Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [208]
“I’m still disappointed in the department’s leadership,” Thomas said. “All the detectives are going to be polygraphed, maybe even prosecuted for leaking evidence. The Ramseys never had to take a polygraph, so why should we?” Then he added that three of the five detectives working the case were already consulting attorneys.
Shapiro then called Bruce Hagan, a producer for NBC’s Dateline, and told him about the pending polygraphs and the possible prosecution of Vanity Fair’s police source. “I know a detective who might want to talk. Just listen to his story,” he said, not revealing Thomas’s name or that he was calling without the detective’s permission. Hagan replied that he could have plane tickets waiting at Denver International Airport whenever they were ready to fly to New York.
Shortly afterward, Thomas called Shapiro. “I just got a voice mail from someone asking me to confirm that a guy named Jeff Shapiro is talking to some big East Coast media about the cops taking polygraphs. Just tell me the truth and we’ll get past it.”
“Absolutely,” Shapiro told Thomas. “I talked to Dateline. It was supposed to be between me and them.” Then he added, “I have this all set up if one day you want to go on the air.”
“OK, that’s no problem,” Thomas said. “I understand.”
I called Hunter and asked him if he was going to prosecute the detectives.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“About the Vanity Fair leaks.”
“No. You’re talking about this as if I’m going to press charges, and I’m not,” Hunter said. “Tell them Koby has canceled the polygraphs. There’s nothing more important in my entire life than seeing this thing move forward.”
Then I called Steve Thomas. “Hunter’s not pressing charges.”
“That’s fuckin’ bullshit,” Steve responded.
I had the feeling Eller was telling the detectives some things about the DA’s office that weren’t true, saying whatever he had to, to get everyone all worked up.
Now Hunter knew I had to be talking to Thomas, Wickman, or Gosage.
—Jeff Shapiro
By now, despite the lip service paid to it, preserving the integrity of the investigation was a distant memory. The infighting between the DA’s office and the police department was being played out in the press through leaks. Some of the detectives understood that the leaks from the police suggested that the Boulder PD was more interested in saving face than in solving the murder. Of course, the Ramseys had been playing the image game in the press for quite a while. To that end, they would continue to provide leaks.
In the weeks to come, they would give out stories that pointed to an intruder. For example, Carol McKinley’s Ramsey source told her that something had been found in the snow outside the house near the basement window grate on December 26. McKinley called Charlie Russell, one of their press representatives.
“What’s in the snow?” she asked.
“A knee print.”
“What else?” she asked. “Is that all you have?”
McKinley followed up with her CBI source, the DA’s office, and police sources, but she came up empty. She was told that without a hand or finger imprint, toe print, or shoe print, there was no way to positively identify a knee print. McKinley believed that Russell may have led her astray.
In the preceding months, the Ramseys had launched a public campaign through advertisements, fliers, and direct mail. Now they were ready to present their case on national TV and in Newsweek magazine. Michael Bynum spoke to Dan Glick of Newsweek in late August to tell the writer that he could now publish a story about his July visit to the Ramseys’ house. In a September 7 Newsweek piece, Glick and Sherry Keene-Osborn challenged the thoroughness of the police investigation and claimed that many presumed “facts” about the case—allegedly leaked by the cops and incriminating to the Ramseys—were simply wrong. A photocopy of the ransom note that Keene-Osborn had had access to for over a month was included in the article—its first appearance in print. It was likely that one