Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (60 page)

On December 16, Sahagun asked Bill Wise whether he said the police were investigating the use of a stun gun in the murder. Wise said he had no idea what he was talking about. It was just another crazy rumor, he thought. Sahagun had gotten a virtual “no comment” from the police when he had asked them about the stun gun.

Three days later, on December 19, before Wise had time to mention the rumor to his boss, Hunter walked into his office, closed the door, and said that the next day, the
Los Angeles Times
would report that a stun gun might have been used in the murder. Hunter, who had known about Smit’s stun gun theory, had gotten a call at home the night before from a writer who had been tipped and wanted to warn the DA. Wise, who knew nothing of the investigation by Smit and Ainsworth, since he had been removed at Koby’s request from the daily briefings in February, hadn’t thought to ask Hofstrom or DeMuth about a stun gun after Sahagun called him earlier in the week. On Saturday December 20, the Los Angeles newspaper broke the stun gun story on the front page. Ramsey attorney Hal Haddon told
The Denver Post
: “We’ve been told affirmatively that one [a stun gun] was used.”

Over the weekend Bill Wise received many calls from reporters about the stun gun. On Monday morning, December 22, he asked Tom Faure, the coroner’s chief investigator, what he knew about it. Faure told Wise that there were two marks on JonBenét’s back that could have come from that kind of device, though in retrospect, Meyer thought the marks were scratches, not abrasions from a stun gun. Nevertheless, there were two more scratches on the back of one of JonBenét’s legs which were the same color as the marks on her back.

Since Mark Beckner’s press conference two weeks earlier, Pete Hofstrom had encouraged him to communicate directly with the Ramseys’ attorneys. On December 19, the lawyers met face-to-face with Beckner at the DA’s office. Bluntly, Bryan Morgan told Beckner that he and his colleagues didn’t trust the Boulder PD to conduct an objective or competent investigation, judging by the department’s unprofessional conduct in the past. He hoped to see a change under Beckner’s leadership. Beckner ignored the
insult and got down to business. He repeated his request for a second set of formal interviews with the Ramseys and their son, Burke. In addition, he listed some items the police would need for their continuing investigation, including the clothes John and Patsy had worn during the evening of December 25 and the morning of December 26. Morgan said they would discuss the matter with their clients, and on that very professional note the meeting ended.

Late on the night of December 21, Susannah Chase, a student at the University of Colorado in Boulder, was beaten unconscious just a few blocks from Pasta Jay’s restaurant. A baseball bat was found near the scene of the crime. The press learned that there were no arrests imminent. Sheriff Epp offered his department’s help to Commander Eller, whom Tom Koby had assigned to the case. Eller declined the sheriff’s offer. Instead, using his authority as head of the detective division, he reassigned several detectives from the Ramsey case to the Chase investigation.

CU STUDENT DIES FROM BEATING

A few days after Chase’s death, Epp realized his office still hadn’t been given information about the crime or a possible killer, though his department was responsible for protecting the county, which included the city of Boulder, and there was a murderer on the loose. Eller would wait two weeks before calling a meeting with Epp’s officers.

For his part, Alex Hunter couldn’t understand Tom Koby’s thinking. Just a week earlier, the chief had told the
Daily Camera
that dismissing Larry Mason from the Ramsey case was one of the biggest mistakes of his career. “This was one of the most painful things from start to finish on everybody involved,” Koby had said. “I supported the decision that was wrong. It had terrible consequences for Larry. There is no way I can ever make that right.” Then in almost the same breath, Koby put Eller in charge of Boulder’s second high-profile case in less than a year, though the murder of Susannah Chase posed a more serious threat to public safety than JonBenét’s killing. Everything had changed, Hunter knew, but in effect nothing had changed. A year earlier, Eller had seemed certain that the Ramsey case would be solved within a few weeks; now he seemed to believe the same thing about the Chase murder. To Hunter, it looked like a rerun. An overconfident Eller was keeping at bay everyone who offered to help him.

Just before 7:00
P
.
M
. on December 26, Judith Phillips drove from her home on Lincoln Place to the Ramseys’ former
home on 15th Street. Phillips and a few friends had organized a small gathering to remember JonBenét on the first anniversary of her death.

By evening, the lights decorating the surrounding houses were washed out by the floodlights that TV camera crews had set up for their coverage of the candlelight vigil. A framed black and white photograph of a pensive JonBenét rested atop two golden angels attached to a lamppost. A burning candle and bunches of flowers rested on the front stoop. A ten-year-old girl had brought a decorative tiara and left it as a symbol of her sorrow.

“She was a sweet individual and I miss her,” said Phillips, who had helped arranged the small shrine. “She will have justice.”

Holiday wreaths and stuffed animals lay at the base of the lamppost beside a typed poem, “The Ballad of JonBenét,” which began, “In 1990 a child was born. Her cold wealthy father ruled with scorn. Her mother did the best that she could do.”

