Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? (37 page)

While attending the memorial services in Boulder, and while playing with Anthony in Atlanta, Burke was described by Anthony as acting like “he kind of knew what happened and trusted that people would find out.”

Anthony indicated that Burke may have appeared “confused” at times, but was not acting upset and indicated that he was not scared. When asked how he was doing, Burke said he was “fine.” Anthony told investigators that he never saw Burke cry during their stay in Atlanta.

Kaempfer advised that the only time she had seen him display some emotion and sadness was at the cemetery after the graveside services. He had left a group of people and went to the side of JonBenét’s casket, patting it gently.

After that brief display of caring, Burke and Anthony went exploring, skipping through the headstones in the cemetery.

Upon returning from Atlanta on January 2, 1997, Kaempfer spoke to fellow parent Susan Stine and was told about a conversation Stine had overheard taking place between Burke and her son, Doug. This was reported to have taken place on the afternoon following the grief counseling session that had been hosted at JonBenét’s school on the morning of Saturday, December 28, 1996.

Stine appeared to Kaempfer to have been disturbed by the conversation and had listened to Burke and Doug talk about how JonBenét had been strangled. Based upon Kaempfer’s statement, it appeared that Stine had over overheard the boys discussing whether or not manual strangulation had been involved in JonBenét’s death.

Stine described the conversation as being “very impersonal,” and it struck her that the discussion about the details of JonBenét’s death was like the boys were “talking about a TV show.” This discourse between Burke and Doug had taken place no more than two days following JonBenét’s murder and apparently had such an impact upon Stine that she brought it up in conversation with Mary Kaempfer at the first opportunity.

As I reviewed the video of the DSS interview between Dr. Bernhard and Burke, he was asked if he knew what had happened to his sister or if he had talked to his parents about it. Burke stated that he knew what happened and indicated that he had asked his father where he had found JonBenét’s body. His father had told him that she had been found in the basement.

During the initial exploration of this topic, Burke again appeared to be exhibiting signs of discomfort and stress. As displayed during the question about sexual contact, he began rubbing the board game on his head and was holding it in front of his face. He eventually put the board down.

When asked again what he thought had happened, Burke advised without hesitation that he knew what had happened to JonBenét and that she had been killed. He stated that he thought someone had quietly carried her downstairs to the basement and that person had then either stabbed JonBenét or struck a blow to her head with a hammer.

A chill ran down the back of my neck as I watched Burke twice physically imitate the act of striking a blow with his right arm during his casual discussion of this matter.

I stopped and replayed that section of the video several times.

It seemed absolutely incredible, but Burke was replicating exactly the type of an over-the-arm blow that would have been responsible for the head injury sustained by JonBenét.

It is difficult to describe what I was experiencing. I flashed to the scene of a photograph that I had seen depicting John Ramsey standing next to JonBenét and Burke on a sandy beach. The three of them were standing next to one another, nearly arm-in-arm, and they appeared to be enjoying a summer vacation.

Burke stood head and shoulder above his little sister, and it was the difference in their height that struck me at that moment. JonBenét seemed so petite standing next to her brother, and the mechanics of the delivery of a lethal blow to her head appeared to be within the realm of possibilities.

I leaned back in my chair and contemplated the scenes I had just witnessed on the DSS video. There were red flags popping up all over the place, and I wondered why, assuming Burke had not been misled himself, he apparently would feel it necessary to mislead Dr. Bernhard about his knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the death of his sister and the possibility that a stabbing was involved.

As I reviewed the video time and again, I found it noteworthy that Burke never once mentioned the fact that he knew that JonBenét had been strangled during this conversation with Dr. Bernhard.

As noted, Burke’s interview with Dr. Bernhard took place a little more than a week and a half after JonBenét’s murder on January 8, 1997. The fact that JonBenét had been strangled was common knowledge in Boulder by that juncture.

The
Daily Camera’s
first published article that reported on the news of the kidnap and murder of JonBenét was released to the public on the morning of December 27, 1996. It was noted in the article that the autopsy of JonBenét had not yet been conducted, but was expected to be performed sometime that day.

Chief Tom Koby told the reporter that “although the official cause of death was not yet known… the case was considered a homicide.”

Detective Sergeant Larry Mason was quoted as saying that the child “had not been shot or stabbed.”

The fact that JonBenét had been strangled wouldn’t be released by the papers until the following day, on December 28
^th
, but the exact details about the manner in which the strangulation had taken place were not released.

I thought it noteworthy that neither one of these first two newspaper articles mentioned any blow to JonBenét’s head, and I wondered how Burke could have known about that injury.

I would later find through research of the news media coverage that the
Boulder Daily Camera
would make passing comment about a head injury a few days later, but full details of the depressed skull fracture wouldn’t be revealed to the public by the Boulder County Coroner until July 1997.
⁶⁷

The first public mention of any type of head injury appeared to have been reported by the
Daily Camera
in an article published on January 6, 1997, and read as follows:

John Ramsey and a friend later found JonBenét strangled in the basement. The killer had sexually assaulted the girl, covered her mouth with duct tape, looped a nylon cord around her neck, and fractured her skull.

