You’ll recall that in the Borden murders, Lizzie couldn’t avoid reporting the death of her father, but she went to some complicated lengths not to find the body of her stepmother herself. She orchestrated it so that Bridget Sullivan would be the one, and when Bridget refused to go upstairs alone, Lizzie still wouldn’t go and had Adelaide Churchill accompany the maid.
So the fact that John Ramsey was the one who found his daughter aroused my attention. From the scenario the attorneys had laid out, it would have been so easy for him to have said to Fleet White, “I’ll check the laundry room, you check the furnace room and wine cellar, then we’ll meet back here.” But he didn’t.
I was told that when JonBenet was found, a blanket was wrapped around her torso. Just her torso, I inquired.
Yes, the attorneys replied, her arms and legs were sticking out.
This was another important consideration. As we noted in the Lindbergh case, the way the body is left often tells us a lot about the relationship between the victim and the offender. Charlie Lindbergh’s body was casually tossed into the woods when it was no longer of any use to the kidnappers. No attempt was made to protect it from the elements or animals, and nothing caring or gentle was evident.
In the case of the man who killed his wife, on the other hand, the body was carefully wrapped in the blanket from their bed, so that nothing but her head was exposed. It was a protective, “considerate” presentation. We say that this shows a “proprietary interest” in the victim. Sometimes, it even demonstrates remorse on the part of a parent.
At first, I had been under the impression that such proprietary interest and consideration had been evident when JonBenet’s body was found, but this seemed to be a case of covering the body for convenience rather than any kind of protection or nurturing instinct.
When John Ramsey found JonBenet, a piece of black duct tape was across her mouth, her hands were tied, and a rope ligature was around her throat, tied from the rear. What interested me here was that John’s first instinct—the first thing he did—was to rip the tape from her mouth and attempt to untie the wrist ligature. He succeeded in loosening it but not removing it. Then he carried his daughter upstairs.
The first thing I had to ask myself was, if John Ramsey had killed his daughter or been involved in her death and had subsequently staged the scene to look like the work of a sadistic intruder, why would he unstage the crime to the extent of removing the duct tape and loosening the wrist ligature before anyone else, particularly the cops, got to see it? It didn’t make sense.
The lawyers told me there was a small amount of blood, apparently from her vagina, in JonBenet’s panties, and another stain that appeared to be semen. This, of course, suggested a male offender, and if the sample turned out to match John Ramsey’s DNA, that was going to be a pretty easy case to make. It turned out that one of the prime reasons I had been brought to Denver was to evaluate Ramsey for the benefit of the attorneys. Though they could not come right out and say so, I had the strong feeling they wanted me to let them know if I thought their client was guilty.
Before I met with John Ramsey, though, I predicted to the lawyers that the police lab analysis would eventually determine there was no semen on JonBenet’s body or in her underwear. From my experience with sexually motivated crimes, particularly crimes against children, I didn’t think this offender was the kind of guy to rape a little girl. Anyone who could kill with that degree of force and aggression—either from the strangulation or the blunt-force trauma—would not spend his time on traditional penile intercourse. He might abuse her in some other way, such as by inserting his fingers or an object to demonstrate his control and contempt, and in fact, we soon learned of the vaginal abrasions and bruising. But I was really skeptical about the semen report.
According to the lawyers, there were obvious signs of bruising around the child’s head, which the minister (I didn’t know his name at the time) attempted to cover so that Patsy would not see the extent of the wound. It was clear to me at that point, though, just as it was clear to Lee Foreman and Bryan Morgan, that the crime scene was not only in a state of bedlam, but had been severely contaminated. I knew that this would present the police and prosecutors with severe problems if a suspect was charged and sent to trial.
Foreman told me that the Ramseys had taken part in a two-hour-plus preliminary interview and that their nine-year-old son (whose name I also didn’t yet know) had been interviewed by police without his parents’ knowledge or consent. I was informed that the boy did not really understand what had happened or that he would not be able to see his sister again. In addition to the interviews, the Ramseys had willingly given whatever hair, blood, and handwriting samples the police had asked for. They did the same for their son.
In the evening on January 8, Bryan Morgan and Ellis Armistead, the investigator hired by the Ramseys, took me to the Ramsey home. Armistead was tall and blond, a former homicide detective with an easygoing manner that contrasted with Morgan’s friendly but authoritative, takecharge attitude. The purpose of the visit was for me to get an understanding of the layout of the house and the circumstances and chronology of events on the night and morning of the murder.
According to newspaper accounts I’d recently read, the brick Tudor was about five thousand square feet on four floors, including the converted attic, and was valued at $1.3 million. It had two additions built on by the Ramseys. From everything I could gather as we approached the house, the neighborhood lived up to its published reputation. It seemed upscale and prosperous, the type local police would take care to watch over and where the only kind of serious crime you’d routinely expect would be breaking and entering for cash, jewelry, and other valuables. Thieves hitting houses in this neighborhood would probably know a good deal about what they were looking for. I was given to understand that several of the houses, including the Ramseys’, had been on recent charity open-house tours, which, unfortunately, are often a good way of gaining inside intelligence about a prospective target.
