Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [296]
By the summer of 1998, the Whites seemed to have become convinced that the DA’s office wanted to avoid prosecuting the Ramseys. What if, in their eagerness to absolve the Ramseys, prosecutors led the grand jury to believe that White’s account of what he had—or hadn’t—found that day was false? Clearly the Ramseys were trying to implicate others. Were they, with their allies in the DA’s office, going to make White their scapegoat? Was it possible that the DA’s office might indict him for perjury—or maybe even charge him with responsibility for JonBenét’s death?
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On August 18, returning home at about 11:00 P.M., Steve Thomas saw an unfamiliar car in his driveway and the light on in his living room. Jeff Shapiro was on his doorstep talking to his wife through the door. She was in her pajamas and frightened. Thomas told the reporter he’d crossed the line by coming to his home.
“I’m trying to help you,” Shapiro said, now standing in the driveway. “The Globe has found a source who told them some things that you don’t want made public. They hope you’ll cooperate with them.” Thomas said nothing.
“They need to know things about the grand jury,” Shapiro said. Thomas thought the reporter was playing good cop, bad cop—the oldest trick in the book.
“They know about your mother,” Shapiro continued. “We know she committed suicide.”
“My mother…my mother…” Thomas said, staring at Shapiro. “You’ve got that all wrong.” Thomas had been just seven years old when his mother became suddenly ill and died.
“I don’t want to see that story run,” Shapiro said. “I’m just trying to protect you.”
But the way Thomas saw it, Shapiro was trying to buy him. He told the reporter to leave at once.
Three days later, a FedEx package arrived at Thomas’s house. In it was a letter from Craig Lewis of the Globe, who requested an interview. Enclosed were pictures of Thomas’s long-deceased mother and late aunt, who had died of brain cancer.
That afternoon, Thomas told his lawyer to write Shapiro and the Globe that any further contact with him would be met with legal action. Before long, Thomas heard that the DA’s office was floating a rumor that mental instability ran in his family.
Several months later, the FBI talked to Shapiro about the possibility that he had engaged in extortion with Thomas. Shapiro played them a tape he had recorded during a conversation with Globe staff, where the topic of how to go about leveraging Detective Steve Thomas had been discussed.
Thomas decided not to press charges against the Globe or any of its employees and the FBI dropped the investigation for the time being. To clear his own name, Shapiro went public with excerpts from more than half a dozen phone conversations he’d recorded with his editors at the Globe. It wasn’t long before he was appearing on TV and in such publications as Editor and Publisher with his views on tabloid journalism.
Meanwhile, Michael Kane asked Ron Gosage and Michael Everett to visit Linda Hoffmann-Pugh and show her a photograph of a knife the police had discovered at the Ramsey house just after the killing. It had been found on the counter near the microwave oven in the utility area just off JonBenét’s bedroom.
Hoffmann-Pugh said it was the paring knife from the kitchen, which she had put away many times. It had a wooden handle and wasn’t serrated. She said that the knife had never been used upstairs; it was always in the kitchen. Linda wondered if the knife had something to do with an intruder. Surely Patsy would never scare JonBenét with a knife. That same day, the police told her she would be called before the grand jury.
Two days later, the National Enquirer called her to inquire about the Barbie nightgown that had been found next to JonBenét’s body. Linda mentioned to the reporter that she’d just been visited by Gosage and Everett—they had never told her to keep their visit private. The Enquirer reporter offered her $300 for the story of the detectives’ visit. Hoffmann-Pugh turned it down. The next day, she called Craig Lewis of the Globe. He offered