s-john-stephen-gigax.htm


	A Personal view of the Internet Subculture Surrounding the JonBenet Ramsey Murder case

This web page is part of a series covering found materials regarding individuals, items or events that apparently became part of what is commonly known as the vortex of the JonBenet Ramsey murder case Christmas night 1996. The webmaster of this site claims no inside official Boulder police information as to who has been interviewed, investigated, the outcome or what information is actually considered official evidence. These pages outline found material which can include but not limited to materials found in books, articles, the Internet, transcripts, depositions, legal documents, Internet discussion forums, graphics or photos, media reports, TV/Radio shows about the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. Found materials are here for historical archive purposes. (www.acandyrose.com - acandyrose@aol.com)

This webpage series is for historical archive and educational purposes on found materials

John Stephen Gigax
Screen Captures by ACandyRose
Geraldo at Large August 28, 2006

John Stephen Gigax
Falsely Targeted by CU Professor Michael Tracey's
June 15, 2004 Documentary shown in Great Britian
As PRIME SUSPECT in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey

Falsely accused of midnight burglaries in Boulder 1996
Falsely accused of murder of JonBenet Ramsey 1996
Falsely accused of murder of Michael Helgoth 1997
Falsely accused attemped rape Dance West victim 1997

STATEMENT BY JOHN STEPHEN GIGAX 08/31/2006 (Read on Peter Boyles Radio Show):

"I would just like to say I'd like to see Michael Tracey held accountable for what he's done to me and others. Also Michael Tracey is a Journalism Professor at the Colorado University which is one of our nations most respected universities and I just think the CU facility, students, alumni and those donating money in grants to the Colorado university really want their university to be associated with this professor that works this way. Do the parents of students attending CU for journalism degrees really want a man like Michael Tracey teaching their children? I ask anyone hearing this show to think what this would do to your life. Imagine having your family, friends and co workers having to live this nightmare. Then understand that next week it could be you in Michael Tracey's sights. This man needs to be stopped before he ruins another life. I'm asking the public for help. If this upsets you please write to Colorado University Board of Regents and voice your opinions to them. I would like to see Michael Tracey removed from his teaching position at Colorado University and issue a public apology for his wrongful accusations leveled against myself and others. This man has no business teaching in a university period. And that's just what I wanted to say."

CHAIN OF EVENTS 2004

2004-06-15 Who Killed The Pageant Queen - Prime Suspect
(Transcript done by Jayelles, "The Alert Viewer in Scotland")

Six weeks after the murder of JonBenét, Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter, invited journalists to a press conference. He ended it with this message ...

DA Alex Hunter: I want to say something to the person or persons who took this baby from us, the list of suspects narrows. Soon there will be no-one on the list but you ...

Narrator: The words had been written by the FBI. It was part of a strategy to use the media to put the killer and any accomplices under pressure. Soon afterwards, car mechanic John Kenady approached the Boulder Police to tell them about someone he thought might have been involved in the Ramsey killing. It was this man, Michael Helgoth, who helped run a car salvage yard in Boulder. Helgoth had committed suicide, it was believed, just hours after Alex Hunter’s press conference. According to Kenady and others, he had been violent and bizarre.

John Kenady: He liked shooting guns. He had a little crotch pocket, so he’d reach down and grab it and he’d point the pistol right at your head and just shoot off the side of it and then if he just missed a tenth of a second, you’d have a bullet in you. It was kinda unnerving.

Helgoth friend: I was actually scared, I was standing behind him when the bullets were flying by my head. He would shoot the cats in the back

John Kenady: He thought that was great sport. He had a fun time with that because he could kill. I think he liked to. Something that he enjoyed quite well and he ended up getting kittens from the junkyard there and picking them up and wrenching their neck ...just killing them with his bare hands.

Narrator: It was not only violence against animals that excited Helgoth.

John Kenady: We were walking along headed toward the house and he just casually comes up and says “I wonder what it would be like to crack a human skull”, you know I looked at him and I thought “Woah, I don’t want to have this conversation” and just laughed it off.

Narrator: Helgoth left no suicide note. After his death, Kenady was asked to go through his possessions. It was while doing this that he began to think Helgoth might have been involved in the killing of JonBenét.

John Kenady: Alex Hunter, where he makes the finger-wagging speech on the 13th and then Michael dies on the very next day? ...

DA Alex Hunter: Soon, there will be no one on the list ...

John Kenady: Seems a little suspicious to me.

Narrator: But it was more than Alex Hunter’s press conference that led Kenady to suspect Helgoth.

John Kenady: Mike was pretty happy around late November about him and a partner making a killer deal and they were each gonna make fifty or sixty thousand.

Narrator: The ransom note left at the Ramsey home demanded a curious $118,000, close to the amount Helgoth had said he and his unknown partner would make. No ransom was paid.

John Kenady: And then Christmas goes..comes and then he’s really depressed and there’s no money. And then he said that he wanted to crack a human skull and then she received a crack on her skull and I felt obligated to go to the police department and tell them what I knew.

Narrator: Three months after the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, the Boulder Police were told that this man, Michael Helgoth, might have been involved. They ignored the information, but a new team of detectives appointed last year, have taken it seriously. They’ve discovered Helgoth had an infatuation with young girls. A girlfriend says that he actually collected Barbie dolls. She eventually had to take out a restraining order on him to protect her daughter. She had come home unexpectedly one evening and found her on his bed. He was in bed naked. He said he couldn’t trust himself with her daughter.

Ollie Gray: I think this is very relevant to our case. We’re looking at a potential paedophile. This has all the characteristics of sexual deviation. The age bracket of the child was within two years of the one we were investigating and I felt that it should go further.

Narrator: Detectives found out something else about Helgoth that caught their attention. It was among his videos. What they contained, they say, is significant. They found not only a lot of violent scenes like this (film clip of lone gunman shooting at crowds of young people), but numerous images of children including this one from the Disney family film ‘The Santa Clause’ showing a little girl being awoken by Father Christmas on Christmas Eve. JonBenét was awoken by someone on Christmas Night.

John San Augustine: In a lot of these types of investigations you see that these criminals hide their activity within media. What they’ll do is, they’ll play a movie and then somewhere in the middle of the movie, they will put their piece of their criminal activity within that video and when you look at the Helgoth video, you know, here you have a movie that’s playing along and then all of a sudden you have news coverage of an unsolved murder here in Colorado (News 4 news clip).

Narrator: The news story that Helgoth had kept, told of the abduction and murder of a five year old girl. It occurred near Boulder three years before JonBenét’s killing. It too remains unsolved.

