April 14, 2003
Solving the JonBenet Case
by
Ryan Ross
Copyright by Ryan Ross.
2003. All rights reserved.
Copying and posting or otherwise disseminating any portion of this
article is a violation of copyright law.
It's time for closure. More
than six years have passed since JonBenet Ramsey was killed. Most all the
evidence is in. The principals have had more than enough time to ponder,
scrutinize, and digest. The grand jurors have long since heard, deliberated, and
gone home without a peep. The new district attorney isn't up to the job. The
media are desperate for a climax — any climax.
The public — misled by assorted media jackals clamoring
for microwave justice — pines for a murder trial that will never happen, all
but resigned to an O.J.-esque outcome in which there is no closure, and where
doubts and suspicions linger as long as memory allows.
Some have moved on. Others will perpetuate the hand
wringing about how the system failed.
No one will be satisfied. And the truth will remain
buried.
But there is a way out of the morass. The
mysterious 1996 killing of beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey of Boulder, Colo.,
doesn't have to be another O.J. There is still time. The police blunders were
not fatal. The right laws are on the Colorado books. Secret statements by
prosecutors suggest the evidence is strong. All that's needed now is a strong
Colorado governor willing to intervene by appointing a special prosecutor to take over the case.
Even if Gov. Bill Owens does appoint a special prosecutor,
getting to the bottom of the mystery is not going to be easy. The key players
all bring ample flaws to the table. The process has more potholes than pavement.
And given the track record of events since the night JonBenet was killed, more
blunders by those responsible for ensuring justice are likely.
But it can happen nonetheless, and it won't take a
miracle.
Before dissecting the killing, it's important to remember
why the JonBenet saga has topped the "who-dun-it" charts for six years now. The
same factors that helped JonBenet attract the spotlight in life worked even more
powerfully in death. She was the epitome of American beauty. Long blond hair.
Big eyes. High cheek bones. A disarming smile. Watching her sashay across the
stage as she competed in a succession of beauty pageants, twirling her hair,
swinging her hips, and doing a mini-dance while wearing outfits that seemed
right off a Paris runway fashion show, it's clear she could easily breach the
line — even if she didn't mean to — between the feminine innocence
beauty-pageant sponsors profess to spotlight, and something more deliberate and
calculating. One reporter watching videos of JonBenet's stage performances
described her appeal as a "coquettish allure that stopped just short of being
seductive."
Seductiveness being in the eye of the beholder, few would
have much noted JonBenet's stage persona — even after her killing — except for
one glaring feature that transcends even her astonishing good looks: at the time
of her death, she was 6 years old.
Barely old enough to be in school.
Yet old enough to be a beauty-pageant queen several times
over.
And old enough to die a gruesome death, in the comfort of
her own home, no less, under circumstances that suggested her loving parents may
have killed her.
The media, understandably, went nuts, attracted by an
unsolved murder (what appeared to be a murder, anyway), invoking the image of
the Keystone Kops as they reported the police blunders (starting with the
failure to properly secure the crime scene), examining the question of whether
the Ramseys' wealth won them protection from the law, exposing the world of
beauty pageants for 6-year-olds, chronicling each blow of the almost unheard of
battle between police and prosecutors (who at times seemed to be as interested
in investigating each other as JonBenet's killing), breathlessly reporting the
reassignments and resignations of key law enforcement personnel (a police
detective, the lead police commander on the case, the police chief), the dueling
angry resignations by embittered detectives (one on the police force, the other
in the district attorney's office), the
sideshow criminal cases (for release of
the autopsy photos and for bribery in an attempt to get the ransom note), and the
more than a dozen civil cases spawned as so-and-so sued so-and-so for slander,
libel, or defamation.
Oh, and positively salivating at the opportunity to print
pictures of gorgeous JonBenet, and replay again and again the videotapes of her
oh-so-cute stage performances that quickly made the rounds. If some viewers
thought JonBenet looked sexy, who in the media would argue? Sex sells, even
6-year-old sex. "It's a sick curiosity," then Boulder Police Chief Tom Koby
complained.
Maybe. Certainly powerful. The case has spawned a dozen
books, two documentaries, a made-for-TV movie, a slew of
web sites and
Internet forums, more supermarket tabloid
headlines than Jennifer Lopez, Gary Condit, and all the TV reality shows
combined, dozens of network prime-time magazine and morning-show segments, and
countless hours of gabfests on the cable talk-shows. JonBenet has outdone O.J.,
and a possible trial is still to come (if Colorado's governor finally gets involved).
Underlying the hype are two threads to the story that even
those jaded by yet another so called "crime-of-the-century" have difficulty
resisting. The first, of course, is JonBenet herself. She seemed to hold promise
for a special life, and not just because of her looks. "I remember coming home
and telling my wife 'I saw an angel tonight,'" Bill McReynolds said of the day
he met JonBenet. McReynolds was playing Santa that day. "She was one of the only
children who ever talked to me who didn't ask for anything," McReynolds
recalled. "Instead, she gave."
"I've said I don't think there's anyone too good for this
world," McReynolds said at JonBenet's memorial service. "But she was pretty
close."
The other compelling thread is JonBenet's parents. They
couldn't have killed their daughter, could they have? "From a kid's viewpoint,"
columnist Wendy Underhill wrote in the
Boulder Weekly
soon after the killing, "if it becomes even a remote possibility that the
murderer was someone close to the child, then family itself ceases to be a
secure refuge. It touches on what must be a child's ultimate nightmare: that
Mommy or Daddy will kill her.
"Ordinarily such a thought keeps to its place: the deep,
dark subconscious. JonBenet's death has brought it into the light. At some point
a child's cocoon is stripped away, but surely 6-year-olds don't need to learn
about horror on the home front yet. Please, my heart asks, let it be anyone but
Mom or Dad."
The New Evidence
This scenario for unraveling the mystery of the Dec.
25-26, 1996 slaying of beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey is based in large part on
documents not in the public record, including complete transcripts of the
interviews of John and Patsy Ramsey conducted by law enforcement officials in
1997, 1998, and 2000.
Videotapes of the interviews were given late last year to
NBC, CNN, and CBS by, of all people, the Ramsey's attorney, L. Lin Wood of
Atlanta. The networks didn't seem to know what to do with them. NBC hasn't used
them at all as far as I have been able to tell. CBS cited them briefly during a
"48 Hours" segment. And all CNN did was give them to Larry King, who gave Ramsey
attorney Wood yet another platform to defend his clients. If Wood's motive in
releasing the videotapes was to use them to his clients' PR advantage and
pre-empt a damaging leak from police, it worked like a charm.
As it happens, these interviews are a treasure chest of
information. They contain the most complete account of statements by John and
Patsy Ramsey. They also reveal the most thorough detailing of the evidence
against them, including the first glimpse into evidence heard by the grand jury
impaneled in 1998 to investigate the slaying. And they provide a key to
understanding the case.
So breathe deep, let go of preconceived notions, and start
by considering the possibility that the one premise in the case repeated by the
media more often than any other — that JonBenet was murdered — is wrong.
Was It Murder?
