After experiencing abdominal pain that turned out to be the result of metastasized colon cancer, Lou Smit died at seventy-five years of age on August 11, 2010, at Pikes Peak Hospice in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Shortly before Lou’s passing, John Ramsey had come to the hospice, where he was staying, to spend several hours with him and pray at his bedside. John told us he felt honored to speak at Lou’s funeral.
Mark and I have written that probably the worst thing that can happen to a person or couple is to have their child die by violence. Because of the Ramsey case, we realize that there is something even worse: to be falsely accused of that crime.
There is one strange coda to this case that shows how anyone can be taken in by assumptions, even us.
On August 16, 2006, authorities in Bangkok, Thailand, arrested a forty-one-year-old expatriate primary-school teacher named John Mark Karr. He was a divorced father of three from Petaluma, California, with a previous charge of possession of child pornography. He had come to the attention of the Boulder DA’s Office when Michael Tracey, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado, very responsibly turned over copies of e-mails he had exchanged with Karr for four years. The Thai authorities were working from a sealed arrest warrant signed by Boulder County District Court judge Roxanne Bailin.
Clearly, there was something strange about Karr. When he was questioned by the police in Bangkok, he said he was with JonBenét when she died. He told a subsequent press conference, “I love JonBen ét,” and that she died accidentally. When he was asked if he was innocent, he replied, “No.” Lieutenant General Suwat Tumrongsiskul, of the Thai Immigration Police, reported that Karr admitted attempting to kidnap JonBenét and strangled her after his plan went bad.
Karr was brought back to Los Angeles, where he waived extradition to Colorado.
As soon as we heard about Karr, Mark and I figured the case had finally been solved and the long quest for justice for JonBenét was nearing its conclusion. Karr seemed weird enough and amoral enough to have pulled this off. He had been married twice, first to a thirteen-year-old and then to a sixteen-year-old, and had become a substitute teacher so he could hang around children.
But it wasn’t the evidence that most convinced us. Frankly, we didn’t even look at it very closely. We reasoned that with all of the sorry mistakes and embarrassments of this globally publicized case, the Boulder authorities must be absolutely certain they had this guy dead to rights before they brought him halfway around the world to face the music.
So we were as shocked as anyone when Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy announced that DNA samples given up by the suspect did not match the evidence found on JonBenét’s body and so “the case of the People versus John Mark Karr has been vacated.”
We couldn’t believe it! They had been mistaken yet again, and we had fallen for it for the same reason we had criticized others—for going in with a preconceived idea rather than letting facts and evidence direct our thinking. Despite all of our experience, we had fallen for a false confession and were just relieved that neither of us had accepted any media invitations when the Karr story first broke.
To be fair, I think Mary Lacy would have preferred to gather all of the evidence first and then act, but the publicity that leaked out forced her hand. But we can’t deny that we jumped to an improper conclusion without full information. The lesson was well learned.
As of this writing, Karr is living under the name “Alexis Valoran Reich” and is preparing to transition into a woman.
Who did kill JonBenét Ramsey during the night of Christmas, 1996? I don’t know. As a profiler, with the information and resources I had to work with, I can suggest the type of person who did it and the strategies that might help identify him and bring him to justice. Equally important, I can suggest who did not do it, and my views on that have not altered at all since the day I first met John and Patricia Ramsey. As I’ve explained, the role of the profiler is to redirect or refocus an investigation and to help police narrow and analyze their suspect list.
Will the case ultimately be solved? Who knows? At this point, it is doubtful, since the heat is long off. The best chance would probably be if the subject is arrested for something else and certain critical dots get connected. When last we spoke to John Ramsey, he felt as I did that it was probably someone who had a deep grudge against him and was getting revenge through his child. He confided a few possibilities to us.
Could the case have been solved if it was handled properly from the beginning? I told the police detectives at the time that I thought it definitely was solvable. Had Lou Smit or someone of his experience, stature and wisdom led from the beginning, I think it would have been solved.
Each murder leaves a terrible legacy in its wake, rippling out in ever-expanding circles from the victim. This one left an even larger and deeper wake than most with its compounding of injustice. Not only were two kind and upstanding people robbed of their beloved child, but because of a vicious and malicious rush to judgment— fueled by a media that couldn’t get enough of it—they were tormented and isolated for years by accusations that they were killers, while the real killer remains free. How can you properly grieve under such a burden?
We know that the aftermath of a child’s death—whether by disease, accident or crime—can either tear a couple apart or bring them closer together.
“It was really Patsy and me against the world,” John recalled. “We were pretty close to begin with, but this probably made us even closer. And if there is any lesson in all of this, it isn’t that an innocent child was murdered—because, unfortunately, that happens all too often—but that the police persecuted innocent people.”
No matter your faith, no matter your inner strength, when something like this happens, there are wounds that never heal. “Your primary responsibility as a father is to protect your children, and I couldn’t do that,” John reflected.
