1999-02-18: "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, JonBenet and the City of Boulder"
Written by Lawrence Schiller, February 18, 1999

PMPT Page 203

"The next day, on February 24, Detective Arndt re-interviewed the Ramseys’ gardener, Brian Scott. She had already spoken to him earlier in the month.

Scott, who had graduated from the University of Colorado the year before, told the detective that he’d started working for the Ramseys in

PMPT Page 204

June 1995 as a landscaper. The last time he was at the house was December 10. The family used large wooden candy canes to decorate the yard during the holidays, and he noticed that they hadn’t been arranged properly. They needed deeper holes, which he dug before pounding them into the ground. Detective Arndt asked him what he remembered about the window-well grate near the rear patio. Scott said he didn’t remember that the window was broken. He’d only been in the basement to fix the sprinkler clock. He didn’t know there was a wine cellar, much less where it was. He did recall a broken window at the front of the house, but it was for the electrical cord for the Christmas lights and certainly not big enough for someone to crawl through - something like 2 inches square.

While Scott adjusted the candy canes along the front walk, he saw a blue chevy Suburban pull up to collect JonBenet. She was wearing a pair of blue overalls and was being bratty about something. “I think she might have been giving orders,” Scott said, “like, “you get in the back, you do this.” Something like that.” A moment later the car was gone. That was the last time he saw JonBenet.

On December 25, Scott went to the apartment of his girlfriend, Ann Preston, at around 10:30 p.m. and stayed until just after midnight then went home alone. There was nobody to confirm his alibi for the rest of the night. Arndt asked him for a handwriting sample, and two weeks later he gave the police blood, saliva, and hair samples as well. Only then did he feel he was a suspect.

---

(SNIP)

---

PMPT Page 345

"Meanwhile, Steve Ainsworth met with Detective Jane Harmer to discuss several possible suspects the police might want to look at again. The Ramseys’ gardener, Brian Scott, came up. Detective Arndt had interviewed him in February, but she was no longer working on the case. Ainsworth thought Scott’s alibi should be rechecked and that he might be able to describe the condition of the grate covering the broken basement window. Harmer re-interviewed Scott, showing him two photographs taken just after the murder. One was a bushel basket with some weeds in it, and the other was of the window grate. To the police, the ground cover around the grate looked as if it had been disturbed - perhaps because the grate was lifted up. Looking at the photographs, Scott said it looked as if the ground over had grown underneath the grate, which indicate that it had been lifted, but he couldn’t tell when. It could have been in September-October, when Ramsey said he entered the house by that broken window, or as late as December, when JonBenet was murdered.

After Harmer left, Scott remembered an encounter with Patsy that he hadn’t mentioned.

PMPT Page 346

“I remember Patsy running out of the house, outraged at what had happened. It was October 3, 1995. O.J. Simpson had been acquitted. And I just happened to be there. You could see she was upset over it.

“He’s getting away with murder.”

I thought to myself, He could be innocent. He’s been acquitted.

“It’s a bad system, full of flaws,” was what she was saying. It seemed to her he was getting away with it because he had money.

Brian Scott.”

Two weeks later, Harmer spoke to Scott’s girlfriend, Ann Preston, to reconfirm when Scott had left her place on Christmas night. She said it was around 12:30am. Scott’s saliva, hair, and handwriting samples would have to be analyzed before he was cleared."