Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [278]
When Schuler asked Burke if his mother and father had prepared him for their conversations, he said no.
Gently, Schuler explored whether Burke thought his sister had sometimes been a bad girl and gotten mad at people. They discussed which people she got mad at and whether she had been mean and nasty to those people. Schuler asked Burke if his mother and father ever got really mad at his sister. Burke said he didn’t think so. Schuler’s most important question, never asked directly, was whether JonBenét had ever done something to bring about her death. Again Burke answered no. Had she fallen and hit her head? He didn’t remember her doing that.
The most delicate part of the interview was getting Burke to answer questions without revealing what the police knew. First he was asked if he ate any pineapple and when he went to bed. He didn’t remember. What did he and his father talk about when they played with his Christmas gift that night? Just that it was time for bed. Then Schuler asked what had happened after Burke went to bed. Did he have any dreams? Did he hear anything in his sleep? Burke said he had heard voices, in the distance. Maybe it was a dream; maybe not. It was so long ago, he said.
Without mentioning the 911 tape, Schuler asked Burke when he got up that morning and how he awakened. He did not want the Ramseys to learn what the police knew. The plan was to confront them about the tape during their own interviews, which would probably take place later in the month.
Burke said he remembered waking up and hearing a loud conversation from down the hall or on the front stairs. Maybe his mother had come into his room, but he was sure he stayed in his bed and pretended to sleep. Even when his dad came in, he said, he pretended to be asleep. He was concerned while he pretended, he said. Burke told Schuler he was awake when his mother made the phone call. His parents might have thought he was asleep, but he wasn’t, he said. When he was asked if he spoke to his parents that morning before being awakened at seven to be taken to the Whites’ home, he said no. He said that he had stayed in his room the whole time. The 911 tape seemed to say otherwise. Had Burke been coached, or had his thinking changed independently since his January 1997 interview? The detectives wondered.
On the third day, Schuler asked Burke if he had any questions, anything he wanted to know. By the way, that Rolex watch you have on, Burke asked, how much did it cost?
Back in Boulder, several of the detectives watching the videotapes thought Burke’s credibility hinged on one answer he gave. Schuler asked the boy how much he and his parents had talked about JonBenét during the last year or so. Burke said that they didn’t talk much about what had happened to JonBenét. More than one detective felt that this wasn’t plausible. Experience told them that any child of Burke’s age was inquisitive and that he must have asked his parents about his sister’s death; it would be natural for him to believe that his parents knew things he didn’t. This reply of Burke’s, combined with his not remembering leaving his bedroom and talking to his parents at the time of the 911 call, led the Boulder investigators to believe that some reorientation—coaching or coaxing—had taken place during the intervening period.
Later in 1998, Jim Jenkins would be asked about the 911 tape by a reporter covering the story. Burke’s lawyer said that the boy’s answer was not inconsistent with what one would expect a child to remember under traumatic circumstances. Jenkins suggested a scenario to the reporter: “Patsy came into Burke’s room, turned on the light, saw her son was OK, and turned her attention back to her missing daughter. She rushed back downstairs, where John had gone to read