10-31-2019, 01:04 AM
Quinn Podcast Interview (part 1)
The first 19:30 of this episode for those who can't listen or prefer to read:
INTRODUCTION
Hello, and welcome back to DIE-ALOGUE: a true crime conversation. I’m your host, Rebekah Sebastian and today I am speaking with Quinn. Quinn is a childhood friend of JonBenet Ramsey, and in listening back to our conversation I have to tell you that this is exactly the kind of dialogue I imagined having when I imagined starting this podcast. I just love her candor and vulnerability and we just talked all about the things that mean so much to me and that I wonder about and I have some very in real-time conclusions and thoughts and responses to the things that she shares, and it was just a great conversation, and the fact that it was hovering around the case of JonBenet Ramsey sort of just made it icing on the cake if you ask me. So I feel extremely honored to have had this conversation and I want to thank Quinn very specifically for choosing to sit down with me and share her story and thereby share it with you. So, please enjoy this episode of DIE-ALOGUE: a true crime conversation.
REBEKAH: Quinn, welcome to DIE-ALOGUE: a true crime conversation. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
QUINN: Thank you so much for having me.
R: Yeah of course. I was really glad to get your message, like all good things it started on Instagram.
Q: Always, always - sliding in peoples’ DMs.
R: Yes, oh my gosh I’m like the queen of that so I appreciated it and I particularly loved that you were pitching this idea of maybe you talking on DIALOGUE because you are connected to, I think your words were, ‘a semi-popular cold case.”
Q: I think I downplayed it a little.
R: Yeah, which was good. I mean you know, the intrigue was there so I wrote back and I said, ‘just curious, which case is it?’ and you can tell us what you replied.
Q: I replied, ‘It’s the JonBenet Ramsey case.’
R: Right, I’m like I think I’ve heard of that one, say more.
Q: Yeah, people have.
R: So this is kind of exactly up my alley in terms of exploring true crime and the genre itself. There sort of is no case that embodies true crime, in a weird way the way - I would say it’s one of maybe five or ten that everybody can reference.
Q: Every kind of like true crime podcasts, books I feel like everybody’s covered this case.
R: Everybody’s covered it. And everybody knows it. She is a household name. The case is a household case. So your perspective is that of a childhood friend. So maybe we could start there, in Colorado I assume.
Q: Yes, in Colorado.
R: So, you’re from Boulder, and do you want to tell us how you came to know the Ramseys? Was it your whole family or was it just you and JonBenet through school, or, how did that come about?
Q: So, JonBenet and I went to the same preschool in Boulder, which was, it was a preschool that was housed in the church that both of our families went to - ? Prebyterian, in Boulder. So I met her, I guess I was like, three or four, in preschool. So originally it was really just, me knowing her because it was just us being in preschool together. After a while, I would say that of anybody in my family knowing anybody else closely, it would be my mom knowing Patsy. Just because they’re both moms and they’re doing playdates and stuff together so that would probably be the other family member that talked to anybody who was really in the family.
R: So, what are your first memories of her as your friend?
Q: I would say something that I always found really interesting about her, it’s a weird, distinct memory that I have is, and everybody knows that her family was fairly well off, that’s like always part of the story that I think comes up when people are discussing it - and I remember it’s just kind of getting that vibe from her family. Like, she had nicer things than some of the other kids and I remember as a kid bringing it up to her when I first met her and her being like, ‘oh, I don’t like to talk about that.’ Like, she was very aware of it as a kid, which I think is really interesting, that she didn’t want to brag about it, she was very like ‘I don’t like to talk about that my family has money,’ and like for a four year old -
R: That’s so mature. That is like an old soul.
Q: I know! I really think that she was incredibly mature for her age.
R: Wow. That’s kind of wild because most kids at that age it’s all about having the best stuff and -
Q: showing off to everybody and she was so not like that. Very humble.
R: Oh my gosh. So, I mean, Boulder as an area, nice town?
Q: Very affluent town. Not very diverse, as a town, but yeah - I mean everybody always talks about that one of the reasons why the case had so many flaws when it came to solving the crime was that things like that just don’t happen there.
R: They didn’t know how to deal with it.
Q: Yeah, like drunk college students… that’s what the police handle in Boulder, but not murders like this.
R: Right, and so you’re saying everyone sort of knew the Ramseys as this sort of especially affluent family? So even within an upscale community even they were kind of, doing better than everyone else?
