Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (17 page)

Bill Wise spoke to Henry Lee, who said he liked the idea of working with Barry Scheck again. He didn’t know if his schedule would permit him to sign onto the case, though. The two men agreed they’d talk after Wise spoke to Scheck.

John Meyer understood that his written autopsy report would be the official record of his findings. As coroner, he was the collector of objective evidence. Though JonBenét’s autopsy was only one of the 140 or so he did in a year, Meyer understood its importance and was in no rush to finish the report.

Under Colorado law, there is no provision for public access to autopsy findings until the reports are completed, so no one could legally obtain access until Meyer was ready to file his report. As he worked on it, the Boulder County District Attorney’s office prepared for a battle with the media, and by the end of the month, deputy county attorney Madeline Mason, on behalf of Meyer, would argue against release of the report. Meanwhile, Meyer took his time, knowing that the moment it was released, forensic pathologists and the press alike would scrutinize it.

As he wrote, Meyer prepared for the questions that would be asked when he appeared as a witness. Both the prosecution and the defense would be relying on his report,
not on his memory, so he knew he had to be extremely thorough in the details.

The report Meyer was preparing stated that on the right side of JonBenét’s chin, he had spotted a superficial abrasion measuring about 3/16 by 1/8 inch. There was another abrasion on the back of her right shoulder and also several linear hemorrhages across her left shoulder. On the left side of her lower back were two very small dried abrasions, which Meyer planned to describe in his report as “rust-colored to slightly purple in color.”

On the back of JonBenét’s left leg, roughly 4 inches above her heel, Meyer had seen two more scratchlike abrasions, between 1/8 and 1/16 inch in size. For his report, Meyer wrote, “The examination of the extremities is otherwise unremarkable. On the middle finger of the right hand is a yellow metal band. Around the right wrist is a yellow metal identification bracelet with the name JonBenét on one side and the date 12/25/96 on the other side. A red ink line drawing in the form of a heart is located on the palm of the left hand.”

The coroner noted that JonBenét’s fingernails had been clipped and sealed in envelopes for further examination and that after examining JonBenét’s genitals, he had swabbed her thighs and taken several swabs each from her vagina, anus, and mouth.

Meyer remembered what the police had done during the autopsy. Detective Arndt had stepped away to call Detective James Byfield, who was drafting an addendum to the original search warrant so that the police could obtain additional evidence from the Ramseys’ home. Arndt told Byfield that fibers had been found on JonBenét’s shirt and that similar material had been discovered in her pubic area. She also reported the green fibers in the child’s hair.

At the same time, Detective Trujillo had called the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to ask about the feasibility
of lifting fingerprints from JonBenét’s skin. It was a long shot, Trujillo learned, because of the skin’s comparatively rough texture. Meyer had suspended the autopsy while a CBI technician walked Trujillo through the process. The best approach would be to tent or otherwise encapsulate the body, then to “fume” the remains with Super Glue. The glue vapor would adhere to any prints on the skin and enhance them enough to make them visible under a fluorescent light source. Trujillo ended up using a different, simpler method and lifted one partial print.

Meyer decided not to make note of those events in his report. Afterward, he had continued with an internal examination of the body. He had seen no sternal or rib fractures. He noted that he had found some scattered petechial hemorrhages on the surface of each lung and on the front surface of the heart. These suggested death by suffocation. The bladder, he noted, had been contracted and held no urine. The esophagus was empty. The small intestine had contained fragments of a yellow to light-greenish-tan material, apparently remnants of a fruit or vegetable—possibly pineapple.

The next thing Meyer noted in his report was a fracture of the skull that had not been visible before he removed part of the skull. There was subdural hemorrhaging over the surface of the right cerebral hemisphere and a thin film of subarachnoid hemorrhaging over the whole right cerebral hemisphere. In the report, he wrote about an extensive purple bruise, about 8 by 1¾ inches in area, underlying the skull fracture, as well as a bruise at the tip of the right temporal lobe measuring about ¼ inch square. The tip of the left temporal lobe, Meyer noted, showed only very minimal bruising.

After writing about the brain, Meyer moved on to the upper body. Examining the thyroid cartilage, cricoid cartilage, and hyoid bone, he had found no signs of hemorrhages or fractures.