There are two important components of a death that form
the basis for a conclusion of murder. The first is what the deceased's body
reveals about the circumstances of death.
The best evidence that JonBenet was murdered has always
been the force of the blow to her head and the apparent viciousness of her
strangulation. Each is a flimsy foundation for a conclusion of murder. As a
legal term, "murder" occurs when someone acts with the intent to kill. To say
the power of a blow to the head speaks to the intent of the one delivering it is
a crude tool for legal analysis. The blow, no matter how hard, could have been
accidental, or unintentionally life-threatening. And the strangulation, if done
on a limp, seemingly lifeless body, could have been motivated by someone's
desire to stage the scene to distract. Tie a cord around her neck and stick a
finger in her vagina and you'll have people thinking sex crime. Some did.
That sequence is consistent with what forensic
pathologists told Boulder police had likely happened, according to Det. Steve
Thomas in his book on the case (JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder
Investigation) and author Lawrence Schiller (Perfect Murder, Perfect Town).
Schiller, citing unnamed "specialists," and Thomas, citing Michigan pathologist
Dr. Werner Spitz, say pathologists told police that someone struck JonBenet in
the head with a bat or a metal object such as a flashlight (each was found in
the home, clean of fingerprints). Her skull was fractured. Massive brain damage
was instantaneous. She could never have regained consciousness.
She was then strangled by someone who placed a cord around
her neck and twisted it tight with a garrote fashioned from a paintbrush in the
basement of the Ramsey home. JonBenet offered no resistance. The strangulation
stopped all of JonBenet's bodily functioning, but in time the blow to the head
would have been fatal by itself. The strangler could easily have believed
JonBenet was dead, in which case the strangler couldn't be a murderer because
you can't murder someone you think is dead, even if you were, as it turned out,
wrong.
The forensic evidence from the body, then, is
inconclusive. It could have been murder. But the blow to her head could just as
easily have been unintentional.
The belief that JonBenet was murdered is so ingrained in
public perception of the case in part because Boulder law-enforcement officials
have consistently said she was murdered, and the media have dutifully repeated
that conclusion. How else to explain what happened to her? In fact, from the
beginning of the case there never has been anything about what JonBenet's body
shows that couldn't be just as easily explained by an accident and then a
cover-up designed to distract. That's one reason famed criminologist Henry Lee
(famous, largely, because of his work on the O.J. case) repeatedly urged Boulder
officials to consider the possibility they were dealing with the result of an
accident. "Whether ... it was murder or an accidental death with staging of the
crime scene remains an open question in my mind," Lee wrote in his 2001 book
Famous Crimes Revisited.
The next step in determining whether someone was murdered
is identifying a perpetrator with motive. The weakness of the forensic evidence
as proof of murder is all the more glaring when combined with the complete lack
of evidence either parent had any reason to harm, let alone murder, JonBenet.
All indications are that each loved her as fervently as the most loving of
parents.
JonBenet's brother, Burke, who was 9 at the time of his
sister's death, arguably had motive to kill her, if one is willing to allow that
sibling rivalry can sometimes escalate into violent rage. And a 9-year-old is
certainly less able to judge the result of a blow to the head than an adult, or
be able to deliver a measured blow designed to punish instead of kill. Boulder
District Attorney Alex Hunter is among those who privately considered the
possibility that Burke played a role in the death of his sister. "I wonder if
Burke is involved in this," Hunter mused out loud one day, former Boulder police
detective Steve Thomas wrote in his book.
Hunter declared publicly in 1999 that Burke wasn't a
suspect in his sister's death. But later events suggested that statement wasn't
as definitive as it seemed. In 2000 Hunter refused a request by Ramsey attorney
Wood to sign a statement declaring under oath that "all questions related to"
Burke's "possible involvement" in the death of his sister "were resolved to the
satisfaction of investigators." He also refused to declare that Burke "has never
been viewed by investigators as a suspect." Nor would he say that Burke "has not
been and is not a suspect."
Hunter did, however, agree to language in which he
declared that "no evidence has ever been developed ... to justify elevating
Burke Ramsey's status from witness to suspect," and there is nothing in the
transcripts of the interviews of the Ramseys to suggest any such evidence was
developed.
So whatever Hunter's suspicions about Burke, he wasn't
able to substantiate them.
If Burke killed his sister, child psychologists can debate
endlessly the issue of whether a 9-year-old has the psychological capacity for
intent for murder without reaching consensus. In Colorado, the issue is settled
by law: No one under the age of 10 can be charged with any crime. They know not
what they do, Coloradans have decided. If Burke is the killer, he's not —
legally, anyway — a murderer, and JonBenet wasn't — legally, anyway —
murdered. When Hunter said in 1999 that Burke wasn't a suspect in his sister's
murder, he could also have said that from a legal standpoint Burke couldn't be.
He was too young.
The best case for murder has always rested on the
possibility of an intruder. Among other mysteries, unidentified DNA under
JonBenet's fingernails and in her panties, an unidentified pubic hair in
the white blanket found with her body, an unidentified palm print on the door to the room in which JonBenet's body
was found, an unidentified Hi-Tec boot imprint in the basement room in which
JonBenet's body was found, and bruises on JonBenet's body that suggest to some
the use of a stun-gun mark all combine to make it clear there is no way of
excluding the possibility of an intruder.
Lou Smit, the retired
Colorado Springs cop hired by Boulder D. A. Alex Hunter to sift the evidence, is
right: Possible intruders have to be identified and investigated.
It doesn't help the intruder theorists, however, that many
of the list of clues Smit says point to an intruder fell by the wayside as the
investigation proceeded:
-
The palm print on the basement door turned out on
further review to belong to Melinda Ramsey, one of John Ramsey's children from
his first marriage, the News reported last year citing "a source close
to the case."
And the mystery of the Hi-Tec boot imprint was solved in
grand jury testimony. Prosecutors disclosed in the 2000 interviews of the
Ramseys that Burke and one of his friends had told jurors that Burke
owned a pair of Hi-Tec boots — something his parents said they somehow
overlooked or forgot when they told authorities no one in the family owned such
a boot, even though there is a distinctive compass on the boot.
More importantly, as an explanation of what happened that
night, the intruder theory is problematic. It's difficult to get around the
ransom note Patsy Ramsey reported finding early the morning of the Dec. 26th.
The author clearly had no fear of detection because he or she wrote the mother
of all ransom notes while in the Ramsey home, using paper and pen from the home.
Under the intruder scenario, he/she entered the home and killed JonBenet without
detection while the child's parents and brother slept, and was therefore free to
leave without being detected. For the intruder to pen a three-page ransom note
and leave behind the strongest evidence that would link him or her to the
killing suggests he/she was either stupid or trying to get caught.
A federal judge who last month tossed out a defamation
suit against the Ramseys declared there is "abundant evidence" for the intruder
theory. But as a vehicle for truth finding the ruling is of little value. The
judge didn't have access to the police files. She didn't know about the
grand-jury testimony of Burke and a friend that Burke owned a Hi-Tec boot.
In writing her decision, she was unable to fashion a coherent explanation for
the actions of the intruder in writing a long ransom note while in the Ramsey home.
