Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [228]
Politically, he was a conservative, Ramsey said, but over the years he had learned to be both more tolerant and more compassionate. For example, he was uncomfortable with homosexuality but would not endorse antihomosexual legal or social measures. The strident public debate on abortion made him uncomfortable. Ramsey believed in God, he said. God would know if someone had done something that he hadn’t admitted to, Ramsey said. Yes, God would know.
When the interview was over, Bird felt he’d learned nothing. Ramsey seemed earnest and sincere, but was bland and seemed never to allow his emotions to get the better of him. Only one thing stood out about him: John Ramsey hadn’t dodged any of the questions. Bird hoped he wouldn’t have to write up his interview. There wouldn’t be much to say about JonBenét’s father.
While John Ramsey was talking off the record to journalists, Michael Tracey, a professor in the school of General Mass Communications at the University of Colorado in Boulder, was talking to Bryan Morgan about making a documentary for British television about the media coverage of the Ramsey case.
Earlier in the year, Tracey, who had never met the Ramseys, had heard Chuck Green of The Denver Post say that “the Ramsey case was entertainment and that was why it was such a big story.” That started the educator thinking, and by August, Tracey was expressing his own views on national TV: that the American public “knew” the Ramseys had killed their daughter just as every white jury in Mississippi of the 1950s “knew” that a given black boy standing before them was guilty. Having read Dan Glick and Sherry Keene-Osborn’s coverage of the case in Newsweek, Tracey realized that many media outlets were reporting the story incorrectly, or only partially, and thereby depriving the Ramseys of the presumption of innocence. Several weeks before the death of Princess Diana, the professor started to write an article on the subject for the Daily Camera. It was published a few days after the Princess of Wales’s funeral: “Media-Saturated Culture Quick to Judge Ramseys.” Tracey drew parallels to the 1983 McMartin day care center case in California, in which, he said, a family had been wrongfully tried and ultimately exonerated, and to the climate in Great Britain in the wake of a series of IRA bombings in the 1970s. Tracey wrote about the corruption of journalistic values and the now-hazy line between the tabloid press and the mainstream media. He raised a question: Why did the public want the Ramseys to be guilty?
After Tracey’s op-ed piece ran on September 7, Bryan Morgan paid him a visit at his university office. Sitting in the tiny room stuffed with more than a thousand books, Morgan told Tracey that Patsy Ramsey wanted to talk to one of his journalism classes about her experience with the press. Tracey thought the idea wasn’t practicable: he was sure the media would storm his classroom when it was discovered that she would be talking to some college students. Nevertheless, Tracey told Morgan he would think about it, and the two men agreed to have lunch the following day. After the attorney left, Tracey glanced out the window at his unobstructed view of the Front Range and laughed. Patsy Ramsey’s idea was astonishingly naïve.
Tracey speculated that the Ramseys, ready for a fight, were slowly coming out of their shell. Then he asked himself if their story wasn’t a way of critiquing the media, which led him to the idea of making a documentary.
The next day, Morgan brought Pat Burke, Patsy’s attorney, to their lunch. The two lawyers pitched their clients’ desire to address Tracey’s students. “Patsy has a degree in journalism,” Burke said. Instead, Tracey broached his suggestion of making a documentary. Looking at the attorneys’ facial expressions, he was sure his idea would be nixed. Two days later, however, Tracey heard from Morgan that the Ramseys were interested in meeting