Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet? Page 4

  While French remained with the parents, Reichenbach conducted an interior inspection of all three floors of the home, including the basement, and he did not notice any credible point of entry that drew his attention. He noted that at the far end of the basement was a white door secured at the top by a block of wood that pivoted on a screw. Reichenbach tried to open the door, but stopped when it was apparent that it would not have been either a point of entry or exit from the home.

  During his inspection of the second floor, Reichenbach observed that the door to Burke’s bedroom was open, and the lights were off. He moved quietly into the room, and Burke appeared to be asleep beneath the covers of his bed. Exiting, Reichenbach closed the door “nearly all the way” to prevent downstairs noise from awakening the boy.

  Following a walk-through of the home, Reichenbach then conducted a cursory search of the exterior and observed “frost on the grass and a little bit of snowfall” on exposed areas of the lawn. He noted that no one other than himself had walked through these areas.

  Reichenbach noted that no snow had adhered to the rear patio and walkways. The driveway was wet but no foot prints / tracks were visible, and he observed no fresh signs of forced entry to exterior doors and windows.

  After hanging up on the 911 dispatcher, Patsy Ramsey found the composure to make two additional phone calls. Family friends John and Barbara Fernie, as well as Fleet and Priscilla White were hurriedly summoned to the home. She told her friends that there was an emergency and that she needed them at her home. She had not told them that JonBenét had been kidnapped and that she needed their support.

  It was close to 6:30 a.m. when the Fernies arrived and, from outside the rear kitchen / patio door, John Fernie was able to observe the ransom note still spread out on the floor of the hallway next to the kitchen.

  Not long thereafter, Fleet and Priscilla White were the next family friends to arrive at the Ramsey home. Fleet White reported that within approximately 15 minutes of his arrival, he made a quick inspection of the basement of the home. He was purportedly the third person to visit the basement at that point of the morning.†

  It should be noted that White’s daughter, Daphne, had gone missing about a year earlier, and she was eventually found hiding in their home. Despite the existence of the ransom note in this instance, he took it upon himself to check the basement for JonBenét. He is the only person of record who called out her name as he searched the home that morning.

  White observed a window to the Train Room to be closed and unlatched, and he was immediately drawn to the area. A particular upper left quadrant of the window was broken and it was large enough, about the size of a baseball that a person could reach through the space to unlock the window latch inside. Sections of fractured glass were missing from this part of the window, and he inspected the area closely for the remnants of these pieces.

  He moved a hard-sided Samsonite suitcase that was standing beneath the window to look for broken glass. He didn’t find any. The larger pieces of glass pane had already been removed, and it was subsequently determined that John Ramsey had broken the window and entered through that space when locked out of the house the previous summer. The glass from that breakage had been cleaned up, but the window had never been repaired.

  White did find a small single kernel of glass on the floor, an apparent remnant from John Ramsey’s earlier entry. He placed this on the ledge of the window frame and, leaving the window in its original condition, moved on to complete his survey of the basement.

  White then moved from the Train Room to the white door of the Wine Cellar and, unlatching the wood block, partially opened the door to that room. Unable to locate a light switch for the windowless room, White failed to see a blanket on the floor that wrapped the body of JonBenét.

  White returned upstairs and subsequently suggested that Burke be sequestered to the safety of his own home, in the company of his son, Fleet Junior, and visiting family.

  Reports are in conflict as to whether or not White accompanied John Ramsey to awaken Burke. Ramsey reports that he alone awakened Burke and told him to get dressed and that his sister was missing. French made an attempt at an interview before Burke left the home, but was told that the boy had been asleep throughout the entire event and had no information to offer officers.

  There is no dispute that White alone subsequently drove JonBenét’s brother to his residence located in West Boulder. Before leaving home, Burke grabbed his Nintendo game, and he was gone by the time Detective Linda Arndt arrived at 0810 hours.

  The exact timing of events is not clear, but French was purportedly the second person to inspect the basement after things had stabilized at the scene. He reported that he had briefly checked the garage and back doors of the residence not long after his arrival and had gone to the basement sometime before the arrival of civilians at the home.

  Much has been made about his failure to discover the body of JonBenét in the Wine Cellar during this walkthrough, but like Reichenbach, one must understand what was going through his head at the time.

  This was not a situation where a child was merely missing and possibly hiding in the home. The family was reporting a kidnapping of their child, and he had been shown a ransom note as proof. French was checking the interior of the home for a possible point of entry or exit that would have been used by a kidnap-per(s).The door to the Wine Cellar was secured by a wooden block and it showed no sign of having been forcibly entered from the exterior. There simply was no reason at the time to go into that room.

  CSI Karl Veitch arrived on the scene and handled the collection of the ransom note. It had been replaced and photographed on the stair treads as that had been the original location of discovery according to Patsy Ramsey. He then transported the note to the police department and photocopied it for investigators before securing it and going home sick.

  Reverend Rol Haverstock, of the family’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, also responded to the home that morning and he, along with family friends, attempted to console a visibly distraught Patsy Ramsey. He was arriving at the home as Veitch was departing with the ransom note.

