Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [224]
Then I passed some bad checks, was given a felony summons, and given a court date. I’d found the checks in a jacket, walked into a bank at Broadway and Canyon, and got some cash.
Then I asked my lawyer why the cops were looking for me. He found out my file was in Hunter’s office with the guys working on the Ramsey case. I was in shock. My lawyer looked at me kind of weird. I’m a convicted felon, you know?
I got tired waiting for my court date, so in July I just got on a bus for Knoxville to see my friend Eric. I’m a football fan, and I like the university’s football team. It wasn’t hard to get a job, right off Cumberland and Kingston Pike. Right down from the campus.
Then on September 1, I was reading a newspaper and a cop drives by, looks at me strange, and I start walking. He pulled over and said I looked suspicious. I gave him my name, he checks on his car computer, and my warrant came up. They arrested me on a felony warrant for my check forgery and missed court date. The next day they said someone was coming from Boulder to pick me up.
That’s when I realized they weren’t coming all the way to get me on a check charge. On September 11, they came up for me in a sheriff’s plane. Something was wrong. I’d known Gerry Leverentz in Boulder, and he had this guy Lou Smit with him. Smit told me he was working on the Ramsey case. Smit said he was just doing a background check on me. I told them I had a paid attorney and couldn’t talk to them without him. Smit just said fine, OK.
On the way back, Smit helped turn the sports pages of the newspaper I was reading, since I was in handcuffs.
When I was booked in Boulder, I got a public defender, Cary Lacklen. He said to me, “You know something or you know somebody.”
“I know nothing,” I told him. “They ain’t got nothing on me. I got my felony and my bike theft.”
On October 20, Harmer and Weinheimer came to see me in jail. Then on the twenty-second Lou Smit and Harmer came back. There was a court reporter and my attorney. Smit wanted to know everything about Christmas night. They knew about Juanita’s, the day I was there, December 26. But they wanted to know about the night before. I told them I was at my mom’s house.
“I’m a thief,” I said. “I’m not a killer.”
Harmer wanted to know if I could have left the house that night. I told them if you open a window, the alarm goes off. If you open the front door, it beeps for a few seconds, so you can turn the alarm off if you know the code. If you don’t know the code, which I didn’t, the alarm goes off.
Smit asked if I’d been convicted of any sexual offenses. I said no. Asked if I’d gone into an adult bookstore in Boulder. I said yeah. After twenty minutes they were done. I just asked them to leave my family alone.
Then they took blood, hair, and handwriting samples.
Never heard from them again. Guess they figured out I didn’t do it.
—Kevin Raburn
Charlie Russell, a Ramsey press representative, began telling some reporters that the police were at least seriously pursuing the possibility of other suspects in the case. He told one journalist that solid leads had come from the Ramseys’ July and August advertising campaign. One of them pertained to a member of St. John’s church, he said. He also noted that Janet and Bill McReynolds were still suspects. Some new facts about the McReynoldses had just come to light, and the Ramseys had hired investigators to stake out the couple’s home in the mountains, waiting for the couple to return home from a trip East. They believed the police were wrong to discount McReynolds because of his infirmity at the time of the murder. The Ramseys were also still interested