CHAPTER 11
THE DAYS AFTER— DECEMBER 26 TO 31, 1996
JonBenét’s casket.
JonBenét’s body being carried in a casket out of the church in Atlanta. December 31, 1996.
CHRONOLOGY
Thursday, December 26, 1996—After JonBenét’s body is found, the Ramseys go to a friend’s home to stay. Boulder Police Department officers accompany them to observe, write reports and protect.
Friday, December 27, 1996—The Ramseys stay with their friends. BPD officers are still with them day and night, observing and writing reports.
John asks a BPD sergeant to come to the friend’s home to interview him.
Saturday, December 28, 1996—John, Patsy, Burke, John Andrew and Melinda give DNA samples and are interviewed and monitored by police, who take notes at the Boulder Sheriff’s Department. John, Patsy and Burke give handwriting samples at the home where they are staying.
Attorney Mike Bynum says there will be no more interviews without an attorney for the Ramseys present.
The commander of the investigation, John Eller, attempts to stop the release of JonBenét’s body to her family unless the Ramseys come to the Boulder Police Department to be interviewed. He has no legal authority to do this and is rebuked by the coroner and the Boulder District Attorney’s Office.
Sunday, December 29, 1996—A memorial service for JonBenét is held in Boulder. The Ramsey family then flies to Atlanta for her funeral. It is Patsy Ramsey’s fortieth birthday.
Monday, December 30, 1996—Visitation is held for JonBenét in Atlanta.
A Boulder police spokeswoman erroneously says Patsy Ramsey has not had her DNA taken. The information is published in the media.
Tuesday, December 31, 1996—JonBenét’s funeral is held in Atlanta.
John’s friend causes a disturbance in Atlanta at a private residence. (BPD Report #5-4583.)
THE RAMSEYS WOULD NEVER GO HOME AGAIN.
They had spent hundreds of hours making their home a happy retreat. It was a pretty place filled with family photographs, colorful wallpaper, paintings and relaxed furniture. Patsy later would say, “Yet there was so much tragedy. John’s daughter Beth was killed in a car accident when we lived there, I was diagnosed with cancer and then JonBenét was killed inside. The house seemed to have turned against us, and we wouldn’t ever go back.” She shivered as she said this.
Within an hour of JonBenét’s body being discovered, Patsy and John Ramsey were told by police that they had to leave their home because it had become a crime scene. They left a house, though, a place that was no longer their home. Instead, it was now a series of still and lifeless rooms, stripped empty of the people who had made them a comfort. They retreated to the home of close friends who had been with them, caring and supporting them, all morning. The police went with the family for both protection and to gather more information. Soon their son, Burke, joined them, as well as John Andrew, Melinda and her boyfriend.
One Boulder Police Department officer who remained with the Ramseys observed John and Patsy the night of December 26 and into the morning of December 27. He wrote in his police reports observations about Patsy and John’s behaviors that provided a professional insider’s look of their states of mind. The officer also talked with the Ramseys’ friends about them. The information from his report shows how closely the family was being monitored and reveals their emotional conditions; information that hasn’t been released until now. Information leaked after the first week following JonBenét’s death showed a stark difference between what was noted in the confidential police reports and what was published and broadcast by the media and online. Publicly, the couple was variously described as “cold,” “seemingly uncaring,” and “not acting right.” John was even described as “ice man” by Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter months after JonBenét’s murder.
But in unreleased police reports, details regarding John and Patsy’s behaviors seemed to contradict what was publicly disclosed about them that first night after their daughter’s murder:
12:05 a.m. 12-27-96: “Both John and Patsy get Valium.” (BPD Report # 1-112, Source.)
12:20 a.m. 12-27-96: “John and Patsy Ramsey fall asleep on the living room floor.” (BPD Report #1-112, Source.)
01:50 a.m. 12-27-96: “Patsy gets up and asks if someone is with her son, Burke. She also asks for more pills and says ‘I just want to stay asleep.’ She also asks if all the doors and windows are locked. She is drowsy and drugged.” (BPD Report #1-112, Source.)
The police reports continue:
02:00 a.m. 12-27-96: “Patsy gets up to go to the bathroom. She is drowsy and dazed. Sobs every once in a while. At times needs to be supported.” (BPD Report #1-112, Source.)
