We Have Your Daughter Page 37

  When the sitter told John Andrew about the visit, he didn’t call the police; he e-mailed his father. John Andrew was furious. Why hadn’t the police just called him? Why did they come unexpectedly after dark and frighten his babysitter? This was intrusive and harassing behavior, he concluded, the same type of tormenting behavior his family had endured for years.

  The search was also continuing in another part of the country. John Ramsey’s last known address had been in Little Rock, Arkansas, but he was no longer there. According to John, he’d left a forwarding address at his apartment complex and the manager would have given this information to the police if they had simply asked for it. Instead, BPD detectives asked police in Little Rock to knock on the door of a close friend of John’s in order to find out where Ramsey was. Boulder police seemed to know a lot about John’s personal life from their loose surveillance. Little Rock police cooperated. The friend later e-mailed John, saying the Boulder Police Chief was urgently trying to reach him. The friend added, “I trust this means a resolution in the case.”

  So, where was John? Had he fled the country because of his guilt, as some in the Boulder Police Department both feared and hoped?

  Well, no.

  At the time, he was in India on a religious service trip called Discipleship Training for Adults, part of a larger religious organization. The trip had been recommended to him by a missionary friend. He was in India for two months, still seeking direction in his life and striving to live and go on after losing two of his daughters as well as his wife, and providing service to poor communities in India.

  Boulder Police Department officials could have easily found John Ramsey by calling one of his defense attorneys. Two lived right in the BPD’s own town, two others a few miles away in Denver. Perhaps pride or concerns about giving a prior warning had prevented them from taking that simple step. According to sources, BPD officials had discussed taking that course but concluded the Ramsey attorneys would refuse to disclose John’s whereabouts or would set conditions the police wouldn’t be willing to follow.

  Legally, the Ramsey family had very little protection. Law enforcement had described them for more than a decade as “suspects” and as being “under the umbrella of suspicion.” Those terms condemned them to be viewed with suspicion, uncertainty, even hatred, especially as they lacked the legal protection they would have been given if they had been arrested and charged and thus allowed to see the evidence that the Boulder Police Department had against them.

  When John Ramsey returned from his religious mission in the early spring of 2010, he received a letter from Chief Mark Beckner. In the process of moving back to Charlevoix, Michigan, John was as easy to find as he had been when the police were actively looking for him just two months before. Beckner asked that John keep his letter confidential and out of the media, and John honored that request. Beckner suggested in his letter that the two of them meet with no attorneys and no other police officers present. It was a “let’s just talk about the case … just the two of us … ” type of letter. In all the years following the murder and the turmoil afterward, the men had never sat together and talked alone.

  Beckner wrote that he was sure John would like to know more about the investigation. “I know I would if I were you,” the police chief added.

  Ramsey considered that comment condescending and recent BPD behavior threatening. So he declined, saying he didn’t trust the request, the Boulder Police Department or Beckner. He added, however, that he would consider speaking with Beckner if the police chief would answer some questions first. Beckner wrote back reiterating his request, but said he wouldn’t answer John’s questions unless they met alone and in person.

  When Chief Beckner couldn’t get his “sit-down” with John Ramsey, momentum related to the case seemed to stall out. The BPD officers on the case consulted with others and continued to discuss their options, and then someone suggested approaching John’s other son, Burke, since John Andrew had not been cooperative. Just as they’d done with John Andrew, the BPD officers on the case decided not to give Burke a chance to say “no” by calling and asking to see him. Instead, they’d just drop in at his Purdue University apartment to see if there was something on his mind he’d like to talk with them about. Not all Boulder Police Department officers involved with the case agreed on this strategy. Some considered it to be the wrong thing to do. But the decision was made to go ahead.

  In May 2010, three Boulder officers traveled to West Lafayette, Indiana, to visit, unannounced, Burke Ramsey in his college apartment. It was two months after Burke’s dad had declined to meet with the BPD police chief, and more than thirteen years after Burke’s younger sister had been murdered in the Ramsey family’s Boulder home.

  Burke was in his senior year at Purdue, where he was majoring in computer and information technology. It was finals week, and he was studying for his upcoming exams. In the middle of his study haze, there was a knock on the door.

  Burke opened it, expecting a friend, and was surprised to see three police officers, two men and a woman. One man and the woman introduced themselves as Boulder police detectives and gave Burke their business cards. Burke has said he doesn’t remember the third person identifying himself. That man was Sergeant Tom Trujillo, then the supervisor in charge of Burke’s sister’s murder investigation. Like Chief Beckner, Trujillo had worked the case since the first few days of the investigation.

  The two detectives told Burke they were new on the case and asked if there was anything he wanted to know or tell them.1

  “It’s finals week,” Burke told them, surprised when they didn’t seem to understand the enormity of that fact. Later he would state, “I didn’t have time to do anything but study and take tests. They were very polite and nice, but I [didn’t] see why they flew all the way out there. Why were there three of them? It was a bit of overkill. Why didn’t they call first or just call as opposed to traveling all that way? It wasn’t that professional. If you want to do an interview, contact me. Don’t just show up at my door.” His answer was the same, regardless of where they suggested meeting to talk with him: “No thanks.”

