Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [14]
Rol Hoverstock is pastor of St. John’s. I knew him before he came to our church, before he was ordained. He owned a bicycle shop in town and he wanted to be a priest. When he left Boulder for his first parish in South Dakota, he was shaky, nervous, ill at ease in the pulpit. Then Father Jim—Jim McKeown—retired, and Rol was the congregation’s unanimous choice to replace him. The priest who came back to us from South Dakota was a man who suddenly felt comfortable with what he was doing. I think of him as a country priest. He had a vision for our church as a family community. He really wanted a strong program for children. There’s nothing I don’t like about Rol.
—Niki Hayden
The next morning, Friday, December 27, everyone in the Daily Camera’s second-floor newsroom was scrambling to gather any scrap of information on the Ramseys. It was almost as busy as Election Day. The paper that morning led with an article about the murder of JonBenét.
MISSING GIRL FOUND DEAD
A 6-year-old Boulder girl reported kidnapped early Thursday was found dead in her parents’ home later that afternoon. It is Boulder’s first official homicide of 1996.
Police detectives and crime scene investigators began searching the house late Thursday after securing a search warrant. No details of what they had found were disclosed.
Although the official cause of death was not yet known, Police Chief Tom Koby said the case is considered a homicide. The child had not been shot or stabbed, said Detective Sgt. Larry Mason.
No arrest had been made as of press time, and police had no suspects, Mason said.
The Boulder County coroner’s office refused to discuss details of the case, though an autopsy will be performed today, according to city spokeswoman Leslie Aaholm.
The child was the 1995 Little Miss Colorado and a student at Martin Park [sic] Elementary School, according to a family friend. Patsy Ramsey traveled around the country with JonBenét to attend her daughter’s beauty contests. “They were so serious about this beauty queen stuff, but they never put any pressure on her. She was Little Miss Colorado in 1995,” said Dee Dee Nelson-Schneider, a family friend.
“She had her own float in the Colorado Parade of Lights in December 1995, and Patsy walked along the side of the float the whole parade to make sure (JonBenét) was safe. That’s how protective Patsy was.”
—Elliot Zaret and Alli Krupski
Daily Camera, December 27, 1996
In the winter, when the aspen trees are bare, you can see the Front Range of the snow-covered Rockies from almost every street. Boulder, just twenty-six miles northwest of Denver, is an old-fashioned small town, with many brick and wood-framed houses dating from the 1930s. With a population of 96,000—one third of whom are affiliated with the University of Colorado—the town prides itself on its pretty neighborhoods. Boulderites like to think of themselves as having an excellent quality of life.
When you have lived for a while in the town, which is isolated by both municipal planning and topography, it isn’t hard to lose a sense of how it looks from the outside. If you are a runner, however—and there are thousands of Boulderites who run—a five-mile jog up Flagstaff Road to the top of Flagstaff Mountain is one way to rediscover where you are.
In every direction you turn, you are faced with the facts of geography: to the southwest are the Flatirons, enormous slabs of rock that from some angles appear to prop up the snow-covered Rockies beyond; to the east, the vast flatlands of the Great Plains; to the west, the Continental Divide, dividing the country’s two primary watersheds. Along the Divide, the Indian Peaks rise 13,000 feet above sea level. Off in the distance to the southeast, you can just make out a few of Denver’s skyscrapers, where many Boulderites work five days a week. The rest are content with the pace of life in Boulder.
From the top of Flagstaff Mountain, you can see