Perfect Murder, Perfect Town Page 4

  Except for his terse statement, Mason had ignored the media throughout the evening. By 11:30, he found only Elliot Zaret from Boulder’s Daily Camera. The Camera was holding the presses till Zaret filed a story. The reporter wanted to know exactly what had happened inside. Were there any signs of a break-in?

  “I don’t give a fuck about your First Amendment,” Mason growled. “All I care about is solving this fucking case. I know what you journalists do—you’re in everybody’s face.”

  But Zaret persisted. He’d already been led astray once that evening, when the coroner’s investigator, Patricia Dunn, told him that they had custody of the body, which suggested that the body had been removed when in fact it was still in the house.

  “Nobody’s telling me anything,” Zaret said. “There’s a dead little girl, and I don’t know if there’s a murderer on the loose. People reading the story tomorrow will be worried if they don’t know.”

  Zaret asked Mason to talk to him off the record at least, then tell him what, if anything, he could print.

  “What do you want to know?” Mason finally said.

  “The cause of death.”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Was she shot?”

  “No.”

  “Was she stabbed?”

  “No.”

  “So she was strangled,” Zaret said.

  “I didn’t say that. You can’t print she was strangled.”

  “Can I print she wasn’t shot or stabbed?”

  “Yes. And if you burn me, I’m never going to say another word to you again.”

  Zaret printed only what they’d agreed on.

  At 11:44 P.M., seventeen and a half hours after Linda Arndt was first paged, she was the last person to leave the Ramsey house.

  At midnight that night, Dr. Beuf and his wife, Penny, were still at the Fernies’ house, along with Patsy’s friend Patty Novack, who had become her unofficial nurse. Patsy had to be helped even in the bathroom.

  Finally, the Valium she had taken made Patsy drowsy. She fell asleep again on the living room floor. Two hours later she was awake again, sobbing, asking for Burke, asking if all the doors and windows were locked.

  John Ramsey, lying on the sofa, slept fitfully. When he nodded off, his mask of stoicism vanished. He heaved with sobs.

  2

  Niki Hayden, a writer for the Daily Camera, was at her office late in the day on December 26 when her editor, Joan Zales, said to her: “I think the Ramsey family are members of your church.”

  Hayden was stunned. She looked at a picture of JonBenét that Zales was showing her, but she didn’t recognize the child or recall the name.

  “Would you know them if you saw them?” Zales asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Hayden thought she knew most everyone at St. John’s Episcopal Church, but these people were strangers to her. She assumed they were very recent arrivals, though they weren’t.

  I’ve been married for almost thirty years, and I was originally trained as a teacher. Now I work for the Daily Camera. When my husband and I moved here in 1982, I saw Boulder as a beautifully designed small town that had preserved its old buildings—a very human scale for pedestrians. It wasn’t like living in New Jersey or New York, where you often feel dwarfed.

  Boulder was much more of a college town then than it is today. My first impression was that Boulder was a small city with intelligent people who liked small-town life. They could have made more money in a bigger place, but they wanted a real community. These were people who dedicated a portion of their lives to public service. I didn’t ponder it deeply—I was immersed in changing diapers, learning to be a mom.

  Today, I see less and less of that community spirit and much more of people who have escaped or retired from large cities and can pay people to run this city for them. They’re not as involved. Today, we Boulder residents are not devoted to public service the way we once were. We’ve become more of an urban center.

  Rol Hoverstock is pastor of St. John’s. I knew him before he came to our church, before he was ordained. He owned a bicycle shop in town and he wanted to be a priest. When he left Boulder for his first parish in South Dakota, he was shaky, nervous, ill at ease in the pulpit. Then Father Jim—Jim McKeown—retired, and Rol was the congregation’s unanimous choice to replace him. The priest who came back to us from South Dakota was a man who suddenly felt comfortable with what he was doing. I think of him as a country priest. He had a vision for our church as a family community. He really wanted a strong program for children. There’s nothing I don’t like about Rol.

