Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [259]
Some of the detectives hated DeMuth. They felt he always talked down to them and that he didn’t know the case. They respected Hofstrom’s intelligence and skills, but his gruff approach was a real turnoff. His attitude was, You guys are well paid and you get all this overtime, so get on with your work. Plus, he was the guy who had given the store away to the Ramseys’ attorneys.
Hunter would soon ask Beckner to present the case officially to the DA’s office. The thirty thousand pages of case files would have to be organized, summed up, and presented orally. With this in mind, Beckner and the detectives met with their pro bono attorneys, who invited the cops to use the equipment in their offices to put together their presentation. They should make it a tour of the case and use visual aids—blowups of written reports, enlargements of still pictures of the evidence, videos of the Ramseys’ house, and so forth. No one was going to read thirty thousand pages, the lawyers felt.
The detectives were elated by the assignment, which gave them something concrete to do. Steve Thomas was assigned to open and close the presentation. He would present an overview of the case, including everything that had happened on December 26. Finally, he would get the chance to do something for JonBenét.
But his chronic fatigue was worsening. Some days he drank five or six cups of coffee every couple of hours and could still hardly stand on his feet. Thomas knew that something was wrong with him. He visited his doctor, who did a workup of his blood. She told him he had an autoimmune problem and that further testing would be needed. Thomas thought she was hinting he had AIDS, but he was afraid to ask if that was what she meant. For three days he waited in anguish for the results.
He learned that his body was producing antibodies that were attacking his thyroid.* He would have to take a thyroid-replacement medicine for the rest of his life. A review of his medical history did not reveal the cause of the problem. It might be work-related, he was told. If he continued his eighteen-hour-a-day job, he would be risking his life. He was to change his environment. His job, the doctor said, was to sleep late, go to bed early, and take it easy. Thomas refused to quit the department. The Ramsey case had to be presented to the DA’s office, and he felt that no other detective knew it the way he did.
Thomas’s mother, who had died when he was a young child, had had Addison’s disease,* he learned from his sister. His thyroid problem might be hereditary. He began to experience the side effects of his medicine. He was often sick to his stomach, but he told nobody. By the end of April, he began to regain some of his energy.
EX-MARSHAL ADMITS TO KILLING
Shaking and sometimes crying, Robin Anderson watched former Nederland Marshal Renner Forbes plead guilty Thursday to the shooting death of her 19-year-old brother, killed in Forbes’ custody nearly 27 years ago.
Forbes, 69 years old and in poor health, won’t serve a day in prison for the crime. Instead, he will spend the rest of his life on probation in a Northglenn nursing facility under a sentencing arrangement approved by Boulder County District Judge Morris Sandstead.
Sandstead agreed to drop a second-degree murder charge as Forbes pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, which allowed him to be placed on probation instead of going to prison. The burden of caring for Forbes would create an extraordinary cost for taxpayers and Forbes’ health problems are more confining than prison, said Deputy Boulder Country District Attorney Peter Hofstrom. He also suffers from seizures, chronic pain and depression and requires 24-hour health care, according to his attorney, Robert Pepin.
—Christopher