Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [291]
That evening, he received a letter from the Boulder PD asking him to come in and surrender his badge and credentials. The letter said he would be provided with an “armed escort through the department’s secure areas.” Was he also going to be handcuffed? He told the department that he would only turn over his shield to Commander Dave Hayes, whom he trusted and respected. A meeting was set for 10:00 P.M. the same night in the parking lot of a feed store in Golden, beyond Boulder’s jurisdiction. Precisely on time, Thomas, in his white pickup truck, pulled up alongside an unmarked police car in the empty lot. As in a movie, under a bare lightbulb, Dave Hayes and Sgt. Mike Ready approached Thomas. They went through an inventory of everything that had to be returned to the department, down to the clip on his belt. Last was his shield. Thomas held it for a long moment, looking at his name and number. Then time was up and he handed it over. Hayes gave him a respectful nod, and they parted. As Ready and Hayes drove off, Thomas sat in his pickup.
Thomas was sure that the same egos that had run his friend John Eller out of town would want some payback from him. He braced himself, anticipating the worst.
The day after Steve Thomas’s resignation became public, Governor Romer called Bob Grant.
“A lot of people have been calling me about this Thomas letter,” said Romer, who mentioned he was calling from an airport. “I need some kind of response.” Grant had this image of Romer running through a terminal like O. J. Simpson talking on his cell phone. Clearly, the governor was hearing from people he respected.
“What do we do?” Romer wanted to know. Grant suggested that he and the other metro DAs discuss the situation and report back to him. It sounded as if Romer wanted the four of them to say publicly that everything was still on track with the case so that the governor could say, “I’m satisfied if they are satisfied.”
That same morning, Friday August 7, while Alex Hunter was touring Alaska’s inland waterway with his family, Wise and Hofstrom met with Beckner and Wickman to discuss Thomas’s letter. The problem, as Wise saw it, was that unlike Fleet White, who was simply an angry witness, Thomas would be taken seriously because he was a detective on the case. Wise asked Beckner to announce that Thomas’s letter was misleading and untrue, but the chief refused to go public. Wise thought Beckner was afraid that his officers would back Thomas and that he himself would be faced with a no-confidence vote, as Koby had been the previous year. Finally, Beckner relented, but he would only say publicly that he did not agree with Thomas’s opinion that the case could not be concluded successfully.
That same day, the Daily Camera printed Thomas’s letter. The headline read, DETECTIVE BLASTS DA’S OFFICE. Suzanne Laurion, speaking for the vacationing Alex Hunter, said, “This letter is outrageous and is substantially false and misleading.” The Denver Post not only headlined the story, but columnist Chuck Green told his readers: “To preserve public confidence in his office, Hunter needs to forcefully rebut Thomas’s accusations—point by point.” On Sunday, August 9, the paper published Green’s second column on the subject:
THERE’S A BIG PROBLEM IN BOULDER
The city fathers of Boulder, including its top two law enforcement officers, have a problem.
If former Detective Steve Thomas is a reliable cop whose judgment can be trusted, then his eight-page tale of horror about the inside workings of the JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation signal a crisis in the case. There would be a problem.
But if he’s not reliable, and if his scathing letter of resignation is a rambling collection of falsehoods and exaggerations, then for 18 months an untrustworthy detective played a guiding role in the most-noted crime in the city’s history. That would be a problem.
So either way, there is a problem—a big, big problem—in Boulder.
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