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After the meeting, Hofstrom and Hunter discussed the conditions. The DA told Eller and Wickman that he saw little point in withholding the documents that had been requested. If the Ramseys were charged, Hofstrom told the police, they would obtain the documents anyway, as part of the discovery process.*

But the Ramseys hadn’t been charged, Wickman and Eller insisted—they were only suspects. The police were furious that they’d had to wait so long for interviews. Now, on top of the delay, the Ramseys wanted to see their prior statements to the police. Wickman and Eller thought it would compromise the interview process, if not the entire case. Reminded of what they had told the police earlier, the Ramseys could tailor their new answers accordingly.

But Hunter could understand why their attorneys wanted the Ramseys’ earlier statements—it was likely they were already looking at their clients as charged defendants. “These people aren’t right off the boat,” was how the DA put it. “It was obvious they were prime suspects from the first days of the investigation.” There was nothing out of the ordinary about the police having to wait to interview the Ramseys—any good defense lawyer would have tried to delay his clients’ interrogation.

Hofstrom negotiated with the police, and Eller and Koby grudgingly agreed that the DA could release the statements the Ramseys had made to the police, though not the entire contents of the officers’ reports. The police would hand over a total of twenty-six pages. The decision infuriated Steve Thomas, who had been selected to interview Patsy. It would be like having one hand tied behind his back.

The interview was set for Wednesday, April 23, at 9:30 A.M. From Hunter’s point of view, the process was moving forward.

Within a day of the agreement, Patsy gave the police a fourth handwriting sample and agreed to identify her prior writings. The Ramseys also gave the police permission to search their home again. Then Smit gave Trip DeMuth copies of the requested statements from his set of police files, which DeMuth delivered to the Ramseys’ attorneys.

That same week, Carol McKinley’s source in the Boulder PD told her that he and his colleagues were outraged that the police had to bargain with the Ramseys. It was the last straw, he said.

John and Patsy’s participation in a meeting with Hofstrom and Wickman suggested to Hunter’s office that Ramsey was becoming more active in the day-to-day decision-making in the case. He was also back at Access Graphics full-time. Gary Mann, the parent company’s vice president, had taken the position that John Ramsey was innocent until proven guilty, so Ramsey was still running the company for Lockheed Martin. Mann saw that although Ramsey was under enormous pressure, he didn’t miss a beat when it came to work. Sales and profits at Access Graphics were increasing, and the company was ahead of last year’s record. With those results, Lockheed decided that now was the time to sell the company. Management had first discussed that possibility with Ramsey during the summer of 1996. At the time, Ramsey had mentioned buying the company himself, but with JonBenét’s death, he dropped the idea. Mann told Ramsey that he could stay with Lockheed Martin if he wanted to.

With the sale of Access Graphics imminent, Ramsey decided to move his family back to Atlanta. The family had imposed on Jay Elowsky and the Stines long enough. It was time for their friends’ lives to return to normal. In Atlanta the Ramseys’ day-to-day movements would be less noticeable, and the media would have other stories to cover. Also, Patsy would be close to her parents and sisters, who could help care for Burke when she and John traveled. There was no reason to stay in Boulder any longer.

Gary Mann considered John Ramsey a big asset for Lockheed, and he wanted to keep him in the corporation after Access Graphics was sold. Lockheed Martin was primarily in the airplane business, however, and it had no information division in the Atlanta