CHAPTER 3

FINDING JONBENÉT

Burke and JonBenét at Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympics. © John Ramsey.

CHRONOLOGY

DECEMBER 26, 1996—THURSDAY

1:00 p.m.—Detective Arndt suggests John Ramsey and his friend search the home to see if anything is out of order.

1:06 p.m.—(Approximate time) John finds his daughter’s body in an old basement storage room.

1:30 p.m.—(Approximate time) John’s children from his first marriage (son, John Andrew, and daughter, Melinda, as well as Melinda’s boyfriend) arrive in Boulder after flying to Denver International Airport from Minneapolis.

1:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.—(Approximate time) The Ramseys leave their home and go to a friend’s home to stay. The police have interviewed them and don’t ask to continue to interview them. Nor do they take the family to the police department for interviews, forensic physical examinations and DNA testing.

Early evening and that night—John’s brother, Jeff, family friends and Patsy’s sisters arrive at the airport in Denver from Atlanta.

TO LOOK AT THE GOOFY SMILE on the handmade turtle, which sports a painted and shaped paper plate for its shell, is to see what she saw.

Turtle with paper plate shell made by JonBenét. © John Ramsey.

Her art teacher wrote that she “draws happy, sunny pictures. She is talented and a care-giver to other students.”

Her music teacher said JonBenét “loves to dance and sing. She always makes sure that each student has his/her turn.”

Her homeroom teacher wrote on JonBenét’s report card after her first few months in Kindergarten: “JonBenét is a pleasure to have in class. She is a confident, positive student who works hard on all assignments. JonBenét’s mature behavior makes her a positive role model for other students.”

Self-portrait made by JonBenét. © John Ramsey.

Homeroom teacher’s comment about JonBenét.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1996

Although John, Patsy and their friends had been allowed to wander throughout the home during the morning, after nearly all the police officers left before 10 a.m., all civilians on site were instructed by the remaining detective to stay in a back section on the main floor. This is where the detective, John and Patsy, their friends and the two Victim Advocates waited for the ransom call. The phone rang several times that morning. Some were return calls from acquaintances John had called while trying to arrange the $118,000 ransom money for when the call came from the kidnapper. Others were from friends, unaware of the devastating circumstances inside the home, who were calling to wish the Ramseys happy holidays. With each call, John experienced brief seconds of relief and then despair. He answered with a simple hello, trying to keep his voice calm. With each call, he thought, “Maybe this is the kidnapper. Maybe he’ll let me hear my daughter’s voice.”

One call that morning was unlike the others. With this call, there was a split-second pause on the line, and then the caller hung up. In 1996, the family didn’t have caller ID, and the call was not long enough to complete a trace of it through the phone company.

“I thought it was the kidnapper,” John said later. The caller had waited just long enough to hear his voice. Why did the caller hang up? Who was it?

There was nothing he could do.

It was a long, slow morning of suffering. The small group of people waited and prayed while their hearts were slowly torn apart … As Patsy negotiated with God, at one point she was overheard by a police officer saying, “If only it was me, I would trade places with … I would trade places … oh please, God, let her be safe oh please, let her be safe.” (BPD Report #5-2627.)

JonBenét Ramsey was born August 6, 1990.

JonBenét’s birth announcement. © John Ramsey.

Patsy holding newly born JonBenét on her lap. © John Ramsey.

She was named after her father, whose full name is John Bennett Ramsey. Her mother used the soft, French J when she called her by name. Her father used the hard J.

As a baby, JonBenét didn’t cry much. When she did, her mother knew she either needed a diaper change or it was time for bed. Otherwise, JonBenét smiled a lot and was delighted to sit and watch what was going on around her, always searching for a new sight. As she got a little older, her mom once said, she loved airplanes. When she heard one, she would point and wave toward the sky and say “pane.”

Her half-sister, Melinda, remembers how much JonBenét liked to play outside and be with other children. “Kids!” JonBenét would yell out, pointing and turning all different ways in her stroller. “Kids!”