02:35 a.m. 12-27-96: “Patsy Ramsey goes back to bed.” (BPD Report #1-112, Source.)
02:40 a.m. 12-27-96: “John Ramsey gets up and asks for two pills and walks around crying.” (BPD Report #1-112, Source.)
02:45 a.m. 12-27-96: “John Ramsey goes back to bed.” (BPD Report #1-113, Source.)
02:50 a.m. 12-27-96: “John Ramsey is back up crying and sobbing at times.” (BPD Report #1-113, Source.)
03:50 a.m. 12-27-96: The police officer’s report ends when he is relieved by another officer. (BPD Report #1-85.)
Another police report written from an interview with a family friend said: “Per [Patsy’s friend] … Patsy looked dead herself … was up every 30 minutes throughout the night. John was pacing when I got there … was pacing and crying throughout the night … Patsy would ask … me to check on Burke every 10 minutes.” (BPD Report #1-1881.)
We spend the next 24 hours in a numbed, body-shocked daze. I sleep a little bit on the floor, totally in agony.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1996
On that Friday morning, John began trying to find a child counselor for Burke. The Ramseys had taken nothing from their home when they left, so friends organized to get some basic clothing for them and began preparing for a memorial in Boulder and a funeral service in Atlanta.
That afternoon, the police knocked on a few doors in the Ramseys’ neighborhood to find possible witnesses. According to an attorney in the DA’s Office and Detective Lou Smit, however, the Boulder Police Department never completed a thorough canvass of the neighborhood. Ever.
Some of the police reports from a brief canvass that was done would list an address and then, “Nothing of significance reported.” Smit responded to this finding by saying, “A short while into a homicide investigation and snap judgments were being made about what was and was not important. Everything was important at that point in the investigation.”
The Stine family, friends of the Ramseys, went to visit the couple where they were staying on Friday, December 27. “Patsy looked like she had aged a thousand years. She was so distraught,” Susan Stine said. “We said what little we could say and hugged her and John and then just did what little we could to help. We’d brought our son with us to be with Burke. We thought it was important that Burke have a friend with him to distract him from the grieving adults.”
John’s business attorney and friend also saw them the day after the murder was discovered. Mike Bynum viewed the developments in the immediate days that followed as the lawyer he was. In spite of consistent rumors floated in the media that the Ramseys were not cooperating, Bynum knew both Patsy and John had been interviewed or observed every day since that first morning and would be until they left Sunday afternoon for JonBenét’s funeral in Atlanta.
“After that first day, I could tell they were being targeted by police,” said Bynum. “That was why it was so important to get attorneys for them immediately.”
The lead police commander on the case began insisting the Ramseys come to the Boulder Police Department to be interviewed. John replied, “Come and interview us as much as you want where we are staying, but Patsy can physically barely get out of bed.” That’s when the legal side of Bynum kicked in fully. “These were people who literally couldn’t tie their shoelaces,” he said. “The trauma of seeing their dead daughter’s body strangled with a rope embedded in her neck when they had never seen a victim of a violent crime left them incapable of making decisions. The Ramseys didn’t hire an attorney. I did. I asked John if he would trust me to make a decision for him that I felt was critically important. He didn’t ask me what it was and just said ‘go ahead.’ Neither one of them knew my decision was to hire attorneys to represent them.”
Friday afternoon, a family friend “put Patsy Ramsey to bed and Patsy made some comments that concerned the friend such as ‘can’t you just fix this’ and ‘why did they kill my baby’ as well as other comments [the friend] was not ready to share.” (BPD Report #1-1186.)
On that same Friday, John got a call from a close friend at Access Graphics, the company where he was CEO. The man voiced concerns similar to those Bynum was thinking and told John, “I need to convey a message to you. It’s from someone in the DA’s Office on the inside of the investigation. I can’t tell you who it is, but the person said I’m supposed to get this message to John Ramsey.” The message was a warning. “You need to get the best defense attorney you can. They think you killed your daughter, and they’re out to get you.” John, who was still paralyzed with grief, was simply incapable of acting on any information. He told no one about the call, and its message didn’t penetrate until weeks later.
