JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (3 page)

Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter. You will also be denied her remains for proper burial. The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you so I advise you not to provoke them. Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as Police, F.B.I., etc., will result in your daughter being beheaded. If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies. If you alert bank authorities, she dies. If the money is in any way marked or tampered with, she dies. You will be scanned for electronic devices and if any are found, she dies. You can try to deceive us but be warned that we are familiar with Law enforcement countermeasures and tactics. You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to out smart us. Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back. You and your family are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities. Don’t try to grow a brain John. You are not the only fat cat around so don’t think that killing will be difficult. Don’t underestimate us John. Use that good southern common sense of yours. It is up to you now John!

Victory!
S.B.T.C.

At the Boulder PD, Sergeant Paul Reichenbach, the patrol supervisor, pushed aside his end-of-shift paperwork when he heard the dispatcher’s unusual call and headed for his car.

While Reichenbach drove to the house, Mrs. Ramsey was telling Officer French that she had gone into JonBenét’s bedroom at 5:45 A.M. to awaken her daughter because the family planned to fly to Michigan that morning. The bedroom was empty, and when she descended a spiral staircase, she found the note on a lower rung. John Ramsey said he had checked the house, and it appeared to still be locked as he had left it the night before. He saw no sign of a forced entry or a struggle. The alarm system had not been engaged, their small dog had spent the night at a neighbor’s home, and the Ramseys had heard nothing unusual during the night.

French stepped away from them to meet Sergeant Reichenbach at the front door and confirmed that it looked as if there might have been a kidnapping. But, he observed, “Something isn’t right.”

Patsy Ramsey had made two more telephone calls immediately after contacting the police, despite the explicit warning in the ransom note that her child would be “beheaded” if she so much as spoke to a stray dog. She called her friends Fleet and Priscilla White, at whose home the family had attended a party the night before, then also alerted two other close friends, John and Barbara Fernie. All four were asked to hurry over, and they did. If kidnappers had been watching, the sudden arrival of two police cars and a covey of friends would have told them the dire warnings in their note were being disregarded.

Reichenbach thought about his next move as he read the ransom note. The patrol sergeant knew he was going to need a lot more help, and on this day, of all days, that could be a problem.

Not only did the discovery of the note hit almost exactly when the shifts were about to change, but it caught the police department at one of its weakest staffing periods—Christmas. Every cop who could arrange it was off for the holidays, leaving a minimum of officers on duty.

He called for more officers, crime scene technicians to search for evidence, and victim advocates to comfort and help the Ramseys; alerted the phone company to put a trap on the Ramsey telephone; and notified the on-call detective supervisor, Sergeant Bob Whitson. Further radio traffic was ordered to cease to prevent the kidnappers from picking up police broadcasts with a scanner. Communication would be by phone, and therefore less effective. As other police arrived, they considered the behavior of the parents. While the father seemed calm and composed, he was not comforting the mother, who had dissolved into an emotional mess, lying alone on the floor in a nearby room, hugging pillows, clutching a crucifix, and wailing.

Reichenbach and John Ramsey went up to the second floor to look into the missing child’s bedroom. Two beds were parallel and about three feet apart. One was made, and the other’s peach comforter was pulled back toward a pillow at the foot, exposing a white fitted sheet printed with cartoon characters. A small blue fanny pack was looped over a bedpost, a white steamer trunk gaped slightly, and a large Christmas tree decorated with angels and snowflakes stood beside green curtains and a closed door to a covered balcony that was glazed with undisturbed frost. Dolls and clothes lay about the room. Folding closet doors on the opposite wall stood open, revealing more clothes on hangers and in heaps. Strewn amid the toys were trophies and little tiaras. On a wall above a white chest of drawers was a formal portrait of the missing girl, a beautiful child with a bright smile, chin resting on lace-gloved hands.

The father lifted the dust ruffle to peer beneath his daughter’s bed and was told not to touch anything else. They left the room as a telephone rang, and Ramsey answered. “JonBenét’s been kidnapped,” he said and began crying. The lights were off in the nearby bedroom of the second child, and Reichenbach looked in on Burke Ramsey, who appeared asleep, then closed that door.

The sergeant found no evidence of forced entry during a walk through the house, then went outside. A light dusting of snow and frost lay atop an earlier crusty snow in spotty patches on the grass. He saw no fresh shoe impressions, found no open doors or windows, nothing to indicate a break-in, but walking on the driveway and sidewalks left no visible prints. It was frigid, about nine degrees, and Reichenbach returned inside.

He went down into the sprawling basement and walked through it. At the far end was a white door secured at the top by a block of wood that pivoted on a screw. Reichenbach tried to open the door, stopped when he felt resistance, then returned upstairs. Reichenbach, Officer French, and one of the friends Patsy had called, Fleet White, would all check that white door in the basement during the morning, and White would even open it. They found nothing.

By the time the sun rose at 6:30, the Whites and Fernies had arrived to comfort their friends. Their admittance to the house was also a mistake, for the place had become the scene of a crime, apparently a kidnapping. Good police procedure would have been to empty the house immediately and take the inhabitants to the police station, post a patrol officer inside the front door, and allow entry only to authorized personnel. Another perimeter should have been established some distance away to preserve the grounds. No one knew at this point what evidence, such as footprints or fibers, might yet be found, and the crime scene was put at risk by allowing the friends to come inside.

As if to demonstrate that problem, Fleet White stepped away from the little group attending the Ramseys and took a walk inside the house, certainly with the best of intentions. No one had told him not to. His own little girl, JonBenét’s best friend, had temporarily disappeared the year before, and he vividly remembered the fear he endured until Daphne was found hiding. Maybe JonBenét was doing the same thing, just playfully hiding somewhere.