I considered the possibility that this early release of information could have been the source of Burke’s speculation about the “hammer” strike to his sister’s head, but he had combined this comment with his mention of a “stabbing” as well. Why speculate about two methods of injury if he was truly conversant with his sister’s injuries.

I spoke to media people who were more closely associated with the daily reporting of events at the time and became aware that some minor references regarding the injury to JonBenét’s skull had also been discussed by retired FBI agent John Douglas on
Dateline
NBC on the evening of January 28, 1997.
⁶⁸

As noted previously, Douglas had been hired by the Ramsey family, and subsequently provided a profile of the person believed responsible for the abduction and murder of their daughter. The
Dateline
NBC interviewer, Chris Hansen, attributes the following statement to John Douglas during a voiceover on the program:

Hansen: “Douglas says JonBenét was brutalized, that she had duct tape on her mouth.
She suffered severe head wounds
. And she was strangled and sexually assaulted.”

The late date of this public broadcast didn’t explain Burke’s reference to the head injury, however, and I attempted to determine what exactly had been known by the family in advance of Burke’s DSS interview.

The Ramseys were not conversing with Boulder investigators at the time, so I reached the conclusion that, as the parents of a murdered child, members of the either the Coroner’s Office or D.A.’s office were probably sharing this information with Ramsey attorneys. I thought it likely that they were advised of this information fairly early in the investigation and long before it became general public knowledge.

The parents had maintained that they never spoke to their son about the circumstances surrounding JonBenét’s death, and had indicated over the following months that they had made every effort to limit his exposure to the media coverage taking place about the murder. At one point, Patsy had actually asked the manager of a supermarket to remove the tabloid newspapers from the racks of the business. She didn’t want her son to be confronted with that type of sensationalist coverage of the murder while waiting in the checkout line of the grocery store.

I again thought it feasible that he may have overheard his parents talking between themselves about the head injury. Or, similar to the conversation he had with Doug Stine about the strangulation, Burke may have been conversing about the details of the investigation with playmates and learned of the head injury prior to the DSS interview.

This was certainly within the realm of possibilities, but I was still asking myself the following questions:

• Why would Burke tell Dr. Bernhard that he knew what had happened to JonBenét and not mention her
  strangulation
  ? He clearly was aware that strangulation had been involved due to the conversations he was overheard having with Doug Stine not more than two days after the murder of his sister.
  
• Additionally, if Burke had truly become aware of the circumstances surrounding the murder, why would he be mentioning a
  stabbing
  when there had been no such injury sustained by his sister?
  
• As illustrated here, the first media report issued on the murder
  specifically
  stated that JonBenét had
  not been stabbed.
  

Those were troubling questions, and I wondered whether Burke deliberately misled Dr. Bernhard regarding the exact knowledge he had of the circumstances surrounding his sister’s death, and why he would feel the need to do so.

Taking all of those things into consideration, I wondered if perhaps this was merely another strange coincidence that would continue to muddy the waters of the investigation.

On the other hand, I couldn’t help but contemplate the possibility that Burke had just physically demonstrated first-hand knowledge of the lethal blow that had been struck to the head of JonBenét.

Boulder Police investigators were effectively being sidelined by the late spring of 1998, and the D.A.’s office had successfully negotiated another series of interviews with the Ramsey family. The fact that a grand jury investigation was looming seemed to play a role in getting the Ramseys back to the interview table, but this time the man who had given birth to the intruder theory would be directly involved.

Boulder Police were aware that interviews were going to take place, but the D.A.’s office would not reveal where they would occur. Investigators were provided the opportunity, however, to review the videotapes between the interviews that had been scheduled over the span of three days in June, 1998.

Transcripts of the interviews conducted with John and Patsy Ramsey had subsequently been prepared, but I couldn’t find any written record of the interviews conducted with Burke. I was eventually able to obtain DVD copies of these videotapes.

It was my impression that Burke continued to display a distant and detached attitude toward the events surrounding JonBenét’s death, and he frequently appeared bored by the investigator’s questions. When queries finally began to center around the details of his sister’s disappearance, Burke retreated into his chair in a fetal-like position, and he seemed to become agitated and nervous.

Again, I thought that this body language seemed to suggest anxiety and distress. I had initially thought that he might have been withdrawing unconsciously into a position of fetal protection, but later observed that he was calling out that the hour of the interview was nearing an end. This to me resembled the behavior of a reluctant psychiatric patient monitoring the clock for the conclusion of a counseling session.

I was not able to review the third and final segment of these interviews due to a faulty DVD disk, but I was advised by Tom Wickman that, at the conclusion of the last interview, Burke was asked if he had any questions regarding the investigation into the death of his sister. Provided this opportunity, did Burke inquire whether police were any closer to catching the person who had brutally murdered his sister?