Patsy kept her children busy. When asked what she did for a living, Patsy said she “invested in futures.” Most assumed that meant she worked in the stock market, but Patsy was talking about her children. She was a mother.

JonBenét and Burke took piano lessons.

At various times, JonBenét took violin lessons and acting lessons, participated in a children’s choir and attended gymnastics, singing and dancing classes.

Both children skied, ice skated and were enrolled in rock climbing and Bible study classes.

Patsy and John wanted them to be well rounded and to participate in family activities that included sports as well as educational and artistic endeavors. Burke had his father’s genes. He was quiet and became easily involved in activities by himself.

JonBenét had Patsy’s personality times ten; she was gregarious and outgoing, and she liked people. She talked in her own language from an early age and then just talked a lot. She was “exuberant,” Patsy would say, adding that yes, “JonBenét went through the two-year-old phase.” She was very strong-willed and verbal, according to both parents.

Once, when the family was skiing in Aspen, John thought JonBenét was skiing at too fast a speed and could lose control. He remembers them being at the top of an advanced run on a clear day of vivid blue skies and sunlight and snow. The grandeur of the Colorado Rockies was all around them, and here was his little girl, racing her way down the mountain. He skied down and tackled her.

“Man, she was mad,” he remembered, smiling. They had both face-planted in the snow. JonBenét looked around, startled, trying to figure out what had happened. Then, sputtering with indignation, she demanded, “Dad, did you do that? I was just getting going!”

“JonBenét, you were going too fast. You could have gotten hurt.” “No. Only if I couldn’t stop. I could stop.”

“Well,” her dad answered, “I’d like you to slow down a bit.”

They helped each other up and brushed themselves off, and then off they went, skiing again. JonBenét took off just as quickly but, this time, her dad was very close behind.

On her first report card in kindergarten, JonBenét got thirty-nine plusses and needed work on recognizing the differences between a penny, nickel and dime and between a letter, word and sentence. She also needed to work on writing out her numbers past thirteen and reading color words. The only “x” she got was for a failure to recognize number patterns.

JonBenét’s kindergarten report card.

JonBenét had a certain vitality and was always active and busy. During a parental interview for kindergarten, Patsy wrote in some paperwork that “activities [JonBenét] liked were artwork, coloring, ceramics, reading, monkey bars, rollerblading and bicycling.” Patsy also wrote that JonBenét would rather “play with others than play alone,” got along “great” with her brother, and loved “scary stories.” She felt JonBenét did “well in printing, reading, art, computer, writing and letters.” With regard to discipline, Patsy wrote JonBenét was “very sensitive” and that “it was important not to pull her from a group, but to reach compromises.”

In one Boulder Police Department report related to another care-giver for Burke and JonBenét, a long-time babysitter said, “JonBenét and Burke were the most loving brother and sister I’ve ever seen” (BPD Report #5-3610). Another report, however, related to a former nanny, stated that the nanny had “bad-mouthed the Ramseys a lot.” (BPD Report #5-1343.) It was reported by police that the same nanny “who babysat while Patsy was ill” had hit Burke: “Burke said she had hit him and he did not like her. She had been mean.” (BPD Report #5-3044.) That babysitter resigned or was let go as the children’s nanny soon after the incident involving Burke.

When they weren’t in school, JonBenét and her brother were often outside playing with friends. JonBenét was an all-day person, which meant she’d wake up cheerful and ready for the day ahead. During the school year, she’d get up, get dressed and go to school. She and her brother carpooled to a local public school. She had a few after-school activities, and then she was home for dinner, family time and bed.

Once, on a jungle gym with her mother standing by, JonBenét missed a rung, fell and landed flat on her back. Her parents had stressed laughter through playtime accidents. As Patsy ran up to her stunned, unmoving child, JonBenét suddenly burst into laughter and told her mom, “I’m not hurt, Mom. I’m going to get back on, and this time I won’t fall.” Patsy recalled, “I was always amazed by the confidence and maturity of statements like that from both Burke and JonBenét. I’m not so sure I would have climbed back on those monkey bars.”

