Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (56 page)

On October 24, John Ramsey’s attorneys hosted their annual Halloween party. Hal Haddon and Lee Foreman showed up in drag. At another party, held at the Boulder Elks Club, Patsy’s attorney Pat Furman showed up as Gary Davis, a convicted killer who had been executed on October 13—the first execution in Colorado since 1967. Taped to each of Furman’s forearms, as part of his costume, was a large syringe. Furman had briefly represented Davis. James Aber, a public defender in Jefferson County, came dressed in a cowgirl outfit similar to one JonBenét had worn in a pageant; duct tape covered his mouth.

That evening, Aber discussed holding a murder mystery party with JonBenét’s death to be solved by the guests.
One of the Ramsey attorneys joked that the perpetrator would be Koby.

RAMSEY EXIT TO FOLLOW TRADE OF BOULDER FIRM

A couple of days before the
Daily Camera
reported the sale of Access Graphics to General Electric, John Ramsey’s attorneys visited Alex Hunter. They complained that Ramsey was going to take a financial hit in the stock trade between Lockheed Martin and GE. Not only had Ramsey’s contract not been picked up by GE; he had been terminated before the sale was made. Laurie Wagner was the only Access Graphics employee from the Ramsey camp who was moving over to GE.

Hunter understood what the attorneys were suggesting: that John Ramsey might choose to seek financial restitution from the city of Boulder because the police had leaked information to the media that he was responsible for his daughter’s death. They would claim that this had damaged his reputation and credibility, which in turn had curtailed his advancement as an executive. Hunter told Ramsey’s lawyers to save their breath.

A few days later, Access Graphics held its quarterly “What’s Happening Meeting,” at the Boulder Theater on
14th Street. John Ramsey was to introduce Perry Monych, the new president of Access Graphics. In a short statement, Ramsey said that the sale of the company had been a strategic decision between two of the largest companies in the world and had nothing to do with the death of his daughter. Ramsey was restrained and unemotional, but Laurie Wagner could see that he was hurting.

Although GE didn’t pick up his contract, Ramsey would stay with Lockheed Martin for six months after the sale to GE. Gary Mann, his boss at Lockheed, had wanted to keep Ramsey, but he wanted to keep his family in Atlanta, and the company didn’t have a management opening in the area.

In the first week of November, Hunter met with Boulder County commissioner Paul Danish, who had recently lost his mother.

Danish told Hunter that he had cleared out his mother’s apartment and found her diary of the period when she divorced his father. Danish was having a hard time mourning his mother’s death, and it made Hunter think about how everyone grieves differently. He remembered that when his own mother had died, less than two months after JonBenét was murdered, he hadn’t been able to lament properly.

Hunter had recently heard something Patsy Ramsey told a friend—that John often put himself in situations that didn’t allow for venting of emotion. But he woke up in the middle of the night sobbing and crying, she said. That was his time to grieve; then in the morning, he would be ready to meet the challenges of the new day. It was ironic, because Ramsey’s apparent stoicism in the face of JonBenét’s death was exactly what made some people believe that he had murdered his daughter.

In the second week of November, Cordwainer Bird, a reporter for the
Daily Camera
, got a call from one of John Ramsey’s lawyers. Ramsey wanted an off-the-record conversation with Bird; one attorney would be present.

Bird was not to tell anyone about the meeting—not even his editor. He wasn’t allowed to use a tape recorder, and he could not take notes. He could not ask any specific questions about the forty-eight hours before and after JonBenét’s death. Bird asked how many other reporters had been given the same opportunity. A handful, he was told, and everyone had been given the same conditions. He didn’t know that Lisa Ryckman of the
Rocky Mountain News
and her editors had turned down the same offer.

Bird believed that a reporter should never shut the door on information. Here, he knew he’d be dealing with someone who was less than forthcoming and who had an agenda. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to hear Ramsey out, he thought. And maybe he could get something useful out of him.

Late in the afternoon of November 20, in crisp weather, Bird arrived at a house in Boulder where Ramsey greeted him at the door. The two men shook hands and made some small talk, then sat down a few feet apart. Bird’s first impression of the fifty-four-year-old John Ramsey was of a poised, mild-mannered man—not gregarious and not a performer. Bird saw JonBenét’s father as an ordinary man caught in far-out-of-the-ordinary circumstances.

