We Have Your Daughter Page 21
Smit quickly became somewhat of a pariah with BPD detectives on the case because of his belief in “following where the evidence pointed and getting friendly with the Ramseys.” “Sources” leaked that he had prayed with the family outside the former Ramsey home, suggesting this had affected his objectivity. He was publicly ridiculed by an anonymous police source who leaked that he was a “delusional old man.” But others came to his defense, especially other detectives who agreed that praying with possible suspects can be a clever way to get close to them and gather information from them.
It was on Wednesday, April 30, 1997, that Boulder Police Department officials first interrogated John and Patsy Ramsey. The courthouse was surrounded by media for the anticipated “formal interviews,” which were in fact interrogations, questioning with targeted suspicion. Even so, no pictures of the couple were taken. They avoided the media by arriving in a van that had no windows and entering an underground garage used by the Boulder Sheriff’s Department, where the interviews were to take place. The courthouse and the sheriff’s department were in the same building.
It became apparent that the BPD was most interested in questioning Patsy Ramsey by the amount of time spent on the two separate “formal interviews” (as the BPD and DA described them) or “interrogations” (as Ramsey attorneys described them) conducted that day. The Boulder Police Department’s focus on John and suggestions of possible incest related to the case had gone nowhere, and John was interrogated for approximately two hours. But Patsy was interrogated for six and a half hours. A representative of the Boulder Police Department and of the Boulder District Attorney’s Office as well as an attorney and investigator for either John or Patsy Ramsey was present at each separate interrogation.
On May 1, 1997, the day after their “formal interviews”/“interrogations” with BPD officials, John and Patsy gave their second joint interview with the media. Just as the Boulder Police chief had done for his first public question-and-answer interview, the Ramsey attorneys had hand-picked specific local reporters to meet with their clients.
The conditions of the interview were kept mysterious. The journalists were told where it would be held just forty minutes before the interview began. They were instructed to keep that information secret until after the session had been completed. The reporters had to use a password in order to gain entry into a hotel conference room. They understood that they would not be allowed to ask questions about the facts of the case or about the Ramsey interrogations with police that had taken place the day before. Television, still cameras and other recording devices were already in place, and photographers were allowed in with the selected reporters. There were three television reporters, three print reporters and one radio reporter in attendance. The Ramsey attorneys explained that they had chosen this format for an interview with the Ramseys in order to “ensure some privacy and to limit the media circus.”
The reporters were seated in the conference room first, and then the Ramseys walked in and were seated facing them. John and Patsy seemed determined and sad as they answered all the questions asked of them. The interview lasted thirty minutes.
I was one of the television reporters asked to participate in this interview. My television station, KUSA TV, broadcast the entire interview live within thirty minutes after it had ended, and I reported on it at that time and in later newscasts. Newspaper reporters printed the interview in its entirety. Such approaches helped ensure that the viewing and reading public could make their own decisions about the case by seeing or hearing the complete interview.
In June 1997, the Ramseys moved out of the Stine home and went to their summer retreat in Charlevoix, Michigan. They had already bought a home in Atlanta, where they would live beginning in the fall.
Charlevoix provided a good change for them, and the town embraced them. The Ramseys had long-time friends there who would sustain them through the summer and offer help and comfort. It was a familiar and bright and sunny place, and the distance from Boulder helped. But they were still, according to Patsy, “very sad, lonely, and afraid.” “The tabloid people were all over the town following us and trying to get pictures,” she said.
John’s Journal:
It was going to be very hard in Charlevoix because we had so many happy and fun memories there with JonBenét. Plus we knew the media would be relentless in their pursuit of us there. The media is indeed all over Charlevoix.
Patsy was visiting garage sales one day with Burke. This pastime always became a treasure hunt for them, and a friend of Burke’s was also along that day. Burke liked to find old toys and games, and Patsy occasionally found something special, too. On that day, however, they were being stalked by a photographer from the tabloids. When Patsy drove up to the photographer and asked him to leave them alone, he immediately started snapping pictures and shouting, “Fuck you, fuck you.” Swearing at people is a ploy used by some tabloid reporters and photographers to provoke a negative reaction. They do this to get the angry picture that will sell lots of copies when featured on a front page under a headline such as “GUILTY MOM.”
The following excerpt from John Ramsey’s journal is from September 1997:
Returned to Atlanta. The media was at our house within 30 minutes of arrival. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. Later I look back through my charge cards, and compare when I use them and when the media shows up. I find one card that, when used, coordinates with the arrival of the media. They must be paying someone on the inside of the charge card company.
Met with security engineer in Atlanta. Discuss needs. We want to make sure home is lit well enough so that no one can hide in cars or bushes. Some even climb trees to try to get a better view of us. Astonishing and worrisome.
Security analyst later shows me pictures of a hidden camera site he discovered, apparently installed by the tabloids at JonBenét’s grave site.
