Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [193]
Lou Smit showed Patsy and John many of the crime-scene photographs taken by the police in the days after the murder. In one photo Patsy noticed a small white toy bear dressed in a Santa suit. It was among the other toys on the second bed in JonBenét’s room. She told Smit she didn’t know where the bear came from. The stuffed toy had not been confiscated by police after the murder, and now it seemed to be missing. In the coming months the DA’s office would try to determine how it got there.
Then Smit asked the Ramseys about the stun gun. John Ramsey said that they never owned one. Ramsey thought he remembered being given a videotape on self-defense by Spy World, a high-tech security outlet in southern Florida, which might have included a segment on the use of stun guns. The family didn’t wear or own Hi-Tec shoes, he said.
Five days later, Smit asked John Andrew about the same items. Like his father, he said he knew nothing about stun guns and didn’t own Hi-Tec brand shoes.
Hoping that someone with information might come forward, Smit believed that the police or the DA should go public with what they’d discovered about a stun gun and asked permission to release the information. But Hunter considered the stun gun theory “iffy.” He talked to the police about exhuming JonBenét’s body, but they were against it. The media were sure to find out, they said, and exhuming the body would lend credibility to what the detectives called Smit’s “wacko” stun-gun theory. Hunter knew they had another reason: no jury would believe that the Ramseys could have used such a device on their daughter.
Lou Smit’s request was turned down. The police said they would inquire about a stun gun when they recanvassed the Ramseys’ neighborhood. It would take another six months.
Meanwhile, on July 14, the Colorado Supreme Court denied the coroner’s request to withhold his autopsy report from the public. Deputy county attorney Mason told the press that since John Meyer anticipated being called as a material and expert witness “at any future trial in this case,” he would not comment on the supreme court’s decision or offer an interpretation of the still-censored autopsy report.
The report, which detailed the long fracture to JonBenét’s skull, the blood around her vagina, the abrasions to her hymen, and the severity of the furrow around her neck from the ligature, was in the hands of the press by midafternoon.
Dr. Richard Krugman—dean of the CU Health Sciences Center and a nationally known child abuse expert who had consulted with the police and the DA since March—told the media that on the basis of what he’d read in the report, JonBenét was not a sexually abused child. Then he added, “I don’t believe it’s possible to tell whether any child is sexually abused based on physical findings alone.” The presence of semen, evidence of a sexually transmitted disease, or the child’s medical history combined with the child’s own testimony were the only sure ways to be confident about a finding of sexual abuse, Krugman told reporters.
Physical abuse was another matter. Krugman had occasionally seen injuries to little girls’ genitals that were related to toilet training and had nothing to do with sexual abuse. In children, one had to separate sexual from physical abuse. By now the detectives had learned that at age six, JonBenét was still wetting the bed, and was asking adults to wipe her after she was done on the toilet. It was possible that the injury to her vagina was a result of punishment.
Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist who was appearing regularly on talk shows about the case, scoffed at Krugman’s remarks. “How can anybody say, with the blood and the abrasions, that this was not sexual assault? What is he [Krugman]