To a country that seems to have decided that the Ramseys are guilty, friction between the authorities seems incomprehensible. But the case is still far from solved. NEWSWEEK has learned that some of the press reports most damaging to the Ramseys–no sign of forced entry at the house on the night of the murder; the absence of footprints in the snow; semen on Jon-Benet’s body; even an accent mark on the word attache in the ransom note-are wrong. “Due process and presumption of innocence are extremely important tenets of American law,” Hunter told NEWSWEEK. “We are continuing to look at all possibilities as suspects, from both inside and outside the house.”
The Ramseys, however, are certainly still suspects. Families are most often to blame for the murder of a child, and Hunter says that John and Patsy Ramsey–who maintain their innocence-remain the prime focus of the ease. But NEWSWEEK has pieced together the portrait of a beleaguered investigation-a high-profile probe in which top prosecutors and police aren’t cooperating, key law-enforcement players are taking off or breaking down and progress appears excruciatingly slow.
Indeed, sources close to the prosecution team say the case against the Ramseys is not nearly as solid as the public believes. When John Ramsey found the 6-year-old beauty queen’s body in a windowless basement room of her family’s Boulder mansion on Dee. 26,1996, the family almost immediately became central suspects. Reports quickly surfaced that there had been no forced entry into the house. The burglar alarm had not gone off. There were no footprints in the snow. There were also reports that she had been sexually abused and even had semen on her belly or thigh. Those clues are actually less incriminating than they once appeared–or wrong altogether. NEWSWEEK has learned that, far from being security-obsessed, the Ramseys often left their doors unlocked at night, which is not uncommon in Boulder. The burglar alarm may not have sounded because the Ramseys rarely set it; JonBenet and her brother, Burke, tended to trip it accidentally. The snow around the house had begun to melt, so the lack of footprints isn’t necessarily proof that an intruder couldn’t have entered the house. And despite being widely reported (including by NEWSWEEK), police found no semen on JonBenet or accented e’s on the ransom note. The semen might have been a key source of DNA evidence. The accent mark was supposed to indicate not only a sophisticated note writer, but someone crafty enough to purposely misspell mundane words such as “business.”
Why didn’t the Ramseys set the record straight on these details? Friends say that they were afraid to antagonize the local police. The cops have been struggling with their own difficulties in recent weeks. Two weeks ago, the rank and file gave Chief Tom Koby a vote of no confidence-for reasons largely tangential to the case-and he promptly left town on a planned vacation. During his absence, Koby’s boss, city manager Tom Honey, was forced by the Boulder city council to resign, also for a variety of reasons. Their absences have left Eller, Boulder’s chief detective, in charge. He, too, is unpopular with many on the force. One officer, Larry Mason, is threatening to sue him because Eller suspended Mason after accusing him of leaking information about the Ramsey case to the press. (Mason has since been cleared.) A second officer, Linda Arndt, may sue Eller as well. She was the first detective on the scene on Dec. 26 and has taken much of the heat for allowing the Ramseys to wander inside freely, which ultimately may have contaminated much of the evidence. Both Arndt and Mason have taken stress-related medical leaves. For his part, Eller has applied to be police chief in Cocoa Beach, Fla.
Ramsey supporters are now speaking out more aggressively. Last week family lawyers insisted that, contrary to press reports, John and Patsy Ramsey have been unusually cooperative with investigators. The lawyers say the Ramseys have continued to provide confidential medical and school records, even though they are not legally required to. The hair, blood and handwriting samples- Patsy has given five samples; John has been ruled out as the letter writer–were also volunteered, not legally required. Patrick Burke, a lawyer for Patsy, says the family even offered to allow the police to search their summer house in Michigan before a search warrant had been obtained. And in her first press interview, John Ramsey’s first wife, Lucinda Ramsey Johnson, told NEWSWEEK that she’s very supportive of her former husband. “He never even disciplined the children as far as spanking or hitting them,” she said from her home outside Atlanta. “There has never been any emotional, sexual or physical abuse in our family. My children were never abused.”
Both the prosecutors and police insist they’ll make an arrest–eventually. “I’m very optimistic this case will be solved,” says Lou Smitt, the D.A.’s investigator. “But it’s going to be solved in its own time.” NEWSWEEK learned that the Ramseys had granted investigators permission to search their Boulder house again late last week. In the fall, the family is expected to move to Atlanta, where they lived before relocating to Boulder in 1991. Patsy Ramsey and 10-year-old Burke left for the house in Charlevoix, Mich., last week. John Ramsey, back at work as president and CEO of his billion-dollar computer firm, Access Graphics, plans to commute from Boulder on the weekends. He may have a tough time making it to the front door. The tabloid army has migrated to Michigan for the summer as well. In the JonBenet case, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
