CHAPTER 19

THE CASE—BOULDER POLICE DEPARTMENT

Overview of Boulder from hill to the east of the city. The city is nestled in a valley. © Dan Weaver.

THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS with all their majestic heights have a thousand different moods that change with the time of day, the angle and intensity of the light, the weather, the season. The Rockies can be vividly serene, welcoming and beautiful. They can also turn menacing, hurling down violent storms that sometimes spin into tornados and rake the eastern plains of Colorado. Winter blizzards and spring storms can bring many feet of snow, creating havoc from the side streets of Front Range towns to Denver International Airport.

Boulder is very much defined by the Rockies, and not solely as a matter of topography. Along with the city’s signature Flatirons, which rise just to the south and west of Boulder, the Rocky Mountains play a large role in the town’s identity, giving it a Magic-Kingdom sense of isolation that allows residents to perceive themselves as the beneficiaries of a multifaceted grandeur. The great peaks all around, the nearby forests, and the tumbling, clear mountain creek that bisects the city all contribute to the general understanding among residents that they live in a special place.

Beyond that commonly shared assumption, Boulder is also defined by a liberalism typical of most university towns. To live in Boulder and embrace this outlook is one thing, but to be on the outside looking in or to live in Boulder and fundamentally disagree with a liberal point of view can lead to conflicts and tension on numerous levels. In outside circles, the city had been labeled the “People’s Republic of Boulder” due to long-held public opinion that the people who live here consider themselves to be enlightened, are self-absorbed and/or overly concerned with environmental issues, and prefer not to interact with those who do not share their particular outlook.

The Boulder Police Department has long operated in a community often perceived by officers as politically out of touch with the nuances of law enforcement. Boulder government leaders do not always seem willing to work with the BPD to accomplish its goals and do not always show public appreciation for BPD efforts by pursuing charges and trials when arrests are made.

There is a common understanding in the metropolitan Denver area that you have to be from Boulder in order to successfully do business in Boulder. In the mid-1990s, this undercurrent affected every one of the police officers who worked in Boulder, and yet were not from Boulder.

Virtually all Boulder Police Department officers lived outside city limits at that time because they simply could not afford housing prices in town. Since the late 1970s, Boulder’s growth rate cap limiting the number of new residential units that could be built in the city annually had contributed to skyrocketing housing costs. To some extent, the fact that the city’s police patrolled streets in neighborhoods where they couldn’t afford to live reinforced the disconnect they felt with the townspeople. The people who lived in Boulder weren’t their neighbors.

As with every police department, BPD had its own culture, and it was one of being outsiders who were isolated and lacked support in the town they were sworn to protect. In early 2002, after several years of small riots on the University of Colorado campus during which college students dragged their old sofas off their porches and set them on fire to protest or celebrate something, the Boulder City Council showed its true colors. Instead of going after the students with arson or criminal mischief charges as the BPD would have preferred, the Boulder City Council simply passed an ordinance forbidding upholstered furniture from being outside, including on a porch. The officers at the Boulder Police Department were stunned.

That thought process has continued. In early 2014, a Boulder City Councilwoman suggested researching if licensed dogs in Boulder should be required to get a DNA test. The reason? To explore any left-behind canine waste in order to determine which pet owners are not picking up after their dogs in public areas.

In the mid-1990s, the BPD worked in what Boulderites considered to be their safe “little town.” A few weeks before the Ramsey murder, Boulder Police Chief Tom Koby had actually warned people to please not leave their keys in their cars because vehicles had been stolen right out of driveways.

Yet at that time Boulder was also the home of high-tech companies, government labs, and a major university with a Nobel Prize winner on staff. One requirement of being hired by the Boulder Police Department was to have a college degree. Until 2001, BPD was organized differently than most others. Under the Boulder police union contract, officers regularly rotated through the various units including patrol, traffic, and investigations, an arrangement that effectively denied officers the ability to gain the expertise and experience they needed to perform their jobs in any department well. Since the Ramsey murder, that structure has changed in order to allow officers longer periods of time in individual units.

Some of the officers who worked for the Boulder Police Department in December 1996 have said that the department’s culture and its attitude toward the city and its inhabitants affected the first steps taken on the Ramsey murder investigation. Initially, Boulder Commander John Eller wanted to be cautious and considerate with the Ramseys. According to an officer inside the department who was involved in the case, Eller had no homicide experience but was aware of the political risks involved when wealthy people found themselves at the center of a horrendous murder investigation.

In the first six hours following Patsy Ramsey’s 911 phone call, when the case was effectively bungled and law enforcement did an about-face from sympathy for the parents to suspicion, the out-of-touch atmosphere at the BPD and the fact that the police were operating in isolation had a dramatic impact on the investigation. Meanwhile, BPD officials’ initial decisions to not personally respond to the media and public about the case helped fuel the building media frenzy. Speculation reigned.

Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner and former Chief Tom Koby declined requests to be interviewed about the Ramsey murder investigation for this book. Retired Adams County District Attorney Bob Grant, however, agreed. Adams County is in the northeastern greater Denver metropolitan area. Grant was term-limited out of office in 2005 after fourteen years as district attorney. Since then, he has served as executive director with the Colorado District Attorney’s Council and serves on the board of directors of CASA, court-appointed special advocates. CASA recruits and trains volunteers to assist and represent abused and neglected children in court and other places. Grant was involved in the Ramsey case at the request of then Colorado Governor Roy Romer and Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter, who was told point-blank by Romer to avail himself of outside help.

“I and three other district attorneys were asked to review the case, be able to consult with Alex and his team and to provide expertise to analyze the investigation. I also dealt with the media and was readily accessible for perspective,” Grant has said. “The four of us met with Boulder Police for their presentation on the case and to consider and coordinate a possible grand jury.”