Such an intruder would have been at risk of discovery. Further she offers no explanation
for why an intruder, who had killed rather than kidnapped JonBenet and left her body
in the cellar, would leave a ransom note, knowing that as soon as a thorough search of
the house was conducted no ransom could be obtained.
(For a detailed dissection of the judge's ruling,
click here.)
Following a briefing about a year after JonBenet's death,
members of the FBI's Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit (the Silence of the
Lambs unit) said they believed there had never been any kidnapping. "These guys,
who do it everyday," Boulder police detective Steve Thomas told John Ramsey when
he interviewed him in 1997, "say ... there were clearly steps taken in this case
to make this look like something it wasn't. (They said) 'This is how it happens
in the movies. It is not how it happens in real life.' And they said all that
was done... was made to make this look like something that wasn't there."
"They had the gut feeling," Thomas writes in his book on
the case, "that 'no one intended to kill this child.'"
Accident/Cover-up?
In contrast to the intruder theory, the accident/cover-up
theory provides a framework that appears to fit the publicly available evidence,
and the most significant secret evidence revealed in the transcripts of the
interviews with the Ramseys conducted in their attorney's office in Atlanta in
August of 2000.
In the course of the interview with Patsy Ramsey,
prosecutors asserted that investigators had found:
- Fibers on the sticky side of the duct tape John Ramsey
removed from his daughter's mouth when he says he discovered her body in the
basement wine cellar that are "identical" to fibers in the red sweater-jacket
Patsy was photographed wearing at a Christmas dinner at a friends' house the
previous day.
- Fibers from the same type of jacket in the paint tray
from which a brush was taken that was used to help fashion the ligature found
around JonBenet's neck.
- Fibers from the same type of jacket "tied into" the
ligature.
- Fibers from the same type of black wool shirt made in
Israel that John Ramsey wore to the Christmas dinner "in" the panties JonBenet
was wearing when she found and in her "crotch area."
The most notable mention of any of this evidence in the
public record is in the book by former Boulder police Det. Thomas, one of the
principal investigators in the case before he resigned in 1998. He writes that
fibers from the jacket Patsy had been wearing were found to be "chemically and
microscopically consistent" with four fibers found on the inside of the piece of
duct tape John Ramsey found on his daughter's mouth when he discovered
JonBenet's body.
For all his zeal in pointing an accusing finger at Patsy
Ramsey (he concludes in his book that she killed her daughter), Thomas downplays
the significance of the fiber evidence from the duct tape. He notes that when
John removed the tape from the mouth of his daughter's body, he "dropped it," as
John told investigator Smit in 1998, and it may therefore have fallen on the
blanket JonBenet's body was wrapped in, which, according to Patsy, came from
JonBenet's bed, where it might have picked up the fibers from Patsy's red
sweater-jacket when Patsy tucked JonBenet in the previous night or on some prior
occasion.
Moreover, prosecutors may have misrepresented the fiber
evidence in their interviews with the Ramseys, or overstated the strength of the
conclusions. Although they at one point said the fibers found on the duct tape
were "identical" to fibers in Patsy's red sweater-jacket, it's likely that the
match is only to that type of jacket, not the exact jacket that Patsy wore.
Nonetheless, the likelihood of there having been a jacket
of that type in the house when JonBenet died owned by someone other than Patsy
is remote. Assuming prosecutors accurately summarized the results of the fiber
comparisons, the implication is that four fibers found on the inside of the tape
put over JonBenet's mouth by someone who was trying to control, or kill her, or
cover-up the circumstances of her death matched the VERY type of article of
clothing Patsy had been wearing the last time she says she saw her daughter
alive.
Det. Thomas doesn't write in his book about the fibers
from Patsy's sweater-jacket found in the paint tray or on the ligature found
tied to JonBenet's neck, or the fibers from John's shirt found in JonBenet's
panties and crotch. Those results apparently weren't in when Thomas quit the
force in 1998. They are examined publicly for the first time here.
THE PAINT TRAY - Photographs show the paint tray was
located outside the door to the
wine cellar in which JonBenet's body was found,
and thus well removed from the blanket that creates the possible contamination
problem with the fibers on the duct tape. The fibers were put in the paint tray
sometime before or during the time a brush in the tray was used to tighten the
cord around JonBenet's neck, because Patsy didn't have access to the tray
thereafter. Patsy told prosecutors she had never worn the red sweater-jacket
while painting. So there is no readily apparent explanation for how the fibers
could have gotten there in a manner that doesn't implicate Patsy in the use of
the brush in the paint tray around the time of her daughter's death.
THE LIGATURE - This was an instrument fashioned for the
apparent purpose of controlling JonBenet (it was like a collar and leash used on
a dog), strangling her, or "staging" the crime scene to make it look like there
had been an intruder. In any case, the only way fibers from ANY type of Patsy's
clothing could make their way innocently onto this instrument would be if the
fibers attached themselves to the paint brush used to make the ligature at some
prior time, when it was simply a paint brush. Thus an innocent explanation runs
into the same problems as does the explanation of how the fibers from Patsy's
sweater/jacket came to be in the paint tray (why THAT piece of clothing when
Patsy never wore it while painting?), and it runs into the additional problems
created by the switch from the innocent use of a paint brush to the felonious
use of the ligature. Patsy told investigators there were no broken brushes in
her paint tray prior to the night JonBenet was killed. So the brush in question
was broken the night JonBenet died by someone trying to control or kill her, or
stage the crime scene.
THE PANTIES - John Ramsey told investigator Smit in his
1998 interview that while he had carried a sleeping JonBenet to bed after the
family returned from their Christmas Day outing, he did not undress her. Patsy
did. Patsy confirmed that. There is, therefore, no obvious way to explain why
fibers from the type of shirt John was wearing when he says he put her to bed
were found in her underpants and "crotch area."
What the Ramseys Say
In the June 1998 interviews with the Ramseys at a police
station in a city near Boulder, a detective told Patsy that police had "trace
evidence that appears to link you to the death of JonBenet (an apparent
reference to the fibers from her jacket found on the duct tape on JonBenet's
mouth)", thereby triggering the only speech Patsy made during three days of
interviews.
"That's just totally impossible," Patsy insisted. "Go
re-test."
"How is it impossible?" Detective Tom Haney asked.
"I did not kill my child. I did not have a thing to do
with it."
"I'm not talking someone's guess or some rumor or some
(newspaper) story. I'm talking...."
"I don't care what you're talking about!"
"...about scientific evidence."
"I don't give a flip how scientific it is. Go back to the
damn drawing board. I didn't do it. John didn't do it. And we didn't have a clue
of anybody who did do it. So we all gotta start working together from here -
this day forward to try to find out who the hell did it! I mean, I appreciate
being here. It's very hard to be here, but it's a damned sight harder to be
sittin' at home in Atlanta, Georgia, wondering every second or every day what
you guys are doing out here. You know? Have you found anything? Are we any
closer? Is the guy out there watching my house? Is my son safe? My life has been
hell from that day forward. And I want nothing more than to find out who is
responsible for this. Okay? I mean I wanna work with you, not against you. Okay?