White went downstairs. The lights were on, and shadows danced in the big basement. A small broken window in a large room where a model railroad was laid out caught his attention, and on the floor beneath the window he found a piece of glass, which he placed on the ledge. He dropped to his hands and knees, searching for other pieces, and moved a suitcase in doing so.

Unknowingly, he was altering a vital part of the crime scene. In coming months, claims would be made that a mysterious intruder came through that window and used the suitcase as a step.

Moving deeper into the basement, he found the same white door that had been checked by Sergeant Reichenbach. Fleet White turned the makeshift latch and pulled the door open, toward him. It was totally dark inside, and when he could find neither of two light switches, he closed the door, relatched it, and went back upstairs. He never saw JonBenét.

By 6:45 two victim advocates from the police department had arrived, and the population inside the house continued to swell. Five minutes later, as a crime scene tech dusted for fingerprints, one of the advocates followed along, tidying up with a spray cleaner and a cloth. It was a terrible breach of procedure—possible trace evidence was being erased in the name of neatness.

Another tech saw the ransom note on the bottom step of the spiral staircase and photographed it there. But the photograph lied. The note had traveled from the stairs, possibly into Patsy’s hands, then had been spread out on the hallway floor where John Ramsey and the police had read it, and French had put it back on the stairs. The photograph, which was supposed to show exactly where evidence had been discovered, was inaccurate.

The Reverend Rol Hoverstock, pastor of St. John’s Episcopal Church, arrived as an officer left to take the ransom note to police headquarters. The minister was also allowed into the home, adding to the crowd.

Police mistakes piled up at an alarming rate, the crime scene was disintegrating, and no one had taken firm control. Instead of shutting the place down tight and preserving evidence, police were treading gingerly in the lavish home of a wealthy couple. The scene was seriously compromised before the investigation even really started.

Sergeant Whitson summoned Detectives Fred Patterson and Linda Arndt, then called other relevant personnel from the sheriff’s department and the FBI, along with Deputy District Attorney Pete Hofstrom and the city’s public information officer, Leslie Aaholm. He requested that the senior command staff be alerted by pager.

At 7:33 a K-9 unit with a tracking dog was put on standby, but not used. Had the dog been put to work immediately, there was a strong chance it would have followed the scent of the missing child from her bed right to the basement room where her body was. Another error.

One minute after that, an available officer who had just come onto the day shift headed for the scene, but radio silence was broken when she was told en route that no more officers were necessary. Cops were being turned away instead of summoned.

Detectives Patterson and Arndt linked up at headquarters, where Arndt picked up a photocopy of the ransom note. Then they drove to the parking lot of the Basemar shopping center, only six blocks from the Ramsey residence. Sergeant Reichenbach pulled alongside in his own car and gave them an overview of what was known so far.

At the house, another peculiar scene unfolded that left police bewildered. Burke Ramsey was awakened by his father and Fleet White, dressed, and was being taken from the house. Burke was one of only three people in the house at the time of the crime and therefore a witness who needed to be closely questioned about the disappearance of his sister. Perhaps he had heard or seen something during the night that could help investigators find JonBenét. So when Officer Rick French saw him being taken away, he went over to talk to the boy. But John Ramsey intervened. The father told the policeman that Burke didn’t know anything and had slept through it all, and he hustled the boy to a waiting vehicle. It was one of the poignant moments of the morning. His sister was thought to be the victim of a terrorist kidnapping, but Burke was exiled to the White’s home, an unprotected location, where he would be watched over by friends instead of police. Whatever he knew went away with him. I would later wonder why the parents had not awakened the boy immediately upon discovering that JonBenét was missing.

At 8:03 Sergeant Whitson telephoned John Eller, the detective division commander, who was in the midst of a two-week vacation with family members from Florida, celebrating the holidays and his grandson’s first birthday. The Christmas spirit faded when he learned that the six-year-old daughter of a local business owner had been kidnapped. There was no sign of struggle or a forced entry, a long ransom note was asking for $118.000, and the kidnappers would call. Detectives Patterson and Arndt were on the way, and the FBI and the DA’s office had been alerted. The money was being arranged, and the phones were being trapped. No details had been given about delivering the ransom.

Eller gave Whitson a list of things to do: Put a detective on the Ramseys, never to leave their side, and get undercover narcotics detectives out for surveillance. Confirm that the phones were tapped, and contact the sheriff’s office. Have a helicopter on standby, get a recent photo of the child, and put a transponder on a car that would deliver the ransom. Check the victim’s medical records, and determine if there were any custody disputes. Get scanners and cell phones, and make early preparations for a possible major media broadcast. Eller wrote down each point as he spoke.

As he hung up, he realized that the sergeant he had been talking to was from the narcotics squad, not Sergeant Larry Mason, the acting commander in the detective division during Eller’s absence. On the margin of his Daytimer, Eller wrote and circled, “Where is Mason?”

Detectives Arndt and Patterson arrived at the Ramsey house at 8:10 A.M., and Officer Rick French gave them an updated briefing. Then, with detectives finally on the scene to handle the witnesses, French checked the garage and lower levels of the house, looking for places through which a kidnapper might have carried off the child. He found none. The house was messy, but he saw no sign of a struggle.

In the basement he also came to the white door at the far end that was closed and secured at the top by the wooden block on a screw. French was looking for exit points from the house, and the door obviously was not one. No one could have gone through that door, closed it behind them, and locked it on the opposite side by turning the wooden latch, so he did not open it.

When he went back upstairs, the patrolman noticed Patsy Ramsey watching him through parted fingers that covered her face. “Eyeballing” him, he would later recall.

Things quieted somewhat in the house following the shock of the kidnapping and the sudden arrival of police and the Ramseys’ friends.