Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [26]
On the way home, I bought my daughter a whistle that she could hook to her pillow. She wanted her friends to have them too, so I bought whistles for them. Other parents I know got whistles for their kids. Our kindergarten kids latched on to the whistle idea pretty strongly.
For weeks, my daughter wouldn’t go to sleep without the light on, the bedroom door open, and the whistle clipped to her pillow.
She didn’t sleep through the whole night for months afterward.
Now I always make sure I turn on the house alarm that I hadn’t used in two years. I don’t think there’s a night that’s gone by since this happened that I haven’t had our alarm on.
I was happy that my child grasped that whistle. It was something that gave her some comfort, some sense of power. You realize that it’s absolutely futile, but you’re never going to tell your child how futile it is.
—Barbara Kostanick
By Saturday morning, having been present at Mason and Arndt’s abortive attempt at an interview the evening before, Michael Bynum realized that the police were targeting his friend and client John Ramsey. His instincts told him to make sure the Ramseys had every protection the law provided. Bynum, in his early fifties and a longtime resident of Colorado, was born in Arkansas and retained faint overtones of the South in his soft-spoken speech. Like so many who eventually settled in Boulder, he had attended the University of Colorado. Bynum also got his law degree at CU and worked briefly as a deputy DA in Boulder before becoming a specialist in business planning, acquisitions, and commercial transactions. Bynum had a saying: when it comes to murder, it doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or innocent—you need an attorney.
Shortly after noon that Saturday, without consulting John or Patsy, Bynum told Detective Arndt that the Ramseys would not give any more testimonial evidence without a criminal attorney present, and they would no longer share privileged information with the police. Since he was no longer a criminal attorney, Bynum called Bryan Morgan of Haddon, Morgan and Foreman in Denver, one of Colorado’s top firms. By Saturday evening, the Ramseys had retained Morgan.
Arndt then checked with Pete Hofstrom in the DA’s office about the non-testimonial evidence the police still wanted from the Ramseys.* It was likely, Arndt knew, that according to court rulings, the Fifth Amendment and its protection against self-incrimination did not include physical evidence such as blood, hair, saliva, fingerprints, and handwriting samples.
Hofstrom then called Michael Bynum, who confirmed that although John and Patsy refused interviews at this time, the entire family—including Burke, John Andrew, and Melinda—would give blood, hair, fingerprint, and handwriting samples. Bynum agreed that Detectives Arndt and Kim Stewart could speak to John Ramsey’s older children and his brother, Jeff, who were at the Fernies’ house.
John Eller was unhappy with Bynum’s position. The commander acknowledged that a suspect had the right to an attorney once he was arrested, but he thought the investigative process was hindered by the courts’ liberal reading of the Sixth Amendment, which says that any person interviewed by law enforcement is entitled to counsel. For Eller, this court ruling was an unnecessary obstacle.
Just after noon on Saturday, Boulder County DA Alex Hunter, who had been in Hana, a remote area on the island of Maui, without a phone or pager for the last two days, checked in with first assistant DA Bill Wise and learned about the murder. Hunter, who had been the Boulder DA for twenty-five years, often read the business section of the Daily Camera, but he didn’t recognize the family’s name and didn’t recall ever having met John or Patsy Ramsey. When Wise mentioned that Ramsey had hired private attorneys, Hunter wasn’t surprised. A man as apparently wealthy as John Ramsey would automatically retain counsel. And