Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [164]
“I’m appalled that anyone would think that John or I would be involved in such a hideous, heinous crime.” Patsy said. Then she closed her eyes and added, “I loved that child with my whole of my heart and soul.”
Maybe it meant nothing, but she did it again when she said, “We would like to think that we don’t know anyone that we ever met in our lives that could do such a thing to a child.”
She shut her eyes again when she said: “I feel like [the police] are doing a broad investigation, and that is all I need to hear.”
As Brennan wrote his story for the next day’s paper, the confidence he’d felt in the Ramseys while in their presence began to recede.
We’ve been able to convict the Ramseys because they were outsiders.
Usually a crime like this will bring the community together, but we really didn’t adopt them as one of our own. They were just one of dozens of families who came here to escape other cities. That made things easier on us.
—Peter Adler
Professor of Sociology, University of Denver
Now that they had completed police and media interviews, the Ramseys began to cooperate to some degree with the DA’s office. They had met Pete Hofstrom earlier in the year and trusted him. Introduced to Lou Smit when they gave their police interviews on April 30, they came to believe he wasn’t looking to target them. He didn’t seem to have an agenda. It was likely that they were impressed not only by Smit’s religious faith but also by his telling them that he intended to let the evidence lead him to JonBenét’s killer. Not long afterward, Smit made the same statement to a colleague, adding: “If the evidence led to Jesus Christ, I would follow it.” Experience had taught Lou Smit that an investigator had to get to know his target, look him in the eye from time to time. It was important to build a positive relationship with the target, not alienate him. Smit believed that after a bridge was forged with the Ramseys, he would be able to rely on his gut to tell him what the evidence couldn’t.
Two weeks later, Smit, Ainsworth, and Hofstrom met with the Ramseys and showed them a photo lineup. Included were Kevin Raburn, his mother and sister, and two sex offenders the investigators were checking out. The Ramseys couldn’t identify any of them. Without blood and hair samples from Raburn, who still hadn’t been located, Hunter’s office began to process the few handwriting samples they had culled from his prison files.
While Smit and Ainsworth continued investigating Raburn, unknown to them, the Longmont police were also looking for him. Back in March, when Smit and Ainsworth had first tried to locate him, Raburn was forging checks. A Longmont detective had tracked him down, unaware that Hunter’s office was looking for him. Raburn agreed to turn himself in for check forgery and, still unknown to Smit and Ainsworth, appeared on May 13 at the police department, where he was released pending a court date. After that he became a fugitive, and Smit and Ainsworth were still unaware of his run-in with the Longmont police.
STUDENTS RIOT ON HILL BONFIRES BURN AS 1,500 FACE OFF WITH POLICE OFFICERS
It began as a simple end-of-the-semester party.
But soon, more than 1,500 people—mostly students from the University of Colorado—were overturning Dumpsters, setting bonfires and pelting law enforcement officers with rocks, bricks and bottles.
Police called the five-hour standoff in the University Hill section of Boulder late Friday and early Saturday the worst riot in the city in 25 years. Participants said it was the result of a year of simmering tensions between police and students over alcohol consumption.
The riot ended with 11 people arrested