Reporters and TV crews outnumbered the thirty or so residents of Boulder who kept vigil on the bitter cold night. Some held candles; others stood with bowed heads. After they sang “Silent Night” and “Amazing Grace,” the crowd dispersed and the media departed.

For the past week, local and national papers and TV stations had carried features about the case. The
Daily Camera
’s headline read,
NO END IN SIGHT
, and the article noted that the investigation had been suspect from the start. Reports stated that to date, the case had cost the taxpayers nearly $200,000 and the cost was expected to climb to at least half a million dollars. One story claimed the case was made up of tiny particles that had become a huge mound of evidence. Every media outlet recapped the highlights of the last twelve months. Some stations reran the Ramseys’ CNN interview.
Still, nobody knew for sure if there was any hard evidence that linked the Ramseys to their daughter’s murder.

By now it had been leaked to the media that the DNA evidence did not tie the Ramseys to the crime, that hair and blood samples, fingernail scrapings, and fluids from the crime scene were still unidentified. The
Daily Camera
noted that palm prints and fingerprints were like snowflakes—no two were alike. Fibers that had been found in JonBenét’s genital area, the white cord, the garrote, and the duct tape might yet yield some answers. The broken paintbrush, the ransom note, some pens, various handwriting samples, and a note pad may have held answers but they were also still hidden. The mystery of the shoe imprint had yet to be solved. So many unyielding puzzles, yet the police remained cautiously optimistic—perhaps defying logic.

THE GALLUP ORGANIZATION

In December, Gallup conducted another poll, asking 1,005 adults eighteen years or older if they thought the case would be solved; 31 percent said yes, 58 percent said no, and 11 percent had no opinion.

Since Beckner’s press conference the previous month, the detectives had become minor celebrities. Now that their names were connected to faces, the public could relate to them, and the department’s hate mail became personal. At police headquarters, the detectives decorated their war room with letters and one area was reserved for “the letter of the day.”

In 1996 Alex Hunter had spent the Christmas holidays in Hawaii. This year he was in Boulder. Hunter was at his office daily, and even worked between Christmas and New Year’s. He responded to calls from journalists, who wanted to know about the stun gun and the Hi-Tec shoe imprint. One writer asked how it felt when he looked back at all the criticism he and his office had received during the preceding year.

“When I was sixteen, my dad sent me on a ten-day canoe trip to Canada,” Hunter told the writer. “The first stop was an island outside of Soo Look-Out, Ontario, that had the worst mosquitoes I had ever encountered in my life. The purpose of stopping at this miserable place was that the counselor wanted to make sure all of us could handle the bugs. When you went to take a leak, you even had mosquitoes on your penis. By the time that trip was over, I could roll up my sleeves and just let them bite. That’s how I’ve felt along this year’s journey.”

On January 2, 1998,
The New Yorker
’s fact checkers began confirming Hunter’s quotes for an article that was to be published on January 12. That same day, the
New York Post
reported that JonBenét’s body would be exhumed to determine if a stun gun had been used on her. The author of
The
New Yorker
article asked Hunter for a comment. He said, “Every rock must be turned over, and if that means swabbing everyone’s mouth or exhuming JonBenét’s body, that’s what the police will have to do. I don’t want the public to think everything has been done if in fact, in effect, everything hasn’t been done.” The police said they had no plans to exhume the body.

On Monday, January 5, Hunter and Wise met to discuss the Ramsey case. Hunter told Wise that he expected Tom Koby to come to him in about three months and say, “We just don’t have it. It’s not there.” The two men joked that they hoped Koby would still be around to say it in public. Hunter was sure Koby would also ask that a grand jury be convened. That way, he could spread the blame around. While that might be the chief’s way of closing
his
file on the case, Hunter knew it would give the DA’s office a chance to carry on the investigation. Then he would be able—finally—to cut Lou Smit loose. Also, the grand jury had some powers that the police and the DA didn’t have. It could require witnesses to appear and answer questions and could demand certain documents and evidence. In addition, a grand jury would have its own investigators. New evidence might well come to light under the auspices of such a secret proceeding.

“Koby still doesn’t seem to get it,” Wise told Hunter. The chief had given the Susannah Chase case to Eller, even though Eller was leaving the department on February 28. Again, the commander wasn’t cooperating with Pete Hofstrom, who was getting his information from the coroner’s office. The Chase murder was as mysterious as JonBenét’s death. No motive had been established for the killing, and the perpetrator was still at large and unknown to the police. Moreover, the threat to public safety in Boulder was escalating. Recently there had been a rash of burglaries where
entry was made through unlocked doors. In the first nine months of 1997, the police had recorded 722 burglaries, of which 231 did not involve forced entry.

BOULDERITES QUERY COPS IN STUDENT DEATH

Tom Koby called Alex Hunter on January 6 and asked to meet. At the Foundry coffee house, after some small talk about how Koby thought Beckner was getting along with Hofstrom, the chief got down to business.

