Perfect Murder

On December 26, 1996, early in the morning hours, a six-year-old beauty pageant star named JonBenet Ramsey was murdered in her home on 755 Fifteenth Street in Boulder, Colorado, in a wealthy suburb known as University Hill . Over the next several months, the investigation of the murder and its subsequent tabloid coverage would create a nationwide sensation. Even as the case failed to show much progress and remains unsolved, speculation and discussion has never been lacking. The crime involved many issues that immediately struck a nerve with the public: it unfolded during the holidays, it involved a wealthy and socially prominent family, it possibly involved an unthinkably brutal crime between parent and child, and it occurred not long after the O.J. Simpson and Susan Smith cases, and the racially, sexually, and socially charged publicity that surrounded both of these cases.

The case of JonBenet Ramsey would captivate the American public from late 1996 to 1999. Although many members of the public remained skeptical about whether or not the case would be solved, the words ‘‘a new break in the Ramsey case’’ continue to intrigue television viewers to this day . A December 1997 Gallup poll found that six in ten surveyed had followed the case very or somewhat closely and only ten percent had not followed it at all . That same year, the first anniversary of JonBenet’s death drew nationwide coverage, and vigils were held outside her home and the Boulder County courthouse. The case also provided a glimpse into the largely unknown world of child beauty competitions, a highly lucrative industry with 3,100 competitions yearly and more than 100,000 competitors. The photographs and videos from the pageants offered images that disturbingly blended and blurred the lines between eroticism and childhood, innocence and sensationalism.

The recent events surrounding the Ramsey case and the sizable sensational amounts of media coverage they received are a testament to the impact and resonance of JonBenet’s murder on the American psyche. In particular, the false murder confessions of John Mark Karr in August 2006 prompted a tangible sense of relief in the nation. Many news organizations immediately assumed Karr was the killer without any substantial proof declared the premature front headline of The New York Daily News on August 17, the day after the arrest of Karr, only to have to backtrack days later when DNA evidence cleared Karr of all charges. Such emotional rushes to find justice for the beautiful six-year-old girl suggest the continuing relevance and poignancy of the case and its unsolved status.

The investigation into the murder of JonBenet Ramsey began with a breathless phone call made by her mother, Patsy Ramsey, at 5:52 a.m. on December 26, 1996. Initially, the incident appeared to be a kidnapping as Patsy had come downstairs during her normal routine of making coffee and then waking her husband, John Bennett Ramsey, and the children, JonBenet and their nine-year-old son, Burke . The four of them had planned to board a private plane and travel to Charlevoix, Michigan, where a vacation home awaited; the family also planned a trip to Disney World within the next week. Upon fully descending the staircase, approaching the kitchen, Patsy discovered a ransom note addressed to a ‘‘Mr. Ramsey’’ on three sheets of white-lined paper demanding a sum of $118,000 . The note demanded the money within a day and said JonBenet would be killed if the demands were not met.

Patsy rushed upstairs to the second floor of the house and found JonBenet’s bedroom empty and immediately dialed 911, claiming that a foreign crime organization abbreviated ‘‘S.B.T.C.’’ was responsible for the abduction of her child. The investigation would be troubled from the beginning as the police of the small suburban section of Boulder had dealt with few serious crimes and had no kidnappings on record. Only an hour after Officer Rick French was dispatched to the Ramsey home, Pete Hofstrom, the leader of the felony division at the district attorney’s office in Boulder, became wary that the investigation was headed in the wrong direction. After the arrival of Officer French, more than two hours passed before the first detective began to gather evidence at a little after 8 a.m.

Typically in cases involving a kidnapping such as this one, the protocol is to set up a command post away from the victim’s home in order to avoid interference and destruction or loss of key evidence, but such a base was never created. In addition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is contacted in such cases for consultation but was not in this case. The lack of initial contact with the FBI was curious given that, since the passage of the Lindbergh law, the FBI has primary jurisdiction in kidnapping cases for fear that the perpetrator may cross state lines, cause confusion among local authorities, and require extradition procedures. Moreover, the police were grossly understaffed given the gravity of the situation.

As a result, many members of the Ramsey’s circle of friends, including their pastor Reverend Rol Hoverstock, were welcomed by Patsy into the sprawling, three-story house, making it difficult to keep track of all the individuals, much less control the crime scene and protect potential evidence. Hoverstock would later be permitted to deliver the ransom note to police headquarters, an action heavily criticized by many in the Boulder police department as well as the FBI. The on duty supervisor at the time, Sergeant Bob Whitson, after getting word of Patsy’s 911 call, attempted to locate the Bureau’s manual on procedure for kidnappings but could not find the document.

Because of the idyllic reputation of University Hill, often referred to as ‘‘Planet Boulder: twenty miles surrounded by reality,’’ and lack of serious crime (the area averaged only one homicide per year) the police department had not officially adopted the Bureau’s procedures regarding kidnappings, as they felt it an unnecessary exercise and use of resources Patsy would later put into words the feeling of surprise and shock the kidnapping sent throughout the quiet Boulder suburb, and the nation itself, during an interview on CNN’s Nightly News, ‘‘Boulder is a small, peaceful town, unlike Atlanta or New York, or LA, where this, God forbid, is a much more frequent occurrence. This does not happen in Boulder’’. As more police personnel arrived, along with two victim’s advocates and four detectives, John Ramsey called Ron Westmoreland, a vice president of the Merrill Lynch investment firm and personal friend to the Ramseys, to arrange for the ransom money.

