recent painting. She pulled at it hard and the door finally opened. Feeling around in the dark, she found a light switch on the wall to her right.
The room was full of trees, some still covered with last year’s decorations, replicas of Burke’s model airplanes and John Andrew’s cowboy hats, boots, and red scarves. The next day the housekeeper had her older daughter, Tina, her son-in-law Mike, and her husband, Merv, take all the trees upstairs and place them in their proper rooms.
The police asked Hoffmann-Pugh if she had closed the door to that storage room securely. She didn’t know. She couldn’t even tell the police what the room looked like empty because she wasn’t the last person to leave, she said.
When the police asked if she’d seen a broken window in the basement or had ever cleaned up broken glass from a broken window, she said she couldn’t recall anything like that.
That same Friday, December 27, the police fingerprinted the housekeeper’s entire family, including her daughters and sons-in-law.
On Monday morning, December 30, several of Sheriff George Epp’s detectives met with him in his office at the Justice Center. Sheriff Epp had jurisdiction over the entire county, which included the city of Boulder. Even though the Boulder PD had primary responsibility for the city, the sheriff’s department and the Boulder PD often loaned each other officers. The day after JonBenét’s body was found, the Boulder police had requested four of Epp’s detectives to work on the Ramsey case. Epp’s officers had been involved with kidnappings in the past, including the Tracy Neef case, in which a child had been abducted from Bertha Hyde Elementary School and found dead near BarkerReservoir at the top of Boulder Canyon.
This morning Epp’s detectives were upset with what they’d seen over the weekend. Eller, they said, wasn’t organized. He wasn’t running things efficiently. Some officers were just sitting around when they should have been canvassing the Ramseys’ neighborhood. One of the detectives said that Eller’s attitude was, We’ll just vacuum up all the evidence, pull together everything, and give it to the DA to make a case out of it.
Epp was also troubled to learn that Larry Mason was working for Eller. Larry was the kind of cop who needed to be nurtured by his supervisor. But Eller’s reputation was that he wouldn’t accept input from anyone. Mason and Hofstrom could work well together, but Eller and Mason were bound to be trouble.
After the meeting with his detectives, Epp called police chief Tom Koby and offered his department’s continued assistance. He had a couple of detectives available who wanted to help, he said.
“We’re fine,” Koby told him. “We can handle it ourselves.”
A few weeks later, one sheriff’s detective made T-shirts for his department, stenciled with WE ’ RE THE OTHER GUYS in bold letters. When the case dragged on, a second set of T-shirts appeared, bearing the slogan WHEN IT ABSOLUTELY , POSITIVELY HAS TO BE SOLVED OVERNIGHT .
That Monday afternoon, December 30, Pete Hofstrom received a letter from Bryan Morgan, one of the Ramseys’ attorneys. A gracious gentleman in his midfifties with a passion for tough cases, Grady Morgan preferred to be known by his middle name as a tribute to his birthplace, Bryan, Texas. A proper defense, he believed, included addressing a client’s emotional needs.
In his letter to Hofstrom, Morgan said he wanted to beinformed in advance when it looked as if evidence might be destroyed by forensic tests. He asked for approval and participation in the tests of the physical evidence being provided by the Ramseys. Morgan also requested copies of the ransom note, the autopsy report, the affidavits for the search warrants, and copies of keys to the Ramsey house that were in the possession of the police.
Meanwhile, in Marietta, Georgia, Gary Mann, John Ramsey’s boss at Lockheed Martin, attended the visitation
The room was full of trees, some still covered with last year’s decorations, replicas of Burke’s model airplanes and John Andrew’s cowboy hats, boots, and red scarves. The next day the housekeeper had her older daughter, Tina, her son-in-law Mike, and her husband, Merv, take all the trees upstairs and place them in their proper rooms.
The police asked Hoffmann-Pugh if she had closed the door to that storage room securely. She didn’t know. She couldn’t even tell the police what the room looked like empty because she wasn’t the last person to leave, she said.
When the police asked if she’d seen a broken window in the basement or had ever cleaned up broken glass from a broken window, she said she couldn’t recall anything like that.
That same Friday, December 27, the police fingerprinted the housekeeper’s entire family, including her daughters and sons-in-law.
On Monday morning, December 30, several of Sheriff George Epp’s detectives met with him in his office at the Justice Center. Sheriff Epp had jurisdiction over the entire county, which included the city of Boulder. Even though the Boulder PD had primary responsibility for the city, the sheriff’s department and the Boulder PD often loaned each other officers. The day after JonBenét’s body was found, the Boulder police had requested four of Epp’s detectives to work on the Ramsey case. Epp’s officers had been involved with kidnappings in the past, including the Tracy Neef case, in which a child had been abducted from Bertha Hyde Elementary School and found dead near BarkerReservoir at the top of Boulder Canyon.
This morning Epp’s detectives were upset with what they’d seen over the weekend. Eller, they said, wasn’t organized. He wasn’t running things efficiently. Some officers were just sitting around when they should have been canvassing the Ramseys’ neighborhood. One of the detectives said that Eller’s attitude was, We’ll just vacuum up all the evidence, pull together everything, and give it to the DA to make a case out of it.
Epp was also troubled to learn that Larry Mason was working for Eller. Larry was the kind of cop who needed to be nurtured by his supervisor. But Eller’s reputation was that he wouldn’t accept input from anyone. Mason and Hofstrom could work well together, but Eller and Mason were bound to be trouble.
After the meeting with his detectives, Epp called police chief Tom Koby and offered his department’s continued assistance. He had a couple of detectives available who wanted to help, he said.
“We’re fine,” Koby told him. “We can handle it ourselves.”
A few weeks later, one sheriff’s detective made T-shirts for his department, stenciled with WE ’ RE THE OTHER GUYS in bold letters. When the case dragged on, a second set of T-shirts appeared, bearing the slogan WHEN IT ABSOLUTELY , POSITIVELY HAS TO BE SOLVED OVERNIGHT .
That Monday afternoon, December 30, Pete Hofstrom received a letter from Bryan Morgan, one of the Ramseys’ attorneys. A gracious gentleman in his midfifties with a passion for tough cases, Grady Morgan preferred to be known by his middle name as a tribute to his birthplace, Bryan, Texas. A proper defense, he believed, included addressing a client’s emotional needs.
In his letter to Hofstrom, Morgan said he wanted to beinformed in advance when it looked as if evidence might be destroyed by forensic tests. He asked for approval and participation in the tests of the physical evidence being provided by the Ramseys. Morgan also requested copies of the ransom note, the autopsy report, the affidavits for the search warrants, and copies of keys to the Ramsey house that were in the possession of the police.
Meanwhile, in Marietta, Georgia, Gary Mann, John Ramsey’s boss at Lockheed Martin, attended the visitation
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