Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [256]
In a letter dated March 16 and addressed to Hunter, the attorneys stated that they saw the case moving into “the hands of competent and unbiased professionals” and that they “welcomed it.” Noting that the grand jury should be presented with an impartial view of the evidence, since the police were unable to be objective, they said, “No sane persons would continue to deal with a police department bent on scapegoating them.”
Hunter and Hofstrom considered the letter a signal that the Ramseys were ready to cooperate with the DA’s office and would either grant interviews when the case was turned over to the office or would testify before a grand jury if called.
Hunter hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be a hollow victory. He had his fears about asking a grand jury to bring an indictment on the basis of flimsy evidence. Both the setting and the rules governing grand juries were very different from those governing courtroom proceedings, since defense attorneys were not permitted to cross-examine witnesses. Also, the grand jury could conduct its own investigation, follow all sorts of leads, and call many witnesses whose testimony might not be admissible in court. In that climate, hearing so much damning evidence and no counterarguments or alternate scenarios, the grand jury might run away and indict, and the DA’s office might be left with a case that it couldn’t prove in court. For those same reasons, Hunter’s staff was still debating whether the case should be taken to a grand jury. Hunter warned them that it was easier not to present the case and suffer the wrath of the public than to wind up with a case they couldn’t win in court. Nevertheless, taking all these factors into consideration, the inclination of most of his staff was to go ahead and convene a grand jury.
The detective who had called the writer earlier in the month called again one Saturday afternoon, from his desk at police headquarters. The journalist wasn’t in, so the officer left a voice mail message. He wanted the writer to know that he cared tremendously about JonBenét, a little girl he had never met. He really hoped the case was moving in the direction of a grand jury.
The writer was struck by the urgency in the detective’s tone. He realized that the police wanted the public to know how they looked upon their work now that the case was almost out of their hands. Though prevented from speaking to the media by the chief of police, the detective seemed nevertheless to want to reach out. He was bursting to talk about what the detectives had been through.
3
When Sherry Keene-Osborn called Alex Hunter about the grand jury announcement, she also told the DA about the British documentary that was under way. Its main thrust, she said, would be an indictment of the media, which had convicted the Ramseys in the court of public opinion. Director/producer David Mills and coproducer Michael Tracey, she said, had just finished three days of on-camera interviews with the Ramseys and their family members in Atlanta. Keene-Osborn told Hunter that she and Dan Glick were freelance consultants on the film and that Newsweek would get first publication rights to the story at the time the documentary aired.
By then, Mills had met with most of the Ramseys’ attorneys and persuaded those who didn’t want their clients to make the documentary to come around. Mills thought that Tracey’s decision to hire Glick and Keene-Osborn