The police became suspicious that John would contact an outsider about the money without consulting them first. The commander of the Boulder police department detective division, John Eller, was then called (he was out of town vacationing as many on the police force were), in order to apprise him of the situation and decide the best course of action. Eller also voiced surprise that the FBI had not been contacted. One of the detectives dispatched to the case, Linda Arndt, an officer with a department wide reputation for her empathy with victims, worked to console John, Patsy, and Burke. John was directed to handle any phone calls concerning the ransom, as the note stated that he would be contacted between eight and ten in the morning, and Arndt informed him to keep the kidnappers on the telephone as long as possible in order to get a trace on the call. John offered the names of several disgruntled ex-employees as possible suspects during Arndt’s questioning.

Arndt would then make one of the most crucial and controversial mistakes of the investigation. She failed to move the unneeded visitors from the house and asked John and a close friend, Fleet White, to go through the house and look for signs of forced entry, something Officer French already reported he had not found. In addition, Arndt suggested that they look for any missing possessions from the house that could be searched for if a larger search for JonBenet outside the Ramsey home became necessary. Upon entering a playroom on the ground floor containing many of Burke’s toy trains, a broken window was discovered. John quickly explained that he had locked himself out of the house some months earlier and had kicked in the pane to get at the lock and get back inside. Ramsey then decided to go to the basement. He was followed by White and another friend, John Fernie, who had been the first person to arrive at the house, even before Officer French.

Although several officers had searched the area in and around the basement earlier that morning, John Ramsey came upon the body of his daughter in a small room that was being converted into a wine cellar. The little girl was wrapped in a white blanket with a strip of duct tape over her mouth. John ran to the body, pursued by Officer Fernie, White, and Renee Lucas (another Ramsey family friend who had made her way into the basement behind them). White began shouting ‘‘Oh God!’’ repeatedly as he knelt in the doorway to the tiny room. John pulled the tape off JonBenet’s mouth as he picked up the body. The body was ashen and stiff from rigor mortis, her lips blue and the skin cold to the touch. It appeared JonBenet had been dead for several hours. Lucas repeatedly yelled up the stairs for an ambulance as John proceeded to carry the body from the basement up the stairs to the living room.

JonBenet was still wearing the clothes she had on at bedtime, a long sleeved white shirt with star sequins and long-john pants with the word ‘‘Wednesday’’ written on the waistband. Boulder police chief Tom Koby would later offer what many considered a weak explanation of why his own officers had apparently not carefully searched the house: ‘‘We had no reason to believe the child would be in the house at the time’’. It was believed by many critics, despite Koby’s protests, that the police had mishandled the initial search of the house and overlooked important evidence. Death from asphyxiation, by use of a wire ligature, would be the eventual conclusion of the Boulder County coroner, John Meyer, and other consultants brought in including FBI profiler John Douglas, Many of the sordid details Meyer refused to mention, including evidence of prolonged sexual abuse and fetishism and evidence of a brutal blow to the girl’s head, would be revealed to the public in the coming months.

On December 31 JonBenet was laid to rest in Marietta, Georgia, just outside Atlanta (where her parents had originally met and where John’s parents and brother, Jeff, were originally from). The murder investigation was only just beginning. Only days before the funeral of JonBenet, on December 27, Commander Eller had assigned almost one-third of the 100 officers under his command to the case. The police in and around University Hill had allowed the crime scene of the Ramsey murder to become immeasurably contaminated during the crucial early hours of the investigation. Between the seven hours and thirty-three minutes that elapsed between the initial 911 call and the decision to finally clear out the Ramsey’s house by Detective-Sergeant Larry Mason, many of the key solutions to the case were, it appears, permanently lost. As one criminalist associated with the case noted, the scene of people milling about was ‘‘. . .like something out of an Agatha Christie novel’’.

Unfortunately, the Ramseys had allowed many people to enter the house even before the first police officer arrived on the scene. In the process of finding the body of JonBenet, John Ramsey committed perhaps the most damaging acts toward the evidence by picking up the body, removing the duct tape, and taking JonBenet out of the small room in the basement. The forensic investigation suggested that John probably destroyed evidence on and around JonBenet’s body, such as tears, fingerprints, saliva, and other body tissues and fluids. In addition, the evidence on the blanket, which contained spots of some sort of bodily fluid (many investigators and writers on the case suspected semen), were also contaminated and could not be clearly analyzed. Further errors were revealed, such as the initial lack of protective gloves used by detectives first arriving on the scene and by Officer French, the first to enter the Ramsey house.

There were only two officers to handle the initial crowd in a house that covered 6,866 square feet, three stories, and a half acre of land. Another mistake concerned a large flashlight that could have easily been used to create the blunt trauma wound found on the top of JonBenet’s head. The flashlight was only noticed and tagged as evidence the day after the investigation began, having sat on the kitchen counter unattended all day. Eleven weeks after the sizable missteps taken in the initial investigation, there was not a great deal of new evidence coming to the surface. John Ramsey’s two older children from a previous marriage, John, Jr. and Melinda (a third, Beth, had died tragically in a 1991 car accident), were possible suspects briefly. Their names were cleared by evidence that both of them were in Georgia at the time of the murder.

Compounding the lack of progress was a palpable sense of tension between the leaders of the Boulder police department and the office of the district attorney, specifically whether or not to allow the continuing presence of the FBI in the case. Also, dissension between Boulder district attorney Alex Hunter and Police Chief Koby caused controversy, particularly with regard to publicity on the case. In statements to the media, Hunter wanted to appeal to the people for continued support of the investigation, whereas Koby wanted to keep the amount of press conference and interviews minimal. Commander Eller frequently conflicted with Hunter and Bill Wise, the chief assistant to Hunter, concerning the progress of the investigation. Specifically, Eller felt the current law enforcement personnel was sufficient, but Hunter and Wise felt the use of more experienced outside help, given University Hill’s lack of violent crime, was necessary.

