A wonderful author. A true gentleman. Visit his site at:
www.stephensingular.com See link to the right for Simon Says, associates of Stephen Singular. I thank you. -SD
Computer Crime Research Center
JonBenet Ramsey - Exclusive Interview With Stephen Singular
Date: July 12, 2004
Source: Crime Library
By: Patrick Bellamy
Stephen Singular is a highly regarded journalist and freelance writer. Apart from his book Presumed Guilty -- An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, The Media and the Culture of Pornography, he is the author of ten other non-fiction books including the New York Times best-selling A Killing in the Family, which eventually became the NBC-TV mini-series Love Lies and Murder. His first book Talked to Death: The Life &Murder of Alan Berg - which dealt with the assassination of Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg by neo-Nazis - was the basis for Oliver Stone's 1989 film, Talk Radio. His latest book, due for release at the end of 2000, is called -- The Uncivil War: The Rise of Hate, Violence, and Terrorism in America.
Bellamy is a former Scientific Investigator with a prominent Australian Police Department. Trained as a Crime Scene Analyst, his case experience includes the investigation of serious crime including multiple murder, rape, arson, bombings, aircraft crashes and acts of terrorism.
After leaving the department, he became a private investigator specialising in insurance fraud and motor vehicle accident investigation. He has worked in a variety of fields including financial futures trader and computer store proprietor. He has been writing true crime articles since 1998 and currently lives in Queensland.
THE INTERVIEW
Q: When you first went to Boulder, Colorado in January 1997 following JonBenet's murder, did you, like the hundreds of other journalists drawn to the area at the time, have any pre-conceived ideas regarding who might be responsible for the crime?
I try not to have pre-conceived ideas about murders, but to discover what my ideas and perceptions are along the way. Even if you know what happened in a case, you still want to know why it happened. So you're always searching for that. By February 1997, when no arrest had been quickly made in the Ramsey case, I began to think that it was a more complicated homicide than the media was portraying it to be. The longer the case went on without an arrest, the more convinced of that I became.
Q: Prior to your first meeting with Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter in April 1997, what research had you undertaken on the case?
I had gone online and looked at pictures of little girls, five and six-year-olds, the same age as JonBenet, who were being used for child pornography purposes. They were being tied up by their hands and ankles and being sexually abused, or laid out on tables or hung from ceilings. They were being treated violently, and ropes, scarves, and belts were used to tie them up. These photographic situations looked very similar to the conditions surrounding the death of JonBenet, who was strangled to death with a piece of nylon rope. Before meeting Hunter I'd also talked to computer crime specialists who told me that child porn was now the fastest growing criminal activity in cyberspace.
Q: How did you make the connection between the JonBenet Ramsey case and child pornography?
I didn't make the connection as much as I felt that this area should be investigated by the authorities because of the similarities between what I'd seen online and the child's murder. And because I'd been told by cyber-crime specialists that JonBenet was precisely the kind of child, because of her beauty pageant experience, who could be sucked into the world of child porn. She was a natural candidate to attract attention -- and pedophiles. Once it became apparent, from the cops' investigation, that the Ramseys did not seem to be involved in abusing their child and this was not an obvious case of a parent raping or killing their little girl, then the next place to investigate was the subculture of exploitation and violence that JonBenet was exposed to through her success in the pageant world. If you can determine that her parents had no criminal past or even criminal tendencies, and you can also determine that a child was connected to things that hold criminal behavior, why wouldn't you investigate those things and that behavior?
Q: You were responsible for focusing Alex Hunter and his team on another suspect weren't you?
Yes, I told Hunter that a photographer (Randy Simons) who'd taken JonBenet's picture and who, according to some pageant moms in the Denver-Boulder area, had asked if he could photograph their girls nude or semi-nude, had freaked out following the murder and had acted very suspiciously ever since. I was not suggesting that Simons participated in the death of JonBenet but that he might well have knowledge of the kinds of activities and subculture I was telling Hunter about. At the time I told the DA this, he'd never heard of Simons, which indicates just how much the Boulder police resisted investigating the murder outside of the family and how little they knew about the world JonBenet had been exposed to through her
pageant connections.