  “Even if I wanted to do an interview, and I didn’t, that was the wrong way to approach me,” he said. “What were they expecting?” The police told Burke they’d be in town in case he changed his mind and wanted to talk with them.

  Nearly fourteen years after Burke’s sister had been killed, Boulder Police Department officers dropped by to find out if Burke wanted to talk about anything. In police jargon, this is referred to as a cold call. In this case, the BPD approved a 1,000-mile cold call with a price tag of more than $5,000, according to travel records.2 The BPD officers had gambled that they’d surprise Burke and he would talk. But Burke has said repeatedly that he has nothing to say to, and nothing to hide from, the Boulder Police Department. He simply wonders why they tried to catch him off guard and intimidate him.

  The story about Boulder police officers visiting Burke Ramsey was leaked and reported as exclusive news on KDVR, the Denver Fox 31 television station on September 21, 2010, four months after the visit took place. A mini-study in how false stories about the Ramsey case had spread so many years ago, the story became one of the most-viewed stories on the Fox 31 website. It was also wrong.

  Reporter Julie Hayden broadcast that her exclusive story had come from “sources.”

  “Sources tell us Boulder detectives met with Burke and interviewed him in the past month … Nightside [the 10 p.m. Fox 31 newscast] has learned Boulder detectives have interviewed Burke within the past few weeks. Police aren’t saying anything about what was asked or answered, but they probably had Burke go over events before he and JonBenét were put to bed that night. What, if anything, he heard that evening and what he saw that morning. They also could have talked with Burke about details of the family’s life.

  “Now, police aren’t officially commenting at all, except to say JonBenét’s murder remains an open, active investigation. But obviously …
this is one of the few people in the house that night, one of the, you know, the brother. He has a lot of information and clearly something the police are going to keep trying to get.”

  ANCHOR—Julie, is he a reluctant witness, does he want to get on with his life and remain as normal as he can, or was he forthcoming?

  HAYDEN—You know, I get the impression, and again this is the impression from sources, that he was willing to talk with police. When he was a little boy, his parents, understandably, kind of protected him from all of that. But, I think also, you know, you look at his Twitter’s [sic] posts, his Facebook posts, this is a kid who’s been under tabloid scrutiny, you know, most of his life. I think a great part of him wants to be just as normal as possible.

  The report was broadcast without getting the other side of the story and without asking John, Burke or their attorneys if it was true.

  Contrary to Hayden’s report and sources, Burke was not interviewed by Boulder police at any point in 2010. When I called the reporter to talk about her story, Hayden said she would have to get permission from her news director to respond. When Hayden didn’t call back, I wrote her an e-mail. Hayden then replied, saying she wasn’t able to talk because of “internal policy changes.”

  The erroneous story built its own momentum and was reported over and over across the country, demonstrating the staying power of the Ramsey murder and the high level of interest it still commanded. This time, however, as the false story grew in strength and impact, it began to be corrected based on accuracy checks and double-source checks by some members of the media who were reporting on it.

  On September 28, 2010, reporter and author Lawrence Schiller, who wrote the first book published about the Ramsey murder in 1999, appeared for an interview on CBS This Morning. CBS News had done its homework and called John Ramsey’s civil attorney, Lin Wood, for the other side of the story.

  ANCHOR—We called the Ramsey family attorney. He says that Burke has not been questioned, but your sources are telling you that police are trying to question him?

  SCHILLER—I was in Denver yesterday by pure coincidence, and I called some people in Boulder, and they said the police have sent on their business cards and asked Burke, if time permitted, if he could get in touch with them.

  ANCHOR—He was questioned and exonerated 14 years ago. Why would the police be trying to talk with him now?

  SCHILLER—You have to remember, as you said, he was nine years old, a frail kid, not very large in size. His sister was younger. There’s a lot of evidence that has still been unexplained over the years … Police are never going to give up on this case. There is no statute of limitations on murder.

  ANCHOR—In other words, they may have discovered some new evidence that wouldn’t necessarily then make this then nine-year-old a suspect, but he could possibly speak.

  SCHILLER—That’s correct. He was exonerated by DNA, by many, many methods that the police used at that point. But the question is, in his own mind now, this many years away, has he locked away the facts of this murder, has he in essence put it in a room, closed the door and doesn’t want to think about it? So how helpful can he be? You know, just because questions are unanswered, that doesn’t mean someone is withholding the answer.

  The momentum on the Burke story continued to grow in the media.

  On October 1, 2010, the Daily Camera in Boulder published an article that began:

  BOULDER POLICE CONDUCTING ADDITIONAL INTERVIEWS IN JONBENÉT RAMSEY CASE

  Boulder police are conducting a new round of interviews related to the 1996 JonBenét Ramsey homicide based on recommendations from an advisory committee that met in 2009 and pored over all the evidence.

  This statement was countered, however, by two BPD detectives who said a task force (referred to in the article as an “advisory committee”) met for only three days and didn’t even begin to look at the evidence of the case. There was no poring “over all the evidence,” they said. That would have taken months of full-time work. According to the detectives, the task force had recommended re-interviewing Burke Ramsey, yet more than a year had passed since the task force made that recommendation.

