Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? (9 page)

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n Saturday, December 28, 1996, Assistant District Attorney Pete Hoffstrom informed detectives that the family had retained legal counsel and were not willing to meet with police investigators. He suggested that any questions they had be reduced to writing, and he would forward these to Ramsey defense counsel.

A list of 16 early questions was presented to Hoffstrom, but it took weeks before the answers to these basic questions were returned to authorities. Clarifying questions posed were like the following:

• What was JonBenét wearing when she went to bed that night?
  
• What did JonBenét have to eat that night?
  

These were basic things that police had not been able to record during the hectic events of the morning.

Rick French at one point characterized his efforts at obtaining information as a series of twenty hectic and scattered discussions taking place, during which time some things were never pinned down.

The circumstances surrounding these early events were puzzling to investigators. It was understandable that the family needed the time to make arrangements to bury their child, but why wouldn’t the family want to meet with the people responsible for investigating the death of their daughter?

The Ramseys had not yet returned to Boulder after the services in Georgia and were already taking steps to engage the media. At some juncture during their stay in Atlanta, a family friend with connections was able to arrange an interview with CNN.

This course of action, and the fact that attorneys had been hired to represent the Ramsey family, reportedly upset Fleet White, who had accompanied the family to Georgia for the services. White could not understand why the family was delaying their return to Colorado to begin their interviews with authorities.

At one point, White became agitated during a telephone conversation with John Ramsey’s brother, Jeff, and headed to the family home to continue the discussion. The brother was frightened by the conversation, and Don Paugh, Patsy Ramsey’s father, reportedly hid a handgun beneath the cushions of his living room couch in anticipation of trouble. John Ramsey calmed everyone down before White arrived, and nothing further came of the incident.

Rod Westmoreland was said to have been responsible for setting up the CNN interview for John and Patsy, but the Ramseys would later state that it was Fleet White who had encouraged them to go on national television.
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This representation was entirely contrary to White’s expressed feelings for the matter, and he was having a difficult time with decisions being made by the family during this time. He subsequently booked a commercial flight home rather than fly on the private jet that transported the family and other friends.

John Ramsey stated during the January 1, 1997, CNN interview that the family was now ready to return to Boulder and work with authorities, but that didn’t come to fruition. They instead took refuge in the home of “Pasta Jay” Elowski and appeared to continue to fortify their team of attorneys. John Ramsey went so far as to hire attorneys to represent members of the Paugh family, and even his ex-wife, Lucinda Johnson.

A Denver-based private investigative firm, Ellis Armistead, joined the team of attorneys being assembled to work the Ramsey’s side of the inquiry.

The Washington, D.C. public relations firm of Rowan and Blewitt was retained, and soon Pat Korten was handling the media and releasing public statements for the family.

Police continued to attempt to set up one-on-one interviews with each of the parents, but no one could agree to a time and place or the duration of said interview. The days stretched into weeks, and the weeks lapsed into months. At one juncture, police had agreed to meet with the family at an off-site location from their headquarters, but subsequently cancelled just days before the meeting, after the FBI counseled them that the interviews should be taking place on their home turf.

Ramsey attorneys had a field day with the media. They claimed cooperation on the part of the family, but that the police were being obstinate.

The father of Polly Klass, a 12-year-old child kidnapped and murdered by a pedophile in California in 1993, publically criticized the Ramsey family in early January 1997 for their behavior in the matter:

“I think the parents made some terrible mistakes thus far by hiring lawyers and a publicist and refusing to talk to police.”
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From his personal perspective, Marc Klaas believed that the parents of a murdered child ought to be working side-by-side with police investigators and not hiding behind the legal pads of high-priced attorneys.

In the meantime, Ramsey’s PR firm began to get busy and helped publicize the formation of a foundation named in memory of JonBenét. A non-profit 501 (c)(3) corporation was established with John and Patsy Ramsey listed as the board members, and appropriate paperwork was filed with the State of Colorado and the IRS on March 31, 1997. Subsequent tax documents reported that the “JonBenét Ramsey Children’s Foundation” intended to do the following:

1. Provide opportunities to children to develop their talents
   
2. Build a strong spiritual foundation in children
   
3. Promote the safety of children
   
4. Promote education on effective parenting and nurturing
   
5. Affirm and recognize children who demonstrate compassion for and service to others.
   
6. Recognize responsible journalism that affects children and families and promotes good in the world for children
   

The foundation listed its intention to fund organizations or programs that met the objectives listed above. It did not intend to conduct any fundraising efforts, but indicated that it would rely upon donations from family members, friends, corporations and unsolicited donations to fund its charitable causes.

The foundation also publically offered a reward of $100,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) believed responsible for the kidnap and murder of JonBenét. A reward poster depicting a photograph of JonBenét was printed for distribution along with a private telephone tip line, with no association to the police department or Crime Stoppers listed on the document.