(SNIP)

Narrator: These detectives do not see Helgoth as the actual killer, in fact, DNA samples taken at a post mortem show that he was not. But they think he may have been involved. One reason is that they’ve always believed it likely that more than one person was in the Ramsey home that night. The footprints suggest this as do the number of objects taken in and out of the house. These include a rope, stun gun, cord and duct tape. It would have been difficult for just one person to have done everything that was done that night. And the ransom note also suggests that more than one person was involved. It says, “We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction”. It warns about the “two gentlemen watching over your daughter”. Throughout, it refers to the kidnappers in the plural. The new team of detectives think Helgoth may well have been involved as an accomplice of an even more deadly killer. One who later murdered him to stop him talking after Alex Hunter’s unnerving press conference.

In trying to identify a potential killer, they came up with an important clue. In the months before the murder, up to a dozen houses near the Ramseys’ were broken into at night. There was a curious pattern to these burglaries. Little or nothing was taken. Detectives believe they were carried out simply for the thrill of stalking others at night. The break-ins stopped abruptly after the murder. The Boulder Police did not link them to the murder, but the new investigators believe they might be the key to everything because Helgoth too used to stalk people at night. It happened to John Kenady.

John Kenady: I was working on a car late one evening in my garage. I kind of get the feeling there’s something out there and went right up to the window to look. I looked, and it was real quiet and I don’t see anything. I look again and all I could see were a pair of eyes coming out of the black. I don’t know why I figure well this could be Michael, so I said “Is that you Mike? And he goes “Yeah” and I said “Well how long you been out there?” and he goes “Long enough” and ... he’s gone. I thought it was kinda strange.

Narrator: Helgoth used to stalk people at night dressed in black ninja clothing. When looking for his possible killer, detectives looked for a violent associate who shared his interest in martial arts and young girls. They immediately came up with one. A close associate who has since disappeared. A man who frightens those around him.

First Man: I tried to steer clear of that individual because he could have been, you know, a menace ... to me or my family.

Interviewer (Unseen): Were you personally scared of him?

Second man: Phew. On a level, I’d have to say “yes”. Absolutely. I think he was capable of being violent towards anybody.

John Kenady: He threatened to cut one of his girlfriend’s ears off. His ex-wife -- he tried to kill her. They were only married probably five or six days.

Narrator: Helgoth’s associate lived in this trailer park near the car salvage yard. The makers of this programme know his name, but have decided to withhold it, because he has not been charged with any offence. But the more that has been discovered about him, the more he fits the profile of a stalker and a killer.

Second Man: He was very methodical. He wanted everything down to the last detail. He ... didn’t want anybody else to have any control. If he didn’t feel like he was controlling a situation, he would lash out.

John Kenady: Martial arts, he liked those throwing knives, he was into ninja, he was into the dark clothing, he always wore a black t-shirt, black pants, black boots...

Narrator: Helgoth’s associate was convicted following a stabbing here on the trailer park. Witnesses were too frightened to give evidence but court documents summarised his criminal record as “violence -- history of sexual assault”. They also reveal that he was a convicted paedophile. He was imprisoned in the 1980s for a sexual assault on a child. It is believed that he may have worked in the Ramsey home, shortly before the family moved in. Unidentified animal hairs were found in the cellar where JonBenét’s body was left. The hairs were of two colours. Helgoth’s associate raised wolf dogs whose hairs exactly match those colours. Helgoth had bought two of these dogs.

Ollie Gray: If Michael Helgoth and this one associate that we identified were actually involved in the burglaries, they could easily have been involved in the murder also. There’s just too many associated items that could tie him to it that means that he has to be eliminated. We need DNA from him –- wherever he might be.

Narrator: These investigators see the associate as their prime suspect in the Ramsey case. Tracking him down they say, is a priority. The need to do so, made more urgent by revelations about another horrific crime the Ramsey killer may have committed.

2004-07-01: From Tricia's www.websleuths.com
Forum thread titled, "The holes in Tracey's theory"

07-01-2004, 04:10 PM
Jayelles
Registered User Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 659

The holes in Tracey's theory

OK, I know it isn't actually "Tracey's" theory, but I mean the Helgoth + Mr X theory.

At first viewing, this theory was very interesting. However, I've been through the documentary with a fine tooth comb now and I've mulled it over and over ...... and I have some serious questions about it.

No Helgoth forensics

The first is that there is no forensic evidence which puts Michael helgoth at the crime scene - no DNA, no fingerprints. All evidence is based upon the testimony of a shady individual called John Kenady AND of course the fact that Michael Helgoth had Hi-Tec boots. So did thousands of others though and the footprint cannot be dated. Add to that the fact that Burke Ramsey said he owned Hi-Tecs and this particular clue becomes weaker still.

John Kenady

Kenady is not squeaky clean. He has a long rap sheet and may have been motivated by thoughts of a nice fat reward. However, despite what Candy says about Kenady having had a head injury, he did not come across in the documentary as incompetent in any way. Far from it. Kenady was alert, expressive and he spoke well - which is more than could be said for the other individuals interviewed for the documentary.

Helgoth's suicide

The Ramsey investigators think it was murder because:-

Helgoth was right handed and the shot was fired into his left side. Not only that, but it was fired through a pillow - something which would have meant an even bigger stretch of the arm to achieve. They questioned why a suicide would try to muffle the shot (valid question). They also raised the point that most suicides shoot themselves through the ear or mouth (quick). There were signs that Helgoth didn't die immediately because he had blood on his hand which he transferred to his forehead. The pistol was lying to Helgoth's right, yet he was shot on the left. Finally, there was no suicide note.

OK, they suspect that Helgoth/Mr X got scared after Alex Hunter's "finger wagging speech" (to quote Kenady) the day before and that maybe Mr X thought Helgoth would spill the beans and so he disposed of him.

Problems: Why did Mr X not finish Helgoth off? If it was supposed to look like suicide, why did he not shoot him in the head and place the pistol in his hand? Mr X is supposed to be one of a partnership of two who like writing phoney ransom notes. Why didn't he write a phoney suicide note? He could have had Helgoth confess to JonBenet's killing saying he acted alone.

Also, the friends of Helgoth who were interviewed in the documentary described him as a bold, sadistic type who wrung the necks of little kittens and wanted to crack a human skull. He fired guns at people - missing them by fractions. He dressed in black and stalked people at night, peering in their windows and responding boldly when challenged. His former girlfriend had a restraining order against him.

Does this sound like someone who would get cold feet?

