Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [146]
On Friday, April 11, Smit, DeMuth, and Ainsworth went to the coroner’s office and laid out the photographs for John Meyer. “Are these abrasions consistent with a stun gun or taser?” they asked. Meyer wouldn’t commit himself to a definite answer. DeMuth asked Meyer for a complete set of autopsy photographs and had some of them enlarged to life size.
Someone might have used a stun gun to subdue JonBenét during the crime. It was also possible, however, that Patsy or John or some third party had used such a device on their daughter for perverse reasons. Either way, the detectives now had to investigate the possibility that a stun gun had been used on the child.
Five days later, on April 16, Lou Smit drove to Lakewood, just outside Denver, to see CBI inspector Pete Mang, who had begun his career at the FBI. Mang suggested that Smit talk to Sue Kitchen, another CBI investigator, who had worked on a murder case in Steamboat Springs in which a stun gun was used. Two days later, Kitchen told the investigators that in her opinion, the small abrasions could have been made by a stun gun. She referred them to Arapahoe County coroner Mike Dobersen, who had solved a murder involving a stun gun in 1993. The device had been found in a suspect’s car, and the body of the victim was exhumed eight months after burial. Tissue from the corpse was tested for evidence of electric shock, and it proved positive. The suspect and her boyfriend were later charged and convicted.
After viewing the photos, Dobersen told the investigators that the abrasions on JonBenét’s body could have come from a stun-gun injury but that there was no way to know for sure without checking the skin tissue under a microscope. Before taking the extreme step of exhuming JonBenét’s body, Dobersen advised them to find a stun gun or taser with prongs spaced the same distance apart as the marks on JonBenét’s body and compare them to a life-size photograph.
By the end of the month, Smit had tracked down several Air Taser stun guns whose measurements and characteristics were consistent with the marks in the photos. He had even discovered a local distributor, Upper Edge, in Greeley, northeast of Boulder. There Ainsworth and DeMuth photographed different types of Air Tasers.
When the investigators had collected enough information on the subject, they decided to inform the police. Eller’s detectives derided Smit’s theory as “hogwash,” perhaps because it presupposed an intruder. Hunter thought the police might have rejected the idea because it would be hard to convince a jury that the Ramseys had used such a device on their daughter.
Nevertheless, Smit wanted to ask the Ramseys and their family if any of them had ever owned, borrowed, or seen anyone with a stun gun.
By April 11, Hofstrom thought that his attempt to broker a deal for the Ramseys’ formal interviews with the police had progressed far enough, and he suggested a meeting. Patsy and John Ramsey, their attorneys, and Tom Wickman of the Boulder police met to see if the deadlock could be broken. Wickman, representing Eller, was a far less adversarial presence than the commander. Hofstrom began by saying that they all had to work together to move the investigation onto a new track. Wickman agreed, telling the Ramseys they had been treated unfairly in the past and that the police needed their help to solve JonBenét’s murder.
The attorneys suggested conditions under which their clients would grant interviews to the police: John and Patsy would be interviewed separately, each for no more than two hours. There would be a two-hour lunch break between their interviews, when the Ramseys could consult with their attorneys, advisers, and experts. Under the law, they could have their attorneys present, and the questioning would take place in the office of a neutral Boulder attorney. The most important condition was that the Ramseys’ attorneys be given copies of all written police reports that contained