The Cases That Haunt Us (49 page)

The detectives left the Fernies’ house disappointed that they had not been able to secure the interview they sought. And with the Ramseys leaving town for the funeral and burial in Georgia, they felt the pair was slipping out of their grasp.

By the time of the memorial service, this unusual and tantalizing case had already aroused great public attention. The Ramsey attorneys hired Washington, D.C., media consultant and former reporter Patrick Korten to handle television and press and keep them one step removed from John and Patsy, as well as the attorneys themselves. This was yet another move that brought on a flood tide of criticism: the Ramseys were trying to manage the news. Fleet White was apparently troubled by their girding themselves with lawyers and suggested the best way to get their story out was to go on national television and just tell it.

They addressed this by agreeing to appear on
CNN
in Atlanta the day after the burial: January 1, 1997. They would be interviewed by veteran reporter Brian Cabell, who, coincidentally, went to college with Mark Olshaker.

Toward the end of the interview, Cabell homed in on the question everyone wanted to ask. “The police said there is no killer on the loose. Do you believe it’s someone outside your home?”

“There is a killer on the loose,” Patsy responded.

“Absolutely,” added John.

She went on, “I don’t know who it is. I don’t know if it’s a he or a she. But if I was a resident of Boulder, I would tell my friends to keep …” At this she broke down. John tried to comfort her, then she continued, “Keep your babies close to you. There’s someone out there.”

The story had gone global, so much so that Boulder mayor Leslie Durgin, who knew the Ramseys personally, would call a news conference on January 3 and proclaim, “People have no need to fear that there is someone wandering the streets of Boulder, as has been portrayed by some people, looking for young children to attack. Boulder is safe, it’s always been a safe community. It continues to be a safe community.”

The day before, the second thrust of the globalization of the Ramsey murder story had taken place. ABC’s Denver affiliate ran videos taken officially (for sale to parents and friends) at the All Star Pageant in which JonBenet had competed on December 17. Then there was an amateur video of a Royal Miss competition at a shopping center. Finally, an official video from the National Sunburst Pageant held in Atlanta during the summer of 1996 was shown in which JonBenet was wearing the sparkly white Vegas or Ziegfeld Follies–style outfit. These images brought most of the public into a world they hadn’t even known existed and made them wonder what kind of parents would allow or encourage their children to enter these pageants where little girls imitate big girls.

The Ramseys would be quick to point out that many little girls and their families participated in them, particularly in the South where they came from. It was JonBenet’s own choice, she wanted to get involved, had loved dressing up and performing since she was three, and had begged her mother to let her do it. At home, she even made her mother pretend to be the emcee and announce JonBenet walking down the runway. It was no different, they said, from parents and children involved in Little League, Cub Scouts, or Brownies, skating or any other type of performing. Anyone who saw anything suggestive or inappropriately sexual was reading into it. The pageants developed confidence, talent, and poise, and many of the participants dreamed of growing up and going on to Miss America, in which Patsy and her sister Pam had both competed.

But regardless of any explanation or decidedly unapologetic statements John or Patsy would make, to countless millions of viewers around the world, the images spoke for themselves. These were rich, arrogant parents who were alone in the house the night their daughter was killed, they refused to cooperate with police, they surrounded themselves with lawyers, and they dressed up their little six-year-old girl with lipstick and rouge and tinted hair and glittery makeup in suggestive outfits that made her look like a Vegas showgirl. What kind of people were these?

Meanwhile, Boulder PD had geared up for the most challenging and public case they had ever faced. Among the detectives John Eller assigned was Steve Thomas, who had been working undercover narcotics.

WHERE
I
CAME
IN

On Monday, January 6, I was in Provo, Utah, preparing a training seminar for police officers with Greg Cooper, a former
FBI
special agent and one of the stars in my unit who was now the chief of police in Provo. When I called in to check my voice mail, I had a message from a private investigator named H. Ellis Armistead from Denver, who said he had been hired by the Ramsey family. He wanted to know if I was available to provide assistance regarding the homicide of their daughter. In return I left a message that I would be tied up in Utah for several days, but looking at my calendar, if they still wanted my assistance later in the week, I could probably meet them in Denver. I had heard about the Ramsey murder through the media, but between traveling and planning the seminar, I hadn’t thought much about it and didn’t know many details.

The next day Armistead got in touch with me at the Provo Park Hotel where I was staying. He said my expenses and a consultation fee would be paid, though the rate was not discussed. He indicated that attorney Lee Foreman, a partner of Hal Haddon and Bryan Morgan’s, the attorneys for John Ramsey, would be contacting me.

Foreman called around 9:00 that night and said he would like me to come to Denver and Boulder and conduct an analysis for them. He continued by saying that he had researched pedophiles and that John Ramsey did not fit the profile. John was successful in business, financially well-off, and married to a former beauty queen. I listened to Foreman’s evaluation without comment. It seemed clear to me that he was looking for someone “objective” to come up with the same analysis and evaluation.

I gave Foreman the standard rap I’d given all potential clients since I’d left the Bureau, whether they were private citizens or police agencies: You can buy my time if I have it to give, but my analysis is completely independent, and you can’t influence it. I will give you my report verbally. You may or may not like or agree with what I have to say, and it’s up to you whether you use it or not. If you wish, I will then produce a written report, which, since I am not an attorney, may be subject to subpoena. I won’t reveal any privileged or protected information you give me or say anything based on it. But if I’m asked for my opinion based on public information, I reserve the right to give it. Foreman agreed to the terms.

I flew to Denver on Wednesday, January 8, 1997. During the flight I made notes for myself of things I felt I needed to know and understand:

I. Facts of Case

Day, date, time. When was child determined to be missing? What did they do? Who did they call? Did they call police? What time? What time was child located? Where? By who? Describe location and position of child, crime scene, how dressed, cause of death. Blood? Where? Sexually assaulted? How do you know?