In a previously unreleased police report, Detective Linda Arndt, the only law enforcement person in the Ramsey home after 10 a.m. on Thursday, December 26, 1996, wrote about what she did that morning. According to this report (Detective Linda Arndt—Date of Report 1-8-1997), Arndt talked with Patsy about when she found JonBenét missing, who had keys to the home, their vacation plans and if Patsy had any ideas related to who might have kidnapped her daughter. Patsy told the detective about her housekeeper, the housekeeper’s family and how the housekeeper had recently asked to borrow $2,000. Arndt also wrote that Patsy’s mother, by phone from Atlanta, had said she wanted Detective Arndt to know the housekeeper had told her “many times” that JonBenét was such a beautiful girl and asked if she (JonBenét’s grandmother) wasn’t afraid someone was going to kidnap her granddaughter.

Arndt also interviewed John about his wife’s recent recovery from cancer. They talked about any suspicious people around the house but, according to Detective Arndt’s report, John said there hadn’t been any, as far as he knew.

Detective Arndt also discussed the wording in the ransom note1 with John, the amount of the ransom, the strange signature on the note— “S.B.T.C”—and “things to say when the author(s) of the suspected ransom note called.” She also asked him about any employee of his company, Access Graphics, “who might be responsible for the disappearance of JonBenét.” “John did tell me that there was one employee he was forced to ‘let go’ approx. 5 months ago,” Detective Arndt wrote, adding that she and John then considered the employee in more detail.

As Patsy lay on a couch, she talked with Arndt about the ransom note. “Patsy explained to me that [the housekeeper] did not use the words ‘hence’ or ‘attaché case.’ Patsy did not know why someone would ask for the amount of $118,000. Patsy said that amount had no significance to her. Patsy asked me why the author of the note had not asked for a larger sum of money, or at least a round sum of money. Patsy said the author of the note referred to John as being a Southerner. Patsy told me that anyone who knows John Ramsey knows he’s not from the South.”

“John Ramsey’s friends made the following observations about the note: The author of the note directed the note to John Ramsey; the amount of $118,000 was an odd amount; the author of the note appeared to be somewhat educated, since the words ‘hence’ and ‘attaché case’ were used; the sentence ‘don’t try to grow a brain John’ seemed to be a slap in the face to John Ramsey; the closure ‘Victory! S.B.T.C’ did not make sense; and the reference to John Ramsey being a southerner [sic] indicated to the friends the person did not really know John Ramsey because John was originally from Michigan.”

A family friend who at one point that morning left the home to arrange to have the ransom amount of $118,000 immediately available from John’s bank also spoke with Detective Arndt. “[Friend of John] told me that $118,000 is a relatively insignificant amount compared to John Ramsey’s wealth. He told me that the persons who demanded the ransom could easily have asked for $10,000,000 and … obtained that amount.”

Arndt also noted in her report, “No one in the house made any obvious comment to me that it was after 1000 hours [10:00 a.m.] and the suspected kidnappers had not called.” In the ransom note, the kidnapper said he/she would call between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., so Arndt was questioning why John and Patsy hadn’t noted the time, even though the officers who’d left at 9:45 a.m. and 10 a.m. had failed to stay with Detective Arndt for that crucial ransom call.

By nearly noon, after six frustrating hours with no word, the home was suffocating from inaction.

Detective Arndt paged her supervisor, Sergeant Larry Mason, at noon and at 12:30 p.m. She reported that he did not respond to her pages. She noted in her report: “Patsy Ramsey had been repeatedly asking me for an update. John Ramsey seemed to isolate himself from others.”

Arndt suggested that John and his friend search the home “to keep John Ramsey’s mind occupied.” The two men then went to the basement.

In the basement, they both went directly to the room with the suitcase and the broken window and then investigated further, each moving in a different direction. John went past the basement stairs and down the basement hall to the door of a storage room that was located next to the one he’d just been in. The door was straight down the hall from the staircase and was accessed through an open boiler room door. The door to the storage room was about five feet into the boiler room and in direct line of sight of the staircase.

