Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [73]
“I think we should have given quiet comfort,” I replied, “but not public comfort.” I knew the police were now looking at John Ramsey.
My friend started crying. “You know, that Pat Korten,” she wept. “We were all taken aback…I think of what that child went through…” Then she really broke down and cried.
“You know,” I said, “when all this is over, we will still be here.” That is how our conversation ended.
I decided to write an editorial for my paper. It was entitled “Ramsey Case Shook a Boulder Church to Its Foundations.”
I discussed how the church had been caught in the eye of a storm, the crush of the media. How we as a church would have liked to be observed. How, on the other hand, snowballs and eggs were thrown at journalists, while other reporters offered cash, and some posed as church newcomers to probe for information. How the media wanted to bend the bond between clergy and parishioner. I noted that good journalism can only happen when reporters listen quietly and with compassion for suffering. I pointed out that the media had to be sensitive to any community it serves by writing stories that are rich in fact, skimpy on speculation, and slow to judgment.
I said we cannot choose our tragedies, but we can approach them with dignity and grace. We can reexamine our faith. I said that if we learned nothing else from our ordeal, it is that faith accounts for little if it is never tested.
After I published my editorial in the Daily Camera, the comment got back to me that as a member of the church’s inner circle, I had betrayed the congregation.
I called Rol and asked for a meeting—just the two of us. We sat at this little wrought-iron table just outside his office. We had coats and sweaters on.
He wasn’t upset or angry. He was exasperated. He looked like a man who had been hunted down.
I told him that to the media, the church looked as if it was hiding something. He could defuse things perhaps, simply by saying that he was in a privileged position and couldn’t talk.
“There might be an arrest soon,” I added. “I just want to forewarn you.”
He looked hard at me. “Do you think it is the person everybody is talking about?” He meant John Ramsey.
“It might be true,” I said.
He looked out into space for a long, long time. He was stunned.
Then he said, “We just don’t need to get our name in the newspaper all the time.”
I had to smile. That was his whole response to my editorial.
—Niki Hayden
Though the media were still hounding him, in mid-January John Ramsey attempted to return to work. Gary Mann told Ramsey that the company was fine and could run without him for a while longer if he wanted to wait. Sales projections were up, a testament to the effort Ramsey had put in over the years. He could afford to take some time off—particularly now. But Ramsey wanted to try.
He was ashen the day he walked into the Pearl Street Mall offices. As he walked through the office thanking people for their support, his colleagues noticed that he seemed unsure of himself, distracted. Ramsey told one director that he didn’t want anyone to be afraid to talk to him, and he certainly didn’t want to be shut off from his employees. In the few meetings he attended, however, it was clear he had to work hard just to concentrate. To one executive, he looked like a man still in trouble.
Karen Howard, director of worldwide communications, thought that Ramsey needed someone to talk to—besides all his lawyers. Howard, who had known him for years, felt he knew something about JonBenét’s death but couldn’t talk about it. She thought it was something he didn’t have anything to do with, but she also saw a man who didn’t know how to help his wife deal with their daughter’s death.
That week, Carl Whiteside, director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, called Alex Hunter and asked if the two of them could meet with police chief Tom Koby to discuss the request from the Ramseys’ attorneys to have one of their representatives