Bird asked Ramsey what he had been like as a young man. Was he a drinker? Did he go out and screw girls? Did he think he was well endowed? Ramsey blushed, obviously embarrassed by the question. He thought he was fine, he said, but he was not King Kong. He had been kind of a boring kid, he said. He didn’t take drugs. Didn’t even like sports.

Sensing Ramsey’s discomfort, Bird said he’d been told he could ask anything, so he plowed on: What about your sex life? Any kinks? With an embarrassed smile, Ramsey said he wasn’t creative enough to be very wild sexually. Bird believed him. Ramsey came off as an all-American guy who did what all-American guys do—bed their wives a couple of times a week or, if they’re really unlucky, once a month. Asking questions, Bird was more interested in Ramsey’s reactions to his questions than in his answers.

Their conversation turned to other topics—politics, money, children. Had JonBenét ever pissed him off? Bird asked. How did he react? What had she done to irritate him? Of course she’d made him angry, Ramsey said. She was a little girl and sometimes bratty. He had scolded her the way any father would. Ramsey’s love for his daughter was audible in his voice. As they talked, Ramsey’s attorney, who had been silent throughout the interview, shifted in his seat; Bird saw he had tears in his eyes.

Bird got the impression that the marriage of John and Patsy was loving but not passionate or exciting. Ramsey was settled into the marriage and comfortable in it.

Politically, he was a conservative, Ramsey said, but over the years he had learned to be both more tolerant and more compassionate. For example, he was uncomfortable with homosexuality but would not endorse antihomosexual legal or social measures. The strident public debate on abortion made him uncomfortable. Ramsey believed in God, he said. God would know if someone had done something that he hadn’t admitted to, Ramsey said. Yes, God would know.

When the interview was over, Bird felt he’d learned nothing. Ramsey seemed earnest and sincere, but was bland and seemed never to allow his emotions to get the better of him. Only one thing stood out about him: John
Ramsey hadn’t dodged any of the questions. Bird hoped he wouldn’t have to write up his interview. There wouldn’t be much to say about JonBenét’s father.

While John Ramsey was talking off the record to journalists, Michael Tracey, a professor in the school of General Mass Communications at the University of Colorado in Boulder, was talking to Bryan Morgan about making a documentary for British television about the media coverage of the Ramsey case.

Earlier in the year, Tracey, who had never met the Ramseys, had heard Chuck Green of
The Denver Post
say that “the Ramsey case was entertainment and that was why it was such a big story.” That started the educator thinking, and by August, Tracey was expressing his own views on national TV: that the American public “knew” the Ramseys had killed their daughter just as every white jury in Mississippi of the 1950s “knew” that a given black boy standing before them was guilty. Having read Dan Glick and Sherry Keene-Osborn’s coverage of the case in
Newsweek
, Tracey realized that many media outlets were reporting the story incorrectly, or only partially, and thereby depriving the Ramseys of the presumption of innocence. Several weeks before the death of Princess Diana, the professor started to write an article on the subject for the
Daily Camera
. It was published a few days after the Princess of Wales’s funeral: “Media-Saturated Culture Quick to Judge Ramseys.” Tracey drew parallels to the 1983 McMartin day care center case in California, in which, he said, a family had been wrongfully tried and ultimately exonerated, and to the climate in Great Britain in the wake of a series of IRA bombings in the 1970s. Tracey wrote about the corruption of journalistic values and the now-hazy line between the tabloid press and the mainstream media. He raised a question: Why did the public want the Ramseys to be guilty?

After Tracey’s op-ed piece ran on September 7, Bryan Morgan paid him a visit at his university office. Sitting in the tiny room stuffed with more than a thousand books, Morgan told Tracey that Patsy Ramsey wanted to talk to one of his journalism classes about her experience with the press. Tracey thought the idea wasn’t practicable: he was sure the media would storm his classroom when it was discovered that she would be talking to some college students. Nevertheless, Tracey told Morgan he would think about it, and the two men agreed to have lunch the following day. After the attorney left, Tracey glanced out the window at his unobstructed view of the Front Range and laughed. Patsy Ramsey’s idea was astonishingly naïve.