Mr X

This guy is thought to have done some work on the Ramsey house BEFORE the Ramseys moved in. He is described as very scary. he threatened to cut off his girlfriend's ear and he tried to kill his ex-wife. He has convictions for violence, drugs and sexual assault against a child. He sounds like a good suspect for the Ramsey murder.

However, the Tracey documentary is misleading. It makes the point that this guy has disappeared - the implication being that he killed Helgoth and vanished - yet the documentary goes on to implicate him in a sexual assault on a 12 year old girl which took place 9 months after JonBenet's death. So when exactly did he disappear? Doesn't sound as though he was in a hurry!

We know that Mr X bred wolf dogs and that there were two different coloured animal hairs found in the basement where JonBenet was found and that these match the colour of his wolf dogs. Now, how would investigators know that if this guy has never been interviewed and has disappeared? Helgoth bought two of these dogs and the documentary showed one of them romping about in a home video. It was a multi coloured dog - browns and blacks and light tan. Good chance of finding some hairs which were similar in colour to the animal hairs on Jonbenet. They would need to do lab tests to verify that these hairs came from the same dog lines.

The BIGGEST bugaboo with Mr X is his physical appearance. I will attempt to post part of a screen capture of an arrest sheet for this man which describes him as 6'2", 180 lbs with brown hair and brown eyes. He's obviously a big lad. The mother of the 12 year old whom the Ramsey investigators believe was also assaulted by Mr X described the assailant as about 5'7" with blonde hair and a prominent chin. Now, hair can be died/streaked etc, clothes can hide a person's build - but one thing we cannot disguise is height. A person of 6'2" is tall - a man of 5'7" is below average height! The mother also described their intruder as being between 20-30. Mr X was older than this but again, age is something that we are not always good at guessing.

Hi-Tecs and mould

The Ramsey investigators also showed us a graphic of the mould on the ramsey basement floor and stated that some debris wedged in Helgoth's boot logo was the same colour.

Problems: Helgoth had been wearing those boots for 2 months since JonBenet's death. It was winter and there was snow. Snow has a cleaning effect on footwear but apart from that, Helgoth's junkyard was also shown in the documentary and it was very muddy - a reddish coloured mud similar in colour to the debris on the boot. Only lab tests would prove the presence of Ramsey mould. There is no suggestion that Smit, Bennett or the Ramsey investigators have had this done.

The Ramsey Investigators

Now this is a bit bizarre. Seemingly, these guys have been working on the case since the beginning. However, the Boulder Police apparently tried to hire PIs Ollie Gray & San Augustin the "day after the murder" in "order to pursue the parents" but the PIs "declined". That strikes me as mighty strange. The day after the murder the PIs would have known nothing at all about the murder so it is very odd that they would turn down work because they wouldn't have had time to form any kind of opinion about the Ramseys or the BPD's behaviour in the Ramsey case! One day after the murder there was NO reason to suspect that the police were unreasonably pursuing the parents - at that stage they would simply have been following normal protocol to start at the centre and work outwards. This small fact alone makes me think "hmmmmm".

Then there is the "fact" that they have been working for the DA's office on the case - yet they are not bound by any confidentiality?????? The documentary alsoa stated that they are now working on the case as "unpaid volunteers".

Do these guys have access to the case files? Have they ever had access to the case files?? Do they have any jurisdiction at all?

I am inclined to think not. I am inclined to think that they were hired by the Ramseys and that the DA's office has hired them to do some specific jobs - follow some specific leads WITHOUT the benefit of seeing the police files themselves. I would imagine that Lou Smit has talked to them at length BEFORE he was rehired by the DA and I'd be very interested to know what Smit & Bennett's thoughts are on Helgoth and Mr X

[Forums For Justice at www.forumsforjustice.org]

Forums For Justice Investigation
"Colorado University Professer Michael Tracey"

CHAIN OF EVENTS 2006

2006-08-17: Broward-Palm Beach New Times "JonBenet Flimsy"
http://www.newtimesbpb.com/2006-08-17/news/jonbenet-flimsy/

As the case against John Mark Karr disintegrates,
attention turns to CU prof Michael Tracey,
who's fingered false suspects in the past.
By Tony Ortega
Published: August 17, 2006

(SNIP)

"In 2004, Tracey, a British expatriate journalism professor and documentarian, produced a film about the Ramsey murder that aired on British television but not in the United States. By then, however, Tracey was already considered a notorious developer of false leads by a large group of Internet sleuths who congregated at Forums for Justice, a website started by a radio disc jockey named Tricia Griffith."

"If you know the case and you watch Tracey's documentaries, they're filled with blatant lies. It's so easily proven," Griffith says from Park City, Utah, where she does radio and voiceover work. In Tracey's 2004 documentary, Who Killed the Pageant Queen?, the professor claimed to have stunning new evidence that was leading police to a previously unidentified "prime suspect." The documentary claimed that police were trying unsuccessfully to track down the man because he had gone "underground." Tracey's film didn't name the man, but a document was shown onscreen that purported to be a police record of the suspect, with the suspect's name and address blacked out.

Griffith says an alert viewer in Scotland recorded the show and was able to do a screen capture of the police report. The image included a document number, enough information for Griffith to track down her own copy of the document.

Tracey's "prime suspect" turned out to be John Steven Gigax, who was, in fact, an acquaintance of Michael Helgoth's, who, in "intruder" theories about the murder of JonBenet, was long considered a possible suspect.

However, contrary to Tracey's claim that Gigax was underground and untraceable, Griffith found him in ten minutes with a simple Google search. "He was selling jewelry on the Internet," Griffith says.

Griffith says Gigax immediately contacted Boulder police to see if they were really looking for him.

They weren't.

"I talked to [Boulder District Attorney Investigator] Tom Bennett myself, and he said Gigax was never a suspect. Gigax can prove he was in Indiana on the day of the murder."

(SNIP)

2006-08-28 Geraldo At Large Interview of John Stephen Gigax
(Transcript done by ACandyRose www.acandyrose.com)

GERALDO (VOICE OVER): About John Mark Karr's first court room appearance, we have been investigation the man behind Karr's Bangkok arrest and we have uncovered something that we feel is deeply disturbing. Laura Ingle has our exclusive investigative report

(CLIP OF JONBENET): My name is JonBenet Ramsey and I'm five and a half.

(CLIP of JONBENET SINGING COWBOY SWEETHEART)

LAURA INGLE: [Geraldo At Large Correspondent] (VOICE OVER): Michael Tracey is a University of Colorado Professor and documentarian who brought John Mark Karr to the attention of the Boulder District Attorney. Now startling revelations that this is not the first time that a suspect that Michael Tracey has named.

