JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (7 page)

The stomach was empty, but the coroner found what appeared to be chunks of pineapple in the upper digestive tract. This also would be tested in an effort to determine to what extent the food had been digested, a key indicator in helping establish the time of death. Police would need to identify what she had eaten the day before, when, and where.

Abrasions were noted on the face and shoulder, as were two small rectangular ones on the back, a triangular abrasion on the neck, and a scratch on the lower left leg.

There had been a surprising lack of blood for such a violent murder. The child did not seem to have been beaten, and when the coroner examined the eyelids, he found the pinpoint petechial hemorrhaging that indicated she was still alive and her heart pumping when she was choked. The garrote was the most obvious cause of death.

So the viewers at the autopsy were astonished when Meyer peeled back the scalp and discovered that the entire upper right side of her skull had been crushed by some enormous blow that left a well-defined rectangular pattern. The brain had massively hemorrhaged, but the blood had been contained within the skull. The caved-in skull was a second, and totally unexpected, possible cause of death.

Meyer concluded that JonBenét was alive at the time her head was struck and was still alive when she was choked. Either attack would have been fatal, but he officially called it asphyxia due to strangulation associated with massive head trauma. He could not establish a time of death.

In the police department’s Community Room, the press was gathered in force as Commander Eller prepared for his first and only news conference on the Ramsey case. Few crimes had ever attracted the kind of media attention this one was drawing. It had already spread beyond the circulation area of the local newspaper and beyond the sphere of the two big papers in Denver, just down Highway 36. The murder had become national news, more out-of-town reporters were arriving by the hour, and the deluge was just beginning. For weeks, months, and years to come, the media would promote Jon-Benet Ramsey to the postmortem status usually reserved for celebrities.

Eller needed a photograph of the child but thought most of the pictures in a stack he was handed were rather unseemly. Instead of a glamour shot, he chose one in which JonBenét looked like a little girl: a nice smile on a pretty face that was framed by golden hair touching the shoulders of a pink sweater. He pinned it to the wall of the conference room, and it soon became a national icon, one of the most recognizable photos in a story that was awash with pictures.

The commander faced a room filled with reporters and photographers swaddled in lights, flashguns, tape recorders, television cameras, notepads, and microphones. Never had he seen such a turnout in Boulder. He kept it short—confirming the death, the identity, the victim’s age, and the location. No specifics.

Afterward he met with Chief Tom Koby, who decided that since this was to be a national show, a professional spokesperson like himself would henceforth personally represent the Boulder Police Department. That was fine by Eller, who had plenty to do running the investigation. Koby, who did not particularly like the press even in the best of times, took over the BPD media relations. I couldn’t think of a worse person for the job.

I was at the kitchen table that morning, reading newspaper reports about the murder, when my telephone rang. My former SWAT partner, Detective Ron Gosage, said that Eller was putting together a team to handle the Ramsey case and wanted me. Did I want in? Absolutely.

With that one phone call, my life was forever altered.

I checked to be sure my good suit was clean and looked in the mirror at the bearded face of an undercover narc. Cut the long hair? Not yet. Shave the beard.

After the autopsy, the police spent five hours working up a new warrant for 755 Fifteenth Street, based upon the coroner’s findings, to search for additional items not specified in the original warrant. The detectives felt the long delay was again due to difficulty in getting the DA’s office to sign off on what should have been a routine search warrant addendum.

Among the items police now sought were the possible bludgeon that caused the head wound and any dark fabric that might account for the fibers found on the body. A red clay brick that appeared to have fibers stuck to it was retrieved from the living room fireplace, and a golf club with a blond hair on it was found in the backyard. They were also looking for traces of semen, and in the victim’s bedroom, ultraviolet light showed stains on the bed and surrounding carpet. The mattress was wrapped in plastic.

Detectives going through the house noted cobwebs in the tracks of various windows and found some windows painted closed. Dust and debris had gathered on other sills, giving no indication of forced entry. Some curious pry marks were found on a back door, but more and more, except for the broken window in the basement, it looked as though the big house had been locked up tight the night before.