This child is the most precious thing in my life. And I can't stand the thought
thinking somebody's out there walking on the street. God knows he might do it
again to some other child. You know? Quit screwin' around asking me about things
that are ridiculous and let's find the person who did this! Criminy."
Because most of the fiber evidence was developed after the
1998 interviews, the Ramseys were not asked about it that year. Prosecutors
wanted to do so in the interviews conducted in August of 2000 in Atlanta, where
the Ramseys have lived since about six months after JonBenet died.
John Ramsey was told fibers from the shirt he had been
wearing Christmas Day were found in JonBenet's panties. "Bullshit," he said. "If
you're trying to disgrace my relationship with my daughter.....that's
disgusting."
But Ramsey attorney Wood blocked questioning of Patsy on
the subject, saying that he wouldn't allow his clients to answers questions
about it unless he was given the lab reports. Without such access, Wood
suggested his clients were being asked to comment on something that might be
more accurately characterized as opinion than fact. "You're sitting here making
a record saying that it's a fact, and I don't know that," he said, suggesting
that many other fibers were likely found in those locations and that the lab
result may have been that the fibers in the clothes of the parents were "similar
to" the fibers found at the scene, not identical to.
"I don't want this record to be accusatory based on your
statement about the fibers," Wood continued. "Fiber evidence is... I won't say
'weak,' but let's just say that is the subject of a great amount of debate in
the profession."
Prosecutor Bruce Levin says he was simply trying to give
Patsy an opportunity to offer an innocent explanation for the fibers. But
prosecutors refused to give Wood the lab reports on the fibers, and Patsy
didn't, therefore, have the opportunity to offer innocent explanations.
In conjunction with this article, Crime Magazine
offered Wood the opportunity for him and the Ramseys to answer questions
pertaining to the JonBenet case. Crime Magazine's offer included the pledge to
publish his or the Ramseys' responses or comments verbatim. Wood did not
respond. The offer remains open. To see the questions Crime Magazine wanted to send to
Wood, click here.
Wood did, however, tell cable talk-show host Larry King
last fall that he "knows for a fact" that black fibers were not found in
JonBenet's underwear (he didn't say how he knows this). And he said "there's any
one of many innocent explanations for why the fibers (found in the paint tray,
on the brush, and in the ligature) might be consistent with something Patsy was
wearing." He offered only one such explanation: that Patsy had put JonBenet to
bed the previous night. But that couldn't account for the fibers in the paint
tray, and they couldn't account for the fibers on the brush used in the ligature
and "tied into" the ligature, unless the fibers somehow transferred from Patsy's
sweater to JonBenet's clothing and then to the brush and "tied into" the
ligature.
Patsy also tried to provide an innocent explanation for
the fibers when she spoke to CBS' "48 Hours." She said she had hugged her
daughter's body after John discovered it in the basement of their home and
brought it upstairs. Fibers from the sweater she was wearing at the time could
have transferred to JonBenet's clothing, she suggested.
But the fibers weren't found on JonBenet's clothing. They
were found, among other places, in the paint tray, which was in the basement
when Patsy hugged her daughter's body upstairs.
In her 1998 interview, Patsy tried to explain why she wore
the same sweater the day after Christmas that she had Christmas Day. "I do that
(wear the same clothes two days in a row) a lot," she said. "I don't like to do
laundry." That's surprising for someone as fashion-conscious as Patsy, a former
Miss West Virginia. To Det. Thomas it suggests that Patsy never went to bed the
night before, calling into question her entire account of what happened that
night and the next morning.
The forceful manner in which Ramsey attorney Wood parried
questions from prosecutors to Patsy about the fibers evidence is an indication
of how a defense lawyer would attack it in court. But if the fiber evidence is
what prosecutors claimed it is in the interviews, the conclusions that can be
drawn are simple and powerful: Officials have reason to believe John and
Patsy Ramsey may have covered up the circumstances of their daughter's death, there was
no intruder because the parents wouldn't cover up for an intruder, and there was
no murder because the only three people in the house at the time JonBenet died either
didn't have motive to intentionally kill JonBenet, or if
Burke had motive, he was too young in the eyes of the law to be capable of having the intent to
murder anyone.
There is other evidence that is inconsistent with John and
Patsy's account of what happened after they came home on Christmas Day evening:
- The fingerprints of Patsy and Burke were found on a bowl
on a kitchen table from which JonBenet ate pineapple sometime after she arrived
home, according to Det. Thomas, something inconsistent with the statements by
John and Patsy that JonBenet was asleep when they arrived at home and never woke
up. JonBenet had apparently gotten up during the night (or had never gone to
sleep) and, with the help of Patsy and/or Burke (either of whom could reach the
bowl stored in a cabinet well above the height JonBenet could reach), was served
and ate the last food she consumed before she was killed.
- All five of the fingerprints recovered from the pad on
which the ransom note was written that did not belong to policemen, according to
Det. Thomas, belonged to Patsy.
- In a version of the tape of Patsy's call to 911 enhanced
by audio technicians consulted by Boulder police, Burke's voice is heard in the
background at a time when John and Patsy say Burke was asleep, according to Det.
Thomas and author Lawrence Schiller. "Please, what did I do?" Burke asks. "We're
not speaking to you," an angry sounding John Ramsey responds. "Help me Jesus,
help me Jesus," Patsy says. "What did you find?" Burke pleads.
Moreover, the ransom note was likely written by Patsy,
according to Vassar professor and linguistic expert Don Foster (the author of
Author Unknown
, who unmasked Joe Klein as the author of
Primary Colors), David Liebman, former president of the
National Association
of Document Examiners, and Gideon Epstein, director of the forensics
unit of the documents lab at the Immigration and Naturalization Service until he
retired in 2000.
"What is your degree of certainty as you sit here today,"
Ramsey attorney Wood asked Epstein in a deposition last year, "that Patsy Ramsey
wrote the note?"
"I am absolutely certain she wrote the note," Epstein
replied.
"Is that 60 percent certainty?" Wood asked.
"No, that's 100 percent certainty."
Wood got Epstein to concede that he had reached that
conclusion without having access to the original of the note. Vassar professor
Foster had told Patsy Ramsey before having access to the note that he believed
she didn't write it. The reliability of handwriting and linguistic
text analysis is
much disputed. And other experts have said they can't conclude Patsy wrote the
note. In fact, D.A. Hunter testified in a 2001 deposition taken by Ramsey
attorney Wood that the experts he had obtained analysis from concluded, by his
estimate, that the odds Patsy wrote the note were 4.5 on a scale of 1 to 5, with
5 being that she didn't.
The Ramseys may also be able to find an expert concluding
that Burke's voice is not on the 911 call. And there may yet be an innocent
explanation for the fiber evidence and the pineapple found in JonBenet's stomach
after her death that does not call into question her parents' account of what
happened that night.
Of course, the most reliable way to assess the strength of
the defense the Ramseys can mount is to test it in court.
A Prosecutable Case?
Publicly, Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner will say only
that the Ramseys are "under the umbrella of suspicion." Privately, he revealed
in a 2001 deposition, the Ramseys are considered "suspects" because there is a
"probability" they were involved in the death of their daughter.