Q: I would say so. I mean like everybody in Boulder, well not everybody, but, it’s definitely a pretty affluent city but I would still say that they were considered one of the more affluent families there.
R: Ok, and so, your friendship with JonBenet, I mean it obviously, and this is just where the surreal, I mean for me just talking about it, the timeline it’s obviously a very short period of time because her life was cut so tragically short. Did it go past preschool? Did you go to the same kindergarten after preschool?
Q: We did not. So we ended up going to different kindergartens, but we still remained friends and would still have playdates. We definitely didn’t see each other as often just because we’re not with each other every single day but we’d still have playdates up until she died.
R: And how about Mrs. Ramsey? Did you, do you have an impression of her? I can think of my childhood friends’ moms - they’re actually kind of a big influence in your life when your spend a lot of time -
Q: They definitely are. Yeah and I always think about that because I mean I remember having friends’ parents who like I wasn’t as big of a fan of, but I loved Patsy as a kid. She was amazing. People will always talk about that just because the family is always, you know, people aren’t the nicest about the family and I understand that and I can kind of see where people are coming from but simultaneously, I didn’t have a ton of experience really with John or Burke. I didn’t spend that much time with them, but spent a decent amount of time with Patsy and can say only nice things about her - which, I thought she was an amazing mother -
R: Good, I’m glad to hear that.
Q: Very attentive to JonBenet and very sweet to us. I mean, I never had any bad experiences with her.
R: That makes me happy. The pageant thing - was that happening, how did you, did you have consciousness of it ?
Q: Yeah, definitely. I mean, this is always something that comes up with people when they talk about the pageant thing and I know that, a lot of the things I see about it are people saying ‘oh, she was obviously forced into this thing’ and that like because Patsy did the pageants she wanted to have like a little mini-me and honestly, I didn’t see that. Again, I was a kid so there could have been things that I was missing but when JonBenet would talk to me about pageants, I only just remember her being extremely proud of them and showing off the trophies that she had won and writing me postcards like, ‘I’m at this one right now and I’m so excited to do it.’ I also remember, there was one time as a kid, Patsy invited me, JonBenet, and my mom to go watch Patsy in this kind of pageant fashion thing that she was doing in Boulder so I always felt that JonBenet’s pageants were just her wanting to be like her mom.
R: That was their connection.
Q: Yeah, that was a connection that they had. I never got the impression that she was forced into doing anything or that she didn’t enjoy what she was doing. I went to a couple of pageant rehearsals with her, she always seemed to be really enjoying herself. So I never got the impression that it was like, ‘I’m being forced to do this thing and I hate it.’ I mean I remember doing soccer and playing instruments as a kid and hating it.
R: Yeah, most of us have something like that in our childhood!
Q: Just like, I don’t wanna be doing this, and I think kids are pretty vocal about those kinds of things when they don’t want to do them, and I never heard anything like that from her.
R: Ok, I’m glad to hear that too. Did you want to do it? Did it like, I have that best friend that I kind of envied certain things she did or was able to do -
Q: Oh my god, yes. You got to wear the pretty dresses, you got to do your hair, you got to travel. I mean I thought it was the coolest thing when I was a kid.
R: How did your mom perceive it? Do you remember her having an opinion on it like, ‘no it’s not for you or us’ or?
Q: I don’t know. I mean, I was a dancer as a kid so I think I kind of had that similar outlet of like I liked to perform and I get to put makeup on and it’s not like anything weird, it’s just me and what I do for my dance show. This is how I perform. I put on a costume, kind of thing. So I think I found similarities through that.
R: Ok, and then your mom and Mrs. Ramsey, whose name is escaping me - it’s Patricia, right?
Q: Yeah, Patsy. Patricia.
R: Patsy! So, were they friendly? I mean it sounds like you had some experience together the four of you and I guess this move us a little bit more into the future and present - does your mom have perceptions of Patsy and are they pretty aligned with yours?
Q: Yeah. I have not had lengthy discussions with my mom about Patsy. I do know that she met with her a couple of times after JonBenet died. I remember ones of those times. I remember one of those times because Patsy came over, I think this was after they had moved out of Boulder, too.
R: And how soon was that after JonBenet died?
