Morgan described the very noticeable difference in his cellmate the second time around.
“He was bugging out,” Morgan kept saying. “He’s always been nuts, but he kept it in check before. Now he was like a wild man, he was so upset, like terrified. And he was pissed at Jeremy Fischer.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He was going on and on about what he told Jeremy,” Morgan continued. “That he never admitted he had sex with Etan Patz. He said he told Jeremy he was with a boy, and that he had sex with this boy but that he never said that it was Patz. Now, I could never tell if Ramos was making that up to cover something.”
Galligan very deliberately didn’t make eye contact with Stuart GraBois. In her recent conversation with Jeremy he’d graphically contradicted Ramos’s denials about sex with Etan. Sounds like a man in a panic, trying to backtrack and lay groundwork for claiming Jeremy Fischer’s a liar, she thought.
Morgan told Galligan and GraBois about Ramos’s near breakdown and how the overwrought man had been convinced Fischer was talking to authorities. Morgan repeated Ramos’s mantra about how no one could touch him because “there’s no body.” And he recounted the dream about burning bodies that had woken Ramos one night, and the revelations about the boiler.
Galligan had already heard about Ramos’s nightmare from Morgan’s notes smuggled out of the cell. GraBois had mentioned it too, less interested in the psychology of Ramos’s nightmare than what it had led the man to reveal. If Ramos so intimately knew the internal workings of an oversized boiler in his own building, it might indeed explain what had happened to Etan’s body, a mystery that had dogged every investigator over the last twelve years. In New York City, there were only a few places you could successfully hide a body without someone finding it. Even in the East River, which had always been a favorite theory, bodies eventually surface.
Now, as GraBois sat across the room and let Morgan tell it, Galligan was intrigued too. While it wasn’t proof of anything, she thought, it just made sense. With access to the basement boiler, Ramos would never have had to leave his building with the evidence. It would just go up in smoke. And with no physical trace of a body, no matter what else happened in this case, there would forever be room for doubt.
Mary Galligan recalled the day she’d met Stan and Julie Patz when she oversaw their blood being drawn so their DNA could be compared to P.J. Fox’s.
“I just want to bury my son,” Julie had said to her that day. Listening to Jon Morgan repeat Ramos’s description of unscrewing the burn box, removing it, and crawling inside to clean it, Mary considered that there might never be anything for the Patzes to bury.
She forced her mind back to the business at hand, but Morgan was off topic.
“At one point Ramos said he knew the Zodiac killer.” Name dropper, Galligan thought scornfully.
“And he was absolutely obsessed with the book The Silence of the Lambs. He wanted to see Jodie Foster in the movie. And he said he thought the Buffalo Bill character was very unprofessional.”
“Did he say anything else specifically about Etan Patz?” she asked Morgan, trying to get him back on track.
Morgan looked at his notes, which he later gave to Galligan.
“He asked me about that statute of limitations question again. He was always wanting me to explain to him the statute of limitations for kidnapping. Oh yeah, I forgot, he did say at one point that in his mind, the Patz kid was the kid he took on May 25.”
Galligan’s cynical side didn’t put much stock in that revelation. Morgan would have known they’d want to hear that and could have easily come up with it himself.
“But then he said he never told Jeremy that the kid was Etan, and he’d go on and on about how Jeremy was a snitch. I don’t know what he told Jeremy, but whatever it was it seemed to scare the crap out of him. When he saw the name GraBois on that typewriter ribbon, he was convinced you”—he nodded toward the prosecutor—“were behind the whole thing. He kept saying GraBois was going to pay for it. By the time I got out of there he was convinced the room was bugged, that Jeremy was already in a grand jury, and that I would be called in next. I’m telling you, I never met anyone as paranoid as Ramos.”
It reminded her of that old expression, Galligan thought, as she cuffed Morgan to take him back to the marshals. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
CHAPTER 26
Nothing to Lose
“Do your job, just don’t ever forget what he is.”