JOHN STEPHEN GIGAX: I started getting these weird e-mails saying did you know you're being named as a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case.

ANNOUNCER: In a world exclusive meet Steve Gigax, the man that Michael Tracey first claimed killed JonBenet Ramsey.

LAURA INGLE: Did you have anything to do with the murder of JonBenet Ramsey?

STEVE GIGAX: No, no I did not.

(CLIP of JONBENET in Documentary)

LAURA INGLE: (VOICE OVER) Michael Tracey made these apparently untrue claims in this 2004 documentary he co-produced called "Who Killed The Beauty Queen - The Prime Suspect."

STEVE GIGAX: Here we go, Michael Tracey's at it again

LAURA INGLE: (VOICE OVER) These are disturbing facts about the respected professor, facts that could cast even more doubt on the validity in the case against John Mark Karr.

TRICIA GRIFFITH: (VOICE OVER) He has been known in the past to produce out and out lies about supposed prime suspects in the case who were not prime suspects at all.

LAURA INGLE: (VOICE OVER) Tricia Griffith runs Forums For Justice, an online JonBenet Ramsey blog based in Salt Lake City. Griffith said she was the first to scrutinize the accusations made my Michael Tracey made in his 2004 documentary which was broadcast in Britain.

TRICIA GRIFFITH: (VOICE OVER) In this documentary he talks about this prime suspect whose a very dangerous man.

LAURA INGLE: (VOICE OVER) The documentary shows a document on screen reported to be a police record of this prime suspect with his name and address blacked out but an alert viewer in Scotland [Jayelles=alert viewer in Scotland :-)] took a screen shot of the case number in the corner of the police document and sent it to Griffith. Griffith did some online research and found the document corresponded to a person named John Stephen Gigax. The documentary called this suspect the man, quote, who has since disappeared. But Griffith says she was able to find his phone number without leaving her chair.

TRICIA GRIFFITH: I found John Stephen Gigax with a Google search in a few minutes so obviously I'm not an investigator and I was able to do it. There was Michael Tracey's first big lie.

LAURA INGLE: (VOICE OVER) Tricia Griffith called Steve Gigax

STEVE GIGAX: It was like a nightmare. It can't be happening. And I wanted it to stop.

LAURA INGLE: (VOICE OVER) Gigax was no angel. He admits he served time for attempted sexual assault and menacing with a deadly weapon but he says he's also no killer. And in 2004 he says he called Tom Bennett in the Boulder District Attorney's office to prove he was not even Boulder at the time of the murder.

STEVE GIGAX: And I sent him some records that I had of signed credit card receipts from purchases at Sears at the time when I'd been in Indiana

LAURA INGLE: Did he tell you, you were not a suspect?

STEVE GIGAX: He said don't worry about it I'm not a suspect. They don't want to talk to me.

LAURA INGLE: (VOICE OVER) Do to a gag order the District Attorney's office is not able to comment on Steve Gigax's story but Fox News correspondent Carol McKinley who has covered this case from the beginning confirms it.

CAROL MCKINLEY: As far as for the official investigation he was never a suspect.

LAURA INGLE: When we asked Michael Tracey for a comment on our story he refused to go on camera for an interview but he did offer a statement through a spokesperson, quote, "I'm a great believer in rational debate, not a shouting match on Fox TV. People have every right to disagree with me. I have no problem with that." Still Gigax tells us there is nothing Michael Tracey can say that would fix the effects of his claims in the 2004 documentary.

STEVE GIGAX: People showed up at the house, reporters and all kinds of stuff. I couldn't go back to work. I just couldn't do it.

LAURA INGLE: (VOICE OVER) If Michael Tracey fingered the wrong suspect in 2004. Tricia Griffith wonders if he's doing it again by bringing John Mark Karr to the attention of the current Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy.

TRICIA GRIFFITH: Apparently she takes his phone calls. There's something wrong about that, this man has lied in the past and who knows what he's doing now.

LAURA INGLE: Here in Boulder Colorado, friends of Michael Tracey's say he's just a regular guy who likes to hang out here at this local pub on Friday nights.

LAURA INGLE: (VOICE OVER) He's also joined here by his friend, newspaper journalist Michael Sandrock. The newsman defends Tracey's documentary.

MICHAEL SANDROCK: And I really think he does want to see the case solved and the fact that he's doing documentaries I think it's a good thing and whether he's right or not I can't really say.

LAURA INGLE: (VOICE OVER) But that's little solace to Steve Gigax. He is suffering from a heart condition and Hepatitis C and with his failing health there is nothing more he wants than to counteract the effects of Michael Tracey's film.

STEVE GIGAX: I want the world to know I'm a hundred percent innocent of that and I just want the world to know and move on.

GERALDO: Laura Ingle now from Boulder Colorado. Laura, regardless of what we think of Professor Michael Tracey, John Mark Karr could barely possible but could still be the man who murdered JonBenet. Tell me though the theory here on his first scheduled court appearance that maybe he got his information another way other than committing this awful murder.

LAURA INGLE: We are hearing that a man in Petaluma, California where Karr once lived is telling people today that he took a road trip, that's Karr with his former wife and three sons across the country and made a pit stop here in the year 2000 to Boulder, Colorado where he dropped his wife and kids off at a motel so he could go over to the Ramseys home. This is where he said he wanted to do research on an upcoming book he was going to write. So that could be where he got a lot of his information about the layout of the home, the landmarks here in Boulder. This case is still developing and we'll bring you even more tomorrow as it develops Geraldo.

Why_Nut's YouTube Video Geraldo at Large 08/28/2006

2006-08-31: Peter Boyles Radio Show 630KHOW
Guest: John Stephen Gigax (Link to full transcript)

BOYLES: Just begin if you would and talk about your life and give us a bio of yourself and then we will move on to you ending up in a documentary film two years ago so Mr. Gigax it's all yours so if you wish to speak to the audience please do.

GIGAX: Yeah, well ah, I use to live out in Colorado and a, I lived out there for about fifteen years in Boulder and worked some remodeling work and odds and end jobs and stuff like that. I ended up leaving Colorado in September, late September or early October of 1996. I came back to my original state I was from, where I'd grown up, which is Indiana, and a, rented a house back here in Indiana. And that's when the things started happening in about, oh it was in September of I believe 2004 I started receiving a bunch of mysterious e-mails. Some of them were saying like did you know that you're being aimed as a prime suspect in a documentary on the murder of JonBenet. And of course that caught me completely off guard, I had no clue what was going on, and from there it just got worse and that's what we're going to talk about today.

