Excerpts from National Enquirer book, "JonBenet, The Police Files" by Don Gentile and David Wright

1997 April 30 - Taped Interrogation interview of Patsy Ramsey by Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo in Colorado

NE Book Page 82:

Tom Trujillo: "When did John break that window in the basement?"

Patsy Ramsey: "He, I don't know exactly when he did it, but I think it was last summer sometime when we, the and I were at the lake."

Tom Trujillo: "In Charlevoix"

Patsy Ramsey: "...He didn't have a key and the only way he could get in was to break the window....to the basement there."

Tom Trujillo: "He had to lift the grate out of the way to, to get in there?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Yeah, that's the one."

Tom Trujillo: "Okay. Any reason why that one wasn't replaced or the pane wasn't fixed or anything?"

Patsy Ramsey: "No, I don't know whether I fixed it or didn't fix it. I can't remember even trying to remember that, um, I remember when I got back, uh, in the fall, you know... went down there and cleaned up all the glass."

Tom Trujillo: "Okay."

Patsy Ramsey: "I mean I cleaned that thoroughly and I asked Linda to go behind me and vacuum. I mean I picked up every chunk, I mean, because the kids played down there in that back area back there. And I mean I scoured that place when, cause they were always down there. Burke particularly and the boys would go down there and play with cars and things and uh, there was just a ton of glass everywhere."

Tom Trujillo: "Okay."

Patsy Ramsey: "And I cleaned all that up and then she, she vacuumed a couple of times down there."

Tom Trujillo: "To get all the glass?"

Patsy Ramsey: "In the fall, yeah, 'cause it was just little, you know, pieces, big pieces, everything."

Tom Trujillo: "Do you ever recall getting that window replaced?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Yeah, uh, I can't remember. I just can't remember whether I got it replaced or not."

---

Excerpts from National Enquirer book, "JonBenet, The Police Files" by Don Gentile and David Wright

1997 April 30 - Taped Interrogation interview of Patsy Ramsey by Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo in Colorado

NE Book Page 83:

Tom Trujillo: "... Patsy, has anybody, that you can remember, um, spent time in the basement, um, how many people have had acess to the basement know about that basement cellar?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Well, my cleaning lady and her husband."

Tom Trujillo: "Linda and Mervin?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Yeah, would definitely be one couple, because I had asked them at Thanksgiving time, we were going to be in Atlanta and I had hired them to put out the Christmas trees and some of the Christmas decorations and the big artificial Christmas trees were back in that room..."

"And, uh, they also washed the windows, so they may be able to recall whether that window, and he was going to do some odd jobs."

Tom Trujillo: "Mervin was?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Uh huh."

Tom Trujillo: "Okay."

PR: Uh, fix some shelves in the playroom and some, uh, closet doors that had come off their track and some stuff like that. And so I would, it seems to me like she and I talked about that window or did, somehow I vaguely remember that if it would have gotten fixed he very likely would be the one to fix it. And at any rate they were going to wash all the windows, so they would have known...."

Tom Trujillo: "Whether it was fixed or not?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Yeah"

---

Excerpts from National Enquirer book, "JonBenet, The Police Files" by Don Gentile and David Wright

1997 April 30 - Taped Interrogation interview of Patsy Ramsey by Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo in Colorado

NE Book Page 91:

Tom Trujillo: What kind of things did JonBenet like to do? What kind of games did she like to play?"

Patsy Ramsey: "She liked crafts mostly, like making stuff. Painting, she liked painting. Watch movies and dressed up in makeup and dancing, tap dancing, singing. She got bent on taking violin one time, and I tried to talk her out of it, but she just insisted, so we got a little violin about that big, and she took that for awhile and she decided she didn't want to do that any more."

Tom Trujillo: "What about painting classes? Take anything like that?"

Patsy Ramsey: "I took painting class this fall, and she would paint with me. Again, we kind of turned our lower kitchen into a ... kind of studio, and she would paint."

Tom Trujillo: "So, you took painting classes in the fall?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Right"

Tom Trujillo: "What kind of classes?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Down at CU."

Tom Trujillo: "Water color or oil..?"

