09-11-2020, 07:51 PM
On top of a filing cabinet there’s a research binder labeled “Mothers Who Kill Their Children.” At the foot of his desk there’s a pile of VHS tapes, copies of the three JonBenét documentaries Tracey has coproduced. On his desk, there is a pair of white, porcelain baby shoes; written in gold paint on the toes: “JonBenét 1996”—a gift from one of the investigators on the case.
Tracey pulls out the autopsy pictures of JonBenét’s tiny, obviously abused corpse. The pictures, he says, are a reminder of what he’s fighting for. He points to a close-up shot of JonBenét’s wounded neck—the deep, red gashes caused by a makeshift garrote the killer used to restrain her while he penetrated her, just before killing the child. Tracey feverishly flips to another picture, this one of JonBenét’s bludgeoned skull, an enormous crack through the middle.
With great theatrical flair, he tosses the pictures across the desk to me and begins to make his case, not so much to me but more like he’s addressing any and all critics who would dare to question him. “That penetration was real. There is the general sense that there was an intruder.
“You don’t sort of, in your 40s, become a homicidal maniac,” he continues, referring to JonBenét’s now deceased mother, Patsy. “Patsy doesn’t suddenly, out of nowhere, have the capacity to do that [crime]. She may be lacking in taste—the pageants are not my style—but nothing about her would suggest this kind of behavior.” He pounds his fist at the end of every sentence. “If I have to spend the rest of my life telling America one by one that the Ramseys didn’t do it, I will.” He leans back in his chair.
Tracey’s wearing what he wears almost every day: worn-out jeans, sport sandals, and a wrinkled cotton shirt, unbuttoned one too many times. He has that I’ve-just-been-on-a-hike tan that many CU professors enjoy. His wavy, silver hair is glazed with an unctuous gel. “There are times when I feel like a mini-Clinton,” Tracey says defiantly. “He was one of those characters who people either really loathed or liked. And I sometimes feel like I’m in that position. If you like the Ramseys, you like me. If you don’t like them, you hate me.”
Considering the myriad cul-de-sacs and characters of the JonBenét saga, it’s easy to forget how Tracey got involved in the first place. Almost from the very moment back in December 1996, the day after Christmas, when John Ramsey discovered the mangled body of his 6-year-old daughter in the basement of their Boulder home, he and his wife were considered prime suspects. Those were the days you could overhear someone at a cocktail party say, between sips of Chardonnay, “I just know that trashy Patsy did it. You can see it in her eyes.” On “The Geraldo Rivera Show,” a staged jury declared John and Patsy were “liable” (read: guilty).
Watching this all unfold from its Boulder epicenter, Tracey decided to weigh in on the case. A media scholar by training, he saw the Ramsey story as a perfect example of a flawed American media, the broken Fourth Estate, and he wrote an op-ed piece for the Boulder Daily Camera. Titled “Media-Saturated Culture Too Quick to Judge Ramseys,” Tracey’s article chided the press for its sensational coverage, its endless imagery of a bedazzled JonBenét, and its rush to judgment, as well as the consumers who devoured it all. He asked society to step back, take a breath, and grant the Ramseys their basic inalienable right: the presumption of innocence. “If I wrote a scholarly article about the media coverage, who the hell was going to read it?” Tracey has said about his work. “The choice I made, to engage people, was to get in the boxing ring. That’s where the debate is.”
John Ramsey’s attorney Bryan Morgan in Boulder read the op-ed piece. He picked up the phone to thank Tracey for his refreshing viewpoint. And over the next few months, Morgan says, Tracey convinced the lawyer to talk to his clients about doing an interview.
The embattled Ramseys hadn’t granted a formal interview in months, not since a horribly botched press conference in May 1997, when the Ramseys had insisted they didn’t do it; to which the whole world responded, Oh, yes you did! Suspicion of their guilt intensified, especially in Boulder, eventually running the Ramseys and their son out of Colorado, to relatives in Atlanta. Until Tracey’s op-ed, John and Patsy, adhering to the counsel of their attorney, avoided the media.
The Ramseys agreed to sit down with Tracey. Getting the couple to talk, particularly with a grand jury yet to convene and perhaps indict them for murder, was a journalistic coup, not to mention a potential gold mine. The professor, touting himself as an unbiased scholar, offered them a safe platform from which they could tell their side of the story, and John and Patsy committed to cooperating with the interview. Tracey called his friend David Mills, a television producer back in England known for his work at the U.K.’s Granada news production company, and told him to get on the first plane to America. They all met at the Ramseys’ new home in Atlanta to work out the details of the interview.