How has his life changed since the tragedy? “Before all this happened, I used to worry all the time. Even when things were going great, I’d worry about what would happen if I lost my job—how would I support my family? I could always find something to worry about. Now I just don’t pay any attention to that sort of thing. I’m beyond it.”
We asked him if having lost two daughters and a wife—having already undergone the cruelest that life could throw at him—made him “emotionally untouchable.”
“No, I’m not emotionally untouchable. After JonBenét died, I didn’t care what happened. I wouldn’t have taken my own life, but if something had happened to me, it would have been fine. Then gradually I came to accept that I still had other children to take care of, and other things to live for. I realized that I had to do what I could to clear the family name—if not for my own sake, then for my children’s. And so no matter what, I think each of us has to work toward the idea that our best days are still ahead of us.”
With John Ramsey’s faith and strength of character, and concern for others, he just might achieve that goal. He remarried in 2011, to a fashion designer named Jan Rousseaux, and we wish them the best of everything.
Any highly publicized murder case becomes representative and symbolic—of our own fears, our fascination with and repulsion from evil, and of our involvement and interrelationship with our fellow human beings. They work as real-life embodiments of classic tragedies.
Knowing John Ramsey as I do, having known his late wife, Patsy, I can only think of them as individual human beings rather than symbols or pop culture celebrities. Like so many others, they were fine, loving, generous people; and in spite of everything, John still is.
I hope, with all that this tragedy represents, that we will not lose sight of the most basic and obvious element of all: A beautiful and unique child has been prevented from growing up, from living her life and fulfilling her own special destiny. The family that raised her has had to endure the unendurable, and beyond. That is something that every decent human being must mourn.
SATANIC PANIC
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CHAPTER 17
ROBIN HOOD HILLS
“Hello, this is John Douglas. I understand you want to talk to me.”
It was March of 2006. My website directed inquiries to my attorney in New York, Steven Mark, who had given me the name and number of someone who wanted me to consult on a case. This was an Arkansas phone number.
“Yes, thank you for calling. My name is Lorri Davis.” She had a nice voice. My instantaneous profile was early thirties, educated and sophisticated, maybe a professional of some sort. “Are you familiar with the West Memphis Three case?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Three young men were convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1993. But every one of them is innocent.”
Of course they are. No murder defendant is ever really guilty.
“Powerful people in Hollywood are fans of yours and believe in the work you do,” she went on. “Would you look at the case?”
“What is your relationship to it?” I inquired.
“I’m married to Damien Echols, one of the defendants,” she explained. “He was already in prison when we married.”
Okay, profile’s wrong! She may be educated and sophisticated, but this is another nut job.
I say “another” because this was a phenomenon well known to many of us involved with the criminal justice field. For various reasons, certain women tend to fall in love with incarcerated killers. It often starts out as a pen pal relationship, either out of altruism or simple curiosity. It can then blossom into love, and then even marriage with the full knowledge that her spouse will likely forever remain behind bars. And that is a good thing, because this individual is a violent offender; and if he ever got out, she would likely end up one of his victims.
The various reasons for these women’s behavior include loneliness and a real or perceived inability to make it with “normal” men; a vicarious fascination with excitement, violence or the taboo; a desire to nurture or “mother” those who have never had sufficient attention or “understanding.” This is often combined with the seemingly contradictory feelings of low self-esteem and an illogical, self-righteous confidence in their ability to “reform” the killer and make him a peaceful and productive member of society. Then, of course, some of them marry because it is “safe”; they can feel married without actually having to go through the accommodations of living with a husband.
There can be other motivations as well, but these are the ones we see over and over again. As much as it annoys me, since I think their sympathy is misdirected, I often feel sorry for these women. They can be pretty pathetic.
And who were these “powerful people in Hollywood” who were such big fans? The whole thing sounded strange.
But the more she talked, the more I sensed there was something different about Lorri Davis that just refused to fit this mold. She explained she was a landscape architect in New York who had seen an HBO documentary film entitled Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills and had become convinced the three convicted defendants were innocent. She had begun corresponding with Damien Echols, the so-called ringleader who was on death row in Arkansas. Eventually they had fallen in love and decided to get married, even though their lives would essentially be lived apart and their relationship potentially short.
“I don’t know anything about the case,” I repeated, “so I don’t know what conclusions I can draw. We’ll have to get an attorney involved to write up an agreement.” The contract was important, because if I did get involved and my conclusions were not to the client’s liking, it had to be clear that my findings would not be altered.
I gave the standard rap about buying my time, but not my opinion; that they would be free to use or not use my conclusions as they wished; that I would not reveal any negative information obtained through nonpublic sources, but to remember that anything they asked me to put in writing would be discoverable by the prosecution in any future legal proceeding. I ended by saying that when I worked on a case like this, I was always ultimately working for the victims, no matter who brought me in.
Lorri said she thought all that was fine.
“Would the agreement be with you?” I asked.
No, she said, it would be with the lead appellate attorney, Dennis Riordan, of Riordan and Horgan in San Francisco.