Grant is a straightforward and blunt Scots-Irishman who is well known for his many media appearances related to the Ramsey case. As a district attorney, he was all law and order, and defense attorneys who worked with him still speak of him with nostalgia. They liked his tough yet consistent way of dealing with them. Grant was candid, a trait that has stayed with him into retirement.

“There was a lot of distrust between Boulder Police and the District Attorney’s Office when the Ramsey murder happened,” Grant said. “There is always the possibility of that disconnect in police/prosecutor relations, but there the connection between the two was a festering problem that continued to need attention. Police and prosecutors have to be vigilant about maintaining communications. There are always going to be disagreements, but there has to be a way to air those disagreements productively, and there wasn’t in Boulder at that point.”

Some law enforcement officers thought that Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter’s constant plea bargains on charges coupled with the documented lack of trials in Boulder represented a form of liberal permissiveness that put “getting along” ahead of getting the end results that the police felt their efforts merited.

“The reputation of the Boulder District Attorney was that he didn’t try cases,” said Grant. “They had this plea bargain deal where they’d make a deal before charging. ‘We won’t file this charge, but we will file this charge’ kind of thing. The police hated it. But Alex had his finger on the pulse of his community. He understood the community, the voters and the jurors. His decisions were right for the Boulder community, but often didn’t seem right to the Boulder Police Department.”

While BPD officials didn’t trust Hunter as a matter of course, Boulder prosecutors were deeply concerned with the police department’s flawed efforts that began on the first day of the Ramsey case and impacted almost every aspect of the investigation.

That privately held opinion was made very public in early 1997, when Boulder First Assistant District Attorney Bill Wise went before the Boulder County Commissioners to ask for money to hire an experienced homicide detective and a full-time deputy DA exclusively for the Ramsey murder investigation. During his presentation, Wise publicly criticized the BPD investigation of the case. In the volatile atmosphere already created by the Ramsey investigation, Wise’s public criticism of the Boulder Police Department poured gasoline on the embers and created a heated blowback from the BPD. Wise was subsequently removed from the case, and retired Colorado Springs Homicide Detective Lou Smit was hired.

At this early stage in the Ramsey murder investigation, District Attorney Hunter did not have criminal investigators in the true sense. According to a detective familiar with the structure of responsibilities in the Boulder District Attorney’s Office at the time, Hunter’s investigators conducted criminal background checks and made phone call checks, but they were not on-the-scene investigators.

Grant would not give an opinion about who he thinks killed JonBenét Ramsey. “I was never able to convince myself that it was an inside job with Patsy, John or Burke being responsible. And I was never able to convince myself that it was an intruder.”

He said detectives from the BPD had theorized that one or both of JonBenét’s parents had killed her. In a scenario painted by Grant with input from former and current police investigators, one can grasp why members of the Boulder Police Department believed as they did:

• From the BPD’s viewpoint, the people who had been inside the home at the time of the murder would necessarily be the first suspects. This reflects standard procedure in a homicide investigation. However, some of the Ramsey case detectives broke a basic rule of conducting a homicide investigation by not following the evidence. Instead, BPD officials decided that their primary suspects were John and Patsy Ramsey and then looked primarily for evidence that fit that theory. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• BPD officials were concerned about contradictions in John and Patsy’s separate statements about what happened early on Thursday, December 26, 1996. Such contradictions included Patsy not remembering whether she saw the ransom note or JonBenét’s empty bed first, and John and Patsy not knowing whether one or both of them went to Burke’s bedroom. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

Ramsey attorneys insisted that Patsy and John Ramsey had both been in shock when they spoke with different Boulder Police Department investigators about these events, and that some contradictions in their statements from that morning were to be expected. Certain that BPD officers had made errors in citing information from their clients, the Ramsey attorneys also asserted that if BPD officials had taken charge immediately after JonBenét’s body was found and conducted formal interviews with John and Patsy at that point, they would have obtained a clear picture of what had transpired. The attorneys also pointed to details related to when Patsy saw the note and her daughter’s empty bedroom that had been described concisely in Detective Linda Arndt’s police report, which states that Patsy saw the ransom note first and then went to her daughter’s room.

• Confusion also existed as to whether the blanket on which JonBenét’s body was lying when her body was found by her father had been wrapped around her loosely or tightly. If it had been wrapped tightly, this would have signified to experts that someone had been trying to take care of JonBenét after she was killed. This would also signify to the police that at least one of the parents had been involved in the murder. In a July 1998 interrogation of John Ramsey by Chief Deputy District Attorney Mike Kane, who had been appointed to the position by Colorado Governor Roy Romer’s Special Council, and Homicide Detective Lou Smit, who had been hired by Boulder DA Alex Hunter after an extensive vetting process, more was revealed about how JonBenét’s body had been positioned in relation to the blanket. John’s attorney, Bryan Morgan, and an investigator with his office, David Williams, were with John during the interrogation.

According to the transcript, when questioned by Lou Smit about the blanket, John answered that it “was crossed in front of her as if someone was tucking her in.” He also said with additional questioning that his daughter’s arms had been outside the blanket and raised above her head, and her feet had been uncovered. Further on in the interrogation, when questioned once more about the blanket, John said, “It was like an Indian papoose.” This information was leaked to the media and only hardened the law enforcement’s determination that the Ramseys had been involved in their daughter’s death, because the killer had tried to take care of JonBenét after she’d been killed.

At the time, the Ramsey attorneys asserted that how the blanket was situated could also have indicated that the sexual predator who had killed JonBenét had shown brief remorse and tried to take care of her after she’d died. They added that any blanket theories represented “guessing” by Boulder Police Department officials and asked why John Ramsey would have incriminated himself when he’d been the only one to see how his daughter had been wrapped when he discovered her body? They also noted that a “papoose-style” of wrapping a child in a blanket sometimes encloses the feet as well, which in this case hadn’t been covered.1 The attorneys concluded that there were just too many assumptions being made related to the blanket, that John had been in shock, and that no factual basis existed that would allow anyone to conclude anything about the blanket. Lou Smit later said he believed the blanket had been tossed loosely around JonBenét’s body.

