Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [218]
—Yes, it’s bad. The cops are in the war room no more than one day a week.
—Yes, it’s bad. The cops are behaving so unprofessionally that their Chief has had to write letters of apology to us.
—Yes, it’s so bad that the progress of the case has been hampered. For months we’ve felt the rift was nothing out of the ordinary, but now that we’ve hit 9 mos. mark and we see that the patient isn’t getting any better and at times is taking a turn for the worse, we need to conclude that the rift may well be extraordinary.
—The cops will tell you that they can’t trust us not to leak information to the Ramseys (as reported by Vanity Fair & Channel 7) or the news media (as reported by Vanity Fair & Channel 7). Well, I’d like to address each and every one of their suspicions head on and let you be the judge as to whether any of these charges of conflict of interest and malfeasance hold water. I assure you they don’t and so-and-so and so-and-so will back me up on this. All of these folks stand ready to come on this very news program and back me up on what I’m saying tonight. You say you want character references on me and my office…well…here they are.
—Also understand that it’s not unusual for a murderer who’s yet to be caught to try to drive a wedge between the police and the DA over a high-stakes case. It is naïve to think that whoever did this crime is ambivalent about the progress of the case. Whoever did this crime may very well be taking an active role in undermining the progress of the case.
((The toughest and most risky message (yet the most important charge to answer) is explaining the rift. Toughest because truth doesn’t match the cops’ truth. Most risky because it’ll goad the cops into resurrecting Vanity Fair. And it’ll give the Ramsey camp more fodder for declaring that “Boulder authorities” are unethical and incompetent and then they’ll rush again to exclude us from their tirade…“accidentally” causing us more damage.))
ROLE
—Who our guys are and what they’re doing.
—A computer database prepared for trial.
—But all this is on hold until we get a case from the cops.
RESOLUTION
—Mistakes WERE made.
—Nationally renowned forensic pathologists tell us flat-out that the evidence is even more difficult to decipher than they’ve imagined.
—We are open-minded, we are open to outside experts (list ’em all) and we are NOT doing anything to impede the cops’ progress.
((I believe there are three camps out there who benefit from tearing down the DA’s credibility: BPD wants to be able to lay blame at our doorstep when they can’t make a case. Ramseys want us crippled in the court of public opinion before they face us in the court of law. Media gets new angle to keep story alive. I believe that all three of these camps have been equal players in negative press we’ve gotten the past three weeks. And all three will be in there swinging in the aftermath of our proposed media campaign. No matter how convincing our message, how impeccable the delivery, the aftermath will be ferocious. And the whole thing is liable to leave the public thinking that they wish everyone would just shut up and solve the case.))
A few days later, Hunter got a call from Koby, who wanted to see him as soon as possible. The chief said he had been thinking about the progress of the investigation and was considering some changes. Hunter had heard from Epp that Koby was moving toward replacing Eller, so he went into the meeting thinking the chief had actually made the decision.
When he arrived at Koby’s office, however, there was a tape recorder on the table. Koby wanted him to hear something his detectives had brought in. Listening to the recording, Hunter realized that Thomas and Gosage had worn a wire during a recent meeting with Jeff Shapiro and secretly tape-recorded a conversation in which Shapiro revealed the content of his private talks with Hunter, including the DA’s leaks to