Boulder D.A. Hunter didn't comment publicly on his view of
the evidence while he was in office, he has refused to do so since he retired in
early 2001, and he didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article.
(To view the questions Crime Magazine wanted to pose to former D.A. Hunter,
click here.) But
based on the public record in the case, the transcripts of the interviews with
the Ramseys and applicable law, it's clear what some of the factors were that
Hunter was weighing as he considered whether to bring charges against the
Ramseys.
If the aim was to bring murder charges, there was no
evidence of motive, no murder weapon, no witnesses, and a deadly head wound that
reflected death by accident as easily as murder. The Ramseys had opportunity and
means to kill their daughter, but that's about it.
Lesser charges associated with her killing would have been
equally problematic. Negligent homicide would have meant having to prove that
the Ramseys were negligent; manslaughter charges that they were somehow reckless
and that their recklessness caused JonBenet's death. But Hunter didn't know what
instrument had been used that resulted in JonBenet's death, much less who was
responsible.
There is, however, another set of charges that Hunter
could have considered filing.
Under Colorado law it is illegal to conceal a death if
doing so "prevents a determination of the cause or circumstances of death." The
first report the Ramseys made to law enforcement was that their daughter was
missing and they'd found a ransom note indicating she'd been kidnapped. If the
fiber evidence is what prosecutors say it is and if the Ramseys staged the crime
scene, the Ramseys knew otherwise. If they decided to conceal the death of their
daughter from law enforcement, they effectively "prevented" police from
determining the circumstances of JonBenet's death. Police still don't know how
she died. The maximum penalty for concealing a death is six-months
imprisonment.
It is also illegal for someone to make a report to law
enforcement "of a crime or other incident [emphasis added] within their
official concern when he knows that it did not occur." None of the statements in
the interviews with the Ramseys could be the basis for perjury charges because
the Ramseys were not under oath. But "false statement" charges do not require
that the person making the statement be under oath. Anyone walking into a police
station faces the charge if he or she makes a statement about an incident of
police interest he/she knows to be false. The maximum penalty on conviction is a
prison term of up to 18 months per false statement.
"Concealing a death" and "false statement" charges are
misdemeanors. D.A. Hunter also could have considered a felony charge of
falsifying evidence. Under Colorado law, anyone who "destroys, mutilates,
conceals, removes or alters physical evidence with intent to impair its verity
or availability" or "knowingly makes, presents or offers any false or altered
evidence" has illegally tampered with evidence if they believe a law-enforcement
investigation is "about to be instituted." Violators are subject to a prison
term of 18 months.
Normally, these types of charges are filed in conjunction
with charges involving an underlying crime. The cover-up was, say, hatched to
hide a wrongful death, for example. But it's not a requirement for conviction
that prosecutors prove — or even allege — an underlying crime. Coloradans have
seen a recent, high-profile example of this in the case of
Koleen Brooks, an ex-mayor of a mountain town, ex-stripper and Playboy
pin-up, who was charged with tampering with evidence and false statements after
she claimed she'd been assaulted. She was in the midst of a bid to stave-off a
recall attempt at the time. Brooks said her political enemies were behind the
assault. Prosecutors alleged she invented a phantom assault in a bid for
sympathy from voters. Voters recalled Brooks, and earlier this year she was
convicted of a misdemeanor count of making a false statement, but acquitted of
the more serious felony count of tampering with evidence.
Motive for Cover-up?
Although prosecutors don't have to prove an underlying
crime, it helps to be able to provide jurors with a motive for the conduct of
defendants. This is why the accident/cover-up theory is a powerful tool for
prosecutors in the JonBenet case. Clearly any discussion of a possible motive
for cover-up involves some speculation. There are, however, several pieces of
evidence that are useful to prosecutors.
The forensic pathologists analyzing the case for Boulder
police estimated that between 10 and 45 minutes passed between the time JonBenet
sustained her head wound and the time she was strangled, according to author
Schiller. If JonBenet's death were the result of an accident, John and Patsy
Ramsey would have been faced with an excruciating decision, because reporting
the accident would have jeopardized what was left of their family. Officials
with the Boulder County social services agency are charged under state law with
protecting children, and are authorized to seek a court order removing a child
from a home if they believe the child "is neglected or dependent
if a parent has subjected him ... to mistreatment or
abuse...or the child lacks proper parental care through the actions or omissions
of a parent...or the child's environment is injurious to his ... welfare ... or
the parent ... fails to provide the child with proper care..." Social services
personnel would have had to make an assessment about whether it was safe to
leave Burke in the home of a family in which a 6-year-old sibling died as the
result of what at best was an accident. If they concluded the parents or Burke
were likely negligent (or that they needed time to investigate), that could have
led to the removal of Burke from the home. And then John and Patsy Ramsey would
have, in effect, lost two children and Patsy's only remaining child (John has
two children from a prior marriage).
Precipitating a cover-up and creating a kidnapper/intruder
scenario, however, would have avoided having to make disclosures that called
into question their fitness as parents, without much additional risk. It's not
hard to envision any parent facing those circumstances deciding — in the panic
of the night — to take a gamble.
If this is the decision they made, it's worked for them so
far. They would have succeeded in what would have been the primary aim of any
parents under similar circumstances: keeping Burke out of the hands of a foster
home or adoptive parents. "The reason Patsy and I have come through this," John
told investigators when they asked whether he had considered suicide, "is
because we have Burke. If we didn't have other children, we probably would have
checked out a long time ago."
Investigators asked Patsy about the accident theory in
1998. "We'll say that JonBenet got up (sometime during the night)," Det. Tom
Haney theorized, "and someone in that house, legally, lawfully in that house,
one of the three of you, also happens to be up, or gets up because she makes
noise. And there's some discussion or something happens. There's an accident.
Somebody..."
Patsy interrupts. "You're going down the wrong path,
buddy," she said. "If she got up in the night and ran into somebody, it was
somebody that wasn't supposed to be there. I don't know what transpired after
that. Whether it was an accident, intentional, premeditated or whatnot. But it
was not one of the three members that were also in that house. Period, end of
statement."
How then does Patsy square her assertion that no one in
the house was involved and that JonBenet was asleep from the moment she arrived
home and was awakened by the person who killed her, with the evidence JonBenet
ate pineapple sometime after arriving home Christmas evening? She had no
explanation. "It just doesn't fit," she acknowledged.
Investigators also asked John Ramsey whether he had
considered the possibility his daughter had died as the result of an accident.
"How could it?" he asked. "The child was strangled. Her head was bashed in. That
was not an accident."
In fact, however, the Ramseys have had personal experience
with an accident involving Burke and JonBenet. In 1993, when Burke was 6 and his
sister 3, Burke was swinging a club or bat one day when JonBenet walked up from
behind him and disaster struck. JonBenet "got clobbered," John Ramsey told
prosecutors. "It was a pure accident."
Patsy told investigators she remembers JonBenet's
reaction. "She screamed bloody murder," Patsy said. JonBenet was rushed to a
hospital. Mom was so concerned about whether JonBenet would ever completely heal
that she says she took her daughter to a plastic surgeon. He told her the
abrasion would eventually go away. It did. But the parents had learned that
despite the best of intentions, accidents happen and people get seriously hurt.
