Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (35 page)

Shapiro told Hoverstock he wanted to become a Christian. He was truthful with Hoverstock about his upbringing and told him how frustrating it was to graduate from college and be unable to find the right job. He said his parents were wealthy and that a lot of his friends were Christians. He was undercover, Shapiro told himself, and his ultimate goal was more important than these trivial white lies. He was in Boulder to find the truth, and he began to feel that God wanted him to help.

He mentioned his interest in the Simpson case and told the minister that the LAPD had framed OJ.

Hoverstock replied, “You’ve come at an interesting time.”

Jeff nodded.

“We’ll get to know one another, have some conversations,” Hoverstock told Shapiro. “I’ll learn more about you.” Hoverstock invited Shapiro to services and seminars, to become more informed about Christianity.

From then on, Shapiro attended services every Sunday, and prayer classes, which he enjoyed. In some ways he felt
more of a bond with the people at St. John’s than with his fellow Jews. He felt good about what he was doing. He felt that he belonged. He purchased a Book of Common Prayer and a Bible.

Later Shapiro would tell his editor that he was getting two for the price of one—he was doing his job and acquiring spirituality.

My father always reminded me of Hal Holbrook in the movie Wall Street. He’s rational and likes to disarm people, doesn’t like to provoke them. I’m sure he worked for the CIA when I was a kid. He’d leave in the middle of the night for places like Iran, the Middle East, and Europe. I think he helped build a power plant for the CIA out there and had some run-ins with terrorist organizations. Later he helped design the launchpad for the Saturn Five rocket.

I was brought up in Boca Raton and attended Florida State University as a political science major. I wrote stories on Jim Garrison, the O. J. Simpson case, and John DeLorean for local publications.

When I was fifteen I started to go out alone. I saw homeless people in places my parents had never taken me. The contrast of people in limousines and people lying on the street starving affected me. That’s when I decided I wanted to talk to President Reagan and find out why there are homeless people in such a wonderful country.

I snuck into the Boca Raton Resort & Club Hotel to see the president when he was in Florida. I knew that hotel like the back of my hand because I’d spent days there as a kid. I got past the Secret Service and all the way up a stairwell to the twenty-fourth floor, one floor below Reagan. That’s when I was taken into federal custody.

I was wearing a shirt with an American flag and
FREEDOM FOREVER
printed on it, and I’d wrapped another little flag around my wrist. I looked like a comic book character.

When I was caught, I thanked God that I hadn’t brought my Swiss Army knife. It might have looked like an assassination attempt. They interviewed me for hours. I told them I was interested in politics. I showed them how I’d driven my bike past the police at the golf course entrance. One of their cars followed me when they let me ride my bike home.

At twenty-two, I got an internship at the White House Office of Media Affairs, in the Clinton administration. Washington was like a futuristic Roman empire. There was a lot of beauty, a lot of corruption, and a lot of people compromising their values. I have a history of getting into confrontations—because I question the way things operate. That happened in Washington, so I went back to Florida and freelanced for the Miami Herald until the Globe hired me.

—Jeff Shapiro

The Boulder PD was now being criticized almost nightly on TV programs such as
Larry King Live
and
Geraldo
. Though detectives weren’t being identified by name, it was hard for Steve Thomas and his fellow officers to take the constant ridicule. It wasn’t only the national media that attacked them; the
Rocky Mountain News
and
The Denver Post
also chastised them. The attacks were excruciating. What made them worse was the continued silence of Chief Koby. With no one speaking up for them—and strict instructions that they were not to speak to the media—the detectives were frustrated and angry. Officers who wanted the Ramsey case prosecuted without delay and were willing to ignore the presumption of innocence realized that the media could be an effective tool, indeed a weapon.

It was under these circumstances that one detective called Carol McKinley. He insisted on anonymity but
wanted the public to know that the Boulder PD was doing its best and that they knew who the murderer was. The officer told McKinley that suspects were not always arrested immediately. Good police work took time. No matter what was being said, he and his colleagues weren’t the Keystone Kops. His primary concern was the department’s reputation, he said.