The last time John Ramsey had seen his daughter was after she’d been tortured and killed. He couldn’t get that image out of his mind. Nothing else mattered.
Bynum thought the BPD insisting the family go to the police department for more interviews and the commander in charge of the case, John Eller, refusing to go to the home where the Ramseys were staying to interview them was “counter-productive and unreasonable.” He called the person he thought was one of the best defense attorneys in Colorado, Hal Haddon of Haddon, Morgan and Foreman in Denver. Haddon remembers the phone call from Mike Bynum. Bynum told him, “The most terrible thing has happened. This little girl was kidnapped and murdered. These are family friends of mine, and even though they are cooperating, the police are trying to frame them.”
Haddon listened. “I didn’t know Mike Bynum or the Ramseys,” he said, “but from what Mike told me, it sounded like it was an awful tragedy and the police had targeted the parents. These are the kinds of cases we do. We represent people who are involved in serious criminal investigations.”
Haddon called his partner, Bryan Morgan, who lived in Boulder. Morgan had seen the news of the murder on a local television station on Thursday night, December 26, but few details had been revealed at that time other than the fact that a child had been murdered.
That Friday morning, the Rocky Mountain News1 had reported that Boulder Police Department Commander John Eller had said, “The family has been more than cooperative.” In the same article about the kidnapping and murder, however, an attorney from the Boulder District Attorney’s Office was quoted as saying, “It’s not adding up.”
On the phone, Haddon and Morgan agreed to take on this case.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1996
Two days after her murder, JonBenét was once again held for ransom. The commander of the Ramsey investigation, John Eller, threatened to hold the child’s body indefinitely unless her parents agreed to an immediate and lengthy interrogation at the Boulder Police Department that Saturday morning. “It exacerbated the feelings in an already terribly flawed investigation,” said Ramsey attorney Mike Bynum. “Not only was this threat extremely inappropriate, it was unconstitutional unless there was probable cause to continue the hold on the body.”
John and Patsy weren’t told about Eller’s exact threat of trying to keep their daughter’s body from them.
John’s Journal:
Patsy is in extremely bad shape, unable to walk … Chuck [Dr. Francisco Beuf] tells Mike [Bynum] that in his professional opinion we are in no shape to be taken out of the house to the police station for lengthy interviews. Mike relays that medical opinion to the Detectives, who continue to insist that we must come to the Police station to give them the help they need to solve this crime.
According to Colorado law, the custody of the body of JonBenét Ramsey belonged to the Boulder County Coroner, who had released it to the family for burial. Attorneys from the Boulder District Attorney’s Office told Eller to back off because he had no legal standing on the custody of the child’s body. Eller did drop his demands, but the damage lingered. In the continuing days, as the Ramsey attorneys were hired and became active in the case, they told me they were incensed by what they perceived as Eller’s unprofessionalism and hostility.
“Think if it was your child and someone threatened to keep your child’s body from burial even though you legally had already been given the right to it. How could anyone even think of something that cruel?” asked Bynum.
John’s Journal:
We are confused. We want to help any way we can. We agree to go to the Sheriff’s Dpt. to give DNA samples and handwriting because that will take only 15 minutes each, the police tell us. We trust them when they tell us going to the Sheriff’s Dpt. is the only way they can do this. We find out later they could have taken DNA from us at the house. We agreed because we were trying to help. But the interviews would be hours. Can’t they ask questions for interviews where we’re staying?
The Ramseys spent that desolate Saturday morning with Patsy in bed, Burke closely and constantly watched and John finding out that Bynum had hired attorneys for the family.
“John had great difficulty in understanding why I hired attorneys for them,” said Bynum. “He was a law and order supporter. He trusted the police would do what was right and just. I explained to him there’s a way that allowed you to cooperate and allowed you to protect your family and help the police. And that’s what we’re doing by hiring attorneys.”
John remembers Bynum telling him he had hired two attorneys to represent him and Patsy.
John’s reaction was, “Why do we need attorneys?” and “Why do we need two attorneys?” He said later he was unable to comprehend the seriousness of the forces gathering against him. In his mind, he and his family were innocent, and he was certain the police would feel the same way.