Wise told the New York Times that an outside investigator needed to be consulted to bring a fresh perspective to a rocky and stalled investigation: ‘‘We just need a good, experienced, probably retired police officer—probably—maybe even an FBI agent’’. Moreover, in January 1997 Koby revealed he had rejected offers of help from the Denver police on several occasions without consulting Eller or Hofstrom. Koby also continued his practice of giving news conferences and interviews that often glossed over police mistakes in favor of generalizations and reassurances. On one such occasion, Koby suggested the much-maligned police work on the case could not have ‘‘done better’’ and that the Ramseys’ decision to quickly hire private attorneys was not problematic, an assertion that would garner much criticism: I’ve been in communication with police personnel around the country, and most legal experts will tell you we’ve done it just right.

There’s nothing that’s been done, either by us or by the Ramsey family, that is out of order. Koby went on to comment that the fascination with the case in the news media and tabloids was a ‘‘sick curiosity’’. Later, David Michaud, the Denver police chief, revealed he had, as early as January 2, 1997, offered the resources of the department as well as a significant portion of detective force of 300 to Koby. Later, Koby would be plagued by two votes of no confidence by his own police force and would be forced to resign in October 1997. However, there was one thing that Hofstrom and Wise, along with several others including Eller, could all agree on: the parents of JonBenet were prime suspects. There were many reasons JonBenet’s closest family rose quickly to the top of the list of possible murderers. First, no indications could be found of a forced entry into the house except for the broken window that John admitted was his fault.

Not one person in the quiet and safe neighborhood of University Hill had reported anything verifiable or out of the ordinary the days leading up to and the day of the murder. In addition, a report to Hofstrom from the coroner pointed to semen on the body of JonBenet (and possibly on other evidence, including the blanket), suggesting the possible involvement of John Ramsey given the large percentage of child murders carried out by the father as opposed to a stranger. Also, there was the ‘‘practice note’’ as it would come to be known—a sheet of paper found in a pad in the Ramsey home with the first few words of another potential ransom note scrawled in the same block lettering with same felt tip pen. At 370 words the completed ransom note that was found—lampooned by one author as the War and Peace of ransom notes due to its long length— would prove to be a damning piece of evidence for the Ramseys.

The amount demanded, $118,000, was nothing to a multimillionaire like John Ramsey (the author even referred to John as ‘‘fat cat’’ at one point, suggesting a knowledge of his wealth), creating doubt about the authenticity of this three-page document . Ted Rosack, a former special agent once in charge of the Denver branch of the FBI, remarked,In addition, the amount of money was exactly the figure of John’s yearly bonus paid to him by Lockheed Martin at Access Graphics, a coincidence that implied an intentional air of familiarity as opposed to an actual realistic dollar figure. Hofstrom also noted that writing a ransom note of this length while inside the victim’s home was a deviation from previous cases he knew of and would be an unnecessary risk for a potential perpetrator. Moreover, one recent ruling in the Oklahoma City Bombing case, heard in nearby Denver, saw Timothy McVeigh’s lawyer calling handwriting a ‘‘false science’’ without merit.

Although the evidence, linking McVeigh to the rental contract for a truck used to transfer fertilizer and explosives, was admitted, none of the testimony put forward by experts would go on record. Furthermore, after analysis by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI), several inconsistencies were noted in which the author seemed to misspell certain words in a format inconsistent with the rest of the note. In contrast, use of the words ‘‘hence’’ and ‘‘attache´’’ suggest an educated person; some similarities were noted between the phrasing and patterns of the note and Patsy’s written and spoken statements after the murder. The oddities in the note suggested someone attempting to make the kidnappers seem foreign and/or uneducated with poor English skills.

The analysts also noted similarities between the use of certain phrases and action films shown recently on cable television in the area including Dirty Harry (‘‘I don’t care if it’s a Pekinese pissing on a lamppost’’), Speed (‘‘Do not attempt to grow a brain’’), and Nick of Time, which aired the night before the kidnapping and involves a plot concerning a young girl kidnapped by a group of foreign terrorists. The CBI would later provide another crucial finding in the case when its analysts discovered that a small smear on JonBenet’s thigh was blood; CBI would eventually use the blood to create the profile of the murderer that is largely followed to this day (an unknown white male). Moreover, no kidnappers were ever heard from and JonBenet was discovered at her home, another rarity in cases of stranger-perpetrated abduction. The police were, according to the ransom note, not to be contacted, but Patsy did so immediately after finding the ransom note.

The so called ‘‘practice note’’ further harmed the credibility of the ransom missive, particularly after a handwriting analysis performed (from samples provided by the Ramseys) pointed to Patsy as a strong candidate for having authored it . Chet Ubowski, the primary handwriting analyst at the CBI, suggested that Patsy absolutely could have written the ransom note. The Deputy Director of the CBI, Pete Mang, also believed the handwriting was likely that of JonBenet’s mother. Judith Phillips, a longtime close friend and confidant of Patsy who had viewed the note, suggested that Patsy had switched hands to disguise the physical writing style: ‘‘It was her penmanship, even though it might have been left-handed’’.