Q: What was the result of those investigations?
The police never truly investigated Simons or anyone else who raised the possibility of a different scenario for this homicide. They were, to use Hunter's word, "fixated" on the Ramseys and still are.
Q: So when police chief Mark Beckner told the press that his detectives had "intensively investigated" numerous other suspects, apart from the Ramseys, he wasn't telling the truth?
He was telling the truth as he saw it. They did devote a little time to this or that person but never with any conviction or genuine curiosity. From firsthand observations of the police behavior in this case, I can tell you that they have not deeply investigated a number of credible leads. They haven't acted this way out of malice, but because they hold only one view of the case. The murder can't be solved, I believe, because that view doesn't fit the evidence.
Q: In February this year, a Californian woman came forward and, through her counselor, advised the Boulder police that she had previously been molested at the hands of a pedophile ring that she thought was also responsible for the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. How significant was her evidence and do you think Alex Hunter and the BPD treated it seriously?
I think much of what she said -- and I was present during several of her interviews -- is very significant. The Ramseys have gone on TV and begged the public for information about this murder. They have presented a profile of their daughter's killer: a pedophile in Boulder who knew their family. This woman came forward and talked about a pedophilic group in Boulder with connections to their family, and she suggested that this group might have played a role in their daughter's death. The Ramseys wanted absolutely nothing to do with her -- even though she was talking about things that appeared to exonerate them in the murder of their child. What does this tell you? They don't want this pedophile door opened even one crack. The
secrets of the case, I believe, lie in there and they (or at least one of the parents) don't want anyone to explore this realm of child exploitation, abuse, and pornography. It is better to be accused of being a murderer than to have other things come out. Hunter took her seriously, but the BPD, which interviewed her and was the agency that should have investigated her claims, dismissed her the same way they've dismissed everyone and everything that haven't fit their scenario. For the Ramseys, or one Ramsey, there appeared to be a worse scenario than having both Patsy and their young son Burke being publicly accused, for the past three years, of killing JonBenet. That scenario had to do with making their daughter the victim of a child sex ring in Boulder. Why was this more threatening than having your family members accused of the most terrible thing a person can do?
Q: Can you suggest any scenarios that would explain why they would want to cover something like that up and allow themselves to be implicated in their daughters murder in the process?
Both parents, as I've suggested, are not involved in the same things, so the cover-up then becomes broader than merely hiding things from the police. And once certain actions were taken on the night of the murder, taken in a moment of absolute panic, they could not be undone. Also, the Ramseys have never been legally implicated in the murder of their daughter. They've only been accused of this by the media and others. So the plan, at least to date, has worked. They are not in jail and not likely to be charged with the crime soon. It is better, isn't it, to be thought a bad person by much of the world, than to face the worst accusations from the people closest to you? So silence prevails.
Q: Why do you think those closest to the case and the general public were so quick to implicate John and Patsy for JonBenet's death?
Because it's easy. People need to hate other people and the media feeds this need. It's in the business of creating demons and selling them to the public. None of this has anything to do with solving murder cases. It's just dollars and cents. As for the cops who were so certain the Ramseys were guilty, they were merely looking at the statistic that says in 10 out of 11 cases in which a child is found dead in the house, a parent did it. They were going by the book. But nothing in this case -- nothing at all -- comes close to fitting the book.
Q: If JonBenet hadn't been involved in child beauty pageants, do you think the case would have drawn the same amount of media attention?
The images that drew everyone into the case are, in my view, the same images that drew JonBenet's killer to her. She was a marketable commodity so she was going to be exploited for someone's gain. It is very interesting that we are all drawn to look at those images, over and over again, yet there has been great resistance to the notion that someone outside the family would also have been drawn to the child and participated in her death. We don't like to admit, as a society, how troubling the sexualization and exploitation of children is, so we've tried to lay this entire case off on JonBenet's mother. It is an example of extreme denial.
