Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? (4 page)

Several moments later, the van moved off through the alley, and the trash can slowly receded from view as Monster turned the corner at the next block. Smiling, he turned to his partner:

“It never hurts to have a patsy ready to take the fall for you…”

The misleading clues left behind by the members of the foreign faction were confusing and puzzling, and ultimately sent some investigators flying away on the tails of wild geese.

“I didn’t – I couldn’t read the whole thing. I had just gotten up. We were on our, it was the day after Christmas, and we were going to go visiting, and it was quite early in the morning and I had got dressed and was on my way to the kitchen to make some coffee. And we have a back staircase from the bedroom areas, and I always come down that staircase, and I am usually the first one down.

And the note was lying across – three pages – across the run of one of the stair treads and it was kind of dimly lit. It was just very early in the morning and I started to read it, and it was addressed to John.

It said ‘“Mr. Ramsey.”’ And it said, ‘“We have your daughter.”’ And I, you know, it just, it just wasn’t registering. And I, I may have gotten through another sentence. I can’t. ‘“We have your daughter.”’ And I don’t know if I got any further than that.

And I immediately ran back upstairs and pushed open her door and she was not in her bed and I screamed for John.”

—Patsy Ramsey’s description of finding the ransom note during the CNN interview aired January 1, 1997.

Photo 1 - Ramsey Home 755 15
^th
Street Boulder, Colorado/ Source: Boulder PD Case Files

I
t was nearing shift change at the Boulder County Regional Communications Center in the early morning hours of December 26, 1996. Having worked most of the holidays, dispatcher Kimberly Archuleta was looking forward to spending the next few days off with her teenage son.

Dayshift relief dispatchers were coming into the center, receiving their briefing on the night’s events when the light of a 911 phone console lit up at Archuleta’s station at 0552 hours. She took the call, and immediately sensed the urgency of the hysterical voice of a female on the line.

A hush came over the center, and co-workers turned their attention to Archuleta as she repeated the words of the 911 caller: A six year old girl had been kidnapped.

Patsy Ramsey: (Inaudible) police

Archuleta: (Inaudible)

Patsy Ramsey: Seven fifty-five Fifteenth Street.

Archuleta: What’s going on there, Ma’am?

Patsy Ramsey: We have a kidnapping…Hurry, please.

Archuleta: Explain to me what’s going on, Okay?

Patsy Ramsey: There we have…There’s a note left and our daughter’s gone.

Archuleta: A note was left and your daughter is gone?

Patsy Ramsey: Yes

Archuleta: How old is your daughter?

Patsy Ramsey: She’s six years old…she’s blond…six years old.

Archuleta: How long ago was this?

Patsy Ramsey: I don’t know. I just found the note and my daughter/s (inaudible)

Archuleta: Does it say who took her?

Patsy Ramsey: What?

Archuleta: Does it say who took her?

Patsy Ramsey: No…I don’t know it’s there…there’s a ransom note here.

Archuleta: It’s a ransom note?

Patsy Ramsey: It says SBTC Victory…Please.

Archuleta: Okay, what’s your name? Are you…

Patsy Ramsey: Patsy Ramsey. I’m the mother. Oh my God, please…

Archuleta: I’m…Okay, I’m sending an officer over, Okay?

Patsy Ramsey: Please.

Archuleta: Do you know how long she’s been gone?

Patsy Ramsey: No, I don’t. Please, we just got up and she’s not here. Oh my God, please.

Archuleta: Okay.

Patsy Ramsey: Please send somebody.

Archuleta: I am, honey.

Patsy Ramsey: Please.

Archuleta: Take a deep breath (inaudible)

Patsy Ramsey: Hurry, hurry, hurry, (inaudible)

Archuleta: Patsy? Patsy? Patsy? Patsy? Patsy?

Officer Rick French was the first to arrive on scene at 0556 hours and was greeted at the front door of the residence by Patsy Ramsey. John Ramsey was visible from the front door, standing in the kitchen at the end of a length of hallway that ran toward the rear of the house. French observed John Ramsey to be dressed in a long-sleeved blue and white pin-striped shirt and khaki pants. Patsy Ramsey’s hair and make-up appeared to be neatly done, and she was dressed in a red sweater and black slacks.

