Perfect Murder, Perfect Town - Lawrence Schiller [99]
I was supposed to come back the next day, December 24, and clean up. I called Patsy and said I couldn’t. I told her I had a fight with my sister and needed some money to pay the rent. I asked Patsy for a $2,000 loan. I told her I would pay it back $50 each week.
She didn’t hesitate. “Sure.” Said she’d leave it for me on the kitchen counter for my next regular visit on December 27.
The more I think about it, JonBenét could not have been killed by a stranger. I didn’t even know that room was there. How could a stranger know to go there? How in the world did this happen?
—Linda Hoffmann-Pugh
2
By mid-February the FBI and the CBI forensics technicians had concluded part of their fingerprint typing and fiber analysis. CBI told the Boulder police that no prints had been found on the black duct tape that John Ramsey said he removed from his daughter’s mouth and none were found on the broken artist’s paintbrush used to make the “garrote” found around JonBenét’s neck. The CBI had been able to identify two fingerprints found on a white bowl on the dining room table that contained uneaten pineapple. One print belonged to Burke and the other to Patsy. Since partly digested pineapple had been found in JonBenét’s small intestine at the autopsy, the police wondered if the Ramseys had been less than candid about JonBenét’s bedtime activities and what time she fell asleep. Patsy and John had never mentioned with whom, where, or when their daughter had eaten pineapple.
A palm print on the wine cellar door was identified as belonging to Patsy, and another of Patsy’s prints was found on the door to Burke’s train room, the room with the broken window. A print on the west patio door on the main floor belonged to John. The location of the prints meant very little, since Patsy and John, living in the house, often visited these rooms and fingerprints are almost impossible to date. Another fingerprint on the west patio door was later identified as belonging to Barbara Fernie. Eventually the CBI told the police that they had been able to match almost all the fingerprints the detectives had collected to people from whom the police had collected physical evidence. However, another palm print found on the wine cellar door still remained unidentified.
The CBI had already determined that the stain on JonBenét’s underpants—which appeared to be blood and turned out indeed to be blood—was not solely hers. A D1S80 DNA test showed that the stain came from at least two different sources.* After receiving the report, the police contacted the parents of JonBenét’s playmates to see if any of the children had ever exchanged clothes with her. Priscilla White said she could not remember her daughter, Daphne, trading clothes with JonBenét, but Daphne told Detectives Arndt and Harmer that she and JonBenét sometimes wore each other’s clothes. During their interviews, the police were told that Fleet White had sometimes changed JonBenét’s panties. Months later, Pam Paugh, Patsy’s sister, told a TV reporter that she knew White had changed her niece’s clothes.
The new information meant a lot of follow-up work for the police in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile the duct tape was sent to the FBI, which had a large database for matching purposes. Special Agent Douglas Deedrick, an FBI hair and fiber specialist who had testified in the O. J. Simpson criminal case, notified the Boulder PD that he had found what seemed to be red and black microscopic fiber traces on the duct tape. The four fibers would have to be analyzed further to determine what kind they were. Shortly afterward the FBI began a chemical analysis of the adhesive on the duct tape. Eventually they hoped to be able to locate the manufacturer and possibly even find out the approximate date of fabrication. They told the police they