Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [71]
Two days later, Detectives Ron Gosage and Steve Thomas, responding to Christie’s call from the previous day, stopped in at McGuckin Hardware. They learned that Patsy Ramsey had used an American Express credit card on December 2 and December 9 for purchases of $46.31 and $99.88, respectively, and agreed that the person Joann Hanks had talked to was in fact John Ramsey, although the urgency in his voice that Hanks described seemed out of character from what the detectives knew of him. Hanks gave them the two credit card receipts, which they took to police headquarters and booked as evidence.
The detectives theorized that Ramsey had discovered his wife’s December charges when he received his bill and might have suspected that she had purchased items used in the crime. The police contacted the FBI to help them set up a phone tap at McGuckin Hardware, awaiting Ramsey’s call on January 20.
The next day, January 17, Thomas and Gosage continued an interview at Access Graphics with comptroller Susan Richart, who told them about Sandra Henderson, a former employee, who was in trouble with the law, and her husband, Bud, each of whom owed the firm $18,000. Add $100,000 to either of them and you had the ransom amount, which gave the detectives cause for suspicion. They put Bud and Sandra high on the list of those to be interviewed.
Richart told the detectives that John Ramsey’s previous yearly net bonus, after taxes, was within a half dollar of $118,000. To her knowledge, the only other people who knew the exact amount were Lockheed Martin’s evaluators; Ramsey’s boss, Gary Mann; and Ramsey himself. She did not mention Gary Merriman. When asked if she had an alibi for the night of the murder, Richart said that she had been with her parents. Within four days of Richart’s interview with the police, CNN reported a possible link between Ramsey’s bonus and the amount of the ransom demanded.
The following day, Detective Thomas interviewed Mike Glynn, another former Access Graphics employee. He was cooperative. He told the detectives that he had been with his in-laws in Tucson, Arizona, the evening JonBenét died. Glynn had met Ramsey in 1991, while he was on the football coaching staff at the University of Colorado, and joined Access Graphics in 1992 as head of international business development, where his knowledge of several foreign languages would come in handy. Glynn and Tom Carson set up the company’s overseas sales and distribution center. By 1996, however, Glynn didn’t see room for advancement in the company and decided to leave. Ramsey offered him more money to stay, but on May 3, four days after Jeff Merrick left, Glynn went to work for CompuWare in Tucson, where his family preferred to live so that they could be closer to Glynn’s ailing mother-in-law. Gary Merriman had told the police that Mike Glynn had a personal relationship with the Ramseys and was one of the few Access Graphics employees to have been invited to the Ramseys’ home. In fact, the two families had often vacationed together.
Two weeks after his interview with the police, Glynn provided hair, blood, and handwriting samples.
John Ramsey seemed like an introvert. He was just nice and shy. He never wavered in what he was like, and you could tell he was a deep-thinking guy. I never saw him ruffled by any circumstances. Sometimes, internally, he must have been. One time we were negotiating with Sun Microsystems, our largest vendor, and the frustrations of dealing with the games played in the computer industry got to John. Yet he stayed level-headed. He steered away from confrontation.
Don Paugh was a real father figure around Access. He had the ear of everyone when he was human resources director. His job then wasn’t to hire or recruit anyone, but he sure solved a lot of difficulties that arose in the company. Everyone enjoyed Don. He was always around. He lived by himself, and every once in a while, Don and I would sit on his porch, have a beer, and talk. When someone new was hired, he would take them to his porch and have