Tracey pulls out the autopsy pictures of JonBenét’s tiny, obviously abused corpse. The pictures, he says, are a reminder of what he’s fighting for. He points to a close-up shot of JonBenét’s wounded neck—the deep, red gashes caused by a makeshift garrote the killer used to restrain her while he penetrated her, just before killing the child. Tracey feverishly flips to another picture, this one of JonBenét’s bludgeoned skull, an enormous crack through the middle.
With great theatrical flair, he tosses the pictures across the desk to me and begins to make his case, not so much to me but more like he’s addressing any and all critics who would dare to question him. “That penetration was real. There is the general sense that there was an intruder.
“You don’t sort of, in your 40s, become a homicidal maniac,” he continues, referring to JonBenét’s now deceased mother, Patsy. “Patsy doesn’t suddenly, out of nowhere, have the capacity to do that [crime]. She may be lacking in taste—the pageants are not my style—but nothing about her would suggest this kind of behavior.” He pounds his fist at the end of every sentence. “If I have to spend the rest of my life telling America one by one that the Ramseys didn’t do it, I will.” He leans back in his chair.
Tracey’s wearing what he wears almost every day: worn-out jeans, sport sandals, and a wrinkled cotton shirt, unbuttoned one too many times. He has that I’ve-just-been-on-a-hike tan that many CU professors enjoy. His wavy, silver hair is glazed with an unctuous gel. “There are times when I feel like a mini-Clinton,” Tracey says defiantly. “He was one of those characters who people either really loathed or liked. And I sometimes feel like I’m in that position. If you like the Ramseys, you like me. If you don’t like them, you hate me.”
Considering the myriad cul-de-sacs and characters of the JonBenét saga, it’s easy to forget how Tracey got involved in the first place. Almost from the very moment back in December 1996, the day after Christmas, when John Ramsey discovered the mangled body of his 6-year-old daughter in the basement of their Boulder home, he and his wife were considered prime suspects. Those were the days you could overhear someone at a cocktail party say, between sips of Chardonnay, “I just know that trashy Patsy did it. You can see it in her eyes.” On “The Geraldo Rivera Show,” a staged jury declared John and Patsy were “liable” (read: guilty).
Watching this all unfold from its Boulder epicenter, Tracey decided to weigh in on the case. A media scholar by training, he saw the Ramsey story as a perfect example of a flawed American media, the broken Fourth Estate, and he wrote an op-ed piece for the Boulder Daily Camera. Titled “Media-Saturated Culture Too Quick to Judge Ramseys,” Tracey’s article chided the press for its sensational coverage, its endless imagery of a bedazzled JonBenét, and its rush to judgment, as well as the consumers who devoured it all. He asked society to step back, take a breath, and grant the Ramseys their basic inalienable right: the presumption of innocence. “If I wrote a scholarly article about the media coverage, who the hell was going to read it?” Tracey has said about his work. “The choice I made, to engage people, was to get in the boxing ring. That’s where the debate is.”
John Ramsey’s attorney Bryan Morgan in Boulder read the op-ed piece. He picked up the phone to thank Tracey for his refreshing viewpoint. And over the next few months, Morgan says, Tracey convinced the lawyer to talk to his clients about doing an interview.
The embattled Ramseys hadn’t granted a formal interview in months, not since a horribly botched press conference in May 1997, when the Ramseys had insisted they didn’t do it; to which the whole world responded, Oh, yes you did! Suspicion of their guilt intensified, especially in Boulder, eventually running the Ramseys and their son out of Colorado, to relatives in Atlanta. Until Tracey’s op-ed, John and Patsy, adhering to the counsel of their attorney, avoided the media.
The Ramseys agreed to sit down with Tracey. Getting the couple to talk, particularly with a grand jury yet to convene and perhaps indict them for murder, was a journalistic coup, not to mention a potential gold mine. The professor, touting himself as an unbiased scholar, offered them a safe platform from which they could tell their side of the story, and John and Patsy committed to cooperating with the interview. Tracey called his friend David Mills, a television producer back in England known for his work at the U.K.’s Granada news production company, and told him to get on the first plane to America. They all met at the Ramseys’ new home in Atlanta to work out the details of the interview.