Patsy Ramsey: "I started out with oil, but then I changed to acrylic because it got on my car... It smelled real bad, so i switched."

Tom Trujillo: "Do you normally keep the painting supplies in that...area where the checkered board stuff is (checkered tiles on the floor of the butler's kitchen)?

Patsy Ramsey: "Yeah, we had it there for a long time, and then around the holidays, I moved all that to the basement... cause we put coat racks and things in there for parties."

Tom Trujillo: "What part of the basement do you recall moving the painting supplies to?"

Patsy Ramsey: "I don't remember. I think Linda took all that down there... I don't remember where she put it."

Tom Trujillo: "How much stuff are we talking about?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Well, I had a bunch of big canvasses... and a big easel, a big tall easel. And then like a white caddy kind of thing, like a plastic thing that I had a bunch of paint in. It would have been a lot of stuff to flip over."

---

Excerpts from National Enquirer book, "JonBenet, The Police Files" by Don Gentile and David Wright

1997 April 30 - Taped Interrogation interview of John Ramsey by Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo in Colorado

NE Book Page 121:

Steve Thomas: "Okay. When you previously broken that basement window to gain entry to the home when you had been locked out, can you approximate what month that was?"

John Ramsey: "Well, I think it was last summer because Patsy was up at the lake all summer, and it would have been July or August probably, somewhwere in that time frame."

Steve Thomas: "Did you remove that grate and get down into the window well?"

John Ramsey: "Uh huh."

Steve Thomas: "And what did you use to break the pane?"

John Ramsey: "Ah, I don't remember. Might have been my foot, I don't know."

Steve Thomas: "Okay. You reach in, I'm assuming, unlatched it an gain entry through that small window?"

John Ramsey: "Yeah."

Steve Thomas: "Did you then replace the grate onto that window well?"

John Ramsey: "Oh, I probably would have done it that night."

Steve Thomas: "Did you remove that whole grate off the well, to jump down there and get in?"

John Ramsey: "Ah, probably. I don't remember."

Steve Thomas: "Is there any reason that window went unreparired?"

John Ramsey: "No. I mean it's, Patsy usually took care of those things, and I just rarely went to the basement, so it just, I guess, got overlooked. Although she did think that she asked the cleaning lady's husband to fix it over Thanksgiving when they were doing some repair work there, but I don't know if that's ever been confirmed whether he fixed it or not."

Steve Thomas: "And you mentioned when you went down in the morning, the 26th, and it was unlatched, did that strike you as odd or did you bring that to anybody's attention?"

John Ramsey: "I, I don't know, yeah, I think it proably struck me as a little odd, but it wasn't, I mean sometimes that window would be open because the basement got hot, or one of those windows would be opened. So it wasn't..."

Steve Thomas: "Particularly unusual?"

John Ramsey: "....Out of the ordinary, but, that is, I thought about it."

---

Excerpts from National Enquirer book, "JonBenet, The Police Files" by Don Gentile and David Wright

1997 April 30 - Taped Interrogation interview of John Ramsey by Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo in Colorado

NE Book Page 133-134:

Tom Trujillo: "Okay. And let's hop back to the grate for just a second, 'cause I picked the grate up, it's really heavy, I mean fairly heavy. Picked it up, moved it out of the way, kind of hopped down, I mean first peeked into that window, hopped down into that window well, you ended up, have to kick the window, break the window somehow, reach in and unlatch it. How far of a drop is it (to the basement floor), or is it a difficult I should say to drop from the window well..."

John Ramsey: "It's probably, I don't know, four feet maybe, five feet."

Tom Trujillo: "Okay. But on the outside you've got that kind of skinny narrow window well. Did you have any difficulty sliding into that or sliding down the wall?"

John Ramsey: "Yeah, well, as I recall, I did it at night and I had a suit on, and I took my suit off and did it in my underwear. But, it's not easy, I mean, you can get in that way, you get dirty, but."

Tom Trujillo: "It's not a graceful way to get in?"

John Ramsey: "No, no."

Tom Trujillo: "It's difficult because of the angles?"

John Ramsey: "Right"

Steve Thomas: "Tom, let me just ask John this. Do you sit down and slide through, buttocks first if you will, through a window like that or, do you recall how you went through the actual window, John?"

