Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [142]
Wise asked Hofstrom to review his appointment calendar since the beginning of the case. It showed that Hofstrom had four breakfast meetings with Morgan—all in restaurants. Then Wise called Green to offer him the facts. He provided the columnist with the dates and locations of the meetings and added that the police had asked Hofstrom to negotiate with the Ramseys’ attorneys on their behalf for additional handwriting samples and interviews. Green decided not to run the story.
In reality, Pete Hofstrom was speaking to the Ramseys’ attorneys whenever the police needed his assistance, mostly with Bryan Morgan. They had a cordial and respectful understanding: you be honest with me, and I’ll be honest with you. Hofstrom had a much more difficult time dealing with Eller. It became particularly frustrating when he began to suspect that the police weren’t giving his office all the facts. He’d resigned himself to the reality that Eller was part of his life, but he probably would have agreed with the deputy DA who characterized the commander as one more cop who liked to beat up on prosecutors. Hofstrom wanted the police to let the evidence lead the investigation wherever the hell it was going to lead them, without obstruction and subterfuge, so that the DA’s office could eventually prosecute the charged suspects confidently.
Hunter could see that Hofstrom was under stress. Pete had chronic blood pressure problems, and they appeared to be worsening. He had begun jogging to work off some tension, but it didn’t seem to help. Bill Wise noticed that his door was now always closed. This was not the Pete Hofstrom they had known for twenty-three years.
Hofstrom’s first full-time job, at age twenty-six, was at San Quentin. He was just over 5-feet-4, and going to school at San Francisco State while working the four-to-midnight shift at the prison. Hofstrom wanted to become a lawyer. Eugene Ziemer, his lieutenant at San Quentin and a Colorado native, told him there was a great law school in Boulder that he should aim for.
San Quentin, the prison that once housed Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, had its problems in the 1970s. The general population included the Mexican mafia, the Aryan Brothers, and the Black Guerilla Family. On one occasion the inmates killed six people.
Hofstrom’s first assignment at San Quentin was to lock up the cellblocks. Because he’d had polio and walked with a distinct limp, his nickname was “March of Dimes.” But nobody dared call him that to his face: he was gutsy and bold. Another one of his jobs was to keep the inmates in line—literally. He was in charge of the chow line and the line to and from the cells. “You’re just like a cop on the street,” Ziemer told him. “The inmates pick up on your confidence—or lack of it—right away.” Pete Hofstrom was known for not backing down.
But he was thoughtful and self-motivated. When he had difficulty with an inmate, he would read the guy’s file and then go and talk to him. Before long, this unusual approach got him noticed, and he was promoted to correctional counselor. Hofstrom actually loved to talk with the inmates and to make his own evaluation of their behavior. He often picked up on changes in behavior that warranted his lieutenant’s attention.
Following Ziemer’s advice, Hofstrom moved to Boulder to attend law school at CU. It was 1971. Alex Hunter would be elected DA the following year.
Boulder was undergoing a sea-change: young people were moving into public office, replacing the older law enforcement officers from the pre-Miranda, pre-Escobedo days.* Hunter and Dave Torke, who would later become a judge, worked in both the sheriff’s department and the police department introducing officers to post-Miranda law enforcement.
While he attended law school during the day, Hofstrom