CHAPTER 16
ENTER LOU SMIT
Once I got involved with the Ramsey case, my public and professional image seemed to change overnight. No longer was I perceived as Agent Jack Crawford, the straight-shooting, justice-seeking character in the trim black suit Scott Glenn had portrayed in The Silence of the Lambs, which was reputedly based on me. Now I was seen as the hired gun that would say anything for a price. Ironically, once I determined that the Ramseys were not offenders but surviving victims, I stopped accepting their money altogether.
Mark and I were stunned by the reactions. Nearly everyone we talked to about the case, either personally or through media interviews, seemed to discount our observations out of hand and implied that we were naive in our belief in the Ramseys’ innocence. Mark talked to several agents at Quantico and came away surprised and confused about why they weren’t looking at the totality of the evidence.
No one, it appeared, agreed with us or even allowed for the possibility that my assessment might be correct.
No one, that is, until Lou Smit entered the picture.
If there was anyone whom I considered a genuine hero in this case, anyone in whom I had complete faith and confidence, it was Detective Andrew Louis “Lou” Smit. By the time he entered the investigation, he was already a law enforcement legend in Colorado, having cleared over 90 percent of the more than two hundred homicide cases he’d investigated. He felt such a personal connection to the victims of the murders he’d handled that he kept small photographs of some of them in his wallet.
In March 1997, three months after the murder with the case at a standstill, with John and Patricia Ramsey still under the glare of prime suspicion, with the police department and district attorney’s office in a Cold War–type relationship, DA Alex Hunter hired Lou Smit to consult on the case. At the time, Smit was retired from the El Paso County Sheriff ’s Office, an area due south of Denver that encompasses Colorado Springs and the United States Air Force Academy. Hunter’s reasoning was solid. This case had shone an international spotlight on Boulder; it needed to be moved forward; and no one could assail the integrity, objectivity, talent and experience of a man like Smit.
Smit meticulously went through all of the now-voluminous evidence and concluded that JonBenét had been killed by an intruder. It reminded him of a case he had worked six years before—the 1991 murder of thirteen-year-old Heather Dawn Church, killed in her house near Colorado Springs. For four years, the community and police were convinced that someone in the house was responsible, and the case went nowhere. Smit, with a nearly superhuman attention to detail, discovered an overlooked fingerprint that he was able to match to a suspect arrested in Florida. Robert Charles Browne at first pled not guilty. But realizing he was facing the death penalty if Smit’s work held up in court, he took a life plea. Altogether, he may have killed more than forty more. God only knows how many others would have lost their lives but for Lou Smit.
Smit’s working theory was that the UNSUB intruder had gotten in the basement through a loose grate in a window well and gained access to the entire house. While I believed the intruder to be someone who had a grudge against John Ramsey, Smit thought he was probably a pedophile who had seen JonBenét either casually around town, in school or in one or more of her pageants. He used the pad he found in the kitchen to write the strange ransom note and then hid out until the family returned home and went to bed.
Some people may tend to discount this theory because slipping into the house and hiding there for so long is such a bold and gutsy move. But it’s important to remember that while “normal” people may find this unimaginable, it’s what burglars and robbers do for a living. I don’t know how many cases I’ve had over the years in which a woman wakes up to find an intruder standing over her bed, watching her. And I’ve dealt with a large number of break-and-enter guys—many of them essentially nonviolent—who have no problem spending long periods in a target house, sometimes entering when the household is still awake. For some of them, that’s the main thrill of the crime.
After coming up with his particular slant on the intruder theory, Smit contributed another crucial element through his meticulous observation. Studying photographs of JonBenét’s body, inch by inch, he noticed two strange lesions—one on the right side of her neck near her jawline and the other on the lower-left portion of her back. The two lesions appeared virtually identical, each consisting of twin, parallel red welts, about three and a half centimeters apart.
Smit consulted with several of his colleagues before turning to Dr. Michael Dobersen, an M.D., Ph.D., certified forensic pathologist and the coroner of Arapahoe County, Colorado. Though he wouldn’t fully commit without being able to examine the body himself, Dobersen agreed with Smit that the lesions were consistent with the results of having been shot with a stun gun. Further consultation with experts helped Smit narrow down the particular spacing of the two marks in each wound to what would have been produced by an Air Taser Model 34000. Smit also examined the last photographs taken of JonBenét when she was still alive. Though her lower back was covered up, he noted distinctly that there were no corresponding marks on the right side of her face and neck.