“And what’s that? Do you know?”
“I know he’s a monster. Beyond that, nobody can say for sure. Maybe you’ll find out.”
—Jack Crawford assigns Clarice Starling to interview Hannibal Lecter, Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs
Whether or not there was enough to convict him, the evidence was mounting that Jose Ramos had killed Etan Patz. But neither informant had gotten Ramos to make a full confession or say what he’d done with the body, and Morgan and Fischer had gone as far as they could. The next step, GraBois and Galligan ultimately agreed, was to confront Ramos and hope for him to do the unexpected. He’d done it before, especially when he was thrown off balance, like that day in GraBois’s office, when he made the “90 percent confession.” And according to Jon Morgan, Ramos was already teetering on the edge.
“The most important thing I heard from Morgan was that Ramos acted so crazed coming out of Fischer’s cell,” Galligan mused as she and GraBois reviewed her notes. “He sounded like he was falling apart. And the ‘They can’t get me—there’s no body’ line where Ramos kept having to be reassured he hadn’t hung himself out to dry? Morgan may not have directly corroborated everything Fischer got, but it sounds like Ramos realized he’d just made serious admissions to someone working for the other side.”
Now they had to decide the best way to get Ramos to make even more admissions. Should they bring him to New York? Double-team him? Play good cop/bad cop? The reality was, their options were limited. They didn’t have much to offer him—neither carrot nor stick—that would pry out a confession, persuade him to admit he had killed a child. But you didn’t not interview someone because you doubt he’s going to confess.
“The odds that he’ll give us everything are pretty low,” GraBois acknowledged. “He has nothing to gain by confessing. But at this point, we’ve got nothing to lose by talking to him.”
“A group of profilers are up in New York this week for meetings,” Galligan said. “Let me pick their brains.”
The FBI Behavior Analysis Unit was a legendary, elite group within the Bureau. Out of some thirteen thousand agents, fewer than forty were full-time profilers. Highly trained specialists in behavioral and forensic sciences, they studied violent crime cases and the psychopathology of the criminals who commit them. They didn’t spend all their time in mindlock with serial killers, learning what made them tick so as to stop other serial killers, but that certainly was their public image, especially after the release of Jose Ramos’s—and everyone else’s—must-see film of that year, The Silence of the Lambs.
After hearing the case history, the profilers agreed an interview was the next step. But one thing was clear, they stressed. Stuart GraBois was toxic to Ramos, and he should have no part in the conversation. He can’t be within miles of the place, one behaviorist told Galligan, or Ramos won’t say a word.
“I understand,” GraBois said when the agent relayed the consensus opinion. As much as he wanted to get his hands on Ramos again, if it was not what was best for the case, he had no problem stepping back.
It was Mary Galligan who looked pained, standing in front of his desk. “There’s more.”
“Yes?”
“Not only do they say you shouldn’t be there, but we may be forced to disavow you if he starts railing, which of course you can count on. We might even have to rail a little with him.”
“Mary, say whatever you have to,” GraBois replied, a smile playing at the corners of h
is mouth. “I don’t care what you have to tell Ramos about me. Because it’s not going to be true.”
Over the next week, Galligan talked often to the profilers, now back at Quantico. They put her on speakerphone and asked a million questions, then tag-teamed a practice session, role-playing Ramos to help her develop a series of themes that might draw Ramos out.
“Appeal to his religion…” or “Leverage a visit with his parents…” or “Ask him to give the Patz family the closure they deserve.” If one doesn’t work, they said, you’d better have a dozen others ready. She solicited suggestions from everyone in the squad and sat at her desk writing a packet of index cards.