Meyer remembered that shortly before he completed the autopsy, Arndt had called Byfield again to tell him there was a skull fracture and hemorrhaging of the brain, which were consistent with a blow to the head. She had sounded surprised because when the body was lying near the Christmas tree, there had been no external indication that the child had sustained a head injury.

His report nearly finished, the coroner locked it away in his office safe, where it would await the outcome of the legal battle to keep it from the public.

On Friday afternoon, January 10, a few minutes after Meyer gave an interview to CNN to answer some technical questions about the case, a phone message caught his eye: it was from Tom Brokaw.

Brokaw’s producer told Meyer that NBC had an advance copy of the
Globe
tabloid, which featured photographs from the autopsy and crime scene. Were they authentic?

“I can’t tell you without seeing them,” Meyer replied.

“I’ll fax them to you, “the producer said.

Meyer studied the faxed images and saw that the photographs were genuine. Some of them had been taken by his staff. Minutes later, Meyer was in Sheriff George Epp’s office, one floor above his in the Justice Center. The coroner was shaking.

“George, I’ve got a problem. I need your help.”

Wordlessly, Meyer showed Epp the fax he had just received and his set of original photographs. Then Meyer called Bryan Morgan and told him about the call from NBC and what to expect.

When Meyer left, the sheriff assembled three of his top investigators, Detective Steve Ainsworth, Sgt. George Dunphy, and Lt. Steve Prentup. Step one: interview Meyer and his staff and get them polygraphed. Step two: contact
Photo Craft, the lab that had handled the photos, and interview everyone who might have touched either the film or the finished prints. It surprised Detective Ainsworth that the coroner had sent this highly sensitive material to the most ordinary little shop with no special security and no extra precautions. “We take our film to K-Mart to get the two-for-one deal,” Ainsworth said half aloud. “I need to go to school on this one.” That afternoon, one by one, Meyer’s staff was questioned. Everyone agreed to be polygraphed.

It was 9:00
P
.
M
. when Roy McCutcheon, the owner of Photo Craft, told the sheriff’s detectives about Shawn Smith, who ran the minilab and personally handled all the coroner’s work.
The Late Show with David Letterman
was still on when the officers showed up at Smith’s home, a short way up Four Mile Canyon.

“You must know something about this,” Lt. Prentup said to him.

Smith told the officers he had no idea how the pictures had been obtained by the tabloid. He agreed to take a polygraph the next day.

The next morning, January 11, the coroner’s staff and Shawn Smith were taken to Amich & Jenks, a polygraph firm in Wheat Ridge, just west of Denver. Everyone on Meyer’s staff passed except for Patricia Dunn, who had shot some of the photos. Her polygraph results were inconclusive.

Shawn Smith was next.

“Did you arrange with anyone to give or sell those JonBenét photographs to the media?”

“No.”

Jeff Jenks, the examiner, had Smith hooked up to the polygraph in an 8-by-10-foot windowless room. Smith’s respiration, sweat output, blood pressure, and heart rate readings were fed into a briefcase-size machine.

“Did you give or sell any of those JonBenét photos to
anyone outside of Photo Craft?”

“No.”

“Do you know for sure who distributed those JonBenét photographs to the media?”

“No.”

Jenks excused himself and joined Prentup, who was watching the examination from the next room. “He’s either involved or he knows someone who is,” Jenks told the officer. He went back inside and sat down next to Smith.

“You really need to come clean on this,” he told Smith. “Sometimes things happen in people’s lives. They get in a bind.”

Smith didn’t answer. A few minutes later, Prentup and Smith left for Boulder. Smith still wouldn’t talk.

The next stop for the detectives was the Hotel Boulderado, where many out-of-town reporters were staying. Registration records indicated that NBC, ABC, CBS, and all the cable channels were still in town. Prentup checked the list for tabloids. When he saw the
Star
, the
National Enquirer
,
Hard Copy
, and
American Journal
, Prentup felt as if he were looking into an abyss.