When attorney Bryan Morgan initially spoke with John in that first week following JonBenét’s murder, he told him why he and his wife would need separate attorneys. Under the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 1.7, the same attorney could not represent Patsy and John under the circumstances of the case, which included the fact that they were both suspects.
The two attorneys would meet with John and Patsy personally and individually upon the Ramseys’ return from JonBenét’s funeral in Atlanta. To escape the pressures of the case, Morgan and John drove east of Boulder to a hiking trail, where they would walk for an hour and just talk. It was a private session held out in the open country for the two of them to get to know each other. Morgan says he remembers John as initially very emotional; they didn’t talk about JonBenét or the murder investigation during this first meeting. John recalls immediately finding Morgan to be very thoughtful, compassionate, intelligent and sincerely interested in him.
“I felt very good about him,” John remembers. “Morgan was a warm man and extremely professional. This was not a meeting to decide whether to hire him. Mike Bynum had already hired him. It was a very relaxed environment and talk.”
Patsy met defense attorney, Pat Burke, a highly skilled trial lawyer, in Boulder. He had talked with Patsy by telephone when she was in Atlanta, and met with her at the family friend’s home where the Ramseys were staying.
Pat Burke remembers their meeting well. “She was curled up in a ball on a couch. She was incredibly sad. I thought she was sincere and smart and continued to think that throughout our relationship. We met for three hours. She was completely distraught. She cried repeatedly. Still, there were moments when she became composed enough to talk about her family and their lives.”
Patsy would later say her new attorney made her feel “very secure and protected.” “I respected him and admired his approach to me and about JonBenét and the case. I felt comfortable with his guidance.”
Prior to these meetings on the Saturday afternoon before the Ramseys attended a Sunday memorial service in Boulder and then left for Atlanta for their daughter’s funeral, they had to leave the bleak solitude of their friends’ home for DNA testing at the Boulder Sheriff’s Department. They did this with the understanding that the process would take no more than 15 minutes for each of them. The family didn’t understand they would also be observed and briefly interviewed by Boulder Police Department detectives at the Boulder Sheriff’s Department. They also didn’t realize they could have given DNA samples from the home where they were staying. Patsy and John Ramsey were each accompanied that afternoon by a legal representative whose presence Mike Bynum had arranged. Bynum also told the Boulder DA’s Office there would be no further interviews of the Ramseys without an attorney present.
While detailed and confidential records of the Ramseys’ DNA exchanges from that afternoon would be kept, the same standard of confidentiality wouldn’t hold when information about those DNA collections—and what the Ramseys said while at the Boulder Sheriff’s Department—was leaked publicly.
The Boulder Sheriff’s Department was in the same building as the Boulder County Courthouse and the Boulder District Attorney’s Office. The Boulder Police Department was in a separate building five miles away. Detectives had scheduled brief times for each family member at the Boulder County Sheriff’s Department Records Section, a sparse room with a sink and long table at which fingerprinting was normally completed.
John Andrew Ramsey, JonBenét’s half-brother, was the first to give DNA samples. He was also photographed. His testing began at 3:12 p.m. (Source: WHYD Investigative Archive.)
According to police reports, at approximately 3:50 p.m., JonBenét’s half-sister, Melinda Ramsey, began giving blood and hair samples and fingerprints. She, too, was photographed. Melinda was described as being “friendly/cooperative/talkative” while “samples were obtained.” “Some basic personal information was obtained” as well. Times were listed in the report for when actual samples were taken:
3:50 p.m. blood draw
3:55 p.m. hair samples
4:00 p.m. fingerprints
(Boulder Detective Steve Thomas, 12-28-1996.)
Burke Ramsey gave his DNA at the same time as Melinda, at 3:50 p.m., according to excerpts from police records in the WHYD Investigative Archive. His photograph was also taken.
At approximately 4:09 p.m., Detective Thomas noted that John began giving blood and hair samples and fingerprints. “A photo was taken and some basic personal information was obtained … John Bennett Ramsey was cooperative and reserved and samples were obtained.” John was accompanied by a private investigator who conducted work for the Haddon, Morgan and Foreman law firm.
