1999 Flashback

http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/08/31/ramsey.release/

Ramseys challenge prosecutors to bring charges in JonBenet murder case

Patsy Ramsey says if prosecutors want to charge her with murder, "let's have a trial and get it over with"

August 31, 2000
Web posted at: 4:22 p.m. EDT (2022 GMT)

ATLANTA (CNN) -- Patsy Ramsey and her attorney urged Boulder, Colorado, prosecutors to file charges against her if they think they can prove that she killed her 6-year-old daughter, JonBenet.

Ramsey told USA Today that she and her husband, John, are frustrated that they are still under suspicion in the 1996 murder.

"I'm beyond being hurt or embarrassed," Ramsey told the newspaper. "If you think I did it, lets have a trial and get it over with."

Ramseys' attorney Lin Wood echoed that sentiment Wednesday on CNN's "Larry King Live." Wood demanded that Boulder County special prosecutor Michael Kane explain why a grand jury did not indict either of the Ramsey's after a 13-month investigation.

He added that Kane should either "put up or shut up" about charging the Ramseys.

Kane refused to be pressured.

"I'm not going to be dictated, nor is the Boulder Police Department going to be dictated, by a demand by Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey or anybody else to put up or shut up. That's not how the criminal justice system works," Kane said.

He also said he could not release any information about the grand jury proceedings without the court's permission.


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Wood and Kane did agree during the King interview to release the complete videotape of this week's two-day, 10-hour interview between Boulder authorities and the Ramseys. The also said they would seek the release of the grand jury transcripts.

"I'll tell you what: If you will go to court with me, and ask the presiding judge to authorize a release of that information, I will release it," Kane told Wood.

Wood replied, "I will walk into that courtroom with you."

Wood's office said it did not have a timetable for releasing the videotape and other documents.

The 22-minute segment of the videotape that Wood released Wednesday showed that he and Kane argued over questions concerning the Ramseys' son Burke.

Special prosecutor Michael Kane asked Patsy Ramsey why she allowed Burke to go to and from school without security.

"Well, he left the garage in a locked car and drove straight to school, and then was escorted into the school," Ramsey answered.

When Kane attempted to push Ramsey further on the question, Wood questioned Kane, "I just wonder, what does this have to do with the investigation into finding who killed JonBenet Ramsey?"

Kane then accused Wood of attempting to obstruct questioning, which Wood denied.

The next few minutes of the tape showed the two attorneys arguing over the questioning, with Kane calling the questioning "a sham" and threatening to walk out of the room.

Wood told CNN Wednesday that he allowed his client to answer all of the questions she was asked, but he did not believe the question about Burke was relevant, calling it "the disgusting tactic of an overzealous prosecutor."

The argument erupted during questioning Tuesday by Boulder investigators over the unsolved 1996 killing of JonBenet. Investigators said the sessions, held Monday and Tuesday, produced "less than we had hoped for."

In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner, who participated in the sessions, said his office was prepared to explain "what evidence we believed put them under suspicion, and explore whether they had any explanations for some of that evidence."

Beckner said the Ramseys' attorney wanted to see portions of lab reports prior to allowing his clients to answer questions about forensic evidence. But, he said, it is not in the best interests of the investigation to release any further police reports on the crime.

He said releasing the information "could actually harm our efforts to find justice for JonBenet."

The Ramseys have been under intense scrutiny since their daughter was found dead -- strangled and beaten -- in the basement of their Boulder home the day after Christmas in 1996.

The family moved back to Atlanta a short time after the killing. They have maintained their innocence in the case, and wrote a book entitled "The Death of Innocence" to explain their theory that a pedophile intruder killed their daughter.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

LKL Interview Transcript

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0008/30/lkl.00.html

Larry King Live
Ramsey Attorney to Release Tapes; Drew Carey on Trauma and Triumph

Aired August 30, 2000 - 9:00 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, he is a fabulous funny man with two hit TV shows. His life has not always been a load of laughs. Drew Carey will join us in Los Angeles, talking trauma and triumph.

But topping the news, inside views on the police Q&A with John and Patsy Ramsey, against their lawyer's advice. In Atlanta, the Ramseys attorney, Lin Wood; in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, Ramsey case special prosecutor Michael Kane. They're both next on LARRY KING LIVE.

John and Patsy Ramsey were questioned by Boulder authorities during separate meetings in their attorney's office in Atlanta on Monday and Tuesday.

Joining us from Atlanta is Lin Wood, and from Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, Michael Kane. Michael is on contract to the prosecutor's office in Boulder.

Michael, you were part of the questioning. Did you learn anything yesterday or today that changed your mind, added to the facts, caused you to think differently?

MICHAEL KANE, RAMSEY CASE PROSECUTOR: Well, Larry, I'm not on this program or any other program to talk about the facts of the Ramsey investigation. This is a case that's been going on for three and a half years and we have had a policy -- I have certainly had a policy that it is not appropriate to talk about the facts. The reason I am agreeing to appear here tonight is because Mr. Wood has been making comments about our approach during these last round of discussions with the Ramseys, and I would like an opportunity to respond to that.

KING: All right, but the question was: Did you learn anything different? Not what did you learn, but did you learn something?

KANE: Well, I mean, you always learn any time you have an opportunity to ask questions of witnesses or suspects, and so, of course, we learned information. I'm not going to deny that.

KING: All right, Lin Wood, what was your objection since, as you say, your clients didn't do it, what did it matter how the questioning went, as long as they didn't do it and answered the questions? LIN WOOD, RAMSEY ATTORNEY: Well, even innocent people need to be protected from overzealous and less than objective prosecutors such as Michael Kane.

KING: What did he do?

WOOD: Well, Michael Kane wanted, for example, to go into an area dealing with forensic tests, some test results primarily on fibers, he wanted to tell us what the results of the tests were and then ask a hypothetical question about it. The test results, as they described them, were confusing, they couldn't give us a clear explanation, so I said just show us the results. You know, interrogators often will intentionally mischaracterize things such as forensic tests so that they can go on a fishing expedition.

We are almost four years into this investigation of this family, millions of dollars, special prosecutors, a grand jury for 13 months, Larry. Every inch of this family's life has been examined and re- examined. They have been subjected to police interrogation for over 66 hours.

So my question for Michael Kane tonight is, Mr. Kane, are you now ready to state that you are prepared to file criminal charges against John and Patsy Ramsey? It's time for you to answer that question, and you owe that answer to the American public and to this family.

KANE: Mr. Wood, neither I nor Chief Beckner are going to be directed by you, or by your clients, or by anybody else as to when it would be appropriate to file criminal charges. When we reach the point -- as every prosecutor in this country recognizes, when we reach the point where there is an individual against whom we can prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt, we will file the charges.

WOOD: Well, Mr. Kane, what else do you have to do to investigate John and Patsy Ramsey? What possibly could be left to do? You have collected all the physical evidence from the crime scene. You have done all of the forensic tests known possible to be done. I mean, 66 hours of voluntarily coming in and answering questions from skilled police interrogators -- what else is there to do? Isn't it time for you to acknowledge that you have done everything you can do, you have exhausted the investigation, and as much as you might like it, it's not there? You want it to be there, Mr. Kane, but it's not there and it's time for you to acknowledge that.

KANE: Well, Mr. Wood...

KING: Michael -- let me interrupt. Michael, it's a fair question only in that the public is already with enough of this already either -- I guess the old term is put up or shut up. What's the story?

WOOD: Absolutely.

KANE: Well, you know, and I don't ascribe to that at all, Larry. I don't know how many cases, criminal cases Mr. Wood has had, but I have had quite a few, Bruce Levin has had probably twice as many as I have, and Mitch Morris -- he's had more than that. And we've had cases that have been a week old, we have had cases -- I tried a murder case that was 15 years old. You don't try a case until you get to the point where the evidence proves it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Are we there now? No. Will something happen next week that could put us there? Perhaps. Could something happen in five years that could put us there? Perhaps. But I'm not going to be dictated, nor is the Boulder Police Department going to be dictated, by a demand by Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey or anybody else to put up or shut up. That's not how the criminal justice systems works.

WOOD: So you're acknowledging tonight, Mr. Kane, that after this period of time, this much investigation, this much money, these hours of interrogation, you are admitting tonight that the evidence is still not there, and I guess you're telling us that someday, you're hoping a miracle will occur, and you'll find something to prove your case, despite the fact that you haven't been able to do it in all this period of time. I just think that's a -- continuing to show a lack of objectivity and fairness to this family.

KANE: You know, we went down to Atlanta, because we have been told by you, Mr. Wood, that the Ramseys were willing to answer any question that was put to them, so long as we weren't plowing over old ground.

WOOD: As long as it was fair.

KANE: And if you'll recall, I wrote you a letter on July 13th, in which I said in response to a letter that you had written the day before, I said to you -- and if I could read this, Larry, it's important: "In recent conversations with you and your clients, we agreed there would be no need to plow old ground in this case. It serves no purpose in the investigation to pose questions which have already been answered. We did not, however, ever hint at a willingness to roll over and play dead if a question was not to your or your client's liking. We do not conduct interviews with anyone, suspect or witness, under such terms, nor would any other competent law enforcement agency."

After receiving that letter, Mr. Wood, you called me before the ink on your fax machine was dry and assured me that whatever question that we had that was germane to the investigation, your clients were willing to answer.

WOOD: And they did. And they did.

KANE: And then we got down there, we found out otherwise.

WOOD: Not true, absolutely false.

KING: We have a difference here. Are you saying, Michael, questions were not answered?

KANE: Absolutely. Absolutely. I told Mr. Wood, before we left, he said, do you have further questions? I said, I have many, many more questions. But with the parameters that you've set, I'm not going to ask those, because I'm not going to listen to a 10-minute speech every time I ask one of these questions, and that's how it was left.

WOOD: That will not be borne out by the transcript of that interview. The only questions that were not...

KANE: Release it.

WOOD: Well, if you would like for me to. I thought Chief Beckner asked me not to.

KANE: You've already done it, Mr. Wood. You've already released it.

KING: Do you have -- did you release all the transcripts, Lin?

WOOD: No. I released a small segment of an afternoon session that shows some problems that occurred with Mr. Kane's conduct in the interviews. I did that because the Boulder Police Department issued a press release basically praising Mr. Kane's conduct. I found out that Mr. Kane was going to appear on "Good Morning America," and so I decided it was appropriate to let the public see what Mr. Kane did and how he did it, and let the public decide if his conduct was appropriate.

KING: Lin, do you plan to release the whole thing?

WOOD: Well, it just sounds like I've been asked to do so by Mr. Kane, and I will tell you this, Larry...

KANE: I'm not asking you to do anything.

WOOD: I thought you just said release it.

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Well, why not? Why not release it, Lin? Why not release it, Michael?

WOOD: Listen, I'm more than happy to release it. I'd like to for the public to know exactly what this police department has done to John and Patsy Ramsey.

KING: Well, who can release it? Michael, can you release it?

KANE: I'm -- we're prosecutors, we work under prosecutorial ethics, and our ethics are, we don't discuss a case, we don't release information about a case.

WOOD: You're on national television discussing the case, so...

KANE: And I'm not here talking about the facts of the case, Mr.Wood.

WOOD: What are you here to talk about?

KANE: I did not leave the interviews on Monday afternoon and hold a press conference. I didn't do that. WOOD: We didn't either.

KANE: You did. You did.

KING: I'm a little confused.

WOOD: We went outside to a waiting group of journalists who wanted to have some questions answered, and I thought they were entitled to answers.

KING: Michael, if someone is questioned by prosecutors or police, and says, release it, I don't care, you can a hear everything I said, what could you possibly have against that if the person being questioned wants it released?

KANE: I don't have a problem with it. I'm saying that as prosecutors, we can't release it. If Mr. Woods...

KING: Who can't?

WOODS: Sure you can. He's got my authority to release it if you need it. Go right ahead and release it, Mr. Kane, and release...

KANE: But, Mr. Woods, I don't even have it. I don't have the tape.

WOODS: Release the 48 hours of videotape when you interrogated him for three days in June of 1998. Let the public see what you did to them in those days.

KANE: You have...

KING: Let me break here, fellows. Let me get a break.

Michael says you can release them, Lin.

We'll come back with Lin Wood and Michael Kane.

Drew Carey still to come.

Jerry Lewis Friday night.

Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOOD: Mr. Kane, you misrepresent my letter to you, you misrepresent our conversation, you misrepresent your statements that I have imposed conditions -- let me finish. All -- the only...

KANE: Mr. Wood, this is a sham.

WOOD: No, it's not.

KANE: This is a big publicity stunt...

WOOD: No, it's not.

KANE: ... on your part. You want you to go out there and say my client answered every question. Well, don't say that, because you're not letting your client answer this question.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KANE: That medallion worked in a school. It was tied into something in the -- in the -- principal's office. Is that correct?

PATSY RAMSEY: Right. Right.

KANE: So on way to school it wouldn't work. What...

RAMSEY: Well, I...

KANE: Why did you allow her to go without any security against Tracy Temple's (ph) advice, as a matter of fact, to be transported to and from school when he was most vulnerable.

RAMSEY: Well, he -- he left the garage in a locked car and drove straight to school, and then was escorted into the school.

KANE: You didn't have any concerns about somebody, a stop sign...

WOOD: Mr. Kane...

KANE: Michael.

What's the objection now?

WOOD: I just wondered, what does this have to do with the investigation into finding who killed JonBenet Ramsey?

KANE: The very fact that I'm asking it means it has something to do with it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Lin Wood, you released that tape to us, and Michael says you can release all of it; will you?

WOOD: Well, if Michael has authorized me.

KING: He just did.

WOOD: Well, then, Michael...

KANE: I'm saying I have no objection.

WOOD: I will absolutely accept you request that I release those records, and release those tapes, and we'll release the June of 1998 tapes.

And I would challenge you, in return, to tell us now why the grand jury that you were in charge of, after 13 months, refused to issue an indictment in this case. Would you tell us that, please, Mr. Kane?

KING: But you will still release them, right, Lin? He has agreed to let you release.

WOOD: Let me say one thing too, Larry, about the interviews, if you don't mind, because it is important to know...

KANE: Mr. Wood, let me ask you...

KING: Let him answer that first. Go ahead.

WOOD: Let me finish. During the interviews, John and Patsy Ramsey did, in fact, answer every question, even the questions that I thought were basically a waste of time about whether or not they had adequate protection for their son Burke, then 10 years old, when he returned to school in Boulder in 1997.

They did not answer a handful of questions about the forensic tests, but I offered, if they would simply show me the results so that we could verify that they were telling us accurate that we would answer those.

But what Mr. Kane does not know is that when he had already left, the other members of the interrogation squad were there, and we didn't have any problems with those six individuals. My clients gave to Chief Beckner, the Boulder Police Department, their direct private telephone numbers, and they told Chief Beckner: We want to have a dialogue with you. We want to work with you. If you think there is something that we can give you, in terms of additional information, pick up the phone and call us, don't even call our lawyer, call us directly. That is cooperation.

KING: I have got a time problem here, Lin. But you will release them, and Michael has given you permission.

And now, Michael, he asked you, why -- to explain why the grand jury did not indict.

KANE: Larry, Mr. Wood, if he has ever practiced criminal law, which I don't know that he ever has, but I assume that he knows, because it is criminal law 101 that no prosecutor can talk about what went on in the grand jury.

WOOD: Sure you can.

KANE: I can absolutely not talk about what went on in the grand jury, and you know it, and you know it, Lin.

WOOD: Mr. Kane, why don't you just tell us why the grand jury didn't take any action. It is a fair question. The public is entitled to know. This is not...

KANE: No, I'm not -- I'll tell you what, Mr. Wood, I'll tell you what: If you will go to court with me, and ask the president judge to authorize a release of that information, I will release it.

WOOD: I will walk into that courtroom with you, I may not...

KANE: I will sign that petition with you, Mr. Wood, I will sign.

WOOD: Let's get this case...

KING: Wait a minute.

WOOD: Let's get this case out fully and fairly before the public.

KING: We have made some progress here tonight. Lin Wood will release all the tapes he has got. And Michael and Lin will go to court together; Lin will ask for the release of the grand jury, Michael will say is OK.

WOOD: I look forward to seeing you in court, Michael.

KANE: I will tell the judge I have no objection. If you say that you will waive rule 6 and allow us to release that information, I will tell the court I have no objection.