Q: I don’t think it took them very long because they also already had other houses so I think they just went to just go - because I mean like, it’s a lot, living in that house, I can’t even fathom what that would feel like. So it was pretty soon after, I think, and I remember her coming over and she had brought me like a little teddy bear with angel wings, and the teddy bear if you squeezed its hand would say ‘I’m your guardian angel’ and so, she was very, I think she did an amazing job with me as a kid and understanding -
R: Wait so this is Patsy or your mom?
Q: Patsy had brought me that.
R: Was it JonBenet’s or had she just got it for you?
Q: No, she had just gotten it for me.
R: That’s very thoughtful.
Q: Yeah, and I have a couple of letters that she wrote to me and my mom afterwards so I mean she really kept in touch a little bit, I think obviously she was going through a lot and then she had the battle with cancer that she was going through later, so they weren’t extremely close but there was definitely a little bit of contact afterwards.
R: We’ve already gone to the death of JonBenet but let’s go back to maybe right before it happened and leading up - so she was six?
Q: She was six.
R: And you were six? You were the same age?
Q: Yes.
R: So you’re six year old, and news, I mean how quickly did your family hear and the community and what did that look like? Who told you and what did they say?
Q: Obviously it traveled very quickly and because it was such a high profile case it was everywhere, immediately.
R: On the news all day and all night.
Q: My mom actually, this is something that I didn’t even know she did. She tells me these things like years after it happened, but, so you know in the grocery stores that you go up and there’s those trashy magazines? Tabloids? And so she actually went to our local grocery store and told them ‘you have to take these down because my child is going to be here. This just happened to her. You have to take these down because they’re at eye height and she’s gonna see these and this is like the last thing that she needs right now.’ So she like she made them take it down in the grocery store.
R: What a hero.
Q: I know, my mom - same thing, I went to a doctor’s office to get my DNA taken for the FBI and the FBI tried to talk to me and my mom was like, ‘no, you don’t get to talk to my child. This is gonna be so traumatic for her.’ And same with my pediatrician. Immediately was like, ‘nope, you’re not allowed to come into the room.’
R: Wow, so wait the FBI wanted your DNA?
Q: Yes.
R: Because you’d been in that house?
Q: Because I’d been in the house.
R: So timeline, what do you think, was that days after?
Q: I don’t even, I don’t even remember it.
R: So you’re getting your DNA collected, FBI, how does your mom tell you like, ‘that’s what we’re doing today - like, going to get your DNA’?
Q: So she, what she tells me she had told me because I did not have any memory of this as a kid - she told me that we had to go to the doctor’s office because I had to get a strep test done which makes sense because if they’re swabbing my mouth for DNA I would have thought it was a step test. Or I think she said something about like ‘kids are getting strep at school, we have to double check to make sure you’re ok’ kind of a thing. And I just took that as a kid, so -
R: Your mom is emerging as the hero just more and more throughout this story.
Q: She’s definitely my hero.
R: That makes sense. That’s what I would hope to think of if um, I was in that situation, also what’s DNA? Like a four year old, or, six year old you know, there’s not context.
Q: Yeah, I probably would have had zero understanding of that.
R: So, they were doing that because you’d been in the home. So this is an investigation.
Q: Yeah, you know they have to investigate anybody who had recently been in the home or who was close with the family so -
R: How aware of that were you, at six?
Q: I was not aware that I would have been in any way associated with a case, for sure, that definitely did not hit me at all. I don’t honestly, and this is like now an interesting thing to think about, I don’t really remember what age I was when I finally realized that like her family was being investigated. Cause I know that I had that realization at some point but I don’t really remember how old I was ‘cause my parents really were like, I told you about getting the tabloids taken down and if it ever came on the TV they would turn it off.
R: So they were really sheltering you from the reality of what was happening. But I’m sure if I were to interview your mom, it was probably going rampant like through the mom circuit.
Q: I cannot even imagine. We stopped going to church because it was such an issue and then people at church were turning against the Ramseys and there was a lot of internal drama and so like we stopped going to church because it was all over the church. So there was a lot of like, things that I didn’t realize were happening when I was a kid that my parents were obviously dealing with and trying to keep me as removed from it as possible.
R: Was there any trickle-down on the first-grade, second-grade level of kids? I mean obviously a classmate was lost, you weren’t in her same school, but a child in your community, were kids talking about that?