  —Niki Hayden

  The next morning, Friday, December 27, everyone in the Daily Camera’s second-floor newsroom was scrambling to gather any scrap of information on the Ramseys. It was almost as busy as Election Day. The paper that morning led with an article about the murder of JonBenét.

  MISSING GIRL FOUND DEAD

  A 6-year-old Boulder girl reported kidnapped early Thursday was found dead in her parents’ home later that afternoon. It is Boulder’s first official homicide of 1996.

  Police detectives and crime scene investigators began searching the house late Thursday after securing a search warrant. No details of what they had found were disclosed.

  Although the official cause of death was not yet known, Police Chief Tom Koby said the case is considered a homicide. The child had not been shot or stabbed, said Detective Sgt. Larry Mason.

  No arrest had been made as of press time, and police had no suspects, Mason said.

  The Boulder County coroner’s office refused to discuss details of the case, though an autopsy will be performed today, according to city spokeswoman Leslie Aaholm.

  The child was the 1995 Little Miss Colorado and a student at Martin Park [sic] Elementary School, according to a family friend. Patsy Ramsey traveled around the country with JonBenét to attend her daughter’s beauty contests. “They were so serious about this beauty queen stuff, but they never put any pressure on her. She was Little Miss Colorado in 1995,” said Dee Dee Nelson-Schneider, a family friend.

  “She had her own float in the Colorado Parade of Lights in December 1995, and Patsy walked along the side of the float the whole parade to make sure (JonBenét) was safe. That’s how protective Patsy was.”

  —Elliot Zaret and Alli Krupski

  Daily Camera, December 27, 1996

  In the winter, when the aspen trees are bare, you can see the Front Range of the snow-covered Rockies from almost every street. Boulder, just twenty-six miles northwest of Denver, is an old-fashioned small town, with many brick and wood-framed houses dating from the 1930s. With a population of 96,000—one third of whom are affiliated with the University of Colorado—the town prides itself on its pretty neighborhoods. Boulderites like to think of themselves as having an excellent quality of life.

  When you have lived for a while in the town, which is isolated by both municipal planning and topography, it isn’t hard to lose a sense of how it looks from the outside. If you are a runner, however—and there are thousands of Boulderites who run—a five-mile jog up Flagstaff Road to the top of Flagstaff Mountain is one way to rediscover where you are.

  In every direction you turn, you are faced with the facts of geography: to the southwest are the Flatirons, enormous slabs of rock that from some angles appear to prop up the snow-covered Rockies beyond; to the east, the vast flatlands of the Great Plains; to the west, the Continental Divide, dividing the country’s two primary watersheds. Along the Divide, the Indian Peaks rise 13,000 feet above sea level. Off in the distance to the southeast, you can just make out a few of Denver’s skyscrapers, where many Boulderites work five days a week. The rest are content with the pace of life in Boulder.

  From the top of Flagstaff Mountain, you can see the tidy neighborhoods laid out in neat grids and, in the heart of town, the Pearl Street Mall, home to the Hotel Boulderado, shops with turn-of-the-century facades, and over a hundred restaurants. Parallel to the mall is
Canyon Boulevard, once called Water Street because of the flooding that can occur when adjacent Boulder Creek explodes out of the foothills with springtime snowmelt. To the east lies the sprawling campus of the University of Colorado, easily distinguished by its many red sandstone roofs.

  In Boulder, it’s as if people are so intensely pursuing their own interests that they develop a kind of disregard for the general welfare. But the word community itself implies care for the general welfare.

  I was the principal of High Peaks and Martin Park Elementary School, which shared a common property. In June 1996, I wanted to have the city build another speed bump on the west side of the schools. With the addition of High Peaks Elementary in the same building and the sudden influx of more cars, I was concerned about the kids who walked to school in this quiet neighborhood.

  At a city council hearing in September or October of 1996, I was surprised at the number of people who protested. They said it would interfere with their bike riding. And yet a hundred yards from the school is a beautifully designed multimillion-dollar bike path running north and south along the creek. So it’s not that the needs of bike riders have been ignored, just that bike riders were saying, “We don’t like to slow down for speed bumps.” But what about the children’s safety? There was a real reluctance to address those needs.