WOOD: Let's the truth come out, Mr. Kane.

KANE: All right, very well.

KING: We're going to have you both back for an hour when all of it comes out, and I appreciate you being with us, Lin Wood and Michael Kane, and the dilemma goes on.

When we come back, Drew Carey on this edition of LARRY KING LIVE. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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LKL Interview Transcript

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0211/12/lkl.00.html

CNN LARRY KING LIVE

Interview with Lin Wood

Aired November 12, 2002 - 21:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LARRY KING, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight, new revelations in the most sensational child murder mystery of our time, the Jon Benet Ramsey case. With never before seen police video tape.

PATSY RAMSEY, MOTHER OF JON BENET: He didn't do it. I didn't do it. Bert (ph) didn't do it.

KING: It was six years ago next month, Christmas night 1996. Beautiful Jon Benet murdered in the quiet picturesque Rocky Mountain community of Boulder, Colorado. Her lifeless, strangled body found the next day in the family's basement. This gruesome crime captured the public's imagination and wouldn't let go. But to this day not a single arrest. The lead police investigator think Jon Benet's mother, Patsy Ramsey is the killer. The Ramseys say it was an intruder and they've issued heated denials, some of them on this program.

STEVE THOMAS, BOULDER POLICE INVESTIGATOR: Are you saying you would have...

(CROSSTALK)

JOHN RAMSEY, FATHER OF JON BENET: You have assaulted my wife.

KING: The Ramseys remain under a cloud of suspicion. But the Boulder police have also been accused of badly botching the investigation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, there were many mistakes.

KING: Tonight, after six years of endless questions and no answers, some new insight into the Jon Benet Ramsey case. John and Patsy Ramsey's attorney, Lin Wood, shares with us some never before seen video of the Ramseys' police interviews and depositions. An intense new look at the still unsolved mystery of Jon Benet Ramsey's murder. It's next on LARRY KING LIVE.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Good evening. We have a very interesting show in store for you tonight. Our special guest is Lin Wood from Atlanta, Georgia. He is the attorney, civil attorney, for John and Patsy Ramsey. He has been on this program before. We've got a bunch of tapes we're going to be showing you tonight. Why, Lin? Why have you made all of this available to us? Give us a little genesis.

LIN WOOD, RAMSEYS ATTORNEY: Well, the Ramseys goal at this point is to try to get the investigation into the hands of new and competent, skilled, experienced and fair investigators. The Boulder Police Department has demonstrated over the last six years that it is not willing to take a thorough and fair look at the facts of this case.

They focused on the Ramseys. They've ignored other tips and leads. Some of these tapes clearly demonstrate the incompetence of the investigation. While at the same time I think reveal the cooperation of the Ramseys have given.

KING: Tape turned over to you as the attorney hired under the...

WOOD: The tapes of the interrogations from June of 1998 and August of 2000 were provided to me without any stipulation that they could not be used publicly. The other deposition tapes from civil litigation are the nonconfidential portions of those tapes.

The Ramseys' position is very simple. They want the public to have the full benefit of what has been done and what has not been done in this investigation.

KING: Before we start seeing some of them, we're going to see a lot of clips tonight of these tapes in various circumstances. How are they doing?

WOOD: Well, John's trying to get established in a new job. Patsy is, as you know, recovering from recent six month treatment, chemotherapy treatment for a recurrence of cancer. They're amazing people, Larry. They are forward-looking in terms of trying to survive the tragedies in their lives.

And I think they're strengthened by not only their knowledge of their innocence, but by the quality of their character. And the hope that one day the murder of Jon Benet will be solved.

KING: Let's begin with the tapes we're going to be seeing tonight. You've given us access to these. The first one we're going to show is the police interviewing the Ramseys. One interview took place in 1998 and the other in 2000, that was after they moved to Atlanta. I guess we see Steve Thomas here.

WOOD: I think in the June 1998 tapes they had moved to Atlanta but you will not see Thomas. Those interrogations were conducted by prosecutors with police review at night.

KING: I'll bring up Thomas in a moment who appeared on this program with them. Let's watch the first tape.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

J. RAMSEY: You hope that she didn't suffer. And if I let myself think beyond that, it's too difficult. But my hope is that she didn't suffer. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's about 10:25. Do you want to take about a ten minute break? How's that sound? We'll come back to this.

P. RAMSEY: I'm sorry.

J. RAMSEY: We were given Jon Benet, who in my mind it was a gift to us. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) I miss her more than I can bear. I couldn't do anything about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Since that day, have you given any thought, even for a minute, considered that John may have been involved in some way in Jon Benet's death?

P. RAMSEY: Absolutely no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not a second?

P. RAMSEY: Not a moment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Never crossed your mind?

P. RAMSEY: Never crossed my mind.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why?

P. RAMSEY: That man loved his children. Period, end of statement.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know you're a Christian, John. Would you swear to God you didn't do this?

J. RAMSEY: I swear to God I didn't do it. I swear to God.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know anybody else? Could your wife have done it?

J. RAMSEY: Swear to God. What I told you is the absolute from the heart truth.

P. RAMSEY: He didn't do it. I didn't do it. Burke didn't do it. We love that child, OK? We're not involved. Read my lips. Let's find out who is.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

KING: I never seen police ask, Do you swear to God you didn't do it?

WOOD: Well I've never, fortunately, been subjected to a police interrogation. I think it's important to note that what you have seen there are small portions of three day interrogation. Patsy Ramsey was interrogated for three full days. John was interrogated for three full days. That was after they had given eight hours of interviews back in April of '97.

And you've seen some emotion. You've seen, I think, though, individuals who are down to earth. They're honest. And they then wanted to help this investigation. They still want to help it. They just want to have people deal with them that are fair and will know what they're doing.

They did -- Lou Smith that you saw with John Ramsey. I know you know Lou Smith, he's been on your program. He's a great homicide investigator. He spent a lot of time looking at all the evidence in this case. He is totally convinced that the Ramseys are innocent.

KING: Steve Thomas, who was the lead investigator, wrote a book called "Jon Benet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation." His theory was that Pasty committed the murder. In a dramatic moment on this shoe he accused her on this program. I'm sure you saw that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS: Patsy, you could have been arrested in this case.

P. RAMSEY: I wish I had been and then we would have had a free and fair trial and you would have met your Waterloo, Mr. Thomas.

THOMAS: Are you saying...

(CROSSTALK)

J. RAMSEY: You have assaulted my wife. You have assaulted her. You have called her a murderer. You have checked 73 suspects and said because Patsy's handwriting was the only one that couldn't be eliminated, therefore, she is a murderer. That is absurd.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: There was subsequently a lawsuit over that book and it was settled, right?

WOOD: Steve Thomas settled it in the Ramseys' favor.

KING: Steve Thomas was deposed, was he not, over that book?

WOOD: He was deposed actually in another lawsuit that was filed against the Ramseys. We subpoenaed him. He fought the subpoena, tried to avoid being deposed. Court ordered that he be deposed. So we had a chance to depose him for seven hours.

KING: And let's watch some portion of that. Steve Thomas being deposed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS: I believe there were discussions with the FBI, yes, about how to exert some public pressure on people who were not cooperating, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Were they also thinking that they might use the media to apply pressure so that there might be a possibility that one of the parents might confession involvement in the crime? Was there ever discussed?

THOMAS: That may have been some motivation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you believe, from your recollections, that that was discussed?

THOMAS: I wouldn't disagree with it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who put the screen saver on at the Boulder Police Department that said, quote, "The Ramseys are the killers?"

THOMAS: I don't know who applied that to the computer screen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you think that was professional?

THOMAS: Sometimes police humor can be less than professional behind closed doors.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well did you suggest that it might be better to take that off since you were in the process of investigation and there were a number of suspects beyond the Ramseys?

THOMAS: I did not make that suggestion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Was he a weak witness?

WOOD: I thought he was a very weak witness. I think that we learned a long time ago that when you tell the truth, you look somebody in the eye. Steve Thomas spent most of that deposition looking down at the table.

KING: But he did believe Patsy did it, right? I mean, that wasn't just conjecture?

WOOD: I think Steve Thomas formed that belief within days of his involvement in this case because he was not a homicide detective, he was a narcotics detective, and he only knew one way to investigate, and that is to try to figure out who did it, and then build a case against that person. That's the exact opposite of how you handle a homicide investigation.

KING: Right back with more of these fascinating details on this case, now about to be six years old.

We'll be right back with Lin Wood on this edition of LARRY KING LIVE. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS: I'm suggesting that there was an explosive encounter, because at one point put the child in clothes, a red turtleneck, for example, not the same clothing she was found in deceased, the following day. I think something happened in that bathroom.

KING: All right. Why would it lead then to garroting and hitting on the head: What would lead to that?

THOMAS: I don't know. What can you imagine would led to garroting or hitting on the head?

P. RAMSEY: What can you imagine? I can't imagine. I want to you look at me and tell me what you think happened.

THOMAS: Actually, I'll look you right in the eye. I think you're good for this. I think that's what the evidence suggests.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We're back with Lin Wood. Now, police say that they had several key pieces of evidence against the Ramseys. We should point out no charges have ever been brought in this case against anyone, right?

WOOD: Against anyone.

KING: Patsy's clothing fibers -- the biggest one they claim is the fibers from her jacket. They say from what she was wearing were found in the paint tray where the garot used to strangle Jon Benet was found. Fibers were also found on Jon Benet's body, and the duct tape Jon Benet's mouth. And what we are going to show now is the tape of her responding to that charge, right?

Here is Jon Benet's mother, Patsy, responding to that charge about the evidence of the fibers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have found, and I want you to help us, maybe you can offer an explanation. We have found fibers in the paint tray that appear to come off of the coat in the photograph we showed you.

P. RAMSEY: In the paint tray?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

P. RAMSEY: What's a paint...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... ask his question. What's your question?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I did.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll rephrase the question, maybe this will satisfy -- Mrs. Ramsey, I have no evidence from any scientist to suggest that those fibers are from any source other than your red jacket.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on. What other sources did they test? How many other red jackets and red and black jackets did they test? That's an unfair question on the face of it, Bruce. Did they test anything other than that red and black jacket? I mean, they can't have information that it could come from another source if they didn't test another source for gosh sakes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And how, Lin were they -- would you go out and test every red jacket ever made?

WOOD: No, no -- but let me make a couple of points. Number one, police interrogations do not have to be fair, and they don't have to be truthful. So when they ask a question and say they've got evidence that says that fibers from her jacket appear to be consistent with fibers found in the paint tray, that may or may not be true.

I know they asked John Ramsey about fibers during his interrogation, and I know for a fact that the information was not true in terms of the location of those fibers.

Patsy was wearing a red and black and gray jacket, as I recall, and there were red fibers alleged to have been found on the duct tape, and on Jon Benet's body and in the paint tray.

That's what they say.

There were no black fibers. There were no gray fibers. We know that there are brown fibers that have never been sourced. We know that there are blue fibers that have never been sourced.

So the fiber evidence is, I think, extremely weak and besides, she lived in the home. She put Jon Benet to bed that night. There's any one of many innocent explanations for why the fibers might be consistent with something Patsy was wearing.

KING: Now concerning John's clothing fibers. They say there's evidence of fibers from John's clothing on Jon Benet. Here is the father's response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Ramsey, it is our belief, based on forensic testing that there are hairs that are associated -- that the source is the collared black shirt that you sent to us that are found in your daughter's underpants, and I want to refute...

J. RAMSEY: Bull (EXPLETIVE DELETED). I don't believe that. I don't buy it. If you're trying to disgrace my relationship with my daughter...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Ramsey, I'm not trying to...

J. RAMSEY: Well, I don't believe it. That's ridiculous.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think you are too, Bruce. Let's move on. Why don't you move on.

J. RAMSEY: That's disgusting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I am not.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, you are.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's move to something else, maybe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's move to another topic.

J. RAMSEY: The question is, how did fibers of your shirt get in your daughter's underwear? I say that is not possible. I don't believe it. That's ridiculous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So you're saying police invent things to try to get respondents to respond?

WOOD: That was invented. We know that there were black fibers found, they claim, but there were no black fibers found in the areas of Jon Benet's underwear, as claimed in that question. The Boulder Police Department did not even ask for the Ramseys to provide the department with the clothes they were wearing the night of Jon Benet's murder for over one year. They couldn't even remember what they had worn. They had to go back and look at photographs to try and reconstruct what they wore that night.

KING: And now, one other thing in this segment, the pineapple. There was pineapple found in Jon Benet's stomach in the autopsy. Patsy Ramsey said she didn't feed Jon Benet any pineapple that night, but pineapple was found in Jon Benet's stomach. Police say that Patsy's fingerprints were found on the bowl of pineapple. Police say they can't be hers. Police say she is lying about this, then she's probably lying about other things. Here is Patsy's response to those accusations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were the remains of pineapple in Jon Benet's system.

P. RAMSEY: I have heard that, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. So this isn't a shock to you?

P. RAMSEY: No it is not, no. But I did not do this. If she ate that, somebody put that there. I don't know when she would have eaten it. She was sound asleep when we got home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. And what if those fingerprints belong to one of the two of you?

P. RAMSEY: Well, I don't know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, now wait a minute. You started that line... P. RAMSEY: I didn't put the bowl there, OK? I did not put the bowl there. I would not do this setup.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, but let's go back to your line of reasoning here. Now, talk to me.

P. RAMSEY: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look at me.

P. RAMSEY: If they're not yours and they're not John's, then they would be somebody else's.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

I mean, there was somebody in our home that night besides my husband, my son, my daughter and myself that killed our daughter. You know? Could they have fed Jon Benet pineapple?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[To be continued in next post]

 

[continued from previous post]

KING: Did that answer the pineapple question?

WOOD: I have to tell you, the pineapple question is still a confusing one for me because the logic of the police escapes me.

They claim that there was pineapple or a substance like pineapple found in Jon Benet's intestinal tract upon autopsy. The digestive time for pineapple is so varied that I don't think anyone could pinpoint with any accuracy when she might have eaten that substance, if it was pineapple.

There were any number of victims' assistants and individuals at the Ramsey house the morning when they thought this was a kidnapping. Whether that bowl was placed there then or whether it was placed there earlier. I don't think Patsy Ramsey has ever denied that it was not her fingerprint. I think she's just made the consistent point from Day One, just as John has, when they got home that night, Jon Benet was asleep. They took her from the car, they put her to bed. They did not feed her pineapple that night.

KING: More when we come back. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

P. RAMSEY: What we want to let everyone know is that this $100,000 reward is for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer of our daughter. We feel like there are at least two people on the face of this Earth that know who did this and that is the killer and someone that that person may have confided in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) (SINGING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We're back with Lin Wood, the attorney for the Ramseys, whose desire it is to get a broader, fuller, better investigation, right?

WOOD: I'd like to get actually a legitimate investigation. We've never had one.

KING: Because the cloud still hangs over them, right? And always will until...

WOOD: Look, there's no public will in Colorado at the moment for public officials to spend the money to reinvestigate the Jon Benet Ramsey case so the Ramseys twist slowly in the wind in Atlanta, Georgia. That may be a satisfactory solution to the taxpayers of Colorado and to the politicians of Colorado, but it is not a satisfactory resolution for John and Patsy Ramsey. They want to know who killed their daughter.

KING: Enter Lou Smit, a veteran investigator hired by the Boulder police to help out with the investigation. Smit eventually resigned out of frustration, now works on his own on this case and he believes an intruder committed the crime.

Here was Lou Smit appearing on this program.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOU SMIT, INVESTIGATOR: I believe that there is evidence pointing toward an intruder, strong credible evidence. I believe that sometime during December 25, 1996, someone got into the house of John and Patsy Ramsey. I believe there is some evidence to suggest strongly that he may have come in through a basement window.

KING: And then I remember your telling me about a suitcase.

SMIT: The position of that suitcase when it was first observed there, by Fleet White, was that it was directly against the wall directly underneath that open window. There is evidence on top of that suit case, a very small, tiny pea sized piece of glass which could have come off the shoe of the intruder. There's also what appears to be a disturbance on the top of that suitcase, as if someone may have stood on it at some particular point. The intruder had to come in through the window.

KING: Used the suitcase to get out.

SMIT: Yes. It would make it much easier to get out of that basement.

KING: OK. So then you have a theory as well dealing with the bed. Which is?