John Ramsey: "I don't....remember. Seems like, I mean, I don't remember, but I think I would probably have gone in feet first."

Steve Thomas: "Feet first, backwards?"

John Ramsey: "Yeah."

Steve Thomas: "And when you went through in your underwear, were you wearing shoes...?"

John Ramsey: "I still had my shoes on, yeah."

Steve Thomas: "And were those with a suit, were they business shoes?"

John Ramsey: "They were probably, probably those shoes."

Steve Thomas: "Okay. And what are those shoes?"

John Ramsey: "Business shoes...shoes that I wear with a suit, just a pair of business shoes, dress shoes.

---

Excerpts from National Enquirer book, "JonBenet, The Police Files" by Don Gentile and David Wright

1997 April 30 - Taped Interrogation interview of Patsy Ramsey by Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo in Colorado

NE Book Page 85:

Tom Trujillo: "Okay, Were you ever, you were not ever in the basement that morning before the police got there?"

Patsy Ramsey: "No, I was not."

Steve Thomas: "Patsy, when were you last in that cellar basement room prior to Christmas?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Prior to Christmas?"

Steve Thomas: "Yes, ma'am."

Patsy Ramsey: "Well, I was there, I was down there a lot on the 24th wrapping, and I was there on the 25th wrapping.."

---

Excerpts from 09-11-1997
Boulder Daily Camera news article
"Ramseys open up to press":

"(In police photographs of the crime scene that appeared in a tabloid newspaper, a blue suitcase rests beneath the window. When the house was turned over to the family, the suitcase was no longer there, family representatives said. Police also apparently removed a broken window pane - John Ramsey reportedly told investigators he had broken it in the summer of 1996 when he returned from a business trip and didn't have a key.)"

---

Excerpts from National Enquirer book, "JonBenet, The Police Files" by Don Gentile and David Wright

1998 June 25, 26, 27 - Taped Interrogation interview of Patsy Ramsey by Tom Haney and Trip DeMuth in Colorado

NE Book Page 213:

Trip DeMuth: "When and how often, I'm talking about in the months prior to Christmas, when and how often did you go into the wine cellar?"

Patsy Ramsey: "Oh, not very often. I might, you know, have a wrapping session, you know, of Christmas things in there, so maybe a couple of times before Christmas."

Trip DeMuth: "Is that shortly before Christmas or more into November, or what do you think?"

Patsy Ramsey: "No. Probably before Christmas."

---

Excerpts from National Enquirer book, "JonBenet, The Police Files" by Don Gentile and David Wright

1998 June 25, 26, 27 - Taped Interrogation interview of John Ramsey by Lou Smit and Michael Kane in Colorado

NE Book Page 302

John Ramsey: "(She said) When this person calls you've got to insist that you talk to JonBenet and stall for time. And I said why..? (She said) to tell him it's a hard job to raise this much money and use the time. But you must talk to JonBenet...."

Lou Smit: "...Did you ever go down to the basement?"

John Ramsey: "Uh huh. I went....I was by myself. There's three windows across here...the middle one...was broken. There was pane glass broken out of it, which I attributed to breaking myself... it was open (an inch or so) and there was a suitcase under it...this hard Samonsite suitcase...and I closed the window. I don't know why, but I closed it... I latched it... I don't think I looked anywhere else."

Lou Smit: "...Did you tell anybody about that?"

John Ramsey: "I don't really remember... I mean part of what is going on, you're in such a state of disbelief this can happen. And the, you know, the window had been broken out. And you say, hah, that's it. But it was a window that I had used to get into the house before. It was cracked and open a little bit. It wasn't terribly unusual for me. Sometimes it would get opened to let cool air in because that basement could get real hot in winter...it was still sort of explainable to me that it could have been left open.....The suitcase was unusual. That shouldn't have been there. I took that suitcase downstairs, I remember. But I sure wouldn't have taken it all the way back there and put it against the window. I'm 99.9 percent (sure) that I wouldn't have taken it all the way back and set it against that wall."

Lou Smit: "Any other areas you looked at? You walked into that train room? Did you look at any of the closets or in any other areas?"

