Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? (35 page)

Investigators were stumped. What could possibly be the reason for an officer engaged in a deadly gun battle to take the time to collect his empty brass? It soon became apparent that the officers, acting under the duress of the moment, had merely been acting on behavior that had been ingrained during many hours of firearms training. In some jurisdictions, it was routine to immediately collect your empty brass after you had fired your weapon at a paper target. It made for easier clean-up at the end of the day at the range.

Training soon adapted to this realization, and spent brass stayed where it fell until the end of the day. Officers fatally wounded in shootouts no longer were being found with empty shell casings in their pockets.

It was my thought that the combination of things taking place in regards to the ransom note pointed to a matter of habit and routine. As hard as Patsy may have tried to alter the crime scene, she had not been able to overcome the habit of using her own notepad when it came time to craft the ransom note left behind by the
intruder.
The same could be said of her punctuation, use of language, and style of handwriting.

Investigators frequently look to “post offense” behavioral changes when attempting to narrow a list of suspects believed responsible for a crime. In this instance, BPD investigators could not understand why the Ramsey family had taken refuge behind a wall of attorneys so early in the investigation. They had expected the family to be pounding down their doors wanting information about the status of the search for their daughter’s killer.

Soon after the burial of her daughter, Patsy seemed to be suggesting that she was interested in learning where investigators stood in their progress. During a conversation held with Mary Kaempfer, who had played “nanny” to Burke and her son, Anthony, during the funeral services held in Atlanta, Patsy stated that she wanted know why they had not heard from Boulder Police about the case. She wondered what progress had been made and was frustrated about not knowing anything.

A day or so later, after watching their CNN interview on television, Patsy commented on the news coverage that reported a group of Boulder detectives were boarding flights for Atlanta. Patsy was reportedly observed to turn to her husband and ask: “So, are we going to have company tomorrow?”
⁶⁴

John responded, “I guess.”

I thought it ironic that she was voicing frustration about her lack of knowledge of the status of the investigation, and could have easily made arrangements to receive a briefing from Boulder authorities after their arrival in Georgia. Instead, John and Patsy Ramsey quietly slipped out of the state and took refuge in the Colorado home of family friend “Pasta Jay” Elowski.

Patsy’s interest in learning about the status of the progress of the investigation, and her husband’s willingness voiced during the CNN interview to return to Colorado and work with police, seemed to have quickly dissipated.

Another piece of post-offense behavior noted by investigators centered on Patsy Ramsey’s sudden change in handwriting techniques. In April 1997, Detectives Steve Thomas and Ron Gosage paid a surprise visit to the Georgia home of Nedra Paugh, Patsy Ramsey’s mother. Mr. and Mrs. Paugh were not particularly happy to see the investigators, and they reportedly gave an earful about how they thought Boulder Police were persecuting their daughter.

At one point the discussion centered on the ransom note. Detective Gosage indicated that if Mrs. Paugh believed her daughter had not authored the note that perhaps she’d be willing to provide some handwriting examples to help investigators clear her of possible involvement.

Mrs. Paugh responded by thrusting a piece of paper into the detective’s hands, stating that her daughter had just written on it that morning.

After departing the residence, Gosage noted that the piece of paper contained a list of handwritten names, addresses, and telephone numbers. Gosage further observed that the second letter “a” in the name of Barbara Fernie had originally been written in the
manuscript
style, but had been written over with a black felt tip pen changing it to a
cursive
style of letter.

Investigators noted that the ransom note contained a total of 376 words, and the small letter “a” had been printed in manuscript style 109 times, and written in lowercase cursive style only 5 times. This was clear evidence that the author of the note was attempting to conceal his or her handwriting style in order to be precluded from being identified.

Unwittingly, Nedra Paugh had provided investigators with a sampling of Patsy Ramsey’s handwriting that indicated she was consciously making attempts to change her handwriting style. Investigators noted that in Patsy Ramsey’s
pre-homicide
writings that she had consistently used the lower case manuscript style “a” in her handwriting.

In her
post-offense
samplings however, Patsy Ramsey’s writing of the manuscript style of the letter “a” disappeared entirely. Investigators believed the evidence pointed to a conscious effort on her part to obscure her style of handwriting.

It is this type of post-offense behavioral change that investigators are looking for when evaluating evidence of a subject’s possible involvement in a criminal offense. Patsy Ramsey’s conscious effort to alter her handwriting style suggested she wrote the ransom note and had some type of participation or knowledge about the circumstances of the death of JonBenét.

There had been another discrepancy in one of Patsy Ramsey’s law enforcement interviews that caught my attention. Investigators had noted that the wrapping paper on a pair of Christmas presents observed in the Wine Cellar at the time of the discovery of JonBenét’s body had been torn. She told the detectives that she couldn’t remember what was contained in the presents, and hence the need to tear back part of the paper.

