Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [87]
Patsy said she didn’t like the press and started to cry. She said that she hated being followed and photographed through the window blinds at Jay’s house. She couldn’t go to a store without being photographed. Enough is enough, she kept saying.
To Parker it was clear that Patsy couldn’t deal with the interview, and he let her know that he was there to help with her problems.
Burke, her attorney, was silent and let Patsy talk.
Patsy told Parker that Jay had left the house to take a box of sandwiches to a homeless shelter. She didn’t see him take a bat. Later when she heard police cars and saw Jay’s car being towed away, she called her attorney.
Hendry could see that Parker was working Patsy well. She was talking freely.
Then she told Parker that someone had broken into her house and killed her daughter. “There is still a murderer loose in the city,” she said. “You know, my little girl was murdered. All these people are hounding us instead of trying to find the murderer. Somebody broke into our house, you know, killed my little girl,” she repeated.
Burke seemed nervous, but he let Patsy continue. Hendry noticed that she cried when she talked about the media but not when she talked about her child’s killer. Patsy kept going back to JonBenét’s death. “Somebody breaks into my house, kills my little girl.” Then she said it again in a flat, matter-of-fact way, as if by rote, Hendry thought. If Patsy wanted to talk, Parker and Hendry certainly weren’t going to stop her.
Suddenly, Burke got up and placed himself between Parker and Patsy. He didn’t say a word, just looked hard at Patsy while she pulled herself together. That ended the interview.
Burke had been there to make sure that Patsy didn’t say too much, and Hendry had been there to make sure that Parker couldn’t be accused of overreaching. Patsy was being interviewed as a witness, not as a suspect. They accepted that whatever she had said about JonBenét that afternoon could not be used against her if she were put on trial.*
During the interview, Hendry felt that Patsy had knowledge of the crime and wanted to talk. He thought John and Patsy were responsible for their daughter’s death somehow, but which one killed her and which one was covering for the other—that, he didn’t know.
It would be Hofstrom’s job to charge Elowsky. John Stavely, a Boulder attorney, represented him. During the precharging negotiations, Stavely laid out all the mitigating factors: he began with a story of the poor guy besieged by the media.
Hendry had heard this kind of thing before, and he knew that only rarely was someone in Boulder charged with what he had really done. As for how often a criminal was convicted for what he had really done…well, that was even more rare. Hendry was a cop. He believed that if you broke the law, you should be punished, and without that—well, according to Hendry, without that, you have Boulder.
Two months later, the Daily Camera published an editorial on Elowsky.
PASTA JAY AND THE LAW
Did Jay Elowsky receive special treatment when he ran afoul of the law in Boulder?
With all due allowance for the pressure Elowsky was under, there’s no excuse for his actions as described by the police.
Under a proposed agreement with the Boulder D.A.’s office, Elowsky would plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of menacing.
The charge is hardly trivial—penalties can include time in jail—but it generated charges of favoritism and “justice for the rich.” Seizing on the remark of an assistant D.A., who reportedly told one of the victims that a felony conviction could cost Elowsky his liquor license and jeopardize a business loan, some complained that this man was treated differently because of his wealth and connections.
But hold it. The only way to know whether Elowsky received special treatment is to ask a simple question: Compared to what? How are other cases treated in Boulder? If the critics had asked, they’d know that he wasn