Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [286]
Grant told one journalist, “The fact of the matter is that people who are under the umbrella of suspicion or who are suspects are more likely to wait to talk to prosecutors, because prosecutors are in a decision-making capacity and police are not.”
Hal Haddon released a prepared statement, which said in part, “We have honored every request for information which has been made by the district attorney’s office over the past 18 months.” This outraged several members of Hunter’s staff, who had made numerous requests on behalf of the Boulder PD that were never honored. Hunter, displeased by Haddon’s spin, issued a statement of his own.
DA: RAMSEYS’ HELP WAS LIMITED
Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter on Friday disputed claims by defense lawyers that his office conducted numerous formal and informal interviews with John and Patsy Ramsey for more than a year.
Hunter also indicated the number of documents given to investigators by the couple has been limited.
His claims came a day after Ramsey attorney Hal Haddon indicated the couple had been quietly cooperating with the district attorney’s office for about 18 months…in stark contrast to earlier reports. Haddon made the statements Thursday, after three days of investigators’ intensive questioning of his clients.
Hunter told The Denver Post the idea of this week’s interviews came April 15, when he was given a letter from John Ramsey indicating he was willing to be interviewed.
—Howard Pankratz and Karen Auge
The Denver Post, June 27, 1998
Dan Glick learned about one exchange of words during the Ramseys’ interviews, and Newsweek published the snippet on June 28:
LOU SMIT: John, look, it was an accident. This could all be a lot easier for everybody.
JOHN RAMSEY: Look, somebody bashed my daughter’s head in, Somebody strangled her. It wasn’t any accident.
A few days later, freelance writer Frank Coffman spoke to Lou Smit on the phone.
“People think that because your beliefs are similar to the Ramseys’ religious beliefs, you might be sympathetic to them.”
“I’ve put just as many Christians in jail as anybody,” Smit retorted.
“Don’t you think the motive is difficult?” Coffman asked.
“Yes,” Smit said.
“I just don’t see why anybody had to kill that little girl,” Coffman said.
“Yeah, really,” Smit sighed.
When Coffman told a friend he thought Smit was on the Ramseys’ side, his friend said, “He’s just jerking your chain. He’s buttering up the Ramseys so he can get close to them.”
On June 23, during the Ramseys’ interviews, Mark Beckner was named Boulder’s new director of police services.
“Because Commander Beckner and I have worked closely on the Ramsey case this past half year,” Alex Hunter told the Daily Camera, “I can say that we are on the way to forging the sort of cooperative relationship that will serve this community as well.”
Tom Koby, who’d had his retirement accelerated, agreed to stay with the Boulder city manager’s office to work on special projects. Among them was an expansion of the Restorative Justice program, which handled community-service sentencing. By year’s end, however, callers would hear the following message on his voice mail: “This is Tom Koby. I don’t live here anymore. Those of you I’ve worked with, I’ve enjoyed it. I wish you all well.” Alex Hunter told the Daily Camera, “Tom Koby was a great fit for the city of Boulder. This community and what it stands for took Tom and his wife by storm. He loved Boulder.”
RAMSEY COOPERATION MITIGATES SKEPTICISM
Who ever would have guessed that we would be so easy to manipulate?
The Ramseys did, I suppose. Or their team of experts.
News that JonBenét’s parents and her brother finally are providing long-sought insight into