SMIT: I believe that the killer did take Jon Benet from her bed.

KING: Right there.

SMIT: And brought her down to the deepest, farthest dirtiest corner of that basement and did fashion a garot there that was used to strangle her. And that he did also stun gun her, very possibly at that location. And then he also brutally hit her on the head with a blunt object.

KING: Why is the bed significant to you?

SMIT: They show a bed that is somewhat messy, but it don't look like there's been any violence in that room. The various tables in that room and the other bed don't show any signs of violence occurring in that room.

I don't know what was in the mind of the killer. All I know is that the killer fantasized making this garot in his mind. He fantasized putting this around her next. He had to put a handle on this garot. He had put a noose on this garot. He had to put it around Jon Benet's neck, probably while she was still bound and had the Duct tape on her mouth.

KING: Do you think she was targeted? that it was someone who knew these people? Who knew -- obviously knew they had money?

SMIT: Yes. I think that is the motive for the intruder. The Ramseys were very highly visible prior to the murder. John Ramsey was the head of this large access graphics company. He was known as "Billion Dollar John."

KING: So would you say then if it ever came that the Ramseys were involved, you'd be shocked?

SMIT: If the Ramseys were involved, I would be very shocked.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: There was a time, Lin Wood, when people thought that he, Lou Smit, was working for the Ramseys. He never worked for the Ramseys.

WOOD: Never worked for the Ramseys. Never received a dime form the Ramseys. He worked for the Boulder police department and he's been working the case on his own since then.

And Lou Smit, you know, 32 years homicide experience. This is the kind of homicide investigator that needs to be looking at this case from A to Z. And that means R, too. The Ramseys understand. When they call for new investigation, they will be reinvestigated, too. They're prepared for that to happen.

KING: Here now is John Ramsey responding to police questioning about the intruder theory. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If ever there were going to be an intruder on trial, the defense is going to be that you did it. Remember that.

J. RAMSEY: I remember that. But I'm not here to prove my innocence. I'm here to find the killer of my daughter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: There are those who say, Lin Wood, that Smit bonded too much with the Ramseys, got too close with them. Went to church with them.

WOOD: Never went to church with them. I think that he ran across them one day when he was out in front of the house and met them, spoke with them and said a short prayer with them.

Lou Smit has a technique and it's successful. He tried to build a bridge with individuals who are potential suspects. The Boulder police department built a wall. Lou Smit tried to build a bridge. And the rumors and speculation and myths about him being too religious -- he's put a lot of people in jail.

And if he thought John and Patsy Ramsey were involved in this crime, he said it to me, he said it to you, he would be the first person to say, put them away.

KING: You will admit, Lin, that there is so much puzzling aspects to this case that they have to be considered.

WOOD: They've only asked and urged that all other leads and tips and possible suspects be investigated with the same level of thoroughness and competency that they've been subjected to.

Every square inch of their lives have been covered repeatedly, and the police came up empty, but they've never looked at other people. Never canvassed the neighborhood, never investigated workmen and repairmen at the house.

Legitimate leads that have come in, where individuals have called my office and said, We never heard back from the Boulder Police Department.

And look, sooner or later you've either got to declare that the case is over and you have nothing else to do with respect to the Ramseys, and they're not under criminal investigation any longer, and the case is unsolved, or you've got to say, This is the murder of a child, and in Colorado, we're going to do whatever it takes to investigate it, and get some folks in there that know what they are doing, and I think this case can be solved.

KING: We'll be right back with Lin Wood with more fascinating tapes. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

P. RAMSEY: This shouldn't have been this way. She should have enjoyed a lot of wonderful years on this earth, but now she's in heaven, and I know I'll be there one day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're back with attorney Lin Wood, he is the attorney for the Ramseys, who live -- how is their son doing, by the way?

WOOD: Burke is like most kids, he's struggling in high school. But he's doing fairly well under the circumstances. I worry more about Burke in years down the road when the impact of all of this hits him, but he's doing very well right now.

KING: Does it concern the Ramseys that a killer is loose somewhere?

WOOD: Sure it does. It ought to concern any citizen in this country. People sit back -- in 1996, people don't come into your house in the middle of the night, in a million dollar house, and take your child and brutally murder your child.

And guess what? We know that that happens. Ask the Smart family. They had someone come into their house in the middle of the night while they slept and in the presence of one of their other children literally take their child out of the house.

KING: Now, along with Steve Thomas, we have deposition tapes of others involved in the investigation. They include Alex Hunter, the Boulder County district attorney, and Mark Beckner, the Boulder chief of police.

Here's a tape of them, Hunter and the others, discussing this in their deposition.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX HUNTER, FORMER BOULDER CITY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: This has come up before. I think it's much like some of the other myths you've talked about, to be frank with you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That being?

HUNTER: That there was some sophisticated media plan that was designed to undercut people or, you know, psychologically pressure them. I know it's -- that's been sort of out there from time to time. I'm not sure there is a basis for it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You made a statement in June of 1998 in a press release that said -- the question was, Do you know who did it? And you said -- answer -- "I have an idea who did it."

What was the purpose in saying that?

MARK BECKNER, BOULDER POLICE CHIEF: Well, I think one of the purposes, reassuring the public that we're not clueless about this case. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And would it be fair to say that when you made the statement "I have an idea who did it" you weren't trying to focus on John and/or Patsy Ramsey, were you?

BECKNER: I wasn't intending that to be necessarily the interpretation of that, but I wanted the public to know, yes, we had an idea.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And Alex Hunter, by the way, has since then called Steve Thomas' book, accusing Patsy of being the murderer, pure and simple blood money, and quoted also saying that Thomas is "toast if he ever was called as a witness in a trial."

He also denies claims by Thomas that he, Alex Hunter, leaked the investigation to the tabloids, other than the "Globe."

WOOD: Look, Alex Hunter is wrong, and I think Alex knows better. There was a plan, and it was a plan that was -- it involved the FBI. It involved the Boulder Police Department, and it was a plan to publicly assassinate the character of the Ramseys by leaking information, misinformation, false information in an effort to somehow pressure them and coerce them into a potential confession.

Steve Thomas admitted that that plan existed. Alex Hunter wants to run from it, but they brought in Bill Hagemeyer (ph) from the FBI, who I believe was also involved in the Jewel case, and they hired a fellow named Stephen Pitt (ph), some sort of a forensic psychiatrist, and the whole plan was to somehow break this family.

Because they couldn't find evidence to support a charge against them, they decided they would somehow try to coerce a confession, because that's who they believe did it. It was always about the speculation and belief. We know who did it, we just got to prove it. We can't prove it? Let's see if we can break them. That's not how our system of justice is designed to work.

KING: Here is Steve Thomas again, responding to allegations that the investigation was flawed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS: It appeared based on the evidence that she was not only a good suspect, but appeared to be the offender.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And there were a number of experts that, at that point, had not even been hired to review evidence, isn't that true?

THOMAS: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was a lot of evidence that had never even been collected or even requested, true?

THOMAS: Such as -- the clothing? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The clothes. That's a key piece of evidence, isn't it?

THOMAS: Correct. As I have said, that was a mistake.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah. And it was one of many mistakes, wasn't it?

THOMAS: I'm not here today defending the police department.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not asking you to defend the police department.

THOMAS: Yes, there were many mistakes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Honestly, do you think this is ever going to be solved?

WOOD: Yes.

KING: You do? Based on?

WOOD: If -- if responsible officials in Boulder, Colorado, get experienced homicide -- objective homicide investigators to review this case in its entirety, it can be solved.

You're never going to solve it with people like Steve Thomas on the job because Steve Thomas, before the Jon Benet Ramsey case, had zero homicide experience. He had never investigated a homicide.

KING: But forensic experts have, on this show, said that the crime scene is so damaged. He was allowed to move the body. It was so terribly handled, you are never going to forensically prove this.

WOOD: I disagree, because I think that despite the mistakes that were made...

KING: Henry Lee said that.

WOOD: Well, with all due respect to Henry Lee, Henry Lee is involved in every high-profile case with an opinion, and he is entitled to his, but in this instance, I think he's wrong, if that's his position, because -- look, we've got right there the best evidence to find the killer.

DNA. Three different areas of DNA -- male, not the Ramseys found under Jon Benet's finger nails on both hands, found in her underwear. So the DNA is one of the major points, but there's a lot of other forensic evidence that does exist that when the killer is found, the killer can be prosecuted successfully. I still have confidence if we get another investigation.

If it stays with the Boulder police department, we're never going to know the identity of the killer.

KING: We'll be back with more of Lin Wood of Atlanta, Georgia, the attorney for the much beleaguered Ramseys. Don't go away.

[To be continued in next post]

 

[Continued from previous post]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J. RAMSEY: Jon Benet was an entertainer. She loved to get on stage and sing and dance and sing and dance and...

P. RAMSEY: Ham it up.

J. RAMSEY: She was a ham.

She had a real strong voice. It always boomed out.

P. RAMSEY: And she could -- I remember in this little play they were doing some of the children forgot their lines, so Jon Benet kind of improvised and filled in for them. She knew everybody's lines. Including hers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

P. RAMSEY: When she won that great big crown for the National Royal Miss pageant, she was so proud of herself. She wore that crown. She took to it school with her one time to share on show and tell day. She was just very proud of it and thought it was so pretty. You know, it was just kind of a more organized way of playing dressup, I guess. You know, all little girls like to pretend like they're princesses. That's kind of what she was doing. She was my little princess.

KING: We're back with Lin Wood.

Although the governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, has never publicly outrightly called the Ramseys suspects, he seemed to suggest that they should be considered suspects at a press conference held after a grand jury was released. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. BILL OWENS (R), COLORADO: I think that based on my understanding of the case, there's a reasonable belief that there was more than one person involved. If I could speak to John and Patsy Ramsey, I would tell them to quit hiding behind their attorneys. Quit hiding behind their PR firm. Come back to Colorado. Work with us to find the killers in this case, no matter where that trail may lead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: What was the Ramseys' thoughts on that?

WOOD: Let me tell you, that was in September -- or October of 1999, after a grand jury, 13 months of deliberations and review of the evidence, did not render an indictment against anyone. Not John or Patsy Ramsey. No one. That's what you have just seen. An act of total irresponsibility on the part of a chief executive of a state who is not to be involved in making accusations of criminal conduct against private citizens who have never been charged with a crime.

I said at the time directly that Bill Owens was a liar. Because the Ramseys had cooperated. They didn't have a P.R. firm and they weren't hiding behind their lawyers. It turns out in the testimony of Alex Hunter under oath, under penalty of perjury that Alex Hunter, said, Well, Mr. Wood, actually, Governor Owens was simply not currently informed. He was not well informed. In short, he didn't know what he was talking about.

KING: It was frustrating though, wasn't it?

WOOD: Well, let me tell you. He used this case for his own political advantage. I mean, the popular thing in Colorado at the time was, you know, jump on it's got to be the Ramsey bandwagon. And then Bill Owns was a politician at his worst when he did that to this family.

KING: Speaking of that, here is the Boulder County district attorney Alex Hunter talking about Bill Owens' comments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOOD: What Bill Owens said about the Ramseys after the grand jury was discharged was totally inappropriate, wasn't it?

ALEX HUNTER, FMR. BOULDER CTY. DISTRICT ATTORNEY: It would certainly be inappropriate for a lawyer to make those remarks. And I think I have tried and a few of my remarks, to cut him a little slack for being nonlawyer and a political person, they would have been better had he not said those things in terms of my sense of the criminal justice system.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: By the way, we should point out that we're inviting Steve Thomas and Alex Hunter and Mark Beckner to come on this show and give their own side of the story. Do you expect they might?

WOOD: Well, Steve Thomas is not going to show up if I'm around because Steve Thomas knows that I've got the goods on him. I can destroy his credibility in two minutes or less if he comes on. Free shot to repeat what he said in his book he might come on.

Mark Beckner is not going to ever answer any questions publicly about this case because then he opens himself up to the public learning the truth about the failed investigation.

Alex Hunter may come on. Alex, you know, -- Alex Hunter, I think, sits on the fence, Larry, when he discusses this case publicly. But he didn't sit on the fence when I took his deposition. He made it very clear that he thought the Ramseys had been treated very unfairly.

And I give Alex Hunter great credit for this. He withstood incredible pressures out there at a time when it would have been very easy for him to simply say, OK, let's put them on trial. But he knew that the evidence wasn't there and he acknowledged that six other experienced prosecutors agreed with him. There was no evidence justifying a charge being brought against anybody in this family. He had the courage to take that position and I respect him for it.

KING: Are the Ramseys no longer wealthy?

WOOD: They have not been wealthy for a long time. They spent a tremendous amount of money on attorneys fees, investigators and John Ramsey has not really had a gainful employment since the time.

KING: What did he do?

WOOD: Well, he's started up with a new company now that's really a startup company. He's not on salary. He's just trying to give them some advice in hopes that it might grow into something one day. But, you know, John -- he's a young man. John Ramsey's in his mid, late 50s. That's young. And who's going to hire him?

KING: You went through that with Richard Jewell, did you not?

WOOD; I did. And Richard Jewell went through it for three months and it still taints Richard Jewell to this very day.

John and Patsy Ramsey have undergone this for six years. This will affect not only the Ramseys but their children and their children's children. Generations of this family will be affected by what this Boulder police department did to them.

KING: Unless the killers are caught.

WOOD: Unless the killer is caught. Absolutely.

KING: We'll be back with our remaining moments with Lin Wood right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS: We're right here at the table tonight. Will you take an FBI sponsored polygraph? And the answer is?

P. RAMSEY: Why will they not review the polygraphs that were taken? Why has he made a statement that says they are unacceptable when he has not even taken the time to look at them?

THOMAS: When you're at the police department next week, ask them these questions.

P. RAMSEY: That would be great. If you can broker that deal, boy that would be a great thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We're back with our remaining moments with Lin Wood.

If I called the Boulder police at the moment and asked the status of this case what would they say?

WOOD: They'd say it's under active investigation. Not true. Hasn't been any active investigation since the grand jury adjourned back in the fall of 1999.

KING: Have polygraphs been taken?

WOOD: They've used polygraphs on some individuals, I'm told. The Ramseys did not accept their offer to take an FBI polygraph.

KING: Why?

WOOD: For good reason. The FBI's been involved in this case for day one. You're not going to get an objective polygraph examination out of the Boulder Police Department if it's done by the FBI.

KING: Why not an independent polygraph?

WOOD: The Ramseys did in fact undergo polygraph examinations from Ned Gill (ph), one of the most experienced polyographers in the country. Those tests were done in May of 2000. They passed. They showed no deception. The results were verified by Cleave Baxter (ph), one of the most respected polygraph examiners himself . Boulder police didn't even bother. When I offered to send them all that information, offered to let them talk to Dr. Gill, talk to Dr. Baxter, they never even accepted the opportunity to do so. Unbelievable.

KING: Do they have any ideas?

WOOD: I don't think John and Patsy -- I don't think that they know -- they believe they know anyone who could commit this type of crime.

Remember, this was a brutal, brutal murder of a child. The person that killed Jon Benet Ramsey is identified, it's not going to be someone that lives a normal life, that's never had any type of history of problems, that has been a good family person with happy kids and a happy family. That's the Ramseys. That's not going to be a killer of a child.

KING: This could be a perfect murder then?

WOOD: Again, I go back and look at DNA, I look stun gun marks and handwriting that was left there and I don't think it's a perfect murder. I think it's just been a horribly imperfect investigation. That can still be saved if we get good competent experienced people running it.

KING: How's Richard Jewell doing?

WOOD: Richard is doing okay. I mean, again, Richard still lives with the taint of what was done with him by the media and the FBI.

KING: Taint's gone though. We know he didn't do it.

WOOD: They should know it. The power of the message that he was quote unquote the bomber there's still people out there today that have questions about Richard. But Richard is moving along with his life. He married a year ago, happily married living in South Atlanta. Still fighting the battle against the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" six years later. Maybe fighting that battle six years from now.

KING: You settled with NBC and CNN?

WOOD: We have.

KING: Still in that lawsuit is still on?

WOOD: The lawsuit against the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" is still on.

KING: Has there ever bee a decision? Was there ever a trial?

WOOD: No. We were not even close to the trial stage of the case. Just shows you what the media can do if they want to spend millions and hire lawyers to just wear you down. We're hanging in there.

KING: They've made an offer?

