• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1719 0

shoulders shaking. There was no attorney for the family in the room with Burke. Still traumatized from the events of the last thirteen days, the child seemed indifferent. His lack of affect was pronounced. He didn’t want to talk about his sister’s death. As they played games, Bernhard asked Burke about how they all got along in the family. Delicately she touched on the topics of sexual and child abuse. He didn’t respond as a molested child might. When they talked about secrets, Burke said pointedly that if you told someone a secret it was no longer a secret. He didn’t seem to be holding anything back, and he appeared to be dealing with the absence of his sister in the expected way. There were several breaks during the two-hour interview, and the detectives took the opportunity to suggest additional topics to the psychologist.

The results were inconclusive. Burke gave the police little information about the night of JonBenét’s death that they did not already have. And when they screened the videotape, it was hard to tell if Burke might be hiding anything.

Also on January 8, Detectives Thomas and Gosage interviewed Laurie Wagner, a vice president at Access Graphics. She had been John Ramsey’s employee for over ten years. The detectives wanted to find out more about the company and about the relationships among the various employees, including Wagner’s relationship with the Ramsey family. They gave no hint that they considered Ramsey a suspect.

At the time, Wagner was not asked for a blood or handwriting sample. A year later, however, in January 1998, the police told her that there was an unidentified print on the ransom note. They asked her to provide palm prints and fingerprints, which she did.

I went to work for John Ramsey in Atlanta in 1986 and came to Boulder in 1990 with a dozen or so other employees. The simplest way to explain Access Graphics is that we are a wholesale distributor of high-end PC computers. We don’t manufacture products—we sell the products made by other companies to resellers. We offer support services, consulting services, and teaching. We sell all over the world.

John started Advanced Products Group in Atlanta and merged with Eric Crod of CAD Sources Inc., in Piscataway, New Jersey, and Jim Hudson of CAD Distributors in Boulder to get a competitive edge in the marketplace. The three companies became Access Graphics, with corporate headquarters in Boulder.

CalComp, a subsidiary of Lockheed, acquired 20 percent equity in the new company. Access soon surpassed CalComp in both size and profits. When Access showed rapid sales and profit growth, Lockheed picked up its option to acquire the company.

In 1991 John became president. He recruited young employees and gave them a relaxed, exciting work environment—no dress code, an open-door policy, with everyone on a first-name basis. There were lots of opportunities for advancement. We had very little employee turnover. The average employee age is the mid-twenties.

Then Lockheed merged with Martin Marietta. Now Access Graphics has more than six hundred employees worldwide—over four hundred people working in 70,000 square feet of offices on the Pearl Street Mall. You can sit outside, relax, discuss creative ideas, and listen to the musicians on the Mall. Who wants to be in an industrial park? Boulder is a good place for entertaining clients.

When JonBenét was murdered, we, as a company, got attention that nobody anticipated.

At first the media was looking for some connection with the company. Could there be a disgruntled employee? The sophistication of the reporters differed considerably—the Today show to Geraldo to you name it. Larry King never gave up.

One day a tabloid contacted my ex-husband. That’s when I knew they were looking at me. When the Star showed up at my front door, I wasn’t shocked. The reporter had this little camera he sort of flipped out from behind his back. They said I was in the Ramseys’ home the night of the murder. They said John and I were involved. “We know it, the police know it. People have sworn to this.”

I said nothing.