“And who are these powerful Hollywood people, and how are they involved?”
“I can’t tell you that until after you’ve signed the agreement,” she stated. Very strange.
From there, things progressed quickly. She talked to Steve Mark, who wrote up an agreement. The “they” turned out to be a number of prominent show business people who, like Lorri, had seen the Paradise Lost film and concluded that the West Memphis Three were wrongly charged and convicted.
I began speaking regularly with Lorri. Normally, as I’ve suggested, I find women who fall in love with convicted murderers to be creepy and cripplingly dependent. But as I listened to Lorri, I could tell something else was going on here. Despite the seeming illogic of involving yourself with someone who is going to spend the rest of his (probably short) life in prison, she seemed to have her logic system and critical ego in perfect working order. She seemed neither dependent nor needy. Rather, she was extremely mission-oriented, but without losing her sense of humor or concern for the normal considerations of everyday life.
I received a voluminous amount of case material—forensic reports, interrogation accounts, photographs, newspaper clippings, maps, disks, timelines and the entire trial record. I set to work, immersing myself in the case.
Lorri suggested I interview Damien in prison, but I told her that wouldn’t be helpful to me. At this stage, I didn’t want to get emotionally involved or be influenced by personal relationships. I wanted to base my opinion strictly on the facts of the case.
West Memphis, a city of some 27,000 residents, lies just to the west, or the Arkansas side, of the Mississippi River. It connects to its larger and distinctly more cosmopolitan namesake—Memphis, Tennessee—by bridges for Interstates 40 and 55, which split off from each other near the northeastern edge of town. These two highways join the country from coast to coast and from Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico. The fact that the east-west I-40 and north-south I-55 come together for several miles here makes West Memphis an attractive place of business for anyone servicing the trucking industry.
The Blue Beacon Truck Wash, part of a hundred-plus location chain throughout the United States and Canada, was one such establishment. This particular location closed in 2012, but in 1993 it was a thriving business just off the interstates’ South Service Road. South of the highway there is a long channel running roughly east to west that came off Ten Mile Bayou, one of the many such waterways in the area. It is called, appropriately enough, the Ten Mile Bayou Diversion Ditch. Its function is to take up the rainwater that normally would flow into the Mississippi from the bayou, but is blocked because of the levee system that keeps the river from flooding. The channel carries water south to a point beyond the levee.
Back then, squeezed in between the highway and Ten Mile Bayou Diversion Ditch, was a heavily wooded patch of land known locally as Robin Hood Hills, or just plain Robin Hood. There was a creeklike drainage channel coming off the diversion ditch, which ran into the heart of the woods, and a large sewage drainpipe supported by metal beams across the channel, which allowed brave souls, or those wanting to seem brave, access to Robin Hood from the neighborhood of modest houses to the south.
Parents tried to keep their kids out of Robin Hood Hills. It was reputed to be a haven for drug use and disreputable transients from the interstates. But the creek, hiking and bike-riding trails, rope swing and dense foliage, where any fantasy adventure was possible, were too much of a temptation for all but the most obedient or timid of children.
On May 5, 1993, Christopher “Chris” Byers, Michael Moore and Steven “Stevie” Branch, all eight-year-olds from the adjoining neighborhood, wen
t missing. They were best friends and often hung out together. All three were second graders at nearby Weaver Elementary School.
John Mark Byers, Christopher’s stepfather, was the first to report his concerns to the West Memphis Police Department (WMPD), at about 8:00 P.M. He said neither he nor his wife, Melissa, Chris’s mother, had seen him since 5:30 P.M., nor was it like him to be late.
Officer Regina Meek responded to Byers’ call at 8:08. While she was taking his information, Dana Moore, who lived across Barton Street from the Byers, came over and reported that her son Michael was also missing. She had last seen him around 6:00 P.M., riding bikes with Stevie. Chris was on the back of Stevie’s bike. She’d lost sight of them and sent her nine-year-old daughter, Dawn, to find them. Dawn went after them, but she couldn’t keep up. Dana Moore described the brown-haired, blue-eyed boy in his habitual outfit: his blue Cub Scouts uniform.
Stevie Branch’s mom, Pamela “Pam” Hobbs, was equally distressed. They lived a few blocks away from the Byers and Moores, and she had not seen him since right after he came home from school. Her husband, Terry—Stevie’s stepfather—got up and left the house early each morning for his job distributing ice cream to retail stores. He said he hadn’t seen Stevie all day. The boy had brown hair and blue eyes. Chris’s hair and eyes were light brown. All three were proud Cub Scouts, though Chris and Stevie didn’t wear their uniforms everywhere like Michael did.
As the alarm spread, neighborhood parents and friends joined the police and began searching—anywhere they thought the boys might be. Some even ventured into Robin Hood Hills, which took on a distinctly sinister and forbidding aura once the sun went down. It was difficult to see anything at night in the dense woods, but the search was resumed at sunup. Nobody found anything, not even a clue as to which direction the boys might have gone. By now, the parents were beside themselves with worry.
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