Perfect Murder, Perfect Town Read online

  Continuing with the external examination, Meyer noticed—and Detective Arndt also observed—a number of dark fibers and hairs on the outside of JonBenét’s nightshirt. Using forceps, Meyer lifted these for later microscopic analysis. Everyone in the room could also see strands of a green substance tangled in the child’s hair. Arndt believed she’d seen the same thing the day before; it was probably some of the holiday garland decorating the spiral staircase that led downstairs from JonBenét’s bedroom.

  Meyer then removed her clothes and set the garments aside to be placed into evidence.

  “The unembalmed, well-developed, and well-nourished Caucasian female body measures 47 inches in length and weighs an estimated 45 pounds,” Meyer dictated. “The scalp is covered by long blond hair, which is fixed in two ponytails, one on top of the head secured by a cloth hair tie and blue elastic band and one in the lower back of the head secured by a blue elastic band. No scalp trauma is identified.”

  Meyer began an internal examination of the body.

  An hour later on that same morning, December 27, Detectives Fred Patterson and Greg Idler began their first formal interview with Fleet White at Boulder police headquarters. By now the police knew that John Ramsey considered White a close friend—possibly his closest friend. The Whites had keys to the Ramseys’ house.

  White told the detectives that he and his wife, Priscilla, had invited relatives and friends from California to join them for the holidays. On December 22, Heather Cox, Priscilla’s niece, and her husband, Bill, and the Whites had driven five hours to Aspen and spent the night. The next day they returned to Boulder, and the Whites attended the Ramseys’ Christmas party with Priscilla’s parents. JonBenét had hung up the guests’ coats, White said. There were gingerbread houses for each family to decorate with gumdrops. On Christmas Day, the Whites were up early opening presents with their kids and Priscilla’s parents. That afternoon at about 4:30, the Ramseys, with JonBenét and Burke, arrived at the Whites’ house. They would join the Whites, the Coxes, and Allison Shoeny, Priscilla’s sister, and her boyfriend, Cliff Gaston, for Christmas dinner. Afterward, the adults, along with the kids, played on the floor. Then some neighbors came over for Christmas caroling. Fleet White and the kids joined the group in singing. At around 9:30 P.M., White said, the Ramseys left, saying that they were going to drop off gifts for other friends, the Stines and the Walkers. By 11:00 White was in bed, he said. Priscilla and her sister talked in the kitchen until 2:00 in the morning. By then Cliff Gaston was asleep on the couch in the family room, and the Coxes were also asleep, in the Whites’ daughter’s room.

  At 6:00 A.M. the telephone awakened Cliff Gaston. It was Patsy Ramsey. Priscilla took the call, and within minutes the Whites were dressed and on their way to the Ramseys’ house. When they arrived, the police and John Fernie were already there. Patsy was on the floor, hysterical, and her husband was trying to comfort her. It was still dark outside.

  White told the detectives that he had been there only a few minutes when he started to search the house. Alone, he went down to the basement, found some of the lights on, and started calling out JonBenét’s name. It was so cluttered down there—with boxes stacked everywhere and shelves overflowing with odds and ends—that he could hardly see any open spaces where she might be. He started in Burke’s train and hobby room, where he saw a suitcase sitting under a broken window. On the floor under the window, he found small pieces of glass. He placed some of them on the windowsill. Then he moved the suitcase a few feet to get a closer look at the window. White said he was sure the window was closed but unlatched. After he left the train room, he turned right, into the boiler room. At the back of the room, he said, he saw a door to what the Ramseys called the wine cellar. He turned the closed wooden latch and opened the door. The room was pitch-black, he said. He didn’t enter, and he saw nothing. When he couldn’t find a light switch, he closed the door and went back upstairs. He did not remember whether or not he relatched the door. Later, when White saw John Fernie, he told him that a window downstairs had been punched open. The police wondered why White had not seen JonBenét’s body and later Ramsey had, since they both stood at the same spot after opening the door to the wine cellar.

