Perfect Murder, Perfect Town (66 page)

On Wednesday, June 3, the police detectives began to transfer the voluminous case file to Hunter’s office at the Justice Center. Two days later Hunter, Kane, DeMuth, Beckner, and Wickman met. Beckner said the police wanted to direct the continuation of the investigation.

“This is our case now. Stay away from it,” Hunter said at the outset. “You’ve had eighteen months to do it yourself, and you haven’t done it.” Wickman remained calm as he reminded the DA that there were close to two dozen tasks still to be completed, let alone the interviews of John,
Patsy, and Burke. To calm things down, Kane said that he’d come away from the presentation with the notion that there might be a case against Patsy.

Later in the afternoon, Beckner met privately with Hunter and Hofstrom to argue his position. He pointed out that it was important for the grand jury to subpoena the Ramseys’ credit card and telephone records before they were interviewed. In their April interviews they had said that they had never bought duct tape or cord. Maybe the records would show otherwise. “Get the hard evidence and confront them with it,” Beckner said. Hofstrom replied that they would go ahead without the records. The interviews with the Ramseys were more important. Beckner said he would tell his officers.

“Look, we’ve done all we can do. It’s no longer our case,” Beckner told his assembled detectives an hour later. “Go back and resume your lives. Make your summer vacation plans. And don’t worry about this case anymore.”

The officers were distraught. Some of them felt that Beckner didn’t want to challenge Hunter because he was concentrating on becoming chief and believed that a street fight with the DA wouldn’t help his cause.

“If this isn’t our case,” Gosage said to Thomas, “then there is no case.” Another officer told a friend that he felt as if he’d handed over his baby to a stranger and wasn’t even allowed to change its diaper anymore.

Beckner assigned Tom Wickman, the case officer, to be the liaison with Kane and the DA’s office. Later, he would be sworn in as primary grand jury investigator.

On Tuesday, June 9, as agreed, Pete Hofstrom and Dan Schuler traveled to Atlanta to interview Burke Ramsey. In preparation, they consulted the FBI and the Boulder detectives and reviewed the videotape of Burke’s January 8, 1997, interview. The interviews were to be conducted at a
local district attorney’s office and videotaped. On three consecutive days, June 10, 11, and 12, for two hours each day, JonBenét’s brother would be questioned by Schuler, a police officer with a gift for talking to kids, a cop who didn’t like guns and never carried one.

In Atlanta, attorney Jim Jenkins had obtained written consent from Patsy and John and made sure they understood that they would not be allowed near the interview room. John Ramsey had previously told the attorney that he wanted to cooperate fully with Hunter’s staff and supply them with everything they needed.

Jenkins knew it was inappropriate to prepare Burke for the sessions. For his part, Jenkins didn’t want to know what Burke had to say, and he had never attempted to discuss the events of December 25 and 26 with the boy. Jenkins told him only one thing: “The people who are coming are trying to solve the murder of your sister, and you need to help them.” Then he added, “The conversations are going to be serious.” The last thing Burke wanted to do, now that school was out, was to sit in a room for three days. Nevertheless, he said OK. Jenkins told the child he’d be nearby if he needed any help.

When Hofstrom and Schuler arrived, Jenkins could see that they didn’t have an agenda, that they were only interested in factual and accurate information. Hofstrom still wasn’t committed to one theory or another. He and Jenkins watched the sessions from another room on a video monitor. Patsy, who had brought her son, stayed elsewhere in the building.

Burke was polite and bright, but it was understandably difficult for him, because he didn’t want to talk about the death of his sister. Like any child, he was defensive, which indicated that he wanted to forget the past. Within a short period of time, however, he developed a rapport with Schuler, who sensed that Burke was adjusting to the loss of his sister, had made new friends, and was doing well in school.

Each day the videotapes were taken to Jane Harmer’s hotel room in Atlanta. In keeping with Hunter’s agreement that the police would not be involved, Harmer wasn’t allowed to observe. The tapes were shipped overnight to Boulder so that Kane and the Boulder PD detectives could make recommendations to Schuler for the next day’s interview sessions.

When Schuler asked Burke if his mother and father had prepared him for their conversations, he said no.

Gently, Schuler explored whether Burke thought his sister had sometimes been a bad girl and gotten mad at people. They discussed which people she got mad at and whether she had been mean and nasty to those people. Schuler asked Burke if his mother and father ever got really mad at his sister. Burke said he didn’t think so. Schuler’s most important question, never asked directly, was whether JonBenét had ever done something to bring about her death. Again Burke answered no. Had she fallen and hit her head? He didn’t remember her doing that.

The most delicate part of the interview was getting Burke to answer questions without revealing what the police knew. First he was asked if he ate any pineapple and when he went to bed. He didn’t remember. What did he and his father talk about when they played with his Christmas gift that night? Just that it was time for bed. Then Schuler asked what had happened after Burke went to bed. Did he have any dreams? Did he hear anything in his sleep? Burke said he had heard voices, in the distance. Maybe it was a dream; maybe not. It was so long ago, he said.

