Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? (3 page)

At some point during this process, JonBenét began to regain consciousness and began to protest. Frightened at being manhandled down the stairs, with a stranger’s hand across her mouth, JonBenét reached up instinctively with her right hand and scratched her male abductor. According to her grandmother, JonBenét would likely have vigorously fought any attacker, and it may be surmised that she began to kick and scream when she realized what was happening.

The female kidnapper attempted to intervene at the bottom of the stairs, and JonBenét was able to graze her with her left hand in the struggle to free herself. As she continued to struggle, JonBenét scratched herself as well.

In an attempt to calm JonBenét, the female released her from the confines of the blanket. But this was only on the condition that she be quiet and stop struggling. Perhaps there was a threat to use the stun gun again. Secluded in the far end of the house in the kitchen, the female further coaxed JonBenét’s cooperation with a bowl of freshly cut pineapple. Nodding her consent to cooperate, the female kidnapper then removed the piece of duct tape from JonBenét’s mouth, and they moved to the dining room table.

Another of the men joined the team in the kitchen and crouched over the counter, reviewing the ransom note with the aid of Ramsey’s flashlight. The 4
^th
member in the house remained in the forward staircase, monitoring any movement of sleeping members.

The best laid plans sometimes go awry, and JonBenét was not to be fooled by these trespassers. She took one nibble of pineapple, swallowed, and then screamed at the top of her lungs. She slid from the chair and made a dash for the back hallway.

Successful in dodging the male-female team in the dining room, she sprinted through the kitchen. It was at that juncture that it can be presumed that events really began to unravel. In a bid to quickly silence JonBenét, one of the male kidnappers got a hand on her, and he too was scratched with her fingernails. Panicking as she was squirming loose of his grasp, the kidnapper struck out with the flashlight in his hand. The blow fractured the right side of her skull, and she immediately fell to the floor unconscious.

The injury to her brain was serious, and for all intents and purposes, she gave the appearance of being dead. But that eventually was determined not to be the case. Her heart continued to beat for what was estimated by pathologists to be another ninety (90) minutes, slowly filling her cranium with blood. Due to the lethality of the blow to her head, however, it is unlikely that she ever regained consciousness.

It may be presumed that the kidnappers argued and disagreed on their next course of action. They easily could have carried JonBenét from the house by exiting a rear ground floor doorway and escaped into the night. In that case, they would have retained possession of the object of their kidnapping and still had room to negotiate the delivery of their ransom. The family would have had no way of knowing that their daughter was seriously injured and nearly dead.

Yet for some reason, JonBenét was instead carried downstairs to the basement and subjected to the tortures of a pedophile. One of the male suspects was determined to carry through his team’s vengeance, ransom money be damned, and remained in the home as his partners departed to resume their surveillance of the neighborhood from their outside posts. This was the act of the deranged “baby-killer” to whom Patsy would refer during her CNN interview on January 1, 1997.

“Keep your babies safe…” she admonished viewers, for there was a “killer on the loose in Boulder.”

This monster’s final act of cruelty was determined to be the ultimate causation of JonBenét’s death. The pedophile tied a ligature around her neck and used it to strangle the last bit of life from her tiny body. Petechial hemorrhaging in her eyes indicated that she was still alive when strangled. As further insult, the perpetrator is believed to have inserted the broken end of the paintbrush, used as a handle in the garrote, into her vagina at or near the time of her death.

Death was ruled by the coroner to be a homicide by asphyxiation, and time of death was later estimated to have been at approximately 1:00 a.m. on the morning of December 26, 1996.

The target of his abduction, now deceased, was placed on the floor of the Wine Cellar. “Monster” stood over the unmoving form before him and tried to understand his feelings. Nothing. He felt nothing. Scanning the room, he observed a set of window screens along one wall and a couple of wrapped Christmas presents standing against another. Curious, the wrapping had been torn away at the top ends of each present.

Monster took one last look around and exited the room, carefully latching the door behind him. Unbeknownst to him, he had left behind an impression from the poon of his Hi-Tec boot in the mildew on the floor next to JonBenét’s body, another clue left behind for investigators to contemplate.

Radio transmissions from his partners encouraged him to leave the residence, but Monster wanted to see and hear the reaction of the family when they discovered the disappearance of their daughter. This was no longer about money, but cruel and unusual vengeance.

The hours of the night slowly ticked by, and eventually Monster heard the tell-tale signs of an awakening family in the floors above him. He eventually heard Patsy scream out for John and listened as they discussed the ransom note and debated their calling of police. He listened to Patsy’s near-hysterical telephone call to 911 and settled back into the shadows of the basement when he heard the voices of the first police officer arrive on scene.

It was not long thereafter that a uniformed sergeant swept through the basement, missing him in his darkened hiding space. The light of dawn was slowly beginning to creep its way through the basement windows, and Monster could make out the voices of additional police officers arriving at the scene.

Yet another police officer ventured into the basement and shining his flashlight here and there, passed by Monster in his hidey hole. He was flushed with excitement as the officer returned upstairs and then began to hear the voices of family friends who had been summoned to console Patsy.

And then some period of time later, a third person came through the basement calling out JonBenét’s name as he looked around. This man was not a uniformed officer, but he spent some time inspecting the area around the Train Room window well, and Monster began to worry that his route of escape might have been discovered.

His heart nearly burst when the man unlatched the block of wood securing the Wine Cellar door and then stepped inside. Surely the girl’s body would be discovered by this activity. But the man had apparently seen nothing, for he soon re-latched the door and reluctantly climbed the stairs back to the kitchen.