Still another attractive feature of the accident/cover-up
theory for prosecutors in a case in which the charges are based on the
accusation that the parents covered up what happened to the daughter is that
they could suggest that JonBenet had been sexually abused. This avenue would
offer one way of explaining the sort of rage that might have led someone accidentally
to delivering a blow to JonBenet's head serious enough to
kill her.
Pathologists working with Boulder police say that
JonBenet's vagina showed indications of long-term sexual abuse, according to Det.
Thomas, citing "a panel of pediatric experts from around the country." He
doesn't name them. He writes there were "no dissenting opinions among them."
"We gathered affidavits stating in clear language," he
writes, "that there were injuries (to JonBenet's vagina) 'consistent with prior
trauma and sexual abuse'....'There was chronic abuse'...'Past violation of the
vagina'... 'Evidence of both acute injury and chronic sexual abuse.'"
"One expert summed it up well," Thomas writes, "when he
said the injuries were not consistent with sexual assault but with a child who
was being physically abused."
Apparently referring to the reports of the pathologists,
Det. Haney told Patsy during the 1998 interview that police had "reliable
medical information" that JonBenet had been sexually abused well prior to her
death. Haney did not indicate how often JonBenet had been abused, but the
conclusion of the medical experts that the abuse had occurred well prior to her
death meant that if JonBenet had been murdered by an intruder, the intruder
wasn't responsible for the sexual abuse, unless the intruder was someone who had
also been alone with JonBenet on numerous occasions well before her death.
"That's one of the things that's been bothering us about
this case," Haney said.
"No damned kidding," Patsy said.
"What does it tell you?
"It doesn't tell me anything! I'm...I don't...I...my...I
just am shocked, is all I can say. And I don't...I don't know what to think. I
mean I'm...I just wanna see where it says that."
The possibility that appropriate sexual boundaries were
not being followed in the Ramsey household was something authorities considered
in the aftermath of JonBenet's death. Boulder Detective Linda Arndt suggested in
a 2000 deposition in connection with a suit she filed against the city that
social services personnel considered more than the possibility that John Ramsey
was sexually abusing his daughter. She said her opinions about the case had been
dismissed by her law enforcement colleagues, as had the opinions of "all of the
department of social services."
Question: Which opinions were these?
Answer: Incest, naming the Ramseys as suspects.
Q: This is incest between John Ramsey and JonBenet?
A: Yes, to the whole incest dynamic in the family.
Q: But involving John Ramsey and JonBenet, any other
members?
A: Well, specifically because she's the one who's dead.
Q: But when you refer again to incest, it could involve
any number of family members. I'm just trying to identify the family members
when you use that term.
A: Well, there's a whole dynamic, because everybody's got
a role in the family.
Q: The incest has an effect on family members, does it
not?
A: Well, in general terms that covers it when you talk
about an act, but I'm talking about the dynamic.
Q: I understand about the dynamic, but I want to get the
predicate first. The participants in the incest, when you refer to incest,
you're referring to John Ramsey and JonBenet and no other family members?
A: I refer to every member of the family. Every member has
a role.
Q: But in terms of the sexual act that's implicit in the
term of "incest," you're referring to John Ramsey and JonBenet?
A: Yes
Patsy was apparently concerned enough about some aspect of
JonBenet or Burke's moral compass that she mentioned her concern to her father.
He gave her the 1992 book Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong, she
told police, in which then Boston College education professor William Kilpatrick
argued that kids were morally adrift in part because "our present culture sends
out confusing and misleading messages about sex." The result, he wrote, is that
"when teens are confronted by adults over sexual misbehaviors, a frequent
response is simply, "I didn't know it was wrong.'"
Kilpatrick didn't mention beauty pageants for 6-year-olds
as part of the problem. He cited sex-education courses in which sex is taught as
though there is no moral component. "The point (of these classes)," Kilpatrick
wrote, "is to be able to view sex as a nonmoral, nonromantic recreational
activity." That's a formula for trouble, Kilpatrick wrote, because it fuels a
range of sex-related problems (adultery, diseases, neglected children). "Sooner
or later," he argued, "sexual irresponsibility...become (s) everyone's problem."
Police did not ask Patsy during their interviews with her
what had prompted her father to give her the book.
One particular form of sexual irresponsibility seems to
have been on the mind of someone in the Ramsey household soon before or just
after JonBenet was killed. Det. Thomas claims in his book that a police
photograph taken in the Ramsey home the morning of the "kidnapping" shows that
someone had opened a Webster's New World Dictionary, turned the pages to
"i," and creased the page so that it pointed directly to the word "incest"
("sexual intercourse between persons too closely related to marry legally").
Investigators did not ask the Ramseys to explain this during their interviews
with him.
The evidence indicating that JonBenet had been sexually
abused well prior to her death enables prosecutors to suggest to jurors a
two-pronged motive for cover-up: If JonBenet were the victim of inappropriate
sexual behavior, disclosure of which would have threatened the chances that what
remained of the family would have been allowed to stay together, that could have
sparked the sort of rage that could have led to an accidental blow to the head
serious enough to kill, an accident that would have generated questions about
whether Burke should be allowed to stay in the home even absent inappropriate
sexual behavior.
The final feature of the accident/cover-up theory that's
helpful to prosecutors is that it allows them to leave unresolved the question
of who caused JonBenet's head wound and why. This question is central in a
murder case. In an accident/cover-up case it doesn't matter. It wouldn't matter
if the blow to the head were delivered by a sibling jealous of the attention
JonBenet was getting, angry about JonBenet bringing her soiled self into his bed
(she had a bed-wetting problem), or enraged by his sister's declaration that she
was going to tell their parents she was upset about his "playing doctor" with
her privates, or by a distraught Mom or Dad angered by more bed-wetting, or by
discovery of some instance of sibling rivalry run amok. Take your pick. Craft
your own scenario. They're all variations of an accident.
It's not possible from the evidence to tell what happened.
It is possible to realize that from a legal standpoint, it
doesn't matter. Under any variation, what happened wasn't murder because the
only people in the house at the time she died had no reason to kill her or were
too young to have the requisite intent. The evidence can be read to suggest one
hypothesis of what happened that night: JonBenet's death was an accident the
result of, at worst, negligence, a tragedy compounded by a deliberate and
premeditated decision to cover-up, and hang on tight, together, all for one and
one for all to protect what remained of the family.
If that's what happened, it was also a decision that made
a personal tragedy a public tragedy that cost the taxpayers of Boulder County $1
million or more, fueled a media circus, forced the expenditure of untold blood,
sweat and tears on the investigation of an accident, and diverted resources
from, among other investigations, the search for the killer of Susannah Chase,
who was bludgeoned to death in a Boulder alley a year after JonBenet was killed.
Her case remains unsolved.
Prosecutor Michael Kane is among those who have concluded
that JonBenet wasn't murdered. Kane was brought on board by Boulder D.A. Hunter
in 1998 to prepare for the possibility of a grand jury inquiry. He was the lead
prosecutor working with the grand jury into late 1999, when it was announced
that the jury had concluded its work without issuing any indictments. And he was
one of the prosecutors who interviewed the Ramseys a year later.
