Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (31 page)

PATSY RAMSEY HIRES SECOND ATTORNEY

The Ramsey defense team now included Patrick Burke and Patrick Furman, who represented Patsy, while Bryan Morgan, Hal Haddon, and Lee Foreman represented John. Morgan was the lead attorney for John’s team, and Burke headed Patsy’s team. Among themselves, the attorneys joked that the media were incorrectly thrusting Haddon into the number one spot, but no one minded, because Haddon had the most experience with the press, having been a key advisor to Gary Hart’s failed presidential campaign. Nevertheless, the
team worried, because Haddon sometimes lost his temper with the press and held grudges. He looked like a man who could deliver a punch as well as take one.

The team decided to divide up the media chores. Haddon talked to
The Denver Post
, Morgan handled the
Daily Camera
, and Patrick Furman dealt with the
Rocky Mountain News
.

“What I need now is a good digger in Boulder,” Tony Frost, the executive editor of the Globe, said to me in my uncle’s Boca Raton home. I was intrigued by the Ramsey case and asked him if I was the type of person he might hire.

“Yes,” he said immediately. “I take one look at you and I don’t think anyone would think you’re a reporter. At least, not one of our reporters.”

Frost was in his jogging outfit. I wore my Washington uniform—suit and tie. He’s sweating and I’m sweating. Nevertheless, Frost reminds me of Pierce Brosnan. In his own way, he’s James Bond.

—Jeff Shapiro

Jeff Shapiro had told his uncle, Richard Sachs, that he wanted to be a reporter. When Sachs arranged for Jeff to meet Tony Frost, Shapiro rolled his eyes. He didn’t think much of the
Globe
. He thought its publication of the Ramsey autopsy photos was unethical—sickening, in fact. A few days later, however, Shapiro, twenty-three, a graduate of Florida State University, was on the
Globe
’s payroll and on his way to Boulder as an undercover investigator. His job was to infiltrate the Ramsey family by getting close to John Andrew, then a student at the University of Colorado.

On March 2, 1997, Shapiro arrived in Boulder with $2,000. His contact was Craig Lewis, a
Globe
writer who was
already in town. Lewis, a laid-back guy who wore black jeans, black leather jackets, and sunglasses, found Shapiro a rental car and gave him some pointers about Boulder. Then Shapiro was on his own.

When Shapiro first drove by the Ramseys’ house, he was surprised to see how close it was to the student hangouts on University Hill. Then he discovered that John Andrew’s fraternity house, Chi Psi, was at 1080 14th Street, just five blocks from his father’s home. Shapiro realized that he’d never read that simple fact in any of the press stories. By midday he’d found a room at a youth hostel for $27 a day: no bathroom, white tile floor, a little narrow bed, and a night table. Not very elaborately appointed, but it had a perfect view of John Andrew’s fraternity house. Settling in, he developed a routine. Every evening he visited every bar on the Hill looking for Ramsey’s son. His cover was that he had graduated with a political science degree, couldn’t find a job, and had decided to go to law school at CU.

Soon he learned that John Andrew was no longer living at the fraternity house, so he moved out of the hostel and into a place at the University Court Apartments that he shared with a couple of students. He liked the small-town campus atmosphere—it was like being in school again. Still, he wasn’t making much progress in finding Ramsey’s son. Then one day, leafing through John Andrew’s high school yearbook, he came across the name Allison Russ. On a hunch, he looked her up and discovered her phone number in the CU directory.

On the phone Shapiro introduced himself to Russ as Matthew Hayworth, a law student at CU, and said he was interested in the Ramsey case. She was reserved and laughed a little nervously when Shapiro told her that he wanted to help because he thought the Ramseys were probably innocent. “You saw what the LAPD did to O. J. Simpson,” he told her, implying that the Boulder cops
might be setting the Ramseys up. Russ soon became a little more chatty. Shapiro gambled. He told her he’d heard from a friend that lubricant had been found on JonBenét’s body, in the vaginal area, and that it was complicating the DNA testing process. He asked Russ to take this information to John Andrew, who could then pass it on to his father’s investigators. Allison said she would.

Shapiro still had many places to visit in Boulder. Next on his list was Pasta Jay’s. There, he applied for a job—again as Matt Hayworth. He was filling out his application when a college student wearing an Atlanta baseball cap walked in.

“Hi, I’m John Ramsey,” the student said to the manager.

Shapiro was in luck. His prey was standing not 10 feet away asking to fill out a job application. Then John Andrew caught him staring.

“I’m sorry,” Shapiro said. “You just look like someone.”

“Who do you think I look like?”

“Are you John Ramsey’s son?”

“That’s right,” John Andrew said, then asked if Shapiro was a journalist.

Shapiro said he wasn’t and added, “I think the police are doing to your dad the same thing the LAPD did to OJ. The police can play a lot of games with you. But I’m sure you’ve already found that out.”

“I know,” John Andrew replied.

Shapiro completed the job application and left Pasta Jay’s.

He was furious with himself. He was sure John Andrew would figure out that he’d been the one who called Allison Russ. The next morning he called her and explained a bit more. He didn’t tell her he worked for the
Globe
, only that his name wasn’t Hayworth.

“Jeffrey Scott is my real name,” Shapiro said. Then he told her that he’d run into John Andrew. “He’s a nice kid.”

RAMSEYS ENTER PLEA ON INTERNET

As the nation became obsessed with the Ramsey case, some turned to the Internet to keep up with developments. Finding information on-line was easy because of JonBenét’s unusual name. By early 1997, a user could type it into a search engine and receive between three hundred and a thousand matches.