Hidden camera installed in utility pole which had a view of JonBenét’s grave site. © John Ramsey
When they moved to Atlanta in the fall of 1998, John and Patsy entered a post-traumatic stress treatment program at Emory University to “desensitize” them to the events surrounding their daughter’s murder. Both had received extensive grief therapy, but they were struggling. Each of them talked to a counselor at Emory and took a specific anti-depressant as part of the treatment, which also involved weeks of therapy sessions. At these sessions, each had to repeat over and over what had happened December 26, 1996, when they found out JonBenét was missing, and then dead. John has said it seemed as though they did this hundreds of times, but in reality it was much less. It was “tough,” he said, “but we had to find a way to recover enough so we weren’t still crying every day and could be good and effective parents to Burke, and this is what we chose.” Patsy said simply, “It was something we had to do to survive.”
Patsy and John had each, at various times, discussed killing themselves. The difficulty of living in this world without their daughter and the excruciating memory of how she was killed and what they had seen overwhelmed them. Yet they would always reach out to each other and decide why they would instead choose living. It was because of each other and their children.
John’s Journal:
Life difficult to go on with. Burden is almost too heavy. Melinda calls. That lifts my spirits. I am blessed by three wonderful living children.
Three things centered their lives. They knew their children needed them, they had each other for support and they had their beliefs. It became enough to live for.
“Besides,” Patsy said, “there was no way we were going to leave any stigma for the police to capitalize on in terms of who killed our wonderful daughter.”
Time healed, but only somewhat. They longed for the little girl who had given them so much joy. “I want her with me,” Patsy would say. “I want her with us.”
John’s Journal:
Patsy is very depressed and expresses the view that everyone has rights except us. We discuss immigrating to Ne
w Zealand. I know it’s hard for her, but it happens all throughout history. Oppressed people leave their homeland for a better place.
More than nine months after the murder of JonBenét Ramsey in October 1997, Boulder Police Chief Tom Koby moved to replace BPD Commander John Eller on the Ramsey case. He chose BPD Commander Mark Beckner, who had worked on the case since its first weeks. Commander Beckner would be promoted to the position of Boulder Police Chief in June 1998.
Boulder DA Alex Hunter was privately “delighted.” He and his investigators hadn’t gotten along with Eller. They’d felt he’d disguised his lack of homicide experience with stubbornness and cantankerous ultimatums. “I remember one day,” said Bill Wise, Hunter’s First Assistant DA, “Eller actually pounded his fists on the table in the room where we were meeting. Pounded his fists and said we had to do it ‘his way.’”
Hunter has said he remembers this instance as well. “He was furious with us. We were trying to help. To get this case going in the right direction together with the police department. He wanted it his way and that was it. I wonder if my jaw dropped when he pounded his fists. In a way, it made me want to laugh, but it was such a serious situation.”
Eller’s supporters who’d been in the room at the time thought he’d had “balls” by standing up to DA Hunter. For some of them, Eller’s behavior provided a boost in morale, though ultimately it would make no difference.
Commander Beckner set out to get the investigation organized. He made a “to do” list for his detectives that consisted of the deliberate steps that were needed on a homicide case, especially this case. Beckner, according to Detective Lou Smit, was “trying to bring order and process to the case, which was really needed.” Smit had spent the past seven months organizing and cataloguing the evidence, including police reports, photographs and DNA.
The Ramseys and their attorneys were anticipating that Beckner would take the investigation in a different direction and seriously consider an intruder theory. On December 5, 1997, however, they found out this would not be the case.
The infamous “umbrella of suspicion” term related to the Ramsey murder investigation had been used by Boulder DA Alex Hunter months before, but during a press conference in early December 1997, it was the focus of the event. At the start of Commander Beckner’s first meeting with the media since taking charge of the Ramsey investigation, the scene was dramatic. The eight BPD police detectives still involved in the case stood in a half circle on the raised stage behind Beckner as their new commander reviewed with reporters what the detectives had accomplished in the weeks since he’d assumed charge.
It didn’t take long for reporters to ask if the Ramseys were suspects. “What I will say is that we have an umbrella of suspicion,” Beckner said. “People come and go under that umbrella. [The Ramseys] do remain under an umbrella of suspicion, but we’re not ready to name any suspect.”
Years later, Alex Hunter would regard the use of that phrase by himself and others as “unfortunate.” Boulder Police Department officials never removed that label, however, and so the Ramseys have lived under this “umbrella of suspicion” for nearly twenty years.
John’s Journal:
I am concerned because I’m sure GE will view me as a liability because of all the nastiness that has been going on in the media. What they will do is not certain to me, but I’m sure they are wondering that themselves. They’ve got to be saying he’s a guy that runs a good business but based on the media reports is one strange guy—We need to get rid of him. Another example of our lives being destroyed by a ruthless and dishonest media.
In December 1997, General Electric fired John Ramsey from his job at Access Graphics after a buy-out of the company.