4:16 p.m. hair samples
4:24 p.m. fingerprints
(Boulder Detective Steve Thomas, 12-28-1996.)
At approximately 4:37 p.m., the same two detectives met with a heavily medicated Patsy Ramsey.
“Patricia Ramsey was cooperative in our requests, but was crying/sobbing, withdrawn and non-speaking, and unsteady on her feet. Samples were obtained without incident. A photo was taken and some basic personal information was obtained.” Blood and hair samples and fingerprints were taken.
“During this processing, Patricia Ramsey sobbed/cried and during fingerprinting asked Detective Gosage ‘Will this help find who killed my baby?’ and made the statement ‘I did not murder my baby.’” (BPD Report #1-143.)
Those statements were later leaked to the news media by “sources,” and would be used against Patsy Ramsey in the months to come. A representative from Haddon, Morgan and Foreman accompanied Patsy.
4:37 p.m. blood draw
4:42 p.m. hair samples
4:50 p.m. fingerprints
(Boulder Detective Steve Thomas, 12-28-1996.)
At 6:00 p.m. that Saturday, according to the WHYD Investigative Archive, Melinda Ramsey arrived at the Child Advocacy Center for an interview. She was interviewed by detectives for more than two hours from 6:10 p.m. until 8:25 p.m. and gave handwriting samples.
At 6:55 p.m., according to the WHYD Investigative Archive, two Boulder Police Department detectives interviewed John Andrew. He, too, was interviewed for two hours from 6:55 p.m. to 8:52 p.m. and gave handwriting samples.
About the same time, 6:40 p.m., at the home where they were staying, John, Patsy and Burke Ramsey gave more handwriting samples. They were observed and supervised at this time by Detective Linda Arndt. The samples of all the immediate family members were collected and received at the BPD Property Bureau later that Saturday night.
That same Saturday, Patsy’s sister, Pam, went to the Ramsey home to collect clothing and personal items for the family. Pam said the police officer on duty at the front door told her she could go in and get what she wanted. She insisted he accompany her and make a list of what she took. The WHYD Investigative Archive, however, states from a police report that the officer only allowed Pam to stand in the doorway of each room and tell the officer what she wanted to bring back. The officer would then take the item and catalog it before giving it to Pam. The police report and Pam’s accounting of what happened are different.
While in the home, Pam felt she had missed something in JonBenét’s bedroom and returned there.
John’s Journal:
Pam returned to the room and was drawn to a small medal that JonBenét had won at the last little pageant that she had done … When Pam told me of this and handed me the medal with the comment, I felt like JonBenét wanted me to get this to you, I was overwhelmed with emotion. JonBenét had many medals and trophies, but I had always told her that the most important thing was talent, not beauty. So she began working very hard on talent. The last pageant was in early December and I had planned to go there for her talent performance, but the program was running ahead of schedule and I arrived after her performance and after she had been awarded her medal. She lit up like a Christmas tree when I arrived and as soon as I sat down beside her she took the medal from around her neck and placed it around mine. During the days after JonBenét’s death, I had thought that I must find this medal as it was something very special to me. Having Pam now tell me that she was strangely drawn back to JonBenét’s room to retrieve what seemed was an insignificant medal among all of her much larger awards, and to deliver it to me, felt like a direct message from JonBenét. No one knew about that medal except JonBenét and me. No one knew its significance to me. JonBenét had spoken to me and let me know that she was alright and with God. I was so thankful for that gift and to this day that medal never leaves my neck and it was placed by JonBenét. Whenever I hit bottom, I touch the medal and it reminds me that JonBenét is with God and will be there to escort me home when my tasks are completed here.
Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter called in that Saturday from vacation to his First Assistant DA, Bill Wise, and asked to be informed of the developments of the day. That night, Wise called Hunter back about the Ramsey DNA samples, fingerprints, photographs, interviews and handwriting samples. Hunter remembers being angry about Commander Eller’s demand to use the child’s body to force her family to talk at the Boulder Police Department. It didn’t make sense to him that Eller would even consider doing that when Wise had told him the family was willing to be interviewed at the home where they were staying. Wise continued to keep District Attorney Hunter informed of further developments in the case in the days ahead.