• “John Ramsey said he’d read a story to both Burke and JonBenét out in the sitting room until 10:30 pm on Christmas night.” (Officer Rick French, Date of Formal Interview 1-10-1997.)

Officer French wrote this in his first police report. Detective Arndt’s report said that John had read to JonBenét and Burke and then gone to bed. Both reports contradicted later police information that stated John Ramsey had carried JonBenét to bed when the family first arrived home that night, and John played briefly with Burke before they each went to bed.

• The Boulder Police Department initially suspected John of incest, but there was no prior evidence for that, according to JonBenét’s pediatrician, the coroner and the specialist he brought in from Children’s Hospital in Denver, and the director of the Kempe Child Abuse Center. Other family suspects were considered, but when those didn’t work out because of lack of evidence, police focused on Patsy Ramsey. Some BPD investigators theorized that Patsy had flown into a rage over JonBenét’s possible bedwetting or something else, struck JonBenét, mortally wounding her, and then staged a cover-up that involved the torture, sexual assault and death of her daughter. Others imagined Burke had somehow injured his sister, and his parents covered up for him. Burke weighed 68 pounds as recorded in his medical records from August 1996, four months before his sister’s murder. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• BPD officials also suspected that the alleged cover-up had involved Patsy Ramsey writing the ransom note inside her home. The note and the practice page containing the words “Mr. and Mrs. /” had been written on the tablet that belonged to Patsy. The pen used to write the note was found in the home. According to retired Adams County District Attorney Bob Grant, BPD considered the existence of the practice note to be one of the most incriminating indications that the murder had been an inside job.

From the Ramseys’ point of view, however, the presence of the practice note revealed that the killer 1) had been brazen enough to use what he could find in the house to write the ransom note on the premises before killing their daughter, or 2) had been in the house before, possibly during the home’s recent and extensive renovations, and removed items including the pen and Patsy’s tablet, which he used to write the note outside the home and then replaced in the home before killing their daughter.

• Some BPD investigators speculated that the couple, or one of them, had staged the apparent disruption around the southwest window well and the open basement window with the suitcase under it after their daughter had been killed. They did not think an intruder had gotten into the house that way.

The window well and the possible evidence around it formed the basis for much contentiousness and bitterness related to the Ramsey murder investigation. Questions arose related to whether the state of the window well on Thursday, December 26 signified that an intruder had been present at any point during the night before. A lot rested on the answer to this question, which still hasn’t been resolved due to differing opinions among experts on spiders and spider webs and how long it takes for a spider to construct a web. (BPD Reports #1-1106, #5-3339, #1-1108, #1-1109.)

Both an intact spider web and spider web strands were found in the window well the evening of Thursday, December 26. According to Jim Kolar, who studied the case evidence in the mid-2000s as part of his role of chief investigator for the Boulder District Attorney’s Office, an extensive police videotape was made of a walk-through of the Ramsey home on the night of December 26, after JonBenét’s body had been removed and the police re-entered the home for further investigation. In the videotape, a spider web is shown in the left-hand lower corner of the center window of the three-paned window that sits below the southwest window well. This is the same window that was found open the morning of December 26. The operating theory among Boulder detectives was that the intact spider web proved the killer had not climbed into the house by that window because that particular spider web would have been disturbed if that had been the case.

But according to reports from three different BPD officers, at least one spider web inside that window well had been disturbed. On Friday through Monday (December 27–30), those officers noticed spider web drag lines coming from the grate covering the window well and going down into the window well space. (BPD Report #1-1363.) According to one of those officers, these findings would indicate “that a spider web was disturbed.” But others disagreed.

Later tests conducted by the Boulder Police Department also revealed that it would have been possible for an adult to climb through the center pane of the three-paned window into the basement, although others have long argued against this possibility. John Ramsey found this window open the morning of December 26. Styrofoam packing peanuts also seemed to have been brushed into the right and left window well spaces away from the center window, possibly indicating that someone had moved such debris in order to enter the center window, a possibility that would support an intruder theory. Other packing peanuts were also on the basement floor.

Yet it did not appear at the time that the dirt on the window sill at the center window had been disturbed. That finding casts doubt on the intruder theory. Or does it? Given the quality of the photographs taken by the BPD of the window in question, some say it is difficult to ascertain whether or not the dirt had been disturbed and therefore impossible to conclude whether anyone had gone into or out of that window based on these photos.

To further complicate issues related to the southwest window well, green foliage that had grown at the edge of the window well’s grate was found folded over and underneath that grate. The folded foliage was still fresh when it was examined in the days after December 26, indicating the grate had recently been lifted and closed, according to Detective Lou Smit.

BPD Detective Carey Weinheimer also investigated the window grate and the material under it. According to excerpts from his report in the WHYD Investigative Archive, Weinheimer stated his observations: “The weight of the grate crushed and traumatized the plant material under it. The plant will not just grow under the grate naturally.” (BPD Report #1-1142.)

Left, center, and right window well. Courtesy Boulder Police and Boulder County District Attorney.

Window grate from west-facing window. Lifting the grate and climbing through the basement windows below was one of the theories for how an intruder could have gotten into the home. Courtesy Boulder Police and Boulder County District Attorney.

While the Ramsey attorneys were convinced there were other ways inside the home including unlocked windows and doors, they also believed the one video photo of a spider web did not preclude the possibility that an intruder had entered the home through the southwest window well. Explanations were also needed for the suitcase, the comfort items found inside the suitcase, the folded-over foliage under the grate, and the leaves and white Styrofoam peanuts that had been pushed away from the center window, and also found in the basement. When the Ramsey attorneys consulted experts on spiders, however, they also found contradictory information.

