Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? (26 page)

In my view, the theory of the lone intruder, and his use of a stun gun, was beginning to unravel.

Photo 26 - One-to-one scaled Power-Point overlay photograph showing that the electronic leads of the Air Taser stun gun do not align with JonBenét’s injuries. This was the “close match” that led intruder theorists to believe a stun gun had been used in the kidnapping. Source: Power-Point series prepared at request of author and completed by Boulder PD criminalist Shelly Hisey

“ The killer had a stun gun. I am sure the killer had a stun gun…

There is no reason at all for the parents to have used a stun gun to help stage the murder of their daughter.”

—Former D.A. Investigator Lou Smit during an interview aired on
48 Hours Investigates–Searching for a Killer.

October 4, 2002

“If you’re like most Americans you probably think that John and Patsy Ramsey are hiding something in the murder of their daughter, JonBenét. In fact, a new poll for 48 Hours Investigates, 52 percent say they believe one or both parents were involved in the murder in some way.”

—Television Journalist Lesley Stahl during a
48 Hours Investigates
program
: “
Searching for a Killer”, aired October 4, 2002

I
had taken several binders home with me over the 2005 Thanksgiving holiday weekend, and they included the first at-length police interviews conducted with John and Patsy Ramsey on April 30, 1997. I had read in police reports what had been ascribed to them over the course of their inquiry, but was now at a point that I wanted to spend some in-depth time reviewing the details of these statements. One of the binders also included the June 1998 interviews of John and Patsy that I would learn had been conducted by members of the D.A.’s office.

Most of the weekend was spent in a lounge chair where I sat in the relative warmth of the sunny weather outside my cottage in Chautauqua Park. I was into the first few pages of John Ramsey’s April 30, 1997, interview when I nearly fell out of my chair. I was dumbfounded to read that the Ramseys had been provided copies of police investigative reports in advance of their sit-down with detectives.

It certainly seemed an unusual move when viewed as an investigative technique. Police investigators don’t usually share their reports with people who are about to be questioned, especially when they are still under suspicion of being involved in a criminal case. I would later learn that the D.A.’s office had agreed to the release of these reports to the Ramsey team in exchange for their participation in the interview. This would be one of
many
concessions that the D.A.’s office would make over the course of the investigation.

My review of the June 1998 interviews held yet another surprise.

The opening pages of John’s interview, led by Lou Smit, highlighted the fact that Boulder Police investigators were not present and considered “persona non-grata.” I had seen a copy of a handwritten letter authored by John Ramsey in the spring of 1998, during my search of the I-Legal files, and Smit read into the record this same letter requesting an independent meeting with members of the D.A.’s office outside the scope of BPD involvement.
⁴⁹

Present with Smit and representing the D.A.’s office was special prosecutor Mike Kane. John Ramsey was accompanied by attorney Bryan Morgan and their private investigator David Williams. Morgan expressed the desire of wanting to continue to cooperate with the D.A.’s office, but there was a caveat. Morgan stated that the family felt the need to withhold certain medical records from the criminal inquiry, claiming that they deserved an “island of privacy” when it came to the investigation into JonBenét’s murder.

The following is an excerpt from that interview:

Morgan:

“I have a real problem with certain kinds of medical records. These people are entitled to an island of privacy to try to recover what they’ve been through.”

“I think you will get virtually everything you’ve described with the possible exception of personal medical records that I think John and Patsy are at least entitled to make a reasonable decision on….”

“I’ve already discussed these matters with Hoffstrom and he knows how we operate.”

There was additional reference to a “first” letter that Lou Smit apparently had sent to the Ramseys prior to this June interview. Based upon my reading of this transcript, it seemed that there was a movement afoot to segregate and distance the Boulder Police Department from further involvement in the investigation.

It seemed to me that the Ramseys were looking for a sympathetic ear in the law enforcement community.

There had been a number of occasions in the preceding months when I turned in for the night, contemplating the details of the case. It was a method of problem solving that had developed over years of police work, letting my subconscious evaluate all of the angles of an investigation while my physical body was rejuvenated by a night’s rest.