Most of those who logged on were housewives between the ages of thirty and fifty. Many of them went on-line just after the Ramseys appeared on CNN on January 1, 1997. Some men participated as well. At first everyone simply searched for information from newspapers and other sources. Then people sought out—or created—Web sites and began participating in discussion forums and message boards devoted to the case. There were even parody Web sites, including Gone with the Spin—a look at how the Ramsey camp manipulated the media—and Patsy’s Postcards from Prison—
which had photos of Patsy’s prison pageant. Soon there were three hundred Web sites devoted to the Ramsey case.

Most of those who followed the case on-line had children of their own and were haunted by JonBenét’s death. The regulars became emotionally invested in the case and in their cybercommunity. They supported their on-line friends through events in their “real lives,” but they also bickered about the case. By spring 1997, the regulars had split into groups—the Pro-Rams and the Anti-Rams. Everyone wanted to recruit those in the third group, the Fence Sitters.

The first discussions started on a bulletin board run by the
Daily Camera
, with a core group of about two hundred participants, though it often seemed like more. In cyberspace, it’s easy to steal names and hide true identities, and everyone began to wonder if the killer was among the participants. As is typical in cyberspace, conspiracy theories emerged. Pro-Rams were accused of being on the Ramsey payroll and of trying to control the news spin on the Internet.

By the summer of 1997, there were about a thousand people following the Ramsey case on-line, and they were dedicated. They dug through both mainstream media reports and the tabloids for nuggets of information, and they theorized endlessly. When the Ramseys appeared on television on May 1, 1997, the Boulder News Forum conducted its first real-time transcription of a TV event. The first message transmitted was, “Patsy has a mustache.”

At 10:00
A
.
M
. on March 3, Bill McReynolds, who was still considered a suspect by the police, met with Detectives Thomas and Gosage at police headquarters for his fourth interview. This time the proceedings were tape-recorded. By now the detectives had finished their background checks on the McReynolds family and friends, and they wanted to see if they had missed something. When this interview was over, however, they hadn’t discovered any
thing new. Still outstanding were results of McReynolds’s blood and hair samples and an analysis of his handwriting.

There’s this feeling in Boulder that we’ve got to be protective of our Eden. We can’t have this violation of our community. It means we’ll be cast out of the garden. Boulderites are always looking at their image first—what this story is doing to the image of their town.

Almost everyone has written stories about me—the Denver papers, the tabloids, and even CNN. I’ve been on lots of TV shows. It’s too late. There’s nothing I can do about it. Lots of people think that I killed JonBenét, that Santa killed an angel.

Back in ’72, my wife and I led a publicity campaign for George McGovern, which was run by Common Cause. That’s when I met Paul Danish and Ruth Correll. They were among the group that started to clean up the city. Boulder became a place where you could have an aesthetic experience. But maybe it’s been overdone.

Recently the Boulder Dinner Theater was performing Grand Hotel. Now the city has an ordinance against smoking in public places. They threatened to close down the play because there were one or two smoking scenes. Sometimes I think Boulder is overregulated. Everything is protected. Overprotected. Boulder has become just too precious.

I have a Ph.D. in American Studies and a master’s in journalism. In the ’70s, I was teaching journalism at CU. Chuck Green, The Denver Post columnist, was in my first class. I didn’t especially like the academic world; it’s too isolated and remote. When I retired in ’92, Marilyn Haus, who’s in charge of downtown Boulder, hired me as a strolling Santa on the mall. I’d go into restaurants and different shops, like the New York Deli, where Mork and Mindy was filmed—an alien from outer space coming to
live in this community.

One day in 1993 I was doing my “Ho, ho, ho” in the deli, and this lady with two children jumped up and asked if I would be their Santa. That’s how I met Patsy Ramsey. I did the family’s Christmas parties in ’94, ’95, and ’96. JonBenét always made sure that I gave Burke lots of attention, then she would take my hand and escort me around to meet everyone at the party. After it was over, she always wrote me a thank-you letter.

In August of 1996 I had heart surgery and had to retire from being a strolling Santa. Patsy’s 1996 Christmas party was on December 23. The family had just returned from shopping in New York City. JonBenét told me they’d seen Cats, Les Misérables, and the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show.

That same year, Charles Kuralt chose me as a Santa for his TV show. The crew followed me from one party to another for three days. By December 23, they’d had enough, so they skipped the Ramsey party.

Patsy was disappointed they weren’t coming. As always, she wrote little notes about each child on this lengthy scroll. That evening, I told these stories as I passed out presents. JonBenét gave me a vial of stardust for my beard. Patsy presented me with a beautiful scarf and said, “You’re a member of the family.” I was a member of their club, and I wasn’t a wealthy person.

Looking back, I always thought that if anybody wanted to do major damage to this family, they could do it at Christmas, because they all adored Christmas.

—Bill McReynolds

Meanwhile, the CBI informed the Boulder police that some other handwriting discovered on the pad used for the ransom note was apparently written with the same felt-tipped
pen used for the note. This handwriting, found on pages immediately preceding the place where the ransom note pages had been torn out, consisted of the phrase
Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey
and later became known as the “practice note.”

The CBI’s Chet Ubowski reported to the Boulder PD that there were “indications” that John Ramsey didn’t write the note. Other “indications” pointed to Patsy Ramsey as the author. The evaluations were based on the handwriting samples that the Ramseys had provided thus far.

The police had voluntary samples from Patsy and prior “historical” samples, which they had collected from JonBenét’s physician and from a notebook found in the Ramseys’ Boulder home. Ubowski concluded that “there is evidence which indicates the ransom note may have been written by Patricia Ramsey.” To be more certain, however, Ubowski needed more samples produced before December 26, samples that wouldn’t “contain any elements of distortion, attempts to disguise handwriting, or nervousness.”