• Police said the layout of the home was confusing. According to Bob Grant, Boulder investigators questioned how an intruder could have gotten around so easily, particularly in the basement.

John and Patsy routinely left lights on in the first and second floors at night. They had done so on the night of December 25, 1996, a fact confirmed by two different neighbors. Furthermore, an unknown number of construction workers had roamed the house during recent extensive renovations. At least a thousand people had been inside the home during a Boulder Christmas Tour in 1994, when “the Ramsey residence was part of the Historic Society home tour” and “the Ramsey residence had numerous people tour the house as part of the tour.” (BPD Reports #5-3919, 5-3920.) Plus, the Ramseys’ attorneys believed an intruder could have secretly entered the home several times before because of the couple’s careless security that left the alarm system unarmed and doors and windows often unlocked. It was also possible that an intruder at times could have stayed in the basement crawl spaces.

• Boulder Police Department officials noted that the broken paintbrush used to make the garrote to strangle JonBenét had come from within the house and was one of the brushes Patsy used for painting and sketching. (BPD Report #2-9.)

The Ramseys’ attorneys said the paintbrush could have been removed covertly from the home and made into a garrote before the murder by an intruder who had broken into the home secretly and frequently.

• BPD officials thought the Ramseys had demonstrated guilt by hiring attorneys, especially because they’d hired separate attorneys. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

But the Ramseys did not take the initiative to hire attorneys. Mike Bynum, John Ramsey’s business attorney and friend who hired the attorneys for the family, has said he did so without specific permission. “It is a common misperception that people are guilty if they hire attorneys,” he said, adding, however, that “if you’re innocent, it’s all the more reason to hire an attorney.”

With regard to the concern that the Ramseys had hired separate attorneys: according to Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct as passed by the Colorado Bar Association, since both John and Patsy Ramsey were possible suspects, they had to be represented by separate attorneys.

• The lack of Ramsey interviews, formal interviews and interrogations were considered to be extremely suspicious and frustrating, according to police investigators. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

“They did do interviews with Boulder Police,” Bryan Morgan, John’s attorney, explained. “But the police didn’t release that information. It was BPD’s responsibility to conduct interviews in a timely manner. They had plenty of opportunity the Thursday JonBenét was reported missing and did interview her parents. Then when her body was found, they should have gotten tremendous amounts of information from Patsy and John by taking them to the police station for individual interviews. But the police didn’t know what to do. By the time we were fully involved, which was a week after [JonBenét’s body] was found, the hostility and focus on the Ramseys being guilty of killing their daughter was so strong that we had to build numerous safeguards into the process; which in the weeks following were beset by game-playing and delays by Boulder investigators.”

Morgan continued, “[The Ramseys] didn’t ever have to do interviews with the police. They wanted to. Both the police and the defense attorneys were then later involved in delaying the interviews because of what was perceived as a built-in bias against the Ramsey family.”

• Both the Boulder Police Department and the Boulder District Attorney’s Office were also concerned about the timeline of the digestion of food found in JonBenét’s body during the autopsy, and whether such a timeline would help prove who gave the food to her … and likely killed her. For nearly a year, these officials assumed that the material in the murdered child’s stomach had consisted of pineapple only based on an open bowl of pineapple found on the kitchen table in the Ramsey home the following morning and a mention of pineapple in the coroner’s report. (BPD Report #70KKY, #71KKY.)

Boulder police and/or the coroner did not seek out expert opinion or analysis of the contents of JonBenét’s stomach/intestine until ten months after her autopsy, when the BPD approached experts at the University of Colorado in Boulder in October 1997. (BPD Report #1-1156.) In late December 1997, the BPD received a report from these experts stating that grapes, grape skins and cherries had been found with pineapple in JonBenét’s body. (BPD Report #1-1349.) These foods are commonly included in most cans of fruit cocktail.

All the experts consulted by both the BPD and the Ramsey attorneys disagreed on how long it would take to partially digest the fruits, stating a wide variety of time requirements. One doctor told Boulder Police Department officials that the pineapple, grapes and cherries could have been eaten even the day before her body was found. (BPD Report #26-193.) A forensic coroner consulted in the case told me that “the food would have been in the stomach/intestine within 30 minutes, but digestion of the food would have stopped if she were traumatized by a stun gun or a blow to the head. There is no evidence as to who fed her the fruit.”

• The BPD asserted that urine found in JonBenét’s underwear had come from her wetting her bed. This also led to the theory that Patsy had become upset about JonBenét’s bedwetting and hit her daughter, setting a deadly sequence of events into motion. The bedwetting issue was continually discussed in the early weeks of the investigation as a key to the police theory that one or both of the Ramseys had murdered their child. The housekeeper was quoted as saying that she had changed the sheets from those found on the bed three nights earlier. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

However, the Ramseys’ attorneys said no, JonBenét did not wet the bed the night of December 25, 1996, adding that the urine in her underwear most likely was caused by the trauma of a stun gun, her strangulation, the blow to the head or her death. Police reports also make it clear that JonBenét did not wet the bed that night. Evidence admitted into police custody (BPD Reports #44, #45, #46 #47, #48KKY, #2-7, #50KKY, #2-18) from the sheets, pillow and bedspread that had been on JonBenét’s bed showed that forensic analysts had found fibers from her bed clothing on her sheets, indicating that they hadn’t been changed, according to Detective Lou Smit. At least one crime scene photo reportedly showed sheets from JonBenét’s bed in the dryer just outside of her room. Patsy said clean sheets were often left in the dryer until they needed to be used again.

