JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (25 page)

Patsy was magna cum laude smart and Miss America pretty, cancer survivor strong and drama queen talented, tenacious, and determined. John was the condescending and cool CEO, who displayed confidence that he would have little trouble handling the interview. Each was accompanied by a lawyer, and more of them lurked in the halls. Pete Hofstrom from the DA’s office, whom I considered a Team Ramsey ally, sat behind me. I had conducted hundreds of interviews, but never under such adverse conditions.

Detective Tom Trujillo and I watched as Patsy was solicitously helped to a chair by her attorney. As soon as she sat down and adjusted herself, any hint of weakness vanished, those green eyes flashed, and a nervous smile played at her lips.

It was the first time I had seen her since the nontestimonial evidence session on December 28, and she hardly seemed to be the same woman. No longer distraught and disheveled, she was immaculate in a blue suit with white trim over a white sweater, a silver angel pin on her lapel, and gold earrings, watch, and wedding ring, and her perfume reached across the table. She placed a small cup of tea to mark her territory.

It is rare for a woman to go eye-to-eye with a detective, but Patsy Ramsey was a savvy sophisticate who knew how to work a man, even one with a badge. When I had a question, she would lean so close across that narrow pine table that we were almost in kissing distance, invading my personal space before answering.

We started at 9:05 A.M. and went for six hours.

She confirmed that the last thing JonBenét had to eat was some cracked crab at the Whites’ dinner party on December 25. I knew the Whites served no pineapple that night, but pineapple was found in the victim’s stomach, and a bowl of pineapple bearing Patsy’s fingerprints was on her breakfast table. Inconsistent.

JonBenét had fallen asleep in the car on the way home, and John Ramsey carried her upstairs, where Patsy replaced the child’s pants with the long-john bottoms. The white shirt with the sequin star stayed on, she said. That was the first we had heard that she was asleep and carried to bed and clothes were changed. On December 26 Patsy had told police that JonBenét went to sleep wearing the red turtleneck top, which was later found balled up on the bathroom sink. Now it was the white one in which the body was found. Inconsistent.

The door to the child’s bedroom was left open a little bit, she said, which corroborated her January 1 statement on CNN that she pushed the door open that morning. It seemed unlikely that an intruder abducting a child from her bed would take time to close the door behind him.

She got up just after her husband, about five-thirty the next morning, only an hour before their plane was to leave for Michigan. This didn’t seem like much time to pack, get two kids ready, and drive to the airport. In their separate bathrooms, John showered as she did her makeup and hair.

Early in the interview I moved to lock her into a statement that she had worn the same clothes on the night of December 25 and the morning of December 26. Those questions revealed that Patsy and JonBenét had “a little rift” about what to wear to the Whites’. We knew they often wore matched sets of clothing, and Patsy said that on Christmas night she put on a red-and-black outfit, but her daughter demanded to wear her new crewneck shirt with the star on it from The Gap. That was interesting because it showed that Patsy was upset with JonBenét early that evening.

When I returned to the clothing issue a little later by asking what Patsy had put on the next morning, her attorney came to attention. When she replied, “I put on the same black velvet pants and the red turtleneck sweater,” her lawyer actually began to sweat, perhaps making the same link we did—wondering why Patsy would take time to fix her hair and makeup but ignore a closet full of fresh clothing in favor of clothes she had worn to a party twelve hours earlier.

Back on the time line, we established that she went downstairs, stopping briefly in the laundry room outside JonBenét’s room to examine some stains on her daughter’s red jumpsuit. I recalled that there was the big bag of diapers that was hanging out of the cabinet, which wasn’t mentioned.