John Ramsey: "I don't remember doing that...."

Lou Smit: "You didn't go to the wine cellar at that time?"

John Ramsey: "No."

Lou Smit: "How long would you say you were down there?"

John Ramsey: "Oh, a minute. Thirty seconds to a minute."

Michael Kane: "When was this?"

John Ramsey: "....It was probably some time between seven and nine."

---

Excerpts from National Enquirer book,
"JonBenet, The Police Files"
by Don Gentile and David Wright

1998 June 25, 26, 27 - Taped Interrogation interview of John Ramsey by Lou Smit and Michael Kane in Colorado

NE Book Page 304

Lou Smit: "What made you go downstairs?"

John Ramsey: "I just wanted to start logically from the bottom up, I guess.... so I went down to the basement... I explained to (Fleet) that this window had been cracked open and I closed it.... that the window was broken, but I think it was broken by me... we got down on our hands and knees looking for some glass just to see."

Lou Smit: "What did you find?"

John Ramsey: "I think we found a few fragments of glass... not enough to indicate that it was a fresh break... we might have put them on the ledge, if I remember. It really wasn't much. We had only found one or two."

---

Excerpts from National Enquirer book,
"JonBenet, The Police Files"
by Don Gentile and David Wright

1998 June 25, 26, 27 - Taped Interrogation interview of John Ramsey by Lou Smit and Michael Kane in Colorado

NE Book Page 314

"Like Patsy, John was shown a series of crime scene photographs. One showed a chair blocking the door into the train room in the basement. To get to the broken window in the cellar, someone has to go through that door. Ramsey found the chair blocking the entranceway during his first search of the basement, moved it and then moved it back, he said. The information cast some doubt on the intruder theory."

Lou Smit: "So you think that the chair would block the door and nobody would have gotten in there without moving it?"

John Ramsey: "Correct"

Lou Smit: "In other words, let's say that the intruder goes into the train room, gets out, let's say, that window?"

John Ramsey: "Uh huh."

Lou Smit: "How in effect would he get that chair to block that door, if that is the case, is what I'm saying?"

John Ramsey: "I don't know... I go down, I say, "Ooh, that door is blocked." I move the chair and went in the room."

Lou Smit: "So you couldn't have gotten in without moving the chair?"

John Ramsey: "Correct... I had to move the chair."

Lou Smit: "The thing I'm trying to figure out in my mind then is, if an intruder went through the door, he'd almost have to pull the chair behind him... because that would have been his exit... so that's not very logical as far as......"

John Ramsey: "I think it is. I mean if this person is that bizarrely clever to have not left any good evidence, but left all these little funny clues around, they... are clever enough to pull the chair back when they left."

---

07-09-1998 A&E Documentary - 'Who Killed JonBenet’ by Michael Tracy and David Mills

John Ramsey: "As I was going through the basement, I opened the door and knew immediately that I'd found her because I saw a white blanket. Her eyes were closed, I feared the worse yet I'd found her and she was back in our safe protection again. And yet when I found her, even though there was this rush that I'd found her, I was fearful that she wasn't OK and just, I couldn't say anything, I screamed to attract attention and carried her upstairs. The detective was there that had helped us that morning, spent a minute with her and looked at me and said to me, she's dead. I think up to that point, I just kind of hoped we could bring her back that she was just asleep."

---

July 21, 1998 Linda Wilcox (former Ramsey housekeeper) interview on Peter Boyles Show

Peter Boyles: So much talk about the so-called "secret room," the little room, the room that hardly anyone knew. Linda Hoffman-Pugh, who replaced you, once said that she didn't know the room was there. What about the room where the little girl's body was found?

Linda Wilcox: It's a wine cellar, that's what it was built as. It has no windows, I mean, it was a wine cellar. The last time I was in that room, there was nothing in it, it was bare. It wasn't used for storage, it wasn't used for anything. It was very damp, anything you put in there got kinda moldy, nothing was in that room. It wasn't necessarily hidden but it wasn't in plain view. And the room leading to it was the boiler room. It was kind of open but it was very dark. No one was ever down there much except maybe Burke. Burke was there occasionally. He had his train set down there. He was the only one who played down there. Patsy hardly ever went down there. She'd go down to get whatever she needed, she didn't like to go down there. It freaked JonBenet out. It was cold, it was damp, it was cluttered, it was dark. Pretty much the household help were the only ones who went down there. In fact, I'm the one who discovered the safe. Patsy didn't know it was there. One day, it was Suzanne, myself, Nedra and Patsy."