WOOD: I don't think either side is interested in a peaceful resolution. I think this case ought to go to a jury and let citizens in the community decide it.

KING: How could a newspaper hold it up that long?

WOOD: They got unlimited pocket books.

KING: Has Richard ever met the Ramseys?

WOOD: He did meet the Ramseys early on after I started representing them.

KING: And Patsy is improving?

WOOD: Her last tests were clean and she still gets a good prognosis from the doctors so everyone remains hopeful.

KING: How do you feel after all this time? Is it frustrating to be the Ramseys' lawyer?

WOOD: No, it's not -- it has its frustrating moments when you deal with the Boulder Police Department, it can be quite frustrating. I find it rewarding. It's a challenge. I didn't take it on because it was easy. I took it on because I thought it was the right thing to do.

And I think that the public ultimately will give the Ramseys credit. You know, a lot of people say -- and I think you've even said this. If I was innocent, I would go down and I would park myself at the Boulder Police Department and I wouldn't leave until they cleared me and looked for someone else. But you know, Larry, the truth is, if you just lost your child and your life was literally destroyed, you grieve because the who did it and why was it done can wait until you can recover enough emotionally to go help the police. This wasn't a case where the child was missing. They had found Jon Benet.

But I would submit that if you say, well if I was innocent, I would do this. If you were guilty, would you spend six years urging, urging that a team of competent homicide investigators investigate the murder of your daughter, including reinvestigate you? Absolutely not.

KING: Good point. Thanks, Lin.

WOOD: You bet.

KING: Attorney Lin Wood on this edition of LARRY KING LIVE. Other people mentioned, as we said earlier, have been invited to appear. Thank you very much for joining us. NEWSNIGHT with Aaron Brown is next. I'm Larry King in Los Angeles. Good night.

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[End 11/12/02 LKL Interview Transcript]

 

LKL Interview Transcript

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0307/11/lkl.00.html

CNN LARRY KING LIVE

Interview With Lin Wood

Aired July 11, 2003 - 21:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PATSY RAMSEY, JONBENET'S MOTHER: Please, we just got up and she's lying here. Oh my God, please.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KING, HOST: The frantic voice of JonBenet Ramsey's mother.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

P. RAMSEY: Oh my God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Just part of the 911 call we'll hear in its entirety tonight, the call that launched one of the most sensational murder cases of our time, a case that has taken a dramatic turn. A judge rules the weight of evidence points to an intruder, not at JonBenet's parents, as the killer of the 6-year-old beauty queen. And a new DA takes the case away from the police and launches a new investigation.

Tonight, Lin Wood, attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey, and the 911 call that started it all over again, next on LARRY KING LIVE.

Good evening. A very important edition of LARRY KING LIVE tonight. Our special guest for the hour is Lin Wood, the attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey.

You all know the case, early morning December 26, 1996, Patsy Ramsey calls 911 about her 6-year-old daughter, JonBenet, being missing. The rest has become history. This is now six and a half years. No one has been charged, no trial, of course. And an unsolved mystery.

Lin Wood is here tonight for a lot of reasons, the main one of which is to provide us with the 911 call that Patsy Ramsey made the early morning of the 26th. What took so long to get this?

LIN WOOD, ATTORNEY FOR JOHN AND PATSY P. RAMSEY: The Boulder Police Department fought me tooth and nail to try to prevent me from obtaining this tape and being able to allow the public to hear it.

I worked through civil litigation with the use of subpoena, filing an agreement, a motion filed. And ultimately, the 1st of this year the Boulder district attorney, Mary Keenan, interceded and directed that the tape be released to me.

KING: She is new, is she not?

WOOD: She's been the district attorney for the last two years.

KING: So this would be her first step in this case?

WOOD: It was -- actually, she got -- she has been looking at the case, apparently, for the entire two years. And in December of last year, she made the decision, in response to a letter that I had written and demands made, that some action be taken to take the case away from the Boulder Police Department. She did so. She took the case away from the Boulder Police Department, brought the murder investigation into her department, where she's in charge.

KING: Why did they not want to release the 911 tape?

WOOD: Well, I think that the answer is self-evident when you listen to the tape. First and foremost, the voice of Patsy Ramsey. It is a voice of anguish, a voice of panic, a voice of a mother who has awoken just a few minutes earlier to find her 6-year-old child missing. It's a genuine voice.

And the Boulder Police Department, Larry, did not want the public to hear that voice, because it is a voice of innocence.

KING: Let's go back to the night in question, and then we're going to hear the tape. The parents last see her when?

WOOD: They saw her when they put her to bed on the night of December 25.

KING: And they opened gifts together that night?

WOOD: They'd actually gone over to a neighbor's home for a party and had returned home, and JonBenet had fallen asleep in the back seat of the car on the way home.

KING: And they put her into bed?

WOOD: Yes, they did.

KING: And they went to sleep?

WOOD: Yes.

KING: And Mrs. Ramsey got up first?

WOOD: Actually, I believe John got up first and started preparing for the trip they were going to take that day to Michigan to share time with their family members before they left on a cruise with the kids.

Patsy got up thereafter and redressed, put on her makeup and then went downstairs and found the three-page ransom note at the bottom of the spiral stairway.

KING: The young son, the boy, was sleeping?

WOOD: Burke was asleep at that time. He did wake up, we later learned, when he heard his mother screaming. But he feigned sleep and so John and Patsy, until they heard about his testimony before the grand jury, they always thought that he was asleep.

KING: All right. Let's hear it. The 911 call Patsy Ramsey makes, the early morning, the day after Christmas, 1996. Listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE)

P. RAMSEY: Police -- 755 15th Street.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's going on there, ma'am?

P. RAMSEY: We had a kidnapping. Hurry, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Explain to me what's going on. OK?

P. RAMSEY: We have a -- there's a note left and our daughter's gone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A note was left and your daughter's gone?

P. RAMSEY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How old is your daughter?

P. RAMSEY: Six years old. She's gone. Six years old.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How long ago was it?

P. RAMSEY: I don't know. I just found the note. And my daughter's taken.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does it say who took her?

P. RAMSEY: What?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does it say who took her?

P. RAMSEY: I have a note. There's a ransom note here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a ransom note?

P. RAMSEY: It says "SBTC." "Victory." Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. What's your name?

P. RAMSEY: Patsy Ramsey. I'm the mother. Oh, my God! Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. I'm sending an officer over. OK?

P. RAMSEY: Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know how long she's been gone?

P. RAMSEY: No, I don't. Please. We just got up and she's not here. Oh, my God. Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK.

P. RAMSEY: Talk to somebody.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am, honey.

P. RAMSEY: Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Take a deep breath for me, OK?

P. RAMSEY: Please, hurry, hurry, hurry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Patsy? Patsy? Patsy?

(END AUDIO TAPE)

KING: Very dramatic.

WOOD: It is. And genuine.

KING: Does she remember that call well, Patsy?

WOOD: I don't think so. I think that she was in such a state of mind that morning, her mind racing, her daughter missing, that she really does not have a great recollection of what she said.

You know, one of the things that I think led to the Boulder police fighting so far to keep this tape from being made public, in addition to the voice of Patsy Ramsey, was the fact that after Patsy hung up the phone, the Boulder police claimed that she had somehow not hung up the receiver on the wall phone and that there was a conversation that was picked up through an enhanced version of this tape that involved John and Burke, the 9-year-old son, and Patsy.

And that when they were interrogated by the police, John and Patsy said they didn't speak to Burke after the 911 call. So that was allegedly the smoking gun, that Patsy Ramsey lied.

KING: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) who appeared on this show (UNINTELLIGIBLE) accused Patsy of being the murderer. He was the one that claimed JonBenet's brother, Burke, could be heard at the end of the 911 tape.

WOOD: Absolutely, and that information was leaked out from the Boulder Police Department in September of 1998. Again, allegedly the smoking gun, the objective proof that the Ramseys were lying.

Well, in fact, that conversation is not on that tape. It's been enhanced by the FBI, the Secret Service, they found nothing. I gave it to one of the rival networks, NBC News. They hired two independent experts. They tested it. There absolutely is no voice on there discernible that belongs to Burke or John or Patsy.

KING: We had Patsy being interrogated by investigators about the 911 call and whether or not she talked to anyone else at the end of the call. Let's listen to that from 1998.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was there any conversation immediately following your last words to the dispatcher?

P. RAMSEY: I don't remember. I was out of my mind. My child was missing. I was trying to convey that to the person on the other end of the line. OK? I don't remember.

Do you have it on tape and would like for me to hear it, I'll listen to it and see if that's (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is something.

P. RAMSEY: OK. All right. Well, if you've got the tape and we can play it then I'll try and help you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: And you enhanced the tape, and there was no conversation?

WOOD: The test shows that there was no conversation. And you noticed that when Patsy said, "Play the tape, I'll listen. Maybe it will jog my memory." They don't play the tape.

KING: Where did they get the idea from?

WOOD: You know, Larry, there was -- evidence was established that there was, in fact, a plan by the Boulder Police Department to leak information accusatory to the Ramseys to the media, in an effort to convince the public that they were guilty, to pressure them so that somehow they might confess.

I think that this tape was part of that plan, it's objective evidence of that plan. It was either an intentional fabrication or it was the product of an imaginative but prejudiced mind. Because you listen to the tape as a lay person, there's no way that at the end of the tape the background noise could be a conversation. There's no way that a wall phone could not have been hung up.

It was leaked, it was damaging. It's one of many things that was leaked about this family that I think has led to a public perception that they were involved, a perception, by the way, which I think has dramatically changed in the last several months in terms of how people feel about this family.

KING: Now the public looks at it differently.

WOOD: I think the public gets it. I think that they understand that this family was, in fact, victimized by a biased investigation, a flawed and failed investigation.

KING: We'll talk about that and lots of other things with Lin Wood, our special guest tonight on this edition of LARRY KING LIVE. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's going on?

P. RAMSEY: We have a kidnapping. Hurry. Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Explain to me what's going on, OK?

P. RAMSEY: There's a note left and our daughter's gone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A note was left and your daughter is gone?

P. RAMSEY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How old is your daughter?

P. RAMSEY: Six years old. She's gone. Six years old.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How long ago was it?

P. RAMSEY: I don't know. I just found the note. And my daughter's taken.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does it say who took her?

P. RAMSEY: What?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does it say who took her?

P. RAMSEY: I have a note. There's a ransom note here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a ransom note?

P. RAMSEY: It says "SBTC." "Victory."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[To be continued in next post]

 

[Continued from previous post]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

P. RAMSEY: If you're asking me if I knew some information that John Ramsey was responsible for killing my daughter, I mean, (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why?

P. RAMSEY: Because I (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a long time ago. OK? He didn't do it. I didn't do it. Burke didn't do it. We loved that child, OK? We're not involved. Read my lips.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We're back with Lin Wood. Is it your contention the Boulder Police never investigated beyond the Ramseys?

WOOD: They never investigated any other potential suspect in a thorough and exhaustive fashion. Except the Ramseys.

KING: They must have had reasons.

WOOD: You know, people...

KING: They must have come to some -- Steve Thomas, who was (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

WOOD: Inexperienced cop. Never had done a homicide investigation before. I mean, it's a fair question. Why would the Boulder police focus so hard on the family? And it's really an easy answer. I mean, you're talking about a police department that was inexperienced in homicide investigation. We're talking about two of the lead individuals, one in charge -- Steve Thomas being the other one -- one of the lead detectives -- who had never investigated a homicide before.

And they went about it the wrong way. And they developed a theory that it must be the family, and so they said, "Now all we've got to do is find the evidence." They looked for six years; they couldn't find the evidence because the family's innocent.

But that same attitude, of we think we know who did it; we just need to prove it, has led to a situation where these police officers and this police department simply cannot admit that it was wrong and that it devastated a family in the process, wasted millions of dollars, because their reputation's at stake and they simply can't admit that they were wrong.

KING: There were weird aspects of it, though, right? The father moved the body, the ransom note was rather crude and weird.

WOOD: Well, actually, John discovered...

KING: If you're kidnapping someone, why leave the body? Why not take the person you're kidnapping?

WOOD: John Ramsey actually did not move the body. He found JonBenet in the basement, and after he'd been asked by one of the detectives at the scene to start going with him, a friend of his, to look through the house. And so he brought her body upstairs.

The ransom note is three pages. It has been analyzed by six individuals who looked at the original note, experts, including a Secret Service examiner. The conclusion is that John Ramsey didn't write it and that Patsy Ramsey probably did not write it. In other words, she's basically on the scale of elimination. There were other individuals who were investigated whose handwriting was closer to the ransom notes than Patsy Ramsey's.

So yes, and this was a brutal murder of a child, sexual assault, strangulation by the use of a garrote, a torture type of murder with a ransom note. It had to be the work of a very sick and perverted mind.

KING: What got you so to believe in your clients?

WOOD: When I first was contacted by the Ramseys, I had watched the coverage. I represented Richard Jewell. I recognized...

KING: Falsely accused.

WOOD: Falsely accused. I had first-hand knowledge that you can't always believe what you see on TV or read in the newspapers.

When the Ramseys came to me in the fall of 1999, they first came to seek my help with respect to their son Burke. Burke had been accused by a number of members of the media, including the tabloids, of being the murderer of his sister.

I took on the case initially because of that, because of what had been done to this child and what he would have to live with for the rest of his life, where he was accused of the murder of his sister, his life's best friend.

And in the process, obviously, they asked me to look at cases for them. I spent time with them. I went out and talked to Detective Lou Smit out in Colorado Springs. Talked to some other folks: a former district attorney, Thurston Hughes (ph), who had worked on the case.

There was no doubt in my mind from talking to the Ramseys and from learning the evidence that they were, in fact, innocent, that they had been falsely accused.

KING: Now, Detective Lou Smit, you mentioned him, he appeared on this program, the veteran investigator, on the intruder theory. Let's watch a brief segment of that interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOU SMIT, DETECTIVE: I believe that there is evidence pointing towards an intruder, strong, credibly evidence. I believe that sometime during December 25, 1996, someone got into the house of John and Patsy Ramsey. I believe there is some evidence to suggest strongly that he may have come in through a basement window.

KING: And then I remember you telling me about a suitcase.

SMIT: The position of that suitcase when it was first observed by Fleet White (ph) was that it was directly against the wall, directly underneath that open window. There is evidence on top of that suitcase, a very small, tiny, pea-sized piece of glass, which could have come off the shoe of the intruder.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And you mentioned that the new D.A., Mary Keenan, has taken a whole new look. Has she postulated anything?

WOOD: Again, in fact, in April of this year, issued a press statement where she indicated that she agreed with the ruling of a federal judge in Atlanta, Judge Julie Corns (ph), who had issued a 93- page ruling in a case that we were handling in Atlanta, stating that the analysis of the evidence done by her, in that case reviewed by her in detail, for all purposes and conclusions, that the weight of the evidence established that this was a case where an intruder killed this child and not a parent.

Within a few days thereafter, District Attorney Keenan reviewed that order and issued a public statement where she made clear that she agreed with the conclusion of Judge Corns (ph). That she agreed that the weight of the evidence in this case indicates that an intruder killed JonBenet Ramsey.

And she said in that public statement that she presumed the Ramseys to be innocent and she intended to treat them as such.

There's no doubt in my mind, because I met with Mary Keenan before she took this case over in December. I've met with her since then. I know what she has said. I know the actions she has taken, and it's very clear that the days of the criminal investigation of John and Patsy Ramsey are over. They are not the focus of this investigation, and Mary Keenan is looking for the killer of this child. She's looking for the intruder.

KING: Did she express sympathy to the Ramseys?

WOOD: I was actually there with the Ramseys in February of this year, when they went out with me to Colorado and met with Mary Keenan and her first assistant, Bill Nagel (ph). And I stayed for a few minutes, and they met alone for three or four hours without me.

And I have to tell you that the first thing Mary Keenan did was she extended her hand to John and to Patsy and then she extended her sympathies to them for the loss of their daughter. And she noted that she thought she was probably the first Boulder public official to ever say that to them, and she was right. She was the first.

And I remember watching Patsy's expression and how it touched them that finally someone was treating them like victims, parents who had lost a child, and not like criminals, and that's the way they had been unfairly treated for six years before.

KING: How is Patsy, by the way? She's ill, isn't she?