She descended the spiral staircase, saw the three pieces of paper laid out side by side on the third rung, stepped over them, turned around, and read the note. “The first couple of lines … I didn’t know what it was. It dawned on me that it said something about ‘we have your daughter’ or something, and I ran back up the stairs and pushed open the door to her room, and she wasn’t in bed.” It was another inconsistent statement, for if she “only glanced” at the first few lines, how could she have known to tell the 911 dispatcher about the SBTC acronym and the word
Victory
, both of which were at the bottom of the third page? And how did the intruder know to place the ransom note on the rear staircase that would be used by Patsy?

Throughout the interview, I was constantly reminded of just how well prepared she appeared. Her answers reeked of lawyerly advice, avoiding specifics and hedging with open-ended answers instead of yes or no. Trying to get a straight answer from her was maddening.

“Who moved the note?” I asked.

“I think he [John] did,” she replied. “I don’t think I did.”

“Did you touch the note?”

“I don’t recall doing that, but I may have.”

“Did you take the note upstairs with you?”

“I don’t remember exactly.”

“Do you recall moving the note from the stairs?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Did you read the note?”

“I think I glanced at it.”

“Do you remember touching the note?”

“Not specifically, but I may have.”

“Did you check on JonBenét that night?”

“I don’t believe I did.”

Later she was asked if JonBenét would have been paralyzed by fear or screamed and fought if grabbed by an intruder. Patsy Ramsey said, “I just don’t know.”

“Have you talked to Burke about that night?”

“I haven’t really talked to him much about it.”

Because we had the enhancement of the 911 tape to prove that their son, Burke, was awake when the call was made, I wanted Patsy to confirm her earlier statement that he had been asleep, and she did so several times.

She said she asked John, “Oh my God, what about Burke? He [John] told me he [Burke] was OK.”

Later she was asked again, “Did all the commotion wake Burke up at all?” She said it did not.

In an hour I returned to the same point. “Obviously Burke was OK, he was still asleep through this until he was later awakened, is that right?”

“Right.”

When we asked John Ramsey the same question, we got the same answer. “When you checked on Burke … did he wake up at all?” Ramsey answered, “No, he was asleep still.”

It was as close to a lock as we got on anything all day.

Throughout the day, Patsy’s manner would change abruptly depending on the question. Inquiries about Access Graphics and John’s bonus were met with “I really just don’t know much about what goes on at work … . I wasn’t aware he got a bonus.” Soft words, big doe eyes. All America knew that $118,000 figure, and she didn’t? Asked about the ransom note being written on a pad from her home, the little-girl persona emerged. “It was? I didn’t know that.” She denied knowing anything about the “small foreign faction” mentioned in the note and said she “didn’t have a clue” about the sign-off acronym, S.B.T.C. The woman was a chameleon.

The only time her composure broke was when she was asked to describe the discovery of her daughter’s body. She dissolved into weeping, and although it was touching, it was also her weakest point of the session and the time for me to press harder, to really exploit the opportunity. But just as I was about to allow an opening by suggesting, “It was an accident, wasn’t it? You didn’t mean for this to happen, did you?” Pat Burke and Pete Hofstrom ruined the moment, consolingly saying, “Let’s take a break.” Our own DA’s chief trial deputy helped destroy what in my opinion was the best opportunity of the day. By the time the interview resumed, Patsy Ramsey had gotten her wind back. I felt she knew she had dodged a bullet.

During our brief breaks, I went to Alex Hunter’s office, which had been set aside for the detectives. The first time I walked in, the district attorney asked, “Got a confession?”

Patsy and her team did not have to cool their heels in the hallway. Team Ramsey had been given Pete Hofstrom’s private office, which violated the basic police procedure of keeping the parties being interviewed from contacting each other. I figured they were briefing John Ramsey, who would come in later.

The agreement not to allow any audio or video feed from the interview room hurt us since my fellow detectives could not watch and jot down follow-up questions, and we had no opportunity to allow specialists to examine Patsy’s body language. Sergeant Wickman and Detectives Gosage and Harmer huddled in rapid-fire discussions with Trujillo and me during the breaks.

