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By Root 1670 0

of the Ramseys’ house, though there had been a safety light in that spot for years. She remembered thinking that it was unusual. Melody Stanton, up the street at 738, told the police on January 3 that she was certain she had heard a child’s scream at about 2:00 A.M. on the night of the murder. Her bedroom window, which looks toward the Ramsey house from across the street, had been partly open. When questioned by the police, Stanton said that there had been only one scream but it was horrifying. If it came from the child, she assumed the scream had awakened her parents.

Patsy Ramsey told Rick French, the first police officer to arrive at the scene on the morning of December 26, that her husband got up before her, at around 5:30 A.M., and took a shower. She got up a few minutes later, got dressed, and put on her makeup. From the third-floor master bedroom, she then went down the back spiral stairs, which were decorated with green garlands and red Christmas ribbons, and stopped on the second floor at a laundry area just outside JonBenét’s room, where she washed a soiled jumpsuit of her daughter’s in the sink.

The door to JonBenét’s room was about 10 feet away, but Patsy said she didn’t look in on her daughter. After doing this bit of laundry, she continued down the spiral staircase to the first floor. As she reached the bottom, Patsy saw three sheets of paper spread across one of the steps.

Patsy said she didn’t remember but must have stepped over the papers, and police forensics later confirmed that no one appeared to have stepped on the ransom note. At the bottom of the stairs she turned around and, without picking up the papers, began to read them. After getting through a few lines, she realized the note was about JonBenét. She ran back upstairs, pushed open the door to her daughter’s room, and found her bed empty.

Patsy screamed for her husband. Within seconds, John Ramsey reached the second floor. He was still in his underwear. Patsy told him there was a note downstairs that said JonBenét had been kidnapped. She ran to Burke’s room, she said, turned on the light, and saw her son sleeping. Then she went downstairs, where she found her husband hunched over the three pieces of paper.

John told Officer French that as he read the pages, he realized someone had taken JonBenét. He had no idea where she was. It was still dark outside. Later Ramsey would tell a British TV interviewer that he knew he had to do something. But how could he close the airports and block the roads out of Boulder? Those were the first thoughts that went through his mind, he said. He soon realized that only the police could do what needed to be done.

Before he finished reading the ransom note, he told Patsy to call the police. Immediately afterward, Patsy called the Whites and Fernies and told them something terrible had happened. “Barbara, get over here as fast as you can,” she said to her friend. Seven minutes after Patsy’s call to 911, Officer French was at their front door.

John Fernie told the police that he was the first of the Ramseys’ friends to arrive. His wife, Barbara, came later in her car. As Fernie drove over, he thought that John must have had a heart attack, since Patsy hadn’t told his wife what had happened

Fernie parked his car in the alley behind the Ramseys’ house and ran to the patio door on the south side, which he always used. It was locked. When he looked through the glass-paneled door, the lights were on and he could see some papers lying on the wooden floor. They were not facing him, but from where he stood, he could read the first few lines of one page. That was all he needed. He understood immediately that JonBenét had been kidnapped. Once inside the house, he read the entire ransom note. At first he thought it was bizarre, then later he saw it as perverse.

A few minutes later, John Ramsey tried to phone his pilot, Mike Archuleta, to tell him what had happened and learned that the pilot was already on his way to the airport for the Ramseys’ scheduled flight to Michigan. When Archuleta returned Ramsey’s call, Patsy answered.