PMPT Page 469:

"In mid-January, Beckner told Hunter that Donald Foster, the Vassar linguistics expert who had been working on the case with them at Hunter's suggestion, was making some headway with his analysis. Beckner was eager to hear from Foster."

"Steve Thomas had visited Foster earlier in the month, taking along hundreds of pages of writings from many different suspects, including Patsy and John Ramsey. Foster had followed the case on the Internet long before he had sought out to work on it. He had even entered some of the chat rooms and discussed the case with people like Jameson."

Foster was impressed with the detective. "I can't tell you what our theories of the evidence are, " Thomas had said, "And I'm not going to prejudice your thinking," Foster found that kind of commitment to justice unusual. He had heard the same thing from Hunter when they first talked on the phone. To the professor, both men seemed dedicated to finding JonBenet's killer."