A New International Version Study Bible was photographed on the desk of John Ramsey, open to the pages of Psalms 35 and 36. There was no way to know it at the time, but those verses were to play a critical role in the unfolding case. Beside the Bible was a greeting card JonBenét had made for her father, on which she had printed, “The best gift I can give is me.”

While the house search went on, other cops fanned out to canvass the neighborhood and conduct more interviews. A resident directly to the south reported that the light was off in the southeast corner sunroom of the Ramsey home and thought that odd because it was the only time she was aware in the past few years that it did not burn all night. A neighbor to the north would say that the butler kitchen lights were on around midnight and considered that unusual since it was the first time he had noticed that light being on in the Ramsey home. A third neighbor, to the west, said that her dogs, who barked at anyone walking in the alley, just as they did when the police officer came to question her, made no noise Wednesday night. It was impossible to make a 100 percent sweep because some people were away on holiday vacations, other houses had caretakers, and some just stood empty.

Additional interviews filled in small pieces of the Ramsey puzzle. An acquaintance said that JonBenét was rebelling against appearing in the child beauty contests. She was being pushed into the pageants by her mother and grandmother, said the witness. Someone else, who knew the family through the school JonBenét attended, said the girl so routinely presented gifts to her teachers on holidays that Patsy was asked to be more discreet because the feelings of other students were being hurt.

In-depth interviews were held with three important figures—former nanny Suzanne Savage, Ramsey’s personal pilot Mike Archuleta, and the housekeeper, Linda Hoffmann-Pugh.

Savage, a religious person who had spent eighteen months on a mission for her church, had no idea that she was among the first people the Ramseys had mentioned as a possible murder suspect. She had worked as a nanny and done some light housekeeping for the family from 1992 until 1994, when the children were small, but had not worked there full-time for three years.

Savage told police that she seldom stayed overnight at the Ramsey home but had occasionally slept in JonBenét’s bed and still had a house key. The Ramseys, she said, were very careful about locking their doors.

JonBenét usually slept with her door open in those days, said the nanny. This contrasted with Patsy’s earlier statements that the door had been closed when she reached the room and found it empty the previous morning.

Savage had only complimentary things to say about the Ramseys and the kids. You could make Burke behave by telling him no, she said, but sometimes JonBenét had to be given a “time-out” for doing things such as stomping on Burke’s Lego creations. JonBenét enjoyed riding her bike and loved cats and dogs and having people read to her. The little girl also liked to play and paint pictures in the basement, and Patsy had recently taken a class and was painting in oils.

Savage was puzzled about where the body had been hidden. The former nanny had been in the basement many times and said that someone would have to know the house well just to find the little room.

John Ramsey had two planes, a 1972 twin-engine Beechcraft King Air C-90, white with red stripes and with the name of his first daughter,
Beth
, stenciled below the left window, and a smaller single-engine Beechcraft. A radio scanner in his home office was kept tuned to 126.25, the Jefferson County airport channel.

Mike Archuleta, Ramsey’s private pilot, confirmed that Ramsey had telephoned him about leaving for Atlanta the previous day, but Archuleta attached no significance to the call since he had been readying the plane to fly to Michigan that morning anyway. He figured the man was under tremendous stress and just wanted to get his family out of Boulder. Ramsey had called him twice, once about the girl being missing and the second time when the body was found, and asked how long it would take to be ready to leave for Atlanta. Two hours, the pilot had said. Another man, Fleet White, called a short time later to cancel the flight.

Ramsey housekeeper Linda Hoffmann-Pugh and her husband, Mervin, managed to focus suspicion on themselves by being as cooperative in their second interview as they had been in the first. They even helped police succeed in a macabre scavenger hunt. When the detectives asked if the couple had any black tape, Mervin dug three rolls from his garage, only one unused. Then the detectives said they wanted white lined notepads, and Linda handed over one that seemed to be a visual match of the ransom notepaper and admitted it had come from the Ramsey house. A key? Two. Any felt-tip pens of the sort that probably wrote the ransom note? Three. Police found a two-foot piece of narrow nylon rope, then another length wrapped around a stick! The detectives left with an armful of potential evidence.

