Free Perfect Murder, Perfect Town by Lawrence Schiller Page A

Patsy was heavily sedated. She was in shock, could barely talk, and couldn’t sit up or stand. An interview was out of the question.
    In the Fernies’ basement office, the detectives sat with John Ramsey, his brother, Jeff, Dr. Francesco Beuf and his friend and broker, Rod Westmoreland. Michael Bynum, Ramsey’s lawyer, sat at the opposite side of the room but close enough to hear what Mason was saying. The detectives decided that under the circumstances, it would make more sense to schedule later interviews with the Ramseys. Earlier Mason had told Ramsey how important his and Patsy’s contribution to the investigation would be. Now he said their assistance would be vital to finding their little girl’s killer. Ramsey said he could not set a time and date for the interview. Arndt asked him a few questions, but his answers were so vague that the detectives soon left.
    After the police departed, Bynum and Westmoreland sat beside their friend, holding him as he wept. It was 2:00 in the morning before Ramsey fell asleep. A few minutes later he was up again, sobbing.
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    That night, John Meyer returned to the morgue. With the coroner was Dr. Andrew Sirotnak, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado’s Health Sciences Center. The two men reexamined JonBenét’s genitals and confirmed Meyer’s earlier findings that there was evidenceof vaginal injury. Meyer knew that JonBenét’s death could be traced to strangulation and a blow to the head, but the facts surrounding the sexual assault of the child were unclear. In the event of a trial, the physical evidence about that would be open to interpretation.

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    On Saturday morning, December 28, seventy parents and children showed up at High Peaks Elementary School. The administrator had arranged for therapists to come in to talk to the kids and their parents. The school was in a U-shaped red brick building whose interior had been scrubbed clean and spruced up by dedicated parents. Now, many of these same adults gathered around the small tables in the library and talked in groups. Some of them were grateful to be temporarily separated from their children. It would give them a chance to express their own sadness and anxiety freely.
    In the kindergarten classroom, children of various ages were gathered, some of them hyper, some of them relaxed, all of them full of questions. Charles Elbot, the principal, got their attention and then sat in one of the little chairs and read aloud from a book entitled Lifetimes, the Beautiful Way to Explain Death to Children .
    All round us, everywhere, beginnings and endings are going on all the time. With living in between.
    Sometimes, living things become ill or they get hurt.
    Mostly, of course, they get better again but there are times when they are so badly hurt orthey are so ill that they die because they can no longer stay alive.
    This can happen when you are young, or old, or anywhere in between.
    He told the children that there was no right or wrong way to feel at a time like this and that they should not be afraid to talk to their parents or teachers. “You need to know that tonight you should feel safe,” he said. “What happened doesn’t usually happen in Boulder.”
    â€œYeah,” one third grader responded, “JonBenét’s parents would have told her that too.”
    â€œThat’s true,” Elbot said. “But you need to understand it’s a rare occurrence.”
    He told the children that this was like crossing the street—an accident can happen, but it’s not likely to happen.
    Elbot knew the children were terrified.
    He suggested to them that they make some drawings. Jo-Lynn Yoshihara-Daly, the school’s social worker, helped the younger children. Some of the kids painted pictures of JonBenét’s family. Some drew JonBenét. Some added words to their pictures.
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    A few of us parents thought we should only tell