Other oddities included: the use of only objects inside the Ramsey home to create the nylon ligature that eventually killed JonBenet (wires and a paintbrush from remote locations in the home that would probably be difficult to find except to those familiar with the home) and the only conclusive footprints in the snow outside the perimeter of the house were those of John Ramsey. The Ramseys further frustrated several investigators with erratic behavior the day of JonBenet’s killing and for weeks afterwards, particularly John. These difficulties were cited as reasons for the lack of progress in the case and certainly did not help John and Patsy’s claims of innocence. Detective Sergeant Mason noted John’s insistence on contacting Mike Archuleta, his private pilot and personal friend, in order to travel to Atlanta to be with family even as investigators made it clear this was not possible as he and the rest of the family were crucial components in understanding the case.

Many investigators, including Detective Arndt, noticed a marked detachment in John Ramsey and his strange rush down the basement stairs to the exact location of JonBenet’s body after a full search of the home had not turned up any signs of the girl. Upon first seeing JonBenet after her husband brought the body upstairs, Patsy threw herself on the body and cried, ‘‘Jesus, you raised Lazarus from the dead. Raise my baby!’’ She also reportedly paced nervously around the exact area where, just below, her deceased daughter lay. Furthermore, upon the discovery of the first draft of the ransom note, Eller and Hofstrom knew that the parents of JonBenet must be interviewed.

Detective Arndt, permitted under the U.S. Supreme Court decision Schmerber v. California that allows a judge to issue an order binding an individual to provide non testimonial evidence or police to collect such evidence, had collected statements from John and Patsy regarding possible suspects and any events they could recall leading up to the murder, but the Ramseys, it seemed, were strenuously avoiding a formal interview with other detectives. Although the whole family—John, Patsy, Burke, John Andrew, and Melinda—had all submitted blood, hair, and fingernail samples, key testimonies about the events surrounding the murder were still missing. Another frustrating issue for investigators was the aforementioned decision by John and Patsy Ramsey to hire their own team of lawyers and investigators only days after the murder of their daughter.

Such actions suggested that there was something to hide; the Ramseys had been charged with nothing and were freely giving interviews to venues like CNN while shirking police requests for a sit-down. Michael Bynum, a close friend to John and a former deputy district attorney in Boulder, had originally suggested that both his wife and he cease giving statements to the police and hire criminal attorneys. Moreover, because of the Ramseys’ wealth from John’s computer firm, Access Graphics, they were able to hire some of the top legal talent in Colorado.

The sale of Access Graphics, originally based in Atlanta and purchased by the corporation Lockheed Martin before the Ramseys moved to Boulder in 1991, made the couple over $6 million mid-January 1997 the Ramseys had spent over $125,000 on their legal defense, which included nine professionals: three powerful area attorneys, a publicist from Washington, DC, a former FBI profiler, two private investigators hailing from Denver, and two handwriting analysts. John had hired Bryan Morgan and Harold Haddon of the elite Denver firm Haddon, Foreman, and Morgan, and Patsy was to be represented by Patrick Burke, a lone attorney with offices in Denver and Boulder. After retaining the services of their respective attorneys, the Ramseys further refused to allow either of John’s older children, John Jr. or Melinda, to be interviewed, as well as younger nine-year-old son Burke or Jeff Ramsey, John’s brother.

The police felt the interviews to be a crucial component to the investigation because, as previously mentioned, in cases of child murder the immediate family members are usually automatic midpoint. The interview produced no notable new information, but Patsy’s story did seem inconsistent. For instance, she commented that on the morning of JonBenet’s disappearance she had put back on the same clothing that she had been wearing the day before on Christmas Day. However, Patsy had fixed her makeup and hair before, allegedly, descending the staircase. It seemed odd to detectives Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo, the police carrying out the interview, that she would ignore a walk-in closet full of fresh clothing. Also, awakening at 5:30 a.m. to catch a 6:30 a.m. flight to Minnesota to meet John Andrew and Melinda seemed infeasible, particularly with two children to prepare. Patsy stated that she did not read the entire ransom note, only the ‘‘first few’’ lines, but informed the police operator about the last line.

During the intermissions, Hofstrom allowed Patsy to talk about the case with her lawyers; she agreed to take a polygraph but none was ever administered. John Ramsey entered the police station in the mid-afternoon for his scheduled interview. Unlike his wife, John would produce a piece of intriguing new evidence. Upon being questioned about the walk-through of the house he did with Fleet White, John Fernie, and Renee Lucas, John admitted to having been to the tiny room by the basement by himself earlier that morning after Officer French did his initial search of the house. In his account of the investigation, Detective Thomas states that he was certain after hearing this admission from John that the Ramseys were in some way involved. Thomas believes that Ramsey would have had ample time to move the body after French finished searching the house.

According to Thomas’s own account of the case, in the volume JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, his close friend and fellow Detective Tom Trujillo also seems to think that both interviews only proved the Ramseys had something to hide. After a second series of interviews conducted by District Attorney Alex Hunter and one of his assistants, Trip DeMuth, District Judge Joseph Bellipanni set April 22 as the date when the new grand jury would be convened. The grand jury would be culled from the 150 ordinary citizens who would be summoned to serve. By this point, Mark Beckner, a 20-year veteran with a reputation for excellent organizational skills who had once headed the Internal Affairs unit, had taken over the case as the new Boulder police chief. Chief Koby had resigned, a move that many in the department regarded as more political than practical despite Koby’s turbulent relationship with the press and the district attorney’s office.

