Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [8]
Finally, Barbara Fernie led Patsy by the hand toward JonBenét. Patsy threw herself on her daughter’s body. She pleaded with Rev. Hoverstock to bring her daughter back to life. Then Patsy raised herself onto her knees, lifted her arms straight into the air and screamed, “Jesus, you raised Lazarus from the dead, please raise my baby!” Fleet White was so upset he went into the kitchen. Arndt asked Hoverstock to lead everyone in the Lord’s Prayer. All the voices were lifeless with shock and despair. Patsy’s was broken by sobs.
It was 1:12 P.M. when Detective Arndt grabbed a cellular phone in the kitchen, and returning to the living room, dialed 911. The operator dispatched the fire department and notified police communications, which transmitted the news to the officers working the case: a child’s body had been found at the Ramsey house.
At police headquarters, Larry Mason got a page from the crime scene: “We’ve got a body.”
“Oh fuck,” Mason said, half aloud. “Ron, we don’t have a kidnapping,” he told Agent Walker. “It’s a homicide. Do you want to go?”
“Of course.” Walker knew that finding JonBenét’s body in her own home meant there had probably never been a kidnapping.
After Arndt’s 911 call, John Ramsey told the detective that no one knew about the wine cellar in the basement and therefore his daughter’s murder “has to be an inside job.” Meanwhile, Fleet White decided to go back downstairs to the wine cellar where her body had been found. He had looked into the same room early that morning when he made a quick search of the house. Now that there was a light on, he saw clearly for the first time a white blanket in the center of the cement floor. A piece of black duct tape was lying on it. He picked up the tape, which felt sticky, and then placed it back on the blanket for the police. He looked around the room cluttered with paint cans, lumber and window screens before he went back upstairs to guard the door.
Barry Weiss was the first of several officers to return to the Ramsey home. The next to arrive was Detective Michael Everett. He searched the basement to see if anyone was hiding there. He found no one. In the wine cellar, Everett discovered on the white blanket the piece of tape Fleet White had handled. Next to the blanket was a child-size pink nightgown with the word Barbie embossed on it.
When Rick French, the first officer on the scene after Patsy’s report of a kidnapping, later saw the spot where the body had been found, he remembered his search of the house in the early morning. In the first minutes, French, seeing from where he stood that the door was latched shut, had thought there was no need to open it. Now he was baffled by his own decision. How hard would it have been to open the door? Had JonBenét still been alive when he stood just a few feet away and decided not to open the door? The thought devastated him.
Fifteen minutes after Detective Arndt’s page, at around 1:30 P.M., Ron Walker entered the Ramseys’ living room with Larry Mason and saw JonBenét’s body lying at the foot of the Christmas tree.
The room was empty, but they could hear the mother sobbing. She was at the rear of the house, surrounded by friends.
Mason and Walker went downstairs to the wine cellar, where they saw the white blanket, the duct tape, and the pink Barbie nightgown. Mason noticed that there was something about the crime scene—he couldn’t put his finger on what it was—that made it look unnatural. In the train room he noticed a suitcase standing next to the wall, just under a broken window.
Mason knew there was no time to lose in clearing the house, securing the crime scene, and getting a search warrant. He decided he would move the Ramseys and their friends to the Holiday Inn at 28th and Baseline.