We achieved a Pyrrhic victory on November 5 when Beckner burst into the SitRoom and proudly handed me a "Consent to Release of Telephone Records" signed by both John Ramsey and Pete Hofstrom. It allowed us to obtain the Ramseys' cellular and home telephone records between December 1 and 27, 1996. We had to wait almost a year to see them, which had given the Ramsey lawyers months to work through the limited documents. The woefully incomplete permission slip did not give up Ramsey's company phones, calls made with a telephone card, or records about calls before or after December. We found nothing worthwhile. Just another exhausting trip to nowhere.
I sent a fax to AirTouch in Washington state and personally served the paper on US West in downtown Denver.
"I've been waiting for a phone call from you guys since last December," a telephone company security official said as he handed me the packer. "Usually cops come and get these things right away."
I winced, so tired of being embarassed by this case.
"Yeah, I get subpoenas and warrants every day," he repeated. "Surprised you took so long."
"I'll have to explain it to you someday," I replied and headed for the elevator.
The AirTouch cell phone records were useless. Ramsey started the service in January 1994. AirTouch said that 91 minutes of use were logged during the August-September billing period of 1996, and 108 minutes were used in September-October. October-November was just as busy.
December, however, the only period we were allowed to see, was empty. No calls at all. I asked if someone could have removed billing records from the computer? "No way," the AirTouch source told me.
"All these months preceding December are busy, and not one call was logged for that entire month?"
The representative was firm: "There ain't no way anybody altered these records." It wasn't logical. A search warrant might have answered the questions eleven months ago, but we had only this thin new "consent."
Checking the records, I found a repeat caller to John Ramsey's private office line. Three calls the day after the murder and two more a few days later came from the home phone of the lieutenant governor of the State of Colorado, Gail Schoettler.
Treating her like any other witness simply didn't work. The lieutenant governor strutted her political power and stonewalled me until she was damned good and ready to answer questions. Her husband, Don Stevens, a friend of John Ramsey for thirty-five years, had made the calls merely to convey sympathy, Schoettler told me. The experience demonstrated how deeply John Ramsey was plugged into the Democratic Party power structure. Colorado Governor Roy Romer was chairman of the Democratic National Committee and advised by the politically astute Hal Haddon, one of John Ramsey's attorneys. Haddon's firm prepared President Clinton's taxes. When Schoettler left office, she was appointed head of the US delegation to an international commission by President Clinton.