The old door had no handle. It was painted bright white, and a black metal plate covered the space where a handle would otherwise have been located. The door led to a room that had been used to dump and store coal from the main floor when the home was originally built in 1927. The Ramsey family used the room as a space to store Christmas decorations and presents as well as window screens and other construction paraphernalia. At the top of the door, a makeshift block of wood was held in place by a screw. A latch that hung straight down from the block of wood kept the door closed when it was secured.

Wine cellar door/storage room door with latch (highlighted) at top to keep it closed. The door opened outward only.

John undid the latch and pulled the door open. Inside, the darkness of the bare storage room was solid and still.

He turned on the light. Milliseconds of reality blasted toward him. It was an ugly room that was mostly square, with a short left-side wall that led to a corner and then a longer straight wall around that corner. The room was all concrete from the walls up to the ceiling and down to the moldy floor. The open door allowed light from the hallway to help illuminate the dimly lit, rarely used space.

Just around the corner, JonBenét was sprawled on the dirty floor, arms above her head, a blanket from her bed casually, or tightly (there is differing opinion on this), covering part of her body. Her favorite pink Barbie nightgown was on the floor next to her. (BPD Report #2-8.)

Where JonBenét’s body was found in the basement.

Duct tape binding JonBenét’s mouth and blanket that was partially covering her. John had removed the duct tape from her mouth when he found her. The friend right behind him picked the duct tape up and then dropped it. Courtesy Boulder Police and Boulder County District Attorney.

John’s Journal:

I see instantly what I know is JonBenét. A white blanket from her bed and her face is turned to the left, black tape on her mouth. Her arms are above her head tied together with a shoestring type cord. I notice a red spot beneath her skin at her esophagus. A rush runs over me, thank God I have found her. I fall down over her saying come on baby, talk to Daddy. I rip the tape from her mouth. Her delicate eyelids are closed and her skin is cool to the touch. Come on honey. Oh God, no, talk to me, talk to me. I start to untie her arms as they are bound tightly. I’ve got to do something. I’m totally out of my mind now. I pick up JonBenét and start to rush upstairs. All I can do is scream. My screams are those panic kind of scream you have during nightmares just before your body shakes awake with a start.

There was a brief second of relief … his heart beating against his chest … as John pulled the duct tape off JonBenét’s mouth and frantically tried to untie her hands. And then there was the scream. A deep primal scream, a father’s anguish welling from the depths, a tortured cry that reached those on the floor above, foretelling news of a child’s death. John kept screaming, his body shaking. “I realized she wasn’t alive and picked her up and carried her upstairs,” he later said. The coroner would determine the cause of death had been either strangulation or a blow to the head. The force of the blow that JonBenét endured caused a crack eight-and-a-half-inches in length that ran along the interior of her skull, including a portion of her skull that was caved in. But none of that damage to her skull was visible on the outside of her head.

As he ran from the basement to the main floor carrying his daughter with her arms frozen above her head in rigor mortis, John Ramsey thought for at least a fleeting moment that maybe it wasn’t too late. His denial was so strong that he held onto the hope that the stiff, cold little girl who was his daughter somehow was alive and could be saved. He laid her on the floor of the main floor hallway and Detective Arndt desperately tried to find JonBenét’s pulse. But this was not a day for such mercies. The detective told him, “She’s dead.” Any chance was gone, and the helplessness John Ramsey felt at that moment was crushing. At that point, the detective moved JonBenét’s body into the living room next to the Christmas tree.

Years later, Patsy would remember the scream from the basement. “It was kind of this hoarse, deep scream. I was in the den with a couple of our friends. They held me back and wouldn’t let me go. Eternity passed and John came in. I knew from his face. I can’t describe how he looked, but it was in his face and his walk and his eyes. He told me she was dead. I thought I ran into the room where she was, but friends tell me they had to support me to even walk into the living room to see my baby girl.” One of those friends would later tell police that she “thought it was strange that Patsy did not move” when the body was found. (BPD Report #1-1194.)