Q: I remember me bringing it up to other kids ‘cause I think as like a six, seven year old learning how to process that was really difficult. So I remember talking about her a lot as a kid to other kids. And that was mainly it was like ‘she was one of my best friends’ and ‘she was so amazing’ and that kind of stuff. So I remember doing that as a kid and they had heard of her. So it was obviously, I mean you talk to I think anybody who was old enough and especially anybody who was living in Boulder that because it was kind of everywhere and all over the news and everything that people were aware even if they were kids of at least who she was.
R: There was this collective consciousness of the story and the case. But I’m curious because the family and the police put out the kidnapping story and the ransom note, was the town like ‘oh my gosh there’s a kidnapper on the loose?’ Was there any more locking of doors and safety talks? Do you remember that or do your parents?
Q: I don’t remember - I remember as a kid kind of because afraid because when my parents told me what had happened it was like under the thing of somebody broke into their house and did this thing and I remember, I mean me and my sister both talk about just being terrified. Like, I had nightmares for a very long - like it - ‘cause you’re just like, ‘oh, I didn’t realize that that was a thing that could happen as a kid’ so it’s this realization of like sometimes people do bad things to children and kind of realizing that at a pretty young age.
R: Your poor parents had to sit down and do that, so - talk about that moment. Do you remember that or is this more kind of like family memory that you share between you or do you remember that moment?
Q: I remember it, my sister I think remembers it more.
R: She was older?
Q: Yeah, she was older. If I was six, my sister would have been nine when it was happening so I think she has a stronger memory of it. I mean I do remember being sat down, it was like we had just had a playdate with two other friends and my sister and I were downstairs and I remember my parents sitting me down and essentially saying what happened, that somebody had broken into the house and that she was dead and that’s kind of the majority of what I really remember from it.
R: But you wouldn’t say there was widespread panic around Boulder, in terms of intruders.
Q: If there was I don’t think I was aware of it. I definitely think that it could have been a possibility. I think it’s kind of like, you hear about this with any town where something like this happens and it’s not something that towns are used to where, now it’s just this realization of oh you have to lock the door and this was something that could happen here and we didn’t realize that this was something that could happen here.
R: It’s like a loss of innocence on this macro-level in a community.
Q: Yes, definitely.
That is part one - - will post the rest as it becomes available.
The first 19:30 of this episode for those who can't listen or prefer to read:
INTRODUCTION
Hello, and welcome back to DIE-ALOGUE: a true crime conversation. I’m your host, Rebekah Sebastian and today I am speaking with Quinn. Quinn is a childhood friend of JonBenet Ramsey, and in listening back to our conversation I have to tell you that this is exactly the kind of dialogue I imagined having when I imagined starting this podcast. I just love her candor and vulnerability and we just talked all about the things that mean so much to me and that I wonder about and I have some very in real-time conclusions and thoughts and responses to the things that she shares, and it was just a great conversation, and the fact that it was hovering around the case of JonBenet Ramsey sort of just made it icing on the cake if you ask me. So I feel extremely honored to have had this conversation and I want to thank Quinn very specifically for choosing to sit down with me and share her story and thereby share it with you. So, please enjoy this episode of DIE-ALOGUE: a true crime conversation.
REBEKAH: Quinn, welcome to DIE-ALOGUE: a true crime conversation. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
QUINN: Thank you so much for having me.
R: Yeah of course. I was really glad to get your message, like all good things it started on Instagram.
Q: Always, always - sliding in peoples’ DMs.
R: Yes, oh my gosh I’m like the queen of that so I appreciated it and I particularly loved that you were pitching this idea of maybe you talking on DIALOGUE because you are connected to, I think your words were, ‘a semi-popular cold case.”
Q: I think I downplayed it a little.
R: Yeah, which was good. I mean you know, the intrigue was there so I wrote back and I said, ‘just curious, which case is it?’ and you can tell us what you replied.
Q: I replied, ‘It’s the JonBenet Ramsey case.’
R: Right, I’m like I think I’ve heard of that one, say more.
Q: Yeah, people have.
R: So this is kind of exactly up my alley in terms of exploring true crime and the genre itself. There sort of is no case that embodies true crime, in a weird way the way - I would say it’s one of maybe five or ten that everybody can reference.
Q: Every kind of like true crime podcasts, books I feel like everybody’s covered this case.
R: Everybody’s covered it. And everybody knows it. She is a household name. The case is a household case. So your perspective is that of a childhood friend. So maybe we could start there, in Colorado I assume.