I didn’t know much about stun guns or Tasers, but I was greatly interested in the theory. If a stun gun, in fact, was used on this six-year-old, there were only two possible reasons: to immobilize and therefore control her, or to torture her for the sexual pleasure and satisfaction of the UNSUB. Either of these scenarios would logically rule out either of the parents. First of all, they didn’t previously own a stun gun, so it would have had to be specially purchased and brought into the house, for which there was no evidence. Also, they wouldn’t need a way of controlling her, the way a stranger would. For two people with absolutely no history of any sort of sexual perversion or pedophilia to inflict this on their own daughter was unthinkable.
It was leaked to the media that John Ramsey had a book about stun guns in his house. This is typical of the lies and half-truths that were legitimatized and regularly published. In fact, he had a book about industrial security, which had a mention of stun guns in the context of a variety of security measures. This was similar to the rumor that our book Mindhunter was on the bedroom shelf at the time of the murder. This was completely untrue. John Ramsey did not know who I was and had never heard of the book. It was only after we met and I concluded he was not a legitimate suspect that he obtained and read the book, thus unwittingly starting the rumor.
If a stun gun was part of the crime scenario—and it would seem to me pretty coincidental to have two sets of marks that just happen to correspond to a particular Air Taser model—then that further delineates the evidence. The notepad on which the ransom note was written, the paintbrush handle that was used as a makeshift garrote and the two most likely blunt-force weapons (the golf club and the flashlight) were all found in plain sight in the house. But items intended to control the victim—the roll from which duct tape on her mouth came, the spool for the cord used to bind her, and now the possibility of a stun gun to briefly but completely immobilize her—were not found in the house and therefore had to have come from outside. These were all elements that most of the investigators either overlooked or inexplicably dismissed out of hand.
Smit believed the intruder used the stun gun to render JonBenét defenseless, taped her mouth and carried her to the basement room, where he would be able to take her out of the house. He fashioned the garrote with the cord he’d brought and the paintbrush handle he broke off. While he tightened the neck cord as part of his erotic fantasy, he put his hand into her pants and penetrated her with his fingers. Smit ascribed the unidentified evidence found at the scene to this UNSUB: the pubic hair, the DNA deposits, a Hi-Tec brand boot print on the floor, a scuff mark on the basement wall near the window.
The fact that there was DNA under JonBenét’s fingernails led Smit to believe that she came to at some point in the ordeal and struggled to fight him off. He also noted a number of half-moon–shaped abrasions on her neck around the ligature. He interpreted these as JonBen ét’s own desperate attempt to remove or loosen the garrote, again showing that this six-year-old fought to save her own life. Can you imagine a mother struggling with her young daughter as she tightens a noose around her neck? From my work, I can imagine a lot of sick things, but that one is beyond me.
Smit thought that with JonBenét struggling and not fully subdued, the UNSUB panicked and struck her with what was handy, probably the flashlight. Believing he had killed her, he escaped from the house with the items and implements he’d brought with him, leaving everything else behind.
Smit and I differed on several interpretations. He believed the motive was obsession with the child, while I thought it more likely the obsession was with her father. Mark thought the crime was most likely an actual criminal-enterprise kidnapping that had gone bad, staged by one or more young and unsophisticated offenders. The ransom note’s demand of $118,000 probably supports Mark’s or my interpretation more than Lou’s in terms of inside information. But any of these is a likely scenario, far more likely than the exasperation at bed-wetting portrait painted by Detective Steve Thomas. In any of our theories, you’d conduct the investigation the same way and look for the same kind of postoffense behavior. While the investigators interviewed hundreds of witnesses and persons of interest, and came up with some potentially interesting leads, as far as I could see they did not concentrate on these behaviors, or shift their focus away from the parents.
The investigation continued to be beset by problems, internal divisions and ongoing conflict between the police department and Alex Hunter’s DA’s office. The police very much wanted a grand jury to be impaneled, since it could compel testimony that detectives could not.
On September 15, 1998, closing in on two years after the murder, a grand jury of four women and eight men began work. Hunter appointed attorney Michael Kane to head its investigation. By that time, Detective Steve Thomas had submitted his resignation, citing disagreements with the police over how the investigation was being handled and with the district attorney’s office for having failed thus far to indict the Ramseys.
A week after the grand jury began, Lou Smit submitted his own resignation, but for opposite reasons. In a letter to Alex Hunter, he wrote, I cannot in good conscience be a part of the persecution of innocent people. It would be highly improper and unethical for me to stay when I so strongly believe this.
The following March, with the grand jury still impaneled and conducting its own investigation, Linda Arndt also resigned. There were now few left who had been with the case since the beginning.
