12-02-2019, 04:02 AM
Former Boulder Detective Makes His Case In Book
... A Case He Couldn't Make In A Courtroom: That Patsy Was To Blame
by Charlie Brennan
April 2000
Nobody else is saying it, so it appears this falls to me:
Steve Thomas is the little kid who, protesting a call by the ump, takes his bat and ball and quits, bringing the game to an end for everyone.
Thomas is the former Boulder police detective who resigned in protest over the handling of the JonBenet Ramsey murder, and is now telling all in his book published Tuesday, April 11, by St. Martin's Press, "JonBenet -- Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation." It is co-authored by veteran Boulder County non-fiction writer Don Davis.
If there was any question as to whether this case might someday be prosecuted, that question has been answered. It won't. Thomas empties his three years of bitter frustration onto the pages of a book that, while compelling reading for any Ramseyphile, could also serve as exhibits A-through-Z for defense attorneys, should this beleaguered case ever limp battered and bloodied into a courtroom.
We pause for this disclosure: I am far from a disinterested observer in this matter. I worked for 16 months in collaboration with Lawrence Schiller on another Ramsey book, "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town," published in February 1999.
It was, I feel, the definitive book on the Christmas night 1996 murder of Boulder's six-year-old child beauty queen -- until now. A significant number of law enforcement personnel cooperated with Schiller and myself by sharing details they felt could be divulged without compromising the investigation or precluding a future prosecution.
Certainly, we didn't cast all players in an entirely positive light. We exposed bizarre subplots to the drama -- police and prosecutors dallying with a tabloid reporter to advance their own personal vendettas, for example -- that left many shaking their heads in disbelief. The tales of extreme dysfunction between and among some officials involved in this case are already widely chronicled.
Thomas now picks the scabs and the blood is flowing anew.
He holds nothing back in his quiver, blasting District Attorney Alex Hunter ("a Teflon politician who was always one step removed from any carnage left behind by his office"), both the Boulder police chiefs he served under (mocking former Chief Tom Koby's affection for "bluesky psychobabble"), and even dumps on many peers in the detective bureau. The infallible and unforgiving Thomas is not the kind of person you want to unwittingly cut off in traffic.
In an interview with the Denver Post, Thomas declined to say whether the book was based on his own notes or case files. I can answer that one. It's clearly based on case files, some of which he obviously must have carted home sometime before or after noisily throwing down his badge on Aug. 6, 1998.
Readers can see that for themselves as early as page 14, where Thomas and Davis reprint a verbatim transcript of Patsy Ramsey's call to 911. It's all there, down to the last "(inaudible)." As a student of the case who was outside the Ramseys' home to see JonBenet wheeled away past the twinkling white Christmas lights in a body bag, I know this transcript has previously appeared nowhere else. It's not part of any file that is open to the public.
Thomas not only violates the spirit of the oath he took as a law enforcement officer. He also tramples two citizens' rights to a presumption of innocence.
His book makes the case Thomas couldn't make in a courtroom. He flatly declares Patsy committed the murder in a fit of rage over bed-wetting, and that her husband joined the next morning in a cover-up. Thomas isn't alone in embracing such a theory. But this is the first time a central figure in the investigation has dared say so for the record.
In writing "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town," Schiller and I certainly had our own theories, but we spared readers our conjecture. Instead, we clearly laid out the reasons that many believe the Ramseys are guilty, and the reasons that others consider them innocent. We invited readers to draw their own conclusions.
Call me old-fashioned, but for a former detective to unilaterally issue his own indictment through a publisher and not a courtroom, in a case still under investigation, is flat wrong.
Thomas had no experience as a homicide investigator prior to arriving on this stage. He couldn't put together a case that would stand up in a courtroom. Not to be denied, he's doing so in a book. Here, he's unbound by such distractions as the rules that govern evidence.
It should be noted that Thomas walked away from law enforcement one month before a grand jury was even convened in this matter. That panel worked for 13 months after he was gone and still couldn't come up with grounds to indict John and Patsy Ramsey or anyone else.
If I can be forgiven another baseball analogy, it's as if Steve Thomas is the would-be slugger who whiffs in every at-bat during the big game -- then smacks it over the wall off a batting tee in front of the vacant seats after the crowd's gone home.
The product of Thomas and Davis' labors is, no question, essential reading for anyone with an interest in the child murder heard 'round the world. This is the first book published to date from a key participant in the investigation. Its pages carry the ringside sense of intimacy.
But by doing it this way, at this time, Thomas does a disservice to the couple he accuses, to the officers he leaves behind, and most of all, to the memory of a little girl whose murder is now far less likely to be avenged.
There is this irony. Thomas believes Patsy Ramsey struck her daughter in a rage -- then, mistakenly believing JonBenet already dead, applied a garrote to disguise the crime as something else. In taking that second, bizarre step, Thomas believes, Patsy Ramsey then actually killed JonBenet for real.
