June 1998 John Ramsey Interrogation by Lou Smit and Mike Kane (Neighbor, Kid's Friends)

0090
18 LOU SMIT: Try to think about that a little
19 bit. It's just one of those things that we're
20 trying to determine who all would have gone in
21 there into that room at a specific time. That's
22 whey we have to find that out. That's why
23 specifically if you can think about it. I know to
24 sequence your memory is kind of hard. But it's one
25 of those things that I figure you can think about

0091
1 a little bit.
2 Just to back up just a little bit. After the
3 children opened their gifts, do you know what they
4 did that day, your children?
5 JOHN RAMSEY: Well they played around the
6 house. There were some kids in and out, I think.
7 Because I wasn't there for several hours.
8 LOU SMIT: And where were these kids from?
9 JOHN RAMSEY: Only, I think based -- well
10 I'm pretty sure I saw Evan and Kile, I forget
11 their last name.
12 LOU SMIT: Coby?
13 JOHN RAMSEY: Coby. They were there. I don't
14 remember specifically knowing that. But I think
15 Patsy, I heard her saying neighbors and girls from
16 up the street.
17 LOU SMIT: Do you know their names?
18 JOHN RAMSEY: I don't. I don't.
19 LOU SMIT: We were trying to determine who
20 all JonBenet or Burke had had any contact. And
21 later on we'll kind of get into those reasons. But
22 right now we have to find out any contact with the
23 children.
24 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah, I know. Well, there were
25 a number of kids there that day. Our house was

0092
1 always kind of, kids were in and out of there all
2 the time and it was usually the Coby boys. There
3 was a family that lived not immediately next door,
4 but the house over, that had moved in recently
5 after the Whites had left the house. I didn't know
6 them. I think there were a couple of girls in the
7 house that had come down to play.
8 LOU SMIT: How about the children like to
9 the south of you?
10 JOHN RAMSEY: Let's see, south. That's --
11 LOU SMIT: (INAUDIBLE).
12 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah. It's possible. But I don't
13 remember seeing them there. But they were there
14 occasionally. The boy, the son, this is on the
15 house next to us, towards the baseline. Their son,
16 who seemed like a very nice kid, was always
17 attentive to JonBenet in a nice way; a brotherly
18 way, I thought.
19 LOU SMIT: Do you know his name?
20 JOHN RAMSEY: I don't.
21 LOU SMIT: Is it Luke?
22 JOHN RAMSEY: Luke? That rings a bell, yeah.
23 That's right.
24 LOU SMIT: Do you know of anybody from the
25 family who always lived next door to the north?

0093 1 JOHN RAMSEY: Not a lot. They had a child and
2 they were divorced after that. He had children
3 from another marriage; two boys, I think. All nice
4 kids.
5 LOU SMIT: And were they around them that day?
6 JOHN RAMSEY: I don't remember for sure. Patsy
7 probably would remember that.
8 LOU SMIT: See, we're trying to determine
9 the gap of anybody who could have contact, and
10 usually the neighbors and people close and we
11 would just like to have their names.
12 JOHN RAMSEY: Again, Patsy would have more
13 information on that.
14 LOU SMIT: Or maybe Burke would have some
15 information on that, I'm not sure. (INAUDIBLE).
16 JOHN RAMSEY: There was a little girl, I
17 think, that lived diagonally across the street
18 that --
19 LOU SMIT: Which way was that?
20 JOHN RAMSEY: This would have been south
21 and east, next to the Barnhills, south of the
22 Barnhills.
23 LOU SMIT: Okay.
24 JOHN RAMSEY: I think it was a single mother
25 that rented that house. And I think she had a

0094
1 daughter or a son, was that a son. Maybe it was a
2 son. I don't remember. It might have been a boy.
3 They moved. They would come over occasionally but
4 not often.
5 LOU SMIT: What I'm going to do, I'm going
6 to show you a small diagram. I might have a bigger
7 diagram which I'm going to bring in after a while
8 when we get into the neighbors.
9 JOHN RAMSEY: Okay.
10 LOU SMIT: This is a small diagram that we
11 have and it just kind of shows the relationship of
12 houses in the area. It's not to scale or anything.
13 We'd like to just look at it. This is your home,
14 755, and across the street is the Barnhills. And
15 which address were you talking about about the
16 other little girl.
17 JOHN RAMSEY: It would have been this one,
18 738.
19 LOU SMIT: 738?
20 JOHN RAMSEY: Right. I think it was a boy.
21 They had a child. She had a child. I think it was
22 a little boy. But that's the house I was talking
23 about.
24 LOU SMIT: Now you say he may have come over?
25 JOHN RAMSEY: No, I don't know that he did

0095 1 that day. But I said he's come over once in a
2 while.

