Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [191]
Glick had turned a corner in his thinking. Balancing what little he knew of the evidence with his own investigation into the family’s background, the fact that JonBenét told her friend’s mother that Santa would visit her the day after Christmas, and now the house itself, Glick concluded that Patsy and John Ramsey were unlikely to have been involved in JonBenét’s death. A few days after he saw the inside of the Ramseys’ home, Glick told his friend Charlie Brennan that an intruder could well be the answer. He now thought the Ramseys were probably blameless. From then on, Glick’s articles gave far more space to exculpatory evidence than to evidence pointing to the Ramseys’ guilt.
On July 8 and 9, a moving crew packed the remainder of the Ramseys’ belongings from the house on 15th Street for transport to Atlanta. Their new suburban home, which cost $700,000, was located near the cemetery where JonBenét was buried. The house where JonBenét died was put on the market for $1 million.
HANDWRITING TEST FAILS TO CLEAR PATSY RAMSEY
Handwriting analysts can’t rule out Patsy Ramsey as the author of the ransom note in her daughter’s murder case, the Rocky Mountain News has learned. They can’t say for sure that she wrote it either, sources said.
Results from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation analysis of Patsy Ramsey’s handwriting have been in the hands of Boulder police since last June, but hadn’t been disclosed publicly until now.
Earlier handwriting analysis eliminated John Ramsey, 54, as a possible author of the note.
—Charlie Brennan
Rocky Mountain News, July 9, 1997
Lou Smit had a hard time reconciling the grief-stricken Patsy, who reportedly was unable even to comb her own hair in the days after her daughter’s death, with the person who was able to compose and write a two-and-a-half-page ransom note while her daughter lay dead in the basement. Smit was now ready to believe that John and Patsy could not have killed their daughter.
During the first days of June, the DA’s office received a phone call from Patsy Ramsey. Alex Hunter was out. Patsy left a message that the family was leaving for Charlevoix on June 6 now that Burke was done with school for the year. Lou Smit, who had been driving by the Ramsey’s house each morning at 7:00 A.M. to look around and say a prayer for JonBenét, happened to be at the their home when Patsy and John drove by on June 6. Seeing an opportunity to develop a relationship with the Ramseys, he waved to them. John stopped his car and got out. Smit greeted Ramsey and the two men stood on the front lawn chatting. It was the first time the investigator had met either of the Ramseys. A moment later Patsy joined them and Smit invited the couple into his van to continue the conversation. Just before the Ramseys departed, Patsy told Smit that she and her husband had nothing to do with the death of JonBenét. They wanted the killer to be caught, she repeated. Then the Ramseys and Smit joined hands and prayed together that the detective would find JonBenét’s killer and this nightmare would soon end. Smit continued to stop each day at the scene of the crime on his way to work to pray for JonBenét.
It wasn’t long after that Smit received a letter from John Ramsey. The worst thing that I have ever done in my life, Ramsey wrote, is that I once committed adultery when I was married to my first wife. I wanted you to hear it from me, Ramsey continued, before you read it in some tabloid.
As he had always done in the past, Smit was letting the evidence lead him to the murderer. At this point, he saw no hard evidence against Patsy or John, but there were several strong indications that pointed to an intruder. One was the print of a Hi-Tec shoe that the police had found in the dusting on the cement floor