  That’s what I have found missing in Boulder—a commitment to the general welfare that goes beyond “me” and “my own small world.”

  The day after JonBenét’s body was found, I talked with some parents and realized how isolated they felt. All of them had either read about it in the morning paper or heard the news on TV, but there was no adequate way for them to share the loss with other parents who had a connection to this child. Throughout so much of history, whenever something bad happened, someone would knock on your door with the news and then come in and stay with you. But in talking to these parents, I felt the lack of natural community in Boulder. I decided I would open up the school so that parents, with or without their children, could gather with other families. It would be a place to talk and share their confusion and fears.

  Then that morning I met with a group of therapists, the school psychologist, the school social worker, and several other professionals who volunteered. We decided that what really made this terrifying for kids is that JonBenét was killed in the sanctity of her own home. For kids, it would feel like their homes, their bedrooms. If JonBenét wasn’t safe, they weren’t safe. If JonBenét’s parents couldn’t protect her, how could their parents protect them?

  I also decided early on that JonBenét’s death would not become a school issue, apart from the fact that we would provide support for our children and their families. We wouldn’t respond to media questions. The crime was an issue for the police, an issue for the Ramseys. I let the word out that the school would not participate in any media frenzy.

  —Charles Elbot

  At 8:00 A.M. on December 27, Gary Merriman convened an executive meeting in the small conference room in the offices of Access Graphics on the Pearl Street Mall. Gary Mann, president of the commercial systems group of Lockheed Martin, Access Graphics’ parent company, had been notified. In a series of phone calls, Lockheed Martin specified a chain of command to handle essential business in John Ramsey’s absence.

  Ramsey’s top people had gathered to manage the unmanageable. It was like the day John F. Kennedy was killed: nothing seemed normal. Nobody used the chair where Ramsey usually sat. Their job, Merriman said, was to make sure a billion-dollar business continued to operate. Very quickly they settled on a collaborative crisis team. It included Ross Churchill, Michael Minard, Laurie Wagner, Tom Carson, who was out of town, and Merriman. One of the division managers remarked that JonBenét’s death would be a global story: “John’s a rich guy. His daughter is a child beauty queen. They’re going to attach dirty sex stuff to her death. It won’t be about JonBenét. It’s all about selling papers.”

  Everyone agreed that the business had to be isolated from the tragedy. They set up a procedure to keep clients and employees informed. As workers returned from the Christmas holidays, those who didn’t already know would have to be told. Some were likely to feel helpless, outraged, or saddened. To employees at Access Graphics, JonBenét was not an abstraction—she was a real little girl. She’d visited the building. She had sat in her daddy’s big chair. When she entered a room, it became brighter.

  Then it hit Gary Merriman. Could the Daily Camera story about the company hitting a billion dollars in sales have anything to do with JonBenét’s death? He was the one who had urged sending out the press release. John’s picture had accompanied the article. Had he exposed the Ramsey family to some lunatic? Merriman would be tormented for months afterward by the thought that he might have inadvertently targeted JonBenét.

  Lockheed Martin’s Gary Mann said he’d keep in close contact for the next few weeks, but there wasn’t much to add to what Merriman and his team were doing. Clearly, Lockheed Martin trusted the organization John Ramsey had built, but they also seemed to want to distance themselves from Ramsey’s problems. JonBenét’s death was none of Lockheed Martin’s business. Mann told Carson, Churchill, Merriman, and Wagner to report to him for the next ninety days. Wagner was appointed company spokesperson. Lockheed Martin had a succession plan in place if it turned out that one was needed. No one was irreplaceable to the corporation. Life had to go on.