Peter Boyles: "Suzanne was the nanny?"

Linda Wilcox: Yes, and the kids were in one of the other rooms playing. There had been a refrigerator down there. We were cleaning it out and doing things and I was, the floor leading to that room is linoleum and I was cleaning it by hand and I was backing myself out of the room so I wouldn't track over what I had cleaned. And I was backing myself into the wine cellar, the vacuum was behind me as I backed into the wine cellar. When I saw the safe on the floor and I go, hey did you know that there was a safe in here? It was covered with chips and paint and it hadn't been touched in a long time and I actually cleaned it off. And Patsy goes, 'Nah, I didn't know, John probably knows. Maybe he should, you know, drill it out sometime." As far as I know it was never used, there was never anything in it. There was no sign that it had been touched in years when I found it.

---

1999 February 18 - Lawrence Schillers book "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

Page 295 (Referencing John and Patsy Interviews by Steve Thomas and Tom Trujillo in April 1997):

"John Ramsey said that he had gone down to the basement at around 10:00am that morning. It was the first the police had heard about this. None of Det. Arndt's reports indicated that Ramsey had visited the basement before the body was found. Ramsey now told the detectives for the first time about his finding the broken window open, which had surprised him. Taken aback by the revelation of Ramsey's visit to the basement, Thomas asked him why he didn't report what he found to Det. Arndt since someone could have entered through the window. Ramsey said he didn't know why. He just didn't know, he said a second time. When asked if he also went into the boiler room and checked the wine cellar. He didn't go into that area of the basement, he said."

---

1999 February 18 - Lawrence Schillers book "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town

Page 351:

"At the end of the kitchen was a short hallway, into which they would have to make a left turn, and there, immediately to the right, was the door to the basement. Opening that door, however, the detectives discovered that they were in total darkness. There was no light switch on either wall at the top of the stairs or immediately outside the basement door. Any stranger would grope in vain for light. Eventually, he might discover it set high on the wall behind his back, inconveniently located opposite the door."

---

2000 March 18 - John and Patsy Ramsey book, "Death of Innocence"

DOI (HB) Page 20:

"Sometime that morning, I remember a day back in the summer when I had left my keys inside and was locked out of the house. To get in, I broke one of the panes in a basement window: then I reached in and released the latch. I could climb inside. I think about the basement now. I jump up and hurry down there."

That entry place needs to be looked at. I tell myself. I move down the basement hall and find the window. The pane is still broken, and the window is open, with a large old Samsonite suitcase sitting right under it. Odd, I think. This doesn't look right. This suitcase is not normally kept here."

"Maybe this is how the kidnapper got in and out of our house. The window ledge is a few feet off the floor, so a person would need something to stand on in order to get up and out."

---

2000 March 18 - John and Patsy Ramsey book, "Death of Innocence"

DOI (HB) Page 21:

"Morning drifts into afternoon, and still no phone call. The frustration of waiting for the kidnapper to contact us becomes unbearable. Finally, Detective Linda Arndt asks me to take one person, go through the entire house, and look for anything unusual or out of place."

"I want to do anything I can to help, so I agree. I don't stop to think that we should not be allowed to roam around the house with a police officer present - much less search the entire house by ourselves. After all, it's my home. I live here. And I assume a police detective knows how to professional handle this kind of situation."

"Fleet White is standing next to me, so I ask him to go with me. Fleet is my friend and a father himself. Fleet can help."

"I decide we should start at the basement and work our way to the top floor. "It is highly unlikely that we will find anything amiss in our bedroom on the third floor, and we will need some kind of a system to make sure we don't miss anything. A bottom-to-top search will do that. Fleet doesn't mention to me that he had been down to the basement earlier that morning."

