Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [130]
At 8:45 the next morning, Thomas tried the second phone number. “I’m Steve Thomas, a detective for the Boulder Police Department, and I’m looking for Jeffrey Scott,” he said.
Only half awake, Shapiro replied that he’d hoped to hear from a Ramsey investigator, not the police.
“Well, Jeff, I’m sorry,” Thomas said with a laugh. “I’ve heard you have some interesting information. I’d like you to come in so I can interview you, see if it’s important information. And we’re not going to shine any bright lights on you.”
“Do you know about the DNA results?” Shapiro asked.
“I can’t discuss that with you,” Thomas replied.
“Are you aware that someone is saying that John Andrew once tried to hire someone to run a boat over JonBenét?”
“I’ve heard that,” Thomas answered. “Those are the kinds of things I’d like to ask you about. And, Jeff, I need to make sure you’re not any kind of journalist or reporter before I let you into this department.”
Shapiro told Thomas that he knew some guys from the Simpson case, but he wasn’t a journalist. He’d think about a visit to police headquarters.
When Shapiro hung up, he called Joe Mullins, his editor at the Globe, and said that he’d made contact with Allison Russ, John Andrew, and the police. He also said he’d used a false name in identifying himself.
“You lied to the cops?” Mullins asked.
“I’m undercover.”
“You can’t lie to the police. What’s this cop’s name?”
That same evening at Kutztown University in Allentown, Pennsylvania, John Douglas, the former FBI profiler who had been hired by the Ramseys, held a press conference before giving a scheduled lecture. In answer to reporters’ questions, he said he had been hired to determine whether John Ramsey was capable of killing JonBenét, at a time when, according to Douglas, Ramsey’s attorneys weren’t sure if their client was innocent. Douglas said he had never been asked to focus his attention on Patsy and therefore hadn’t profiled her. And the Ramseys’ attorneys, Douglas said, hadn’t asked him if Patsy fit any of his criteria for the murderer. Journalists following the case assumed that Douglas doubted Patsy’s innocence and wanted to protect his reputation now that handwriting analysis had not excluded Patsy—and in fact suggested that she might have written the ransom note.
Douglas was not the only investigator the Ramseys had hired. Private investigators retained by the Ramseys were reviewing other unsolved crimes of a similar nature, interviewing witnesses the police had not looked at closely enough, and following leads provided to them by the Ramseys and the public.
Steve Thomas was at his desk at police headquarters looking at the March 12 issue of the Globe, which featured photos of the inside of the Ramseys’ house. Eight pictures traced the “evil killer’s footsteps inside death mansion…From JonBenét’s pretty pink bedroom to the cold dark cellar where her broken body was found.” It was another exclusive for the tabloid.
Thomas couldn’t figure out who had supplied the photographs. They had been taken by the Ramseys’ own investigators after the police finished their search of the house in early January. He was certain they wouldn’t have leaked the pictures to a publication that was implicating the Ramseys in the death of their daughter. Thomas was angry because photos of the crime scene should have been restricted to the police.
When his phone rang, he was surprised to hear Joe Mullins of the Globe on the other end. Mullins told the detective that “Jeff Scott” was actually Jeff Shapiro, a Globe researcher. This annoyed Thomas more than the photos had. Thomas told Mullins that he would reveal Shapiro’s true identity to both John Andrew and Allison Russ.
By now Steve Thomas had been involved in almost every aspect of the investigation and, within the department, was gaining the reputation of resident expert. If anyone in the Boulder PD had an overview, it was Thomas. For his part, he was sure that Bill McReynolds, though his handwriting was questionable, was too frail to have committed the crime. Someone stronger than Santa had