While the Ramsey family plodded through the necessary responsibilities in the investigation of the murder of their daughter, the Boulder Police Department was striving to manage the investigation while dealing with public relations realities.
Over the weekend, Police Commander John Eller defended BPD officers’ actions when they first responded to a call about a possible kidnapping that Thursday morning, saying in a Rocky Mountain News article that responding officers did not immediately search the Ramseys’ home because they “had no reason to believe the child would be in the house at the time.”2
One experienced police officer in the department not involved in the case later stated that he shuddered at Eller’s public comments. Concerns existed about the closeness of the relationship between Commander Eller and BPD Chief Koby, and between Eller and BPD Detective Steve Thomas. Some wondered whether Eller had the experience to handle the case and whether the three Boulder Police Department officers already lacked objectivity about the investigation.
Only two days after JonBenét’s body was found, the story of her murder had spread nationally. Outside Colorado on that Saturday, the story was covered in newspapers in Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Alabama, St. Petersburg, San Jose, New York, Philadelphia, Kansas City and Trenton, New Jersey.3 There is no accurate accounting available on what television newscasts and radio broadcasts mentioned the murder.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1996
It was Patsy’s fortieth birthday, but that wasn’t even an afterthought. “That didn’t matter,” Patsy would later say. “What mattered was our daughter. How could we ever accept that she was gone?”
The service at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Boulder was private. John spoke and wore JonBenét’s medal around his neck. After the service, the family flew to Atlanta for the funeral and burial.
In Boulder, turmoil and now hostility continued inside the investigation with relentless scrutiny and finger-pointing in the media about the botched investigation.
In Denver and beyond, confusion reigned from an article published in the Rocky Mountain News (January 1, 1997) that contained this information:
“John Ramsey pilots plane to Atlanta for daughter's funeral.”
Rocky Mountain News reporter Charlie Brennan reported the story in the days after the Ramsey family’s trip to Atlanta. Reporters seeking off-the-record reactions to the headline found people who had read the article and thought John Ramsey was a cold, uncaring father focused enough to be able to fly a jet to Atlanta.
This statement, however, was wrong.
John Ramsey didn’t fly the plane. He says he was too shocked to even consider piloting a plane. Two pilots working for Lockheed flew it. The company had loaned the Ramseys the corporate jet and pilots for their trip to Atlanta for their daughter’s funeral.
In an interview years later, Brennan admitted that he’d made a mistake. “No reporter ever likes making a mistake, and I regret that it was made … It was based on a source, and yet that’s one, not two, whose information had been highly reliable in the past, and I had every reason to have faith that the information was accurate in this case, and that’s regrettable.”
John’s Journal:
We learned that the media frenzy had already begun with the false report that I had piloted my personal jet, I don’t have one, back to Atlanta and then accusations in the local Denver hate radio shows that John Andrew, my son, was a suspect even though he was in Atlanta with his mother and sister for Christmas. (BPD Report #1-752 stated a radio talk show host said that John Andrew had murdered JonBenét.)
MONDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1996
The last time John and Patsy saw their daughter privately was during a visitation at the funeral home in Atlanta. It was the fourth day after her body had been found. Hundreds of family and friends attended. After the others had left, Patsy, John, Burke, Patsy’s parents and two sisters, JonBenét’s half-brother and half-sister (John Andrew and Melinda) and John’s brother, Jeff, as well as a few other relatives gathered around JonBenét’s coffin.
One at a time, they said goodbye. Some of them left a personal remembrance to be put into her casket. Nearly all of them leaned over and whispered special words. And each of them told JonBenét, “I love you.”
“She was so small and so was her coffin. I couldn’t understand what was happening,” John would later recall.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1996
It was now five days after JonBenét’s body had been discovered, and this day was the day of her funeral. The same church in which her family had witnessed so much happiness, including her parents’ wedding and her own christening, was now reserved for JonBenét’s funeral. Her casket, covered with pink roses, sat in front of the mourners at the front of the church. The melody and words of the song “Jesus Loves Me” were accentuated by the sobs of the mourners as they sang before the coffin that held JonBenét’s body.
Family in church standing before JonBenét’s casket.