Chapter Twenty-Five: The Evolution of John Ramsey's Statements
The following is a synopsis of the statements made by John Ramsey with regard to some of the actions taken on the morning of the discovery of the ransom note. Included are his thoughts about the intruder and the suspected point of entry used to access the residence.
The Chronological History of John Ramsey's Statements
- -> Initial Police Investigation: December 26, 1996:
John advised officers/investigators that he believed the house to have been locked on the evening of December 25, 1996.
He indicated that he observed no signs of forced entry to the house.
John stated that he conducted a cursory search of JonBenet's bedroom after reading the ransom note, but there was never any mention of a trip to the basement.
During questioning by police investigators about possible suspects, John and Patsy provided names and possible motives for suspects, but John did not say anything about his observations and suspicions regarding a possible entry/exit point to the residence.
- - > Follow-up Police Interview: December 27, 1996:
Sergeant Larry Mason and Detective Linda Arndt responded to the Fernie residence ... Patsy was too distraught to answer questions about the death of her daughter.
Ramsey friend/attorney Michael Bynum ... wouldn't permit an interview to take place at the police department.
Sergeant Mason asked John about the broken window in the basement and was told that he had broken it during a forced entry to his home the previous summer when he had left his keys behind.
Police investigators were subsequently advised on December 28th that members of the Ramsey family were now being represented by legal counsel. Any questions investigators wished to pose to them would have to be routed through the district attorney's office.
- - > CNN Interview: January 1, 1997:
Not yet having participated in a formal police interview, the Ramseys decided to involve the national media by providing an interview with CNN in Georgia.
John stated that he had 'shared his thoughts with the police' and that he intended to return to Boulder and speak to investigators.
John reported that they were "now ready to cooperate."
John stated that he/family were "not angry" about JonBenet's death but he/they were interested in finding out "why" this had occurred.
John and Patsy pointed to the involvement of an intruder in the death of their daughter but, other than mentioning the ransom note, provided no other details about an intruder's activities in their home.
- - > Police Interview: April 10, 1997:
Having negotiated the terms of their first official police interview, John advised investigators that the garage door was typically used to enter and exit the home.
He reported that he had checked the 1st floor doors and they appeared to have been locked.
John reported that he had been in the Train Room sometime early that morning and observed the broken window but that he didn't see any glass. (The exact timing of this visit is not made clear during the interview but it was described as being later in the morning, after the 911 call to authorities.)
When he did visit the basement, John assumed that the window was broken from his summer 1996 forced-entry to the basement.
He reported that the Train Room window was open approximately "1/8 inch."
John stated that he closed and latched the window.
John reports that he didn't return to the basement until at the direction of Detective Arndt. This took place at approximately 1:00 pm and he led Fleet White to the Train Room and informed him of his previous forced entry into the room. They inspected the window and looked for window glass together.
John stated that the unlatched window struck him as a little unusual ... but it wasn't dramatically out of the ordinary.
He didn't bring it to anyone's attention.
John went on to state: "My theory is that someone came in through the basement window ... because there was the blue Samsonite suitcase also sitting right under the window." "[He] ... could have gotten into the house without that but you couldn't have gotten out that window without something to step on ... those windows weren't obvious to somebody just walking by."
- - > Denver News Media Interview: May 1, 1997:
In response to the criticism of the father of murder victim Polly Klaas regarding their lack of cooperation with authorities, John reports to the media that they (the Ramsey family) had 'spoken with police investigators for approximately eight hours on December 26 and another two hours on December 27 and that they had supplied them with every piece of information they had.'
John stated, "And we have all along, through our investigative group ... communicated every piece of information we had that we felt was relevant to the case."
- - > Boulder County District Attorney's Interview: June 23, 1998:
John was "perplexed" at how they got in. 'Later in the morning ... wondering if anyone was watching the house ... went to Burke's room with binoculars.' "There was a truck parked in the alley across the road [behind the Barnhill residence] that I never noticed before. There was a white Ford Fiesta driving by more than once."
John reported that he had gone to the basement earlier and found the door to the Train Room 'kinda blocked ... there was a chair in front of the doors ... window was cracked open ... maybe an inch."
- - > Continuation of District Attorney's Office Interview: June 24, 1998:
Detective Lou Smit and John review photograph #71, which depicts the entryway to the Train Room:
JR: What is different, the door is blocked by this drum table. Here's the chair I said was blocking the door ... I moved the chair to get into the door. When I went down, that chair was kind of blocking that entrance right there [Train Room door]. There was something else on the other side ... but all I had to do was move that chair and I walked into the room."