I learned, over the course of my inquiry, that it was Burke who had actually been responsible for tearing back the paper of the presents while playing in the basement on Christmas Day, and I wondered why Patsy would claim responsibility for doing this. Patsy had also told investigators that the unwrapped box of Lego toys in the same room was being hidden for Burke’s upcoming January birthday.

I didn’t give much thought about the presence of the Christmas presents in the room at the time, but would later think these played a role in some of the events that took place on Christmas day.

Photo 27 - Torn Christmas presents in the Wine Cellar next to the body of JonBenét. The wrapping on these presents are the same as those depicted in photographs of JonBenét and Burke in front of their Christmas tree on the morning of December 25, 1996. Source: Boulder PD Case File / Internet

It was reported that information about investigative steps being taken by Boulder Police investigators was leaking like a sieve to both the Ramsey camp and media. It seemed that any tidbit of information, whether it had substance or not, was being devoured by the press. In one instance early in the investigation, a tabloid offered thirty thousand dollars ($30,000.00) for copies of the ransom note that had not yet been released to the public.

Information about one critical piece of evidence was in Patsy’s hands before she interviewed with the D.A.’s office in June 1998. It is not clear how she came to know this, but it was apparent she was aware that pineapple had been found in the digestive track of her daughter. Armed with this knowledge, she denied feeding pineapple to her daughter, or knowing how it may have entered her system.

Through questioning, Patsy had indicated that she had cleaned up the kitchen and dining room after their late Christmas morning pancake breakfast. She didn’t think the family had had lunch that day due to the late breakfast and the fact that they were going to the White’s that afternoon for a dinner party.

Shown photographs of the dining room table that held a glass with a tea bag and a bowl of pineapple and spoon, Patsy declared that someone else had to have placed those items there. Her reasoning for believing this was that she “would never put a spoon that big in a bowl like that…”

Photo 28 - Bowl of pineapple and empty glass of tea discovered on dining room table: Fingerprints belonging to Burke and Patsy Ramsey were recovered from these objects. Source: Boulder PD Case File / Internet

At first view of the photographs, she stated that she couldn’t tell what the contents of the bowl were, suggesting that they were “grits, or apples, or cereal.”

Patsy continued to maintain that JonBenét was sound asleep when the family returned home from the White dinner party, and that she had not served pineapple to her daughter.

There was some brief discussion about the White’s not serving pineapple at their party, so the investigator was trying to pin down the time and location that JonBenét may have had access to the fruit.

Patsy stuck by her story, and further stated that she did not believe it possible that either of her kids would have got up that night to fix themselves a snack, because she would have heard the kitchen cupboards being opened and closed.

She suggested that the person who had murdered her daughter was responsible for feeding her the pineapple, and that this had actually happened while he was in the home that evening. I took this to mean that she believed the intruder had been a little more careful about opening and closing the cupboard doors as he prepared this snack for JonBenét.

Patsy had at one point asked if the bowl and glass had been fingerprinted, and when told that latent prints had been identified as belonging to one of them (John and Patsy), she continued to deny knowledge about the dinnerware found on the dining room table:

“I did not feed JonBenét pineapple. Okay? So, I don’t know how it got in her stomach and I don’t know where this bowl of pineapple came from. I can’t recall putting that there. I can never recall putting a tea bag like that in a cup.”

It is important to note that investigators determined that the Whites had not served pineapple during their dinner party.

Moreover, by the time of this interview, investigators had developed latent fingerprints on the drinking glass on the dining room table that belonged to Burke. Latent fingerprints found on the bowl of pineapple were identified as belonging to Patsy.

Assuming the bowl had been washed before use, this was proof that linked Patsy to a tangible piece of physical evidence that played an important role in this murder. The timing of the ingestion of this piece of fruit placed JonBenét at home after the White dinner party, having consumed it within approximately two hours before her strangulation at approximately 1:00 a.m.

JonBenét may very well have been asleep when the family arrived home that evening, but is it plausible to believe that she had ventured downstairs sometime later that night?

The red flag in this instance addresses Patsy’s adamant denial of having anything to do with the glass of tea and bowl of pineapple discovered on the dining room table. And yet the physical evidence in this instance suggests that she served a bowl of pineapple to Burke after returning home from the White dinner party.

Was Patsy denying this activity because the pineapple in JonBenét’s digestive system provides evidence of contact between Burke and his sister at a critical time?

I believe she gave voice to a specific motive on the day she accompanied Burke to the DSS interview that was conducted on January 8, 1997. Speaking with Detective Arndt as Burke was being interviewed by Dr. Bernhard, Patsy stated that she would have
nothing left to live for if she lost Burke.