Soon, however, Patsy Ramsey did make it to where JonBenét’s body lay on the living room floor. John had covered his daughter with a blanket. Patsy lay down and held the body of her little girl. “My mind snapped,” she later remembered. “I couldn’t cope, understand or reason.”

According to Detective Arndt, “Patsy was crying and moaning while she was with JonBenét. Patsy raised herself onto her knees, lifted her arms straight into the air, and prayed. Patsy said ‘Jesus! You raised Lazarus from the dead, raise my baby from the dead!’”

The Christmas tree and sparkling decorations as well as figurines of the Three Wise Men in the beautifully decorated living room stood as mute witnesses over the murdered child who lay, a rope still embedded in her neck, on the floor in front of them.

Tree with three wise men figurines in front of it. It was where JonBenét’s body was laid by the only detective in the home. Courtesy Boulder Police and Boulder County District Attorney.

The Ramseys’ friends joined hands as the family minister, who had arrived earlier that day, began Last Rites. They then recited “The Lord’s Prayer” while gathered on the floor around JonBenét’s body.

When Commander-Sergeant Bob Whitson returned to the Boulder Police Department at 10 a.m. that day for his meeting with the FBI, he turned John and Patsy’s handwriting samples over to the department’s forgery detective, who was already in possession of the ransom note. The meeting with the FBI, which also included Boulder Police Chief Tom Koby and Sergeant Larry Mason (supervisor of the other detectives that day), lasted nearly three hours. And then, quite suddenly, the meeting was interrupted.

Whitson remembers that the forgery detective who had been examining the ransom note and the handwriting samples burst into the conference room with the tablet with Patsy’s handwriting on it. But it was something else on the tablet that brought the meeting to a stunned halt. In the middle of the tablet, where there should have been empty pages, the detective had found the words “Dear Mr. & /” in that same odd block-letter handwriting of the ransom note. Patsy’s tablet, which contained samples of her handwriting, had also been used by someone for practice writing the beginning words of the ransom note. Seven pages had been ripped from the middle of Patsy’s tablet as well. The ransom note had been written on the eighth, ninth and tenth pages of the tablet; what was left of those pages in the tablet had tears that matched up with tears at the top of the ransom note pages.

“And that was when it coalesced,” Whitson said. “The meeting came to a conclusive halt. It was the first indication law enforcement people in the room had that the Ramseys might have been involved in their own daughter’s disappearance.”

The anomalies of the day continued to mount. “I tried to call the Ramsey home line to tell the detective about the new ransom note development, and it was busy,” said Whitson. The phone line was busy because, at that exact moment, the only detective in the home was calling 911 to report a body had been found by John Ramsey in the basement of the home.

In a later police report, on-the-scene Detective Linda Arndt said she used a cell phone to call in the dead-body discovery, which wouldn’t account for a busy home phone line at the exact same time. The discrepancy about the busy phone signal in the home was never resolved.

The death of JonBenét Ramsey was quickly conveyed to those meeting with the FBI at Boulder Police Department headquarters. Whitson would later describe the scene that he and other officers rushed back into at the Ramsey home as surreal.2 “Patsy was standing and holding JonBenét and rocking back and forth with a banshee-like wail. I was focused on her so everyone else was a blurred surround.”

Downstairs, the friend who had helped John Ramsey search the basement at the request of Detective Arndt was stationed in front of the closed basement door. Arndt had asked him to stand guard there and allow no one to enter. Involving a civilian once again in the crime scene was another mistake by the detective. “Controlling the movement of persons at the crime scene and limiting the number of persons who enter the crime scene is essential to maintaining scene integrity, safeguarding evidence and minimizing contamination.”³

At the suggestion of the Ramsey family’s minister, Patsy finally set JonBenét’s body on the floor. John and a family friend literally carried and half-dragged Patsy, who had collapsed, out of the room. Later Patsy Ramsey would state, “Nothing. Nothing. I could do nothing on my own.” She also recalled that in her mind she was screaming, “No! No! No!”

