Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [213]
“Imagine this: Your beloved six-year-old, the child at the very soul and center of your existence, is snatched from her bed as you sleep. The child is then tortured, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered in the basement of your dream house. Grief-stricken, your nightmare has only just begun, because almost everyone on the planet thinks that you did it. Now imagine—just imagine for a moment that you’re innocent.
“We invite the Ramseys”—he paused for effect, then said, “come on down.”
7
It was now clear to everyone in the DA’s office that Hunter no longer wanted simply to prosecute the Ramsey case—he wanted to solve it. His staff had never seen him behave this way before. He wanted access to all the police evidence so that he could cut Lou Smit and Steve Ainsworth loose to investigate the case as they saw fit. He wanted Vassar professor Donald Foster to look into the writings of Janet McReynolds and other possible suspects as well as Patsy’s. He was prepared to call upon both the CBI and Sheriff Epp for help.
Alex Hunter has a little girl and a little boy as well as older children. One child is about JonBenét’s age. As a father, he understands that there could be nothing more horrible than having your daughter die, especially if it’s by your own hand. I mean, if I were to accidentally kill my child, the horror I would be struck with for the rest of my life would be immeasurable. I can’t even conceive of it.
So as a human being, Alex feels it immensely. And as a prosecutor, he has to do it right. He must do it in a way that he can accept because he’s ultimately answerable to himself. He’s going to make sure he does the right thing for number one before he satisfies the community. If the right thing ultimately disappoints the community or the police, he’ll still do it. How can he live with that politically? I don’t know.
I hope Alex has reached that point where he can decide which is more important—to live with himself as a human being or to pony up to someone else. But keep in mind that this is Alex’s last term in office. You never want to leave a job on a down note. You want to have a swan song.
—former judge Virginia Chavez
As far as the DA’s office knew, there was no DNA evidence to link JonBenét’s murder to her parents or any other member of the family. No murder weapon had been identified by forensic evidence. The flashlight found on the kitchen counter, a possible weapon, would have been accessible to anyone. The Ramsey family background did not indicate any of the pathologies generally associated with this kind of murder or with child abuse. No one had seen either parent so much as scold their children in public.
The police were unable to find a motive for the crime. Hunter remembered what Dr. Lee had said to him early in the case—that JonBenét’s death may have been the result of an accident, that what may have begun as an accident was then covered up to look like a murder. Lee had suggested that the investigators look at the evidence from that point of view.
Hunter understood that JonBenét’s participation in beauty pageants caused people to think that Patsy was somehow suspect as a mother. But it was wrong to focus suspicion of murder on the Ramseys simply because of some choices they made for their daughter were wrong. As an officer of the court, Hunter was troubled that the public had reached a conclusion about the Ramseys’ guilt.
“We don’t have a filable case,” John Eller told Alex Hunter in late September, referring to the Ramseys—not because there was evidence of an intruder, the commander pointed out, but because there wasn’t enough admissible evidence against the Ramseys. There was no smoking gun.
Clearly, Eller had listened to the pro bono attorneys, who had become an asset to the investigation—and thereby to Hunter. They had accomplished what his office had been unable to do, and in a nonadversarial way. Even with Eller’s new attitude, however, Hunter was unhappy with him and wanted the commander replaced. In the DA’s eyes, Eller had a