Beckner had uttered the now-famous remark that John and Patsy remained under an ‘‘umbrella of suspicion’’ during a press conference in December 1997. Further evidence came from the panel of pediatric experts who were assembled at the request of Hunter. This panel concluded that JonBenet had indeed suffered vaginal trauma prior to her death; the injuries were ‘‘consistent with prior trauma and sexual abuse’’ and supported the notion of prior abuse that had been proposed by many noted forensic experts, such as Cyril Wecht. The partial autopsy that seem inconsistent. For instance, she commented that on the morning of JonBenet’s disappearance she had put back on the same clothing that she had been wearing the day before on Christmas Day , Patsy had fixed her makeup and hair before, allegedly, descending the staircase. It seemed odd to detectives Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo, the police carrying out the interview, that she would ignore a walk-in closet full of fresh clothing.

Also, awakening at 5:30 a.m. to catch a 6:30 a.m. flight to Minnesota to meet John Andrew and Melinda seemed infeasible, particularly with two children to prepare. Patsy stated that she did not read the entire ransom note, only the ‘‘first few’’ lines, but informed the police operator about the last line. During the intermissions, Hofstrom allowed Patsy to talk about the case with her lawyers; she agreed to take a polygraph but none was ever administered. John Ramsey entered the police station in the mid-afternoon for his scheduled interview. Unlike his wife, John would produce a piece of intriguing new evidence. Upon being questioned about the walk-through of the house he did with Fleet White, John Fernie, and Renee Lucas, John admitted to having been to the tiny room by the basement by himself earlier that morning after Officer French did his initial search of the house.

In his account of the investigation, Detective Thomas states that he was certain after hearing this admission from John that the Ramseys were in some way involved. Thomas believes that Ramsey would have had ample time to move the body after French finished searching the house. According to Thomas’s own account of the case, in the volume JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, his close friend and fellow detective Tom Trujillo also seems to think that both interviews only proved the Ramseys had something to hide. After a second series of interviews conducted by District Attorney Alex Hunter and one of his assistants, Trip DeMuth, District Judge Joseph Bellipanni set April 22 as the date when the new grand jury would be convened.

The grand jury would be culled from the 150 ordinary citizens who would be summoned to serve. By this point, Mark Beckner, a 20-year veteran with a reputation for excellent organizational skills who had once headed the Internal Affairs unit, had taken over the case as the new Boulder police chief. Chief Koby had resigned, a move that many in the department regarded as more political than practical despite Koby’s turbulent relationship with the press and the district attorney’s office. Beckner had uttered the now-famous remark that John and Patsy remained under an ‘‘umbrella of suspicion’’ during a press conference in December 1997. Further evidence came from the panel of pediatric experts who were assembled at the request of Hunter. This panel concluded that JonBenet had indeed suffered vaginal trauma prior to her death; the injuries were ‘‘consistent with prior trauma and sexual abuse’’ and supported the notion of prior abuse that had been proposed by many noted forensic experts, such as Cyril Wecht.

The partial autopsy that had already been made public did not include where the body was found or the time of death but allowed the public to become privy to many of the most gruesome aspects of the murder. Also, public unrest with Hunter and the district attorney’s office was rising over the perceived stagnation of the case and the rising cost (in November 1997, an officer reported to the Rocky Mountain News that he had received over $22,700 in overtime since the start of the investigation). When the grand jury session convened, Hunter first addressed the potential jurors with a ‘‘history lesson’’ on the creation, meaning, and importance of the grand jury, a process he dated back to 1166 with the reign of King Henry I in England. The lecture suggested that the purpose of selecting a grand jury was to find 12 ‘‘true and lawful’’ men and women to impartially evaluate the case.

Such a notion of impartiality worried Hunter because he had recently learned from Robert L. Bernard, a judicial administrator, that over 130 news organizations around the world had inquired about the case. Most of the questioning revolved around a prospective juror’s knowledge of the case and whether or not he or she knew about the conflicts between the district attorney’s office and the Boulder police department; most people were dismissed after 20 minutes. At the close of the session, Judge Bellipanni had dismissed all but 17—all of whom would be on the grand jury. The panel consisted of four women and eight men, as well as four alternates composed of four women and one man. Although the Ramsey case was one possibility on the docket, Bernard reminded the newly selected jurors that they were not a part of ‘‘. . .the Ramsey grand jury’’.

However, the increasing presence of ‘‘celebrity’’ forensic pathologists, such as Henry Lee and Barry Scheck, increasingly worried the Boulder police department in terms of being able to impanel an impartial jury. Lee and Scheck had worked on the O.J. Simpson case together but on opposite sides of the case, with Lee making the case of the government and Scheck assisting Johnnie Cochran. The arguments for and against indicting John and Patsy Ramsey fell into seven main elements as far as the grand jury was concerned. The first concerned the pubic hair found on the white blanket from JonBenet’s bedroom. Because of previous testing, the hair was almost destroyed. Thus the ‘‘advanced mitochondrial’’ test needed for a positive identification could not be performed in order to determine the origin of the hair. The second aspect of the evidence was a shoe print that had recently been discovered in the small basement room where JonBenet was found.

The imprint came from a Hi-Tec brand of boot; the police had contacted over 400 people who had visited the Ramsey’s home in the preceding months before the murder. Not one of these people had ever worn such a boot or could remember anyone they knew wearing one. The small window to the basement room where the body was found was the third key component of the evidence presented to the grand jury. The window was open when John Ramsey, Fleet White, Rene Lucas, and Officer John Fernie entered the room that was to be a wine cellar; shards of glass were also present beneath the windowpane. Although there was a spider web present in the window, forensics were inconclusive as to whether someone had climbed in or out of the window. The sudden jump in temperature from the night to the morning could have possibly allowed a spider to emerge from hibernation and construct a web in a feasible amount of time but the issue of whether someone entered through the window was unsolved.