LS: So do you think that the chair would block the door in an attempt that nobody would have gotten in there without moving it?
JR: Correct.
LS: In other words, let's say that the intruder goes into the Train Room and gets out, let's say, that window ... would he get that chair to block the door ...
JR: I go down. I moved that chair and went in the room.
LS: So you couldn't have gotten in without moving the chair?
JR: Correct.
LS: I'm trying to figure out, if an intruder went through the door, he's almost have had to pull the chair behind him ... that would have been his exit.
JR: Yeah, it was blocked. He had to move something to get in the room.
LS: And he would have had to have moved it back, if he was in there, to get out.
JR: Yeah.
LS: So that's not very logical in terms of doing that.
JR: Yeah, I think it is, if this person is bizarrely clever to have not left any good evidence, yet left all these funny clues around, they certainly are clever enough to pull the chair back when they left.
- - > ABC News Interview: March 17, 2000:
During a nationally televised interview with Barbara Walters, John shares his thoughts regarding the open Train Room window: "I was a bit alarmed, but I was more alarmed with the Samsonite suitcase that was standing up below the window. That looked wrong. That suitcase did not belong there ... it was out of place."
John's first impression was that the kidnapper had gone through the window.
- - > Excerpts from the Ramsey's book, The Death of Innocence, published March 2000:
Sometime that morning while awaiting the ransom call, John recalls breaking into the basement Train Room when locked out of the house that previous summer.
While waiting for the ransom call, he remembers that the note indicates the kidnappers will be watching. Hoping to catch them looking at the house, he races upstairs to find binoculars.
He observes a strange vehicle in the alley across the street behind the Barnhill residence. After several minutes, nothing has happened and he returned downstairs.
The ransom call does not come by 1000 hrs and John's desperation increases.
"That entry point needs to be looked at ... the pane is still broken and the window is open, with a large old Samsonite suitcase sitting under it. Odd, I think. This doesn't look right."
"This suitcase is not normally kept here. Maybe this is how the kidnapper got in and out of our house. The window ledge is a few feet off the floor, so a person would need something to stand on in order to get up and out."
- - > Videotaped deposition of John Ramsey in Civil Case 00CIV1187(JEC) 'Robert C Wolf v. John Ramsey, Atlanta, Georgia: December 12, 2001:
John testified that he went to the basement on one occasion before Detective Arndt asked him to check the residence. He did not remember the time that he made the first trip to the basement.
When asked what he remembered seeing in the basement when he went down there, John states: "I saw a partially opened window with broken glass and a suitcase beneath the window."
When asked if he saw anything else there, John responded: "Not that looked out of the ordinary."
Questioned as to why he went to the basement, John states: "I was trying to determine how someone could have gotten into our house."
John advised that no one directed him to check the basement and doesn't know if anyone saw him go there.
He had a vague recollection of mentioning the broken window to Detective Arndt, but had explained his earlier summer entry to the house.
What I found disturbing about the chronology of these statements is that John had failed to mention his observations, and suspicions, about the suitcase to investigators on the morning of the kidnapping. He had the opportunity to tell Detective Arndt about this after his exploration of the basement. This was a crucial bit of information, especially in light of the fact that everyone in the house was puzzled about how kidnappers had gained entrance to the house that morning.
He also neglected to mention these observations to Sergeant Mason the following evening, on December 27, 1996, when officers visited the family at the Fernie residence.
Moreover, investigators didn't learn about John's observation of the 'suspicious' vehicles in the neighborhood until June 1998. I am aware that BPD investigators were driving through the neighborhood in unmarked vehicles on the morning of the kidnapping, and they could have easily checked on the identity of the people occupying those vehicles.
And then came the 1998 revelation that a suspect was believed to have moved a chair in the basement before escaping the residence. This chair could have yielded latent fingerprints for comparison against the seventy-one million known offenders maintained in the national IAFIS FBI database. This database is more than seven times the size of the DNA database and I would suggest that this would have improved the chances of identifying a suspect if latent fingerprints had been collected from the chair.
Despite claims that the family had shared all of the information they had with law enforcement authorities, it was discouraging to bear witness to the wasted opportunities presented in the events chronicled above.
Assuming the intruder theory to be valid, it is entirely possible that the case could have been significantly advanced by identifying the people in the vehicles observed by Ramsey, and by the processing of critical evidence that might have been handled by suspects while in the home.