Late into the night of May 31, 1998, media satellite and live trucks began claiming their spaces outside the University of Colorado at the Boulder Coors Events Center. June 1 was going to be a big day in the Ramsey case, and members of the media were ensuring they got not only a place to park but a good viewing position, especially given the jammed conditions and what was expected to be a huge amount of coverage. There would be crowds of law enforcement officers inside and reporters with accompanying lights, cameras, cables and microphones attracting the curious outside.
On June 1, 1998 the Boulder Police Department was scheduled to present its case to multiple law enforcement agencies. And while the BPD had publicly announced the session, they’d also made it clear that this was an invitation-only event. Police officers, district attorneys, pro bono attorneys, outside experts hired by the DA, prosecutors from the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, agents with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and agents from the FBI’s Child Abduction and Serial Killer unit were among the invited. Boulder Police Department officials hoped the presentation would pressure Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter into calling for a grand jury in the Ramsey case.
Afterwards, there would be a private question-and-answer session inside among invited participants. Following that session, even though it had presented only one side of the investigation as conducted by the Boulder Police Department, those in attendance would reveal a general disagreement on whether the BPD had proven its case.
That afternoon, when the session was completed, Commander Beckner went outside with his officers to talk with the media. Reporters asked him about his “umbrella of suspicion” comment from the December 1997 news conference six months prior. “There are certainly fewer people under the umbrella of suspicion now,” he said, adding, “the umbrella is not quite so big.” He also stated, “I have an idea who did it. Yes.”
When Beckner had finished, it was DA Hunter’s turn at the microphone. As he had at past press conferences related to the Ramsey investigation, Hunter misjudged the seriousness of the occasion and started his comments with: “This is the kind of weather that brings us all here. How many of you are from out of state?” After a brief pause, Hunter went on to talk about the possibility of a grand jury being convened, saying he hadn’t made a decision on this yet.
Eventually, Adams County District Attorney Bob Grant, not Hunter, would publicly answer many of the questions about the case from the perspective of the Boulder District Attorney’s Office.
CHAPTER 17
VANITY FAIR
John and Patsy in Michigan. © John Ramsey.
SOME BROADCASTERS, TALK SHOW HOSTS AND THEIR GUESTS, newspaper editorial writers and the public said that in her January 1, 1997 CNN interview, Patsy Ramsey, who was on anti-anxiety drugs at the time, did not look like a grieving mother. And according to BPD Detective Linda Arndt’s police report regarding the events of December 26, 1996, a report that included second-hand information (i.e., hearsay), one Boulder Police Department officer noted to another that the Ramseys weren’t “acting right.” (Detective Linda Arndt—Date of Report 1-8-1997.)
This statement by Arndt was contradicted, however, in multiple then-unreleased and still-confidential BPD officer statements and reports. The speculation that the Ramseys weren’t “acting” like grieving parents because they had somehow been involved in the murder of their daughter continued to be leaked to the media for months. In September 1997, it was explored in painstaking detail in a controversial Vanity Fair article1 written by Ann Louise Bardach.2
Journalists use the first paragraph of an article to grab readers by including in it enticing, or even explosive, information that makes them want to read more. Bardach used that technique in the first paragraph of her Vanity Fair article about the Ramsey case:
Subsequently, French [first responding officer] told colleagues that he had been struck by how differently the two parents were reacting. While John Ramsey, cool and collected, explained the sequence of events to him, Patsy Ramsey sat in an overstuffed chair in the sunroom sobbing. Something seemed odd to French, and later he would recall how the grieving mother’s eyes stayed riveted on him. He remembered her gaze and her awkward attempts to conceal it—peering at him through splayed fingers held over her eyes.
French told fellow officers that he felt awful that he had not discovered it in his search of the house. For months he berated himself as he relived every moment of his hours there. While Patsy Ramsey had wept inconsolably, a dry-eyed John Ramsey had paced incessantly. Later, French recalled that the couple had barely spoken to or looked at each other. Though they were faced with the most calamitous tragedy of their lives, he did not see them console each other. But it was the image of Patsy weeping and watching him that haunted French, especially after he learned that she had been sitting directly over the spot—less than 15 feet below—where her child’s body lay.
The details from the article about Patsy “peering at [Officer French] through splayed fingers held over her eyes,” and “watching him” quickly went international on wire services and in newspapers, on radio, on the Internet and in television broadcasts. Repeatedly broadcast and re-published, these details played a key role in fueling public opinion against Patsy, especially since initial statements of other BPD officers, and of French himself, that countered these claims had not been released. Most people were reading in newspapers and hearing in television and radio broadcasts personal reflections from one police officer that were not supported by as-yet-unpublished official police records. According to one reporter covering the Ramsey murder investigation, the prevailing sentiment related to the Ramseys among several in the Boulder Police Department and some in the Boulder District Attorney’s Office was that they were “uncaring, cold and unnatural in their feelings.”