JonBenét’s family members have always insisted that her bedwetting was not a big deal, and Patsy has said she was never angry with her daughter about such accidents, but concerned for JonBenét, who was embarrassed by them when they did occasionally occur.

• BPD officers who worked the case were deeply and adversely affected by JonBenét’s participation in child beauty pageants and wondered what kind of parents would encourage their child’s participation. One high-ranking officer, upon seeing JonBenét’s pageant picture for the first time, said “she looked like a whore.” He would not allow his name to be used for this book. But such an attitude affected some BPD detectives’ perceptions of John and Patsy Ramsey. The pictures and videos of JonBenét’s participation in the pageants also helped drive the publicity about the murder. Many in the public judged her parents harshly for allowing or encouraging their daughter’s participation in the child beauty pageant circuit, which was underscored by the endless broadcasting of video of JonBenét in pageant contests. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

JonBenét’s family and the Ramseys’ attorneys have always insisted that JonBenét was an active little girl who wanted to be in the pageants and enjoyed them as much as she enjoyed other fun activities.

• Boulder Police Department officials noted that fibers from Patsy’s clothing were on her daughter’s clothes and insisted that indicated she’d carried her daughter to the basement to kill her. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

The Ramseys and their lawyers maintained that Patsy could have left fibers on her daughter when she hugged JonBenét good night on December 25th or the next day when Patsy held her daughter’s dead body, especially since Patsy had the same clothes on then. There are also other fibers on JonBenét’s clothing that police were not able to identify, according to Detective Lou Smit and police reports. (BPD Reports #1-77, #26-187.)

• BPD officials were suspicious that Patsy was wearing the same outfit on Thursday morning that she’d worn the night before. They suggested that she hadn’t had enough time to change or simply forgot to change because she was so busy staging the crime. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

The Ramsey team has always argued that theory was ridiculous. If Patsy had tortured and murdered her daughter while wearing those clothes, and was clever and meticulous enough to do all that staging, why wouldn’t it have occurred to her to change her clothes in order to hide any possible DNA evidence? They also said that, from a woman’s viewpoint, it wouldn’t be that unusual to wear a special holiday outfit two days in a row when planning to visit different family and friends.

• BPD officials believed the Ramseys did not act as though they were innocent. Individually, Patsy and John Ramsey acted very differently the morning their daughter was reported missing, according to Detective Linda Arndt’s police report, which included hearsay from one officer to another.

But actual police reports and interviews from officers who witnessed the Ramseys’ behavior that morning indicated that JonBenét’s parents “acted appropriately.” (BPD Report #5-3851.) BPD officers interviewed dozens of people, including business associates, teachers and friends across the country, about the Ramsey family, and the comments these people provided were overwhelmingly positive. At the time, Boulder Detective Steve Thomas said, “It seems the theme that’s being portrayed is [that] John and Patsy were ideal parents, Christian people. It has been difficult at best during this investigation to uncover anyone that can offer any other perspective on the Ramsey’s [sic].” (BPD Report #5-5026.)

Despite these findings, Detective Thomas formed an opinion very early on regarding the Ramsey murder. Eventually he would resign from the Boulder Police Department and, while the case was still active, would co-author a book in which he stated his belief that Patsy Ramsey had killed her daughter. As mentioned, Thomas was sued by the Ramseys about his book and his publisher paid damages.

• Then there was the hugely problematic ransom amount. The FBI quickly discerned that the ransom amount, $118,000, was an unusual number. Why not $100,000? Why not $150,000? Why choose that particular figure? Was it because a Bible on a nightstand next to John and Patsy’s bed was turned to Psalm 118? (BPD Report # 1-1017.) The Ramseys said they’d kept that bible turned to a passage in that scripture because it provided peace and strength and gave them comfort.

Was it the amount close to John Ramsey’s work bonus (BPD Report #5-797) of $118,117.50? According to the Ramseys’ attorneys, the Boulder Police Department had learned about the work bonus coincidence in the first few days of the investigation from Ramsey investigators. The fact that John Ramsey’s bonus had been for slightly more than $118,000 didn’t make sense, said the attorneys, but that didn’t seem to make any difference to the BPD, which soon leaked the information about the ransom amount matching the amount of John’s bonus to the media.

Those who disagreed with the police theory related to John Ramsey’s bonus didn’t think the Ramseys would be so dumb as to use that amount if they had indeed written the ransom note. During the morning that JonBenét was reported missing, the Ramseys indicated to BPD investigators that they, too, were confused about the curious amount of the ransom demand. John said his tax returns were openly sitting in the kitchen, and pay stubs were kept in his unlocked desk at home. Both reflected a recent bonus of $123,000, which after taxes equated to slightly more than $118,000. (BPD Report #5-797.)

The amount of $118,000 was also similar to an amount noted in a case involving two separate people who were fired at Access Graphics, according to police reports. (BPD Reports #5-3295, #5-3488, #5-4809.) In one case, $118,000 was the amount a former employee had been ordered by a judge to repay to Access Graphics after that former employee was convicted of altering account statements in order to steal from the company. (BPD Reports #5-3295, #5-795.) That information was never leaked to the media.

• Another factor that deeply troubled BPD officials had to do with the fact that the killer had seemed to have no fear of discovery. This understanding immediately pointed to an insider or at least to a family-involved crime. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

Those who disagreed with this theory said simply that it’s difficult to predict the behavior of an intruder who is a psychopath or a pedophile, especially one who could have waited in a home for a family to return while writing a ransom note and planning to kill an innocent child. Such proponents of the intruder theory assert that an average person’s fear is not the same as that of a predator or a psychopath, especially when one is dealing with an organized psychopathic killer.