(SNIP)

BOYLES: Right, now who was and what was your relationship to Michael Helgoth?

GIGAX: Michael Helgoth was an acquaintance, I met him through a mutual friend who lived in the same mobile home park that I did, John Kenady who was also in the documentary speaking out against me.

BOYLES: Yeah, that's right

GIGAX: Well, he knew Michael, actually all the Helgoths. About a quarter mile down the street from the mobile home park there was a junk yard and it was owned by the Helgoths, Michael's uncle Douglas and I don't remember the other gentlemen's name but Michael worked there with them at the junkyard and as I said earlier I did do some automotive restoration work on the side and would pick up parts from that junkyard quite often. And John Kenady was also the mechanical type guy who lived two trailers up from me and that's how I ended up started going down there and met Michael which was through John Kenady. And me and Michael, we got along okay, we didn't have like a social life, it was usually an 8-5 if I went down to the junkyard and saw him to go get some parts and 'hey how ya doing' and he had a hot rod that he raced at Denver Mile High so it was kind of like an acquaintanceship thing. He was pretty private type of person. I didn't know much about his personal life outside of the junkyard. That kind of thing so basically it was a limited type aquaintenceship.

BOYLES: What happened to Michael?

GIGAX: Well, when I was back, after I moved back there in Indiana in September or October, I don't have the exact date, I know it was toward the end of September or the beginning of October of '96. I was living my life and a of course I saw the news release of the JonBenet murder in Boulder. I was in Bloomington Indiana in a home that I was renting with two other room-mates. We were sitting there watching TV that evening when it broke and one of my whose Richard Hill who is from Boulder, he came back with me to Indiana from Boulder who helped me drive some of the vehicles. I had a big rental truck pulling the trailer, the jeep and my '55 Chevy pickup truck pulling a trailer. So he drove the pickup truck and we caravanned out here together. I'm sorry I'm losing my train of thought.

BOYLES: The end of Michael Helgoth's life because this is important here

(SNIP)

GIGAX: Michael, according to what I've been told committed suicide on February 14, 1997.

BOYLES: Right so this is two months later, give or take.

GIGAX: Two months later. Well, as I told you I had watched the news release of the JonBenet murder over my TV set in Bloomington with my room-mates. Well a couple months later I received a call from James Johnson.

BOYLES: Tell the people who James Johnson is.

GIGAX: Who is also another one of the persons in the documentary aiming accusations against me. He, when I left Boulder, him and I were friends. We were the longest standing friendship that I had in Boulder. He was the first person I met and we continued to have a friendship relationship all the way and on up through until the day I left. But he called me, and 'Steve, I just wanted you to know that Michael Helgoth committed suicide, I didn't know if you were going to be able to attend the funeral or what but I thought you should know because you did know him.' I told him well I'm not going to be able to go out there and do that but I appreciated his call and letting me know everything so.

BOYLES: Then what happened follow that. Did you follow the Ramsey case at all?

GIGAX: No not really other than what I saw on TV, the original release, press release of the murder and of course when I received the call about Michael committing suicide I had no inkling of any type of connection that was going to be construed about that and I just basically went on my daily life, I mean nothing seemed out of place at that time, you know.

BOYLES: I'm sure you've seen the documentary, I'm guessing you seen the documentary that fingers you as the killer or one of the killers.

GIGAX: Yes I have

BOYLES: So you know in the doc they say, this is the claim, there's voice over who I think is the third narrator for the piece I should say and there's different voices in the piece but the narrators says three months after the murder, I'll read this to you. "After the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the Boulder police were told this man, [it doesn't say who told the police that, but this is why it starts to get interesting,] that Michael Helgoth might have been involved. They ignored the information but a new team of detectives were appointed last year and they have taken it seriously, they had, they discovered, [I don't know where there is any prove of this that Helgoth had an infatuation with young girls.] A girlfriend said he actually collected Barbie dolls. She eventually had to take out a restraining order on him to protect her daughter. She had come home unexpectedly one evening and found her on his bed, he was in bed naked and he said he couldn't trust himself with her daughter." Then they go to Ollie Gray and Ollie Gray turns out later, they don't mention this but Ollie Gray is on the payroll, he's the guy, he's one of the guys that's working in Lou Smit's agency we find out.

GIGAX: Right

BOYLES: Right. He is quoted as saying we're looking for the potential pedophile, this has all the characteristic of sexual deviation, the age bracket of the child was within two years of the investigation meaning the Ramsey case. And they go from there but they start making these statements against Michael Helgoth.

GIGAX: Right

BOYLES: Do you know of any of that to ever occurred? Finding him nude in the bed and the rest of this stuff? Collecting Barbie dolls?

GIGAX: No, no, I never, he lived there at the junkyard in a bedroom with his Uncle in a house that his Uncle and Aunt lived in.

BOYLES: Did you ever see anything like that?

GIGAX: I had never been inside the house. Period. I've never seen any bizarre behavior from Michael. He's quiet, he seemed polite, he seemed like a nice guy, well brought up, never did he exhibit any type of weird pedophile, anything type behavior. He was into car racing. He worked hard everyday and like I say he was just a quiet guy. Just seemed real nice. He did like his guns. He did shoot guns but I never saw him do anything threatening with a gun, target practice stuff out in the back of the junkyard. That's about it.

(SNIP)

BOYLES: Now I want to tell people how people, how the true investigators find out that it is this man being name and by, so, actually I want to make it your story so there's a frame where they hold up what they claim to be a police report, correct?

GIGAX: Yes, it was a menecing with a deadly weapon charge that I just spoke about earlier in the show where a fight broke out in my mobile home and my room-mate was being injured and I interviewed and got a little bit carried away and pin pricked a guy on his chest with a knife and he reached his hand up and grabbed the knife blade and when I pulled it back it cut his hand but I was just trying to get him out the door away from my room-mate so I could tend to my room-mate who ended up actually having an amputated finger from the incident from the guy I was trying to protect him from. If you were to get a hold of the court room transcripts the prosecutor spoke to the judge on my behalf actually more so than my own lawyer had to talk. He told, the prosecutor told the judge that I was so close to making my day thing that I probably shouldn't even be in the court room. But because we were all drunk, it was New Years Eve night, basically one persons testimony cancels out another so all were inadmissable so basically it was my word against the injured parties word and that was it.

