The Death of a Little Girl

BOULDER, Colo. — From the start there were a lot of things that didn’t add up about the slaying of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey in her home the day after Christmas.

Why didn’t Boulder police immediately secure the premises and conduct a square-inch-by-square-inch search after JonBenet’s mother reported that she had found a ransom note on a stairway?

What kind of kidnapper would sit down and write a three-page ransom note demanding a paltry $118,000? This, after discarding a “practice ransom note” in the house.

What stranger would have known about the obscure, windowless room in the basement where the little blue-eyed blond’s body was found?

And Marc Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was murdered in 1993, is not the only one wondering why JonBenet’s parents are delaying a formal interview with homicide investigators that could help eliminate them as potential suspects.

“I’m floored by the whole thing,” said Prabha Unnithan, a professor of sociology and coordinator of the criminal justice program at Colorado State University. “It’s so out of the ordinary from the way law enforcement agencies normally process child homicide cases.”

While protecting the Ramseys’ rights is critical, it is essential, he said, “that the parents be interviewed sooner rather than later. And, as soon as the ransom note was reported, the police should have secured the place and conducted a thorough search. That’s what you do.”

Like many others watching from the sidelines, Unnithan also wonders whether police were influenced by the fact that 53-year-old John Ramsey is a multimillionaire in a town where the police chief’s main mission has been to improve relations with the community.

“The only thing I can speculate,” he said, “is that because of the social status of the parents, considerations were given to the Ramseys that police would not otherwise give to people.”

Sgt. Don Girson, a homicide investigator with the police department in Lakewood, Colo., put it another way: “It’s an incredibly interesting case. I’m just glad it’s Boulder’s and not ours.”

In his first public comments about the investigation, Boulder Police Chief Tom Koby on Thursday denied that his department has veered from standard procedures in dealing with John Ramsey, founder of Access Graphics, a billion-dollar computer firm, or Patricia Ramsey, a former Miss West Virginia.

“There is nothing that has been done either by us or the Ramseys that is out of order,” he said. “Any legal expert will tell you we have handled this exactly the way it needs to be handled within the guidelines and procedures of the criminal justice system.”

Koby refused to discuss any details of the case. But he defended the efforts of the investigative team working nonstop since Dec. 26.

“Our allegiance is solely to JonBenet Ramsey,” he said. “We have dedicated ourselves to bringing justice to the person or persons responsible for her death. Everything else is secondary.”

In an earlier interview, Koby vowed that the investigation would not become another “O.J. Simpson” case. On Thursday, he clarified that statement by saying the case “would not be tried in the press.”

Yet, the slaying of JonBenet has captivated the country like nothing else since O.J. Simpson was arrested in connection with the murder of his former wife, Nicole, and restaurant worker Ron Goldman. Among the haunting similarities: criticism directed at homicide investigators for mishandling evidence.

But even more horrific is the thought of a small child found sexually assaulted, gagged with duct tape and strangled with a nylon cord in the bowels of a spacious Tudor-style home on a quiet street in a college town about 30 miles northwest of Denver.

The case unfolded at about 5 a.m. on Dec. 26 when Patricia Ramsey found the ransom note. It had been written with a black felt-tip pen on a legal pad that was in the home.

Phrases in the note reportedly indicated that it was left by a foreign group angry at certain overseas offices of her husband’s company. It demanded $118,000 for her daughter’s release--and warned against calling police.

She called 911 anyway. Police arrived within minutes and conducted a cursory search of the property. They did not, however, look in the basement, Koby said. Nor did they initially clear people from the house to prevent contamination of evidence.

Koby maintains this is because his investigators were working under the assumption at the time that the case involved a kidnapping, not homicide.

Denver newspapers have reported that the family withdrew $118,000 from a local bank--about $100,000 of it in $100 bills. At about 2 p.m., they were waiting for the kidnapper to call back when the lead detective at the scene asked John Ramsey to take another look around and see if anything was out of order.

With a friend in tow, Ramsey went down to the basement and found his daughter behind a jammed door in a partitioned basement room that had been used to store Christmas presents. He stripped the duct tape from her mouth, cradled the body in his arms and rushed up the stairs.

Given the circumstances, Ramsey’s actions were understandable. Nonetheless, forensic scientists say that he disturbed--and probably destroyed--crucial evidence in the process.

Nothing has gone by the book in this case. Take the ransom note, which was “loaded with red flags,” according to one seasoned handwriting analyst.

“Most kidnap / ransom notes are as short and sweet as possible,” forensic graphologist Nadelle Claypool said. “The likelihood of a kidnapper sitting down in the home and writing a three-page note is not impossible. But typically, they are prepared in advance. The kidnapper takes the child, drops the note and leaves.”

Authorities also found no evidence of forced entry at the 15-room brick home of the family that was known to be extremely security conscious when it came to the safety of their children, JonBenet and Burke, 9.

Yet, inexplicably, their sophisticated intruder alarm system was not functioning on Christmas evening.

Since that night, 30 police investigators have been struggling to find the killer in the intimidating glare of national attention and a media feeding frenzy. They spent eight days gathering evidence in the family’s residence and at their vacation home in Charlevoix, Mich.

They have also collected hair, blood and handwriting samples from the family, as well as from friends, relatives and others who had access to the home in Boulder and the exclusive Atlanta suburb where the family lived until 1991.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is comparing those samples with evidence turned up at the scene to help eliminate potential suspects or incriminate the perpetrator. So far, the case remains wide open.

Among the dozens of people interviewed by investigators in recent days was Shirley Brady, 69, who worked as a nanny for the family in Atlanta for three years. In an interview, Brady said an investigator “talked to me for about five minutes. Most of his questions were about Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey.

“He asked me if Mr. Ramsey’s first wife ever complained about child abuse,” recalled Brady, who attended JonBenet’s funeral in Atlanta a week ago. “Mr. Ramsey would cut his arm off before he hurt any child, much less his own.”

JonBenet’s parents have provided written responses to some of the questions submitted to them by investigators and provided CNN with an extraordinary 40-minute interview that dominated the airwaves New Year’s evening.

They have also hired high-powered attorneys and a media consultant to fend off all comers, and offered a $50,000 reward.

Amid the legal standoff that critics have come to call “Ramseys vs. Boulder,” officials have held multiple news conferences to say that the killing--the city’s first in 1996--is not a trend in the making.

At the same time, tongues are wagging about the wisdom of pushing so young a child into the cattle-call world of beauty pageants. But friends remind that 39-year-old Patricia Ramsey, Miss West Virginia of 1977, has long been a financial supporter of pageant programs.

Over the past year, she and her husband crisscrossed the country with their daughter on the pageant circuit, stacking up crowns along the way.

By all accounts, JonBenet was a preternaturally beautiful child made even more lovely by beauticians, cosmetics and the finest gowns that made her look for all the world like a pint-sized Barbara Mandrell.

Now, she is an icon for an unsolved murder.

“She had such a future,” said Buffie Davenport, publisher and editor of Babbette’s Pageant & Talent Gazette, which will feature a cover story on the little girl in February. “What a shame.”

* Times researcher Edith Stanley in Atlanta contributed to this article.