PMPT
Perfect Murder, Perfect Town : The Uncensored Story of the JonBenet Murder and the Grand Jury's Search for the Final Truth - PDF Free Download
"257, For seven weeks the police had been interviewing the Ramseys’ family, friends, and business associates without turning up any real suspects. ... On February 20, Detective Harmer interviewed Randy Simons. Simons told her that on June 5, 1996, he had spent an entire day photographing JonBenét. Since JonBenét’s death, his shots and Mark Fix’s runway snaps had been sold to over two hundred magazines and newspapers, and now Simons was being pressured by the media for photographs of JonBenét in more provocative poses. He had never taken such shots, he told the police. The night of the murder, Simons said, he had been at home alone in Genoa, 120 miles from Boulder."
"258, In May 1996 Kristine’s mom, Pam Griffin, referred Patsy Ramsey to Simons, and she booked her daughter for a June 5 shooting. Because JonBenét was only six, Randy set aside only half a day. He knew he’d be lucky to get an hour or two from a child that young."
"259, It wasn’t long before the tabloids were saying that Patsy had forced JonBenét into some excruciating shots. I never saw anything like that. I was paid $590 for the day. Patsy gave me a tip of $45. A month later, she ordered $960 worth of hand-retouched prints. —Randy Simons
Three weeks later, on March 12, Detective Jeff Kithcart interviewed Mark Fix, who had also photographed JonBenét at various pageants. Fix, who had been a forensic photographer and had gone through 240 hours of police-academy training, was also a “certified protection professional”—a bodyguard. Kithcart was interested in what Fix knew about Randy Simons. Could he be a suspect? He said no. Fix told the detective that Simons was into high fashion and pageants and had clients from all over the country. His specialty was shooting five- and six-year-olds, and he was known for his creative flair with lighting and retouching. A Randy Simons photo, Fix said, automatically gave a pageant contestant a higher score in the Miss Photogenic competition. Simons was something of an “odd critter,” though, said Fix. Right now he claimed that people were chasing him and that the Ramseys were pointing the finger at him. Simons had even told Fix that some paramilitary group was trying to ambush him and steal his negatives. He’d shot someone in the leg with an arrow to protect himself, Fix said, shrugging."
"411, who had photographed her. Several mothers of child pageant contestants, who had known Simons for years, found it hard to reconcile his strange behavior after the murder with the man they had known before. Two mothers claimed that Simons called them late at night and talked about how JonBenét had been sexually abused. Hunter called investigator Steve Ainsworth into the meeting with Singular so that the detective could hear directly what some of the mothers had said. Later the DA called Pam Griffin to ask about the photographer. She said that Simons had once asked for permission to take her daughter’s face and transpose it to a sexy body in a photograph. It was out of character for Simons, Pam said. Hunter told Singular that he was having trouble getting the police to pursue the line of inquiry Singular was suggesting, and he asked the writer to see what he could learn about the people JonBenét saw outside her immediate family. Hunter wanted to know how she acted when she was not in the company of friends and family. The DA also wanted handwriting samples from the people that Singular thought should be considered. Finally, Hunter asked for help in finding potential sources of the ligature. He didn’t care if it pointed to the Ramseys or someone else, he said. He wanted the information. Hunter was so intent on finding something everybody else had missed that some of his deputies had begun to refer to him as Dick Tracy. Lou Smit and Steve Ainsworth read over the reports of the police interviews with Randy Simons. It appeared that he’d never been questioned in depth.Yet who better than a photographer to familiarize them with the fringe world of beauty pageants? On May 14 they drove to Genoa, Colorado, where Simons was living. The next day Simons granted Ainsworth an interview but was unable to shed much light on the case. Still, because he was a professional photographer who sometimes photographed nudes, they investigated him as 412, well.
Without the photographer’s knowledge, Hunter’s office obtained handwriting samples and a sample of his saliva from a cigarette butt. A month later, on June 17, Ainsworth also interviewed pageant photographer Mark Fix. Eventually Ainsworth concluded that neither photographer had been involved in the death of JonBenét.
The detectives presented a long list of suspects who had been considered and dropped.
Randy Simons, Kevin Raburn, Bud Henderson, Linda Hoffmann-Pugh, Joe Barnhill, and Chris Wolf had been eliminated by forensics evidence. Others, like Sandra Henderson, had ironclad alibis. By now, all but two of the thirty-two known sex offenders in the Boulder area had been cleared."