  At 6:45 A.M., White said, his wife called home and told her niece that JonBenét had been kidnapped. Her niece, Heather, woke the other adults in the house and told them why Fleet and Priscilla were with the Ramseys.

  White told the police that the Ramseys decided to wake their son, Burke, at around 7:00 and move him to his house. Fleet White and John Fernie, with Burke in hand, first picked up the Fernies’ children from their home and then took all the kids to the Whites’, where his guests looked after them. Forty-five minutes later, the two men returned to the Ramseys’.

  White remembered that just after 7:00, the Ramseys’ pastor, Rev. Rol Hoverstock, arrived.

  Meanwhile, Ramsey had called Rod Westmoreland, his friend and Merrill Lynch broker, at home in Atlanta and told him what had happened and that he needed cash. Westmoreland started to make arrangements to transfer money from one of Ramsey’s cash management accounts—where he had over a million dollars—to a Boulder bank. Fleet White told the police that when the Lafayette branch of John Fernie’s bank opened, Fernie went there to see about collecting the ransom money from his own account. During this time Ramsey was distressed, White said; the pain he observed in John was unmistakable. He’d never seen Ramsey this way, at the end of his rope. “He just put his head in his hands and cried and shook.”

  White also told the police that he and Ramsey went down to the basement again at about 1:00 P.M. and first went into Burke’s train room, where they both looked at the broken window. Ramsey told White he had broken it to get into the house a few months earlier, when he came home one day without his house key. Then White described what had happened when John Ramsey found JonBenét’s body. He couldn’t forget seeing John standing in the doorway screaming, his back to White, the light being turned on and, when he entered the room himself, seeing Ramsey on his knees beside JonBenét. It all happened so fast, White said. He had no explanation for why he himself hadn’t seen the body on his first trip to the basement.

  At about 1:30 P.M., White said, his wife called home and told her niece that JonBenét had been found dead. White also said that around 3:00 P.M., he had called Ramsey’s pilot to cancel a flight to Atlanta that John Ramsey had made arrangements for after finding his daughter’s body. White told the pilot the Ramseys might not be allowed to leave that night because of the police investigation.

  Around 4:00 P.M. Priscilla left the Fernies’ house, where they’d all gone with the Ramseys, and returned home. White went home later, he said, and they told their children, Daphne and Fleet Jr., that JonBenét had gone to heaven. Later that night, White stopped by the Fernies’ house on his way to Denver International Airport to pick up Jeff Ramsey, John’s brother, and Rod Westmoreland. Ramsey asked to go along. The four men were back at the Fernies’ home by around 11:00 P.M., White said.

  3

  I remember Boulder when there was no mall on Pearl Street, just a drugstore, some dress shops, and Valentine’s Hardware. Valentine’s had 20-foot ceilings, and you’d get a ladder out and climb up to find what you wanted. That was back in ’71, when my wife and I moved to Boulder. I’m a CPA. And I’ve been a devoted member of St. John’s and a member of its vestry ever since we arrived.

  Boulder used to be a crossroads for teenagers and kids in their early twenties who were crossing the country—runaways, hitchhikers, activists, the whole spectrum. Our Father Jim created some havens for them. He got the parish involved in providing food and temporary housing. His one condition for their getting help was that they had to call their parents. He didn’t ask anything beyond that.

  Father Jim was the most open-minded person I ever met. He was an activist. He could reach all those young people marching through Boulder. He’d say, “This is who I am, and I’m not going to change. If you don’t like it, go f
ind another church.” So in those days, St. John’s actually lost a lot of parishioners.

  These days, Rol says, “Look within this parish. Look at a lot of different members. Come join us and we’ll work things out.”

  Not long ago we had one parishioner who took it upon herself to research the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program. It’s designed to teach four- and five-year-old children about the sacraments. It was quite an expensive thing, with lots of specially constructed child-sized furniture and icons and vessels. Hard work. Patsy and John decided to finance the entire project, which cost several thousand dollars. They were always generous in pledging.

