Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [202]
Q. Haddon says he warned Hunter of impending escalation of the family’s own investigation and Hunter grudgingly went along.
A. Yes, Haddon alerted me to the family’s plans to print more ads and distribute fliers. It was not my place to either go along or not go along. The decision had already been made by the Ramsey attorneys.
Q. Exactly what is the purpose of the D.A.’s trip to Quantico?
A. Our purpose in visiting Quantico is primarily to get the FBI’s per-spective on the breadth and depth of the evidence collected by the Boulder Police Department.
On August 18, just after midnight, Sherry Keene-Osborn of Newsweek, who had developed a telephone relationship with Hunter, left a message for him, advising him to be careful in upcoming interviews:
Here are some of the things good reporters learn to do over the years: A reporter finds out something about the person they’re interviewing, some personal thing, and pretends that has happened to them, too, to gain a simpatico relationship. Or the reporter gets into an intellectual discussion and the person lets down his guard and says things he doesn’t mean to say. Getting the person mad is another way to do it if the other methods don’t work. Confessing something to the person being interviewed makes the subject sympathetic to the reporter and more talkative. Reporters can be really nasty. Watch your ass!
ARE POTENTIAL JURORS AFFECTED BY ADS?
The steady barrage of newspaper advertisements and fliers looking for help in apprehending JonBenét Ramsey’s killer could be influencing potential Boulder jurors.
Jury consultants, former prosecutors and media watchers all say John and Patsy Ramsey have gone to great lengths to show both that they are trying to find the killer of their 6-year-old daughter and that they, themselves, are incapable of such a crime. Experts warn that potential jurors, who some day may even be asked to decide the couple’s guilt or innocence, are being affected.
Michael Tracey, a professor at the University of Colorado, doesn’t think the campaign will work. “Once public opinion is formed, it’s very difficult to break it. For whatever reasons—some appalling reasons—the public opinion that the Ramseys are guilty was established early on,” said Tracey.
—Marilyn Robinson
The Denver Post, August 24, 1997
Since the alleged break-in at the war room, the detectives were even more disheartened because Koby hadn’t supported them or Eller in this dispute with the DA’s office. By now even the officers were also calling the chief Dead Man Walking.
Carol McKinley reported how the detectives felt about Koby without mentioning the chief by name—she used the word management. After the broadcast, her police source called. “You should have said more,” he said. She told him it would have been impossible to tell the full story without exposing him. He understood—he wouldn’t want to be discovered as the source of a leak and lose his badge.
That same week, Fox TV offered McKinley a job covering the West Coast. She asked her police source if she should take it. Taking the job would be selling out, she said, and she knew he would never compromise himself that way, but she was a single mother and could use the money.
“Do it,” he said. “Take the money and run.”
She stayed put, partly because she felt she’d be abandoning him. She also didn’t want him to think she’d simply been using him as a stepping-stone in her career. When she told him she’d declined the job, he said, “Good for you.”
On Friday, August 29, Tom Wickman told Hunter that not all of the physical evidence would be sent to the FBI for review. Some of the items had not been fully tested and evaluated by the CBI.
In fact, the police department had never told the DA that all the evidence would be given to the FBI. Hunter had just assumed that to be the case. He had arranged to make a swing of the East Coast after the Quantico meeting to see Donald Foster at Vassar and Henry Lee and Barry Scheck. But without an evaluation of all the evidence by the Bureau, the meetings with Lee and Scheck