  Shortly after 8:15 A.M. on December 27, Dr. John Meyer entered the autopsy room at Boulder Community Hospital, accompanied by his medical investigators, Tom Faure and Patricia Dunn. Dunn had been at the Ramsey house the previous day and was Meyer’s primary investigator on the case. For the autopsy, Detectives Linda Arndt and Tom Trujillo were on hand for the Boulder police; senior trial deputies Trip DeMuth and John Pickering were there for the DA’s office.

  Attendants unsealed a heavy white plastic bag, revealing JonBenét’s body wrapped in a sterile white sheet. The child was placed on the steel autopsy table, whose slightly inclined subtray permitted fluids to drain into a sink-type apparatus. The sheet was removed and set aside as part of the evidence.

  Meyer knew that in nine out of ten cases of a child’s suspicious death, the perpetrator or an accomplice says that a bike fell on the victim or the child slipped in the bathtub—some accident is concocted to explain the victim’s injuries. Meyer also knew, however, that good forensic pathology usually reveals the real cause of death.

  JonBenét’s body was just as Meyer had observed it twelve hours earlier in the Ramsey living room. Every stitch of her clothing, plus the ligatures on her right wrist and around her neck, remained in place. Paper bags had been sealed around her hands and feet to preserve any possible trace evidence.

  Patricia Dunn took color slides for the coroner’s office, while Detective Trujillo shot photos for the police department. Dunn shot 113 frames, documenting each stage of the procedure. Meyer dictated his observations into a tape recorder.

  “The decedent is clothed in a long-sleeved white knit collarless shirt, the midanterior chest area of which contains an embroidered silver star decorated with silver sequins,” Meyer began. “Tied loosely around the right wrist, overlying the sleeve of the shirt, is a white cord.”

  On the child’s right sleeve, the coroner saw a brownish-tan stain about 2½ by 1½ inches in area, which seemed consistent with mucus from her mouth or nose.

  “There are long white underwear with an elastic waistband containing a red-and-blue stripe.” Meyer also noted urine stains on the underwear, in the crotch area, and at the front.

  “Beneath the long underwear are white panties with printed rosebuds and the word Wednesday on the elastic waistband.” The panties were also stained with urine. At the crotch, the coroner spotted several red spots that were each up to ½ inch in diameter.

  Meyer then recorded the injuries that were visible with the body clothed. Beneath her right ear, at the point where the jawbone forms roughly a right angle, was a rust-colored
abrasion about 3/8 by ¼ inch. There was pinpoint hemorrhaging on the upper and lower eyelids.

  Meyer described the cord around the child’s neck: “Wrapped around the neck with a double knot in the midline of the posterior neck is a length of white cord similar to that described as being tied around the right wrist.” He cut through the cord on the right side of her neck and slipped it off.

  “A single black mark is placed on the left side of the cut and a double black ink mark on the right side of the cut.” Meyer stated these specifics in case it would be necessary to reconstruct the cord as evidence. He knew the police would want the knot left intact, to study the technique used to secure the ligature.

  There were two tails of cord trailing from the knot. One was 4 inches long and frayed. The other was 17 inches long and had multiple loops secured around a wooden stick that was about 4½ inches long.

  “This wooden stick,” Meyer said, “is irregularly broken at both ends, and there are several colors of paint and apparent glistening varnish on the surface. Printed in gold letters on one end of the wood [stick] is the word Korea.”

  Fine blond hair, Meyer noted, was tangled in the knot of the cord around the child’s neck as well as in the knot of the cord tied around the stick.

  “The white cord is flattened and measures approximately ¼ inch in width. It appears to be made of a white synthetic material. Also secured around the neck is a gold chain with a single charm in the form of a cross.”

  Meyer then recorded a series of observations about a groove left in JonBenét’s neck by the cord. In front, it was just below the prominence of her larynx. The coroner noted that the groove circled her neck almost completely horizontally, deviating only slightly upward near the back. At some points, the furrow was close to half an inch wide, and hemorrhaging and abrasions could be seen both above and below it. The groove included a roughly triangular abrasion, about the size of a 25-cent piece on the left side of the neck, that Meyer had seen when he first viewed the body at the Ramseys’ house.