  Patsy was dynamic—to the point where she could be annoying. She absolutely could be. She was a take-charge person with very definite ideas. And she had this living angel. JonBenét was an actual angel. I don’t remember ever seeing any child more beautiful. Always dressed stunningly. I heard about the murder on NPR radio.

  —Robert Elmore

  At 10:00 A.M. on Friday, December 27, Pam Griffin and her daughter, Kristine, a senior in high school, sat before a tape recorder in a small windowless room at police headquarters. Griffin told Larry Mason what she knew. She was the seamstress who made JonBenét’s pageant costumes and Patsy’s confidante about beauty pageants. Kristine was one of JonBenét’s runway teachers.

  The police wanted to know if she’d ever seen any inappropriate behavior between the Ramseys and JonBenét—anything abusive. Griffin said she hadn’t. She had never even seen them discipline their children, she claimed. Pam told Mason that these were parents who didn’t demand respect from their kids—it was they who respected their children. That was the best way she could describe the relationship. And then there was all the love in JonBenét’s eyes when she spoke to her father. Everything he said was important to her, Griffin said. Mason then asked for information about child beauty pageants. JonBenét had won several, Griffin said. On the previous Sunday, December 22, she had performed at the Southwest Plaza as a pageant winner. Was JonBenét forced into the pageants, Mason wanted to know. Not that Griffin could see.

  Then Kristine was interviewed. She gave much the same answers.

  In 1995, four of us parents thought we could start a public elementary school that would work the way schools should. We wrote a 140-page proposal and got a lot of articles published in the local newspaper. We called it a focus school.

  It took a marketing effort to convince parents to sign their kids up for a school that didn’t have a building, didn’t have teachers, didn’t have physical materials to show. You have to remember that these kids are precious.

  At one organizing meeting in someone’s home, a man sat back and listened, listened carefully, and asked a few questions. Then he said thank you and left. That’s how I met John Ramsey.

  In the fall of 1995, High Peaks Elementary, our school, opened. Patsy enrolled Burke in the third grade. Hers was the first southern voice I’d heard in a long time—there aren’t many southerners in Boulder. She was very overdressed for our little city. Her hair was always done, and she always wore city outfits and hats. Of course I didn’t know then that she was recovering from chemotherapy and that her hair was still growing back.

  High Peaks depended on volunteers for survival, and Patsy volunteered all the time. It wasn’t long before we got to know each other. Nothing stopped Patsy from doing what needed to be done. John wasn’t active at school. He traveled a great deal. He looked just like an ordinary guy. He could be in a room and never be noticed.

  Around Valentine’s Day of 1996, my daughter, Megan, met JonBenét for the first time. They were both in preschool. I remember the first time I saw them together—they looked so cute playing on the monkey bars.

  That August, JonBenét entered kindergarten and Patsy kept volunteering. At the same time she was heading up an event for the University Women’s Club. JonBenét seemed resentful that her father traveled so much. Not really angry, just sad. She really liked him a lot.

  Our kids started playing together, and they became close friends. JonBenét would come to our house to play, and I would drive Megan over there. Megan also really liked Burke. He was into computer games. That’s how I got to see more of Patsy—twenty minutes here, thirty minutes there.

  One day Megan told me she wanted to enter a beauty pageant. She’d learned about them from JonBenét. She liked the clothes, and she had been impressed by the crowns. I had to explain that everybody makes choices and that pageants were not something we were choosing to do. As soon as I told her that JonBenét had to sing and dance in front of a whole bunch of people during the competition, Megan’s desire disappeared.

  Patsy was very positive about pageants. She’d talk about the skills they give you—the poise, the self-confidence, and can-do attitude that stay with you for life.

  The Ramseys lived a very lavish life. They went to the Olympics. Took vacations in Michigan and traveled all over. I wondered what JonBenét’s life would be like when she grew up.