Late in the afternoon, back in his office, Prentup listened to a voice-mail message. “I’d like to give you a hypothetical,” said Peter Schild, a respected defense attorney, who had once worked in the public defender’s office. “If I had someone who has some knowledge about the JonBenét photos that the
Globe
is publishing, someone who should have known better…”

Schild was obviously speaking for someone. Probably Smith, who under pressure, was starting to crack.

Prentup called Pete Hofstrom, who in turn called Schild.

As any good attorney would, Schild wanted immunity for his client in exchange for his client’s full cooperation.

“Schild says it’s someone you know,” Hofstrom reported back to the detectives.

“No sale,” Prentup told him. “We don’t like bargaining
with someone who’s hiding behind his lawyer’s skirt. Our terms are full accountability and a complete and honest statement in exchange for our not arguing for any particular sentence. We’ll live with the judge’s call.”

The detectives could tell that Hofstrom wanted to get this incident out of the way. What mattered was solving JonBenét’s murder.

On January 14, the day after the
Globe
appeared in supermarket racks, Hofstrom met Schild for breakfast at the Harvest restaurant on Pearl Street. The detectives knew that Schild’s mystery client would also be at the meeting. If the three of them couldn’t work out a deal, the client’s identity would remain a mystery to the officers.

Schild trusted Hofstrom, who was known to prefer precharging plea bargains, which Boulder’s defense attorneys called negotiations. More important to the attorney, however, was Hofstrom’s understanding of the human condition, particularly in criminals. They might have done terrible things, but he still cared about them as human beings.

Within an hour, Hofstrom called Prentup: Schild would deliver his client as soon as the plea agreement was typed.

Dunphy and Prentup waited on the second floor of the Justice Center for Schild and his client, Brett Sawyer, a former deputy sheriff, who was now a private investigator handling mostly divorce cases and insurance claims.

Sawyer said to Prentup, “Well, I guess this means I lose my concealed weapons permit.” It was his only comment.

Ainsworth escorted Sawyer to what detectives call the hard room—nothing on the walls, no table, only one hard plastic chair coated with Armoral, so slippery that nobody could sit comfortably. The interview was videotaped through a one-way mirror.

Sawyer told them that it began with a phone call the morning of Friday, January 3, when Brian Williams, an edi
tor for the
Globe
, told him, “We’re looking for information the rest of the media doesn’t have.” Sawyer took the job. He would be paid $50 an hour. He claimed he had no idea the
Globe
was a tabloid.

Sawyer suspected that the police had their film developed at Photo Craft, and he went to see his friend Shawn Smith, who worked there.

“We don’t work for the cops anymore,” Smith told him, “but we do the coroner’s processing.”

Sawyer told Ainsworth that a moment later he found himself peering through a photographer’s magnifying loupe at the internegatives of JonBenét’s autopsy and the crime scene photos that had been taken by the coroner’s investigator. The six-year-old child was just three weeks younger than his own son and one grade behind him at the same school.

Sawyer waited while Shawn Smith made the prints he’d requested. An hour later, he handed them to a courier.

Two days later, Sawyer told the officers, Brian Williams called and said the pictures were being shown to one of the
Globe
’s experts. Sawyer would be paid his fee of $500, plus a $5,000 bonus. On Saturday, Sawyer told Ainsworth, he woke up to the
Daily Camera
’s front page headline
TABLOID OBTAINS MURDER
-
SCENE PHOTOS
. The article said there would be a full investigation and potential felony charges against whoever had compromised the case.

Ainsworth asked Sawyer why he had turned himself in.

“My conscience got to me,” Sawyer said. He worried about embarrassing his family.

When Sawyer’s interview was over, he agreed to sign his statement. Half an hour later, Ainsworth called Shawn Smith, who continued to deny everything.

“You know Brett Sawyer, don’t you?” Ainsworth asked. Then Smith admitted everything.

What struck the detectives was that if Sawyer hadn’t
turned himself in, Smith would never have talked. A court date of February 20 was set for Sawyer and Smith.

When the
Globe
published the photos on January 13, it promised its readers an exclusive glimpse into JonBenét’s
TERRIFYING LAST MOMENTS IN THE HOUSE OF HORROR
. The tabloid claimed the photos held answers to what happened the night JonBenét died:
CORONER
:
THIS WEAPON KILLED JONBENÉT
, 6.