Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [270]
Alex Hunter and Bill Wise, accompanied by Barry Scheck and Henry Lee, arrived at 7:00 A.M. The DA answered questions shouted by reporters without breaking his stride. He had “come to listen,” he said. Lee and Scheck had no comment. By 7:30 forty-one people had arrived for the presentation.
In the Events Center, the police had chosen a room designed as a lecture hall; it had tiered seats in three sections. On the right sat five rows of Boulder police officers, including case supervisor Detective Sgt. Tom Wickman and Detectives Tom Trujillo, Steve Thomas, Jane Harmer, Ron Gosage, Carey Weinheimer, and Michael Everett. Sitting above them were metro DAs Bob Grant, Bill Ritter, and Jim Peters and forensic psychiatrist Steve Pitt. Just behind them were pro bono attorneys Richard Baer, Daniel Hoffman, and Robert Miller. Chief Tom Koby sat alone in another row.
The police had arranged their voluminous files, photographs, and visual displays in the first few rows of the center section. Behind those seats, Barry Scheck and Henry Lee sat next to each other. Behind them were Alex Hunter and Bill Wise. In the top row, sitting alone, was Pete Hofstrom.
To the left was Hunter’s group—Trip DeMuth, deputy DAs Pete Maguire, Bill Nagel, John Pickering, and Mary Keenan—and beside them, Tom Haney, Michael Kane, Lou Smit, and Dan Schuler, and John Dailey and Terry Gillespie from the Colorado attorney general’s office. Also present were four Boulder police commanders who had applied for the position of director of police services—Molly Bernard, Jim Hughes, Tom Kilpatrick, and Dave Hayes.
Bill Hagmaier, Mike Morrow, and Larry Ankrom from the FBI’s Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit were also there, joined by CBI personnel, including Pete Mang, Kathy Dressel, and Chet Ubowski.
In front was a podium equipped with a microphone and, behind it, a large screen.
The room was stifling; the air-conditioning wasn’t working.
The Boulder PD wanted to make sure that Hunter would take the case to a grand jury. The detectives had exhausted their resources and were ready to turn the case over. The crime and its aftermath had taken a heavy toll on everyone in the department. Among the casualties were John Eller, Tom Koby, Larry Mason, and Linda Arndt. Jane Harmer had been hospitalized once, and Rick French, the first officer to respond to Patsy’s 911 call, was reportedly still tortured by his failure to open the wine cellar door when he searched the house in those first minutes. What if JonBenét had still been alive? he kept asking himself.
Beckner opened by thanking everyone for coming and was soon followed by Steve Thomas, who spoke for ninety minutes, to the accompaniment of images projected on the screen behind him. He began by describing the Ramseys’ life in Atlanta and Boulder. The first image he showed was JonBenét on Christmas morning with her new bike. The second, which Thomas kept on the screen for five minutes, was Patsy holding her daughter’s arm, the pressure of her fingers evident on the child’s skin. Thomas then moved on to the events of the day of the murder. He told the audience that Linda Arndt had “amnesia” and couldn’t assist the department, though she had been the first detective on the scene and the only one present when JonBenét’s body was found. Thomas was followed by Tom Trujillo, who discussed the autopsy findings; Michael Everett, who described the crime scene and the items collected from the house; and Carey Weinheimer, who presented the evidence about the pineapple.
The police said that JonBenét’s head injury could have been caused by the flashlight they found on the Ramseys’ kitchen counter, although nothing had been found on the flashlight to tie it to the crime or the injury. There was nothing on the child’s scalp to suggest the pattern on the casing of the Maglite.