Inside, I observed that because of the inherent design of the house and the additions the Ramseys had made, the flow from one part of the home to another was choppy. You couldn’t walk from one room to another without coming to a dead end. The home was well-furnished with both contemporary pieces and antiques. Two staircases led from the first to the second floors, one being the spiral set where Patsy had found the ransom note. You would need some agility to carry a large package or something the size of a six-year-old up or even down those stairs. The master bedroom, converted from the attic on the third floor, seemed tucked away, removed from the rest of the house. John had work space up there, and he and Patsy had elaborate separate bathrooms and closets.
JonBenet’s bedroom was typical for a six-year-old in a middle or upper-middle-class family. I noted quite a few dolls and memorabilia of her pageants. Any sound coming out of this room, even a rather loud one, would be difficult to hear upstairs and over in the other wing in the Ramseys’ bedroom. A noise from the first floor would be even more difficult, and anything coming from the basement would be virtually impossible to hear up on the third floor.
As a test, I had one of Armistead’s investigators go into JonBenet’s room and count to ten, gradually increasing his volume as he counted. We stayed up in the master bedroom. We could not hear him clearly until he reached number five. The residence had no intercom system or any other monitoring system between the upper floor and the children’s bedrooms.
I also noted that the house had about a half dozen entry doors on the first floor and that JonBenet’s room had a balcony that you could reach with a small stepladder or by standing on a garbage can.
My overall impression was that the perpetrator had to have some pretty good knowledge of the layout of the Ramsey home and the family’s comings and goings on that night, possibly through surveillance. In addition to the residents, one immediately considers maids or other service personnel, construction workers, friends and business associates who h
ad been invited over on repeat occasions.
This was a high-risk crime on the part of an intruder. However, that did not necessarily mean he was an experienced criminal. I felt in looking around the house that if the perpetrator were an outsider, it would be someone dedicated to his “mission” to cause harm to the Ramsey family. We couldn’t tell from the crime scene if JonBenet was attacked initially in her bed. The police had taken all the bedding and cut sections of carpet that I figured must have contained either potential blood or body-fluid stains or dirt or other evidence. I surmised that the child may have been awakened and initially immobilized in her room before being taken down to the basement.
The basement would be a dangerous place for an intruder if the Ramseys were to awaken and go downstairs. He would be trapped.
MEETING THE RAMSEYS
Around 9 A.M. on Thursday, January 9, I met with the Ramseys at the Haddon, Morgan and Foreman law offices. The key meeting was with John, since the attorneys believed that semen deposits had been found on the body and/or at the scene, which would give the primary exposure to him. Bryan Morgan was there. Patsy was not present for my initial meeting with John.
Upon meeting John Ramsey, I informed him who I was, shook his hand, and expressed my sorrow for his loss. As it turned out, there was some significance to the fact that neither he nor Patsy knew who I was. Subsequent to this, several sources, including Detective Steve Thomas, reported that Mindhunter, the first book I wrote with Mark, was on John Ramsey’s nightstand. In this book we deal with staging crime scenes, and some speculated that one or both of the Ramseys had read it and “learned” how to outwit investigators to make it look as if someone from outside had killed their child. First, I have to say that they—or anyone else—would not have learned this from reading the book. We didn’t write a how-to course, and any good investigator would see right through such a primitive attempt. Morever, much as we would like to think that everyone has read our books and knows who we are, Mindhunter was not there on John’s nightstand or elsewhere in the house, and I looked through the place pretty carefully. Believe me, as an author you learn to spot your books anywhere and everywhere. And it was not on the long police list of items removed from the house, although a “Dave Barry book about cyberspace” was. This is just one small example of the mountain of erroneous information that has come out about this case. While I understand that John read Mindhunter after meeting me, he was completely unfamiliar with my work at the time of the crime.
I said to him this was not an easy thing to do, but I had been asked by his attorney to do an analysis of the crime and to provide an opinion as to who or what kind of individual was responsible. I prefaced the conversation by saying something similar to what I’d told Morgan and Foreman the day before: Based on the public source information, I didn’t feel it looked good for him. Family members are always the first suspects in cases such as this, and information in the public domain suggested that he and his wife were being uncooperative with the police.
He replied rather bristly that this could not be further from the truth, that he and Patsy had furnished everything they’d been asked to and had answered many questions. However, he acknowledged that they had not yet participated in an in-depth interview with the police.