There were many times when I awoke the following morning with a different perspective, and this allowed me to pursue a new course of action. On a few occasions, thoughts would emerge in the middle of the night, and I learned to keep a notepad by my bedside to record these transient images. My research into the details of the Ramsey case was no different.

By that juncture, I had been scouring police reports and interviews for nearly five months, and something I read in the files that Thanksgiving weekend triggered a similar event. I awoke at 3:00 a.m. on one of those mornings for no apparent reason. I was suddenly and completely awake, and sat upright for a moment before moving into the living room.

It seemed a simple realization, but it dawned on me that Patsy had reported that she had never finished reading the ransom note before rushing upstairs and screaming for John. Yet, she was able to recite the name of the kidnappers during the panicked and hysterical 911 telephone call to police that morning.

She explained in her April 1997 interview that she had looked at the note when the dispatcher asked her if the kidnappers had identified themselves. I wasn’t buying the explanation.

John Ramsey, according to his statement, was on his hands and knees hovering over the note as he tried to read through it.
⁵⁰
He was facing south, and the note was spread from left to right. Patsy was on the phone about four – five feet away and would have been required to read the note upside down - that is, if she had been able to look
through
her husband.

It was a significant turning point for me and could be described as one of those “ah haa” moments when the truth has finally been revealed to the seeker.

It had taken a number of months of intensive examination of investigative files before I came to believe that the family was somehow involved in the death of JonBenét. I did not quite know how or why, but at that juncture, I no longer felt it was likely that an intruder had participated in this crime.

I returned to the office from the holiday weekend with a renewed energy and an expanded viewpoint. While continuing to evaluate the new leads that continuously streamed into our office, I began to narrow the focus of my review on the family, and observed a number of behavioral clues that seemed out of sync.

Suffice it to say, the more I scrutinized the Ramsey family, the more I came to believe that the likelihood of involvement by a kidnapper – intruder was becoming extremely remote.

I was aware that investigators had discovered that the 911 tape contained a few extra seconds of recorded telephone conversation that was captured when Patsy had failed to fully terminate the call. A number of people had independently listened to the tail end of the call and described hearing the same voices and words on the tape. It piqued my interest because it was reported that a young voice, thought to be that of Burke, had been recognized on the tape.

If that was the case, and Burke was in the vicinity of the kitchen and speaking to his parents when the 911 call was made, why were the Ramseys continuing to insist that he was asleep in his bedroom?

I had listened to the CD of the 911 call and couldn’t quite make out the voices that others had heard, so I decided to contact the California lab that had worked on enhancing the tape. (I have to admit that my hearing has somewhat degraded over the years due to the many hours spent on firearms ranges.) I wanted to know if there was any new technology that could further clarify the voices caught on the tail end of the recording.

I had called Mike Epstein at the Aerospace Corporation just prior to the Thanksgiving holidays, and he advised me that he had not completed any additional work on the tape since first being contacted by Boulder investigators in 1997. He indicated that he didn’t think they had missed a word that had been said on the tape and was willing to send another master copy of the CD for my review. I was not certain which generation of recording was in my hands at the D.A.’s office, and it was my desire to have a cleaner, fresher generation that could be reviewed.

I was disappointed to hear during my gathering of information that technology had not changed and that the same “tool set” being used in the entertainment industry in 1997 was still state of the art in 2005.

In the meantime, while awaiting the arrival of the new Aerospace CD, I continued to work the regular caseload that was ever present in the office. If memory serves, the DA’s office handled nearly 2500 felony and misdemeanor filings in any given year, and many of those cases required additional follow-up investigation once police had cleared their case by arrest. Preparing those cases to the threshold of “beyond a reasonable doubt” frequently fell to the investigative unit of the DA’s office.

I continued my review of the Ramsey case file whenever a spare moment presented itself, and further explored the possibility of family involvement in the weeks that followed.