DOI (HB) Page 22: "We head downstairs, and I take Fleet over to the broken windowpane and explain my breaking in there last summer. I tell him that I had found this window open earlier. We look for glass splinters and find some and small ones."

---

2000 March 18 - John and Patsy Ramsey book, "Death of Innocence"

DOI (HB) Page 270:

"Detective Smit showed me crime scene pictures, taken at our home, and led me through an investigation of rooms in the house. As I looked at the photographs, I pointed out peculiarities when I saw them. They had pictures of the broken basement window that I had found open, and I wondered if they had fully checked out what this window offered in the way of clues. I saw pictures that to me clearly showed that the grate above the window had been recently removed and replaced."

---

2000 March 18 - John and Patsy Ramsey book, "Death of Innocence"

DOI (HB) Page 241:

"One of these strange events had occurred while I was decorating the big Fraser fir tree in our living room. I kept making trips back and forth downstairs, where most of the decorations were kept. Greenery, silk poinsettias, and ornaments were stored on shelves in the back room of our basement. As I unloaded the cabinets, getting everything out for the Christmas tree decorating, I had noticed a large roll of beautiful purple velvet ribbon on one of the shelves. I reached up and took it down. Usually I decorated with gold, red, or green, but on that day the color purple particularly caught my eye. Why not? I thought. Purple would be a different look this year. The family won't expect it. And it could be beautiful."

---

2000 March 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
NBC News Today Show
Interview with John and Patsy Ramsey

COURIC: Detective Linda Arndt was assigned to the Ramsey home during those long hours. Sometime that morning, John Ramsey headed for the basement. Why did you go there?

Mr. RAMSEY: We had a basement window that was under a--a grate, a removable grate that I had used the past summer to get into the house when I'd lost my keys. I--I wanted to check that window. I went down to that room. The window was open. It was broken. I went back upstairs and reported that to Detective Arndt.

COURIC: You did tell her about the...

Mr. RAMSEY: Yes.

COURIC: ...open window?

Mr. RAMSEY: I did.

COURIC: And what did she say?

Mr. RAMSEY: I don't recall that she said anything.

---

2000 March 20, 21, 22, 23, 24
NBC News Today Show
Interview with John and Patsy Ramsey

COURIC: It was reported that a team of investigators spent some time in your house, and that afterwards one of them said that a stranger entering for the first time would need a map and a guide to find his way through that house.

Ms. RAMSEY: Not true.

Mr. RAMSEY: Well, it was a complex house. But it wasn't that complex. And we believe the killer was in the house. We were gone for, what, four hours, five hours that night.

COURIC: And how did the killer get in?

Mr. RAMSEY: We don't know for sure.

Ms. RAMSEY: We don't know exactly.

Mr. RAMSEY: But we know that there was an open window. We know that there was an open door. We believe that the window in the basement was either an entry point or an exit point or both.

---

04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 20:

"White went downstairs. The lights were on, and shadows danced in the big basement. A small broken window in a large room where a model raiload was laid out caught his attention, and on the floor beneath the window he found a piece of glass, which he placed on the ledge. He dropped to this hands and knees, searching for other pieces, and moved a suitcase in doing so."

---

04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 27:

"Ramsey and White walked through the right-hand door instead, which led into a large, oddly shaped room containing a model train setup and a couple of small closets. Weak winter sunlight filtered through the triple windows, which was set into the west wall below ground level, looking out on a window well and protected by a metal grate."

"Each window had four panes, and Fleet White, having been down there earlier, pointed out the baseball-sized hole in the upper left pane of the middle window. 'Damn it, I had to break that,' John Ramsey said, adding that it happened the previous summer when he kicked in the window to get into the house after locking himself out. Should have fixed it then, he noted, taping his forehead. The window was closed but unlatched."

---

04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 37:

"Outside, a detective examined the steel grate that covered the window well and found undisturbed cobwebs still attached from the grate to the bricks. The foliage around the grate also appeared undisturbed."

---

04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 171:

"Ramsey said he checked Burke's train room, where he and Fleet discussed the broken window. He then added, 'I'd actually gone down there earlier that morning, and the window was broken, but I didn't see any glass around, so I assumed it was broken last summer. I used that window to get in the house one time when I didn't have a key, but the window was open. I don't know, maybe an inch, and I just kind of latched it."