Mrs. Ramsey immediately stated that their 6-year old daughter, JonBenét, was missing from her bedroom and that a ransom note had been found indicating that she had been kidnapped. John Ramsey directed French to three pages of paper spread out on the floor of a back kitchen hall. Mrs. Ramsey told French that she had stopped by JonBenét’s bedroom at approximately 5:45 a.m. when headed downstairs that morning and found that her daughter was not in her room. She had come across the note as she proceeded down the back spiral staircase to the kitchen. She stated that she had originally found the three-page note spread on the bottom treads of the stairs, but that her husband had moved it to its current location on the floor of the hallway, just outside of the kitchen.

French was told that Patsy Ramsey had immediately called 911 after showing the note to her husband, and he advised French that the house appeared to be locked as it had been left the previous evening. An alarm system for the home had not been used in some time, and they reported hearing nothing unusual during the night.

Ramsey told French that he had conducted a cursory search of JonBenét‘s room and that of his 9-year old son’s while awaiting the arrival of officers. He reported that his 9-year old son, Burke, was still asleep in his upstairs bedroom. He had not been awakened by either of the parents to determine if he knew anything about JonBenét’s disappearance.

French re-checked JonBenét’s bedroom with John Ramsey and noted that the bedding had been pulled back as though one would be getting in to or out of bed. There was no sign of a struggle in the room and no sign of forced entry into JonBenét’s locked second floor balcony door. It looked like the typical room of a 6-year old.

Sergeant Paul Reichenbach was the night shift patrol supervisor and finishing up the night’s paperwork at his desk when he overheard French dispatched to the Ramsey home. He immediately headed for his car and was the second officer to arrive on scene at approximately 0610 hours.

French met Reichenbach at the front door and gave him a quick briefing, telling him there was a ransom note and he believed there may have been a kidnapping, but something didn’t seem “right” to him. Many years of dealing with people under stress and at the peak of their emotions often give peace officers a “sixth sense,” and something was beginning to tickle the edges of French’s radar screen.

Reichenbach was shown the ransom note on the floor and, reading it, he began to formulate a response plan to the kidnapping. The note had specifically stated that the family was being watched. It seemed unlikely that a kidnapper would be parked outside the Ramsey home watching for police activity, but it wasn’t unreasonable to think that they could be monitoring police radio frequencies, so Reichenbach ordered radio silence for the remainder of the call. Any further communication between officers working the case would be conducted by cell phone.

He called on the resources of the on-duty and off-duty Crime Scene Investigators, notified Sergeant Robert Whitson, the on-call detective supervisor, of the kidnapping and requested that Victim Advocates respond to the scene to assist in comforting the family. Reichenbach also took steps for the telephone company to set up a trap and trace on the Ramsey phone so that the source of any incoming phone calls for ransom could be traced.

While French remained with the parents, Reichenbach conducted an interior inspection of all three floors of the home, including the basement, and he did not notice any credible point of entry that drew his attention. He noted that at the far end of the basement was a white door secured at the top by a block of wood that pivoted on a screw. Reichenbach tried to open the door, but stopped when it was apparent that it would not have been either a point of entry or exit from the home.

During his inspection of the second floor, Reichenbach observed that the door to Burke’s bedroom was open, and the lights were off. He moved quietly into the room, and Burke appeared to be asleep beneath the covers of his bed. Exiting, Reichenbach closed the door “nearly all the way” to prevent downstairs noise from awakening the boy.

Following a walk-through of the home, Reichenbach then conducted a cursory search of the exterior and observed “frost on the grass and a little bit of snowfall” on exposed areas of the lawn. He noted that no one other than himself had walked through these areas.

Reichenbach noted that no snow had adhered to the rear patio and walkways. The driveway was wet but no foot prints / tracks were visible, and he observed no fresh signs of forced entry to exterior doors and windows.

After hanging up on the 911 dispatcher, Patsy Ramsey found the composure to make two additional phone calls. Family friends John and Barbara Fernie, as well as Fleet and Priscilla White were hurriedly summoned to the home. She told her friends that there was an emergency and that she needed them at her home. She had not told them that JonBenét had been kidnapped and that she needed their support.

It was close to 6:30 a.m. when the Fernies arrived and, from outside the rear kitchen / patio door, John Fernie was able to observe the ransom note still spread out on the floor of the hallway next to the kitchen.

