Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [287]
Even some of the couple’s harshest critics have been overheard discussing the return of the Ramseys’ reputation.
It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, how things would have gone if they’d done this from the start.
“If it were me, if it were my child, I’d want to give the police all the help I could,” we all said. But the hard truth is, despite all the criticism, the Ramseys had a right to do things the way they did.
Meanwhile, it’s kind of nice to think that maybe, just maybe, these two people didn’t kill their 6-year-old daughter and then cover it up.
Was it too easy for the Ramseys and their team of professional mind-changers to make us go hmmm? Probably.
But they’ve been trying to spin this for an awfully long while. If it took the lawyers and the private investigators and the public relations people that long to find this angle, they’re getting paid way too much.
—Kim Franke-Folstad
Rocky Mountain News, June 29, 1998
7
By the end of June, Pete Hofstrom had reviewed all the evidence and had made up his mind. Regardless of what his boss, Alex Hunter, intended, he himself would not participate in presenting the Ramsey case to the grand jury. As far as he was concerned, the evidence did not amount to probable cause against the Ramseys—or anyone else. The chief deputy DA would stand on principle: he thought it was just plain wrong to go after the Ramseys with so little hard evidence.
I have to fault Alex Hunter for not being willing to stand up and say, “We don’t have it.” He doesn’t have the backbone to do what’s right when he doesn’t have it. In the Elizabeth Manning case, he passed it on to the judges. Now he’s passing the decision on to the grand jury. I’d rather see him go on record in the Ramsey case if the evidence isn’t there and be straight and say that he’s not going to pursue it. After twenty-five years in office, you’d think he’d be able to take the heat himself.
A truly principled man would stand up and say, “If you don’t like my conclusion, if you want to appoint a special prosecutor, go ahead—that’s fine. But these are my ethics.”
—Judge Murray Richtel
By the end of the first week in July, there were disagreements in the DA’s office about how and when to interview the Ramseys’ friends. Susan and Glen Stine were willing to come in voluntarily, as were others, now that the case was in the DA’s hands. Pete Hofstrom, who was still advising Hunter, even though not directly involved in presenting the case, suggested that the staff move ahead with the interviews, but Michael Kane said that conducting them now might be a mistake. The Stines were sure to be called before the grand jury, and there the DA’s office would get testimony that was unrehearsed and given under oath.
Bill and Janet McReynolds had recently returned from the East Coast to collect their personal belongings before moving permanently to Massachusetts. When asked, they came in for another interview with the DA. It took all day. Detective Dan Schuler, who had interviewed Burke Ramsey, joined Lou Smit in the questioning. The similarities between Janet McReynolds’ play and JonBenét’s murder were discussed at length. The investigators explored Bill McReynolds’ physical ability to commit the murder—and questioned all the details of his travel to Spain, complete with several plane changes, the carrying of bags, all within ten days of the crime.
In the end Schuler said Bill McReynolds required more investigation and Smit felt that his wife had to be interviewed again.
When Steve Thomas heard of the interviews, he was outraged. In his mind, the Ramseys were destroying another person’s life in their desire to avoid being charged for murder.
Steve Thomas couldn’t forget the three days he had sat at police headquarters viewing the videotapes of the Ramseys’ interviews each evening, exchanging ideas for the next day’s session. Hunter’s group had sat on the right side of the room, and the detectives