Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [131]
Later that morning, Thomas returned a call from Iris Woodall, who worked at Home Depot in Athens, Georgia. She told the detective that Patsy Ramsey had shopped for duct tape in December 1996 with a child who resembled JonBenét. Thomas called Detective Evans of the Roswell police for assistance in pursuing the lead. The next day Evans interviewed Woodall and learned that during the week of December 7, Patsy had been in the Athens store and had asked her for help in locating duct tape. Woodall was shown a picture of the Ramseys, and she said that Patsy may have been accompanied by her husband. The police eventually pinpointed the date to December 12, 1996, the day before the Ramseys hosted a dinner in Boulder.
When Detectives Gosage and Thomas made their next trip to Atlanta, they met Woodall and reviewed the accounting records of Home Depot’s Athens store. There were approximately twenty thousand register receipts to check, to find one that matched Patsy’s credit card number or, if a check was used, her Colorado or Georgia driver’s license. After three days they came up empty-handed. This left the possibility that the purchase had been paid for in cash.
Law enforcement sources have admitted to ABC News that the murder investigation may be in trouble. Handwriting experts have failed to find a link between JonBenét’s father and the ransom note; and although Patsy Ramsey, the mother, has given three writing samples, police have been unable to determine if she wrote the note either. Neither parent is yet talking to police.
From the beginning officials have been convinced that a tiny spot of fluid, found on the girl’s leg, is semen. But lab tests of the fluid produced no DNA…and were therefore inconclusive. Sources say the killer wiped the body clean of any other evidence.
“In the absence of semen evidence,[said forensic scientist Moses Schanfield] it will be extremely difficult to find evidence that could lead to not only an arrest…but a conviction.”
ABC World News Tonight, March 13, 1997
Since early in the case, the Ramseys’ investigators, headed by Ellis Armistead, had been looking into possible suspects who knew the Ramseys or could have had access to their home. They were now focusing on people they believed the police had overlooked or had passed over too quickly. On March 13, Armistead met with case supervisor Detective Sgt. Tom Wickman and Detectives Trujillo and Thomas to discuss several possible suspects the Ramsey team had come up with. The list included a known sex offender, an Access Graphics employee, and Glenn Meyer, who lived in Joe Barnhill’s basement across the street from the Ramseys. The detectives listened without acknowledging whether these people had been investigated.
Two days later, on March 15, Armistead gave the police a dossier on Meyer, which showed that he had debts amounting to $70,000. Several weeks later, Thomas questioned Meyer at police headquarters about whether he had a prior record of assault, about his debts, and about his whereabouts on December 25 and 26. Meyer identified handwriting samples he’d given to the police and agreed to give another blood sample. Returning to the Barnhills’ home, he probably wondered how the police had discovered he was in debt and why the polygraph he’d taken hadn’t cleared him.
RAMSEY DOCTORS: NO HISTORY OF ABUSE
JonBenét Ramsey’s family has provided the district attorney a psychiatrist’s videotaped interview with the girl’s 10-year-old brother, a pediatrician’s records, and other information that they contend indicates the family