WOOD: Patsy has suffered a recurrence of cancer last year. She's undergoing chemotherapy, but she is -- and she's ill for a few days, obviously from the side effects of the treatment, but then she's back, up and at them. She looks good. She has a very positive attitude. Her prognosis is good.

She may have a type of cancer that's going to have to be managed over the course of years. But right now everybody's very optimistic, including the doctors.

KING: They will never recover from this. Will they?

WOOD: No. Nor will their children, and Larry, nor will their children's children.

KING: Back with more of Lin Wood, the attorney for the Ramseys. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

P. RAMSEY: She wore this one several times. She wore it at the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) pageant in Atlanta. I was on cloud nine watching her, because (UNINTELLIGIBLE) energy and made me proud. People try to make it seem ugly and something that it wasn't, and I just know how much fun it was. (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Since that day, have you given any thought, even for a minute considered that John may have been involved in some way in JonBenet's murder?

P. RAMSEY: Absolutely no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not a second?

P. RAMSEY: Not a moment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thought never crossed your mind?

P. RAMSEY: Never crossed my mind.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why?

P. RAMSEY: That man loved his children. Period. End of statement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We're back with Lin Wood.

Is there indications that the new D.A. is pursuing the intruder theory, or is this a dead case?

WOOD: No, this is a very active case, and she is, in fact, pursuing the intruder evidence. Lou Smit, Lou Smit, 32 years as a homicide investigator, 200 cases worked, 90 percent success rate. He worked the case back in 1997 and '98 for the district attorney's office, and then he resigned because he felt that an innocent family was going to be unjustly prosecuted. He believes very clearly in the Ramseys' innocence.

One of the first things that Mary Keenan did when she took this case over was she brought Lou Smit back into the case. Since that time, I've provided her with all of the witness statements that had been obtained by the former Ramsey criminal investigators. She's met with the Ramseys' former investigators, she's met with John Douglas (ph), former FBI profiler. She's hired another very experienced and well thought of investigator in Colorado, Tom Bennett (ph), who's going to be working up to 30, 40 hours a week on the case.

There's no doubt about it: Mary Keenan is going to pursue the intruder evidence. While her resources might be limited, her dedication to justice for JonBenet is not limited.

And if you look at what we now know, that I didn't learn until just the last few months, about the DNA evidence, I think this case can, in fact, be solved.

KING: You do?

WOOD: Absolutely.

KING: I'll pick up on that in a moment. I want to get in one more tape for us. John Ramsey in August of 2000 is being interrogated and he's being questioned about fibers of his shirt, right, being found in JonBenet's underwear. Listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Ramsey, it is our belief, based on forensic testing, that there are hairs that are associated -- that are -- that the source is the collared black shirt that you sent to us, that are found in your daughter's underpants. And I wondered if you could...

JOHN RAMSEY, JONBENET'S FATHER: (EXPLETIVE DELETED). I don't believe that. I don't buy it. If you're trying to disgrace my relationship with my daughter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Ramsey, I'm not trying to set you off ...

J. RAMSEY: Well, I don't believe it.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move on. You'll have to move on.

(END AUDIO TAPE)

[To be continued in next post]

 

[Continued from previous post]

KING: Where did they get that from?

WOOD: A lie.

KING: Because that would be conducive, wouldn't it?

WOOD: Well, first, it's an interrogation, and police don't have to tell you the truth when they interrogate you. And it's a well- known interrogation technique to act like or to give information that you've got more evidence than you really have.

But I've actually gone to confirm that, whether that's true. And it is not true. There were no black fibers consistent with the shirt that John Ramsey owned that were found on his daughter's underwear. That was an absolute lie. It was as John Ramsey described it in the terms that he used. He was dead on with that description.

KING: What, in your own mind, Lin, tells you that a kidnapper would, instead of kidnapping, write a ransom note but kill the person, garrote the person right there? What -- it's nonsensical.

WOOD: I don't have the type of mind that can conceive of how one could do that, could even think about doing it. But we know that it was done here. We know that someone went into the home of Elizabeth Smart, in the bedroom with her sister, and took her out of that house at gunpoint or knifepoint.

We know that just recently, in the last few days, a man was arrested for a 1987 murder of a 10-year-old child who was strangled in her home while her parents slept. DNA evidence, 16 years later, got him, brought him to justice.

There are people out there, Larry, that have the ability to do this type of thing. And you and I don't understand it.

KING: So logic doesn't work.

WOOD: But it happens. It absolutely happened.

KING: Why are you confident they're going to find someone?

WOOD: Because of the DNA. You know, you probably heard along the way that the DNA evidence in this case was not necessarily of good quality, that it might even be contaminant. Although there was a point in time when the Boulder police were clearing people based on DNA, but not the Ramseys.

Here's what we now know. We knew that there was foreign male DNA found in -- under the fingernails of both of JonBenet's hands. Foreign meaning it was not the Ramseys. Male.

There was also a spot of blood. Intermingled in that blood was foreign male DNA. Not the Ramseys.

Now, I've learned in the last few months, since Mary Keenan took this case over, that in fact, there was a second spot of blood, both of these spots of blood being in the crotch area of JonBenet's underwear.

In 1998, someone finally said, "You know, we never tested the second spot of blood. Let's do that." They did test it, and the results came back in 1999, and the results were strong. It has nine clear markers and a 10th marker which is just at meeting the standard.

And the reason that's important is because you have to have 10 markers to submit that DNA into the federal FBI CODUS (ph) databank.

One of the things that, I think, establishes without question the bias of the Boulder Police Department is that they never, at any time, made any effort to try to get the DNA evidence in this case into any of the state DNA databanks or into the FBI CODUS (ph) databank system.

And Larry, that may come up with (UNINTELLIGIBLE) now. It may be a year.

KING: How do you capture someone, though?

WOOD: Well, with the CODUS (ph) databank, it actually keeps not only the DNA on convicted violent criminals, it also maintains the DNA from unsolved cases.

KING: Oh, it does.

WOOD: It does. And this DNA is not just strong enough to exclude, this DNA is strong enough to identify. And no efforts were made to get it into the databank. That is a priority, the number one priority of the new investigation by Mary Keenan.

KING: We'll be right back with Lin Wood on LARRY KING LIVE. Don't go away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I first spoke with you, I explained to you that if ever there was going to be an intruder on trial, the defense is going to be that you did it. Remember that?

J. RAMSEY: I remember that, but I'm not here to prove my innocence. I'm here to find the killer of my daughter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're back with Lin Wood. We realize that people tune in and out of television. You may have joined us a little late, and this occurred at the beginning of the program. And so for the benefit, as we used to say on radio, of later tuners-in, we're going to repeat that 911 call that Patsy Ramsey made on the early morning of December 26, 1996.

It took Lin years to get this released. Let's listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE)

P. RAMSEY: Police -- 755 15th Street.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's going on there, ma'am?

P. RAMSEY: We had a kidnapping. Hurry, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Explain to me what's going on. OK?

P. RAMSEY: We have a -- there's a note left and our daughter's gone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A note was left and your daughter's gone? P. RAMSEY: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How old is your daughter?

P. RAMSEY: Six years old. She's gone. Six years old.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How long ago was it?

P. RAMSEY: I don't know. I just found the note. And my daughter's taken.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does it say who took her?

P. RAMSEY: What?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does it say who took her?

P. RAMSEY: I have a note. There's a ransom note here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a ransom note?

P. RAMSEY: It says "SBTC." "Victory." Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. What's your name?

P. RAMSEY: Patsy Ramsey. I'm the mother. Oh, my God! Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. I'm sending an officer over. OK?

P. RAMSEY: Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know how long she's been gone?

P. RAMSEY: No, I don't. Please. We just got up and she's not here. Oh, my God. Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK.

P. RAMSEY: Talk to somebody.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am, honey.

P. RAMSEY: Please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Take a deep breath for me, OK?

P. RAMSEY: Please, hurry, hurry, hurry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Patsy? Patsy? Patsy?

(END AUDIO TAPE)

KING: Lin, what do you make of Dr. Henry Lee, the famed criminologist, been on this show many, many times, who said, "The manner of this death is still a questionable issue. Is it really a homicide? An accidental death? We really don't know." What does he mean by "accidental death?"

WOOD: I have no idea what Dr. Lee means. I mean, I know he has a lot of opinions in almost every high profile case. I have respect for him, but in this particular case, Larry, he hasn't been involved in this case to know the evidence since back in 1998.

KING: He was called in, wasn't he?

WOOD: He was called in by the Boulder Police Department on a limited consultation. And the fact of the matter is, I'm confident that Henry Lee, as a man of integrity, that if he looked at the entire evidence, all of the evidence, just like Mary Keenan has done, an unquestionable person in terms of her integrity, I think he would conclude the same as she, that the evidence in this case clearly weighs that an intruder killed the child.

KING: You mentioned the federal judge ruling. What was that all about? What was that case?

WOOD: Civil lawsuit filed against the Ramseys by an individual who claimed that they had wrongfully identified him as a suspect in their book, "The Death of Innocence." Sued them, saying that, in fact, Patsy killed JonBenet and John knew it, therefore, they published this statement about him with actual malice, as the law calls it, knowledge of falsity.

The judge in that case, Judge Julie Corns (ph), who is an experienced trial judge, 10 years plus on the bench, and before that was a very experienced federal prosecutor, she carefully analyzed all the evidence.

And in what I think would be described as an unprecedented ruling, she issued a 93-page decision in March of this year where she carefully put the evidence out there, analyzed it, discussed it, and then drew the conclusion that the evidence against this family amounted to little more than the fact that they were in the house the night that their daughter was murdered. She concluded that the weight of the evidence was, in fact, that the intruder killed this child and not a parent.

And it was thereafter that Mary Keenan issued her public statement, urging people to read that opinion, describing as a carefully worded, well thought out, well analyzed opinion, the conclusion of which she agreed with.

So you have the district attorney coming out publicly on the intruder side of the evidence after a federal judge has done so -- and I want to tell you something, Larry. It's just not coincidental that these are two female professionals.

And I think when they saw the brutality of this child's murder, while they can conceive that a mother could do something like that, I think they said, "Well, if we're going to believe it, show us the evidence." And they went to the evidence, they looked at the evidence objectively, they realized what the evidence showed, that it was not the mother, and then they had the courage -- they had the courage to publicly tell the world what the evidence was.

Judge Corns (ph) and Mary Keenan. I think they ought to be commended for what they did for this family after all the years of injustice they have suffered.

KING: I seem to remember a night here where the attorney for one of the tabloids was on and then you followed him.

WOOD: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

KING: Did you sue the tabloid?

WOOD: For Burke Ramsey, I did. We had three cases -- ultimately they settled, confidential in amount, but settled in favor of the Ramseys.

KING: All three?

WOOD: All three of the cases against the tabloids. We have had other cases that have also been concluded successfully for the Ramseys.

Every case that I have handled in terms of either suing for the Ramseys or defending the Ramseys, they've won every case.

KING: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) William Connolly (ph) in one.

WOOD: It was. Good lawyers.

KING: He represents the "Enquirer," I know.

WOOD: He did. I'm not sure they do now.

But I want to make that point, that the Ramseys, when they have been in a court of law they have won every time. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, that they are now finally winning in the court of public opinion. And this smear campaign that went on for years...

KING: How did you hold up, you and them hold up during the tabloid times when it was almost every week?

WOOD: Well, I will tell you something, they hired me in 1999. I wish they'd hired me a lot earlier, because if they had, I think the Ramseys would own the tabloids now. Meaning that a lot of those things that were said about them, accusing them of being pornographers, devil worshipers, drug addicts, accusing John Ramsey of molesting his oldest daughter, Beth, who died in a car wreck in 1992.

The sad thing is that the lawsuits, by virtue of the statue of limitations, couldn't be filed by the time I got involved. Otherwise, they might have owned those tabloids. And knowing John and Patsy, they would have yanked them off the market, you wouldn't have to see them when you walk by the check-out at the grocery store.

KING: Has anyone other than Lou Smit in the earlier part of the case come around to new thinking? Has any Boulder cops said, you know, Steve Thomas or somebody said, "You know, maybe I was wrong"?

WOOD: There were a number of individuals who were involved in the investigation in the first few months who felt strongly that the intruder evidence was strong and it was not being followed.

Thurston Hughes (ph) I mentioned, a former assistant district attorney, a police officer named Steve Ainsworth (ph), who's recognized out in Boulder as one of the best homicide cops still working. Individuals in the D.A.'s office. Mary Keenan worked on this case early on. An individual named Pete Hosterman (ph), who kept a very open mind.

All of those individuals that felt like the intruder evidence was strong and was not being followed were mysteriously removed from the case in 1998 before the grand jury was convened. So that the only people involved as a practical matter were the people who were bent on this idea that the Ramseys had to do it.

KING: When we come back, I'm going to ask you if the Ramseys should have done something, anything different.

We'll be right back with Lin Wood. Don't go away.

[To be continued in next post]

 

[Continued from previous post]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J. RAMSEY: We will find you. I have that as a sole mission for the rest of my life.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mrs. Ramsey?

P. RAMSEY: Likewise. The police and investigators have assured us that this is a case which can be solved, you know. You may be eluding the authorities for a time, but God knows who you are, and we will find you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're back with Lin Wood. Is there anything, in retrospect, the Ramseys should have done they didn't do?

WOOD: In terms of how they dealt with the Boulder Police Department, I really don't think so. If you look at the truth of how that investigation turned against them within a matter of days, I think that the criminal lawyers, the former lawyers, felt like they had to protect their interests. And unfortunately, when criminal lawyers protect your interests and your rights, they end up basically giving the appearance of treating you like you're guilty. And that's just the way criminal lawyers do.

KING: You're not a criminal lawyer?

WOOD: I'm not. My only criminal experience is the Richard Jewell case and the Ramsey case, where I've been involved with law enforcement for those reasons. But here, what I would have done differently -- of course, hindsight is 20/20. John and Patsy Ramsey, I would have had them out, or someone out for them. I would have knocked down every false story the minute it happened. And the minute somebody puts on a headline that the family is involved or Patsy Ramsey murdered her, I would have filed a lawsuit.


I would have shown, very early on, that this family was not going to tolerate those accusations. Despite the fact that they were being made while they were still under investigation.

But that's the perspective of a lawyer that thinks that you need to be very proactive and aggressive when you're dealing with innocent clients. That's not necessarily going to be the perspective of a criminal lawyer.

But the bottom line was the criminal lawyers were right. The system worked in that they were not unfairly charged. They were not indicted. But when the end of the day came, the grand jury didn't indict them. The public thought they were guilty.

KING: Should they have taken a state-sponsored polygraph?

WOOD: No. I wouldn't let any client of mine do it. I didn't let Richard Jewell do it, wouldn't let the Ramseys do it...

KING: Why not? Why not?

WOOD: Because it's not a scientific instrument that determines the truth and lies.

KING: You don't like it?

WOOD: I know it for what it is. I mean, the truth is, it is an interrogation tool. It is an investigative tool that law enforcement uses as a method of interrogation and intimidation. And there's no upside for you.

If they think you were involved and you pass, if they are willing to pass you, they're not going to stop investigating you. But more likely, they're going to say it's inconclusive, or they're going to say you didn't pass. But they're going to use that as a way to interrogate you after you take the test. And that's what it's really designed to do. And that's the way law enforcement looks at it, and I wouldn't let any client do it, because particularly where you have a police department as prejudiced as this department was against this family.

KING: I want to discuss in a little bit some of your other clients in our remaining moments, but another thing on the Ramseys. How's Burke doing? How old is he now? What's he doing?

WOOD: Burke is, I'll describe him as a typical 16-year-old. He is as handsome a young man as JonBenet was a beautiful girl. Beyond that, I'll decline to talk about Burke because out of respect for him and his privacy. John and Patsy have really done a great job in trying to shield Burke...

KING: He's a nice boy. I met him.

WOOD: He's a nice boy, and they tried to shield him from these false accusations and it's been tough. But they wanted him to try and kind of grow up as normal as he could in terms of the environment. They've done a great job, and I think he's going to be a fine young man.

I worry about him in terms of the future. I worry about the media going after him.

(CROSSTALK)

WOOD: Psychologically, sure. I mean, this is a situation where, you know, one day it may come crashing down around him, the things that happened to his sister and to his mother and father, his family. The things that were said about him.