Q: Why do you think the Boulder authorities failed to indict John and Patsy Ramsey?
Because the hard evidence points away from them. Given that, they could never win a trial against the Ramseys.
Q: Do you think the polygraph test that the Ramseys took was a valid test? If not, why not?
The test is valid but that is not the main point. Who created the questions, why were they fashioned exactly as they were, and why were the parents not asked the same things? Why wasn't John Ramsey asked about the creation of the ransom note? The fact that they were asked different questions, and that the Ramseys set it up that way, signifies a conflict of interest between the parents and that they each know different things. They passed the test because I don't believe that they killed their daughter or know exactly who did. They could answer those questions safely. But could Mr. Ramsey safely be asked about his involvement with the note or the aftermath of the crime? That is a question the media has never posed to him and it needs to be asked by both reporters and the police.
Q: Why do you think the Boulder authorities insisted that the FBI conduct the test?
The Boulder police want to control the test and ask different questions. That's what needs
to happen in any future polygraph test, if it is to be valid or to reveal any new information.
Q: According to reports in the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post, the Boulder police seem reluctant to meet with the Ramseys. Do you have any idea why?
The Ramseys aren't going to tell them anything more now than they have since the case started. So a meeting most likely won't go anywhere. It is all public relations. That's all the case has been about so far. No one has wanted to look behind the ugly door of what is being done to children in many different places and recognize that this is not a simple crime of a mother gone bad, but a social crime that has left the entire legal system and media looking foolish. Until the police start asking the Ramseys different questions, I don't think another interview will produce any results.
Q: In the past months, the Boulder authorities have alluded to "new evidence" that has supposedly been uncovered by Dr Henry Lee. Do you know what evidence they are referring to?
I don't think it's new evidence. It's forensic evidence, of the sort mentioned above, which doesn't match the Ramseys. Until someone starts talking or until the authorities can match that foreign DNA on JonBenet's body to a known human being, they have no case.
Q: The most curious piece of evidence seems to be the ransom note and its mention of the unusual figure of $118,000, which seems to indicate someone close to the family is responsible. How does that fit with your theories?
I believe that the child was removed from the house that night, for the seemingly innocent purpose of photographing her or exploiting her in some way, and she was killed at another location. At least one parent knew this removal had taken place. I think that JonBenet was then returned home and the crime was covered up by someone inside the family. Both parents, in my opinion, do not have the same information about what occurred that night.
The unmatched hard evidence mentioned above excludes the Ramseys as the killers and most likely excludes their home as the scene of the crime. The death was "accidental" in that no one intended for her to be hurt, let alone killed.
Q: If that's the case, why not dispose of the body completely and claim that the child was abducted? Why would anyone go to the trouble of providing an elaborate ransom note to suggest a kidnapping when the body was found in the house? Can you provide any hypothetical scenarios to explain how and why this may have occurred?
I'm suggesting that the Ramseys loved their child deeply, despite what happened to her. To get rid of her on a cold night in December, by tossing her in a ditch or something of this sort, would have been a very difficult thing for a parent to do. I'm also suggesting, more significantly, that both parents did not participate in this cover-up. Only one. And the cover-up primarily intended to fool not the cops but the other parent. So it had to look credible while accomplishing other things: keeping the child in the house, even though she was dead, and making it look as if someone who knew their family and hated the father had come in and done all this to JonBenet. Also, one parent could not easily have left the house that night with the body. Something had to be done immediately that would occur in the home and be believable. According to John Douglas, the ex-FBI profiler who examined the Ramseys briefly after the murder and concluded they were not child killers, only one parent knew that John Ramsey had recently received a $118,000 bonus and that parent was the father. I believe that a husband's inability to confront his wife at a critical moment -- because of his desire to protect her feelings -- played an important role in this case. It is possible to be afraid of the cops, but terrified of your wife.
Q: Isn't it possible that JonBenets murder was perpetrated by someone whose sole purpose for committing the crime was to implicate John Ramsey?
