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

PMPT Page 108

"Detective Thomas and Gosage were at the Access Graphics office that day, conducting interviews. Among other, they talked to Patsy’s father, Donald Paugh, who had helped get the company off the ground in Atlanta, continued to work with his son-in-law when John amde the move to Boulder in 1991. At the time of JonBenet’s murder, Paugh owned a condominium in Boulder where he spent most of his time, and a home in Roswell, Georgia, with his wife, Nedra, who would often come to boulder to visit. Paugh’s Boulder home was just down the street from a restaurant called Past Jay’s in which John Ramsey happened to be an investor. When the detectives interviewed Paugh on January 9, he said that on December 18, Jeff Merrick and his wife, Kathy, Jason, Perkins, Cameron, Hindson, Tom Carson, and Mike Glynn had eaten together at Pasta Jays. Paugh thought it strange that former Access Graphics employees were dining with a current employee like Carson.

The next day, Thomas and Gosage would follow up and interview Tom Carson at the Access Graphics office. They asked him where he’d been on Christmas night. Carson said that on December 24 he’d taken a United Airlines flight to Chicago and then gone on to Paris, where he spent Christmas Day. Later Thomas was able to confirm that Carson had indeed been on the transatlantic flight at the time JonBenet was murdered."

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PMPT Page 254

"During the trip the detectives re-interviewed Nedra Paugh and asked for a third handwriting sample.

By now the officers had learned from several babysitters that JonBenet had regressed in her toilet training dunng Patsy's battle wIth cancer. In this interview, Nedra confirmed to police that at age six, her granddaughter was still in the habit of asking adults to wipe her when she was on the toilet. It didn't matter where she was or who the adult was-anyone within shouting distance would do.

Some adults, thinking she was old enough to do this herself, stopped answering her calls, and it resulted in soiled underpants. JonBenet's apparent lack of embarrassment about adults wiping her made the detectives wonder if it had somehow invited activity that led to vaginal penetration.

Did Nedra think JonBenet would have fought an intruder? the detectives asked. "I guarantee you,"she replied."

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(SNIP)

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PMPT Page 255

Letter from Nedra Paugh:

I'm from Ellenboro, West Virginia. Maybe a thousand people. Two or three churches, a restaurant, and three stores. I lived there before television, and when we got one, all the people on our street would come to our house and watch it. We couldn't see much, sometimes just shadows.

Patsy was not brought up with a deep religious faith. Actually; the healing power of Jesus didn't come to us until Patsy moved to Boulder and she met Betty Barnhill, who lived across the street. She'd had a healing experience. It had to do with a dreadful allergy problem. She gave Patsy lots of literature to read, and then one day Patsy was cured of her cancer. She believes she had a divine healing. I'd always heard about divine healing, but we weren't taught that in the Methodist Church.

John has always believed that what you receive, you should give back to the Lord. He doesn't attend church without giving, He was raised an Episcopalian, and when they settled in Boulder. John gave St. John's lots of things they needed-like a new sound system. And when Beth died, he established a children's Sunday school atrium in her name. JonBenet got her training there from Barbara Fernie

It was wonderful when we lived in Boulder. You could hear the college band playing from Patsy's upstairs room. I loved the atmosphere. Patsy and John were beginning to like Boulder. None of the traffic and concrete that there is in Atlanta. They could run out and do an errand in ten minutes. In Atlanta it takes half a day;

Patsy was growing anxious about High Peaks, the school JonBenet and Burke were going to. There were children in some classes who would never be self-sufficient, physically handicapped, but they were being mainstreamed into the classroom. They have a right to be educated, but there were these other intelligent little boys and girls who were growing up to make a living, pay taxes, and they were sitting and waiting. The teacher told me her first obligation was to those handicapped children. And you just wonder how much time in the course of a day is spent on the children who need to be learning so that they can take their place in society; I know the teacher wanted to do more, but there was only one of her and an aide.

JonBenet started to read when she was about three. At first she wanted to be a ballet dancer; then an ice-skater, and finally she told someone she might like to be a veterinarian. On her last trip to New York, in November '96, she saw Grease, and the MC invited her to dance on stage before the show started. Nobody would ever pass her up. She just had that gleam in her eye. She and her partner didn't win, but they were runner-ups.

I made several trips to Boulder that last month. One was for the Boulder Parade of Lights that JonBenet rode in. It was cold. I didn't go to John and Patsy's Christmas party, because I was in Roswell. Don, my husband, was there and flew back standby on the 24th so we could spend Christmas Eve together.

I spoke to JonBenet Christmas morning on the phone. She was excited. "What do you like the most about Christmas?" I asked.

"Baking cookies."

Like her mother, JonBenet loved to bake and decorate cookies. That afternoon she was supposed to make some plastic jewelry with her friend Daphne. My daughter Polly got her that gift for Christmas. And she was excited about going on the big red Disney boat after a few days in Charlevoix. Everything was packed.

I can tell you one thing. Whoever killed that child knew JonBenet's dog wasn't going to be in the house that evening. Sometimes Jacques would stay at the Barnhills' for a few hours and then he'd come back. He was always going back and forth. The killer knew the dog had already been taken across the street to stay with the Barnhills since the family was leaving the next morning for their winter vacation.

There were so many beautiful and wonderful people in Boulder like the Barnhills, but now I can't tolerate even thinking of that place. It just makes me ill to even think that someone killed JonBenet in that place.

Now Patsy can never be happy on this earth. But she has to live someplace. We all have to live someplace.

-Nedra Paugh