• Additional suspicions arose when the autopsy of JonBenét revealed that she had been strangled at least twice, possibly both times with the garrote while she was facedown. The coroner/medical examiner found carpet fibers from the basement on her face and rope marks on her neck that supported this conclusion. Some Boulder

Police Department officers said that such findings indicated JonBenét’s parents wouldn’t have been able to cope with their daughter looking them in the eyes while they killed her. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

Those who disagreed with this police theory argued that it was a matter of convenience for an intruder to use the garrote while his victim was facedown. According to military experts and homicide investigators, the common method of using a garrote is to loop it over the neck from the back, causing pressure and using leverage on the front of the neck to strangle.

• In the ransom note, the phrase “and hence” was used. In the Ramsey family’s 1997 Christmas card, a year after JonBenét’s death, the phrase “and hence” was also used. (BPD Report #33-1851.) In the point of view of BPD officials, this was an uncommon phrase suspiciously repeated.

The Ramseys stated that they did not know why they’d used the phrase in their Christmas card, but added that they might have become subconsciously familiar with it from having to copy the ransom note so many times in handwriting sessions for police and in later grief therapy sessions.

• BPD investigators were very curious about a black eye that the Ramseys’ son, Burke, got in May 1997, five months after his sister had been killed. School teachers reported it to Boulder Police. Some BPD officials suggested that this might have been an indication of ongoing child abuse in the family. (BPD Reports #5-3147, #5-3369.)

Police reports documented how Burke said he’d gotten the black eye: “Burke Ramsey came to school with a black eye and he said that he got it playing baseball with his mother and she had thrown the baseball at his eye and he had gotten a black eye.” (BPD Reports #5-5261, #1-1586.)

• Most Boulder Ramsey case investigators do not think the killer used a stun gun on JonBenét, although they searched the home for one and for other possible evidence, even taking apart a fireplace grate in their search. There is still no explanation for the two different sets of similar, evenly spaced round marks on JonBenét’s body. A chief investigator with the Boulder District Attorney’s Office in the mid-2000s later stated that the marks or abrasions shown on JonBenét’s body in autopsy photos matched protrusions from the bottom of her brother’s toy railroad train tracks. The train and tracks were set up in the basement.

Detective Lou Smit, who was a proponent of the stun gun theory, as were the Ramsey attorneys, suggested that someone with a stun gun could have incapacitated JonBenét in her bed and quietly carried her away, thus supporting an intruder theory. A family member would not have needed a stun gun, he surmised.

• At least one Boulder detective questioned why the Ramseys would have put the December 25, 1996 death date on their daughter’s headstone if they hadn’t known exactly when she died. The coroner had never stated an exact time of death, but it was presumed that JonBenét died around midnight on December 25 or in the early morning of December 26. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

John Ramsey has said that he deliberately put December 25 as the date of JonBenét’s death because it was Christ’s birthday, and he wanted people to understand the outrage of her murder on that date. John added that he also chose the last day he and JonBenét’s mother and brother spent with her when she was alive.

• Boulder police consulted audio experts because they speculated that they had heard Burke Ramsey’s voice in the background of Patsy’s 911 call the morning the ransom note was found. That would contradict John and Patsy Ramsey, who had said their son was still sleeping when Patsy placed that call. While Burke Ramsey did say in a statement that he’d pretended to be asleep when his parents came into his room that morning because they were so upset, according to his parents, he was still upstairs when Patsy placed the 911 call. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

The 911 tape allegations went nowhere. Boulder Police Department officials were never able to play them clearly for those who gathered for their formal presentation to other law enforcement officials in June 1998.

• Since JonBenét’s murder, there has not been a similar crime. This fact led one Boulder detective to privately state, “How could it be an intruder if there was never another crime like it?” (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

There is precedent for notorious killers who simply stopped killing, however.

One Ramsey attorney has pointed to the case of Wichita’s serial killer Dennis Rader. Rader tortured and killed ten people between 1974 and 1991 and sent taunting letters to the media and police. He was self-proclaimed as BTK or “Bind, Torture and Kill.” In 1991, he stopped killing and all communications from him stopped. For thirteen years, the police and public knew nothing. However, in 2004, he began writing letters publicly again. Through new evidence, police arrested Rader a year later in 2005. A church deacon, he eventually confessed to the ten murders.

In San Francisco in 1968 and 1969, the Zodiac Killer terrorized the city, claiming that he’d killed seven people. He would send letters to newspapers describing each crime and naming the victims. As far as authorities know, he stopped killing in late 1969 and has never been identified.

The Ramsey attorneys have also said that any intruder smart enough to come up with the complicated staging involved in the Ramsey murder would change the way he commits other crimes. Or, they added, it’s possible that the killer just stopped killing, is in prison and never had his DNA taken, or is dead.

• Even though matching foreign DNA of a white male had been found on different pieces of clothing that JonBenét wore and on her body, some BPD officials considered this either an accident or a coincidence. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

The defense responded to that by saying, “What else could it be other than the killer’s DNA which doesn’t match John and Patsy or their family?”

John’s Journal:

We also offer to pay for the extensive DNA testing that is desirable, but very expensive. I imagined later how confused the police must have been if their prime suspects were offering to pay for the serious part of the investigation. All a scheme to throw them off track, they apparently think. What a bunch of idiots.

Shortly before Detective Lou Smit died in the summer of 2010 from colon cancer, he entreated those who visited him in hospice to not give up on the Ramseys and their case.

“It’s as simple as getting the DNA from the right person,” he said. “This is a DNA case now. No matter which way it goes, you have to get around that DNA. The answer is there.”

