Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [198]
When I first met JonBenét, she was two years old and had a discernible personality. She could walk into a room and everybody would stop and look—not just at her face. She was beautiful, but it was something else. She had confidence, and you had to take a second look. You’d ask yourself, Who is this kid?
On some Sundays after church, Patsy would take off with JonBenét and go to some pageant. The family was prepping all the time during the week. With that amount of participation, it wasn’t just a couple of Sundays. And when she’d say, “I’ve got to go now,” and “We’re doing such and such,” my eyebrows went up just a little, like everybody else’s.
I mean, when Patsy said on TV that the pageants were just a couple of Sundays—give me a break.
—Patty Novack
During the first week of August, Jeff Shapiro called Patty Novack, who had cared for Patsy in the first days after the murder. He wanted to interview her about “anything,” he said. Novack told him she had no comment. Shapiro continued to talk—about himself. He said he was young and looking for a story.
He thought he was playing to some bored housewife. That, I am not. I wasn’t going to fall for his line. Again I said, “I have no comment,” and hung up.
A second later the phone rang again. “Patty, Patty, you hung up on me,” he said. “That wasn’t nice.”
Once again I said I had no comment.
“Surely you must think about what’s going on,” he continued.
“Of course I think about it. I’ve had discussions with my husband. But I don’t have discussions with strangers.”
“We could meet and have coffee, and then we wouldn’t be strangers anymore.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, and hung up.
A couple of weeks later, about six o’clock in the evening, Shapiro showed up on my doorstep with some flowers. He wasn’t the first reporter to use that trick. Someone had tried that on Valentine’s Day.
He just kept ringing my bell. I didn’t answer. Then he walked over to the window. I could see him using his cell phone. Then our phone rang. I had to tell the children not to answer. They got scared.
Shapiro started calling through the window, trying to get my children to answer the door. That scared them more. Finally he put the flowers down and left. There was a note: “Dear Patty,” it said. There was a peace sign and the word offering. He signed his name.
I called the police and asked what our rights were. They said they would issue a trespass ticket and charge Shapiro with harassment, since I had previously told him I had no comment.
I know he’s trying to earn a living and pay his bills, but he can’t do that at my expense.
—Patty Novack
When Carol McKinley first met Jeff Shapiro, she was working for KOA AM Radio in Denver. He simply walked up to her one day at the Justice Center and said he worked for the Globe. The next day she met him for breakfast, thinking they might compare notes.
Then he started calling her regularly, trying to get her to reveal her sources.
“I think we’re talking to the same person,” Shapiro said.
McKinley told him she wouldn’t discuss her sources.
When he saw he was getting nowhere, Shapiro talked to her about his family. He said his mother had always been mean to him, didn’t really think he was good enough. Shapiro told McKinley he needed somebody to be his big brother, like his source.
McKinley never revealed to Shapiro or anyone who her police source was. But when she compared notes with other reporters, it was obvious to her that there were only one or two detectives at the most who were talking to the media.
On Sunday, August 3, the Ramseys ran their second full-page advertisement in the Daily Camera. They had previously asked the police to release the entire ransom note to the public but had been refused. The ad now sought the public’s help in locating the writer of the note. In late April, before the Ramseys’ experts were allowed to review the original note, their attorneys had made an agreement with the police not to release it as a condition of being allowed to keep photocopies of it. Now the ad reproduced the capital letters D along with Do,