Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [162]
As they waited, Paula Woodward, an investigative reporter for KUSA, NBC’s Denver affiliate, asked Carol McKinley a question: “Who do you think killed JonBenét?”
“This isn’t the place to talk about that,” McKinley replied.
“You think they did it, don’t you?” Woodward insisted.
“That’s not something I want to talk about—not right now,” McKinley said as she returned to her seat.
Rachelle Zimmer, who had been hovering about the room, made a final check before John and Patsy Ramsey entered with their lawyers and Patsy’s father. John was neatly dressed in a tweed jacket and paisley tie; Patsy wore a blue suit, with a silver angel pin on her right lapel. Her eyes were clear; her smile, warm. She sat to John’s left, exactly as she had during their January CNN interview.
Most of the reporters, who had never seen the Ramseys in person, found their quiet grace impossible to reconcile with the rumors building around them.
John Ramsey spoke first: “We’ve been anxious to do this for some time, and I can tell you why it’s taken us so long.” Ramsey explained that their first obligation had been to talk to the police. Now that they had, they wanted to “clear up some issues.”
Ramsey discussed how and why his attorneys had been hired, explaining his close relationship to Michael Bynum. Then he raised the subject the reporters had been told to avoid: “Let me address it very directly: I did not kill my daughter JonBenét. There have also been innuendoes that she had been or was sexually molested. I can tell you that those were the most hurtful innuendoes to us as a family. They are totally false. JonBenét and I had a very close relationship”—Ramsey stumbled over his dead daughter’s name. Then he added: “I will miss her dearly the rest of my life.”
Then Patsy spoke: “I’m grateful that we are finally able to meet together face-to-face. I’m appalled that anyone would think that John or I would be involved in such a hideous, heinous crime. But let me assure you that I did not kill JonBenét and did not have anything to do with this.” She added, “We feel like God has a master plan for our lives and that in the fullness of time, our family will be reunited again and we will see JonBenét.”
John said, “I have corresponded several times with a little girl about our son Burke’s age in southern Illinois. She was very distressed by this. I have received a card from an elderly lady. I think she said she was eighty-five. She said she had to wait until she got her Social Security check so she could buy stamps to send us a letter. It’s just been wonderful.”
Patsy continued. “I know you have been diligently covering this case,” she said, “and we have appreciated some of what you’ve said—I’ll be frank, not all of what you’ve said.”
Some of the reporters chuckled as Patsy continued. “We need to work together as a team. And we need your help.”
Then Patsy held up the newspaper advertisement that had appeared four days earlier, in the Sunday edition of the Daily Camera, offering a $100,000 reward for information.
“We feel like there are at least two people on the face of this earth that know who did this,” Patsy continued. “That is the killer and someone that that person may have confided in. We need that one phone call. We need the one phone call to this number that may help the authorities come to a conclusion with this case.”
As Patsy repeated “one phone call,” the reporters exchanged glances among themselves.
With less than twenty minutes left, Patsy asked for the first question. Phil LeBeau, who weeks before had received an unsolicited call from her, was first. “This is the same plea, I think,” LeBeau began, “that you and John made in your CNN interview four months ago.” The reporter wanted to know why the public had seen little evidence of other efforts by the Ramseys to catch the killer.
John responded, even though the question had been directed to Patsy.
“We’ve been distressed that the [original] reward [offer] wasn’t better publicized,” he answered.
Reporter Bertha