  CSI’s Barry Weiss and Sue Barcklow had arrived on the scene and began to look for a possible point of entry to the home. They examined doors and windows and began to dust for latent fingerprints. Weiss observed that the balcony door of JonBenét’s bedroom was closed and locked. He noted that it had been a very cold night and observed a light coating of frost on the exterior bedroom balcony floor and railings. There were no marks of disturbance visible on the balcony prior to his testing of the surface. (Crime scene photos depicted before and after photos of the balcony floor with his footprints in the frost.) Anecdotally, another officer reported that the outside temperature had been observed to be 9 degrees Fahrenheit one hour earlier at Tebo Plaza, approximately five miles distant from the Ramsey home.

  Victim Advocates arrived on scene at approximately 6:45 a.m. as CSIs processed the scene for latent fingerprints. They reportedly followed the CSIs around cleaning up the messy fingerprint powder and were unwittingly destroying additional trace evidence that might have been discoverable.

  Notification of the abduction had been made to Sergeant Robert Whitson, the on-call detective supervisor for the holiday.

  He confirmed that the mechanics for installing a trap and trace on the Ramsey home phone had taken place. He called out detectives Linda Arndt and Fred Patterson and sent them to the home. Undercover narcotic unit detectives were called out and instructed to maintain surveillance for suspicious people and activities taking place in the neighborhood. He directed that a senior command staff page be initiated and alerted the D.A.’s office, the Boulder County Sheriff’s Department, and the City’s Public Information Officer of the investigation.

  Whitson also contacted the Denver field offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and they immediately began consulting with Boulder Police on the investigation.

  Whitson subsequently responded to the home an
d spoke to John Ramsey. He briefed him on the investigative steps to be taken by the department and advised Ramsey of the FBI’s involvement.

  Photo 2 – JonBenét’s bedroom viewed from doorway. Note lamp is turned on. Source: Boulder PD Case File / Internet

  Ramsey reiterated his belief that the house had been locked the previous evening when the family had turned in for the night. Upon request, Ramsey provided Whitson with handwriting samples for both him and his wife. He grabbed a note-pad from the kitchen area that he apparently knew to contain samples of his wife’s handwriting and wrote a sentence on another pad of paper as his own exemplar.

  Whitson asked Ramsey about any suspects that came to mind, and he mentioned a former employee of his company, Jeff Merrick, who had left under difficult circumstances. Linda Hoffmann-Pugh, the family’s current housekeeper, was also named, and this was due to her recent request for a monetary loan from his wife.

  JonBenét’s bedroom was secured with crime scene tape during Whitson’s visit, and he subsequently returned to the Police Department with the handwriting exemplars. These were turned over to Detective Jeff Kithcart, the department’s forensics fraud and handwriting examiner. Later that day, around the time of the discovery of JonBenét’s body, Kithcart made an unsettling discovery. He observed handwriting on pages of Patsy Ramsey’s note pad that started out in similar fashion to the opening words of the ransom note. The structure of the letters was similar to those of the ransom note, and pages had been torn out of the pad. It appeared to Kithcart that Patsy Ramsey’s note pad may have been used to construct a practice ransom note.

  Detective Linda Arndt brought recording equipment with her to the scene and not long after her arrival at 0810 hours, she determined that she would use the Den as her base of operations. She asked French to remain with Patsy Ramsey in the first floor Solarium as she briefed John Ramsey on what to say to the kidnapper(s) when they called. French continued to attempt to control the movement and activities of friends who now inhabited the home.

  Arndt conducted a brief interview with Patsy Ramsey that morning and was told that she too thought the house was locked the previous evening. Mrs. Ramsey reported to Arndt that she had found the ransom note first before going to JonBenét’s bedroom and this conflicted with what she had reported to French when he first spoke to her that morning.

  She related possible suspicion of Linda Hoffmann-Pugh due to her recent request for a two- thousand dollar ($2,000.00) loan. Arndt was subsequently told by Father Rol that Patsy Ramsey also wanted her to know that Hoffmann-Pugh had previously mentioned concerns about the kidnapping of JonBenét.

  A copy of the ransom note was brought back to the house that morning by Detective Arndt, and the family and friends attempted to decipher its contents. Some thought the ransom demand, one-hundred-eighteen thousand dollars ($118,000.00), an odd amount for a ransom demand. They also thought the amount ridiculously low and knew that John Ramsey was well-capable of paying up to one million dollars ($1,000,000.00) in ransom for his daughter if necessary.

  The length, content, and details provided by kidnappers in the note immediately raised questions for the investigators who were working the case that morning. The FBI, consulting in the case, had never seen a ransom note of its kind. In their experience, ransom notes were short and sweet and typically provided few details about the perpetrators behind a kidnapping.

  Additionally, the note began by formally addressing John Ramsey. By its end, the kidnapper(s) spoke as though they were intimately familiar with John and the family.

  None of the civilians on the scene that morning seemed to question or be concerned about the length of the note.

  Arndt noted that John Ramsey seemed to be distracted throughout the course of the morning and was out of the den on at least three occasions during the time frame that they awaited the ransom call. He had to run to answer the phone when it rang.