When John’s son and daughter, John Andrew and Melinda, along with Melinda’s boyfriend, arrived via a flight from Atlanta at the Minneapolis airport, where they’d planned to meet John, Patsy, Burke and JonBenét after their flight from Boulder, a flight attendant told them to call their father in Boulder. They suspected something was wrong and quickly found a pay phone at the airport. John Andrew called and his dad answered the phone. Melinda would later recall that the color drained completely from John Andrew’s face as his father spoke to him. “JonBenét’s been kidnapped,” John Andrew said.

“I fell to the ground when John Andrew told me that,” Melinda said. “He was still on the phone. I knew it was bad. We scrambled and were able to fly stand-by to Denver. My boyfriend was with us. We got a cab in Denver.”

By the time the three arrived in Boulder, JonBenét’s body had been found. “When we got to the house in Boulder,” Melinda said, “I remember seeing police setting up yellow tape around the yard. Dad and Patsy were outside with friends, and Dad was crying. Patsy looked awful. Dad said, ‘JonBenét is with Beth.’ That’s my sister who was killed in a car crash. My mind played tricks on me. I was already in shock. My first reaction was that JonBenét had not died. It was that Beth was taking care of JonBenét while she was still kidnapped.”

Melinda continued, “We all almost immediately got into cars and went to a family friend’s home. When we got there, Patsy couldn’t even sit up, so I went to comfort her.” Melinda told Patsy, “We’re going to get her back. It’s going to be OK.” And Patsy told Melinda, “No, Melinda, you don’t understand. Your dad found her in the basement. She’s dead.”

“I remember thinking this would kill them,” Melinda said. “After my older sister, Beth, was killed in a car wreck, it was just so awful. I didn’t think they could take another loss like this. I thought they’ll be dead in a year from sheer grief. Patsy already seemed dead inside. Her whole body was pale and gray. She just wasn’t there. Dad was sobbing continuously. His way of dealing was to pace and cry.”

Melinda, her brother and her boyfriend had started the day in the best of holiday spirits, looking forward to being with the rest of the family. While they tried to absorb the enormity of what had happened, lives had already toppled and collapsed.

John’s Journal:

John Andrew and Melinda both started to cry. Oh why do my children have to bear such burdens so early in their life.

John’s brother, Jeff, other friends and Patsy’s sisters arrived that night from Atlanta. Jeff would later say he was unable to acknowledge that JonBenét was dead until he saw his brother’s face and helpless sobbing.

Jeff dwelled on memories of his niece and focused on comforting his brother and his wife. He recalled JonBenét’s boundless enthusiasm, and he remembered them playing in the leaves in his brother’s yard in Boulder two years before. “One more time, Uncle Jeff,” JonBenét had called to her uncle. It had been one of those golden Colorado fall days with a brilliant blue sky and temperatures still warm enough to play outside, but the air vibrated the skin with the promise of a cool night ahead. The temperature in Boulder at 5,400 feet descends with the sun. The September days were growing noticeably shorter, the sun slanting in at different angles, its western light this time of the day diffused by gold. The game they were playing involved JonBenét hiding in a pile of leaves. It was up to her Uncle Jeff to “find” her. She would then jump and yell, “Boo!” and he would pretend to be surprised. Then the game would start over again with JonBenét hiding in a new pile. After the seventh or eighth time, Uncle Jeff said maybe they should quit and go inside. But JonBenét, with that endless supply of energy most kids have when they’re having fun, wanted to keep going. “Again?” she’d ask her uncle.

Susan Stine, whose family the Ramseys lived with for four months after the murder, found out what had happened on December 26 when she and her family arrived home from a movie that day. The phone rang and another friend said, “Did you hear what happened to the Ramseys? JonBenét was murdered!”

“Everything was so crazy,” Susan reflected. “At the time, it’s something you would never have thought possible. Not someone going into a house and murdering a child. We were all dazed for weeks, just operating on automatic pilot.”

Terror, fear and depravity had slipped quietly into the home of a seemingly content family of four in the town of Boulder, Colorado. And it was all magnified by the bizarre evidence of the case with its many interpretations.