"I think it (JonBenet's death) was something (that came
about) through an accident, and then everything else was staged — and the
staging was so overdone," Kane said last year, according to the Globe.
"Patsy is a very theatrical person and it was a very theatrical production."
(Other media ignored Kane's comments, perhaps in part because the Globe
is just a supermarket tabloid). Kane declined to comment for this article.
So, if D.A. Hunter's own lead prosecutor believes JonBenet
died as the result of an accident and if the evidence he had suggested the
Ramseys covered up the circumstances of their daughter's death, why didn't he
file charges pertaining to concealing a death, false statements, and/or
tampering with evidence charges?
Why Haven't Cover-up Charges Been Filed?
There's no indication in the public record that Boulder
officials have even considered filing cover-up charges against the Ramseys.
Det. Thomas — who doesn't mention the possibility of
filing cover-up charges in his book on the case — writes that prosecutors
didn't feel up to the burden of prosecuting any case against the Ramseys,
particularly not against the legal talent that would have been arrayed against
them (the Ramseys had hired one of Colorado's foremost criminal defense firms).
"Years of plea bargaining had made them paper tigers," Thomas charges, noting
that under Hunter, Boulder prosecutors rarely took cases to trial because they
favored plea bargains so strongly.
Filing cover-up charges would also have been an implicit
admission that the investigation had failed to determine beyond a reasonable
doubt how JonBenet died or who was responsible. There is no statute of
limitations on murder, so perhaps Hunter felt the best prospect for justice was
to wait until the evidence shows how JonBenet died and who was responsible. But
short of a confession, the evidence will never establish that.
The most dismaying way to explain Hunter's failure to file
false-statement and tampering-with-evidence charges against the Ramseys is that
prosecutors don't like to file charges to solve mysteries. The legal system is a
poor venue for truth seeking and prosecutors aren't trained to consider criminal
charges as appropriate ways to solve mysteries. Their job is to prosecute
lawbreakers. Cover-up charges are minor-league charges compared to murder
charges. Hunter and his team may have been intent on bringing murder charges or
none at all. "Just because she (Patsy) wrote the note doesn't mean we can prove
a murder," Det. Thomas quotes one of Hunter's prosecutors as saying, as though
that was the only possible charge.
The most intriguing possibility for the failure to file
cover-up charges against the Ramseys is that prosecutors figured out — or were
told by the Ramsey lawyers — soon after the killing that what had happened was
the result of an accident, and that there was therefore no public interest to be
served in prosecuting anyone. The Ramseys certainly don't represent a threat to
anyone else, and what would be the point of punishing them for the cover-up when
they'd lost a child they loved in an accident? If they covered up the
circumstances of their daughter's death, their motive was selfish but hardly venal.
If JonBenet did, in fact, die as the result of an
accident, as lead prosecutor Kane says he believes, maybe, despite the
widespread hand wringing about the lack of criminal charges, the interests of
justice have been served after all. Maybe John and Patsy Ramsey have been
punished enough already.
Certainly there were times when prosecutors acted as
though they felt that way. Hunter and his team bent over backwards to
accommodate the interests and concerns of the Ramseys and their lawyers,
according to numerous published accounts. They didn't quickly insist on in-depth
interviews with the parents. They shared information from the police
investigation with the Ramsey legal team. They hand-carried letters from Ramsey
lawyers to investigators. They refused to convene a grand jury to compel
testimony under penalty of perjury until 18 months after the killing, and then
did so only under political pressure from then Colorado Gov. Roy Romer. And they
didn't act on the requests of police investigators to obtain court-authorized
subpoenas for the Ramsey's telephone and credit card records.
"The D.A.'s office stonewalled us," Det. Thomas complains.
The problem with the approach taken by prosecutors, even
if motivated by the belief that JonBenet died as the result of an accident and
that there was no point in prosecuting her parents for the cover-up, is that it
has left police devoting extraordinary resources to chasing a phantom murderer,
and the public grappling with the consequences of a mystery, still under the
impression JonBenet was murdered, still nowhere near the truth, and not likely
to get it — ever.
Why the New D.A. Isn't Up to the Job
Hunter's judgments about the case are no longer relevant
because his term ended early 2001 when he chose not to run for re-election.
Unfortunately, his successor doesn't show any more inclination to get to the
bottom of the case than he did.
New
D.A. Mary Keenan, who was an assistant
D.A. under Hunter, didn't take any publicly known action on the case until
nearly two years into her term, and then she did so only after receiving a
letter from Ramsey attorney Wood informing her, according to press reports, that
the Ramseys were considering suing Boulder unless they were exonerated.
Keenan didn't tell Boulder residents of her decision to
take an active role in the case, but she did tell Ramsey attorney Wood. In a
letter to him, she said the Boulder police investigation of the Ramseys had been
"exhaustive and thorough," that she would proceed without any further
investigation by police, using her department's own investigators, that she
would focus on new leads or leads not previously investigated, that she would
work "cooperatively" with retired detective Smit who is the prime advocate of
the intruder theory, that she would make "every effort to communicate openly
with you," and that she would not go to the press to publicize her decision.
She was acting, she wrote, because a "violent child
murderer is at large."
Ramsey attorney Wood was delighted. His clients "are out
from the umbrella of suspicion," he declared.
Keenan is either unaware of the evidence that gives
prosecutors reason to believe that the Ramseys perpetrated a cover-up, or she
has decided not to act on it. And she seems oblivious to the indications that
JonBenet wasn't murdered and that there was no intruder.
Indeed, with her comment that there is "a violent child murderer at large,"
Keenan endorsed the Ramseys' theory of the case and absolved them of responsibility for what
happened to their daughter, ignoring the police conclusion that there is a "probability" the
Ramseys were involved in the death of their daughter.
Keenan also aligned herself with the Ramseys when earlier
this month she described the ruling of the judge who tossed out the defamation
suit against the Ramseys last month as "thoughtful and well reasoned," even
though she knew the judge didn’t have access to the evidence in police files. Keenan didn’t
respond to a request for comment for this article.
More importantly, even if Keenan wanted to solve the case
without pussyfooting with the Ramseys, she is ill-equipped to do so. The D.A.'s
staff has only two investigators, neither of whom is trained to do a homicide
investigation, former Boulder assistant D.A. Bill Wise told the Rocky
Mountain News in February. Keenan has cut herself off from the investigative
resources she needs to pursue the case.
Prosecutor Kane says Keenan was among the members of
Hunter's team who believe JonBenet had been killed by an intruder. He says
Keenan's letter to the Ramseys was inappropriate. "I don't think that as a
district attorney you send a letter to someone who is still under suspicion,
basically saying to them that we're going to look elsewhere," he complained in
December on a cable TV show.
All this makes Keenan ill-equipped to carry the case
forward. But the biggest reason she's the wrong person to do so is that if John
and Patsy Ramsey covered up the circumstances of their daughter's death, they
won't drop their cover-up and tell what happened unless they're faced with
prosecutors determined to throw them in prison for as many years as possible, or
at least prepared to act like they are.