  The ransom note stated that kidnappers would call with instructions for the family between “8:00 and 10:00 am” and the passage of this time came and went, without any observed comment from Ramsey. It wasn’t long after this that Arndt lost track of his movements. She reported that she first made note of his absence at around 1040 hours, and he didn’t reappear until noon. Nearly 1 ½ years would pass before John Ramsey explained this absence.

  CSIs had wrapped up their processing of the first floor of the home. Victim advocates Grace Morlock and Mary Lou Jedamus had followed them around, cleaning up the mess left by fingerprint powder. Family friends were still in attendance, continuing their attempt to console Patsy Ramsey and had used the kitchen to prepare food and snacks for the group.

  French had remained at the home throughout the morning and observed additional behavioral clues that tickled his sixth sense. For one, Patsy Ramsey had wanted him to remove his gun belt and uniform shirt as he stood by in the house. He thought it an odd request since he was there protecting the family against the members of a “foreign faction” who had entered her home and kidnapped her daughter.

  Why was she so uncomfortable with a uniformed police officer being in her home?

  There was another peculiar moment that captured French’s attention. Patsy Ramsey had been crying throughout the morning and was being consoled by her friends. At one juncture, he observed that she had her hands up around her face, presumably to help cover her anguish. He was a little unnerved when he discovered that she was peering at him through her fingers. It was an odd moment that left him uncertain about what to think of the circumstances in which he found himself immersed.

  Supervisors and detectives had convened at the Police Department following the passage of the ransom hour, and Arndt found herself to be the sole police officer remaining at the home. She had observed a marked difference in John Ramsey’s mood when he re-surfaced at noon. He was anxiously pacing around the house shortly before 1300 hours, and in attempt to keep his mind occupied, Arndt suggested that he check the house from “top to bottom” for anything unusual.

  Rather than follow the directions of the detective, Ramsey immediately led Fleet White to the basement.

  White was interviewed on three different occasions by law enforcement authorities about the events that followed his visit to the basement with Ramsey. He told investigators that John Ramsey led him directly to the Train Room, and White told Ramsey about his visit to the room earlier that morning.

  Ramsey related his break-in through the window from the previous summer, and they both checked around for more glass.† It was not clear from either of the men’s later interviews whether they had opened the window as they looked for more glass, but Ramsey stated that both men got down on the floor to check for signs that the window hadn’t been broken again. Preparing to leave the room, they moved a fireplace grate to check another closet, and Ramsey then moved out of the room and down the hallway toward the Wine Cellar. White was replacing the grate when he heard John Ramsey cry out “Oh my God!”

  Photo 3 - Hallway leading to Wine Cellar. JonBenét’s body was discovered behind this door, and the paint tray is on the floor to left edge of the doorway. Note the bag of golf clubs. Source: Boulder PD Case File / Internet

  Photo 4 - The white blanket on the floor of the Wine Cellar that was wrapped around the body of JonBenét. Source: Boulder PD Case File / Internet

  White stated that he rushed down the short hallway and joined Ramsey just as the latter flipped on the lights in the Wine Cellar. . He could now see the partially wrapped body of JonBenét. He leaned down to touch her bare ankles, which were visible outside the blanket, and later told investigators that they were cold to the touch. White left Ramsey in the Wine Cellar and ran upstairs shouting for someone to call an ambulance.

  Ramsey stated that he removed a piece of duct tape that covered JonBenét’s mouth and also removed a cord that had been tied around her left wrist. He then carried her upstairs and was greeted at the top of the stairwell by Detective Arndt.

  Arndt, alerted to events by White�
��s shouting, saw Ramsey emerge from the basement carrying JonBenét upright and away from his body. JonBenét’s arms projected above her head, stiff from rigor mortis. Arndt instructed Ramsey to place JonBenét on the floor, and she then checked for vital signs. JonBenét’s lips were blue, and she was cold to the touch. Arndt could not find a pulse, and she noted an odor of decay. It was apparent that she had been dead for some period of time.

  Arndt then picked up JonBenét’s body and moved her to the living room, laying her on her back on a rug in front of the Christmas tree.

  Barbara Fernie and Priscilla White had been with Patsy Ramsey in the Solarium when they heard Fleet’s shouting for an ambulance and moved from the room. Patsy did not accompany them.†

  Arndt and John Ramsey stood face-to-face over JonBenét’s body, and he was told that she was gone. She then directed him to call 911, since she had no radio with her to contact her dispatch center, and to then go to his wife.

  Ramsey left and returned approximately two minutes later, and before Arndt could stop him, he grabbed a blanket in the room and placed it over her body. Someone else placed a sweatshirt over JonBenét’s bare feet. Not long thereafter Patsy Ramsey was led from the Solarium, supported in the arms of her friends, where she collapsed on her daughter’s body.

  Despite being instructed by Detective Arndt to stand guard at the top of the basement stairs, Fleet White returned briefly to the Wine Cellar during these events. He picked up the duct tape, touched the blanket that had been wrapped around JonBenét’s body and handled a cigar box in the room.

  Father Rol was leading the group in prayer when White returned upstairs. Patsy Ramsey was hysterical, wailing for Lazarus to raise her daughter from the dead.