Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [150]
On April 15, the National Enquirer wrote that White “told investigators…[that John Ramsey] tried to keep White from opening the door to the small basement room where JonBenét’s body was found.” The tabloid added that “White and Priscilla have made some awful allegations to Boulder police about John and Patsy and the Ramseys will never speak to them again.” It was after reading this that Fleet White stormed into Koby’s and then Hunter’s office and demanded to be publicly cleared as a suspect. Hunter said that he had never seen such anger. “We can clear the guy,” Pete Hofstrom suggested to Hunter. “And then later on, if we decide he’s not clear, we’ll unclear him.” Hunter talked to Koby about White. He told the chief that unless they did something to appease White, they might lose an important witness. Koby reluctantly agreed. He would talk to Eller, and hoped the commander would agree to clear the Whites.
When Hunter saw a draft of the Boulder PD’s intended public statement, however, he objected to the wording. The Whites, he felt, should not be “cleared” of any suspicion, because Fleet White’s demeanor after JonBenét’s murder was still open to interpretation. It might be better to use the words “are not suspects” rather than “cleared.” White would later learn about Hunter’s involvement in the wording of the press release and hold it against him.
The next afternoon, April 16, the police department included the following statement from Chief Koby in the City of Boulder’s Ramsey Update No. 40:
Mr. and Mrs. Fleet White, Jr., are not suspects in the JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation. They are considered key witnesses. The Boulder Police Department appreciates the full cooperation they have received from the Whites since the beginning of their investigation. I feel this response is necessary due to the inaccurate portrayal of Mr. and Mrs. White in certain media publications.
Fleet and Priscilla were the first people to be named key witnesses, when the Ramseys themselves had not officially been named suspects.
Ever since watching Tom Koby’s January 9 press conference from the lobby of the Boulder Public Library, Stephen Singular had often thought about the peculiar nature of the Ramsey case. He had spent fifteen years writing true-crime books, and of course JonBenét’s murder interested him. Soon he began to talk to some of the Ramseys’ acquaintances. During one conversation Pam Griffin talked to him about Fleet White, whom she met while she was caring for Patsy on December 27 at the Fernies’. Pam understood how distraught Patsy and John must be, but it was White’s behavior that caught her attention. She got the impression that White was trying to control and manage things that day, and he seemed not to want Pam to be alone with Patsy. Of course White didn’t know who Pam was or how close she was to Patsy; nor did she know at the time how close the Whites were to the Ramseys. Still, she had an uneasy feeling about Fleet White. For his part, Stephen Singular couldn’t stop thinking about White as he drove from Denver, where he lived, to Boulder for a meeting with Alex Hunter. He had read the National Enquirer that morning, but he was apprehensive about bringing up White’s name at this first meeting with the DA.
Like most Americans who were following the case, Singular thought the Boulder police had little homicide experience. He surmised that so far the cops had dealt only with the surface, that they hadn’t gone deep.
In his own investigations, Singular had learned that inevitably the perpetrator’s prior behavior foreshadows the crime. Though there seemed to be no sign of aberrant behavior in either John’s or Patsy’s background, Singular understood that seemingly good people can sometimes do terrible things.
As he followed the story, he saw that during the first weeks, the media implied that John Ramsey