The ex-detective may well have done the same, misreading this case as over -- then making darn sure that it is.
... A Case He Couldn't Make In A Courtroom: That Patsy Was To Blame
by Charlie Brennan
April 2000
Nobody else is saying it, so it appears this falls to me:
Steve Thomas is the little kid who, protesting a call by the ump, takes his bat and ball and quits, bringing the game to an end for everyone.
Thomas is the former Boulder police detective who resigned in protest over the handling of the JonBenet Ramsey murder, and is now telling all in his book published Tuesday, April 11, by St. Martin's Press, "JonBenet -- Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation." It is co-authored by veteran Boulder County non-fiction writer Don Davis.
If there was any question as to whether this case might someday be prosecuted, that question has been answered. It won't. Thomas empties his three years of bitter frustration onto the pages of a book that, while compelling reading for any Ramseyphile, could also serve as exhibits A-through-Z for defense attorneys, should this beleaguered case ever limp battered and bloodied into a courtroom.
We pause for this disclosure: I am far from a disinterested observer in this matter. I worked for 16 months in collaboration with Lawrence Schiller on another Ramsey book, "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town," published in February 1999.
It was, I feel, the definitive book on the Christmas night 1996 murder of Boulder's six-year-old child beauty queen -- until now. A significant number of law enforcement personnel cooperated with Schiller and myself by sharing details they felt could be divulged without compromising the investigation or precluding a future prosecution.
Certainly, we didn't cast all players in an entirely positive light. We exposed bizarre subplots to the drama -- police and prosecutors dallying with a tabloid reporter to advance their own personal vendettas, for example -- that left many shaking their heads in disbelief. The tales of extreme dysfunction between and among some officials involved in this case are already widely chronicled.
Thomas now picks the scabs and the blood is flowing anew.
He holds nothing back in his quiver, blasting District Attorney Alex Hunter ("a Teflon politician who was always one step removed from any carnage left behind by his office"), both the Boulder police chiefs he served under (mocking former Chief Tom Koby's affection for "bluesky psychobabble"), and even dumps on many peers in the detective bureau. The infallible and unforgiving Thomas is not the kind of person you want to unwittingly cut off in traffic.
In an interview with the Denver Post, Thomas declined to say whether the book was based on his own notes or case files. I can answer that one. It's clearly based on case files, some of which he obviously must have carted home sometime before or after noisily throwing down his badge on Aug. 6, 1998.
Readers can see that for themselves as early as page 14, where Thomas and Davis reprint a verbatim transcript of Patsy Ramsey's call to 911. It's all there, down to the last "(inaudible)." As a student of the case who was outside the Ramseys' home to see JonBenet wheeled away past the twinkling white Christmas lights in a body bag, I know this transcript has previously appeared nowhere else. It's not part of any file that is open to the public.
Thomas not only violates the spirit of the oath he took as a law enforcement officer. He also tramples two citizens' rights to a presumption of innocence.
His book makes the case Thomas couldn't make in a courtroom. He flatly declares Patsy committed the murder in a fit of rage over bed-wetting, and that her husband joined the next morning in a cover-up. Thomas isn't alone in embracing such a theory. But this is the first time a central figure in the investigation has dared say so for the record.
In writing "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town," Schiller and I certainly had our own theories, but we spared readers our conjecture. Instead, we clearly laid out the reasons that many believe the Ramseys are guilty, and the reasons that others consider them innocent. We invited readers to draw their own conclusions.
Call me old-fashioned, but for a former detective to unilaterally issue his own indictment through a publisher and not a courtroom, in a case still under investigation, is flat wrong.
Thomas had no experience as a homicide investigator prior to arriving on this stage. He couldn't put together a case that would stand up in a courtroom. Not to be denied, he's doing so in a book. Here, he's unbound by such distractions as the rules that govern evidence.
It should be noted that Thomas walked away from law enforcement one month before a grand jury was even convened in this matter. That panel worked for 13 months after he was gone and still couldn't come up with grounds to indict John and Patsy Ramsey or anyone else.
If I can be forgiven another baseball analogy, it's as if Steve Thomas is the would-be slugger who whiffs in every at-bat during the big game -- then smacks it over the wall off a batting tee in front of the vacant seats after the crowd's gone home.
The product of Thomas and Davis' labors is, no question, essential reading for anyone with an interest in the child murder heard 'round the world. This is the first book published to date from a key participant in the investigation. Its pages carry the ringside sense of intimacy.
But by doing it this way, at this time, Thomas does a disservice to the couple he accuses, to the officers he leaves behind, and most of all, to the memory of a little girl whose murder is now far less likely to be avenged.
There is this irony. Thomas believes Patsy Ramsey struck her daughter in a rage -- then, mistakenly believing JonBenet already dead, applied a garrote to disguise the crime as something else. In taking that second, bizarre step, Thomas believes, Patsy Ramsey then actually killed JonBenet for real.
The ex-detective may well have done the same, misreading this case as over -- then making darn sure that it is.