Q: Yes, in Colorado.
R: So, you’re from Boulder, and do you want to tell us how you came to know the Ramseys? Was it your whole family or was it just you and JonBenet through school, or, how did that come about?
Q: So, JonBenet and I went to the same preschool in Boulder, which was, it was a preschool that was housed in the church that both of our families went to - ? Prebyterian, in Boulder. So I met her, I guess I was like, three or four, in preschool. So originally it was really just, me knowing her because it was just us being in preschool together. After a while, I would say that of anybody in my family knowing anybody else closely, it would be my mom knowing Patsy. Just because they’re both moms and they’re doing playdates and stuff together so that would probably be the other family member that talked to anybody who was really in the family.
R: So, what are your first memories of her as your friend?
Q: I would say something that I always found really interesting about her, it’s a weird, distinct memory that I have is, and everybody knows that her family was fairly well off, that’s like always part of the story that I think comes up when people are discussing it - and I remember it’s just kind of getting that vibe from her family. Like, she had nicer things than some of the other kids and I remember as a kid bringing it up to her when I first met her and her being like, ‘oh, I don’t like to talk about that.’ Like, she was very aware of it as a kid, which I think is really interesting, that she didn’t want to brag about it, she was very like ‘I don’t like to talk about that my family has money,’ and like for a four year old -
R: That’s so mature. That is like an old soul.
Q: I know! I really think that she was incredibly mature for her age.
R: Wow. That’s kind of wild because most kids at that age it’s all about having the best stuff and -
Q: showing off to everybody and she was so not like that. Very humble.
R: Oh my gosh. So, I mean, Boulder as an area, nice town?
Q: Very affluent town. Not very diverse, as a town, but yeah - I mean everybody always talks about that one of the reasons why the case had so many flaws when it came to solving the crime was that things like that just don’t happen there.
R: They didn’t know how to deal with it.
Q: Yeah, like drunk college students… that’s what the police handle in Boulder, but not murders like this.
R: Right, and so you’re saying everyone sort of knew the Ramseys as this sort of especially affluent family? So even within an upscale community even they were kind of, doing better than everyone else?
Q: I would say so. I mean like everybody in Boulder, well not everybody, but, it’s definitely a pretty affluent city but I would still say that they were considered one of the more affluent families there.
R: Ok, and so, your friendship with JonBenet, I mean it obviously, and this is just where the surreal, I mean for me just talking about it, the timeline it’s obviously a very short period of time because her life was cut so tragically short. Did it go past preschool? Did you go to the same kindergarten after preschool?
Q: We did not. So we ended up going to different kindergartens, but we still remained friends and would still have playdates. We definitely didn’t see each other as often just because we’re not with each other every single day but we’d still have playdates up until she died.
R: And how about Mrs. Ramsey? Did you, do you have an impression of her? I can think of my childhood friends’ moms - they’re actually kind of a big influence in your life when your spend a lot of time -
Q: They definitely are. Yeah and I always think about that because I mean I remember having friends’ parents who like I wasn’t as big of a fan of, but I loved Patsy as a kid. She was amazing. People will always talk about that just because the family is always, you know, people aren’t the nicest about the family and I understand that and I can kind of see where people are coming from but simultaneously, I didn’t have a ton of experience really with John or Burke. I didn’t spend that much time with them, but spent a decent amount of time with Patsy and can say only nice things about her - which, I thought she was an amazing mother -
R: Good, I’m glad to hear that.
Q: Very attentive to JonBenet and very sweet to us. I mean, I never had any bad experiences with her.
R: That makes me happy. The pageant thing - was that happening, how did you, did you have consciousness of it ?
Q: Yeah, definitely. I mean, this is always something that comes up with people when they talk about the pageant thing and I know that, a lot of the things I see about it are people saying ‘oh, she was obviously forced into this thing’ and that like because Patsy did the pageants she wanted to have like a little mini-me and honestly, I didn’t see that. Again, I was a kid so there could have been things that I was missing but when JonBenet would talk to me about pageants, I only just remember her being extremely proud of them and showing off the trophies that she had won and writing me postcards like, ‘I’m at this one right now and I’m so excited to do it.’ I also remember, there was one time as a kid, Patsy invited me, JonBenet, and my mom to go watch Patsy in this kind of pageant fashion thing that she was doing in Boulder so I always felt that JonBenet’s pageants were just her wanting to be like her mom.