Without mentioning the 911 tape, Schuler asked Burke when he got up that morning and how he awakened. He did not want the Ramseys to learn what the police knew. The plan was to confront them about the tape during their own interviews, which would probably take place later in the month.

Burke said he remembered waking up and hearing a loud
conversation from down the hall or on the front stairs. Maybe his mother had come into his room, but he was sure he stayed in his bed and pretended to sleep. Even when his dad came in, he said, he pretended to be asleep. He was concerned while he pretended, he said. Burke told Schuler he was awake when his mother made the phone call. His parents might have thought he was asleep, but he wasn’t, he said. When he was asked if he spoke to his parents that morning before being awakened at seven to be taken to the Whites’ home, he said no. He said that he had stayed in his room the whole time. The 911 tape seemed to say otherwise. Had Burke been coached, or had his thinking changed independently since his January 1997 interview? The detectives wondered.

On the third day, Schuler asked Burke if he had any questions, anything he wanted to know. By the way, that Rolex watch you have on, Burke asked, how much did it cost?

Back in Boulder, several of the detectives watching the videotapes thought Burke’s credibility hinged on one answer he gave. Schuler asked the boy how much he and his parents had talked about JonBenét during the last year or so. Burke said that they didn’t talk much about what had happened to JonBenét. More than one detective felt that this wasn’t plausible. Experience told them that any child of Burke’s age was inquisitive and that he must have asked his parents about his sister’s death; it would be natural for him to believe that his parents knew things he didn’t. This reply of Burke’s, combined with his not remembering leaving his bedroom and talking to his parents at the time of the 911 call, led the Boulder investigators to believe that some reorientation—coaching or coaxing—had taken place during the intervening period.

Later in 1998, Jim Jenkins would be asked about the 911 tape by a reporter covering the story. Burke’s lawyer said that
the boy’s answer was not inconsistent with what one would expect a child to remember under traumatic circumstances. Jenkins suggested a scenario to the reporter: “Patsy came into Burke’s room, turned on the light, saw her son was OK, and turned her attention back to her missing daughter. She rushed back downstairs, where John had gone to read the ransom note. Maybe she left the light on in Burke’s room and the conversation between her and John downstairs was emotional and loud. If so, it very well could have been overheard by the boy. And if he overheard it, Burke could very well have gotten up and gone to the head of the stairs. I’m not saying that this is Burke’s memory of what happened. I’m just saying that it’s entirely consistent. I’m saying that Burke never told anyone he was asleep the whole morning. And I believe he was awake when the 911 call was made.”

Jenkins also told the reporter that if there was any notion of Burke being a suspect, the interviews with Schuler had ruled out the possibility.

Tom Koby had attended the department’s presentation of the Ramsey case to the DA’s office though he had less than a month left on the job. A new director of police services would be announced shortly. On June 10, Koby sent an e-mail to city employees, friends, and business associates.

Two of Koby’s friends couldn’t make it to his going-away party. His closest friend, Tim Honey, former city manager of Boulder, had already sold his house and was in Budapest advising city managers in emerging Eastern European democracies. John Eller had already moved to Florida to look for a job as police chief in a small city.

Some forty people showed up at the party on June 18. None of the Ramsey case detectives or police union leaders attended. Only two reporters showed up, and Jeff Shapiro was one of them. Alex Hunter and Phil Miller were there on behalf of the DA’s office. It was a sad affair for Hunter, who considered Tom Koby a friend. The DA didn’t have
much to say that night.

CHIEF CANDIDATE SEES LACK OF CONFIDENCE

John and Patsy’s attorneys were now talking to Hunter’s staff about scheduling their interviews. The city of Broomfield’s police headquarters was chosen as the location. Simultaneous interviews could be conducted there without John and Patsy ever seeing each other in the large facility. It was important that the Ramseys not be able to consult with each other—or each other’s attorneys—during the day’s questioning. Hofstrom told the couple’s attorneys that the interviews would take at least three days and maybe longer. The Ramseys chose to arrive at the Jefferson County Airport, which was close to Broomfield and where a private plane could land without attracting undue attention.

Beckner and Wickman weren’t told the dates and location, presumably for fear of a leak to the media. Nevertheless, the detectives could sense the interviews were imminent from the flurry of activity in the DA’s office. The detectives were furious at being shut out, because they thought they were the only ones familiar enough with the case to interview the Ramseys properly. When Wickman raised the issue
of the interviews, one deputy DA said, “This ain’t your ball game anymore.”

In the battle zone, Michael Kane emerged as the figure the detectives could communicate with. He had talked to a number of them privately and had managed to avoid offending them, even when he told them that they hadn’t yet run everything into the ground. Kane understood that somewhere, deep in the recesses of some detective’s brain, might lie the key to this case. For their part, when talking to Kane, the detectives understood that there was still work to be done.