Galligan would be the lead agent on this interview, but Special Agent John Winslow was chosen as her backup. A fifteen-year veteran, Winslow was the senior agent on the squad and the most seasoned agent Galligan had ever met. He was famous for a number of daring cases, including one of GraBois’s, where he’d masqueraded as an IRA member—with a flawless Irish accent—pretending to buy plutonium from a Canadian mobster. Since he’d had no previous involvement in the Patz investigation, Winslow had Galligan sit in the bullpen area of the squad room, and he drilled her on the history of the case, to prepare them both. In the end, she boiled all her material down to a one-page cheat sheet, which she tucked into an innocuous manila folder to keep in her lap for reference, together with a five-by-seven color photograph of Etan Patz.
It was only a few hours’ drive from her home to FCI Otisville, and Mary Galligan felt like she needed every second to strategize. She’d met up with John Winslow at a rest stop—he was coming from another direction—and they drove the rest of the way together. Since it was her case, it was understood she’d do most of the talking, unless for whatever reason Ramos seemed to respond better to Winslow.
Everyone at the office knew where she was going today, and not just the rest of her squad, but her family too, and some of her closest friends; she was at once excited and nervous, and felt the burden of the twelve years that previous investigators had spent to get her to this point. And after all those months of her own time investigating this man, today she was going to look in his eyes and make her own judgment.
A few miles away from the prison, they passed a work crew of inmates on horseback traveling down the side of the road. Galligan realized that other than New York City’s MCC, this was her first federal prison. When the agents arrived at the Otisville front gate, Galligan could feel the anxiety jump-starting her nerves. For weeks in the back of her mind, she’d nurtured a wishful scene, a fantasy that had helped her through the late-night hours drilling on the case’s facts and themes.
Blessed Mother, Mary Galligan silently prayed, the ingrained habits of a lifetime of Catholic school kicking in, help me get the confession so the Patz family can finally know what happened.
Winslow gave their names to the guard and the two waited to be cleared through. When the man came back, he shrugged indifferently.
“He doesn’t want to see you,” the guard said.
Galligan was enraged, both at Ramos and herself for being so naive. During all those weeks of preparation and endless mock conversations in her head, it somehow had never occurred to her he could just refuse to talk.
“I understand,” Winslow said smoothly. “But we need to hear him tell us that himself. Have him brought down and we’ll wait.”
The agents busied themselves signing in, and when they were done they were led to a narrow cinderblock interview room. Through the chicken-wire-laced window of the door they could see it was bare except for three chairs, one already occupied by Jose Ramos. As Galligan and Winslow walked in, the smell of overripe, unwashed inmate assailed them. They sat down with their backs to the door as Ramos grunted, “I told them I didn’t want to see you.” He was uncuffed, his arms and legs crossed defiantly. His beard was a tangled mass, and his fingernails were startlingly long. A yarmulke perched on his long gray hair.
Galligan and Winslow stayed in their chairs, silent, acclimatizing themselves to the stench. A minute or two passed. Ramos sat there scowling but he didn’t ask to be taken out. She noticed he was loaded down with a stack of documents, newspaper clips, and other papers, and eyed them conspicuously until Ramos followed her gaze.
“All right,” he finally said. “I’ll talk to you, but it’s gonna be what I want to talk about and nothing else.”
Winslow had advised Galligan on the drive up to listen for the cue to weave Miranda rights into the conversation, and now she jumped in.
“You know, I’m really glad you said that, because, you know, Jose, you don’t have to talk to us if you don’t want to, you understand that, right?”
Ramos nodded.
“And you know if you want to you can have an attorney, you understand that, right?” GraBois had counseled her to stop and confirm that Ramos understood her as she listed each one of the four lines of Miranda, so that no one later could claim he hadn’t been aware of what she was saying. She made it through her spiel, proud of how conversational she’d played it, and nonetheless terrified he’d ask for a lawyer. If he did this whole trip was a waste. But Ramos waved his hand at her, as if to signal how transparent her careful efforts had been.
“Yeah, yeah, I know my rights.” And that was that. He had no visitors and was still in lonely segregation, so he had plenty to say. Galligan began to calm down. She didn’t think Ramos would be asking for a lawyer.
“Did Stuart GraBois send you here?” Ramos said the name like it was a curse.