Not long thereafter, Fleet and Priscilla White were the next family friends to arrive at the Ramsey home. Fleet White reported that within approximately 15 minutes of his arrival, he made a quick inspection of the basement of the home. He was purportedly the third person to visit the basement at that point of the morning.†

It should be noted that White’s daughter, Daphne, had gone missing about a year earlier, and she was eventually found hiding in their home. Despite the existence of the ransom note in this instance, he took it upon himself to check the basement for JonBenét. He is the only person of record who called out her name as he searched the home that morning.

White observed a window to the Train Room to be closed and unlatched, and he was immediately drawn to the area. A particular upper left quadrant of the window was broken and it was large enough, about the size of a baseball that a person could reach through the space to unlock the window latch inside. Sections of fractured glass were missing from this part of the window, and he inspected the area closely for the remnants of these pieces.

He moved a hard-sided Samsonite suitcase that was standing beneath the window to look for broken glass. He didn’t find any. The larger pieces of glass pane had already been removed, and it was subsequently determined that John Ramsey had broken the window and entered through that space when locked out of the house the previous summer. The glass from that breakage had been cleaned up, but the window had never been repaired.

White did find a small single kernel of glass on the floor, an apparent remnant from John Ramsey’s earlier entry. He placed this on the ledge of the window frame and, leaving the window in its original condition, moved on to complete his survey of the basement.

White then moved from the Train Room to the white door of the Wine Cellar and, unlatching the wood block, partially opened the door to that room. Unable to locate a light switch for the windowless room, White failed to see a blanket on the floor that wrapped the body of JonBenét.

White returned upstairs and subsequently suggested that Burke be sequestered to the safety of his own home, in the company of his son, Fleet Junior, and visiting family.

Reports are in conflict as to whether or not White accompanied John Ramsey to awaken Burke. Ramsey reports that he alone awakened Burke and told him to get dressed and that his sister was missing. French made an attempt at an interview before Burke left the home, but was told that the boy had been asleep throughout the entire event and had no information to offer officers.

There is no dispute that White alone subsequently drove JonBenét’s brother to his residence located in West Boulder. Before leaving home, Burke grabbed his Nintendo game, and he was gone by the time Detective Linda Arndt arrived at 0810 hours.

The exact timing of events is not clear, but French was purportedly the second person to inspect the basement after things had stabilized at the scene. He reported that he had briefly checked the garage and back doors of the residence not long after his arrival and had gone to the basement sometime before the arrival of civilians at the home.

Much has been made about his failure to discover the body of JonBenét in the Wine Cellar during this walkthrough, but like Reichenbach, one must understand what was going through his head at the time.

This was not a situation where a child was merely missing and possibly hiding in the home. The family was reporting a kidnapping of their child, and he had been shown a ransom note as proof. French was checking the interior of the home for a possible point of entry or exit that would have been used by a kidnap-per(s).The door to the Wine Cellar was secured by a wooden block and it showed no sign of having been forcibly entered from the exterior. There simply was no reason at the time to go into that room.

CSI Karl Veitch arrived on the scene and handled the collection of the ransom note. It had been replaced and photographed on the stair treads as that had been the original location of discovery according to Patsy Ramsey. He then transported the note to the police department and photocopied it for investigators before securing it and going home sick.

Reverend Rol Haverstock, of the family’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, also responded to the home that morning and he, along with family friends, attempted to console a visibly distraught Patsy Ramsey. He was arriving at the home as Veitch was departing with the ransom note.

CSI’s Barry Weiss and Sue Barcklow had arrived on the scene and began to look for a possible point of entry to the home. They examined doors and windows and began to dust for latent fingerprints. Weiss observed that the balcony door of JonBenét’s bedroom was closed and locked. He noted that it had been a very cold night and observed a light coating of frost on the exterior bedroom balcony floor and railings. There were no marks of disturbance visible on the balcony prior to his testing of the surface. (Crime scene photos depicted before and after photos of the balcony floor with his footprints in the frost.) Anecdotally, another officer reported that the outside temperature had been observed to be 9 degrees Fahrenheit one hour earlier at Tebo Plaza, approximately five miles distant from the Ramsey home.