BOYLES: There's really, it's called capturing a frame so that frame that's showing this, the true identity of the murderer that's been blacked out

GIGAX: Right, they had, on the documentary they had showed the police report or the arrest report or whatever it was, they blacked out my name and address but they left the file, case number in the upper right hand corner of the page, they left that visible

BOYLES: And that doc, the number was 96CR111 and 96F75. It was readable either as 96F75 or 96F15. These documents were discovered and they referred to you, John Stephen Gigax, and your birth dates there and corresponds with the birth date shown on the screen in Michael Tracey's film. The summary of this is, in this film John Stephen Gigax by Michael Tracey is involved in a serious of midnight burglaries in Boulder, the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the death of Michael Helgoth and the sexual assault, you're blamed for an attempted rape on the Dance West victim.

GIGAX: Right

BOYLES: Does that pretty much sum up what was said about you in that documentary?

GIGAX: Yeah, that pretty much sums it up

(SNIP)

BOYLES: On the line with us is John Stephen Gigax who was fingered by Michael Tracey in June of 04 in "Who Killed The Pageant Queen" that aired in Great Britain. This is not only filled with errors but also implicates this man, okay so how do you find out, I mean I heard the story but John tell us how you found out that you had been fingered.

GIGAX: It was all through e-mail. I'd just came back from a camping trip down in the Southern part of Indiana and when I got home I checked my e-mail and there were like six or eight e-mails, boom boom boom, from people I didn't have a clue who they were or what was going on and they were mentioning 'did you know you've been fingered as the prime suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey case.' Stuff like that.

BOYLES: What did you then do?

GIGAX: I freaked out ! It was like WHAT, what is going on here, you know, it totally floored me especially since I knew I was here in Indiana. I was like, how can someone do something like that?

BOYLES: hey did it again too so.

GIGAX: Right, so then one of them was from some web site, amateur sleuth type people and I guess they were in the cahoots with Michael Tracey side of it were they wanted me to meet with that Lou Smit, everybody, Ollie Gray and give DNA.

BOYLES: John, let me ask you something important. Did this group ask you to meet with Michael Tracey?

GIGAX: They said they could set it up for me to meet with Michael Tracey.

BOYLES: My God, so am I to understand they... why am I not surprised.

GIGAX: Then I didn't know who these people were from Adam, I mean I didn't know if they were wacko or if it was true, you know or what kind of angle they were coming at me from so basically, and then I started talking to Tricia Griffith. And it was very obvious that she was from a little bit different camp than the rest of these people who had been e-mailing me and I started contacting her

BOYLES: Michael Tracey makes the documentary and they want you to met with Lou Smit, give blood and met with Michael Tracey.

GIGAX: Yeah.

BOYLES: You called and my understanding through the help of Tricia you got the phone number for Tom Bennett who was at this press conference by the way the other day.

(SNIP)

GIGAX: I spoke with him on the phone for probably a good forty five minutes. We talked about why I was calling him, about the documentary that was naming me as a suspect, we, he asked if I had a problem doing an interview with him and I said no. He asked me some questions.

BOYLES: Did he act like he knew who you were?

GIGAX: No, I don't think he did at first.

BOYLES: Did he ask you anything at all about Michael Tracey?

GIGAX: No

BOYLES: Did he ask you, did Bennett mention anything at all about Michael Tracey?

GIGAX: No he didn't

(SNIP)

GIGAX: Told him I was being named as a prime suspect in a documentary and that I needed to find out what's going on and I wasn't dealing with people I didn't know and I wanted to deal with someone who was a real person, who had real authority in the matter

BOYLES: How did the conversation go and how would you describe and how did Bennett treat you?

GIGAX: Well he basically kind of laughed about it and said it sounds like it's a bunch of crap and he asked if I had a problem with doing an interview where he'd ask me some questions, he said what kind of movies do you like and have you ever owned a stun gun, you know bla bla bla. About fifteen, twenty minutes of that kind of stuff. I told him about receipts that I had, if he would like me to send those, they were signed credit card purchases from Sears in Bloomington and Colombus all through the whole time. I have signed credit card receipts that I sent him for 12/22/96 purchase Sears Bloomington, Indiana and 12/28/96 purchase Bloomington Indiana and also another one that was on 2/14/97 which was the day Michael Helgoth committed suicide so I did copy those and sent those all to him. He told me on the phone that I was not a suspect nor had I ever been as suspect.

BOYLES: Was that the end of it after that?

GIGAX: Yes, that was it.

(SNIP)

GIGAX: Thank you, I would just like to say I'd like to see Michael Tracey held accountable for what he's done to me and others. Also Michael Tracey is a Journalism Professor at the Colorado University which is one of our nations most respected universities and I just think the Cu facility, students, alumni and those donating money in grants to the Colorado university really want their university to be associated with this professor that works this way. Do the parents of students attending CU for journalism degrees really want a man like Michael Tracey teaching their children? I ask anyone hearing this show to think what this would do to your life. Imagine having your family, friends and co workers having to live this nightmare. Then understand that next week it could be you in Michael Tracey's sights. This man needs to be stopped before he ruins another life. I'm asking the public for help. If this upsets you please write to Colorado University Board of Regents and voice your opinions to them. I would like to see Michael Tracey removed from his teaching position at Colorado University and issue a public apology for his wrongful accusations leveled against myself and others. This man has no business teaching in a university period. And that's just what I wanted to say.

2006-09-11: EXAMINER: "WE NAME REAL JONBENET KILLER!"

WE NAME REAL JONBENET KILLER!
And it’s NOT the wacko who confessed
September 11, 2006 EXAMINER
By Rafe Klinger

(SNIP)

"But Helgoth, who covered himself with tattoos - including one of the Grim Reaper and another of a blood-dripping skull - committed suicide just weeks following JonBenet's murder on December 25, 1996.

He apparently shot himself on Valentine's Day 1997 - the DAY AFTER a threatening statement was issued by Boulder, Colo., district attorney Alex Hunter."

(SNIP)

His pal John Kenady had previously gone to police telling them of Helgoth's sadistic love of shooting stray dogs, how he threatened people with guns - and some bizarre coincidences involving the JonBenet case.

When Kenady learned that JonBenet's skull had been severely cracked from a vicious blow, chills ran down his spine.

Kenady told police that Helgoth loved to talk about killing people and once said to him: "I wonder what it would be like to crack a human skull?"

But the most chilling link to JonBenet came in November, the month BEFORE she was killed.

"Mike was pretty happy around late November about him and a partner making a killer deal," recalls Kenady. "They were each going to make $50,000 or $60,000.

"Then Christmas comes and he's really depressed and there's no money."