John was depressed and sad-looking. The day before had been the fifth anniversary of his daughter Beth’s death. I had him take me through
Christmas day and evening and then the next morning, leading up to the time he and Patsy said they had discovered that JonBenet was missing. Christmas morning had been typical for them, with the two children delightedly opening presents from Santa Claus and both parents taking pictures. I was informed that Boulder PD had the photos. At around 4 they went to Fleet and Priscilla White’s house for a Christmas celebration dinner, just as they’d done the year before. The Whites lived about six blocks away. John and Patsy were both social drinkers and each had a glass of wine at the Whites’. The Whites had children around the same ages as Burke and JonBenet. They all played together, and shortly before 9 P.M. the Ramseys returned home, after making two brief stops to exchange gifts. John said that he had carried his daughter to her bedroom asleep and was going to finish getting her ready for bed himself, but Burke wanted him to help him with something, so he let Patsy finish putting JonBenet to bed.
When he’d gotten Burke in bed, he went upstairs to the master bedroom, setting his alarm clock for 6:30 the next morning to be on time for their flight to Michigan, with a stop to pick up his two older children and prospective son-in-law. The Ramsey Jeep was in the garage, already packed with presents for their friends in Michigan.
I paid close attention to what he said, concentrating on his inflection, breathing, body language, word choice—matching him up against the experience I’d gained through thousands of interviews with both violent offenders and victims and their families. I took John through the entire morning and afternoon of December 26, up to when he said he discovered his daughter in the wine cellar. When he talked about carrying her upstairs, he started blinking, as if revisualizing the scene. Then he began to sob.
After I had spent about two hours with Ramsey, he excused himself to go to the rest room. I turned to Bryan Morgan, who’d been in the room the entire time, and said simply, “I believe him.”
“Oh, God, what a relief!” Morgan replied. He was in his sixties, passionate and charming when he wanted to be. I had the distinct impression that he sincerely believed his client was innocent but was eager for some guidance or reassurance about that instinct.
When Ramsey returned, I told him that I had sat across the table from hundreds of criminals. Some have been so convincing that I went back to the files and looked up the case materials to make sure that the evidence was, indeed, solid against them.
I then said, “Mr. Ramsey, you are either one hell of a liar or you’re innocent. I believe what you’re telling me.”
He seemed pleased by my reaction. I said, “Why don’t we go to the police and have you tell them the story as you’ve just told me?”
He said he wanted to be on their side and cooperate. Morgan commented that at some point they would sit down with the police and that he was going to try to meet with them that afternoon around 4:00.
I told Morgan that I was ready to speak with Mrs. Ramsey, but that I’d changed my mind about having to do it without Mr. Ramsey present. He could be present during the interview. I didn’t tell him and Morgan why I had shifted strategy. They may have assumed that I was now so trusting of John that I had no need of Patsy’s unadorned version. The truth of the matter, though, was that since John was the prime focus of my analysis, I was most concerned with gauging his reactions. Now that I had had him alone, I wanted to see what he would be like as Patsy was telling her side of the story. I wanted to see if I could pick up any tension in him as she spoke, or any friction between the two of them about reactions or specific details.
Patsy Ramsey appeared, wearing a black sweater and skirt outfit. I paid special attention to the large pewter cross around her neck. I have often seen accused people suddenly “get religion” and make a big, obvious deal about it, and I made a mental note to go through their family snapshots to see if she had ever worn this cross or anything like it before. I had been told that she had been under sedation, and it was apparent that she had been crying and was in need of rest.
I introduced myself to her, but rather than ask specific questions I told both Ramseys about how I would go about analyzing the case, though I said that I didn’t have all of the case materials I would normally have for such an analysis. I described the Crime Classification Manual, produced and published when I was with the Bureau and of which I was the lead author, and how it sought to classify criminal behavior for the benefit of law enforcement professionals in the same way that the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, did with mental diseases for health care professionals.
Four major categories of homicide were listed in CCM—cr
iminal enterprise, personal cause, sexual, and group cause—with subcategories within them. This case had a demand for ransom (criminal enterprise), an apparent sexual assault (sexual), and a reference to a foreign group taking responsibility for the abduction (group cause). My opinion was that while this case had certain markers for the three other categories, I believed this was primarily a personal cause homicide, particularly with regard to the elements of revenge or retaliation.
As soon as I said this, John Ramsey once again began to cry. He said he felt it was his fault that his daughter had been killed, that someone had been trying to get back at him. Patsy then became very emotional herself and asked why someone would do this.
“I believe you have had the killer in your home before,” I said. “I believe Mr. Ramsey is familiar or has had contact with this person, and that the subject has been harboring ill feelings toward him.”
I asked if either of them had observed any unusual behavior from anyone since the murder. Patsy commented that the Whites had been “acting odd” toward them. I responded that people sometimes do act strangely in these situations, not because they are guilty or have something to hide, but because they don’t know what to do or say. I related my illness and coma and long recovery in 1983, when people who I’d thought were close friends never came to see me in the hospital or later at home. Patsy said that she had had similar experiences with her cancer. A number of her close friends had never come to see her. She told me she had survived that illness because of her strong faith and by placing herself in God’s hands.
The Cases That Haunt Us Page 38
