Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? (53 page)

⁸³
Ibid
[return]

⁸⁴
See Chapter Fourteen, Mystery Man for a discussion of this evidence
[return]

⁸⁵
The Other Side of Suffering: The Father of JonBenét Ramsey Tells the Story of His Journey from Grief to Grace .
John Ramsey and Marie Chapian, Faith Words, ISBN 978-0-89296-385-0, January 2012
[return]

⁸⁶
Ibid, page 37.
[return]

⁸⁷
Ibid, page 42, 46
[return]

⁸⁸
Visit the website, www.missingkids.com for additional information.
[return]

J
ames Kolar began his law enforcement career with the Boulder Police Department in 1976 as a reserve police officer. Ironically, he lived only blocks from what ultimately would become the home of the Ramsey family when they settled in Boulder in the early 1990s.

Over the course of his career, Kolar would serve as a patrol officer, detective, detective sergeant, supervisor of the department’s narcotic and intelligence unit, and as a sergeant in the uniformed patrol division. He received an official commendation from the Denver U.S. Attorney’s Office, Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, for his investigative work on several national, and international narcotic smuggling and distribution cases that involved organizations operating out of Boulder.

In collateral duties, he served as an assistant commander for the SWAT team, the coordinator for the department’s gang unit, and as a supervisor for the recruit officer Field Training & Evaluation Program. He instructed nationally on the topic of the FTEP program for over a decade.

As assistant commander of the SWAT team, Kolar was responsible for helping coordinate the 1990 manhunt for Colorado prison escapee, and serial murderer, Michael G. Bell. Following his escape from the Department of Corrections facility located in Florence, Colorado, Bell and a couple accomplices embarked on a three week robbery – killing spree that left three wounded, and four dead.

On the day of his capture, Bell had killed two out of five young men he had encountered target shooting in the foothills west of Boulder. Posing as a Park Ranger, he convinced the men to surrender their weapons and then had them kneel on the ground. He proceeded to execute two of them before a struggle ensued and he escaped.

A joint effort by the Boulder PD SWAT team, and the Boulder County Sheriff’s Department STAR team, resulted in one of Boulder County’s most intensive manhunts. Bell survived a gunshot wound he received during his capture, and is serving a term of life imprisonment in the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Kolar left the Boulder Police Department in 1993 to take the chief’s position in the mountain resort community of Telluride, Colorado. He eventually returned to Denver’s Front Range to fill an investigator’s position with the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office in 2004. He would subsequently be asked to take the lead role in the murder investigation of JonBenét Ramsey. Troubled by the conscious decision not to pursue probative leads that he had developed in the case, he ultimately resigned his position in the spring of 2006.

A thirty-five year veteran of law enforcement, Kolar currently serves as the chief of the Telluride Marshal’s Department, situated in the mountains of southwestern Colorado.