Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (34 page)

John Fernie was angry when he read Charlie Brennan’s story about footprints. Like many media stories, this one came
from an unnamed source and made the Ramseys look guilty. Fernie wondered if the source had provided the reporter with all the facts. He knew that his own footprints were there in the snow that morning. He had driven up the back alley to the Ramseys’ house just after 6:00
A
.
M
. in response to Patsy’s frantic call that terrible morning. He remembered walking along the brick sidewalk to the patio door, looking through the glass panel, and reading a line or two of the ransom note, which was lying on the floor just inside the door. Then he had run through the snow-covered grass, around the south side of the house, to the front door. If the cops had been looking, they would have found his footprints. A year and a half after JonBenét’s death, Fernie told a reporter that the police
still
had not checked the shoes he wore that day, though a shoe imprint had been discovered next to JonBenét’s body.

Carol McKinley, a reporter for Denver’s KOA-AM Radio, disliked the way some reporters used the word
source
without further identification. She also noted that nobody was questioning it. In fact, McKinley knew that it was the official silence and resulting information vacuum that had created these endless “sources.” After reading Brennan’s no-footprints-in-the-snow story, McKinley knew that she had to develop sources of her own. One of her friends who was close to a Boulder officer investigating the case agreed to introduce her to the detective.

“I don’t want to know anything you don’t want me to know,” McKinley told him. “I just want to know what this case is doing to your life, what you’re thinking. Let me do a profile on you.”

The officer agreed to be interviewed, but only after McKinley turned off her tape recorder did the real story begin to emerge. She could see that the detective needed to talk about his frustrations. He told her about the problem between Eller and the DA’s office, and how leaks to the
press were hurting the investigation, how some of his colleagues had been maligned in the press for months, and how the Ramseys’ attorneys seemed to know everything the police were doing. “You must never reveal my name to anyone,” he told the reporter. McKinley agreed.

“Keep this all under your hat,” the officer told her. Never once, however, did he say that John or Patsy had murdered their daughter.

Before long, McKinley, like other reporters, had found additional sources in the DA’s office, among the Ramseys’ attorneys, and at the CBI. The information she had as a result permitted her to maintain a balance in her reporting. She leveraged information from one source and confirmed it with another.

The day Brennan’s no-footprints-in-the-snow article was published, the CBI gave the Boulder police Bill McReynolds’s DNA test results: On the surface the report seemed to exclude him. His DNA did not match the DNA found on JonBenét’s underpants. Nor did it match some DNA that the CBI had found under her fingernails, which coroner Meyer had clipped and preserved. However, the CBI pointed out that the material found under her fingernails showed signs of contamination and the markers on the DNA typing were weak. The origin of the contamination had yet to be determined. Since handwriting and hair analysis for McReynolds still hadn’t been completed, and Janet McReynolds’s DNA test results were still pending, the couple remained suspects.

While Detective Thomas was reviewing the McReynolds file, his phone rang. It was Allison Russ, John Andrew Ramsey’s friend. She told the detective about the calls from Matthew Hayworth and Jeff Scott. She also mentioned the different phone numbers he had given her. Later in the
afternoon, Detective Harmer couldn’t find “Matthew Hayworth” at the youth hostel where Shapiro had first stayed.

At 8:45 the next morning, Thomas tried the second phone number. “I’m Steve Thomas, a detective for the Boulder Police Department, and I’m looking for Jeffrey Scott,” he said.

Only half awake, Shapiro replied that he’d hoped to hear from a Ramsey investigator, not the police.

“Well, Jeff, I’m sorry,” Thomas said with a laugh. “I’ve heard you have some interesting information. I’d like you to come in so I can interview you, see if it’s important information. And we’re not going to shine any bright lights on you.”

“Do you know about the DNA results?” Shapiro asked.

“I can’t discuss that with you,” Thomas replied.

“Are you aware that someone is saying that John Andrew once tried to hire someone to run a boat over JonBenét?”

“I’ve heard that,” Thomas answered. “Those are the kinds of things I’d like to ask you about. And, Jeff, I need to make sure you’re not any kind of journalist or reporter before I let you into this department.”

Shapiro told Thomas that he knew some guys from the Simpson case, but he wasn’t a journalist. He’d think about a visit to police headquarters.

When Shapiro hung up, he called Joe Mullins, his editor at the
Globe
, and said that he’d made contact with Allison Russ, John Andrew, and the police. He also said he’d used a false name in identifying himself.

“You lied to the cops?” Mullins asked.

“I’m undercover.”

“You
can’t
lie to the police. What’s this cop’s name?”

That same evening at Kutztown University in Allentown, Pennsylvania, John Douglas, the former FBI profiler who had
been hired by the Ramseys, held a press conference before giving a scheduled lecture. In answer to reporters’ questions, he said he had been hired to determine whether John Ramsey was capable of killing JonBenét, at a time when, according to Douglas, Ramsey’s attorneys weren’t sure if their client was innocent. Douglas said he had never been asked to focus his attention on Patsy and therefore hadn’t profiled her. And the Ramseys’ attorneys, Douglas said, hadn’t asked him if Patsy fit any of his criteria for the murderer. Journalists following the case assumed that Douglas doubted Patsy’s innocence and wanted to protect his reputation now that handwriting analysis had not excluded Patsy—and in fact suggested that she might have written the ransom note.