But I also worry about him because I think he's going to be pursued by the media. I think as Burke gets older, I think there are going to be people out there that are going to be chasing down, wanting that first interview with Burke Ramsey. And so I worry about him from that perspective.

KING: How's John doing?

WOOD: John is doing well.

KING: Working?

WOOD: He's still looking for some type of gainful employment.

KING: He's not been employed?

WOOD: He has not. He's worked for a couple of groups of guys that have been working on some start-up businesses, where he's tried to give them some assistance -- he's a great businessman -- in hopes that maybe that would develop into some full-time employment. That's what he's still doing.

KING: How are you getting paid?

WOOD: Well, my pay was from the lawsuits that I filed, in terms of the libel cases, the defamation cases. I work on a contingency fee for the Ramseys. What I do for them in terms of sitting here and talking with you, what I've done in terms of dealing with the Boulder Police Department and a number of other matters, I'd say 50 percent of my time I don't charge for.

KING: Because you have total belief in them?

WOOD: Well, I do. And plus, the fact of the matter is, John and Patsy have already spent a lot of their money, if not all of it, giving it to lawyers. I feel better when I take from the bad guy and give it to them and take my part on the way.

KING: Are other lawsuits possible?

WOOD: There is an additional lawsuit that will be filed against the Fox News Channel, arising out of coverage of the case in December of last year, where, despite the reporters' knowledge about this mountain of evidence of an intruder, they put on an anniversary piece about the case, saying that after six years there had never been any evidence linking an intruder to the crime. Absolutely false.

KING: And you're suing them?

WOOD: It is going to be filed within the next couple of weeks.

KING: We'll be back with our remaining moments with Lin Wood, right after this.

(MUSIC)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We're back with Lin Wood in our remaining moments. They have arrested the accused Atlanta bomber. How's Richard Jewell doing? The non-Atlanta bomber?

WOOD: Richard is happily married, working as a police officer in a small city in northern Georgia, trying to maintain his status as a private citizen again and a public official. And he's doing OK. Richard is a remarkable person, as I find the Ramseys to be.

KING: You won for him court cases against CNN?

WOOD: CNN.

KING: NBC?

WOOD: Yes.

KING: Still got one against the "Constitution"? The "Atlanta Constitution"?

WOOD: Still pending against the "Atlanta Journal." Six years we've been fighting that battle.

KING: Now Gary Condit, you're representing him in what, the lawsuit of Dominic Dunne?

WOOD: I represent former Congressman Condit in the lawsuit filed in New York against "Vanity Fair" author Dominic Dunne, who's obviously a fellow that's appeared here frequently on your show.

KING: In fact, some of the comments were made on this show, right?

WOOD: Well, some of the remarks made, but primarily a story that he told about an eyewitness who claimed to have seen Chandra Levy abducted, had firsthand alleged -- firsthand knowledge of Gary Condit asking, in fact, people to get the job done for him. All an absolute, total lie.

KING: Isn't his defense going to be he was a journalist reporting what he heard?

WOOD: Well, his defense is that he was only stating an opinion, but the fact of the matter is he was actually relating an eyewitness version of what happened to Chandra Levy and what Gary Condit's role in it was. That's not opinion.

Now, the fact is, he was relaying it as third hand. He heard it from someone who had learned it from another person. But he thought it was enough in terms of its strength, that he took it to the FBI, Dominic Dunne did. And he wanted it investigated, and he did what he could to get it investigated. And he believed it.

It wasn't an opinion, it was fact. It was absolutely false. And you know, the question becomes, are we going to allow someone basically to come on TV under the guise of being a journalist or a writer and engage in nothing more than rumor mongering, where you can go out and without any accountability accuse someone of a horrible crime. I don't think we want to get there.

KING: Did you always have faith that Condit was not involved?

WOOD: You know, I try to give the presumption of innocence to individuals in this kind of a situation, where they have been under investigation, but they haven't been charged. They're under siege by the media and by an unholy alliance of the media and law enforcement.

It's a no-win situation, and so I presumed Congressman Condit at the time to be innocent. I disagreed very much publicly about the way how he handled the situation in terms of his interview. But I am absolutely convinced that Gary Condit, whatever people may say about him, in terms of his private life, I'm absolutely convinced that he had nothing to do whatsoever with the kidnapping and murder of Chandra Levy. Otherwise, I wouldn't be representing him. That's what I tell my clients.

KING: Because of the people you've defended and get involved with, are you open on the Scott Peterson matter?

WOOD: I give Scott Peterson the same presumption of innocence that I would give these other individuals. Now, obviously his case has moved to a different level. He has now been charged with murder, and that gives members of your profession a lot more leeway in terms of what can be said about him.

But I am not a fan of all the talking heads that come on at night and speculate about whether someone killed another person, when those people really, Larry, don't know what they're talking about. They don't know the evidence. They don't know the facts. They're speculating on what they might have heard in the media or something that allegedly might have been leaked by someone unknown. They might have their own agenda.

But at least with Scott Peterson, he's going to have an opportunity now to have his day in court and put forth evidence and let the public know what evidence exists so that we can, in effect, make up our minds, not on talking heads speculation but on the actual evidence presented. That's what we ought to be forming opinions upon, not people's speculation.

KING: Is that one of the dangers you see in the media, that we overdo this, and speculation is a natural occurrence?

WOOD: I saw an article the other day and it's called "Murdertainment." "Murdertainment," where it just seems to be a fascination with the 24-7, where you've got unlimited hours. You know, if you look at the people that come on and talk about these cases, I mean, it's almost the same folks that have been doing this since the days of O.J. Simpson. It's a cottage industry that sprung up out of the O.J. Simpson case, and they're still out there talking. They've got an opinion on every case.

KING: Thank you, Lin.

WOOD: It's always good to see you.

KING: My good friend. (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

We also invited, by the way, Boulder Police investigator Steve Thomas, former Boulder district attorney Alex Hunter, Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner (ph) and the new Boulder district attorney, Mary Keenan, to come on, as well.

We'll be back in just a moment to tell you about the weekend. Thanks to Lin Wood. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: By the way, our interview with Queen Noor, previously promoted for tonight will be aired next week.

Tomorrow night on LARRY KING LIVE on the weekend, Dolly Parton will be repeated. And Sunday night we've got a great show for you, with Arianna Huffington, Walter Isaacson on Ben Franklin, and the return of Yanni.

Thanks for joining us on this edition of LARRY KING LIVE. "NEWSNIGHT WITH AARON BROWN" is next. Good night.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

[End 07/11/03 LKL Interview Transcript]

 

Thanks DejaNu

I hope EVERYONE reads this important information.

 

You're welcome, Spade. There's alot more to come too. I hope everyone reads through all this material too. It appears over the years Lin Wood has found dire fault with everyone connected to this case, except him and his clients. . .oh, and Keenan, whom he met with prior to issuing threats of lawsuit against Boulder.

 

Excerpt/LKL Interview Transcript

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0004/14/lkl.00.html
Larry King Live
Does 'JonBenet: Inside The Ramsey Murder Investigation' Reveal the True Killer?
Aired April 14, 2000 - 9:00 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

LARRY KING, HOST: This detective says he knows who killed JonBenet Ramsey. We'll hear from the former lead investigator in the Ramsey murder case, Steve Thomas; and then later, Lin Wood, John and Patsy Ramsey's civil responds to this theory.

Excerpt:

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Now a return visit with Lin Wood, the civil attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey. He's at our CNN headquarters in Atlanta.Are you going to sue? Are the Ramseys going to sue Steve Thomas, Lin?

LIN WOOD, RAMSEYS' CIVIL ATTORNEY: I have been studying his book and I've been watching all of his appearances in his public relations publicity tour to make money off of this book. I sat here tonight, Larry, and I am absolutely amazed.

KING: Are you going to sue?

WOOD: After tonight, you bet. You can...

KING: You're going to sue.

WOOD: You can count on team Ramsey, if that's what I am, in terms of civil litigation. Steve Thomas will have his day in court, and Steve Thomas...

KING: Why after tonight? What happened tonight?

WOOD: Well, this man was afraid and perhaps embarrassed to tell you his theory. He's written a book called "Inside the Investigation." Here's what he's been saying this week "Inside the Investigation" tells the public.

Number one, he's said very clearly John Ramsey is innocent. John Ramsey was not involved in the killing of his daughter. But he didn't want to tell you what his theory was about Patsy Ramsey, because I think people have read it or heard it and they've ridiculed it, and he's embarrassed to say it. But here it is, Larry -- and you've heard it.

He says that Patsy Ramsey in some way woke up that night, went into her daughter's bedroom, found that she had wet the bed, engaged in a physical struggle with her in the bathroom, knocked her up against the bathtub edge, striking her head, killing her, and then took her downstairs into the basement, fashioned a garrote, a killing device, to put around her neck, strangle her and then sexually assault her -- because the evidence is clear that the child was sexually assaulted that night.

Look at "Inside the Investigation." There was no evidence, zero, that there was a bed wet that night in her room. Her sheets were dry. They were not damp. They were not soiled. They were not stained. There's a picture of those sheets, and they clearly were as expected to be with the child having laid in that bed that night. There was no evidence of a struggle in the bathroom, no physical evidence of that whatsoever.

And here's a very significant point, Larry. This child's skull was crushed. She suffered a 8 1/2 inch displaced fracture of the right side of her skull. Now, Patsy Ramsey didn't accidentally push a child into the bathtub edge. If his theory holds water, which it doesn't, Patsy Ramsey would have had to pick up her 45-pound daughter and swing her like a sledgehammer to crush her skull like this. This was a blow that would fall a 300-pound man.

And then look at how she died. The autopsy is clear. She died from strangulation. A garrote was placed around her neck and tightened until she died. And the autopsy showed there were only two tablespoons of blood in her skull cavity. This massive crushing blow should have produced a tremendous amount of blood while Patsy was planning this cover-up stage. But there was no blood as a practical matter because the garrote was already tightened around her neck, stopping the flow of blood from her heart to her brain when she was struck on the head.

KING: All right, now let...

WOOD: Steve Thomas's theory is fiction.

KING: All right, now obviously he totally believes it. Your theory also is why would some -- we could question your theory being why would someone write a long ransom note and then kill a child if you wanted the money for ransom? What sense does that make?

WOOD: Well, let me tell you, I'm not a killer and I'm not a psychiatrist, but I can give you, I think, a very plausible explanation. I could easily say that someone went into that house and waited, wrote this note under the idea that they would make it look like a kidnapping, get this child, assault her and kill her, and then figure maybe the police -- they would buy a lot of time to get out, to get away. There are a lot of explanations, including the fact that it was a kidnapping that went wrong.

But I want to clarify this fiction about the handwriting, too. This expert that Thomas now tells us was the expert linguist who was used by the FBI -- I have a letter, Larry, that this fellow, Don Foster, wrote to Patsy Ramsey in June of 1997. And he said to her, "I know that you are innocent -- know it, absolutely and unequivocally. I would state my professional reputation on it, indeed my faith in humanity."

Mr. Foster, the expert linguist, was so discredited by this letter when it was exposed that he was not even allowed to testify before the grand jury. That's Mr. Thomas's expert handwriting analysis. Now...

KING: He scores points, Lin, when he says your client did not cooperate, did not go to the police, to the hired individual lawyers, pushed things around, pushed it off, had clout. Why didn't -- as innocent people, they run down, give lie detector tests in a second and go crazy because they know there's a killer loose?

WOOD: Well, let me clear up a couple of those false states by Mr. Thomas directly.

Number one, let's look at the question of Patsy Ramsey's willingness to cooperate. You know, in this tabloid that he calls a book, Steve Thomas discusses at length the statements given by John and Patsy Ramsey in April of 1997 that he took, his interrogation. Even though I have the statements -- and he swore a confidence, his word, that he would not release them to the media, his word was not good when it came time to make a profit.

But let me read just one statement in that that he doesn't include in his interviews or his book. Patsy Ramsey said in April of 1997 to Steve Thomas:

"I mean, really and truly, I want to -- I mean, you say you thought about it 100 hours a day, I've thought about it every waking moment, sleeping moment, you know? And I want to work with you, John and I both. Please, I can't tell you how much we want to work with you. So anything else, ask me"

And then he did not ask her to take a polygraph test. He hasn't told the truth about that in his interviews. He said to Patsy Ramsey, "And I know -- well, let me ask you this way," Mr. Thomas said, "I'm not asking you to take one. But hypothetically, if you took a polygraph, how would you do?" And here is Patsy Ramsey's answer to Steve Thomas:

"I'm telling you the truth. I mean, I don't know how those things work, but if they tell the truth, I'm telling the truth. I never have given anybody a reason to think otherwise. I want to find out who did this -- period." Thomas said, "Does that mean you'd pass it?" She said, "Yes, I would pass it. I'll take 10 of them. I don't care. Do whatever you want." That's the truth of what Patsy Ramsey said in...

KING: All right...

WOOD: ... April of 1997. And you know what, Larry? Steve Thomas never asked her to take a polygraph. The person he claims now to be his prime suspect, he never followed up and asked her to take one...

KING: By the way...

WOOD: ... and now he accuses her of not taking one.

KING: I've got to get a break, Lin, but are they going to take one?

WOOD: They have offered to do so. The only issue right now is whether or not the FBI, who has been offered up as the examiner by Chief Beckner, is truly independent. The Ramseys believe that we need to get someone who has not been involved in the investigation. As Steve Thomas said tonight...

KING: Well, there's many good -- you could find one tomorrow. There's many top...

WOOD: Absolutely.

KING: What's delaying this? Why don't you pick one out? In Chicago there's one, in Miami there's one. Pick one out.

WOOD: If Chief Beckner will let me do so, I'll be glad to compare this...

KING: You can do it without Chief Beckner, you can go do it yourself.

WOOD: We can do it ourselves, but let me say this. We want to move this investigation away from John and Patsy. And in order to do that, it's going to be most helpful if we have a polygraph when they pass that the police will look at and say, OK, let's start looking elsewhere.

KING: All right, let me get a break. We'll be right back with Lin Wood, the civil attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey right after this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "LARRY KING LIVE," MARCH 27, 2000)

KING: You set -- you put guidelines up to the interviewers. You'd only be interviewed together. Why?

J. RAMSEY: I don't remember...

KING: Is that...

P. RAMSEY: I don't remember any guidelines.

J. RAMSEY: I don't remember.

KING: You didn't give them any guidelines?

J. RAMSEY: The only guideline I remember, the only request that we made -- and this was after a huge gap of mistrust developed -- the police withheld JonBenet's body for burial to try to force us to submit to their terms.

KING: Which were?

J. RAMSEY: That we -- the three of us be interrogated in the police station before we buried our daughter. And we were horribly offended at that. And this huge gap of mistrust developed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Lin, would you agree with Steve Thomas that this case is stone cold dead?

WOOD: Yes, I do agree with that statement. I believe that's the statement of Dr. Henry Lee. It's interesting that you hear District Attorney Hunter talk about we're on the right track and we're moving along, and you hear the governor come out and say we've got the right people in place. They're doing the job. The truth is they're botching this file up, and it's going on the shelf. And there's a killer out there and no one's looking for him that has a badge and a gun.

KING: So any way you look at it, Steve Thomas or Lin Wood, this has a tragic ending? There's a death without a solution?

WOOD: Well, it is at the moment going to be a death without a solution if we cannot get the authorities in Boulder or some other professional agency involved to start looking in the direction of an intruder.

And let me just point out if I might, Larry, Steve Thomas makes a nice impression. He's a nice-looking young man. But he tries to downplay the fact that he's also a totally inexperienced homicide detective. Before this case...

KING: But they called him in. He didn't ask for the case.

WOOD: Well, that doesn't make him experienced. That just shows that they had to go into the narcotics undercover people to get somebody to look into a homicide.

But, you know, look at what Lou Smit, who was hired by the Boulder district attorney's office, has done. Thirty-two years as a homicide investigator in that part of the country, a legend, over 200 homicides Lou Smit has investigated with an 85 percent or higher solution rate. Lou Smit's done an interview for "Newsweek," sure, but Lou Smit's at home tonight in Colorado Springs. He's not on television trying to make money on a book. He hasn't written a book. Lou Smit's at home tonight working as hard as he can to still find the killer of JonBenet. Contrast that to what Steve Thomas is doing.

KING: But your clients also wrote a book, Lin.