I pushed on that. 'Fleet had talked about earlier being down there alone and discovering that window. When you say that you found it earlier that day and latched it, at what time?' 'I don't know, probably before ten.' Just about when Detective Arndt lost track of him and thought he had left to get the mail. Now he admits being in the basement!"

---

04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 172:

"Nevertheless, his theory was that 'someone came in through the basement window, because there was a blue Samsonite suitcase sitting right under the window and he.... could have gotten in the house without that, but you couldn't have gotten out that window without something to step on. Even to have known those windows were there wouldn't have been obvious to anybody just walking by.' The grate, he added, could be pulled off, and the window was not painted shut."

"This was the DA's intruder Theory, althought it contradicted the events of December 26, when Fleet White said Ramsey shrugged off the open window. Now it had become very important, for the open window pointed toward their intruder. And we knew that Fleet White said had moved the suitcase, so the intruder had not done that."

"Ramsey added that during the morning of December 26, 'I went around and I looked around the house that morning and... all the doors were locked and I had checked every door on the first floor and they appeared to be locked.'"

"And the undisturbed dirt and debris on the sill of the basement window, along with the unbroken spiderweb between the metal grate and the wall, demonstrated to me that no one came through that window."

---

04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 195:

"One of the two possible basement-level points of entry was a north-east corner foot-square window into a bathroom. Smit, examining a photograph with his magnifying glass, thought he had seen a thumbprint in the thick layer of dust on the exterior sill. We argued that it wasn't a print at all. 'Then he wore gloves,' Smit concluded. Sergeant Wickman retorted that someone needed a 'magic X-ray wand' to unlock that window from the outside. The carpet of pine needles and the dirt around the window were intact, and photos from December 27 showed the window secured and undamaged. A vanity shelf just inside was undisturbed."

---

04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 195:

"As the press watched and cameras clicked, we tested it for possible entry. Wickman wiggled through head first on his stomach and had to use his hands to grab overhead pipes and lever himself in. Smit managed to slither in on his back. Both dragged significant amounts of debris in with them, and no such debris was found during the original search. The techs had found no unknown prints when they dusted the pipes that Wickman grasped to make his entry. Even Lou Smit eventually admitted that the small window wasn't a possible point of entry for an intruder."

---

04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 195:

"Two new padlocks had been placed on the grate that covered the well leading to the broken basement window. We unlocked them and continued our review. A thick tangled of foliage bordered the heavy metal grate, and although crime scene investigators in December said the growth was intact and showed no impressions, Smit challenged both points."

"He deduced from the photographs that foliage growth beneath the edges proved the grate had been removed and replaced. We showed that it was simply not a flush fit and that space gave the foliage plenty of room to grow, just as weeds came up through sidewalk cracks. Smit then suggested the foliage appeared crushed under the grate. We learned a detective had lifted the grate during the initial investigation, checked the window well, and then replaced it, so there were several explanations for why the ground cover was beneath the rim."

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04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 195:

"Lou Smit was certain that another photo showed a footprint at the bottom of the window well. We would later clear away the leaves and debris and take new, detailed photographs. The 'footprint' was a blemish in the concrete."

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04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 196:

"Just below the medal grate was the window broken by John Ramsey after forgetting his key the previous summer. The scuff mark on the interior basement wall beneath the broken window was now viewed by Smit and DeMuth as having been made by the intruder, not Ramsey. If it was a shoe scuff at all! That vital point was never proven, and in a clutter basement, many things could have left such a scrap on a wall."

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04-18-2000 Steve Thomas, "JonBenet, Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation"

Page 196:

"In December both Sergeant Wickman and Detective Mike Everett had seen at least three strands of a spiderweb reaching from the brick window well upward to the covering grate. No one had photographed it. The sill had a complete coating of undisturbed dust. Now spiders had woven another palm-sized web into the same general area. When we moved the end of the grate, several strands broke. Smit, however, had managed to ease it open in an elaberately cautious way without breaking strands, and that was enough for him."

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