Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [203]
On Saturday morning, August 30, just days before his scheduled departure for the widely publicized conference, Hunter told Carol McKinley that he wouldn’t be going to Quantico.
“They have half a loaf,” Hunter told the reporter. “It’s not enough for me to go.” That afternoon, Hunter issued a press release noting that he wasn’t going but that Hofstrom, DeMuth, and Lou Smit would meet with the FBI.
The next day, McKinley’s police source told her that the department was frustrated by Hunter’s decision. They had told the FBI that the DA was coming. Now they were going to look unprofessional.
“We’re having a party,” McKinley’s source told her, “and the guest of honor decided it wasn’t worth it.”
5
On Saturday evening, August 30, Boulder, like the rest of the world, learned that England’s Princess Diana had been seriously injured in an auto accident in Paris. Four hours later, in the early hours of Sunday morning, August 31, her death was announced. The media put JonBenét Ramsey on the back burner.
Vanity Fair, which was about to publish Ann Bardach’s story on the investigation, considered postponing distribution of the magazine until after the funeral of the princess. For the moment, the cause of her accident was the mystery everyone wanted solved. The role of the paparazzi—who had been following the princess’s car in the hope of photographing her—was the subject of almost every news broadcast. The involvement of the European and American tabloids in the tragedy was the subject of intense media scrutiny, since they paid the paparazzi handsomely for exclusive photos.
On September 2, the topic on Larry King Live was the paparazzi, tabloid coverage of celebrities, and the death of Princess Diana. On the show, the Globe’s editor, Tony Frost, who had once paid an exorbitant sum for photographs of the princess and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, on a yacht, vowed that he would never publish Diana’s death-scene pictures. During the show’s final commercial break, Larry King’s staff told him that he had an important call.
“With us on the phone—she has called in—is Patsy Ramsey, the mother of the late JonBenét Ramsey, who obviously has something to say,” King told his audience. “Patsy, can you hear us?”
“Yes, I can.”
“What prompted the call?”
“I am watching your show this evening,” Patsy said. “I am just appalled and heartsick that you have stooped to the level of having Tony Frost on your program. He sits there so piously and says he will never print photographs of the late Princess Diana. Well, I’ll have you know that he purchased illegally photographs of my sweet JonBenét, the autopsy photographs.”
She and her family, Patsy said, were just normal everyday Americans, not famous like Princess Diana.
“These tabloid photographers have ruined our lives,” she said. “They are printing false information. They stalk us. They stalk my child. It is just unbearable!”
“I guess no one can understand the pain of having a death,” King said. “What’s the latest? Is anything happening in the investigation that can clear you and get this over with for you?”
“I am not at liberty to talk about that,” Patsy said. “I didn’t call you to talk about that.”
“But that’s the only way this is going to stop—with you,” King replied.
“The only way this is going to change is if a law is passed,” Patsy said. She went on to credit her husband with a “wonderful” idea—a law requiring photographers to obtain a signed release before taking pictures of public figures.
“I took my son to a local department store to buy school supplies,” she said. “As we were checking out, he looked to his left at his eye level. There was a photograph of his murdered little sister with the most horrible headline accusing his parents. I mean, I wanted to just—I didn’t know whether to cry, be angry—you know, this is hurtful…. He looked at me like, you know, he tried to pretend he didn’t see it. But how can