Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? (5 page)

Victim Advocates arrived on scene at approximately 6:45 a.m. as CSIs processed the scene for latent fingerprints. They reportedly followed the CSIs around cleaning up the messy fingerprint powder and were unwittingly destroying additional trace evidence that might have been discoverable.

Notification of the abduction had been made to Sergeant Robert Whitson, the on-call detective supervisor for the holiday.

He confirmed that the mechanics for installing a trap and trace on the Ramsey home phone had taken place. He called out detectives Linda Arndt and Fred Patterson and sent them to the home. Undercover narcotic unit detectives were called out and instructed to maintain surveillance for suspicious people and activities taking place in the neighborhood. He directed that a senior command staff page be initiated and alerted the D.A.’s office, the Boulder County Sheriff’s Department, and the City’s Public Information Officer of the investigation.

Whitson also contacted the Denver field offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and they immediately began consulting with Boulder Police on the investigation.

Whitson subsequently responded to the home and spoke to John Ramsey. He briefed him on the investigative steps to be taken by the department and advised Ramsey of the FBI’s involvement.

Photo 2 – JonBenét’s bedroom viewed from doorway. Note lamp is turned on. Source: Boulder PD Case File / Internet

Ramsey reiterated his belief that the house had been locked the previous evening when the family had turned in for the night. Upon request, Ramsey provided Whitson with handwriting samples for both him and his wife. He grabbed a note-pad from the kitchen area that he apparently knew to contain samples of his wife’s handwriting and wrote a sentence on another pad of paper as his own exemplar.

Whitson asked Ramsey about any suspects that came to mind, and he mentioned a former employee of his company, Jeff Merrick, who had left under difficult circumstances. Linda Hoffmann-Pugh, the family’s current housekeeper, was also named, and this was due to her recent request for a monetary loan from his wife.

JonBenét’s bedroom was secured with crime scene tape during Whitson’s visit, and he subsequently returned to the Police Department with the handwriting exemplars. These were turned over to Detective Jeff Kithcart, the department’s forensics fraud and handwriting examiner. Later that day, around the time of the discovery of JonBenét’s body, Kithcart made an unsettling discovery. He observed handwriting on pages of Patsy Ramsey’s note pad that started out in similar fashion to the opening words of the ransom note. The structure of the letters was similar to those of the ransom note, and pages had been torn out of the pad. It appeared to Kithcart that Patsy Ramsey’s note pad may have been used to construct a practice ransom note.

Detective Linda Arndt brought recording equipment with her to the scene and not long after her arrival at 0810 hours, she determined that she would use the Den as her base of operations. She asked French to remain with Patsy Ramsey in the first floor Solarium as she briefed John Ramsey on what to say to the kidnapper(s) when they called. French continued to attempt to control the movement and activities of friends who now inhabited the home.

Arndt conducted a brief interview with Patsy Ramsey that morning and was told that she too thought the house was locked the previous evening. Mrs. Ramsey reported to Arndt that she had found the ransom note first before going to JonBenét’s bedroom and this conflicted with what she had reported to French when he first spoke to her that morning.

She related possible suspicion of Linda Hoffmann-Pugh due to her recent request for a two- thousand dollar ($2,000.00) loan. Arndt was subsequently told by Father Rol that Patsy Ramsey also wanted her to know that Hoffmann-Pugh had previously mentioned concerns about the kidnapping of JonBenét.

A copy of the ransom note was brought back to the house that morning by Detective Arndt, and the family and friends attempted to decipher its contents. Some thought the ransom demand, one-hundred-eighteen thousand dollars ($118,000.00), an odd amount for a ransom demand. They also thought the amount ridiculously low and knew that John Ramsey was well-capable of paying up to one million dollars ($1,000,000.00) in ransom for his daughter if necessary.

The length, content, and details provided by kidnappers in the note immediately raised questions for the investigators who were working the case that morning. The FBI, consulting in the case, had never seen a ransom note of its kind. In their experience, ransom notes were short and sweet and typically provided few details about the perpetrators behind a kidnapping.

Additionally, the note began by formally addressing John Ramsey. By its end, the kidnapper(s) spoke as though they were intimately familiar with John and the family.

None of the civilians on the scene that morning seemed to question or be concerned about the length of the note.

Arndt noted that John Ramsey seemed to be distracted throughout the course of the morning and was out of the den on at least three occasions during the time frame that they awaited the ransom call. He had to run to answer the phone when it rang.

The ransom note stated that kidnappers would call with instructions for the family between “8:00 and 10:00 am” and the passage of this time came and went, without any observed comment from Ramsey. It wasn’t long after this that Arndt lost track of his movements. She reported that she first made note of his absence at around 1040 hours, and he didn’t reappear until noon. Nearly 1 ½ years would pass before John Ramsey explained this absence.

CSIs had wrapped up their processing of the first floor of the home. Victim advocates Grace Morlock and Mary Lou Jedamus had followed them around, cleaning up the mess left by fingerprint powder. Family friends were still in attendance, continuing their attempt to console Patsy Ramsey and had used the kitchen to prepare food and snacks for the group.

French had remained at the home throughout the morning and observed additional behavioral clues that tickled his sixth sense. For one, Patsy Ramsey had wanted him to remove his gun belt and uniform shirt as he stood by in the house. He thought it an odd request since he was there protecting the family against the members of a “foreign faction” who had entered her home and kidnapped her daughter.

Why was she so uncomfortable with a uniformed police officer being in her home?

There was another peculiar moment that captured French’s attention. Patsy Ramsey had been crying throughout the morning and was being consoled by her friends. At one juncture, he observed that she had her hands up around her face, presumably to help cover her anguish. He was a little unnerved when he discovered that she was peering at him through her fingers. It was an odd moment that left him uncertain about what to think of the circumstances in which he found himself immersed.

Supervisors and detectives had convened at the Police Department following the passage of the ransom hour, and Arndt found herself to be the sole police officer remaining at the home. She had observed a marked difference in John Ramsey’s mood when he re-surfaced at noon. He was anxiously pacing around the house shortly before 1300 hours, and in attempt to keep his mind occupied, Arndt suggested that he check the house from “top to bottom” for anything unusual.

Rather than follow the directions of the detective, Ramsey immediately led Fleet White to the basement.

White was interviewed on three different occasions by law enforcement authorities about the events that followed his visit to the basement with Ramsey. He told investigators that John Ramsey led him directly to the Train Room, and White told Ramsey about his visit to the room earlier that morning.

Ramsey related his break-in through the window from the previous summer, and they both checked around for more glass.† It was not clear from either of the men’s later interviews whether they had opened the window as they looked for more glass, but Ramsey stated that both men got down on the floor to check for signs that the window hadn’t been broken again. Preparing to leave the room, they moved a fireplace grate to check another closet, and Ramsey then moved out of the room and down the hallway toward the Wine Cellar. White was replacing the grate when he heard John Ramsey cry out “Oh my God!”

Photo 3 - Hallway leading to Wine Cellar. JonBenét’s body was discovered behind this door, and the paint tray is on the floor to left edge of the doorway. Note the bag of golf clubs. Source: Boulder PD Case File / Internet