  Six days after Lawrence Schiller’s CBS interview, he was back on television, this time on ABC’s Good Morning America show. Again, he discussed Burke Ramsey and reiterated his opinion of the Boulder Police Department’s actions:

  ANCHOR—Investigators are taking a new look at old evidence … reaching out for fresh interviews with witnesses who may help solve the six-year-old beauty queen’s murder. Among them, JonBenét’s 23-year-old brother, Burke. He was only nine when his sister was killed. A Ramsey attorney told a newspaper that a police detective recently met with Burke and gave him a card and said, ‘If you want to talk to us, here’s how you would contact me.’

  ANCHOR—And for more on why this is happening and where the case goes from here, we are joined by investigative journalist Larry Schiller.

  SCHILLER— … But you see, Burke was nine years old at the time. He was in the house, either asleep or awake, during some of these events. The most important thing is that those memories from a young child are put in a room in his mind, a door is closed, and then the room doesn’t exist. But is there an element that now can trigger some of that and bring back some of it?

  ANCHOR—Wouldn’t you bring in psychologists, and not just have police interviews?

  SCHILLER—No, I don’t think at this point they’re going to try to bring in psychologists. He was interviewed that way shortly after the murder in a room with a glass window in which his mother and other members studied his actions and so forth. I think it’s a matter of can he corroborate something that they know about or that they suspect may lead them to a solution.

  Factually, Patsy had brought her nine-year-old son to the human services interview in 1997, but was not allowed to watch it.

  The day after Schiller’s October 4 ABC Good Morning America interview, Fox News interviewed former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman, who was an author and Fox News contributor. In 1995, Fuhrman had been the focus of a publicity storm as a lead Los Angeles police detective when he testified in the O. J. Simpson trial.

  ANCHOR—So now we understand they’re conducting a new round of interviews based on recommendations of an advisory committee that’s been looking into this. Do we have any idea what the new focus is?

  FUHRMAN—Well, Megyn, I think the new focus might be that somebody finally read Steve Thomas’s book, as the first lead detective after the first couple of days, and he was told to clean up all the mistakes. There’s the first problem. There was never any doubt in Steve Thomas’s mind that there was no intruder … that the person who took JonBenét Ramsey into the basement and killed her was in fact somebody who was in the household by permission or there with the approval of the parents and/or friends.

  Fuhrman was wrong. Thomas was not the lead detective on the Ramsey case. Commander John Eller was in charge, then Commander Mark Beckner. Thomas was one of many detectives on the case. He was a narcotics detective with the Boulder Police Department who was borrowed from narcotics for the homicide investigation. He had no prior homicide experience. The Ramseys later sued him for libel when he named Patsy as her daughter’s killer in his book. His publisher paid thousands of dollars and signed a confidentiality agreement to settle the lawsuit.

  The interview continued:

  ANCHOR—So who does that leave? Because you’ve got John and Patsy, who a judge in a civil suit many years later declared that not necessarily were the parents innocent of the crime, but she said the evidence is much more consistent with an intruder than it is with the parents having killed JonBenét. And then, her brother Burke, who was nine years old at the time, was reportedly cleared.

  FUHRMAN—Well, let’s not count too much on what juries say, especially a civil jury.

  Fuhrman was wrong again. The case never went to trial, so no jury was ever involved. The federal district judge dismissed that lawsuit in its deposition st
age with a 93-page summary that stated, in part, “The weight of the evidence is more consistent that an intruder murdered JonBenét than it is with the theory Mrs. Ramsey did so.”

  The following week on October 14, 2010 on the CNN news program Anderson Cooper 360, Cooper debriefed CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin and Reporter/Anchor Tom Foreman about the case and the latest development related to BPD officials wanting to talk with Burke Ramsey. Foreman reviewed the case and provided perspective. Toobin also offered some insights.

  TOOBIN—The paradox of the current situation is you can sort of understand both sides. It is frustrating to the police, as it should be, to [not be able to] solve a crime that should have an answer. There are so many clues. There is such a limited universe of suspects. COOPER—There are so many contradictory clues. That’s what’s so endlessly fascinating about the case.

  TOOBIN—So you can see why they’d want to talk to Burke just because he’s one of the handful of people who might have had some firsthand knowledge of what went on in the house. But on the other hand, you can certainly understand Burke’s perspective, which is, “Go to hell. I’ve cooperated. I’ve done my best. My family’s cooperated. This has been nothing but pain for us. I’m not going to tell you anything new that I couldn’t have told you five, 10, 15 years ago,” and I can certainly understand his perspective, too.

  Toobin got it right. Burke Ramsey didn’t offer up the blunt “go to hell,” but he didn’t respond to the offer to talk when confronted by the Boulder Police Department.

  During this coverage of the Burke story, which ran through several mainstream news cycles, more reporters began to get it right. They covered both perspectives on the story, something that did not happen when the Ramsey murder story first broke in December 1996.

  However, the tabloids did not.