “Child pageants are predominantly [held] in the South,” Dr. Friedman said. “JonBenét’s murder had a huge impact in the decline of them. But in 2000 they came back and increased in popularity, because parents wanted their children to be involved in them.”