Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [190]
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PORN EXPERT CALLED IN TO RAMSEY CASE
Authorities have asked an Arvada Police Department detective to investigate child pornography computer databases in connection with the JonBenét Ramsey homicide, sources said Wednesday.
Investigators searched for pornography in the Ramseys’ home after obtaining search warrants.
“They were out (at the Ramseys’ house) looking for every type of pornography you can imagine,” a source said. “They were looking for things like pornographic movies, books, magazines and photographs.”
The girl’s autopsy report verified she suffered head injuries and that sections of her vagina showed chronic inflammation and epithelial erosion, or tissue damage.
The Ramseys have denied a history of sexual abuse in the family involving JonBenét or others.
—Alli Krupski
Daily Camera, July 3, 1997
RAMSEY PRESS ADVISORY
To:
Media covering the Ramsey case
Contact:
Rachelle Zimmer
Date:
July 3, 1997
An article in today’s Boulder Daily Camera reflects a despicable new low by some member or members of the Boulder Police Department who are engaged in a concerted and vicious smearing of character of John and Patsy Ramsey. Any suggestion or hint by such persons that John and Patsy Ramsey may somehow be connected with child pornography, and thereby implicated in the death of their daughter is totally outrageous.
The results of such searches were not revealed to the reporter for the most obvious reason: no pornography was found, nor has any evidence of any sort been found which in any way would link the Ramseys to pornography.
When the police had finished the four-day search of the Ramsey home, the couple wanted some independent reporters to determine how easy it would have been for an intruder to enter their house. Just before the Ramseys went to Atlanta, a Ramsey attorney contacted Dan Glick of Newsweek and offered him a tour of the house. That same week, Clay Evans of the Daily Camera was asked if he’d like a tour. Both reporters were told that they could not publish what they had seen or what their conclusions might be until the Ramseys gave them permission—if ever. Both reporters agreed to the conditions.
Evans found many of the family’s personal effects—furniture, books, wall hangings, and even some food—still in the house. What interested him most was the basement. In his notes, he described it as “unfinished,” with walls that had been repainted just before the murder. It had a claustrophobic feel, with low ceilings and small rooms. There were no lighting fixtures—just bare bulbs everywhere. Toilets and sinks were still disassembled from the various police searches. At the back of Burke’s train room, Evans saw the place where the police had found the broken window. He saw that a full-grown person could have crawled through an opening of that size. Just past the boiler room was the unfinished, windowless room where JonBenét had been found. It didn’t look like a wine cellar. The room was “dark and bunker-like, with waterstained cement walls and floor.” The door and its frame had both been removed by the police.
After his tour, Dan Glick considered the relationship of JonBenét’s bedroom to her parents’ and Burke’s rooms. To him, the path from the second floor down the spiral staircase to the basement didn’t seem difficult, and though a stranger to the house, he easily found the wine cellar. He agreed that a grown man could have climbed through the basement window and escaped through any of several doors. An intruder with a key could have entered the house easily, and someone without a key could have entered through any of the doors that had pry marks. Of course, at the time, neither reporter knew that the doors with pry marks had been found latched from the inside and that a partial spiderweb extended across the grate at the broken basement window.
Just weeks before Glick’s visit to the house, Newsweek had published an article by him and Sherry Keene-Osborn titled “Complications in the Case.” The writers