• Some Boulder Police Department detectives were suspicious of two of Patsy’s receipts from a Boulder hardware store in early December 1996 that each included a price of $1.99. The hardware store did not itemize then, but black duct tape was sold for $1.99 at that store. (BPD Report #1-792, #1-947, #1-948, #1-897, #1-876.) There were several other charges on the receipt. In Georgia, a sales clerk at a major hardware store reported that Patsy Ramsey had asked for “assistance in locating duct tape,” leading detectives assigned to the case to do “a hand search of approximately 20,000 register receipts … and they did not find any matches to a Colorado or Georgia driver’s license in the name of Patricia Ramsey.” (BPD Report #1-984.) The clerk said Patsy had been in the store between December 7 and December 14, 1996. (BPD Report #1-513.) Yet BPD officials also “couldn’t find a register tape for a register for which they believed the witness [clerk] would have been working.” (BPD Report #1-809.)

• Boulder police searched extensively to find evidence that one of the Ramseys had bought the type of rope or cord used on JonBenét. They went through thousands of receipts at hardware stores in Atlanta (BPD Report #1-984) and Boulder, then went through a hand search of records in Athens, Georgia, and found nothing conclusive connecting the family to the tape or rope. They did find three $2.29 charges from December 2, 1996 on Patsy’s credit card, but the charges were not itemized, and there were several other charges on that receipt. (BPD Report #1-1117.) That amount of $2.29 matched the price listed for white rope purchased at a hardware store that was similar to the rope used in the murder. BPD detectives also found “visually” similar rope at the Boulder Army Store and at McGuckins Hardware, and from a neighbor’s garbage can; the neighbor reported that the rope had been used on packages mailed to his home. (BPD Reports #1-513, #1-606, #1-779, #1-792, #1-983, #1-1114, #1-851, #1-885, #1-1125, #1-889.)

With regard to these Boulder Police Department searches, Ramsey attorney Pat Burke said, “They’re guessing. These were costs in 1996 where pricing included a large number of items for sale for the less expensive $1.99 and $2.29. The prices then were far less expensive than they are today. It’s a good example of the police trying to stretch to find anything to arrest the Ramseys. They didn’t find it with these price checks or comparisons.”

• The Boulder Police Department also suspected the Ramseys due to unexplained and/or troubling evidence in or near the Ramsey home, or on JonBenét’s body:

• A shoe imprint from a Hi-Tec brand of work boot was found in the basement storage room imprinted in mold growing on the floor. It did not trace back to the Ramsey family. All investigators who had been in the room had their shoes tested. There was no match to that size of Hi-Tec boot to the Ramseys or the police investigators (BPD Reports #1-1576, #1-1594.)

• Additional, partial shoe impressions were found near JonBenét’s body in the basement storage room and on the toilet tank cover in the basement northeast bathroom. (BPD Report #1-1518.) The Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent investigating these footprints has said that the FBI could never match them to anyone or any brand. (BPD Reports #3-165, #1-1518.)

• An unidentified pubic hair was found on the white blanket that had partially covered JonBenét’s body. (BPD Reports #1-1440, #3-128.)

• John Ramsey noticed (and has said he reported to BPD investigators) the presence of a scuff or drag-type mark on the wall underneath the open window in the train room, where the suitcase was found. (BPD Report #1-65.) The scuff mark was noted in later police reports. (BPD Reports #1-101, #1-90.) (BPD Report # 5-421.)

• There was glass and debris from outside the home on top of the suitcase and some debris from outside on the basement floor.

• Some BPD officers stated that John Ramsey had failed to look at, or tell BPD investigators about, the suitcase and open window in the train room. Yet a reference source in a police report noted that John Ramsey had been observed going into the basement, where he found the train room window open and closed it. (BPD Report #5-2733.) One of John’s friends also said that he noticed that the basement train room window was open and reported this to BPD investigators.

Northeast basement bathroom where an additional partial shoe impression was found on the top of the toilet cover. This area was investigated for possible entry into the home. Courtesy Boulder Police and Boulder County District Attorney.

• A stain on JonBenét’s body initially labeled by police as semen (BPD Report #3-15) in later weeks was proven to be a blood smear. The untrue “semen” information, however, was leaked to the media.

• JonBenét’s body had been wiped off. The autopsy report stated that, under specific lighting, the remains of some sort of liquid could be seen on her body. (WHYD Investigative Archive—Autopsy.)

• A rope was found inside a brown paper sack underneath a bed in the guest bedroom next to JonBenét’s bedroom. This was the room that John Andrew had used when he was home from college. The rope and brown paper sack did not belong to the Ramseys. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• Small pieces of material from the brown paper sack were found in JonBenét’s bed and in the coroner’s body bag that had been used to transport her. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• Brown cotton fibers were found on JonBenét’s body, the paintbrush, the duct tape and the rope ligature, according to Detective Lou Smit. These fibers were not identified. Smit was a proponent of the intruder theory and considered the Ramseys innocent. He suggested that these fibers could have been from brown cotton work gloves.

• Two pieces or flakes of white paper were found on JonBenét’s cheek. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation completed a microscopic examination of the paper and concluded they were from different sources. (BPD Report #3-40.)

• The suitcase found under the basement window had been used occasionally by John Andrew, who was attending nearby University of Colorado. At the time of JonBenét’s death, he was in Atlanta visiting his mother and sister for Christmas. While these facts were not disputed, the purpose of the items found inside the suitcase was questioned. The suitcase contained a pillow sham, a duvet and a Dr. Seuss book, all belonging to the Ramseys. (SMF 146; SMF 146 Wolf v. Ramsey deposition—Judge Julie Carnes.) It has been suggested that the killer could have used these items to possibly “comfort” JonBenét.

• Fibers from the same sham and duvet were found on JonBenét’s shirt when her clothing was examined. (SMF 147; PSMF 147 Wolf v. Ramsey deposition—Judge Julie Carnes.) The Ramsey attorneys asserted that this finding indicates that, at some point, JonBenét or her killer had had contact with those items.