Douglas was not the only investigator the Ramseys had hired. Private investigators retained by the Ramseys were reviewing other unsolved crimes of a similar nature, interviewing witnesses the police had not looked at closely enough, and following leads provided to them by the Ramseys and the public.

Steve Thomas was at his desk at police headquarters looking at the March 12 issue of the
Globe
, which featured photos of the inside of the Ramseys’ house. Eight pictures traced the “evil killer’s footsteps inside death mansion…From JonBenét’s pretty pink bedroom to the cold dark cellar where her broken body was found.” It was another exclusive for the tabloid.

Thomas couldn’t figure out who had supplied the photographs. They had been taken by the Ramseys’ own investigators after the police finished their search of the house in early January. He was certain they wouldn’t have leaked the pictures to a publication that was implicating the Ramseys in the death of their daughter. Thomas was angry because photos of the crime scene should have been restricted to the police.

When his phone rang, he was surprised to hear Joe Mullins of the
Globe
on the other end. Mullins told the detective that “Jeff Scott” was actually Jeff Shapiro, a
Globe
researcher. This annoyed Thomas more than the photos had. Thomas told Mullins that he would reveal Shapiro’s true identity to both John Andrew and Allison Russ.

By now Steve Thomas had been involved in almost every aspect of the investigation and, within the department, was gaining the reputation of resident expert. If anyone in the Boulder PD had an overview, it was Thomas. For his part, he was sure that Bill McReynolds, though his handwriting was questionable, was too frail to have committed the crime. Someone stronger than Santa had to have killed the child, who must have struggled at some time during the crime. Her weight alone, if she had been carried down to the basement, seemed to rule McReynolds out. Thomas estimated that Joe Barnhill, the Ramseys’ neighbor, was strong enough, but his palsy eliminated him as the writer of the ransom note. The Ramseys’ ex-employees’ alibis seemed to be checking out. Thomas knew of no credible evidence that someone other than Patsy or John Ramsey could be involved—if not in the death of JonBenét, then in a cover-up.

Later that morning, Thomas returned a call from Iris Woodall, who worked at Home Depot in Athens, Georgia. She told the detective that Patsy Ramsey had shopped for duct tape in December 1996 with a child who resembled JonBenét. Thomas called Detective Evans of the Roswell police for assistance in pursuing the lead. The next day Evans interviewed Woodall and learned that during the week of December 7, Patsy had been in the Athens store and had asked her for help in locating duct tape. Woodall was shown a picture of the Ramseys, and she said that Patsy may have been accompanied by her husband. The
police eventually pinpointed the date to December 12, 1996, the day before the Ramseys hosted a dinner in Boulder.

When Detectives Gosage and Thomas made their next trip to Atlanta, they met Woodall and reviewed the accounting records of Home Depot’s Athens store. There were approximately twenty thousand register receipts to check, to find one that matched Patsy’s credit card number or, if a check was used, her Colorado or Georgia driver’s license. After three days they came up empty-handed. This left the possibility that the purchase had been paid for in cash.

Since early in the case, the Ramseys’ investigators, headed by Ellis Armistead, had been looking into possible suspects who knew the Ramseys or could have had access to their home. They were now focusing on people they believed the police had overlooked or had passed over too quickly. On March 13, Armistead met with case supervisor Detective Sgt. Tom Wickman and Detectives Trujillo and Thomas to discuss several possible suspects the Ramsey team had come up with. The list included a known sex offender, an Access Graphics employee, and Glenn Meyer, who lived in Joe Barnhill’s basement across the street from the Ramseys. The detectives listened without acknowledging whether these people had been investigated.

Two days later, on March 15, Armistead gave the police a dossier on Meyer, which showed that he had debts amounting to $70,000. Several weeks later, Thomas questioned Meyer at police headquarters about whether he had a prior record of assault, about his debts, and about his whereabouts on December 25 and 26. Meyer identified handwriting samples he’d given to the police and agreed to give another blood sample. Returning to the Barnhills’ home, he probably wondered how the police had discovered he was in debt and why the polygraph he’d taken hadn’t cleared him.

RAMSEY DOCTORS: NO HISTORY OF ABUSE

Now that the
Globe
had blown Jeff Shapiro’s cover, he knew he would have to use his real name, but part of his cover
story—that he was a student—was still intact. Joe Mullins had suggested to him before he left Florida that he visit the Ramseys’ church and say he was interested in converting to Christianity. Perhaps he could discuss the Jews for Jesus movement. It might help him gain credibility among the parishioners. Shapiro considered the ethics of using religion to get close to someone and eventually decided he didn’t care.

“When you’re working undercover,” Shapiro often said, “whether you’re an investigative reporter, a detective, or an FBI agent, you don’t have ordinary morals. You do whatever you have to do to accomplish your mission. And you don’t let anything get personal.”

On Friday, March 20, Shapiro visited St. John’s for the first time and asked to see Rev. Hoverstock. On the door of his office hung a sign:
NO MEDIA
.
THANK YOU
.