• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“My guys think you’re an asshole,” Beckner said to him, “but we’re going to need an asshole to fight for us.” He asked DeMuth to persuade Hofstrom and Hunter to use Foster’s report and conclusions as evidence before the grand jury. DeMuth remained neutral; he agreed only to discuss Foster’s findings with his colleagues. Later that afternoon, Hunter, Hofstrom, and DeMuth met. They decided to draft a letter to Beckner stating that the DA’s office could not accept Foster’s conclusions as evidence of Patsy Ramsey’s culpability.

In taking this hard line, it was likely that Hunter was buying time until his grand jury expert came on board. Only then, and with the complete case file in hand, could the DA’s office decide conclusively which pieces of the puzzle would be presented.

Not long afterward, Hunter’s staff reviewed Foster’s report and the documents he had based his conclusions on. They discovered that many of the writing samples he used had been taken from the family’s computer. However, the document files from the computer had been obtained under a search warrant that didn’t extend to their use for linguistic analysis. The search warrant granted the police the right to search the hard drive and floppy discs only for child pornography downloaded from the Internet—which at the time they had believed was relevant to the case. They had not requested the right to search text files to use for a comparison to the ransom note.

Hofstrom and some other deputies thought that under the circumstances, which pointed to inadmissibility in court, the professor’s report and conclusions should not be presented to the grand jury.

It was his voice in the ransom note and her hands. I can see it in my mind. She’s sitting there. We need paper, we need a note. He’s dictating and she’s doing. Like he’s almost snapping his fingers. She grabbed her notepad and her felt-tip pen. That is not her language. But the essence of her is there, like the percentages: “99% chance” and “100% chance.” That is how she talked because of her cancer or how you talk when you are around someone with cancer. And the phrase “that good southern common sense of yours.” John wasn’t from the South, but Patsy and Nedra always teased him about being from the South.

—Linda Wilcox

CITY GOING IN-HOUSE

FOR NEW CHIEF

Boulder’s next police chief will be plucked from within the department in a month or two—probably before a new permanent city manager is even on board, city officials said Tuesday.

Five of Boulder’s six police commanders are considering the job. They include Mark Beckner, head of the detective bureau who is overseeing the high-profile JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation; Jim Hughes, traffic commander; Dave Hayes, patrol day-shift commander; Molly Bernard, head of personnel; and Tom Kilpatrick, swing shift commander.

—Julie Poppen

Daily Camera, April 1, 1998

Later in the month, the city council changed the title police chief to director of police services. In May the city council held community meetings to find out what the citizens of Boulder wanted in a new director. In late May, the candidates made their presentations to the community, and in early June a panel composed of incoming city manager Ron Secrist, acting city manager Dave Rhodes, fire chief Larry Donner, and acting director of human resources Joann Roberts-Stacy conducted the final candidate interviews. Boulder would have a new director of police services by late June.

By the first week in April, the police had completed all but twenty-four of the seventy-two tasks on the to-do list, which left some of the detectives with nothing to do. The inactivity was wreaking havoc on Steve Thomas, who was always tired. By four o’clock in the afternoon, he could barely stay awake. He started drinking more coffee and Coke and was a bundle of nerves. He kept wondering if Hunter’s office would really take the case to the grand jury. He had heard the DA say more than once that there wasn’t enough evidence