Meanwhile another source of McKinley’s, an attorney for the Ramseys, told her that his clients were the victims of poor police work and media speculation. He believed the Boulder PD was using the tabloids and the mainstream media to convict his clients.

There was evidence that an intruder had killed JonBenét, he said, but to protect the investigation, he couldn’t reveal the nature of the evidence. His clients were being framed, he claimed, and the public was being misled.

Though Alex Hunter didn’t know who had killed JonBenét, he was certain that John Eller had been unable to see the big picture since that day in mid-January when the test on what was alleged to be semen came back negative. The commander was too focused on the Ramseys as the only suspects, a position that was unacceptable even to those in the DA’s office who thought that Patsy and John Ramsey had killed their daughter. Hunter, who planned to hire his own investigators, first had to get the files from Eller for an objective review. That would be step one. Hunter told Wise, “How do you know you’ve got it unless you’ve read the whole case?” The second step would be to prepare the files for eventual transfer to a prosecutorial team.

Hunter told Koby his plan, and the chief agreed, as long as the DA’s personnel did not interfere, second-guess, or reinvestigate. Hunter agreed. Eller also responded positively when Koby told him. Now the case file would be cataloged and indexed by Hunter’s office.

Hunter would need two experienced detectives—officers who could be objective. He wanted at least one of them to look at the case from the point of view of the defense.

Tom Haney, recently retired from the patrol division of the Denver PD, was an obvious candidate. In his twenty-eight years on the force, he had investigated many of the city’s most notorious murders. Haney met with Hunter and Hofstrom and then with Eller and Koby. They told him they were looking for someone with investigative experience who could handle the transition from investigation to prosecution. Haney said he could. Eller asked Haney his opinion of Lou Smit. “He’s a hell of a guy and a great investigator,” Haney said. “And he’s solved some tough cases.”

Smit was a legend among law enforcement personnel. Formerly captain of detectives in the El Paso County sheriff’s office, he’d worked 150 homicide cases in Colorado Springs. Smit had recently solved a three-and-a-half-year-old kidnapping by matching a lone fingerprint, which had been overlooked, to one in a regional fingerprint database. At sixty-one, Smit had kept up with cutting-edge technology while retaining some tried-and-true methods. Once, he had sifted through a hundred bags of garbage to look for evidence that tied a murderer to his victim. Maggots crawled up his sleeves, but he found the critical evidence. Like a lot of dedicated officers, he’d been seen praying at victims’ graves. He said that God was his partner.

Hunter discussed Haney and Smit with Koby and with Trip DeMuth, who felt that Smit was less pushy than Haney. Detective Tom Trujillo told Chief Koby that Lou Smit was their kind of cop. Koby decided that Smit would do, and Hunter agreed.

Coincidentally, Hal Haddon, one of John Ramsey’s lawyers, asked Haney to join
their
team. Haney had never worked on the defense side, and he had some concerns, but
he met with Patrick Burke nonetheless. Patsy’s attorney said he believed that John and Patsy were innocent. Moreover, he said, their investigation had uncovered possible suspects.

“I’m not sure I could rule the Ramseys out,” Haney told him.

“They’ll sit down with you,” Burke replied. “They’ll answer all your questions.”

Haney wanted to ask if the Ramseys had taken a polygraph, but he decided it would be rude. The next day, Haney called Burke and declined the job. He just had that feeling in his gut.

On March 13, Smit agreed to work for Hunter. That same day the DA walked upstairs to the sheriff’s office and asked Epp to lend him Steve Ainsworth for his investigation. The detective and deputy DA Trip DeMuth had a good working relationship. They had solved a murder case together in nearby Louisville. Ainsworth had worked on the Ramsey case the first weekend after the murder, and he was eager to rejoin the investigation. Epp was disturbed that Steve wouldn’t be doing any interviewing, however. That privilege had been reserved for Eller’s detectives. Instead, Ainsworth would remain in the office, where he would review material from the point of view of the defense, as Hunter’s devil’s advocate.