“Fleet White came in to talk to me and Beckner,” Koby told Hunter. “White wants you off the case. He says you leaked stuff to one of the tabloids after you met with him last year.” Hunter remained silent. “He’s on the warpath, and he’s threatening to see the attorney general.” Koby said that White refused to cooperate with the police as long as Hunter was still on the case. In one conversation with detectives, White had even teased the officers: “What would you say if I told you the Ramseys owned Hi-Tec shoes?”

Hunter had known for some time that the Whites were angry with him. Bob Grant, a member of his task force, had advised Hunter to mend his fences, but the Whites wanted access to their police statements, and Hunter and Mark Beckner had declined because they felt it would taint White’s usefulness as a witness. The police believed that White might have critical evidence in the case—he had been with John Ramsey when JonBenét’s body was found—but they did not want to make the same trade they’d granted the Ramseys the previous April. Some of the detectives were doubtful that White had even opened the wine cellar door when he made his first trip to the basement early that morning. For his part, White couldn’t understand why Hunter had fought for the Ramseys’ right to see their police statements while now Hunter was denying him the same privilege. He was also upset that in April, Hunter had softened the wording of Koby’s statement intended to exonerate him of involvement in JonBenét’s murder. The Whites felt they were being slighted by Hunter.

On December 19, the couple had met with Colorado governor Roy Romer and his chief of staff, Meg Porfido, in Denver. At the meeting, White leveled some charges against Hunter, saying he ran a timid office, wasn’t aggressive enough, had problems with the police, and was hampering the police investigation. White asked the governor to assign a special prosecutor to take over the Ramsey case.

The governor called Bob Grant and Denver district attorney Bill Ritter for their opinions. Grant told Romer that Hunter was handling the case properly and explained that Hunter was restricted until he was presented with the case by the Boulder PD, which was still completing a to-do list. Only then would the law allow for removing or replacing him for improper behavior. However, in his opinion, Grant said, Hunter’s past actions had no bearing on his handling of the Ramsey case.

Koby told Hunter that the governor had called him in December too. He’d told Romer that there was no basis for the Whites’ request. He confirmed what Bob Grant had said—the case was still with the Boulder PD.

Meg Porfido called White and told him that the governor wouldn’t intervene at this time and didn’t see a need for a special prosecutor. Afterward, the Whites wrote to Romer again, repeating what they’d said at their meeting. The same day that Koby and Hunter were meeting at the Foundry, the Whites went to see the state attorney general, Gale Norton, to repeat what they had told the governor. Norton told them she had no jurisdiction over the matter, since Alex Hunter had not said he wasn’t going to press charges. No one could move against Hunter until the Boulder PD had finished its investigation and handed over the case.

On Monday, January 12, 1998, this writer’s article, “Justice Boulder Style,” was published in
The New Yorker
. It updated readers on the status of the case and explained why Hunter had not indicted JonBenét’s parents for her murder. The story discussed the Ramseys’ presumption of innocence and explored Hunter’s views on the case.

Pete Hofstrom told Bill Wise that the article gave the police ammunition for their case that Hunter was the source of media leaks. Hofstrom reminded Wise that to protect the flow of information from the police, he had
agreed to Beckner’s condition that he withhold from Hunter some evidence the police were developing. Hofstrom also told this to Hunter, and the DA accepted it. When one deputy DA heard about the condition Hofstrom had accepted, he remarked: “Pete hasn’t thrown his boss under the bus; he’s crawled under it willingly. Luckily for Alex, the bus wasn’t moving forward.”

The most extreme reaction to
The New Yorker
article came from Fleet and Priscilla White. They wrote a letter to the editor of
The Denver Post
and on January 14 delivered it personally. Because the Whites refused to allow it to be edited for length, the paper rejected it. That same afternoon, the
Daily Camera
agreed to publish it unedited.

On January 15, a reporter from the
Daily Camera
called Alex Hunter for his comments on the as yet unpublished letter. The DA, on his way to the newspaper’s office to meet with Tom Koby and senior editor Barrie Hartman on an unrelated matter, told the reporter he would address the issue later in the day. At the
Camera
offices, Hunter told Koby about the Whites’ letter, in which they asked the governor to appoint a special prosecutor. Koby said he wasn’t surprised, knowing the Whites’ state of mind.

Before leaving the newspaper office, Hunter made the rounds of its senior staff. He saw Thad Keyes, the managing editor, and Colleen Conant, the new publisher, briefing them off the record. He also said he would have to pass on giving their reporter a comment and would release a statement later in the day.

Hunter wanted his response to be released simultaneously with the Whites’ letter. Bill Wise wrote the statement, which was given to the
Daily Camera
that afternoon and faxed to the governor and the attorney general, both of whom issued statements saying that this was not the time to intervene. Chief Koby also issued a statement. In part, it said, “The Boulder District Attorney has not done anything
but try and be supportive of the investigation. Whether people agree with that is another issue.”

The Whites’ letter, part of which is reprinted below, was published in the
Daily Camera
on January 16.