The fourth issue relating to the evidence presented was a set of unidentified palm prints; one found on the door to the room where JonBenet was found and the other on the ransom note. None of the prints from the case or the FBI or national crime scene fingerprint database matched anyone who had been fingerprinted in the case, lending support to the idea of an intruder as the murderer of JonBenet. In addition, the partial palm print on the door was an important piece of evidence in support of the intruder scenario. Supporters of an intruder theory suggested that the match for the palm print would have quickly been made to John and/or Patsy Ramsey but was not, suggesting someone not yet printed had made his or her way into the house and killed JonBenet. The fifth piece of evidence consisted of the DNA found on the underwear JonBenet was wearing. Forensics concluded that the DNA originated from JonBenet and a foreign source.

The second (and possibly third) elements did not match any friends or relatives or the aforementioned national databases of DNA samples. The foreign DNA could have come from someone who had not given DNA in a case with so many potential perpetrators and information. The other possibility was, of course, the DNA belonged to the killer or killers. The sixth issue with the evidence presented was the possible use of a stun gun in subduing JonBenet. The markings that looked like those left by such weapons were new enough to have happened during the murder but no exhumation of JonBenet’s body was ever carried out. Finally, the seventh aspect of the evidence related to the ransom note. One of the more bewildering aspects of the Ramsey murder suggests that no fingerprints, bends, or damage was present on the ransom note. The detectives on the case concluded that Patsy’s story about finding the note at the bottom of the spiral staircase was impossible due to her claim of skipping a step.

The police had found that it was impossible to hop a step on the massive stairs without losing one’s balance and collapsing forward. Ultimately, on October 13, 1999, Alex Hunter and the grand jury concluded that there was not enough evidence to formally indict John and Patsy Ramsey. Because Colorado law requires that both the jury foreman and the district attorney sign a letter recommending indictment, some critics, such as Detective Thomas, suggested that Hunter, not the actual grand jury, decided not to go after the Ramseys because he believed it would result in a loss in the courtroom and an embarrassment for this task force. Although Hunter had attempted to bolster the case against the Ramseys by bringing in outside help, such as that of grand jury evidence specialist Michael Kane, Lee, and Scheck, the evidence simply did not tip the scale in favor of a possible conviction.

Both Wise and Hunter, despite strong efforts, resigned from their respective jobs after an indictment did not come to fruition. ‘‘We will see that justice is served in this case and that you pay for what you did and we have no doubt that will happen’’. The preceding quote illustrates the tack taken by Hunter and many others investigating the Ramsey murder—speaking directly to the ‘‘killer’’ as if he or she was watching the televised press conference. Many battles for public opinion and leverage would play out on television and the print media as Hunter and the Boulder police department trudged through the evidence to make some sort of progress. Moreover, few cases have received the frenzied and persistent media attention of the JonBenet Ramsey murder.

Against the backdrop of the O.J. Simpson and Susan Smith murder cases, the Ramsey case continued the trend of sensationalized media coverage in the tabloids. Charles Brennan, a reporter for The Rocky Mountain News, recalled watching the Ramseys’ CNN interview days after the death of their daughter. He remembered the words of Patsy sounding eerily familiar: ‘‘Brennan switched channels from the football game he was watching and heard Patsy Ramsey say that a killer was on the loose. He thought immediately of Susan Smith, who had accused a black man of carjacking and kidnapping her two little boys but was later found to have killed them herself’’. Many local media celebrities, such as Denver radio talk show host Peter Boyles, regularly broadcast programs opining that John and Patsy Ramsey had murdered their daughter.

The case saw many respected news organizations covering the ‘‘news’’ in the tabloids, such as The Globe and The National Enquirer. A milestone for the latter came when The New York Times referred to the publication as the ‘‘Bible of O.J. coverage’’. These laudatory words helped several of the reporters for The National Enquirer earn raises as a result of their coverage of the Simpson case. Thus, when the Ramsey case came along, the tabloids were in a powerful position that allowed them to dictate discourse and opinion within the realm of violent and sordid cases that enthralled the public and sold papers. It seemed that the case of JonBenet Ramsey was becoming part of the unique entity dubbed ‘‘mass media’’ and its close association with commerce and public opinion. The media are uniquely part of not only the information but the communication process in the United States, and the JonBenet case illustrated an unprecedented level of agenda setting by the tabloids.

The authorities were constantly on the defensive and had to keep up with the latest bits of information concerning the case. The Globe, which was beaten handily each week in circulation numbers by The National Enquirer, had hoped to find its ‘‘own O.J.’’ in the case of JonBenet Ramsey and eventually bring its circulation of 1.3 million weekly up to the rival The National Enquirer’s 5 million. Many of the segments and images aired by national news programs, most obtained for a fee from photographers and people involved with the beauty pageant industry, caused much commotion.

During one unscripted incident, a visibly shaken Dan Rather, the CBS anchorman, wondered aloud if had he just viewed ‘‘kiddie porn’’. In fact, such images of the six-year-old beauty queen would become the subject of an inquiry into who leaked pictures to the various tabloids, including Star, The National Enquirer, Hard Copy, and American Journal, an odd weakness of the police department easily exploited by an insider in that the department used K-Mart Photo’s ‘‘two for one’’ deal, not a private lab, to develop crime scene images. In fact, the first arrest in the case would relate to the illegal selling of photos to The Globe by private investigator Brett A. Sawyer. The police accused Sawyer of using his skills as a former crime photo lab employee to peddle five photos to the supermarket tabloid. One member of the ‘‘Team Ramsey’’ defense investigation team compared the editors of The Globe to ‘‘jackals’’ and accused them of ‘‘checkbook journalism’’.