Lou Smit and Steve Ainsworth formally joined Hunter’s team on March 17. The first order of business for Smit was to introduce himself to the Ramseys. He wrote them a letter saying that he’d been hired by Alex Hunter to find the killer of their daughter and that any help that they could give him would be appreciated. It was his way of building a bridge to the Ramseys. The better he knew them, Smit maintained, the greater chance he would have of helping to solve the murder. Weeks later he received word that his letter was appreciated.

That same afternoon, Smit and Ainsworth began exam
ining a list of suspects the police might not have investigated fully. One name caught their eyes—Kevin Raburn.

A Colorado Department of Corrections investigator, Steve McLaury, had called the Boulder PD on February 19 about a former inmate, Kevin Raburn, who was discharged from a Colorado prison just 200 miles from Boulder a week before the murder of JonBenét. Joan Wise, the counselor who had handled Raburn’s discharge interview, noticed the ransom amount in newspaper stories and remembered Raburn saying that he had sufficient funds to live on. He mentioned $118,000.

Ainsworth soon discovered that Raburn had been jailed in Boulder during the previous month. He had stolen some batteries and spent several weeks in the Boulder County Jail. Ainsworth immediately found his fingerprint cards and a list of local contacts. Next stop was the Marine Park Apartments in Boulder, Raburn’s last known address. That night Ainsworth visited Raburn’s mother, Caroline, at her home in nearby Broomfield. He had also contacted the Boulder halfway house where Raburn had stayed; Kristen Weiss and Lynn Essig, employees at a bar where Raburn hung out; and Kevin Johnson, the manager of Rafferty’s Restaurant, where Raburn had worked as a short-order cook in 1995 before going to prison. Meanwhile, Smit hit the bars, clubs, and restaurants where Raburn was a customer or had sought work. Within a few days, Smit received samples of Raburn’s handwriting from the Department of Corrections. A week later, Ainsworth discovered that a friend of Raburn’s lived on 17th Street, only a few blocks from the Ramseys’ house.

The detectives, who were unable to find Raburn, pieced together a picture of his movements. His mother told the police that after her son returned to Boulder on December 20, he got his job back at Rafferty’s.

Raburn was off from work on December 24, and Rafferty’s was closed Christmas Day. According to his mother,
with whom he was living, he spent Christmas night watching TV with her and his brother. Mrs. Raburn didn’t remember if she turned on the house alarm, which she normally did before going to sleep. But she said that Kevin didn’t have the access code. The police learned that a week after JonBenét’s murder, Raburn lost his job at Rafferty’s. He began working nights at Juanita’s, another restaurant.

Raburn was suspect not only because of the $118,000 coincidence but because, from the night of the murder through the first week in January, his whereabouts could not be confirmed. And now he seemed to have vanished.

FAMILY GETS OWN DNA EXPERT

Mary Lou Jedamus and Grace Morlock had been called to the Ramsey home by the police as victim advocates when
the kidnapping of JonBenét was first reported. They tried to comfort the parents, and they listened to what the couple said. The detectives thought the advocates might know something that would aid the investigation. On March 21 and 25, Detectives Harmer and Hickman interviewed Jedamus and Morlock at police headquarters.

The Ramseys probably didn’t know that their conversations with the advocates were not confidential or privileged by law.
*
Jedamus and Morlock were obligated to tell the detectives everything they could remember, since they worked for—and were partly compensated by—the police department.

Although victim advocates are not investigators, the police needed to know what the advocates remembered. They recalled that Detective Arndt had been businesslike and sympathetic. Compassionate might be too strong a word. She seemed to consider every possibility, and she was not adversarial. None of the officers had been antagonistic. No one had said, “Why did you do this?”

Morlock remembered that John Ramsey had cried but had tried to control his emotions even when he was so distraught that he could barely speak. He may have said, “If only the dog had been in the house.” The advocates had also heard Patsy say, “Whoever left the note knew that I always come down those stairs in the morning.” Morlock told the detectives she had seen John and Patsy sitting together in the dining room, holding each other and talking.