Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [243]
For the past week, local and national papers and TV stations had carried features about the case. The Daily Camera’s headline read, NO END IN SIGHT, and the article noted that the investigation had been suspect from the start. Reports stated that to date, the case had cost the taxpayers nearly $200,000 and the cost was expected to climb to at least half a million dollars. One story claimed the case was made up of tiny particles that had become a huge mound of evidence. Every media outlet recapped the highlights of the last twelve months. Some stations reran the Ramseys’ CNN interview. Still, nobody knew for sure if there was any hard evidence that linked the Ramseys to their daughter’s murder.
By now it had been leaked to the media that the DNA evidence did not tie the Ramseys to the crime, that hair and blood samples, fingernail scrapings, and fluids from the crime scene were still unidentified. The Daily Camera noted that palm prints and fingerprints were like snowflakes—no two were alike. Fibers that had been found in JonBenét’s genital area, the white cord, the garrote, and the duct tape might yet yield some answers. The broken paintbrush, the ransom note, some pens, various handwriting samples, and a note pad may have held answers but they were also still hidden. The mystery of the shoe imprint had yet to be solved. So many unyielding puzzles, yet the police remained cautiously optimistic—perhaps defying logic.
PART FOUR
Destruction Derby
1
THE GALLUP ORGANIZATION
Princeton, NJ—The American public is skeptical that the murder of JonBenét Ramsey…will ever be solved…. Over six out of ten Americans interviewed in a November [6 though 9] Gallup poll said they had followed the case very or somewhat closely and only 10% said that they had not followed it at all.
Eighty-eight percent of those with an opinion about the murder—representing 32% of the general public—say that it was some member of the family who perpetrated the deed, with three-quarters of those citing one or both of her parents.
In December, Gallup conducted another poll, asking 1,005 adults eighteen years or older if they thought the case would be solved; 31 percent said yes, 58 percent said no, and 11 percent had no opinion.
Since Beckner’s press conference the previous month, the detectives had become minor celebrities. Now that their names were connected to faces, the public could relate to them, and the department’s hate mail became personal. At police headquarters, the detectives decorated their war room with letters and one area was reserved for “the letter of the day.”
Dear Detectives,
Thanks for the great investigative work. Remind me to never get murdered in Boulder. Who paid you guys off.
This thing stinks. Fucking morons.
—A concerned citizen
In 1996 Alex Hunter had spent the Christmas holidays in Hawaii. This year he was in Boulder. Hunter was at his office daily, and even worked between Christmas and New Year’s. He responded to calls from journalists, who wanted to know about the stun gun and the Hi-Tec shoe imprint. One writer asked how it felt when he looked back at all the criticism he and his office had received during the preceding year.
“When I was sixteen, my dad sent me on a ten-day canoe trip to Canada,” Hunter told the writer. “The first stop was an island outside of Soo Look-Out, Ontario, that had the worst mosquitoes I had ever encountered in my life. The purpose of stopping at this miserable place was that the counselor wanted to make sure all of us could handle the bugs. When you went to take a leak, you even had mosquitoes on your penis. By the time that trip was over, I could roll up my sleeves and just let them bite. That’s how I’ve felt along this year’s journey.”
On January 2, 1998, The New Yorker’s fact checkers began confirming Hunter’s quotes for an article that was to be published on January 12. That same day, the New York Post reported