WOOD: You bet they did. And I will tell you, they had no choice. My clients, unlike Steve Thomas, my clients have had a three- year time period in which they have been subjected to the most vicious attacks. Just look at some of the things that have been said about this family. John and Patsy Ramsey have been accused in headlines of being everything from child molesters to drug addicts to murderers to pornographers. They had finally after the grand jury, I think, an obligation almost to come out and tell their side of the story, to tell the truth of what this family has been through. And they're not spending their money -- and I -- with all due respect to Mr. Thomas, I'm sure he's got more than a small house and a pick-up truck as an advance for this book -- but they're putting their money back into paying for the criminal investigation, the attorneys' fees and then the JonBenet Ramsey foundation. I'd like to ask Mr. Thomas what he intends to do with his money.

KING: We'll take a break and be back with our remaining moments with Lin Wood on this edition of LARRY KING LIVE. We'll be right back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "LARRY KING LIVE," MARCH 27, 2000)

P. RAMSEY: I'm worried for the entire country. There is a killer walking around out there someplace. Lou Smit tells us that we can...

KING: That's a detective, right?

P. RAMSEY: Detective Lou Smits.

J. RAMSEY: Lou Smit is the only homicide investigator that's ever looked at this case.

P. RAMSEY: And he says definitively that there's enough evidence to find this man. But the public needs to know it. It's been -- it's been...

KING: So why would the police not want to solve it?

P. RAMSEY: Why wouldn't they?

J. RAMSEY: I think the police are passionate.

KING: That it's you?

J. RAMSEY: They're passionate that is was one of us.

P. RAMSEY: That's right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Let's get a call in for Lin Wood. Little Rock, Arkansas -- hello.

CALLER: Hi.

KING: Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Mr. Wood.

WOOD: How are you?

CALLER: Mr. King.

KING: Hi.

CALLER: I just want to say I think it's wonderful that they've agreed to take a polygraph test. And my question is, would they also submit to a blood test to make sure they were not taking anything, i.e., medication, herbs, that would alter their response to the questions on the polygraph? How would you answer that, sir?

WOOD: Oh, absolutely. I'm sure that the question would be asked if they're on any medications, and they would answer that question truthfully and submit to any urinalysis that was required or asked of them.

John and Patsy Ramsey have in many, many days of interrogation by police officers in Boulder and in a number of interviews with respect to their book, they have answered every question. They have done everything that has been asked of them in terms of coming out and doing whatever they could do at least once to try to help solve this crime. So, yes...

KING: Are you...

WOOD: ... they'll do what it takes.

KING: Lin, are you worried when Steve said that he heard that one of the grand jury members may come forward and say they wanted to indict?

WOOD: I think what I heard him say was that he had heard that one grand juror may want to come out and talk...

KING: Right.

WOOD: And then -- see, here's Steve Thomas for you -- he takes that hearsay, rumor, gossip, and then makes the outrageous statement that from that the grand jury may well have indicted. Listen, if the grand jury indicted John and Patsy Ramsey, there would be -- we'd be probably in the middle of a trial right now. You're not going to put a grand jury out there for 13 months and spend millions of dollars of taxpayers' hard-earned money, have them bring an indictment, and then say no thanks. The grand jury didn't indict in this case for the very simple reason that inside the investigation the evidence did not support an indictment. And it just doesn't take very much to get an indictment. It wasn't there.

KING: Lin, thanks very much. As always, good seeing you.

WOOD: Thank you, Larry. Nice to speak with you again tonight.

KING: And Lin Wood announcing tonight that the Ramseys are going to sue Steve Thomas, the author of "JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation. Steve with us earlier, the Ramseys intend to file a lawsuit. Good night.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

 

Although the next 3 posted articles by Chuck Green at the Denver Post are not LW-focused, I do believe they express current sentiment that the BDA's efforts, both under AH when these articles were published, as now under Keenan for the last 2 years, are woefully deficient in handling this case. I believe Gov. Owens' public opinions then are just as applicable now and support our demand via the Petition that this investigation be placed into the hands of a competent special prosecutor or a more objective investigative body than Mary Keenan et al, with her publicly stated bias favoring the Ramseys, can lend.

There is no doubt that BPD committed many mistakes in its crime scene management, but those mistakes pale in comparison to the glaring ineptitude of the BDA, then and now. If the BPD errors were sufficient to move the case into the exclusive domain of the BDA, don't the failures of the BDA in eliciting ANY new evidence re an intruder for the last 1 1/2 years lay sufficient reasonable foundation for removing this case from them as well?

How much MORE incompetence and obstruction does JonBenet Ramsey have to suffer before she can rest in peace?

 

http://63.147.65.175/news/green1028.htm

Governor knew what he was doing

By Chuck Green
Denver Post Columnist

Oct. 28 - Gov. Bill Owens had plenty of time to pick his words and his thoughts. He had, if you believe him, the evidence he needed to evaluate the integrity of the criminal investigation into the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

He very carefully, and cautiously, left a clear impression that the investigation was gold and the suspects were clear - the evidence points in only one direction, and John and Patsy Ramsey stand alone, accused by investigators as the murderers of their daughter.

I was stunned.

During the news conference Wednesday afternoon, the governor could have made a formal, three-sentence statement: "I am convinced that this investigation cannot be advanced by intervention of the state's attorney general. I am confident in the work that has been done to this point. I see no need to appoint a special prosecutor.''

But he didn't stop there. He went much, much further.

He said the killers will be caught. He said there was more than one person involved in the crime and its coverup. He said the evidence points in only one direction.

He said the targets have been identified and are being pursued.

And then, as he stepped from the podium and out of the glare of TV lights, walking the 15 feet to his private office door, I stopped him.

"Governor,'' I said, "do you realize you have pointed a big, strong finger at the Ramseys today?''

"Yup,'' was his simple answer.

"You do realize what you have done today?''

"Yup, Chuck, I do.''

And then he and his guardians disappeared into his office.

After nearly three years of intense investigation - one of the most intensive homicide probes in American history - and $2.5 million in expense, we are back where we started: not enough evidence to convict anyone, but not enough evidence to seriously suspect anyone but JonBenet's parents as her murderers.

Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner first identified the Ramseys as the only named people under his investigators' famed "umbrella of suspicion.'' And more than a year later, after the full power of a grand jury had collected every known bit of evidence, the chief prosecutor in the case confirmed that JonBenet's parents remained under that parasol of distrust, alone as the only named suspects.

And now, after weeks of carefully studying the evidence and meticulously choosing his words, the governor made his remarkable declaration, like a determined western cowboy who had joined the posse to follow the tracks.

Do you know where you're headed?

"Yup.''

Are you sure?

"Yup.''

This is no lynch mob.

More than 30,000 pages of reports and testimony, more than 60 potential suspects, more than 200 laboratory tests, more than thousands of miles traveled, more than dozens and dozens of theories, more than 10 seasoned prosecutors, more than the FBI and more than the nation's best forensics consultants - it all leads to one place.

And our governor, Bill Owens, has revealed his verdict: "Yup.''

Bill Owens didn't have to ask for this trouble. He had no duty to review the Ramsey case. He had no obligation to evaluate the work of District Attorney Alex Hunter.

But the governor apparently felt a personal, moral responsibility to assure himself - and the people of Colorado - that justice had been pursued, and will continue to be pursued, in this strange and baffling case.

He is a religious man, a public servant whose career has been untarnished and loyal to the platitudes of law and order, a father of children as dear and adorable as JonBenet.

He did what he felt was necessary, and he came to his conclusion.

"Yup.''

But the evidence to convict apparently isn't there, so the pursuit continues.
May the posse never tire.

Chuck Green's commentaries appear Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. His phone is 303-820-1771; his e-mail addresses are cgreenpost@aol.com and cgreen@denverpost.com

Copyright The Denver Post. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without written permission.

 

Has Keenan Put Up or Only Shut Up?

http://63.147.65.175/news/green0830.htm

Ramsey case is all talked out

By Chuck Green
Denver Post Columnist
Aug. 30, 2000 -

It's time for the law enforcement authorities in Boulder to put up or shut up. By all accounts, John and Patsy Ramsey have answered all the polite questions that Boulder investigators have posed over the past 44 months, and they don't have the goods. When the authorities had the chance to subpoena the Ramseys and ask them - under oath - the toughest questions, they passed.

And now, more than a year later, they have produced a dramatic yet voluntary interrogation of the couple, and produced nothing.

If this week's session with the Ramseys advanced the prosecution's case at all, the Ramseys ought to expect criminal charges to be filed within a couple of weeks or to be summoned before a grand jury to wrap up the loose ends before Thanksgiving. Otherwise, the cops are just playing a public-relations game controlled by the primary suspects in the case.

It's been nearly four years since JonBenét Ramsey was murdered in her home on Christmas night 1996. It's been more than two years since the Ramseys were last questioned by police. It's been more than a year since DA Alex Hunter's grand jury disbanded without indicting anyone in the murder, and without compelling the Ramseys to testify under oath.

The prosecution's effort can be described as less than aggressive. The Ramseys' behavior can be described as less than convincing. And progress in the case during the last year can be described as less than impressive.

If Boulder investigators fired their best shot at the Ramseys this week, they need to readjust the scope on their rifle. They had little to go on, by all accounts, and they left with little to show for the last year's work.

Now they have little to hope for.

In the future, the Boulder police and prosecutors ought to publicly shelve their case - unless they have an undisclosed surprise resulting from this week's summit with the Ramseys - and keep the case out of public view until there's a serious, legitimate development. The more they reach into the hat to pull out a rabbit, and come up with nothing but a fistful of fur, the less credibility they have.

Apparently they advanced their circumstantial case against the Ramseys a mere millimeter or two this week, at the cost of providing the Ramseys an advantage of bragging rights in this seemingly endless war of words.

If ever there was a case against the Ramseys, it was squandered in that first year when Hunter and his assistants blocked every move by Boulder police to collect vital evidence and to haul the Ramseys before a grand jury.

The case was jeopardized in the first few hours of crime-scene investigation, when critical evidence was contaminated, but it was lost during the next year when the pursuit of justice was obstructed by inexcusable and unprecedented interference by the DA's office.

Now it's time for prosecutors to put up or shut up.

My guess is that they can't put up, and luck is their only remaining ally.

E-mail Chuck about this column.

Copyright 2000 The Denver Post. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

http://63.147.65.175/news/green0901.htm

Another failure to communicate

By Chuck Green
Denver Post Columnist
Sept. 1, 2000 -

Pardon me if I'm confused, but I'm trying to make sense out of the public statements uttered Wednesday by the law-enforcement authorities in Boulder - the same folks whom I advised earlier in the day to "shut up or put up."

Apparently at their peril, they chose not to do either. At the very least, they should have shut up.

Police Chief Mark Beckner rejected a suggestion by Lin Wood, a lawyer for John and Patsy Ramsey, that videotapes of the Ramseys' two-day interviews with Boulder police this week be released to the public.

"It is not in the best interests of the investigation to release any portion of videotaped interviews or their transcripts," Beckner said in a written statement. "It fact, it potentially harms our ability to find justice for JonBenét."

But then, just a few hours later, special prosecutor Mike Kane offered on national television to join the Ramseys' attorney in seeking public release of the entire transcript from the year-long grand-jury investigation into the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.

Presumably, if a two-day interview with the Ramseys "potentially harms our ability to find justice for JonBeñet," release of details of a one-year grand jury investigation would do far, far more damage to the case.

What we have here, it seems, is a failure to communicate - again.

The police chief says keep the case file closed; the special prosecutor says to open it up - and they're supposed to be working on the same team.

It makes you long for the good ol' days when silver-tongued Tom Koby was police chief. Remember him?

"Our guy won't walk." - Tom Koby, Jan. 8, 1997

One of the most heated exchanges during this week's two-day police interview with the Ramseys came when Wood condescendingly told Kane, a veteran prosecutor, "We're both trying to do our jobs under very unusual and difficult circumstances." Kane shot back: "My job is not to stand in the way of the truth."

The Ramseys' lawyer retorted: "Well, if you are implying that my job is to obstruct the truth, I take that as a professional insult ..." Note that while he may have been insulted, he didn't deny anything.

Can you imagine anyone more stupid than the crazies who "liberated" about 140 birds from a Colorado research lab this week?

Most of the creatures most likely are dead by now - sent to their demise by their so-called "liberators" - because they were born and reared in captivity and had no survival skills.

They probably won't be flattered by the comparison, but the liberators' actions reminded me of the U.S. military forces in South Vietnam who felt it was necessary to burn down native villages in order to save them.

There is no truth to the nasty rumor - no truth whatsoever - that the Russian government privatized its navy several months ago, and United Air Lines submitted the winning bid.

E-mail Chuck about this column.

Copyright 2000 The Denver Post. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

http://thewebsafe.tripod.com/04122000woodontoday.htm

This aired 4/13 on the TODAY show.

KATIE COURIC, co-host: The mystery of who killed JonBenet Ramsey is back in the headlines. A new book out this week by one of the detectives on the case says Patsy Ramsey accidentally killed her daughter and then tried to cover it up by making it look like a kidnapping. Lin Wood is an attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey.

Mr. Wood, good morning. Welcome back.

Mr. LIN WOOD (Attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey): Good morning, Katie.

COURIC: Let me ask you what you think of these latest allegations by Steve Thomas in his new book.

Mr. WOOD: You know, Alex Hunter, the district attorney in Boulder, has described Steve Thomas as a rogue detective. I think he's a bad cop. Somebody that would shoot before he would think. He's made allegations in this book against Patsy Ramsey that are totally unsupported by any evidence. It's like a tabloid in a hard cover. And I would think that if you go to buy it at a store, you would feel the way you feel when you have to go buy one of these tabloids. You hope nobody sees you when you purchase it. Unfortunately, because I have to monitor the tabloids, I know what that feeling is like. But this book is just a lie when it comes to talking about Patsy Ramsey. She did not kill her daughter. And there's no evidence to support this theory that's espoused by this rogue cop.

COURIC: I know that in the Denver Post, John Ramsey called Steve Thomas an inexperienced moron. What else have they said to you about the book and about this man?

Mr. WOOD: Well, they don't intend to read the back. John Ramsey is a gentleman. Anyone that's met him knows that. If you've seen him in his interviews, you know it. This is a man whose wife has been accused of murder by Steve Thomas. This is a man who has sat back and watched Steve Thomas put his daughter's name and picture on a book, illegally utilizing confidential police file information, to write a book so that he can profit. He wants to profit off of the death of this child. And Steve Thomas is a person that should not be allowed to do so.

COURIC: Will you take legal action?

Mr. WOOD: Steve Thomas is at the top of the list. He has to be. You can't sit back and let someone make these kinds of accusations that cannot be supported without testing him in a court of law. I'd like to have 10 or 15 minutes of cross-examination of Detective Thomas, because I think it wouldn't take much longer than that to destroy this man's credibility.

COURIC: So you are planning to sue?

Mr. WOOD: That is--I haven't read the book from cover to cover. I know it's been vetted well by the lawyers. But I would say, Katie, that Steve Thomas is high on the list under the umbrella of litigation for John and Patsy Ramsey.

COURIC: You know, you mentioned, Lin, that Alex Hunter called this man, Steve Thomas, a--a--a rogue cop. But Alex Hunter, in interviews here on the TODAY show with Dan Abrams, has not exactly defended your clients. In fact, he's talked about the key piece of evidence in this case being that ransom note, that three-page ransom note. And in this new book, it says of the 73 suspects whose writing samples were analyzed by experts, only Patsy Ramsey could not be excluded as its author. Based on...

Mr. WOOD: I challenge that. Katie, I will tell you, I challenge that statement. I think that's a lie. And if it's not a lie, then I think the Colorado Bureau of Investigation handwriting experts are incompetent.

COURIC: She was not excluded though...

Mr. WOOD: I would like for that evidence to be put out.

COURIC: ...Lin, she was not excluded. Even when I talked to John and Patsy Ramsey he said...

Mr. WOOD: Sure, I understand that.

COURIC: ...that was a low probability that she had written the note. Which is--which is different, frankly, than being excluded.

Mr. WOOD: Absolutely. I understand--I understand the point. She was not excluded but nor was she identified as the writer of the note. The person that's relied upon by Steve Thomas in terms of trying to connect Patsy Ramsey to that note is a man named Don Foster. And, in fact, Don Foster, who now says that Patsy wrote the note, I have a letter that Don Foster wrote to Patsy Ramsey in June of 1997 where he stated that he was convinced that she was innocent, that he would stake his professional life on it. They are relying on a man, Don Foster, who is a discredited and a person not worthy of belief, plain and simple.