“No.” The behaviorists had been clear—whatever you do, don’t lie, they’d said, it will only trip you up. Ramos wasn’t stupid—he knew very well they were FBI agents and GraBois was an assistant U.S. attorney. But it was true that he hadn’t sent them; they’d been planning this trip anyway.
“This isn’t about Stuart GraBois. He didn’t send us.”
This seemed to work, since Ramos immediately launched into a diatribe about GraBois’s persecution.
“What he’s done to me is illegal…” The rest of it washed over Galligan as she reverted to the agreed-upon strategy: Act like you’re bored, and steer him away when able. She was trying to figure out how to bring up the Patz case, when he beat her to it.
“I assume you’re here to talk to me about Etan Patz. Tell me, have you seen this Vanity Fair article about the Patz case?” Ramos asked. The new issue of Vanity Fair magazine included a long feature on the Pennsylvania Rainbow molestations and their link to the New York investigation, and the profilers had predicted that he’d be dying to see the article. “Do you have a copy I can read?”
“No, I’ve heard about it, but I don’t have a copy with me. I can try to get it for you, if you want,” Galligan offered. Because she knew she had almost nothing to offer Ramos, the agent was listening for anything that might turn into leverage. If he wanted the article, she could certainly get it for him. But she’d have to get something in return.
“What makes you think we’re here to talk about Etan Patz?” she ventured.
“Because everyone wants to talk to me about Etan Patz. People think I know something about the case.”
And then before she could find out what, the moment was gone, and Ramos was off on a tear about many other things. He flitted from topic to topic, and Galligan was reminded of the headaches Jon Morgan said he’d suffered while he tried to keep track of his conversations with Ramos. She alternated between letting her subject ramble to relax him and attempting to corral him back with the themes from her memorized list. Nothing worked. Ramos didn’t respond to the plea of closure for the Patz family, nor the idea of connecting him back with his own parents; that just got him going again about “Stu,” as he referred to GraBois. “Stu” was baiting him by dangling his family in front of him. More persecution.
Then Galligan tried one theme inspired by Jeremy Fischer. He’d talked about the different Ramoses—today’s good versus the bad, “other” Jose. Score more credibility points for Fischer—Ramos
seized on it. The “other” Ramos had been a terrible person. Now a different man sat before the FBI agents, reborn, in a sense, and able to distance himself from his predecessor.
It was the other Jose, Ramos stressed, who had been near Washington Square Park the day Etan disappeared when he saw a young boy playing handball in the park. The boy said his name was Jimmy, but he didn’t give his last name. This was new—she’d never heard the name “Jimmy” before. Was “Jimmy” really code for Etan? And if so could she get him to break the code? Galligan wrote down “Jimmy LNU,” the designation for “last name unknown.” The boy said he lived with his aunt in Washington Heights, at the northern tip of Manhattan.
“What did the boy look like?” Galligan asked him casually.
Ramos looked from one agent to the other. His response left Galligan nearly speechless.
“How tall was Etan Patz?”
“I, uh, we don’t know offhand, Jose,” Galligan replied.
The scathing look Ramos gave her in return said, “What kind of FBI agents are you?” Galligan didn’t take it personally. She was happy to let him be smarter. She was willing to be the dumbest person in the room if necessary.
“Okay, well, the boy in Washington Square Park was about four feet tall,” Ramos went on. “And he was definitely eight or nine years old. I remember reading that Etan Patz was seven.”
Galligan recalled what the profilers had said, that often the subject would assume authorities have evidence against him and are trying to catch out a lie. So he will tailor his story to incorporate true details, omitting only the incriminating ones. Even if they are fabrications, the experts had said, listen carefully because there will be truth laced throughout it.
“Then I took the boy to my apartment,” Ramos was saying.
“What happened when you got to your apartment?”
Ramos crossed his arms and again looked at her disdainfully. “I can’t answer that question,” he said, “because if I did, it would incriminate me.”
After Etan Page 39
