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place before or after her death and, if it was prior, to see if penetration had come from the child herself or from another person. The police would have to track down the origin of a small amount of cellulose that had been found in JonBenét’s vagina.* The possibility existed that it could have come from the broken paintbrush used for the ligature. The knot on the ligature that acted like a slip-knot also required more investigation. Burke’s friends and their parents had yet to be interviewed. More DNA testing had to be done—in the hope of finding a match for the foreign DNA found under JonBenét’s fingernails and in her underpants, since it didn’t look as if John’s and Patsy’s DNA matched it. The list went on and on.

After the meeting with the FBI, Hunter’s staff told him that the police detectives were more certain than ever that the Ramseys had murdered their daughter—that’s what the cops were telling Koby. Hunter’s representatives said that they hadn’t reached the same conclusions.

The perceptions of the various participants at the FBI meetings were so different that to clarify matters for himself, Hunter asked to meet with Koby. They scheduled a meeting to discuss the FBI’s evaluation, but first they decided they had to talk about the media in general and the Vanity Fair article in particular.

On September 15, Hunter met with Koby and the detectives’ three pro bono attorneys. Everyone agreed that leaks tended to backfire on them. Bill Wise, for example, remembered the time when he confirmed for the Rocky Mountain News that the police weren’t providing the DA’s office with results of the DNA tests. He had expected the next morning’s headline to read COPS AREN’T COOPERATING WITH DA. Instead, the spin on the story was the reverse: BOULDER PROSECUTOR OUT OF LOOP, implying that Hunter was ill-informed about the investigation.

Koby and Hunter decided they should limit their press statements to joint releases, though they realized it wouldn’t stop all the leaks, especially from the Ramsey camp. It was remarkable that this strategy meeting took place, given the wide rift between the Boulder PD and the DA’s office. However, the previous Saturday, Hunter had met with Koby and a mediator to plan some damage control in the wake of Ann Bardach’s article.

The facilitator told them that their problem was even more intractable than some NATO situations he had handled. Koby agreed to write a letter of apology to Hunter’s staff on behalf of the police, stating that the information leaked by his department to Vanity Fair was false and misleading.

As planned, on September 22 Hunter met again with Koby and pro bono attorneys Miller, Baer, and Hoffman, this time to discuss the FBI’s evaluation of the Ramsey case. The attorneys said that the case was on track. The detectives were doing high-caliber work and good interviews. Despite what the detectives believed, however, it wasn’t an 80 percent certainty that Patsy Ramsey had killed her daughter. It was clear that charges could not be filed against the Ramseys—or against anybody else—at this point.

Bob Miller had developed a long “to-do” list—people to reinterview and loose ends to be tied up. Among those to be questioned were friends of the Ramseys, children who had played with JonBenét, and a long list of peripheral people who had yet to be excluded as suspects. Richard Baer, who was familiar with the physical evidence, said he was working closely with Detective Trujillo and that he had his own to-do list. Optimistically, he said that he thought the case could still be solved.

Toward the end of the meeting, Koby suggested that Hunter convene a grand jury—to decide whether charges should be filed against the Ramseys or anyone else. The FBI had also mentioned this possibility. Hunter said he would discuss it with his staff but that to him it looked more like a political solution than a way of solving the case.

That afternoon, when Hunter told Hofstrom what Koby had suggested, Hofstrom, who had been at Quantico, said he simply didn’t see enough evidence for a grand jury. He thought