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

PMPT Page 66sb

"Meanwhile, Melinda Ramsey, John's twenty-five-year-old daughter from his first marriage, arrived at the Justice Center. She had been called for a formal interview about her movements over the last few days. An hour later, her brother would be interviewed at the same place.

The Ramseys' attorneys and the police had agreed on this location as neutral territory. The police would have preferred to see them at headquarters, but since John Andrew and Melinda were cooperating without independent counsel, the detectives accepted the Justice Center as a reasonable compromise.

Detective Kim Stewart interviewed Melinda for almost two and a half hours. Detectives Ron Gosage and Steve Thomas questioned her brother from 6:00 to 8:00 P.M.

Twenty-year-old John Andrew was obviously upset, but he was composed enough to explain that he was a student at CU and had been in Boulder until December19. Then he had gone to Atlanta to spend the first part of his vacation with his mother, Lucinda Johnson, and his sister and friends. Then the plan was to continue his vacation with his sister, father, stepmother, and their children. He said his father had arranged to meet him and his sister in Minneapolis at about 10:30 A.M. on December 26, and from there they would all continue to the house in Charlevoix, Michigan.

In the months that followed, the police would confirm that John Andrew, his mother, and her friend Harry Smiles had attended the Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta on Christmas Eve and that John Andrew had returned to his mother's home at 1:00 A.M.

Melinda, who worked at a hospital in Marietta, Georgia, finished her shift at about 7:00 A.M. on Christmas Day. That afternoon, John Andrew, Harry Smiles, Melinda, and her boyfriend, Stewart Long, exchanged gifts at Lucinda's home in Marietta. In the afternoon they all went across the street to a neighbor's for dinner.

Melinda and Stewart Long left the dinner party about 7:00 P.M., and Melinda started to pack for an early flight the next day. At 9:00 they went to visit Guy Long, Stewart's uncle, and after visiting other friends were home by midnight. At about 8:30 P.M., John Andrew went to his friend Brad Millard's home in Marietta to play video games. After an hour, they left to catch a 10:30 show at the Town and Country Movie Theaters in Marietta with another friend, Chris Stanley.

John Andrew said that after the movie he went back to Brad Millard's house to get his car and arrived back at his mother's house at 1:00 A.M. The next morning he left his mother's house with Melinda, who had come there to pick him up. Together they boarded a flight to Minneapolis at 8:36 A.M. local time. That was forty-four minutes after Patsy called 911 to report that JonBenet was missing."

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(SNIP)

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PMPT Page 301sb

"Two and a half months after the Boulder police began investigating John Andrew and Melinda Ramsey, they received the final pieces of evidence that cleared Ramsey's older children of any involvement in JonBenet's murder.

Bryan Morgan wrote to Detective Thomas on March 4 stating that John Andrew had made an ATM transaction at the QT Store on Roswell Road, in Marietta, Georgia, at 9:00 P.M. on December 25. His friend Brad Millard had been present. To support his claim, Morgan enclosed the ATM transaction slip. He also repeated that Melinda had awakened her brother in the early morning hours of December 26, in time for him to stop at a store and still make an 8:30 A.M. flight to Minneapolis. It was impossible for John Andrew to have flown from Atlanta to Boulder, whether by commercial or private aircraft, commit the murder, and return in time to be awakened by his sister in the presence of Brad Millard, who had stayed overnight in John Andrew's room.

Morgan also wrote that John Andrew hadn't been in Charlevoix, Michigan, on either the Memorial Day or the July Fourth 1996 week. The accusation of a onetime police informant that John Andrew had tried to stage an "accidental death" in order to kill JonBenet was clearly preposterous. Morgan again requested an official announcement that John Andrew was no longer a possible suspect.

By now the police had received the test results from John Andrew and Melinda's hair, blood, and handwriting. At the time, the only possible match to evidence found at the crime scene was the pubic hair found on the white blanket in the basement, which held some slight similarities to Melinda's. But her alibi was even tighter than her brother's, and it was not likely that she had used the same blanket when she stayed with the family. The next day the police informed the DA's office that they would make a public statement regarding Ramsey's older children within the week."