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Boulder News - February 22, 1999 - Housekeeper says lies have hurt her family
PERSONAL BACKUP HISTORY ARCHIVE:
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Housekeeper says lies have hurt her family
Former employee says working for Ramseys was pleasant

Associated Press
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GREELEY - Linda Pugh says she had a good job working for John and Patsy Ramsey, making $72 a day for three days a week.

She worked with the family for 14 months, getting to know the mother and her beautiful daughter, JonBenet.

Then, on Dec. 26, 1996, two detectives from the Boulder Police Department rang the doorbell at Pugh's home in southwest Fort Lupton. That's when her life changed, probably forever.

Linda Hoffman-Pugh spent most of her time working for families in Boulder and Greeley. She also has a Greeley Tribune paper route, delivering to the town of Fort Lupton.

She and her husband, Mervin Pugh, have a "yours, mine and ours" family. Linda came to the marriage with five children; Mervin has four, and they had one daughter, Ariana, 13, together. Linda Pugh turned 55 on Saturday.

They are a quiet, honest, hard-working family.

But two years ago, when the nightmare began, Pugh first thought one of her children was in trouble when the Boulder police showed up at her door.

"They sent my family to another room and asked me to sit down at the kitchen table. When they told me JonBenét had been murdered, I screamed and couldn't stop. My family ran into the kitchen to make sure I was OK."

At the time, Pugh didn't know she was the first suspect named in the case, even though she had to give handwriting, blood and hair samples. She was in the middle of a case that would attract worldwide publicity.

Last week, while reading a new book on the case, "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town," by Lawrence Schiller, Pugh learned for the first time that she was named as a possible suspect by Patsy Ramsey.

"Why would she think I'd do something like that and then invite me to the memorial service?" Pugh asks. "Why would she hug me at the service?"

Pugh also was Schiller's housekeeper while he lived in Boulder, collecting information and writing his book. Her copy of "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town" is autographed by Schiller.

Pugh was a suspect in the murder for a short time, and now it is generally believed the chief suspects are Patsy and John Ramsey, JonBenét's parents. Because she is still a witness in the investigation and may be asked to come back and testify before the Boulder Grand Jury, Pugh can't talk specifically about the crime. She won't speculate on the record about who murdered JonBenet.

She does talk, sometimes with anger, about what the crime and the publicity have done to her life.

Reporters and TV show producers won't stop calling. If she doesn't agree to an interview, they might portray her in a bad light, Pugh says. The calls, in some cases, have turned to harassment.

But worse, the Internet sites about the Ramsey case have contained lies about her and her family. Once, someone wrote her husband was a child abuser and her daughter was involved in child pornography. The lies are still haunting the family.

Ariana doesn't attend school in Fort Lupton anymore and is being home-schooled. The Pughs have received anonymous telephone calls accusing them of all kinds of crimes. Two weeks ago, two teenage boys stood in the family's front yard and shouted for Ariana to come outside. "They were yelling about more lies they saw on TV," Pugh says. She called the police, and the boys were taken home.

But it's the national media that have hounded the family, Pugh says. "They've waited outside our house to film us, they've followed me around town, and they call all the time for interviews."

Pugh says she decided it was time for her to use the interviews to overcome the financial problems she has now. "I'm tired of being used while everyone else is getting rich on this case. I think it's time for me to start making some money, too. This is the last free interview."

Her change of attitude about free interviews came after she was lied to by the national media. "Once, a man came to the door and said he was a private detective for the Ramsey family and they wanted me to help them by telling him what I knew. I talked to him for about an hour and a half before I found out he was a reporter for a tabloid magazine."

She speaks in anger of others she thinks are getting rich over the case.

"Once I ran into a TV photographer in Boulder who told me he'd paid off his car, his house and his boat with money he got from the Ramsey story. A lot of people are making a lot of money."

Pugh hopes to write a book about the case, if she can find a good writer to team with her.

But the case and the death of the little girl still hurt Pugh. "I guess she was kind of spoiled, but she was a good little girl, too."

"You know," she says, "I still cry about JonBenet sometimes."

Boulder News
February 22, 1999