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens
can intervene and
call for the appointment of a special prosecutor. Each of his predecessors has
ordered probes by the state attorney general's office in cases in which local D.A.s
either couldn't be trusted or had decided not to act. In 1976, then Gov.
Richard Lamm ordered the state attorney general to look into allegations of
public corruption in two counties. Seven public officials were charged and
convicted as a result. In 1998, then Gov. Roy Romer intervened after a local
D.A. declined to prosecute in a sex-abuse case. A special prosecutor
subsequently convicted three people.
In the Ramsey case, the political downside for Owens if
he were to intervene are minimal. Keenan would be furious and he'd ruffle some
feathers among Boulder County officials, most of whom are Democrats anyway
(Owens is a Republican), and most of whom desperately want the Ramsey to go away
for fear the city will get more bad publicity. Conversely, the political upside
for Owens is high. Owens would win national attention, he would win kudos for
leadership, and either the prosecutor he appointed would break the case open, in
which case Owens would rightfully bask in the limelight, or Owens would win
points for at least getting the case into the hands of someone who could make
one final, objective assessment about whether there is evidence to support
charges, and if so which ones against whom.
There is, as it happens, a Denver area D.A. well
positioned to take over the case. One of Denver D.A. Bill Ritter's assistant
D.A.s spent nearly two years working on the case with Hunter and Kane. In
addition Ritter has a stable of homicide investigators, one of whom is Det. Tom
Haney, the same detective who interviewed Patsy Ramsey in 1998. Haney worked the
case over the course of nearly two years while on loan to Boulder police and is
familiar with all in the evidence in the case through 1998 when he played a key
role during a formal presentation of the evidence to D.A. Hunter and a team of
experts. Ritter would not have to start from the beginning if he had the case.
And he's even a Democrat, which would insulate Owens against charges he's
motivated by considerations of partisanship.
Gov. Owens has a mixed record on matters involving
judicial investigations. He botched a review of the 1999 massacre at Columbine
High School by refusing to give subpoena power to the panel he named to probe
the disaster, and by naming a panel that declared from the outset that it wasn't
going to evaluate the actions of law enforcement in responding to the disaster,
even though that was precisely the question that needed the most scrutiny.
But Owens has shown a willingness to put some PR heat on
the Ramseys. In 1999 he told them to "quit hiding" behind their hired help and
"come back to Colorado and work with us to find the killers." He declined to
name a special prosecutor at that time, but that was in part because he said
there was "substantial new evidence" that was just then being analyzed.
That was more than three years ago now. Whatever hope
Owens had at the time that the new evidence would result in charges has been
dashed. As a politician, Owens has ostensibly more of an interest in getting at
the truth of what happened to JonBenet than prosecutors. But first someone would
have to tell him to take another look at the case. There's no indication it's on
his radar screen. He hasn't spoken publicly on it since his 1999 comments.
Unfortunately, there's not much time for Owens to act. The
statute of limitation on the misdemeanor charges the Ramseys could be charged
with is 18 months. Under Colorado law the "ticking of the clock" stopped once
the Ramseys left Colorado in mid-1997, but resumed after 5 years, or in mid
2002. That means that prosecutors have until June 26 of this year to file the
misdemeanor charges or forever pass on that option.
They have until the end of 2005 to file tampering with
evidence charges. But the chances of securing a deal resolving the case increase
the more leverage prosecutors have over the Ramseys.
And the most likely way the case is going to be solved is
with a deal.
The Deal to Solve the Mystery
There are four components to one possible deal.
First, assuming that the fiber evidence shows what
prosecutors privately claimed it shows, that the other evidence cited by Det.
Thomas and available from other sources stands up to scrutiny, and that a
special prosecutor reviewing the evidence finds it is sufficient to support
cover-up charges, John and Patsy Ramsey, in order to avoid a trial, would need
to plead guilty to a felony count of tampering with evidence. If the prosecutor
has sufficient evidence to charge the Ramseys with a felony and multiple
misdemeanor "false statement" counts, that would give the prosecutor
considerable leverage. Just three misdemeanor and a felony charges would mean
the Ramseys would face several years in prison if convicted. The prosecutor
could also dangle a willingness to recommend light sentences.
Second, the prosecutor could insist that the Ramseys
compensate Boulder County for the resources its officials diverted into trying
to unravel their cover-up. The Ramseys would be amenable to such a payment if
the amount the prosecutor seeks is less than what the Ramseys' attorneys and
experts would charge them to defend them against criminal charges.
Third, and most importantly, the prosecutor would need to
get the most elusive prize of all: the truth. John and Patsy should be required
to drop the cover-up, and explain what they know about what happened — all of
what they know — under oath and penalty of perjury, with the transcript of
their testimony put into the public record.
Why would the Ramseys be willing to drop the cover-up
after sticking to it the past six years? They would, of course, be tempted by
the prospect of avoiding a trial on felony charges and, if they're convicted,
spending years in prison. But the key to get them to talk is to give them the
one thing they crave as much as the public craves the truth: the assurance their
family (what's left of it) will not be ripped apart, no matter the truth.
Here's one way to cinch the deal: Allow the Ramseys to
keep within the family the secret of what caused the accident that resulted in
their daughter's death, as long as they acknowledge the cover-up. The whole
truth would be better. A big chunk of the truth would be better than what we are
stuck with today: an eternal mystery, the lingering suspicion there's a child
murderer on the loose, and an investigation that's going nowhere.
So a deal that is there to be made — a deal that would
resolve the case — is this: a guilty plea by each parent to a felony count of
evidence tampering, a recommendation for leniency, and the truth of what
happened that night (or as much of it as prosecutors can get), in return for no
or short prison terms and the right to keep what's left of the family together
-- no matter what happened that night.
The circus surrounding the death of the 6-year-old beauty
queen could then be taken down, and Boulder authorities could redirect their law
enforcement resources in more appropriate ways. D.A. Keenan could start, for
example, by asking Police Chief Beckner if there's anything she can do to help
find the killer of Susannah Chase, the woman bludgeoned to death a year after
JonBenet.
In that case, there's a murder to be solved.
Editor's Note: If you want to encourage Colorado Gov.
Owens to appoint a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of the mystery of
JonBenet's killing, call 303-866-2471 or email him here:
governorowens@state.co.us. To sign a petition requesting that the governor appoint a special
prosecutor, click here.
Ryan Ross is a legal affairs writer based in Denver. He
has been published in the Washington Post, the National Law Journal,
the ABA Journal and Legal Times, among other publications, and has
twice appeared as an expert on "Nightline." He
can be reached by email at Mtnry@aol.com.
Additional Reading:
Updated:
The Murder of
JonBenet Ramsey by J.J. Maloney and
J. Patrick O'Connor.
(Updated 08/19/06)
Astoundingly, this highest of high-profile murder case goes unsolved. It will
most probably remain so despite the sensational arrest in Bangkok of a
41-year-old child-sex-offender who claimed to be with JonBenet when she died.
John Mark Karr's arrest will demonstrate anew how inept JonBenet's investigation
has been from the beginning.
Click here to view the autopsy report and other documents related to the JonBenet Ramsey case.