Press releases prepared by the PR firm appeared with some regularity in the Denver area print media throughout the spring and summer of 1997.

A website, www.ramseyfamily.com, was established in the spring of 1997, and the reward information was posted there, along with a chronological history of the press releases that had been prepared in the Ramsey’s private search for the perpetrators of the crime.

The Ramseys had also hired retired FBI profiler John Douglas to assist them in the case. His involvement is covered a little more in depth in a later chapter, but Douglas flew to Denver and met with their attorneys on January 8, 1997.

By this time, rumors of prior sexual abuse had been flowing through the media reports, and people were jumping to the conclusion that John Ramsey had been responsible for the molestation of his daughter. Regrettably, some of JonBenét’s reward posters would show up around town with the father’s name plastered all over them.

Douglas reports that one of the primary reasons he had been retained by attorneys was to evaluate the possible involvement of John Ramsey in the death of his daughter. Though they did not specifically say it, he was under the impression that his attorneys wanted to know if their client was guilty.
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Douglas met with John Ramsey for a couple hours on the morning of January 9, 1997, and proceeded to go over the events of the kidnapping. Ramsey became very emotional as he described finding the body of his daughter. To the relief of attorneys, Douglas advised that he didn’t believe their client had been responsible for the murder of JonBenét.

Douglas then met jointly with John and Patsy in the presence of their attorney. Both parents spoke of their experiences and recollections of the day that JonBenét had been kidnapped and murdered and stated that they wanted to cooperate with authorities in their investigation. Based upon their behavior, Douglas formed the opinion that neither of the parents had killed JonBenét.

Though he had not specifically been hired by Ramsey attorneys to establish a criminal profile of the perpetrator(s) believed responsible for this crime, Douglas offered an early theory during his meeting with the family. He thought that perhaps a “personal cause offender” may have been involved, primarily because of the revenge aspects noted in the ransom note.

Attorneys had to have breathed a sigh of relief. A nationally recognized expert in the field of criminal profiling had voiced the opinion that neither of the parents was believed responsible for murdering their daughter.

In spite of not having had the opportunity to review the full complement of police reports, Douglas would eventually work up a behavioral profile for a possible offender that would subsequently be included in advertisements prepared by Ramsey’s PR firm.

Douglas would be interviewed by network media regarding his participation in the investigation, and he eventually devoted an entire chapter to this effort in one of the many books he authored on the subject of “criminal profiling.”
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Police, prosecutors, and Ramsey attorneys continued to do battle in the media as they tried to find common ground for a follow-up interview with the parents. Both sides eventually reached consensus. John and Patsy would be interviewed individually by police investigators on April 30, 1997, for a time period not to exceed eight (8) hours. Breaks and lunch would take place over the course of the day of questioning.

What a coup. Over four (4) months had passed since the discovery of JonBenét’s body, and now Boulder Police had finally been able to convince the parents of this murdered child to sit down with them to answer some basic questions about the death of their daughter.

The Ramseys would continue to broadcast their message to the media following that interview. In July 1997, they issued another press release that seemed to decry the Boulder Police Department’s focus on them as suspects in the murder of their daughter.

The release, really an advertisement, listed behavioral clues that the public should be alerted to, and requested that anyone with information contact their private team of investigators who were “taking a new approach to their search.”

They announced that the perpetrator(s) might have exhibited the following type of behavior around the time of the kidnapping:

• Conflict with a female
  
• Conflict with family
  
• Financial stress
  
• Marital problems
  
• Legal problems
  
• Employment problems
  
• Did that person then suffer a traumatic event, such as the break-up of an important relationship, loss of a job, or some other disruption in his life that could have triggered violent behavior? Did that person express hostility and anger at either of us or our family? Was he depressed, perhaps using drugs or alcohol?
  

In August, they issued an advertisement in which they asked the public if they recognized some aspects of the handwriting depicted in the ransom note and included certain letter combinations found in the wording of the note.

In another release, the public was asked to recall details about a male who purportedly had been approaching little girls around the 1996 Christmas holidays. This was the first Boulder Police investigators had heard about such a tip, and the details on how this lead was developed are scant.

The press releases and advertisements would continue unabated for a number of years as the Ramseys financed their own search for the person(s) believed responsible for the murder of their daughter.

The first six months of the investigation were a rocky time, however, as the Ramseys proclaimed that there was a killer on the loose in Boulder.

City authorities contradicted that opinion, continuing to maintain that Boulder was a safe community and that its citizens shouldn’t be concerned that a child murderer was running amuck. These statements suggested that police were not hunting for a kidnapper / intruder who would have been responsible for the crime. If not an intruder, then who
was
responsible for the murder of this 6-year-old girl?

The politics of the media wars made for good entertainment, and it seemed that at every opportunity the Ramsey publicists were chastising Boulder Police for focusing all of their investigative efforts on the family and not on other potential suspects.

The media exchanges would go on for years.
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