Then why won't John Ramsey pursue information that could get him off the hook? Why does he brush it aside?
Q: What do you think of Lou Smits "intruder theory"?
I don't think an intruder killed JonBenet. I don't think either of the two prevalent scenarios -- the Ramseys did it or an intruder did it -- can explain both the hard evidence coming from outside the family and a ransom note that appears to have come from within the house. Three-and-a-half years into the case, both scenarios have led nowhere. This is an extremely complicated case, which is what the police and the media have never wanted it to be. When Dr. Henry Lee, the world's foremost forensic specialist, tells you that law enforcement needs "luck" to solve this case, he's telling you that they haven't put the pieces together and figured out what happened to JonBenet.
Q: What about an intruder who was an active pedophile who also knew John. Someone who lusted after JonBenet to the extent that they gained entry to the house while the family was out to dinner with the sole intention of abusing JonBenet while the parents were sleeping? Isn't it possible that someone like that could lose control of such a situation and kill the child accidentally while involved in some perverse sexual act and then decide to use their privileged information regarding John's bonus payment to implicate the Ramseys and draw suspicion away from themselves?
That could have happened. But if it had, I suggest that the Ramseys would at some point have come forward and offered some useful information to the police and to the public about a real suspect -- because there were adults in JonBenet's life who were paying attention to her in ways that was not quite appropriate. But the parents have never done this. They've never said or done anything truly useful in terms of finding the killer. And now we have it on the record that they don't want potentially very good information about dangerous pedophiles in Boulder -- precisely the kind of person who fits your scenario mentioned above. This tells me that at least one parent has no interest in seeing the case solved.
Q: A recent news item has alleged that a girl from JonBenet's dance class had been sexually molested in her bedroom by an intruder just months after JonBenet's murder. If the report is true, doesn't this suggest that a sexual predator with a possible link to the pageant circuit was active in the area at the time?
It could. What it suggests more strongly is that the police never followed this lead or its possible connection to the Ramsey case -- any more than they followed the other things I've been talking about. They key question in this murder is not: Who killed JonBenet? It is: Why won't the authorities open up their investigation to the natural place it belongs -- the criminal subculture of child abuse and exploitation that touched JonBenet's life and may have ended it.
Q: Do you think the case could have been solved earlier if the Boulder police had been more efficient in their management of the crime scene?
No. Not really. The problem with the Boulder police is not that they mismanaged the crime scene. It is that ever since then they have refused to investigate the case as anything other than a domestic killing. Bungling the crime scene did not take away the fact that hard evidence from sources outside the family -- blood, hair, fiber, and DNA -- were still recovered from the child's body. The Boulder police have never really tried to find out where that evidence came from. So the case can't be solved.
Q: Do you think this case will ever be solved?
Not until the Boulder police change their attitude and widen their investigation. They've been given numerous leads that they've ignored, while spending $2 million of the public's money. It's time to stop assuming things and do the work they're paid to do.
Q: If it were possible for you to reopen the investigation and start over, what specific factors would you focus on?
I'd focus on the conflict surrounding John Ramsey in the immediate aftermath of the murder. And on the leads provided by the California woman. And on why the Ramseys won't touch her information, which appears to exonerate them. I'd focus on the adults around JonBenet who were behaving inappropriately before she died and I would apply some pressure to them. No known person, in my view, killed JonBenet. But known people do have information about who murdered her. You'll never get that information until you start asking the right questions and backing them up with some weight. This has never, to my knowledge, happened in Boulder. The cops there have spent all their time trying to muscle Patsy Ramsey and this has led nowhere. The best polygraphists in the country have now concluded she didn't kill her daughter or write the ransom note. So let's try something new. When the rats think the ship is starting to leak, they'll start jumping and squeaking.
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Original article found at www.crime-research.org
For the interview, go to www.crime-research.org/interviews/484/2
Post/Article edited by SDRoads on 03-20-2008
Photo, within this post, of Author Stephen Singular