Many citizens of University Hill met at the Chambers of the City Council to arrange a boycott of the sensational tabloid, which revealed it paid $5,500 to Sawyer for photos and matched the Ramseys’ $100,000 offer for information leading to the capture of her killer. Many of the lead detectives and head figures at the Boulder police department, namely Eller, Thomas, and Koby, and the office of the district attorney were well aware of the media comparisons being made to the Simpson case. On one occasion, Wise remarked to a journalist, ‘‘The people in L.A. tried to shoehorn the evidence to nail O. J. Simpson and some of it just didn’t fit. We’re trying to do something different here’’.

Wise was making a jab at what some criminalists, such as the aforementioned Wecht and Lee, had concluded regarding the evidence in the ‘‘trial of the century’’: there were many signs linking Simpson to the murders of his wife and Ron Goldman but much of it pointed to the presence of more than one assailant, and not enough foreign DNA was present on Simpson or in his home consistent with the type of wounds on the victim. Although the first articles written concerning the Ramsey murder only hinted at the complex and controversial case within, it was not long before the most troubling media from the case emerged: the videos of the child pageant competitions. The film of JonBenet vying for pageant trophies would challenge America’s perceptions of the boundaries between innocence and sexual maturity.

Nevertheless, these categories of collapsed distinctions were both disturbing and fascinating and suggested a reshaping of gender and power in a realm of competition known only to a small segment of Americans before this case. Before long, JonBenet’s prowess in the beauty pageants would cause parents to not even enter their children if she was scheduled to compete. Hunter told interviewers in 1997 that, The ‘‘look’’ described by Hunter captures the first images broadcast to the nation of JonBenet. Patsy Ramsey was a former Miss West Virginia. Her mother, Nedra Paugh, was also a former Miss West Virginia and contestant in the Miss America competition. JonBenet was groomed from an early age to be a beauty competition champion; many of the articles in the early phases of the investigation referred to JonBenet by her final title, ‘‘America’s Little Royal Miss’’. Kit Andre, the $100 an hour dance instructor for JonBenet, noted Patsy’s impatience with the child and tendency to interrupt sessions.

Andre was convinced that the little six-year-old was being set on the path to Miss America, a place where both her grandmother and mother had failed. Andre believed such lofty goals were attainable as she had never worked with a girl more talented and intelligent than JonBenet, a sentiment echoed by her kindergarten and first grade teachers, the latter of which allowed JonBenet to dress as a giant Christmas package and sing carols to the class on the last day before the holiday recess and only a matter of days before her death. Andre soon realized a rather troubling truth after working with JonBenet hours on end: this was not the little girl’s dream, Randy Simons, a professional photographer hired by John and Patsy Ramsey to put together a portfolio for the beauty pageant entrance process, echoed the laudatory words of Andre, ‘‘She was one of the best little girls I’ve ever worked with. . .special, unusually talented, unusually cooperative, very mature’’.

Moreover, Simons would later defend many of the sexually charged photos he took of JonBenet by suggesting a flashy and ‘‘mature-looking’’ portfolio was the only way young girls could compete in events pitting them against other contests as old as 18. Giroux notes the easy use of JonBenet, and children in general, by the media in cases of gross violation and criminal victimization in that they can rarely register opinions, and they symbolize the need for protection. They are repositories for the greatest fears of society, particularly its perceived inadequacies in protecting its most vulnerable members. Innocence is used to select who and what constitutes a threat to children. Such sentiments were effectively tapped into by the tabloids through their portrayals of JonBenet in an atypical setting: on the runway clad in one of the $700 outfits, belting out her ‘‘southern belle’’–inspired routine dubbed ‘‘Cowboy Sweetheart’’ in the competition registrar.

Such headlines as ‘‘Beauty Queen’s Nightmare Life of Sex Abuse’’ regularly caught the eyes of customers in the checkout lines of their local supermarkets. Geraldo Rivera suggested, on his syndicated talk show, that JonBenet and other competitors were attractive fodder for pedophiles as many families paid top dollar for makeup artists that could make their girls ‘‘look twenty-five’’: This accelerated process—this pre-adolescent sexuality—there are a lot of very distressing, disturbing hints of abuse, even if the parents are absolutely innocent. . .She was tarted [sic] up and paraded in this neo-Lolita fashion that horrified us. After the murder investigation began, officials from the child beauty pageant industry began to chime in with moral rejoinders concerning the potential for sexual predators to harm the young competitors. Ted Cohen, president of Directory of Pageants, stated, ‘‘They’re an attractive package for someone looking to violate a young person’’.

Others with direct experience, such as Miss America of 1958, Marilyn Van Derbur Atler, voiced strong opposition to beauty pageants for children in the months after Jon Benet’s murder. Van Derbur Atler had turned down many requests to serve as a judge for child competitions. As a victim of sexual abuse by her father, she believed her work as a child beauty queen made her a tempting target. Van Derbur Atler also believed that the competitions promoted unhealthy lifestyles throughout life when competitors were inculcated so young: What the JonBenet cycle of beauty pageants does, in my opinion, is set them up for major cosmetic surgery, eating disorders, an obsession about how they look, why they’re loved, who likes them—those kinds of things. And it’s the wrong message in huge block print. . . The girls are certainly in a situation where they are in the limelight for [someone] looking for that type of person to abuse.