Savage, Archuleta, Hoffmann-Pugh, and her husband had all been forthcoming and helpful when questioned. As a detective, that was what I would have expected when investigating the murder of a child.

By midafternoon, after studying the autopsy results, Eller still had unanswered questions about the body. What about the massive skull fracture? What and where was the murder weapon? What about the vaginal trauma? A lot of points needed to be covered.

Chief Koby pointed out to him that the body itself had become evidence, and to release it at this point could affect the investigation. Eller and the coroner agreed.

But only a few minutes passed before Deputy District Attorney Pete Hofstrom called to say that the Ramseys were asking about burial. His appearance raised an important question that was not addressed: Why were the Ramseys already communicating through the DA’s people rather than directly to the investigating detectives? That indicated they were talking through a private lawyer, and with the strong links between the DA’s office and the defense attorneys in Boulder, that could only mean trouble for the police.

Eller told Hofstrom that Koby, the coroner, and he had decided to hold the body for further evidentiary tests, and thought no more of it.

His attention at the moment was focused on setting up formal Q-and-A sessions with the Ramseys. The police expected that both the Ramseys would want to cooperate as soon as possible in the hunt for the killer of their child. We had hundreds of questions, questions only they could answer, because the situation had changed so dramatically from the time police first arrived on the scene of what had been thought to be a kidnapping. Eller assigned Detective Arndt to arrange a formal interview.

A short time later an agitated Pete Hofstrom came into Eller’s office.

“Pete, we need to talk to the Ramseys,” the commander told the prosecutor.

“You can’t ransom the body for an interview,” Hofstrom shot back.

“We are not ‘ransoming’ the body. It’s just premature to release it.”

“You can’t ransom the body,” Hofstrom repeated, as if he had not heard Eller’s words.

“I’m not suggesting that,” the commander said, laying out the forensic and evidentiary concerns.

“You can’t ransom the body,” Hofstrom insisted for a third time.

Eller grew irritable. “Pete, they are unrelated issues. Go make your deal with them, that’s what you do. We need an interview.”

We would later learn that Hofstrom went to see Mike Bynum, who was already representing the Ramseys behind the scenes, and announced, “We’ve got a problem.”
We
was the word that shook us.

That evening, John Ramsey went to Crist Mortuary to discuss funeral arrangements. In addition to the usual rites, transportation was needed for burial in Atlanta.

Patsy awoke while he was gone and staggered from the bedroom to a couch, barely able to speak, and told her sisters she needed some things from Fifteenth Street. John was overheard to ask someone quietly, “Did you get my golf bag?” When I learned of that statement, it seemed totally out of order. There had been two golf bags in the house, but he had not specified which one he wanted. Neither bag was collected by police. Moreover, it was winter in Colorado, Michigan, and Georgia, not exactly optimal golfing conditions. Why would a man whose daughter had just been murdered be wanting his golf clubs anyway? I wondered what else might have been in the bag that was so important that Ramsey would even think to ask about it.

On the night of December 27, the day after the debacle on Fifteenth Street, Detective Arndt and Sergeant Larry Mason arrived at Tin Cup Circle at 9:30 P.M. to schedule the formal interviews. But instead of stepping forward to cooperate, the Ramseys seemed to be fast fading from view.

John Ramsey was there but would not talk to them alone. Also present were his brother, Jeff Ramsey; Dr. Beuf, the pediatrician ; Rod Westmoreland, Ramsey’s financial adviser from Atlanta, who introduced himself as an attorney; and the influential local lawyer Mike Bynum, who had once worked in the DA’s office. Bynum made his role official when he said he would be providing John Ramsey with legal advice.