Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [108]
It was like showing up in a tuxedo when everybody is wearing sandals and T-shirts. Patsy realized she’d overdone it. She was as shocked as everybody else. I don’t think JonBenét ever wore that outfit again, not even in the national pageant that I photographed two months later.
In July, at the national finals, JonBenét’s costumes were less frilly. They were still on the cutting edge, but they’d been changed to fit the pageant system. By then, her singing and dancing routine had improved. She was really cooking. I don’t know exactly how to describe it…she wanted to win. She was going to win. It showed all the way through.
The photograph I shot of her wearing a crown was just a simple runway photograph, but it appeared on the cover of People magazine. She just walked up, struck a pose, and that was it. End of story.
—Mark Fix
TWO ORDERED TO WRITE APOLOGIES FOR RAMSEY AUTOPSY PHOTO SALE
“It is to be straight from the heart,” said Judge Lael Montgomery, adding the public will not have access to the letters.
Lawrence S. Smith, 36…pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors. Authorities dropped two felonies against Smith. Brett A. Sawyer also pleaded guilty to obstructing government operations.
Montgomery sentenced both men to three days in jail and 64 hours of community service. In addition Montgomery required Sawyer to give the $5,000 he received from the Globe for the photos to the Boulder District Attorney’s office. Sawyer will pay a $500 fine.
“This charge was agreed to between (Chief Trial Deputy) Pete Hofstrom and myself before he was ever arrested,” [defense counsel] Schild added. “Our agreement was that Pete Hofstrom would ask the judge to sentence Brett to what he personally felt was appropriate, and it’s noteworthy that Mr. Hofstrom did not ask the judge to give Brett any jail time.”
—Alli Krupski
Daily Camera, February 21, 1997
The Ramseys were virtually under siege. John Ramsey had to sneak into his office building because he was constantly followed and harassed by reporters, photographers, and people on the street. Guards were now posted at the Access Graphics offices twenty-four hours a day.
At first, Ramsey worked a couple of hours at a time, then a half day or an evening. By the third week in February, he was able to make it into the office two days a week or three days every two weeks. When Gary Mann, his boss at Lockheed Martin, spoke to Ramsey, he heard a man totally consumed by the loss of his daughter. Nobody thought of asking Ramsey to return to work full-time. Mann understood that the company’s management team would have to operate without him for months.
In the office, Ramsey would pace back and forth or stare through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the snow-covered Flatirons. Then, from the corner of his eye, he would spot a reporter or a photographer staking out the offices or going through the company’s trash, and the police would be called. An alarm was installed on his office door to prevent break-ins. Denise Wolf, his secretary, had to do the cleaning in his office because they could no longer trust the janitorial staff not to rifle through—or steal—the papers on his desk.
“How does it feel to work for a murderer?” employees were asked by strangers on the street. Some of them were stalked, followed home. Others were ostracized by their friends for their loyalty to John Ramsey. The firm received obscene phone calls and hate mail and even a bomb threat. One day a photographer was discovered on the back fire escape trying to break into the building. An employee was offered $50, 000 to bug John Ramsey’s office.
With the office and employees of Access Graphics besieged, Lockheed Martin could have used the occasion to get rid of Ramsey, but Mann knew that he had looked out for their interests over the years, and the company was willing to allow the situation to play itself out. No matter what, Mann was going to maintain the billion-dollar