Free JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation by Steve Thomas Page B

knowing what to do with all her money. In reality, she worked at a department store cosmetics counter. The patrol car, stuffed with Ramsey belongings, went to a drive-up window, and Pam (still wearing the BPD jacket) settled down with a Happy Meal. Chromiak paid the bill.
     
     
    The afternoon briefing began when John Eller walked into the Situation Room, where four long tables had been pushed together to form an empty square. The photo of JonBenét in her pink sweater was tacked to a wall, where it remained throughout the investigation. Gosage and I were at one corner, and every chair was filled, with more people standing. The SitRoom was to become my home for the next year and a half.
    Detective Linda Arndt reported that Ramsey lawyer Mike Bynum said the parents of the victim were willing to cooperate with the police, but that any further communication with John and Patsy Ramsey would be with their attorney, Bryan Morgan, present.
    Bynum also said the pediatrician, Dr. Beuf, had determined that Burke Ramsey could not be interviewed by police.
    Detective Arndt asked Bynum to schedule an interview with John and Patsy Ramsey.
     
     
    Later that afternoon, Detectives Arndt and Trujillo were advised by Deputy DA Pete Hofstrom that the Ramseys had now both retained counsel and would not consent to an interview with the police at this time. Hofstrom then suggested the detectives submit written questions. I did not believe the proposal should even be considered, for it would tip off the people being questioned, and their attorneys, to topics the police considered important.
    Hofstrom further advised that the Ramsey attorneys wanted to review all case information before allowing cops access to their clients. All case information? People we wanted to question in connection with the murder of JonBenét wanted an advance look at our case? Any investigator should refuse that demand. The suggestion was preposterous.
    But by now, it was plain that the newly hired Ramsey attorneys preferred to talk to the DA’s office instead of to the investigating detectives.
    When Detective Arndt was prepared to reply to Hofstrom, she dialed a telephone number where he said he could be located. It was the law office of Ramsey attorney Mike Bynum.
    The law is an adversarial process, and in most jurisdictions across the nation, the district attorney and his prosecutors are firmly on the other side of the fence from defense lawyers. Indeed, some are barely civil to each other because their jobs demand such different allegiances. No law-and-order prosecutor, who represents the public, should want to appear too cozy with defense lawyers. The way the justice system worked in Boulder was an anomaly, not the rule. For Deputy DA Pete Hofstrom, the prosecutor, to be making house calls on the defense lawyers was truly an ominous sign to the police.
    We were then brought up to date on a new discovery. Crime scene techs at the house had recovered three Sharpie felt-tip pens from an orange metal container on the kitchen counter beneath the telephone from which Patsy had made her 911 call, not far from where the ransom note tablet was found.
    That was exactly the sort of physical evidence we needed, and I thank God that Pam Paugh didn’t carry it away, because the U.S. Secret Service eventually determined that one of those pens, a pre-November 1992 water-based ink Sharpie, was used to write both the practice and actual ransom notes. The Secret Service, which maintains a huge database on inks because of its federally mandated assignment to chase forgers, told us, “The ink [on the notes] is unique in the collection of approximately 7,000 standards from the Ink Library.”
    That meant that whoever wrote the notes used that exact pen from that cup. They not only left the pad behind but, when they finished, neatly put the felt-tip pen in its container.
     
     
    Eller gave out new assignments. Gosage and I were to get over to the Criminal Justice Center and collect