II. Note

Where found? By who? Paper—where obtained? Review letter.

III
. Background of Family

—Business
—Who lives in house?
—Prior marriages
—How long married?

IV. Access to House

—Who?
—Security systems

V. Modeling Career [I was under the impression the victim was a child model.]

—Who sponsors?
—Who photographs?
—Family photographs?

When I got to Denver, I met with Lee Foreman and Bryan Morgan in their law office, which had been converted from an historic downtown building. We met in a glass-enclosed conference room they called “the bubble.”

I prefaced my conversation by saying I understood that they might have an opinion relative to the Ramseys’ involvement based upon their experience and research with pedophiles. However, I told them, at this stage they should not necessarily assume we were dealing with a pedophile. I explained the differences between preferential and situational child molesters, going through the steps necessary to do an analysis and noting that they would not have the autopsy reports, crime scene photos, and toxicology results, all of which I routinely use in making a determination about the type of offender.

I said that based on the limited media reports I’d read, it didn’t look good for their clients. Whether the information I’d seen was fact or fiction or a combination of both, the perception of the general public seemed to be that the Ramseys were responsible. For example, it was my understanding that they did not immediately contact the police department after finding their daughter. You can see that my factual knowledge at this point was still very limited.

I said I had heard that the Ramseys had never cooperated with the police, which sounded problematic to me.

The lawyers responded by saying that the Ramseys had been very cooperative with the PD since day one. Even though the extortion note had advised them not to contact the police or
FBI
, they had immediately notified the police. The police had searched the house along with some of John and Patsy’s friends but did not locate the victim. The Ramseys were so visibly upset that a friend of theirs had suggested getting John to search the house with a neighbor to keep him occupied. John and his friend Fleet White searched the house, ending up at a ten-foot-square wine cellar used for storage. The friend noticed that a window in the basement was broken and that glass fragments were on the floor. Ramsey remarked at the time that he was responsible for the broken window because he had locked himself out on several occasions and had broken the basement window to gain access. A window well outside the window was covered by a grate. You would have had to know about the broken window underneath to have attempted entry from that point.

As you can see, there were even some minor discrepancies in the attorneys’ version of events. The story was still being pieced together.

They continued by saying that Ramsey and White had searched the basement, and that it was Mr. Ramsey who went into the wine cellar room, then screamed, “Oh, my baby!”

This was an important point to me. From our experience with staged domestic homicides—that is, murders committed by a family member and made to look like something else, such as a rape or burglary gone bad—the killer will generally maneuver and manipulate to have someone else find the body. It is much easier for him to “react” and to maintain some distance from the crime.

For example, I had a case in which a man had killed his wife in their bedroom, then gone to work. But before he left, he moved the body to a storage cellar with access from the outside, then made the body look as if she had been sexually assaulted. He did this because he didn’t want his son to find the body when he came home from school, and so that, when it was found, it would appear to have been a rape gone bad. At his office, he called home several times to establish a phone company record, then, in the afternoon, called a neighbor who had a key to the house, telling her in a worried voice that he had been unable to reach his wife and would she please go over and check. The neighbor looked through the house without finding her, then called back and told him his wife wasn’t home but that the car was there and the bedroom was pretty messed up (the wife had been a meticulous housekeeper). The husband then called the police, relating the entire story told to him by the neighbor, and when they came over to investigate, they found her in the storage cellar. After this, my unit was called in.

You’ll recall that in the Borden murders, Lizzie couldn’t avoid reporting the death of her father, but she went to some complicated lengths not to find the body of her stepmother herself. She orchestrated it so that Bridget Sullivan would be the one, and when Bridget refused to go upstairs alone, Lizzie still wouldn’t go and had Adelaide Churchill accompany the maid.

So the fact that John Ramsey was the one who found his daughter aroused my attention. From the scenario the attorneys had laid out, it would have been so easy for him to have said to Fleet White, “I’ll check the laundry room, you check the furnace room and wine cellar, then we’ll meet back here.” But he didn’t.

I was told that when JonBenet was found, a blanket was wrapped around her torso. Just her torso, I inquired.

Yes, the attorneys replied, her arms and legs were sticking out.

This was another important consideration. As we noted in the Lindbergh case, the way the body is left often tells us a lot about the relationship between the victim and the offender. Charlie Lindbergh’s body was casually tossed into the woods when it was no longer of any use to the kidnappers. No attempt was made to protect it from the elements or animals, and nothing caring or gentle was evident.

In the case of the man who killed his wife, on the other hand, the body was carefully wrapped in the blanket from their bed, so that nothing but her head was exposed. It was a protective, “considerate” presentation. We say that this shows a “proprietary interest” in the victim. Sometimes, it even demonstrates remorse on the part of a parent.

At first, I had been under the impression that such proprietary interest and consideration had been evident when JonBenet’s body was found, but this seemed to be a case of covering the body for convenience rather than any kind of protection or nurturing instinct.

When John Ramsey found JonBenet, a piece of black duct tape was across her mouth, her hands were tied, and a rope ligature was around her throat, tied from the rear. What interested me here was that John’s first instinct—the first thing he did—was to rip the tape from her mouth and attempt to untie the wrist ligature. He succeeded in loosening it but not removing it. Then he carried his daughter upstairs.

The first thing I had to ask myself was, if John Ramsey had killed his daughter or been involved in her death and had subsequently staged the scene to look like the work of a sadistic intruder, why would he
unstage
the crime to the extent of removing the duct tape and loosening the wrist ligature before anyone else, particularly the cops, got to see it? It didn’t make sense.