Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [189]
A few days later, Thomas called me and asked me to come in and meet Sgt. Wickman.
“Jeff, is your loyalty to the DA’s office, the police, or the Globe?” Thomas asked.
I looked at him seriously. “My loyalty is to JonBenét. I will work with whoever I have to work with to do whatever it takes to avenge that girl.”
At that moment I saw a look in Thomas’s eye that I’d never seen before in my life. It was a look of total respect and admiration.
Thomas had told me they couldn’t get to Hunter through the normal chain of command. They needed my help. That was when I decided to tell them some of the things that were going on in Hunter’s office. I related to them some of my conversations with Hunter.
As Thomas questioned me about the things that were going on in the DA’s office, I sensed he was trying to get negative information. They wanted to know all about Lou Smit. I called him “the fox,” “the ace detective”—something I’d picked up from Hunter—and told them about his intruder theory.
Finally Wickman stood up and thanked me for coming in. Steve Thomas left with him. A moment later, he returned alone.
“That was good,” he said. “Wick was totally impressed—especially the stuff about Smit.” Then Steve continued, “I fuckin’ can’t stand Smit. Sometimes I’m in the DA’s office talking to Smit and DeMuth. They’re telling me about the intruder theory, and it’s like—I just look down at my piece and I think to myself—well, I’ve got one in the chamber and seven in the clip.”
We started laughing.
Thomas told me that he believed John and Patsy killed JonBenét. I said I thought it was Patsy who actually did it. Thomas just smiled. “You’re on the right track,” he said. Then we started talking more about Lou Smit.
“Jeff, this guy is convinced the Ramseys are innocent. He is obsessed with his Christian values. We’re ready to arrest the Ramseys—and he’s looking for intruders.”
Then I tried to tell Thomas that Hunter is a good guy and that Hunter thinks Eller is the problem. I told him what he had said about Eller.
“That’s because Eller is the only guy over here who challenges him,” Thomas said.
“Isn’t Eller kind of an asshole?”
“Jeff, Eller is a fuckin’ good guy,” Thomas shouted. “I wish I could just take you in the back and show you our files.”
I could feel we were bonding.
“Just keep it between us, and we’ll keep talking,” he said. “We have to get Hunter off the intruder path.”
I understood that I was the messenger from the cops to Hunter, and from Hunter to the cops. Soon I would become the messenger from God reminding Thomas and the cops that they were needed.
That was how we left it: my job was to get Hunter off that path.
—Jeff Shapiro
While the detectives seemed to be having doubts about Lou Smit, the veteran investigator was gaining admiration for them. Most of them were top-notch, Smit thought—honest to a fault. Their major problem was their lack of experience. How many murder cases did they have to solve in the last five years? Also, there was no devil’s advocate in their ranks to keep them objective, a situation aggravated early in the case when the DA’s office took the position that the cops weren’t doing their jobs right.
One detective stood out in Smit’s mind. Steve Thomas was a professional. He was dedicated and, like Smit, only wanted justice for the victim. Thomas knew the case from every angle, and he was in the field, where detectives should be. The only fault Smit could find in Thomas’s thinking was that he’d started, like Eller, from the position that the Ramseys must have been involved in JonBenét’s murder. Like most narcotics officers once he found his target he never let go. Thomas’s lack of experience as a homocide detective seemed to prevent him from stepping back and looking at all the evidence from a different perspective. It was a shame,