Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [275]
14. The confusing layout of the home would make it difficult for a stranger to commit all the aspects of the crime and its cover-up without fear of discovery.
15. The elements used in the aftermath of the crime and its staging, such as the blanket were obtained from places in the house known to the parents.
16. When the first officer arrived at the house Patsy answered the door fully dressed wearing the same jacket as the previous night and with her makeup on.
17. Fibers from her jacket were found on the duct tape John Ramsey said he tore from JonBenét’s mouth.
A question-and-answer session followed the presentation. All the detectives sat at a table at the front of the room. Beckner was to one side, behind the lectern. Dr. Lee maintained his usual professional demeanor, but his frustration was clear nonetheless. He would pose a question and then add, “I asked you a year ago for this information. I still don’t have it.” DAs Bob Grant and Bill Ritter also remarked to each other that despite their best efforts, the police investigation seemed to have fallen short.
By the time Barry Scheck had to leave, Hunter’s group was saying that there wasn’t a filable case. Ritter, Peters, Grant, Lee, Scheck, and Hunter agreed. Not even close, was their verdict: 95 percent of what they had heard was already public knowledge, the remaining 5 percent wasn’t enough even for a runaway grand jury to indict. They all agreed that the intruder theory, given the existing evidence, was untenable.
Daniel Hoffman, one of the lawyers working pro bono for the police, remarked to Bill Ritter during an earlier break, “Looks like they got it.”
“Got what?” Ritter countered.
“Felony murder,” Hoffman said confidently.
Ritter didn’t see it. The felony-murder statute in Colorado allowed for a murder conviction even when the intent to kill couldn’t be proved, if it could be shown that the death occurred during the commission of a felony such as arson, burglary, or sexual assault. Ritter knew that none of those secondary felonies could be proved in the Ramsey case—not even sexual assault. If JonBenét was penetrated after death, it wasn’t a sexual assault; it was abuse of a corpse. But that wasn’t Ritter’s main reservation about Hoffman’s suggestion. Even if the evidence someday proved that a sexual assault had preceded the child’s death, the prosecution would still have to prove which parent was responsible for the assault. That left prosecutors with the troubling question of which parent—if indeed either parent—had knowingly caused the child’s death. Until investigators could identify each parent’s individual actions, two suspects meant no suspects.
After Henry Lee and Barry Scheck had left, Beckner, accompanied by the detectives who had brought the case to this juncture—Thomas, Gosage, Trujillo, Harmer, Weinheimer, Everett, and Wickman—faced the press. Standing behind the microphones, Beckner reviewed where they had been: 590 people had been formally interviewed, 1,058 pieces of physical evidence investigated, some thirty thousand pages written up for the case file, twenty-two thousand man-hours spent on the investigation, seventeen states visited, sixty-eight people studied as possible suspects, and thirty different reasons given for why the department was justified in asking that a grand jury be convened.
Then Beckner answered a reporter’s question: “I have an idea who did it, yes.” Nothing in his body language or words suggested that he had a mystery suspect in mind. Reporters felt they heard a door slam shut on the intruder theory.
Someone reminded Beckner that six months earlier, he had said the Ramseys were under the “umbrella of suspicion.” In what way, if at all, had that changed?
“There are certainly fewer people under the umbrella of suspicion now than there were in October,” Beckner said. “The umbrella is not quite so big.”
Another reporter asked Beckner if the case could now be considered Alex Hunter’s. Had the baton been passed? Beckner conceded that the biggest decision—whether or not to take the case to