The total amount of money Helgoth and his secret partner would have collected would come close to $118,000 - the odd sum demanded in the bizarre ransom note left at the Ramsey home.

And following Helgoth's death, police discovered more damning evidence in addition to the money amount, the "cracked skull" remark, his prior conviction for sexually molesting a child and the charge by his former girlfriend that she'd caught him naked in bed with her young daughter.

Cops searching Helgoth's home after the suicide found a pair of Hi-Tec work boots - the soles of which would make prints like the one found in the Ramsey basement where an intruder was believed to have broken in.

They also found a Taser stun gun. JonBenet’s autopsy revealed marks on her body similar to those made by a Taser, leading investigators to believe that the killer used a Taser to render the Little Miss Colorado helpless.

“his friends say he was a stun gun nut and that he used to break into people's houses just for the thrill of doing it," says Ollie Gray, an investigator hired by the Ramseys.

And cops found a shirt with the mystery letters"S.B.T.C.” on it and pants with the word

"Victory" on them. Amazingly, the ransom note found at the Ramsey home was signed - "Victory! S.B.T.C."

Police also discovered pictures of young girls and a newspaper clipping about the unsolved case of a 5-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and murdered five years before JonBenet.

Cops tested Helgoth'S DNA with that found in JonBenet's underpants and believed to have been left by her killer.

It didn't match. But private eyes Gray and John San Augustin believe the DNA belonged to Helgoth's unknown partner.

They also believe the secret partner may have murdered Helgoth and made it look like suicide to cover his own tracks.

"If he's one of two people involved in a major, major death of a small girl, what's the best way to eliminate the word getting out that you had any involvement?" says Gray. "You eliminate your partner."

(SNIP)

2006-10-12: Westword: "Made for each other"
http://www.westword.com/Issues/2006-10-12/news/feature.html

Made for Each Other
By Alan Prendergast
Article Published Oct 12, 2006

(SNIP)

Page 5

That documentary set the stage for a more ambitious one two years later, Who Killed the Pageant Queen?: The Prime Suspect. Brought back into the official investigation by DA Lacy, Smit was no longer available to emcee, but no matter. This time around, Tracey and Mills wanted to focus not on the theorist, but on possible killers who fit the theory.

The third trip to the well recycles footage from the earlier documentaries, and the producers' trademark bombast. JonBenét is introduced as the "most famous murdered child in history" (history apparently doesn't extend as far back as the Lindbergh kidnapping), and her parents are "the most hated couple in America" (Britney and Kevin must be disappointed). Fortunately, "a completely new team of investigators has recently uncovered dramatic new facts about the murder," all pointing to the prime suspect.

The new detectives on the case turn out to be private investigators who've worked for the Ramseys' attorneys: David Williams, Jennifer Gedde, Ollie Gray and John San Agustin. The documentary notes their prior association with the Ramsey team, then proceeds to hopelessly muddle their role. Lacy's office has sought their help, the narrator explains, and although they're "unpaid volunteers," they're "an important part of the new investigation."

These on-camera sleuths are presented as quasi-official spokespeople. Their investigation has been "set up" by Lacy's office, we're told; they're "a new team of detectives appointed last year." This is pure invention. Lacy invited the Ramsey PIs to a meeting in 2003 to share their research with her team; that's it. As for being unpaid volunteers, Gray and San Agustin (who's also an inspector in the El Paso County Sheriff's Office) have been consulting on the case, without pay, for the Ramsey attorneys since 1999 -- and still are, according to San Agustin. Gedde, who's now an attorney herself, apparently hasn't been actively involved in the case for quite some time.

Also undisclosed is the relationship between San Agustin, Gray and Lou Smit. Smit is San Agustin's former captain in the sheriff's office, and Lou Smit Investigations is part of a linked network of Colorado Springs-based investigative services that also includes Gray's and San Agustin's firm. Between Smit's stints in the DA's office, he and Gray looked into several leads in the Ramsey case together.

"What Lou was doing was totally separate from what we were doing," San Agustin says. "But I wouldn't say there was a wall between us. There was collaboration, up to a point."

Mills defends the documentary's portrayal of the Ramsey team as "new" investigators chasing down leads for the district attorney. "They were the only people who could speak," he says. "The DA, Mary Lacy, gave us no help in making that program. But Gray and San Agustin were extraordinarily well-informed. They knew the key lines of inquiry."

The key lines of their inquiry, anyway -- which is to find the perp or perps who used a stun gun on JonBenét and then killed her. The program soon keys in on one Michael Helgoth, a Boulder resident who died from an odd but apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound less than two months after the murder. Helgoth had a stun gun, a pair of Hi-Tec boots -- and, according to some sources, an unhealthy interest in young girls. Most intriguing of all, his death came the day after Alex Hunter went on television to address the killer, a speech carefully scripted by the FBI: "The list of suspects narrows. Soon there will be no one on the list but you."

But Helgoth isn't the prime suspect. In fact, the Helgoth lead isn't new at all. Boulder police had looked at him years before and ruled him out. They claimed Helgoth's boots didn't match the print in the basement -- although this is disputed by Mills, who says the boot was never properly tested. (Other accounts have linked the print to JonBenét's brother Burke, an assertion San Agustin dismisses as "baloney.") Worse, the police found that Helgoth's DNA didn't match the material in JonBenét's panties.

Page 6

To Mills and Tracey, and to virtually all proponents of the intruder theory, the DNA is crucial. It's the single most important piece of evidence -- far more important than, say, that silly, inexplicable ransom note. The DNA doesn't match that of any member of the Ramsey family, so it must belong to the real killer. The documentary even reports that the DNA in the undies matches other DNA found under JonBenét's fingernails, all of which "had come from the same unknown white male" -- a dubious assertion, since sources in the district attorney's office have described the fingernail sample as too contaminated or degraded to be meaningful.

"Do we have an exact report on that? No," says San Agustin. "As to the validity of that, I couldn't tell you. That's what we were made aware of."

The documentary zags around the DNA problem by suggesting that Helgoth was one of two intruders in the house that night. Isn't there a second unidentified footprint in the basement? Doesn't the ransom note talk about "two gentlemen watching over your daughter"? Wouldn't it take two people to haul the stun gun, cord, duct tape and other paraphernalia?

The prime suspect, it turns out, is Helgoth's presumed partner in crime, a trailer-park resident "who shared his interest in martial arts and young girls...a close associate, who has since disappeared." Without naming the man, several acquaintances of the suspect describe his threatening manner and violent past, including a prison stretch "for a sexual assault on a child."

