Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (27 page)

The social rules in Boulder were different from anything Patsy knew in Atlanta. In order to fit into society, you have to find your own niche in Boulder. Patsy just didn’t fit into jeans. She ended up getting tight black pants with rhinestone cowboy boots.

After the house was finished, she opened it up to visitors for Boulder’s annual Christmas Tour of Homes. They let anybody view any room, even the bedrooms and bathrooms. They showed people their closets. My husband, Robert, who was now their family and estate attorney, warned them, “Close off your private rooms. Keep your guests on the first floor.” They didn’t.

Patsy wanted to make a statement. There were extravagantly decorated Christmas trees in almost every room. Everything she does is Texas-size. Patsy is most comfortable in opulence. She wants the best of the best. But that isn’t a Boulder thing. Most people in the community were shocked.

While the house was being remodeled in the summer of ’93, Patsy went back east to judge a pageant in her home state. Roxy Walker called and said that Patsy was in the hospital. Her stomach had blown up like a balloon and it was discovered she had cancer—stage-four ovarian cancer. It doesn’t get more serious. She had surgery immediately, then started going to Bethesda, Maryland, for treatments with experimental drugs.

It was life-or-death for her. Her mother came to Boulder and took over with the children. Patsy would go to Bethesda and become very ill, even in the plane on the way
back. Sometimes she’d travel all by herself. She was desperate. She didn’t want to die and leave her children motherless.

I kept thinking, Where the hell is John? I once asked her about that.

“Well, John has to…you know…”

I know John was worried and concerned, but it didn’t change his behavior. He’s a man of few words. And very concerned with his business.

In April or May of the following year she got a clean bill of health. If there is anybody who could overcome an illness by sheer will, it would be Patsy. Sheer determination.

One day soon after the good news, I found Patsy crying in the sun room in the front of the house. That’s where she had spent most of her time when she was recovering. She talked more about religion that day than we had ever done before. She said God wanted her to be an example. So I asked her, “What are you going to do with that?”

She’d spend more time with the children, she said.

No, no, look at the bigger picture, I told her. You can do things to help other women who are suffering the same way. You need to get out and tell your story, how you licked it.

So she offered support to other women. She called them and talked. She’d send people the book that inspired her.

Patsy took this step forward and then took two steps backward. She returned to all her social stuff and pretty much dropped her cancer stuff. She spent a lot of time building up their position in the community. And she worked at her children’s school relentlessly.

One day, in ’95 or ’96, Nedra took me upstairs. “Judith, you’ve got to see this.” She showed me Patsy’s closet. Nearby there was a display—almost a shrine. Pictures of Miss West Virginia. Patsy in every phase of her pageant
days. Lots of paraphernalia on the walls. It surprised me.

Then there was the time Nedra pulled this little cowboy outfit out of the closet.

“This is not JonBenét’s,” I said. “What’s it for?”

“Well, Judith, we’re just getting JonBenét into a few pageants.”

“Why would you do something like that?”

“You know, she’s not too young to get started.”

“And what if JonBenét isn’t willing?” I asked. “What if she says, ‘I’m not going to do it!’ How would you respond to that?”

“Oh, Judith, we would never consider her saying no. We would tell JonBenét, ‘You must do it. You will be a Miss Pageant.’”

It was sort of eerie. A little scary. The inevitability of it—from grandmother to mother and now to daughter.

Another time, Nedra was so excited about this little antique chair that JonBenét had picked out in Denver. JonBenét and Nedra had been shopping, and JonBenét insisted on buying this chair. Nedra was so happy that the child had selected something, that her granddaughter was showing signs of exquisite taste.

It was obnoxiously expensive. Thousands. For a child’s chair.

“Well, as long as Mr. Ramsey brings the money in,” Nedra said, “we’ll spend it.”

John would have been happy living in a cabin with log furniture. He often said that in conversation.

Early last November, there was a surprise birthday party for Patsy. Her birthday is in late December, but the family was going to be back east, so the party was in November. Priscilla White organized the entire thing. John told her, “Wherever you want it to be—the sky’s the limit.”

We all met at the Safeway Shopping Center and were loaded into a large bus—all kinds of people. Nedra, Don,
John, Patsy’s sisters, the Whites, Walkers, Stines, Fernies, Reverend Rol Hoverstock, and Patsy’s entire softball team. Then the bus drove to their home and parked while John went up to the door. Patsy was flabbergasted.

“Should I change?” were her first words.

“No, no, come along right now,” he told her.

Lots of laughing. Patsy didn’t have a clue where we were going. Patsy and John sat in the back. There was an open bar.

At the Brown Palace in Denver, we had a private room. Fifty people. A band called the 4-Nikators. Sit-down dinner, open bar, huge bottles of Dom Perigon, and even cigars on the tables for everyone. Patsy was striding around big as life, puffing on a cigar like she owned the place.

The MC was a guy in drag—tiara, fluffy fur around his collar. Talked in a southern accent and did a monologue on Patsy—the Patsy Paugh Experience, from birth to the present. The family must have coached him. Lots of in-jokes and innuendo that I didn’t understand. Then at midnight we were back on the bus. Patsy opened her presents on the way back. Everyone else was dropped off along the way, and Patsy and John were left alone on the bus.

That was probably the last time I saw JonBenét alive. Early that evening, before we left Patsy and John’s home, both kids got on the bus to say hello to their grandparents and their aunts and uncles.