Patsy was evasive to the point of disbelief on a number of questions. When asked about the mystery woman who broke up her husband’s first marriage, she replied, “I’m not aware of anything like that.”

Her mother, both sisters, and half Atlanta knew about the affair, and Lucinda Ramsey Johnson was one of Patsy’s friends. The subject of the affair had never even been mentioned?

On the pageants, she offered, “It was a Sunday afternoon kind of thing.”

Thousands of dollars spent, hundreds of miles traveled, and every member of the family involved. It was the strangest comment of the day.

About the broken basement window, Patsy said she personally vacuumed up the errant pieces of glass after John kicked in the window last year and was certain she got them all.

Five times this woman, whose own housekeeper described her as slovenly, and who hired legions of cleaning people, would claim to have gone downstairs to a place used basically as a storeroom to clean up glass. It seemed like a prepared answer, and I didn’t believe it.

Before leaving questions about the basement, we locked her into saying that the housekeeper had moved the painting and art supplies down there before the holidays. That made me think how odd it would be for a total stranger, presumably working in the dark, to know where to find the paintbrush that became part of the garrote.

Patsy provided plenty of possibilities for the unidentified pubic hair when I asked if anyone else ever slept in her daughter’s bedroom. She reeled off the names of family members, then added people she knew only as Erin, Brian, and Brad, among others. The list grew steadily longer. It would be impossible to track down all these emerging names and take samples for testing. But it also showed that there were plenty of potential sources other than an intruder.

At one point she interrupted with a statement: “I hope that you are trying to find out who killed my daughter. That is the bottom line, you know, we’ve got to find out who did this, so I’m praying that your department is doing all they know how to do.”

I stared at her. “Well, Patsy, I can tell you this. Since December 28 when I was asked to participate in this case, this has been my entire life, seven days a week, every waking thought … . We are committed to finding the person who did this. That is the truth, and that’s entirely what we’re working toward, regardless of what you read in the tabloids or the newspaper.”

She seemed not to expect such a strong response. “I don’t read it, I don’t read any of it.”

“Do you think this was a premeditated act, or something that got out of hand?”

“I don’t have any idea.”

“Patsy, did you write the note?”

“No, I did not write the note.”

“Did you participate in any way in the death of JonBenét?”

“No, absolutely not.”

“Patsy, do you have any knowledge of John participating in this in any way?”

“No.”

“This is not a case where something terribly wrong happened in that house and that you’re covering up for a spouse?”

“No.”

I told her that handwriting experts thought she might have written the ransom note, and we wondered why experts would think that.

“I’ve given handwriting after handwriting after handwriting,” she replied. “You know maybe it’s a female that wrote the note, I don’t know … . I don’t know what else to tell you. I write like I write.”

It was of interest that she of all people suggested that a woman might be the author.

We ran out of time before we ran out of questions, and I felt we had only scratched the surface. We could have used four days for this interview and still not have gotten everything we needed, but it was a lousy one-day deal, and we still had to interview the husband. Patsy Ramsey walked out.

We had John Ramsey for just ninety minutes. As he crossed his legs, folded his hands, and nodded permission for us to begin, his cool confidence grated on me. He was just as imprecise as she had been, using the guarded answers that prevented them from being pinned down.

“Did you ever leave the bed at any time during the night?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Were you in the room when Patsy changed JonBenét’s clothes?”

“I don’t think so. Not that I remember.”

“Was JonBenét’s door open or closed?”

“I don’t remember.”

He confirmed his wife’s account that JonBenét had fallen asleep in the car and that he had carried her upstairs still asleep, but that was contrary to the December 26 statements in which he said he read to the kids. He confirmed Patsy changed JonBenét into bedclothes. He said he helped Burke assemble a Christmas toy before getting him into his pajamas.

Then he said that Patsy was already in bed when he got there, the only indication we had that she had gotten out of her clothes and gone to bed. “Did Patsy stay up reading that night?” he was asked, but he gave only another vague “Not that I recall.”