"I tried to steer clear of that individual," one witness intones, "because he could have been, you know, a menace to me or my family."

Scary stuff. But the portrait of the prime suspect began to crumble as soon as the documentary aired. An alert viewer in Scotland noticed a close-up of court documents pertaining to the prime suspect. Although the producers had blacked out his name, they'd left the case file number and the man's date of birth clearly legible. Soon the amateur Ramsey sleuths on the Internet knew his name: John Steven Gigax.

Mills is abjectly apologetic about the blunder. "We were determined not to identify him because he might well be innocent," he says. "It's one of the most embarrassing mistakes of my career. It was a piece of incompetence on my part, for which I am ashamed. It was a complete cock-up."

But making Gigax identifiable wasn't the extent of the cock-up. He was also easily found, contrary to the documentary's claim that he'd disappeared; he was, and still is, selling reproductions of Nazi jewelry on the Internet. In fact, at least two of the Gigax acquaintances interviewed by Tracey and Mills were aware that he'd moved to Indiana several months before the Ramsey murder. How could this critical fact have eluded the filmmakers and their crack team of investigators?

"Nobody that we spoke to knew where he was," Mills insists. "And he would not have been eliminated as a suspect had we not made the documentary. It actually makes the thrust of the documentary, that these leads were not being pursued."

Actually, there's no reason to believe Gigax ever was a suspect in the Ramsey investigation -- except to Smit and the Ramsey team. Mills and Tracey are both under the impression that he was "eliminated" by a DNA test after the documentary aired, but that, too, is erroneous. In fact, much of what they report about Gigax was never properly checked.

Gigax first learned of his sudden infamy shortly after the documentary aired. "People I didn't know from Adam were e-mailing me, saying I was this prime suspect in the Ramsey case," he recalls. "I called the Boulder DA's office and talked to Tom Bennett. He said I was not a suspect, that I had never been a suspect."

Gigax offered to send Bennett sales receipts that proved he was in Indiana over Christmas 1996. He also had a dozen witnesses who'd seen him there on Christmas Day. As he sees it, the film mangles basic facts about him, his whereabouts and his criminal record to make him fit the part of a crazed ninja-stalker killer. Calling him a "convicted pedophile" is a bit misleading: After what he describes as a drunken and unconsummated encounter with a teenage babysitter 21 years ago, he was convicted of attempted sexual assault and served less than two years. Yes, he pleaded guilty in 1996 to a menacing charge over a fight in his trailer that ended with the stabbing of a neighbor, but he received probation and arranged to complete it in Indiana.

"Michael Tracey can find an arrest report, and he can't find the rest of the paperwork that goes with it?" he asks. "The people pointing the finger at me and saying I'm a bad, scary guy were both aware that I'd moved. One of them called me to tell me that Helgoth had killed himself."

Gigax says he's never taken a martial arts class in his life. He likes to dress in black, but that's because he's a Harley man. And the sources accusing him, he adds, knew Michael Helgoth much better than he did.

How, then, did Gigax become the prime suspect in Tracey's world? "You have a series of prime suspects that you go through one at a time," Mills says. "At the time we were making that documentary, he was the prime suspect the investigators were interested in."

San Agustin, though, says it was the producers' call to target Gigax: "We never said he's on the top of our list. We just said, 'There's a group of people tied to Helgoth who need to be looked into.'"

Gigax's principal accuser in the documentary is John Kenady, a mechanic and tow-truck driver who introduced Gigax to Helgoth. Kenady is convinced that Helgoth's death was murder rather than suicide. The Boulder police disagree with him.

Like Gigax, Kenady has an ancient conviction for sexual assault on a child, which he says involved a consensual relationship with a teenager; in effect, the producers used one convicted sex offender to point the finger at another. Kenady was also arrested in 2000 for breaking into Helgoth's house and pleaded guilty to trespassing. He says he merely wanted to preserve evidence.

Court records indicate that Kenady suffered a head injury in an auto accident six years ago and was required to undergo a mental evaluation as part of the plea bargain in the break-in. He denies any mental problems. "The DA's office wanted to portray me as crazy," he says. "I couldn't get anyone in the press to talk to me about Mike's death. They're scared to death."

Page 7

Gigax's alibi in the Ramsey case doesn't impress Kenady. The possibility that Helgoth's death, which occurred on Valentine's Day, might have been a suicide related to girlfriend problems also doesn't dissuade him. "I think there were three people involved in this, possibly four," he says. "Mike would say, 'Maybe I should just shoot myself now and get it over with.' I got a pretty good idea he was into something he shouldn't have been."

Mills says he and Tracey paid no one for interviews in their first two documentaries. But they made an exception in the third film, paying Kenady and another Gigax accuser sums of $200 or less for the "inconvenience" of having to take time off from work. While admitting that he was paid, Kenady says he only agreed to appear in the documentary because Lou Smit vowed he would track down the man who killed Helgoth and JonBenét.

"They went a little far on some of this stuff," he says. "Michael Tracey told me, 'I want to be famous, I want to solve this case.' But they hung me out to dry. Lou said he was going to go find the guy, and nothing happens. Lou, Ollie and I made a pact that we're going to work this until we die. I've put way over a hundred thousand of my own money into this. I sold my Harley, my Corvette. I emptied all my bank accounts. It's ruined everything I had planned because I want to know the truth."

Among the flaws of The Prime Suspect, it's clear that no one made a serious effort to contact the prime suspect before including so many serious allegations about him. San Agustin says that was the producers' job, not his. Gigax hasn't heard a whisper of apology from Mills or Tracey. Every time he reads about Professor Presumption blasting the sleazy tabloid press for violating the most elementary ethical tenets of journalism, he wants to scream.

"Sometimes I think the only way to get any justice would be to go to Colorado and pound the hell out of him," he says. "He's teaching the next crop of journalists damaging and biased techniques. Are we going to have a country of little Michael Traceys running around, trying to crucify people?"

Every five years, CU's tenured professors undergo a post-tenure review of their work. Tracey had his most recent review just a few weeks ago, in the midst of the Karr uproar. Because his scholarly output has taken a back seat to Ramsey sleuthing in recent years -- he hasn't published a book since 1998 -- the last two documentaries were a significant part of the portfolio of professional "publication" that he presented for consideration.

Dean Voakes says he's aware that the documentaries are controversial. Asked about specific issues arising from the third documentary -- misrepresentations, paid sources, a prime suspect who says he was unjustly accused -- he expresses bewilderment.

"Now we're in an area I can't comment on," he says. "I'm not aware of any of that."

(SNIP)

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