—Judith Phillips

Writer: I understand you were out of town when JonBenét was murdered.

Judith Phillips: I was in Chicago over the holidays.

Writer: What did you think when you heard she’d died?

Judith Phillips: I wasn’t surprised that it happened.
We’re all given chances to learn significant lessons in our lives, and if we don’t complete that learning process, we will be given that same lesson again—in spades. The death of Beth and then Patsy’s illness affected John and Patsy temporarily, brought them some growth, but they went back to their old routines. They haven’t changed their behavior. If you don’t learn the lesson the first time, it comes back worse the second time, and maybe the third time. It’s always bigger.

J
ON
B
ENÉT
ALL OVER THE WEB

On February 17, Alex Hunter’s office filed a motion in Boulder County court to prevent the search warrants obtained by the police from being made public until the investigation was complete and charges were filed. Also filed was a fourteen-page brief supporting the motion. It stated, “The owners of the property subject to these searches have not been eliminated from suspicion.”

This was the first time any law enforcement official had gone on record to say that the Ramseys were suspects in their daughter’s death.

In their opposing briefs, attorneys for the media did not sway Judge MacDonald from supporting the DA’s position. “There is a substantial likelihood that disclosure of investigatory information at this initial stage of the investigation would compromise the integrity of the people’s investigation,” MacDonald ruled six days later. The warrants, affidavits, and inventory would be sealed for another ninety days or until an arrest was made. Included in the protective order was the phrase “other documents.” This referred to a list of the people who had traps and taps placed on their telephones by the police.

On February 19, Boulder County’s police chiefs and sheriff held their monthly meeting. After the gathering, Sheriff Epp spoke with Tom Koby privately. “You’re appearing to be arrogant with the media,” Epp told him, “so if you’ve made mistakes, they will get you.” Koby said he appreciated the advice, but Epp had the distinct feeling that Koby hadn’t really heard him. That was a shame, Epp thought. In his opinion, Koby was heading for a fall.

Meanwhile, despite Alex Hunter’s continued optimism, time had done nothing to improve the relationship between Pete Hofstrom and John Eller. Hofstrom got the impression that Eller wanted all requests for copies of police reports in writing. In a letter on February 18, Hofstrom had to resort to formal language, notifying Eller that on two prior occasions his requests had gone unanswered. This level of antagonism suggested to one deputy DA that the flow of information from the police was about to stop.

The investigation continued, however. Detectives Thomas and Gosage were back in Roswell, Georgia, reinterviewing family members. They learned that during World War II James Ramsey, John’s father, was a pilot and received the Distinguished Flying Cross. His mother, Mary Jane Bennet, was a housewife. After the war, Ramsey’s father ran the airport at Michigan City, Michigan, and later became the state
director of aeronautics. A strong-willed man, he was known as Czar Ramsey. The family spent their summers in Charlevoix, where they purchased the house that now belonged to John.

Ramsey met his first wife, Lucinda, at Michigan State University and they married before he went into the navy and was stationed at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Before long, they had three children. After John’s mother died and Lucinda’s father died, Ramsey’s father married his wife’s mother. The family remained close until the late 1960s, when Lucinda was prompted to ask for a divorce after John had an affair. Close contact soon resumed, however, and when Lucinda met Patsy, the women became friends.

During the trip the detectives re-interviewed Nedra Paugh and asked for a third handwriting sample.

By now the officers had learned from several baby-sitters that JonBenét had regressed in her toilet training during Patsy’s battle with cancer. In this interview, Nedra confirmed to police that at age six, her granddaughter was still in the habit of asking adults to wipe her when she was on the toilet. It didn’t matter where she was or who the adult was—anyone within shouting distance would do. Some adults, thinking she was old enough to do this herself, stopped answering her calls, and it resulted in soiled underpants. JonBenét’s apparent lack of embarrassment about adults wiping her made the detectives wonder if it had somehow invited activity that led to vaginal penetration.

Did Nedra think JonBenét would have fought an intruder? the detectives asked. “I guarantee you,” she replied.

I’m from Ellenboro, West Virginia. Maybe a thousand people. Two or three churches, a restaurant, and three stores. I lived there before television, and when we got one, all the people on our street would come to our house and watch it. We couldn’t see much, sometimes just shadows.

Patsy was not brought up with a deep religious faith. Actually, the healing power of Jesus didn’t come to us until Patsy moved to Boulder and she met Betty Barnhill, who lived across the street. She’d had a healing experience. It had to do with a dreadful allergy problem. She gave Patsy lots of literature to read, and then one day Patsy was cured of her cancer. She believes she had a divine healing. I’d always heard about divine healing, but we weren’t taught that in the Methodist Church.

John has always believed that what you receive, you should give back to the Lord. He doesn’t attend church without giving. He was raised an Episcopalian, and when they settled in Boulder, John gave St. John’s lots of things they needed—like a new sound system. And when Beth died, he established a children’s Sunday school atrium in her name. JonBenét got her training there from Barbara Fernie.

It was wonderful when we lived in Boulder. You could hear the college band playing from Patsy’s upstairs room. I loved the atmosphere. Patsy and John were beginning to like Boulder. None of the traffic and concrete that there is in Atlanta. They could run out and do an errand in ten minutes. In Atlanta it takes half a day.