Lou Smit and I both testified before the grand jury, and we were among the last witnesses. He went before the panel on March 11, 1999. My own testimony was heard on April 26 and 27. Smit had requested he be allowed to testify, but his participation was rebuffed by prosecutor Michael Kane, who also ordered him to turn over all of the material he had gathered. With the help of other prosecutors he knew around the state, who respected him and agreed that the grand jury was not listening to all relevant evidence, Smit got both rulings reversed. It was my impression that it was not the prosecuting attorneys but the grand jurors themselves who wanted to hear from both of us.
Since grand jury proceedings are held in secret, I don’t know what Smit testified to or whether it conformed to what I said. But a number of media sources wrote of a general consensus that what we both told the grand jurors focused them to their final result.
Bryan Morgan had called to tell me the grand jury wanted me to testify and to bring any notes I had. “I told them you didn’t have any notes,” he said.
“I do have notes,” I said.
“You do?”
I did bring them with me; and when I got in the grand jury room, they let me read my notes pretty much verbatim into the record, including my candid observations on many of the key players.
Two of the grand jurors had backgrounds in science, so I knew it would be important to explain to them what I did and how we had developed the discipline. I recall one member asking me something like, “What if we told you there was evidence that two people were involved in this crime?”
“I’ve investigated and testified in cases in which I thought there were two people involved,” I replied, “but I don’t see it here.” Then I added, “But if you actually have the evidence you mention, then why am I here? Why are you talking to me? Go with your evidence.”
He backed off.
On October 13, 1999, the grand jury and Alex Hunter announced they had found insufficient evidence to indict anyone in the murder of JonBenét Ramsey. Since Colorado law specified that a true bill of indictment must be signed by both the jury foreman and the district attorney, it remained ambiguous which party had led the way in not indicting the Ramseys or anyone else.
Lou Smit and I didn’t formally meet until after the grand jury testimony. But once we did, we quickly became friends, based on mutual admiration and respect. After I completed my grand jury appearance, the Ramsey lawyers said that Smit wanted to meet me. We drove out to his home in Colorado Springs.
When he opened the front door, he greeted me with, “John, it took me ten months to conclude that the Ramseys were innocent and it only took you four days.” The situations weren’t exactly comparable; I was doing a quick criminal investigative analysis and he had undertaken a full-scale police-type investigation. But I have to say, a statement like that from an individual of the stature of Lou Smit was one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received.
He admitted that like me, he went into the investigation assuming the Ramseys were probably the killers. He took me inside and showed me a PowerPoint presentation he had put together. Seeing the way Smit had gone about his own research and analysis reinforced my belief in the Ramseys’ innocence.
As he went over his case materials and presentation with me, I told him how impressed I was by his work. Then he told me some things that didn’t come as much of a surprise. One was about a visit he, Steve Thomas and Alex Hunter had made to Quantico, to consult with the successor of my old group, renamed the Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit (CASKU).
As they were piecing together evidence and making a case for the Ramseys as the killers, Smit declared that the evidence just didn’t fit. At that point, he related, the unit chief made a show of throwing his credentials down on the conference table and saying something to the effect, “If the Ramseys didn’t do it, I’ll turn in my creds!”
This squared with another report I received from Kenneth Lanning, a member of the Behavioral Science Unit and the Bureau’s leading expert on crimes against children. Ken’s research, writing and teaching have been groundbreaking, and his influence on the field is profound. At one point, Ken was asked to sit in on a conference on the case. After hearing the presentation, he told the other agents that they weren’t allowing for the possibility of an intruder, and what they had presented didn’t fit with the Ramseys as suspects.
“Ken, you’re not saying the Ramseys didn’t do it, are you?” one of the special agents asked.
Lanning was never invited back on the case.
The investigation ground on, coming to no conclusion. In 2000, both Steve Thomas and the Ramseys published books. Thomas’s chronicle, JonBenét: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, fingered Patsy as the killer and John as her accomplice in the cover-up. In The Death of Innocence, the Ramseys gave their own side of the story.
In that book, the Ramseys mentioned a local journalist named Robert Christian “Chris” Wolf as a possible suspect and said he “represented too many unanswered questions.” Wolf had written about Access Graphics, John Ramsey’s company; and according to a former girlfriend, he had acted strangely the day of the murder when he stormed out of his own house, returned muddy the next day and followed the case obsessively. The police had interviewed Wolf and cleared him. He denied any involvement, said he had not even heard of JonBenét before the murder and sued the Ramseys for $50 million for defamation in the U.S. District Court in Atlanta.