R: That was their connection.
Q: Yeah, that was a connection that they had. I never got the impression that she was forced into doing anything or that she didn’t enjoy what she was doing. I went to a couple of pageant rehearsals with her, she always seemed to be really enjoying herself. So I never got the impression that it was like, ‘I’m being forced to do this thing and I hate it.’ I mean I remember doing soccer and playing instruments as a kid and hating it.
R: Yeah, most of us have something like that in our childhood!
Q: Just like, I don’t wanna be doing this, and I think kids are pretty vocal about those kinds of things when they don’t want to do them, and I never heard anything like that from her.
R: Ok, I’m glad to hear that too. Did you want to do it? Did it like, I have that best friend that I kind of envied certain things she did or was able to do -
Q: Oh my god, yes. You got to wear the pretty dresses, you got to do your hair, you got to travel. I mean I thought it was the coolest thing when I was a kid.
R: How did your mom perceive it? Do you remember her having an opinion on it like, ‘no it’s not for you or us’ or?
Q: I don’t know. I mean, I was a dancer as a kid so I think I kind of had that similar outlet of like I liked to perform and I get to put makeup on and it’s not like anything weird, it’s just me and what I do for my dance show. This is how I perform. I put on a costume, kind of thing. So I think I found similarities through that.
R: Ok, and then your mom and Mrs. Ramsey, whose name is escaping me - it’s Patricia, right?
Q: Yeah, Patsy. Patricia.
R: Patsy! So, were they friendly? I mean it sounds like you had some experience together the four of you and I guess this move us a little bit more into the future and present - does your mom have perceptions of Patsy and are they pretty aligned with yours?
Q: Yeah. I have not had lengthy discussions with my mom about Patsy. I do know that she met with her a couple of times after JonBenet died. I remember ones of those times. I remember one of those times because Patsy came over, I think this was after they had moved out of Boulder, too.
R: And how soon was that after JonBenet died?
Q: I don’t think it took them very long because they also already had other houses so I think they just went to just go - because I mean like, it’s a lot, living in that house, I can’t even fathom what that would feel like. So it was pretty soon after, I think, and I remember her coming over and she had brought me like a little teddy bear with angel wings, and the teddy bear if you squeezed its hand would say ‘I’m your guardian angel’ and so, she was very, I think she did an amazing job with me as a kid and understanding -
R: Wait so this is Patsy or your mom?
Q: Patsy had brought me that.
R: Was it JonBenet’s or had she just got it for you?
Q: No, she had just gotten it for me.
R: That’s very thoughtful.
Q: Yeah, and I have a couple of letters that she wrote to me and my mom afterwards so I mean she really kept in touch a little bit, I think obviously she was going through a lot and then she had the battle with cancer that she was going through later, so they weren’t extremely close but there was definitely a little bit of contact afterwards.
R: We’ve already gone to the death of JonBenet but let’s go back to maybe right before it happened and leading up - so she was six?
Q: She was six.
R: And you were six? You were the same age?
Q: Yes.
R: So you’re six year old, and news, I mean how quickly did your family hear and the community and what did that look like? Who told you and what did they say?
Q: Obviously it traveled very quickly and because it was such a high profile case it was everywhere, immediately.
R: On the news all day and all night.
Q: My mom actually, this is something that I didn’t even know she did. She tells me these things like years after it happened, but, so you know in the grocery stores that you go up and there’s those trashy magazines? Tabloids? And so she actually went to our local grocery store and told them ‘you have to take these down because my child is going to be here. This just happened to her. You have to take these down because they’re at eye height and she’s gonna see these and this is like the last thing that she needs right now.’ So she like she made them take it down in the grocery store.
R: What a hero.
Q: I know, my mom - same thing, I went to a doctor’s office to get my DNA taken for the FBI and the FBI tried to talk to me and my mom was like, ‘no, you don’t get to talk to my child. This is gonna be so traumatic for her.’ And same with my pediatrician. Immediately was like, ‘nope, you’re not allowed to come into the room.’
R: Wow, so wait the FBI wanted your DNA?
Q: Yes.
R: Because you’d been in that house?
Q: Because I’d been in the house.
R: So timeline, what do you think, was that days after?
Q: I don’t even, I don’t even remember it.