Monster felt that he had seen and heard enough. He had successfully eluded the observation of three people who had been through the basement that morning and the voices of those on the floor above him suggested that the house had been filling with a growing number of people. It was time to get out.

He moved to the window well and stood upon a Samsonite suitcase that had been used to help his partners leave the basement earlier that morning. Preparing to leave, he began to carefully leverage himself into the window well and then froze. Movement in the windows directly across from the grate caught his attention, and he observed John Ramsey standing in the den not more than fifteen feet from where he hid.

Craning his neck to get a better view, he saw John speaking to a female. It wasn’t anyone Monster recognized, and it dawned on him that it must be a police detective. She held in her hand a small tape recorder and the handset of the telephone. “Damn”, he thought. Ramsey would be stationed in the den to receive the ransom call, and he couldn’t possibly escape in full view of all of the windows that faced the back yard from that room.

Monster climbed back down out of the window well and cursed as he accidentally scuffed the wall beneath the window with his foot. With a growing sense of panic, he began to consider his options.

After several minutes, he decided to venture up the stairwell to the first floor and nearing the top of the stairs, he again froze in place. A toilet had flushed. He listened intently as a water faucet was turned on and off, and then a door was shut. It was apparent that someone had been using the guest bathroom located near the top of the stairs.

Cursing himself for not doing a better job of memorizing the floor plan of the house, Monster remained in place listening for additional sounds that would alert him to the presence of another person. There is a butler door somewhere near the top of these stairs he thought: “All I have to do is make it to that door, and I’m home free.”

Monster inched quietly toward the top of the stairs, knowing that at any instant another person could emerge from the doorway to enter the basement. His damp hand clutched a semiautomatic pistol in readiness.

His heart pounded in his chest as his ears searched for the tell-tale sign that anyone was nearby. Peering beneath the crack of the door, Monster decided to make his next move, and he lightly grasped and then turned the door knob. By millimeters the door slowly edged open, and the distant sound of voices opened up to him. They seemed to be coming from the far side of the house.

Stepping across the threshold of the door, Monster swore beneath his breath: “Which way is it? This place is a God-damned maze!”

Monster turned away from the voices and crept along a short hall. He was about to turn a corner when a police radio crackled so close he thought he was almost standing on top of it. He dared not peek around the corner, for the radio hung from the belt of a CSI processing the door for latent fingerprints.

The team in the compact vehicle had pulled back to Chautauqua Park located several blocks away on Baseline Road. Daylight was now in full bloom, and they were growing not only impatient, but alarmed. They had watched as a number of marked and unmarked police cars had visited the Ramsey home over the course of the morning. None had carried their companion away in handcuffs, so they presumed he still remained hidden somewhere in the home.

“What in the hell was he thinking?’ protested the female.

Suddenly there was a break in radio silence, and Monster whispered his predicament to his partners on the outside. It was agreed that from their positions of surveillance, they would track as best they could the movement of the police officers and other people in the home and advise Monster when it might be possible for him to escape the home.

It was decided that no ransom call would be made and perhaps that would give cause for John Ramsey to leave the den and the police to retreat from the home.

The female started up the car and decided to make another pass by the house. It only took a minute before she pulled up to a Stop sign at the intersection of Cascade and 11
^th
Street, a few blocks southwest of the Ramsey home. Another vehicle moving slowly in her direction caught her attention.

“Get down” she said urgently to her partner. He quickly slumped down into his seat and out of view of the passing vehicle. Her face darkened as she tracked the movement of the passing car. She made a quick right turn and drove away from the neighborhood.

“Okay, you can get up now.”

The male passenger pulled himself out of the foot well and peered through the rear window. “What was it?”

“There was an unmarked police car. The passenger was videotaping all of the license plates of cars parked on the street.”

Monster had moved back to the Train Room in anticipation of receiving the “all clear” signal to “go” from his partners on the outside of the home. He paced back and forth in the tiny space and then set a chair blocking the threshold of the doorway to the room. Anyone wishing to enter the room after him would have to move the chair and thereby alert him to their presence. It was risky, but it would give him a moment to be prepared to face any additional visitors who might come to the basement before his escape.

Time seemed to stand still until the radio transmission blurted into Monsters’ earpiece:

“John Ramsey is in Burke’s bedroom. He’s scanning the street with a set of binoculars…”†

Monster knew this was his best opportunity for escape, and he quickly stepped onto the suitcase and climbed into the window well. As best he could, he peered into the windows of the den and at the rear entry door just feet from the grate. He could see no one, and he slid the grate forward and was rapidly out of the window well. Two seconds to replace the grate, and Monster sprinted for the back alley of the house.

There were no shouts of alarm or police officers yelling at him to “freeze.” He continued his sprint to the north end of the alley and then slowed to a walk. Glancing in both directions and seeing no one, he crossed the street and continued up the next alley. Eventually, he circled around to the van and quickly climbed into the side door.

His partner greeted him with open arms.

“No police calls on the scanner…I think you got away clean.”

Monster leaned back wearily and caught his breath. He glanced around the interior of the vehicle and grabbed a plastic bag. Pulling the remainder of the polymer cord from his pocket, he stuffed it, the stun gun, the roll of black duct tape, and the practice pages of the ransom note into the bag and cinched it closed.

Taking a quick look around before stepping out of the van, Monster moved to the trash can behind the Barnhill residence and deposited the “evidence” of the crime into the container.