Wolf ’s complaint stated that the Ramseys knew he was not a legitimate suspect, because Patsy had killed her daughter “either accidentally or intentionally” and then undertook “an elaborate and transparent attempt to cover up her crime.” His scenario was essentially the same as that in Thomas’s book.
On March 31, 2003, Judge Julie E. Carnes, a former federal prosecutor, dismissed the case on a motion for summary judgment on the ground that if Wolf could not prove by clear and convincing evidence (the standard in a civil case) that his theory that the Ramseys killed JonBenét was true; then he cannot demonstrate that their statement concerning his status as a suspect was made with the requisite malice (a critical element in defamation).
In her ninety-three-page dismissal order, Carnes stated that if anything, the Ramseys’ book “understated” the police department’s interest in Wolf. She took it upon herself to evaluate all the evidence and strongly criticized Boulder PD and the FBI for trying to use the media to create a guilty image of the Ramseys in the collective mind of the public. She had particular criticism for Steve Thomas, comparing his work unfavorably to that of Lou Smit:
Whereas Detective Smit’s summary testimony concerning the investigation is based on evidence, Detective Thomas’ theories appear to lack substantial evidentiary support. Indeed, while Detective Smit is an experienced and respected homicide detective, Detective Thomas had no investigative experience concerning homicide cases prior to this case. In short, the plaintiff’s evidence that the [Ramseys] killed their daughter and covered up their crime is based on little more than the fact that the defendants were present in the house during the murder.
There was, she wrote, abundant evidence . . . that an intruder entered their [the Ramseys’] home at some point during the night of Dec. 25, 1996, and killed their daughter.
On all major points, Judge Carnes used solid legal and investigative reasoning in a statement more far-reaching in its assertion of the Ramseys’ innocence than any official document or opinion before. She dismissed the idea that Patsy would have staged the body to make it look as if her accidental killing of her daughter had been some other kind of crime, as well as the theory that she committed the crime out of depression over a supposedly failing marriage.
Although plaintiff presents such evidence in support of his theory, Carnes wrote, if accepted as true, [it] cuts against plaintiff’s theory that Mr. Ramsey assisted his wife in the “cover-up” of JonBen ét’s murder. In other words, if the marriage was shaky, it arguably seems less likely that the innocent spouse would help the guilty spouse cover up her murder of their child.
She also put to rest the notion that the Ramseys, in spite of lawyering up, had not cooperated with the police: Despite widespread criticism that defendants failed to cooperate in the murder investigation, defendants note that they agreed, on at least three occasions, to be interviewed separately by representatives of the police and of the Boulder County district attorney’s office.
Furthermore, she wrote: During the course of the investigation, defendants signed over one hundred releases for information requested by the police, and provided all evidence and information requested by the police.
I found this ruling highly gratifying because Judge Carnes summed up what I had been trying to get across for years: To use any of the physical or behavioral evidence against the Ramseys, you have to jump through so many logical hoops that the whole theory falls apart.
While this case was unfolding, I got a call from Bryan Morgan, who said that the new Boulder County district attorney Mary Keenan wanted to talk to me. I flew out and met with her and her staff. This was the first time in my career I’d been asked to provide an analysis to the defense and prosecution in the same case.
The same month that Judge Carnes’s ruling came down, Keenan issued the following statement:
DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE—TWENTIETH JUDICIAL
DISTRICT
MARY I. KEENAN, DISTRICT ATTORNEY
April 7, 2003
I have carefully reviewed the Order of United States District Court Judge Julie Carnes in the civil case of Wolf v. John Ramsey and Patricia Ramsey. I agree with the Court’s conclusion that “the weight of the evidence is more consistent with a theory that an intruder murdered JonBenét than it is with a theory that Mrs. Ramsey did so.”
Although issued in the context of a civil case, the Court’s ruling is a thoughtful and well reasoned decision based on the evidence that was presented by the parties in that case. It should be read in its entirety.
John and Patricia Ramsey have been the focus of an exhaustive investigation with regard to the murder of their daughter, JonBenét, for more than six years. People charged with a crime are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in court. Since Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey have not even been charged, much less convicted, they must be presumed innocent and must be treated accordingly.
For several months, my office has been investigating new and other unpursued leads, most of which involve the possibility that an intruder committed this crime. We are proceeding with the full cooperation of the Ramseys, Detective Lou Smit, and the Boulder Police Department. We are all focused on the apprehension and successful prosecution of the killer of JonBenét.
Sadly, neither Patsy Ramsey nor Lou Smit lived to see that happen. Three years after her cancer recurred, Patsy passed away on June 24, 2006, at forty-nine years of age. She died in her father’s house with John by her side. She is buried in Georgia, next to JonBenét.
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.