• Fibers from the basement carpet, but no fingerprints, were found on a baseball bat found just outside the Ramsey home. The bat was considered a possible weapon that could have been used to fracture JonBenét’s skull. John, Patsy and Burke all said the bat didn’t belong to them. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• A heavy flashlight, similar to the type of flashlights carried by many police officers, was found on the counter in the Ramsey kitchen. It, like the baseball bat, was considered a possible weapon that could have been used to hit JonBenét and fracture her skull. (BPD Report #3-145.) The flashlight and its batteries were fingerprinted, but no prints were found. The outside of the flashlight and the batteries inside had been wiped clean, according to an investigator. The Ramseys said the flashlight wasn’t theirs. (For several months, the flashlight couldn’t be found, according to one person working on the investigation. It was finally discovered in police evidence storage when the new commander on the investigation ordered a resorting and documentation of all Ramsey articles.) (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• Forensic examiners found JonBenét’s blood on her Barbie Doll nightgown, which was found next to her body in the basement storage room. (JonBenét Ramsey Murder Book Index.)

• Fibers from the rope used to strangle JonBenét were found on her bed. (JonBenét Ramsey Murder Book Index.)

• Investigators discovered dark animal hairs on JonBenét’s hands. These hairs did not match any items tested from inside the house. (JonBenét Murder Book Index.)

• An examination of the duct tape by the FBI discovered a black beaver hair stuck to the duct tape. (BPD Report from FBI #1-1140.) The FBI also found human hairs and fibers on the duct tape. (BPD Report #3-205.)

• Open doors were found in the home the morning the kidnapping was reported. (BPD Report #5-419.)

• A piece of blue paper was found outside next to the southwest window grate with a Boulder woman’s name on it. There was also a reference to a New Year’s Eve party. (BPD Reports #26-125, #5-4812.)

• An unidentified palm print was found in the storage room door area. (JonBenét Ramsey Murder Book Index.)

• Patsy Ramsey’s palm print was found in the storage room door area. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• “Leaf and white Styrofoam packing peanuts consistent with leaves and debris found pooled in the window-well were found on the floor under the broken window.” (SMF 136; PSMF 136 Wolf vs. Ramsey deposition—Judge Julie Carnes.) Such items were also “found in the wine-cellar [storage] room of the basement where JonBenét’s body was discovered.” (SMF 134; PSMF 134 Wolf v. Ramsey deposition—Judge Julie Carnes.)

• On December 24, 1996, in the morning hours, a neighbor who was also a personal friend of Boulder Detective Linda Arndt “observe[d] a dark blue Astro van parked across the street” from the Ramsey home. (BPD Report #1-98, Source.) On December 25 at 10 a.m., the same neighbor “observed a dark blue Astro van traveling north bound [sic] on 15th Street in the 700 block and stopped [sic] in front of the Ramsey home.” (BPD Report #1-98, Source.) On December 26, 1996, the same neighbor “may have seen [a] dark blue Astro van parked in the same general location near front of Ramsey home.” (BPD Report #1-98.) On May 21, 1997, Boulder Sheriff Homicide Detective Steve Ainsworth “determined a blue van parked across the street from the Ramsey residence on the morning of December 26, 1996 belonged to friends of the Ramseys.” (BPD Report #26-80.) There was no tiein with the blue van on Christmas Day, when it was spotted twice. There was also no indication that “the friends” with the van visited the Ramseys on Christmas Day.

• Some items used in the murder were not found in the home:

• Police never found an unused section of the rope used to bind JonBenét. (WHYD Archive.)

• The roll of black duct tape vanished. Only a torn-off section covering her mouth was left behind. It had been torn on both ends, according to crime scene photos. The killer either took the roll of tape out of the home, disposed of it in some manner or only brought or had the amount of tape used. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• Seven blank pages from the middle of the tablet used to write the ransom note that were also ripped out of the tablet were never found. Detective Smit regarded them as possible practice pages for the ransom note because of their original location in the tablet.

• The unused portion of the paintbrush that was part of the garrote was not found. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• Police never determined what weapon was used to fracture JonBenét’s skull and whether it came from inside or outside the home. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• Investigators never located a stun gun or an object that definitely caused the marks on JonBenét’s skin. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• The cloth or fabric used to wipe off and clean up JonBenét’s body was never found. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• The liquid used to clean and wipe off her body was never found. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• No other beaver hairs were found in the home, except for the one on the duct tape. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• There were no hairs in the home that matched the animal hairs found on JonBenét’s hands. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• Items matching the brown cotton fibers on JonBenét, the paintbrush, duct tape and ligature were not found elsewhere in the home. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

• The two different bits of paper found on JonBenét’s cheek were not matched to anything inside the home. (WHYD Investigative Archive.)

So how were all those items removed from the Ramsey home?

By mid-1998, residents of Boulder were pressuring their police department and district attorney’s office to get the hordes of media with their negative publicity out of Boulder. Eighteen months after the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, however, that would not happen because, according to one attorney familiar with the case, nothing had worked well enough in the investigation to provide enough evidence to build a foundation for a prosecution.

Former Adams County District Attorney Bob Grant has said that, given a choice, he’d much rather have been a defense attorney than a prosecutor on the Ramsey case. He said he didn’t ever expect there to be a prosecution and called it a “very difficult” investigation.

In spite of continuing problems with the Boulder Police Department, Lou Smit supported them publicly in July 1998. When John Ramsey was interrogated again by the prosecution side with Michael Kane and Lou Smit present, Smit (whom the family trusted) told John he understood John’s concerns about his family being targeted. He also, however, stood up for the Boulder Police Department, telling John, “I know there’s been a lot of focus on you, but I looked at every one of those reports. There’s been a lot of [police] work done in other ways. And I know from your perspective it seems like that … but they have done a lot of work.”

Two months later, though, Smit resigned from the Boulder DA’s office with a public letter saying the case was focused in the wrong direction—on the Ramseys.