Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [43]
In the dining room of Hofstrom’s 1950s-vintage ranch-style house, the police asked Patsy to write out the text of the entire ransom note, including the passage about JonBenét being beheaded. When she got to that passage Patsy broke down. She couldn’t finish, and John Ramsey became testy—not because his wife was being ill-treated but because she had to write the same thing again and again. Under the circumstances, the police agreed that he could give his third handwriting sample the next day, Sunday, January 5.
That same evening, Priscilla and Fleet White, who had returned to Boulder the previous day, were interviewed again by Detective Arndt. Priscilla told her that Patsy was affectionate with her children and was always with them. She also said that John and Patsy weren’t big drinkers but may have had one or two glasses of wine at their Christmas dinner. White told the police he now remembered that when John pulled open the door to the wine cellar, he might have shouted out “Oh my God, oh my God” a split second or so before he turned on the lights. It was likely that his eye was caught by the white blanket on the floor, reflected in the ambient light. Yet, White told the detectives, when he had looked into the darkened room earlier that morning, he had not seen anything.
Arndt asked if she and Detective Harmer could interview the Whites’ children, Daphne, six, and Fleet Jr., seven. The Whites agreed, and the interviews were held a few days later. Since the Whites had a key to the Ramseys’ home and because of Fleet White’s angry outburst at John Ramsey after the funeral, the Whites were asked to give blood, hair, saliva, and handwriting samples, which they willingly provided. The Whites would soon become the most cooperative witnesses. Some detectives believed they might unknowingly hold the answers to key questions. Over the next two months, the Whites would be interviewed eighteen times, often at their own request.
RANSOM NOTEPAD FOUND
Investigators found the notepad used to write a ransom note in JonBenét Ramsey’s murder inside the Boulder family home, sources close to the investigation confirmed.
“It was made of the same kind of paper used in the ransom note, and it may have imprints from the pen used to write the note,” said a Boulder friend of the Ramseys.
A small foreign group reportedly wrote the letter addressed to John Ramsey. “I don’t think it said anything really bad about John, but it had a problem with some of the countries his (American) company was doing business with,” said one friend. “They really…said how they would kill his daughter.”
—Alli Krupski
Daily Camera, January 4, 1997
I spent four years as a spokesman for the Justice Department. I’m accustomed to working with lawyers and major criminal cases. I’ve handled a number of terrorism cases: an airline hijacking, the Achille Lauro case, the Cuban riots at the Atlanta federal penitentiary. In cases like this, you’re always faced with strategic considerations.
There are things I would like to have done in the Ramsey case that, for legal reasons, were impossible. I had to bite my tongue.
Even before I arrived in Boulder, the Ramseys had decided that their friends should not become involved. The hope was that this might prevent the case from turning into the media circus it nonetheless became.
I flew to Boulder on January 2 from Washington, D. C., to meet John and Patsy Ramsey. The firm I was working for, Rowan and Blewitt, had been hired by Haddon, Morgan and Foreman, a criminal law firm that had been retained by the Ramseys’ business attorney, Mike Bynum, the day after the body