COURIC: Let's move on and talk about this lie detector test, if we could. The Boulder police have said that they will ask John and Patsy--Patsy Ramsey to take one. It's something that they have not done in the past. And, of course, I talked to them about this last month. Let's listen and then we'll talk again.

Mr. WOOD: Sure.

(Beginning of file footage)

COURIC: Did you all take a lie detector test?

Mr. JOHN RAMSEY: We were never asked to take a lie detector test.

COURIC: Why not volunteer to take one?

Mr. RAMSEY: I--that didn't occur to me, first of all. That wasn't my motive.

Ms. PATSY RAMSEY: I understand that lie detector tests are not admissible in court anyway. It's kind of a voodoo science. I don't believe...

Mr. RAMSEY: I would if I was asked. Certainly I would. But the fact is, I was never asked.

(End of file footage)

COURIC: That seems up for debate, Lin, in terms of whether the Ramseys were ever asked. Because, according to the police interview that Dan Abrams talked about yesterday, it was brought up.
Mr. WOOD: Yeah, let me make a...

COURIC: Go ahead.

Mr. WOOD: ...let me clarify that point for you. In fact, Patsy Ramsey was not asked. She was only asked hypothetically what she would do, and she said she'd take 10 if necessary to get this investigation looking for the real killer. John Ramsey was also asked hypothetically if he would take a test and he said that in other interviews. That he has, in fact, recalled being asked hypothetically would he take it. But I've gone back...

COURIC: And he said he would be insulted.

Mr. WOOD: ...look--he did. And I've gone back and looked at the transcripts of that, which I would like for the Boulder police to make public in their entirety. And John did say that he would be insulted when he was asked, 'If at some point in time, I ask you to take one, would you?' John was wrong about his recollection three years after the fact, but he didn't go back and study those transcripts when he came out in these interviews and answered every question honestly and openly.

COURIC: Lin, the fact of the matter is now they have been requested to take a lie detector test. So will they? And if so, when?

Mr. WOOD: They will take a lie detector test if it is performed by a fair and impartial and independent examiner and if the results of that test are made public. They have also asked for the courtesy of the tests to be performed in Atlanta. But they will not take a lie detector test that is administered by the FBI because the FBI is not an independent agency from the Boulder Police Department. They have been involved in this investigation. Some of their members have formed beliefs about the Ramseys that are adverse to them. But if Boulder will offer these people an independent, impartial examiner, and there are plenty of them out there that are not connected to an agency that's been involved in the investigation, and they have said very clearly, they will take this test.

But it's a shame that they have to do that, Katie, because what's happened to John and Patsy Ramsey is the system of justice has been turned upside down. They have to now go out, literally, and try to prove their innocence...

COURIC: But if they're innocent they--you would think they would be...

Mr. WOOD: ...in order to get the police start looking for a killer.

COURIC: ...you think they would welcome a chance to prove their innocence, or at least indicate their innocence, through a polygraph.

Mr. WOOD: Well, they've done everything that they've been asked to do so far, Katie. And I've indicated that if they will be treated fairly and they will be administered an independent test, that they will do that. I don't know what else it's going to take for the authorities in Boulder, Colorado, to come to the realization that they've wasted a lot of time and a lot of money looking at the wrong people. There's someone out there that killed this child. It's not John and Patsy Ramsey. The police need to go out now and start looking for the killer of this child.

COURIC: All right.

Mr. WOOD: To find out who did this horrible crime.

COURIC: Lin Wood. Lin, thanks so much for talking with us this morning.

Mr. WOOD: Thank you, Katie.

 

http://thewebsafe.tripod.com/05102000woodontoday.htm

TODAY SHOW
Wednesday, May 10, 2000

KATIE COURIC, co-host: John and Patsy Ramsey are back in the news this morning for a number of reasons. They filed lawsuits this week against four different publications who reported that their son Burke is the one who killed JonBenet. And the Ramseys have still failed to reach an agreement with the Boulder Police Department to take a lie detector test. Lin Wood represents the Ramseys.

Lin, good morning. Welcome back.

Mr. LIN WOOD (Attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey): Good morning, Katie.

COURIC: Let me start with some portion of the interview the Ramseys did with me back in March when I asked them specifically about a lie detector test.

Mr. WOOD: Sure.

(Beginning of file footage)

COURIC: Did you all take a lie detector test?

Mr. JOHN RAMSEY: We were never asked to take a lie detector test.

COURIC: Why not volunteer to take one?

Mr. RAMSEY: That didn't occur to me, first of all. That wasn't our motive.

Ms. PATSY RAMSEY: I understand that lie detector tests are not admissible in court anyway. It's kind of a voodoo science.

Mr. RAMSEY: I would. If I was asked. Certainly I would. But the fact is, I was never asked.

(End of file footage)

COURIC: Lin, of course the Ramseys now have been asked to take a lie detector test. And some of the particulars were being worked out. What happened?

Mr. WOOD: Well, John and Patsy have stated very publicly that they would, in fact, take a lie detector test if they were asked to do so by Chief Beckner of the Boulder Police Department, if the test was a fair test, and if the test was conducted by an independent examiner, an examiner independent from the Boulder Police Department and its investigation of this family. Chief Beckner offered a test, but he only offered it if it was conducted by the FBI. The FBI has held the hands of the Boulder Police Department members in this investigation. The FBI is not independent. It was meeting last week with Boulder Police officials on the case. And so until and unless Chief Beckner offers a truly fair, truly independent examination, unfortunately there's not going to be one.

COURIC: You obviously do not trust the FBI to administer this lie detector test. But apparently last week the nation's foremost polygraph group, the American Polygraph Association, offered to conduct an independent lie detector test. Would they satisfy your requirements as an independent body to administer this test?

Mr. WOOD: I received a letter from the American Polygraph Association Monday. And, in fact, it does appear that that organization is offering someone who I think could be deemed to be fair and independent. But the question is not for John and Patsy Ramsey to answer. The question is for Chief Mark Beckner of the Boulder Police Department. They sent that letter to him.

COURIC: Do you think they would be suitable to him? Do you think they would be suitable?

Mr. WOOD: He has indicated that the only group that he is willing to allow to have this test--conduct this test is the FBI. I can't speak for Chief Beckner. But I think the question ought to be asked, why is Chief Beckner unwilling to have a truly fair and independent examiner perform the test?

COURIC: Let me ask you about what's happening in the Boulder Police Department. Apparently, they've started to retest evidence that they found at the murder scene, such as hair and fiber. Were you surprised or were your clients, the Ramseys, surprised by this?

Mr. WOOD: No. I think that during the media campaign of the district attorney out there, Alex Hunter, that he's referenced the fact that there were ongoing laboratory tests. So the information from last week certainly came as no surprise.

COURIC: Let me ask you about these four lawsuits that were filed against these four separate publications seeking $ 16 million on behalf of their 12-year-old son Burke. What prompted the Ramseys to file those suits?

Mr. WOOD: Well, when I was hired several months ago, I made it very clear that John and Patsy had asked me to initially concentrate my efforts in terms of civil litigation on behalf of their son Burke. The first lawsuit was filed against a tabloid, Star. That lawsuit was settled a couple of months ago. And these lawsuits follow in that same vein. These lawsuits are brought against members of the media that very publicly proclaimed that Burke Ramsey, a nine-year-old child at the time of his sister's death, was a murderer. And John and Patsy have drawn a line and said that they're not going to tolerate this. These are vicious lies, unconscionable conduct. It's almost like staring at a bully and finally saying 'Enough is enough.' The Ramseys have had enough. They've had enough of the lies and accusations against their son. They've had enough of the lies and accusations against themselves.

COURIC: Meanwhile, they've...

Mr. WOOD: They're going to do something about.

COURIC: ...they've been sued by someone they mention in their book.

Mr. WOOD: They have been, although that lawsuit was filed in New York and dismissed last week. I understand it's going to be refiled in Atlanta. And look, that's--that's unfortunate. It's part of the tragedy this family has to endure. The individual who is going to file that suit has a lawyer who has himself sued the Ramseys and dismissed his case. That individual's lawyer has himself filed a lawsuit against authorities in Boulder trying to interject himself into this case for publicity purposes. That lawsuit is, indeed, frivolous. It's not like the cases that John and Patsy have brought for Burke and will ultimately bring for themselves.

COURIC: All right, Lin Wood. Thanks very much for joining us.

Mr. WOOD: Thank you, Katie.

 

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/famous/ramsey/update_13.html?sect=7

The Interviews

On August 28, 2000, CNN reported that the long awaited "Ramsey interviews" with Boulder police finally came to fruition when Patsy Ramsey met with investigators for the first time in over 2 years. The meetings, conducted over two days, saw Patsy interviewed for a total of seven hours while the interview with John ran for just over two.

At the conclusion of the meetings, Ramsey attorney Lin Wood said his clients felt that "the line of questioning by the seven-member team was fair and pertinent to the case."

Prior to the meeting, Boulder police chief Mark Beckner had indicated that questioning "would focus on evidence developed over the last two years, some of which came from forensic testing conducted after the grand jury disbanded, and statements the Ramseys made in their book (The Death of Innocence)"

As before, when questioned if the Ramseys were the main focus of the investigation he would only say that they were "under suspicion."

The following day, via a faxed statement to CNN and other media, Beckner stated that the meetings between Boulder investigators and the Ramseys produced "less than we had hoped for." It is believed Beckner was referring to Attorney Wood's intervention during the Patsy Ramsey interview when he called the line of questioning by special prosecutor Michael Kane, "overzealous" and "obsessive."

Beckner said his office had originally intended to explain to the Ramseys "what evidence we believed put them under suspicion, and explore whether they had any explanations for some of that evidence," but changed their minds when arguments between the respective attorneys broke out over questions concerning the couple's son, Burke.

Wood later told CNN that he had directed Patsy to answer all of the questions she was asked, except for the question about Burke which he believed was irrelevant to the investigation calling it "the disgusting tactic of an overzealous prosecutor."

Chief Beckner countered, saying that Wood insisted on seeing the lab reports relating to forensic evidence before he would allow his clients to answer questions about them. At the time Beckner refused, as he believed it "wasn't in the best interests of the investigation to release any further police reports on the crime."

He also disagreed with Wood's decision to release portions of the interview tapes to the media stating, "It is not in the best interests of the investigation to release any portion of videotaped interviews or their transcripts," Beckner said. "In fact, it potentially harms our ability to find justice for JonBenet."

According to Wood, Patsy Ramsey felt the interview process produced nothing that would lift the"umbrella of suspicion" she and husband John have been under since JonBenet's death. John Ramsey commented that he and Patsy could "never clear our names, after what's been done to us." He added that he felt no animosity towards the authorities and was thankful that they were still pursuing the case. "The last thing I want is for this to go into a file drawer," he said.

Attorney Wood told CNN that the Ramseys were cooperating with the police and had handed over "significant information" as a direct result of having their own investigator working on the case full time. "We have given them leads. They'll have to determine if those people are viable suspects. That's a determination for the police, not this family," he said.

Wood also dismissed the suggestion that the meeting was just a publicity stunt saying that the Ramseys had readily agreed to be questioned in the hope that they could help the police investigation. "Only a fool would subject themselves to questioning by seven investigators as some sort of publicity stunt," Wood said, "And my clients are not fools."

©2004 Courtroom Television Network LLC. All Rights Reserved.

 

http://thewebsafe.tripod.com/04032001woodonearlyshow.htm

Posted by jameson on Apr-03-01 at 11:02 AM (EST)
LAST EDITED ON Apr-03-01 AT 12:25 PM (EST)

Lin Wood on The Early Show - 4/3/2001 Lin talking about filing the lawsuit against Steve Thomas

Jane Clayson - Lin Wood is the Ramseys' attorney Good morning.
Lin Wood - Good morning.

JC - This is not your first defamation lawsuit, but this is very important to the Ramseys. Do they see this as a trial of their guilt or innocence?

LW - Well, it is. The sad thing about John and Patsy's plight over the last several years is that they have been literally put on trial for the murder of their daughter in the court of public opinion. This unholy alliance of the police combining with the media to portray these individuals as guilty of a crime they have never been charged for, where a grand jury has deliberated and investigated for 13 months and did not indict them. Finally we come to, basically full circle, where they now have to go into court and, in effect, prove their innocence.

JC - But there are no charges - never been any charges filed, why not just drop it? Other than the fact that Mr. Thomas was the lead investigator in the case and they are upset about his allegations, why go forward?

LW - Steve Thomas is the most, on the face of it, credible accuser because he was an investigator, a detective on the case and he brings to his book police information that was confidential, privileged. He takes that information, he misuses it, selectively uses it, misrepresents it, and he says very loudly, "Patsy Ramsey killed her daughter." Now, could they walk away from it? No - because they owe that to themselves, to their family, to their friends, they owe it to JonBenét and her memory. The truth has to one day come out in a court of law and John and Patsy Ramsey are prepared to put that in front of a jury.

JC - Do you believe that the information Mr. Thomas used for his book was illegally obtained?

LW - I know it was. Absolutely. He took police information in the book, quotes from interrogations and interviews, and he used that information to make a lot of money for himself. Now, that's a system of justice that I would submit that fair-minded people do not want to see take place in this country - where a disgruntled former cop goes out and undoes what the system of justice has done - that is to say that there is not enough evidence here to charge this family, they are innocent of this crime - but I'm going to go out and publish a book and I'm going to accuse them and make front page headlines with my story.

JC - Steve Thomas has released a statement and I want to read it before you here. He says, "I stand by my convictions. The Ramseys have no right to silence me or anyone else who wishes to seek the truth and speak out about this horrible tragedy of injustice. I will vigorously defend myself against the Ramseys’ lawsuit and look forward to the opportunity to expose in a court of law what happened in the Ramsey home on Christmas night 1996."

LW - Steve Thomas' public relations statement. He's hired a public relations firm and that's interesting. He accused John and Patsy of somehow having something to hide because their lawyers hired a PR firm to help take phone calls back in the days of the media crush. He goes out and hires a PR firm, that is his right. He issues a statement - and listen - we are not trying to deny Steve Thomas the right to speak. He has his first amendment rights even though he has trampled on my clients' constitutional rights. But he doesn't have the right to go out and falsely accuse someone of a crime they didn't commit and they will address that, exercizing their rights in a courtroom.

JC - He's also hired Daniel Petrocelli who has successfully prosecuted OJ Simpson in the civil case.

LW - Sure. He's a good lawyer.

JC - There's been some comparison here to the Simpson trial - that Simpson couldn't be convicted in a criminal case so it was taken to a civil court. Do the Ramseys see that comparison and are they concerned about the public relations impact for them?

LW - No, they're not concerned about public relations in terms of impact in this case and I don't think it's a fair comparison if you look at it. OJ Simpson was charged with a crime. He was put on trial and the evidence, as it was, against him was presented publicly, in a courtroom. John and Patsy Ramsey have never been charged. They've never had the opportunity to confront their accusers, to force the government to put it's case in front of a jury... because the government doesn't have a case.

JC - But you have said yourself you see this as a trial of their guilt or innocence. ...the facts would come out.

LW - - The only analogy would be that in a civil case, as opposed to a criminal case, the issue of whether or not John and Patsy Ramsey were involved in the death of JonBenét wll be put to a jury. That is the only thing that you can say about the Simpson case and Ramsey case that are similar.

JC - - What do you think are the motivations of Steve Thomas writing this book other than the fact that he was a lead investigator in this case?

LW - - Steve Thomas was... I would submit, into this in part for money.... I'm told reliably, that he intended when he left the force, to, on one of your rival networks, to be an on-line commentator during the Ramsey Trial. Of course there was no trial because there was no change because there was no sufficient evidence. And so he saw this as an opportunity to make some money. I think there's an element of vindictiveness too, because if you look at his book, his book is about almost a petty fight that existed out in Boulder between the Police Department and the District Attorney's office. That's not going to sell many books. Not many people are going to be interested in the infighting between the police and the District Attorney. But if you take that book and you wrap it around an allegation against Patsy Ramsey of murder, then you can sell your book. So that's what Steve Thomas did. He wanted to sell books

JC - - We'll be watching. Lin Wood, thank you.

LW - Thanks for having me.