R: So you’re getting your DNA collected, FBI, how does your mom tell you like, ‘that’s what we’re doing today - like, going to get your DNA’?
Q: So she, what she tells me she had told me because I did not have any memory of this as a kid - she told me that we had to go to the doctor’s office because I had to get a strep test done which makes sense because if they’re swabbing my mouth for DNA I would have thought it was a step test. Or I think she said something about like ‘kids are getting strep at school, we have to double check to make sure you’re ok’ kind of a thing. And I just took that as a kid, so -
R: Your mom is emerging as the hero just more and more throughout this story.
Q: She’s definitely my hero.
R: That makes sense. That’s what I would hope to think of if um, I was in that situation, also what’s DNA? Like a four year old, or, six year old you know, there’s not context.
Q: Yeah, I probably would have had zero understanding of that.
R: So, they were doing that because you’d been in the home. So this is an investigation.
Q: Yeah, you know they have to investigate anybody who had recently been in the home or who was close with the family so -
R: How aware of that were you, at six?
Q: I was not aware that I would have been in any way associated with a case, for sure, that definitely did not hit me at all. I don’t honestly, and this is like now an interesting thing to think about, I don’t really remember what age I was when I finally realized that like her family was being investigated. Cause I know that I had that realization at some point but I don’t really remember how old I was ‘cause my parents really were like, I told you about getting the tabloids taken down and if it ever came on the TV they would turn it off.
R: So they were really sheltering you from the reality of what was happening. But I’m sure if I were to interview your mom, it was probably going rampant like through the mom circuit.
Q: I cannot even imagine. We stopped going to church because it was such an issue and then people at church were turning against the Ramseys and there was a lot of internal drama and so like we stopped going to church because it was all over the church. So there was a lot of like, things that I didn’t realize were happening when I was a kid that my parents were obviously dealing with and trying to keep me as removed from it as possible.
R: Was there any trickle-down on the first-grade, second-grade level of kids? I mean obviously a classmate was lost, you weren’t in her same school, but a child in your community, were kids talking about that?
Q: I remember me bringing it up to other kids ‘cause I think as like a six, seven year old learning how to process that was really difficult. So I remember talking about her a lot as a kid to other kids. And that was mainly it was like ‘she was one of my best friends’ and ‘she was so amazing’ and that kind of stuff. So I remember doing that as a kid and they had heard of her. So it was obviously, I mean you talk to I think anybody who was old enough and especially anybody who was living in Boulder that because it was kind of everywhere and all over the news and everything that people were aware even if they were kids of at least who she was.
R: There was this collective consciousness of the story and the case. But I’m curious because the family and the police put out the kidnapping story and the ransom note, was the town like ‘oh my gosh there’s a kidnapper on the loose?’ Was there any more locking of doors and safety talks? Do you remember that or do your parents?
Q: I don’t remember - I remember as a kid kind of because afraid because when my parents told me what had happened it was like under the thing of somebody broke into their house and did this thing and I remember, I mean me and my sister both talk about just being terrified. Like, I had nightmares for a very long - like it - ‘cause you’re just like, ‘oh, I didn’t realize that that was a thing that could happen as a kid’ so it’s this realization of like sometimes people do bad things to children and kind of realizing that at a pretty young age.
R: Your poor parents had to sit down and do that, so - talk about that moment. Do you remember that or is this more kind of like family memory that you share between you or do you remember that moment?
Q: I remember it, my sister I think remembers it more.
R: She was older?
Q: Yeah, she was older. If I was six, my sister would have been nine when it was happening so I think she has a stronger memory of it. I mean I do remember being sat down, it was like we had just had a playdate with two other friends and my sister and I were downstairs and I remember my parents sitting me down and essentially saying what happened, that somebody had broken into the house and that she was dead and that’s kind of the majority of what I really remember from it.
R: But you wouldn’t say there was widespread panic around Boulder, in terms of intruders.
Q: If there was I don’t think I was aware of it. I definitely think that it could have been a possibility. I think it’s kind of like, you hear about this with any town where something like this happens and it’s not something that towns are used to where, now it’s just this realization of oh you have to lock the door and this was something that could happen here and we didn’t realize that this was something that could happen here.
R: It’s like a loss of innocence on this macro-level in a community.
Q: Yes, definitely.
That is part one - - will post the rest as it becomes available.