  The day before Christmas, JonBenét was at our house playing with Megan. The kids were talking about Santa, getting all excited. I asked JonBenét if she had visited Santa Claus yet. She said, “Oh, Santa was at our Christmas party the other night.” Megan had seen Santa at the Pearl Street Mall, so we talked about that.

  Then JonBenét said, “Santa Claus promised that he would make a secret visit after Christmas.”

  I thought she was confused. “Christmas is tonight,” I told her. “And Santa will be coming tonight.”

  “No, no,” JonBenét insisted. “He said this would be after Christmas. And it’s a secret.”

  —Barbara Kostanick

  By midmorning, December 27, reporters were canvassing the Ramseys’ neighborhood. Almost everyone they talked to said the Ramseys were extraordinary people who enjoyed a lifestyle far more affluent than that of their friends and neighbors. They had moved to Boulder from Atlanta in 1991. They owned a vacation place in Michigan and a boat John Ramsey had built. Patsy was a former Miss West Virginia. What struck most of the reporters was how little the people who knew the Ramseys best were willing to say. One local reporter knew John and Barbara Fernie through their church, but the Fernies told him nothing. The Ramseys themselves were incommunicado. Their close friends told the press that they were grieving.

  Another local reporter visited St. John’s Episcopal Church, which was located at 14th Street and Pine in downtown Boulder. He’d been married there, and Rol Hoverstock knew his daughter. He was welcomed to sit with his friends, the leaders of the congregation, just outside the pastor’s office, but they wouldn’t tell him anything. The reporters felt that this silence was creating a poor impression of JonBenét’s parents. What were they hiding?

  After Detectives Patterson and Idler concluded their interview with him around noon, Fleet White drove over to the Fernies’ house to stay with John and Patsy. Later, at around 4:00 P.M., he went to the office of Michael Bynum, Ramsey’s corporate attorney, to talk to him about the situation.

  Meanwhile, at police headquarters, Commander Eller was meeting with officers in the detective division to compile a list of possible suspects. The previous day they had put together a list of John Ramsey’s employees and business associates. Brainstorming, they added to the list several housekeepers, acquaintances, and friends of the Ramseys as well as relatives and others—like baby-sitters—who’d had close contact with JonBenét.

  John Ramsey’s behavior after his daughter’s body was found—together with national child homicide statistics, which showed that a large percentage of child murders are committed by fathers—made the Ramsey family automatic suspects. Ramsey’s two older children had arrived from out of town after the body was found, but they too were added to the list. John Andrew Ramsey, a college student in Boulder who often stayed at his father’s house, was under particular suspicion. The police would soon learn that the suitcase found under the broken window in the basement belonged to him.

  The police would
take weeks—and even months—checking and rechecking alibis and taking handwriting, fingerprint, blood, and hair samples from almost everyone known to have come in contact with JonBenét, as well as from those who had no known contact or motive to kill her. The initial list included over two dozen people, and it grew larger as the public provided further leads.

  John Eller assigned thirty officers to the case. Larry Mason led the team in day-to-day field assignments, but he and Eller butted heads over who should be interviewed and when, and over how to prioritize the investigation. Mason, with a battered face and a prizefighter’s compact body, stood no more than 5-feet-9 to Eller’s 6-feet-1. The tension between the two men was obvious and palpable. Particularly galling to Mason was the dismissal of the FBI’s investigators from the case. Mason had been a police officer for twenty-five years, and he knew how helpful the Bureau could be.

  Larry Mason was a fourth-generation Coloradoan. His father, Allen, had been with the Boulder Fire Department, and he had an uncle who had been with the sheriff’s department for thirty years. Another uncle was the first marshal in Jamestown, Colorado. Mason had joined the sheriff’s department in 1972, a year when Boulder had witnessed another horrifying crime. Two eleven-year-old girls were kidnapped, sexually molested, and shot, then thrown into Boulder Canyon in the middle of winter. One girl survived and stumbled into the Gold Hill Café seeking help. The perpetrator, Peter Roy Fisher, had been caught and was still serving a life sentence.