Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [93]
“As I watched the dawn arrive this morning, I was doing my workout—which you don’t allow me to do anymore midday,” Hunter began, not fully realizing that his words were reaching millions of viewers across the country.
Hunter spoke of the pressure that everyone, including members of the press, was experiencing and noted that the police and the DA’s office were all on the same team. While Koby, at his January 9 press briefing, had called public interest in the case “sick,” Hunter went out of his way to say that he wasn’t about to quarrel with the press. He called JonBenét’s murder “a case like we have never seen before, a case like I don’t think any of you have ever seen before. I know enough of you to know that we are all zeroing in on the same thing, that we are looking for the truth, and we are looking to do justice in this case.”
His mission, Hunter said, was “to seek out the best of the best to work on this case. Because this is not Tom Koby and Alex Hunter’s case. No, this is a case of the people of Boulder, the people of Colorado, and certainly, without exaggeration, the people across this country whom this case has touched.”
Hunter’s tone became more deliberate and emphatic. “We know where we’re headed. We’re going to solve this case, but we’re going to do it our way…. I’m not going to file[charges] until I feel I have it.”
Hunter stressed that the press “shared responsibility.” The media could—and should—help the American public understand that a resolution of the case would involve exhaustive investigation, a double-dotting of i’s and double-crossing of t’s. The road to justice, he said, would not be paved in shortcuts.
Then Hunter announced that he’d enlisted the help of Dr. Henry Lee and attorney Barry Scheck. At that moment, many reporters felt Hunter moved the case definitively into the national consciousness. With Lee and Scheck—household names from the Simpson case—the investigation of JonBenét’s murder acquired star power.
Referring to the media criticism of his office, Hunter said, “We know there’s sort of a sense of a David and Goliath thing…. Let me tell you what we have put together. We’re calling it an expert prosecution task force.” In addition to Lee and Scheck, Hunter said, his four Denver-metro-area peers would be on the task force—DAs Bill Ritter, Dave Thomas, Jim Peters, and Bob Grant. Local reporters knew that Peters and Grant had personally handled the prosecutions of three out of the five men then on Colorado’s death row.
“We feel that we can match the resources of anyone, in bringing to bear on this case, in our search for the truth, to do justice, the very best that is available.”
Hunter then looked squarely into the TV cameras.
“Finally, I want to say to you, through you, I want to say something to the person or persons who committed this crime, the person or persons who took this baby from us.”
He paused a moment before continuing: “The list of suspects narrows. Soon there will be no one on the list but you. When that time comes—and as I have said to you, that time will come—Chief Koby and I and our people of the expert prosecution task force and the other resources that we bring together are going to bear down on you. You have stripped us of any mercy that we might have had in the beginning of this investigation. We will see that justice is served in this case. And that you pay for what you did. And we have no doubt that that will happen.
“And I say to you that there will not be any failure in that regard. We will ensure that justice is served for this community, for this nation, and, most important, for JonBenét. Thank you.”
This was a surprisingly fierce Alex Hunter, whom the press had not seen before. Then Tom Koby took his turn.
The chief began by discussing the evidence