Tracey speculated that the Ramseys, ready for a fight, were slowly coming out of their shell. Then he asked himself if their story wasn’t a way of critiquing the media, which led him to the idea of making a documentary.

The next day, Morgan brought Pat Burke, Patsy’s attorney, to their lunch. The two lawyers pitched their clients’ desire to address Tracey’s students. “Patsy has a degree in journalism,” Burke said. Instead, Tracey broached his suggestion of making a documentary. Looking at the attorneys’ facial expressions, he was sure his idea would be nixed. Two days later, however, Tracey heard from Morgan that the Ramseys were interested in meeting him. They liked his idea. That evening, Tracey called his friend David Mills, an established British documentary filmmaker.

Mills had, of course, heard of the Ramseys. Like most people, he had drawn conclusions about the case based solely on what he’d read in the newspapers. He believed the couple was guilty of killing their daughter. He told Tracey he wasn’t interested in some child murderers in Colorado. Before the two friends hung up, however, Tracey persuaded Mills to consider making a documentary about the case. His arguments about the one-sided view of the media had con
vinced Mills. The two men agreed they would meet with Patsy and John Ramsey.

When Michael Tracey arrived in Atlanta on December 6, Bryan Morgan was already there. Ramsey came to the Hyatt Regency to pick them up. Shaking John Ramsey’s hand in the hotel lobby, Tracey had the odd feeling that he might be face-to-face with a child killer. At the Ramseys’ home, Tracey was introduced to Rachelle Zimmer, one of Bryan Morgan’s associate attorneys, who was living with the Ramseys until they got settled in their new home. She was making cookies in the kitchen. Patsy was on the patio, talking on her cell phone.

“Well, they didn’t have handsome professors when I was a student in journalism school,” Patsy greeted Tracey. “Thank you” was the only reply the flustered professor could think of. Invited to sit down, Tracey told the Ramseys a little about himself. He’d received his doctorate in political science and American politics in Britain, and then moved to Boulder to teach in 1988, he said. His life’s work, he said, was to think about the media.

“What do you want to do with us?” Patsy said. “What’s your idea?”

It took Tracey a second or two to reply: “A story has been told about you and this murder. I want to see if another story
could
have been told.” He wasn’t prepared to make a presentation, but he plunged ahead: he wanted to include material about the credibility of the tabloids and the inaccurate reporting by the mainstream press, he said. Patsy seemed to like what she was hearing. John was noncommittal.

Later in the afternoon, Ramsey took Tracey and Morgan back to the hotel so they could pick up David Mills, who had by then arrived from Hungary, where he was filming. Sitting in the car, Mills also had a strange feeling: Was he being driven by a murderer?

At dinner, Patsy was the perfect hostess. They dined in a wood-paneled restaurant that resembled an English gen
tlemen’s club. Mills noticed the waiting staff’s kindheartedness toward the Ramseys. He also watched the Ramseys themselves. John was very reserved, while Patsy was outgoing—exactly what he expected from a southern beauty queen. Theirs was an odd relationship, Mills thought. A small incident piqued his interest in the couple.

Ramsey had been telling Tracey about the media’s incorrect reporting. For example, they had said that he flew his own jet to JonBenét’s funeral. He didn’t own a jet, much less know how to fly one, he said. Mills asked Patsy: “How have you coped over the past year?” Patsy started to talk about her faith in God and then suddenly broke down. Mills felt guilty. John Ramsey never moved or looked up as Patsy cried. It was Bryan Morgan who attended to her. The lawyer took Patsy by the hand and led her to the ladies’ room so that she could compose herself. Mills wondered whether Ramsey was such a cold fish that he didn’t care about his wife. Tracey asked himself, Why on earth doesn’t this man get up and see if his wife is OK? Moments later, Patsy returned to the table. Without looking at her husband, she thanked her guests for being so kind.

Later that night, Tracey and Mills discussed the incident. Mills felt that the couple had developed an unusual codependency in which it was understood that one of them had to be rock-solid at all times, lest both of them lose control. Tracey saw it slightly differently. In his view, John held it together for both of them.