Giroux suggests that the 1987 McMartin preschool molestation trial catalyzed a decade long series of reforms to protect children and zealously go after those who could potentially prove dangerous to them. Similarly, Rapping (2003) suggests the rhetoric used by Patsy and John, in interviews on CNN and other networks, pulled at the heartstrings of America by intimately linking threats to children and the nuclear family to a larger societal breakdown. Patsy suggested, on more than one occasion, that America ‘‘needed’’ for JonBenet to be avenged in order to repair itself from the damage caused by the Smith and Simpson cases, suggesting there was still a phantom perpetrator on the loose who could do more harm: America has just been hurt so deeply with this—the tragic things that have happened. The young woman who drove her children into the water, and we don’t know what happened with O.J. Simpson—America is suffering because it has lost faith in the American family. . . There is a killer on the loose.

Thus the disappearance of children through victimization by the lowest offenders—pedophiles, abductors, pornographers, or anyone who preys upon children—suggests a threat to core American values and lays the shaky foundation for a moral panic. Moreover, the Ramseys even hired a ‘‘crisis communications’’ expert named Patrick S. Korten, who had experience as the spokesman for the Department of Justice during the 1985 Achille Lauro hijacking and the Atlanta Cuban prison riot of 1987, to set up several photo opportunities that allowed the tabloids to photograph John and Patsy being comforted by clergymen, such as Bishop Jerry Winterrowd, in front of their local church, to add a religious depth to their national pleas for help in bringing the murderer of their daughter to justice. Along with the potent images and rhetoric surrounding the crime that took JonBenet’s life, issues of race and class were present soon after the explosive media tabloid coverage.

Rapping (2003) suggests that the JonBenet Ramsey case received a kind of ‘‘prioritized’’ coverage given that she projected an image of wealth, beauty, innocence, and whiteness. Giroux (1998) suggested that the media adulation of JonBenet as an oddly sexualized object of beauty and privilege made the brutal tarnishing of her image all the more horrific. In addition, the strong feelings of the public that one or both of the parents were probably responsible for the death of their child ultimately makes the case all the more sensational, disturbing, and compelling: Innocence is primarily applied to children who are white and middle class, often tucked away in urban townhouses and the safe sanctuaries of suburban America.

Innocence also mystifies the sexualization and commodification of young girls who are being taught to identify themselves through the pleasures and desires of adult gaze. . .the pedagogical and commercial practices at work in such a construction remain unexamined because they take place within the acceptable cultural forms such as children’s beauty pageants. JonBenet’s murder jolts the public because it shatters the assumption that the primary threat to innocence lies outside the family in the image of the sexual pervert. This murder also challenges the assumption that privileged families are immune to accusations of child abuse or neglect. Also, the packaging of childhood and youth presented in the case played on other recent violent crimes, such as the murder of Polly Klaas in California and the murder of six-year-old Meagan Kanka. The added dimension of the beauty pageant amplified the sort of celebrity status to the case that had kept the Simpson case in the headlines for months in the mid-1990s.

Furthermore, JonBenet was portrayed more as an essence than a person with agency and dignity; few of the video depictions of her featured anything but a highly coordinated display perfectly attuned to the expectations of a panel of judges. The Ramsey murder introduced America to the $5-billion-a-year industry of child beauty pageants. The most prestigious competitions, dominated by upper-middle class and elite families, carried sponsors such as Hawaiian Tropics and Procter and Gamble, generating huge amounts of revenue from the $500 to $1000 entry fees. Practices such as the capping of teeth, ‘‘spray-on tan’’ skin treatments, fake eyelashes, and, more recently, plastic surgery have been common practice on the competition circuits for two decades, particularly after corporate sponsorship and larger money purses became involved in the late 1970s. More and more extreme measures were required for parents and others involved in the pageants to find a competitive edge.

Reports of physical abuse of children by parents for not dancing provocatively enough or not blowing kisses have been reported. Many parents hire talent agents for young children in order to enter the competitions that could ensure maximum amount of profit. The American public seemed instantly fascinated and the press was unstoppable in their continued depiction of the sexualized competitions. As Bill McReynolds, a Ramsey friend who played Santa Claus at a Christmas party attended by JonBenet just 48 hours before her death, who is also a journalism instructor at the University of Colorado, commented, the dogged pursuit of sensational imagery of JonBenet and her family caused him to question the very foundations of reporting: I have always taught that journalists should be very aggressive. . .But since I know the people in this case—the little girl and her family—I am changing my mind. . .I have seen what an impossible and driving force curiosity is.

The unsolved and haunting nature of the JonBenet case, as well as the shocking world of child beauty pageants it revealed, has made it one of the most storied crimes in American history. The critically applauded 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine dramatized many of the disturbing images and cosmetic procedures associated with the child pageants. A first season episode of the popular television crime program C.S.I.: Las Vegas, broadcast in 2001, entitled ‘‘Gentle, Gentle,’’ mirrored many of the general and minute details of the first days of the Ramsey investigation. This fictional scenario involved an accidental child murder carried out by a family member. Avant-garde artist and writer Joe Coleman, noted for his intricately detailed paintings depicting the events surrounding famous crimes, recently exhibited a painting in September 2006 featuring JonBenet in mid routine, striking one of her infamous poses.

Walter Davis’s 2004 play An Evening With JonBenet Ramsey, a speculation on ho w her life would have unfolded had she survived, garnered strong reviews. In late summer 2006, After John Mark Karr, who was a pedophile and had an obsession with JonBenet and seemed to know case details known only to police, falsely confessed to the murder, Davis also explored many of the pop culture phenomena about the murder that continue to flourish, particularly on the Internet. Several Web sites, such as www.supportramseytruth.com, continue to receive thousands of ‘‘hits’’ a week with continued speculation on what actually happened.