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(SNIP)

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0733
20 JOHN RAMSEY: Right. Another
21 thing that happened that night was, there was a
22 couple that moved in down the street in 777,
23 15th, that had lost a child, and somebody that
24 was at the church party said gee, I know these
25 people, they are really nice, I would like to

0734
1 invite them up and have you meet them. They
2 came up that evening.
3 LOU SMIT: They lived there?
4 JOHN RAMSEY: Yes, I don't
5 remember the names. Arno (phonetic) -- yeah,
6 yes, Arnold, unusual name. So this lady or
7 couple, I think it was a couple, invited them
8 up, they came up about 9:30, 10 o'clock, kind of
9 as the church party was winding down and they
10 stayed in the kitchen, talked for half hour, 45
11 minutes, and I had never met them before.
12 And --
13 LOU SMIT: When was that foyer
14 party?
15 JOHN RAMSEY: That was at the
16 foyer party.
17 LOU SMIT: When was it?
18 JOHN RAMSEY: That evening,
19 probably 9:30, 10. Gosh, I don't know. I could
20 look at the calendar, but it had been like
21 the --
22 LOU SMIT: In December?
23 JOHN RAMSEY: In December, yeah.
24 In mid December.

---

(SNIP)

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0753
25 LOU SMIT: Next door to you, again,

0754
1 I asked you this once before, next door to the
2 north, is the Gibbons and I show that in the
3 phone book, there is a Reid Gibbons listed with
4 a phone number. I know they have a young boy
5 named (INAUDIBLE) is there another boy in there
6 named Reid or anybody older named Reid that
7 maybe had a telephone?
8 JOHN RAMSEY: Geez, I don't know,
9 I don't think so. Scott and Priscilla were the

June 1998 John Ramsey Interrogation by Lou Smit and Mike Kane (Neighbor, Kid's Friends)

0754
10 parents. Reid I think was their youngest child.
11 I remember when he was born. Scott had well,
12 Weston I think was Scott's son from another
13 marriage, I am not sure about --
14 LOU SMIT: Did he live there?
15 JOHN RAMSEY: He didn't all the
16 time. He visited.
17 LOU SMIT: How old is he?
18 JOHN RAMSEY: Then he was, you
19 know, Burke's age, give or take. But I don't
20 know why --
21 LOU SMIT: Any older kids that
22 lived there?
23 JOHN RAMSEY: They had seems like,
24 seems like they had someone who lived in the
25 basement for a while. Could that be?

0755
1 LOU SMIT: A lot of times when you
2 start a homicide investigation you start right
3 -- in fact, I had a detective tell me that just
4 recently too, you start winding tight circles
5 around, and that's why I was wondering if you
6 had anybody that could have even lived next
7 door. Like I, said I never --
8 (MULTIPLE SPEAKERS.)
9 JOHN RAMSEY: There might have
10 been. It kind of rings a bell. I think there
11 was also someone that lived in the apartment at
12 one time above 745. They had like an upstairs
13 apartment. It was -- I don't know if it was a
14 full-fledged apartment. I think someone lived
15 up there.
16 LOU SMIT: That's next door to
17 you --
18 JOHN RAMSEY: To the south.
19 LOU SMIT: To the south, okay.
20 JOHN RAMSEY: Right. 738 was a
21 rental house. 764 was a rental house. The next
22 one down, 774. 7 -- I think it's just those
23 two.
24 LOU SMIT: How about the across the
25 alley from you, I have always been interested in

0756
1 those houses back there. Were you ever
2 acquainted with anybody back there?
3 JOHN RAMSEY: No. I talked to
4 this lady once in that house there.
5 LOU SMIT: That's 756?
6 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah, she was a
7 British lady. We did meet these people, David
8 and Ann. The Cobies were weird as hell,
9 frankly. Their house was a pig sty. I mean it
10 was, I had never been in it but Patsy had, and
11 she just described it was, you know, a mattress
12 on the floor for the kids, the kids always
13 dressed themselves, they looked like they just
14 dressed themselves in the morning and were I
15 felt very uncared for. He was very weird.
16 LOU SMIT: Who is he?
17 JOHN RAMSEY: The husband, or the
18 father. He told me once that he was teaching
19 his kids how to ride a bike and he would knock
20 them over so they would learn how to fall off a
21 bike. One day Burke took over a little gun, a
22 plastic gun and he just went crazy, he didn't
23 want any guns in the house.
24 LOU SMIT: Do you know what the
25 man's name is?

0757
1 JOHN RAMSEY: Ruth and -- Patsy
2 would know. He worked for the state. I think.
3 He used to take the bus down to Denver every
4 day. Just, their daughter who was at that time
5 maybe early teenager, would spend hours and
6 hours and hours out on the swing in the
7 backyard, just swinging and swinging, it was
8 like a rope swing. And somebody said gee, that
9 must be -- there must be something wrong with
10 her. We said no, maybe she just doesn't want to
11 be in the house.
12 That's probably right. Evan was a
13 strange little kid. He was --
14 LOU SMIT:
15 (MULTIPLE SPEAKERS.)
16 JOHN RAMSEY: I just didn't care
17 for him. He was, one time JonBenet was out in
18 the driveway and she had a -- this was several
19 years ago, she had a dress on that didn't have
20 underwear on because it gotten taken off or what
21 and Evan was down, you know, trying to look
22 under her dress and here he was probably at that
23 time a 7 or 8-year-old. I said Evan, cut that
24 out.
25 LOU SMIT: Now didn't they have an

0758
1 older one there too?
2 JOHN RAMSEY: Kai was there, they
3 had a daughter, two daughters. Ruth was the
4 mom, and the daughter was older than the boys,
5 you know. But --
6 LOU SMIT: How about directly
7 behind you in 756?
8 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, I think that's
9 the British couple, the British lady. I have
10 never met him.
11 LOU SMIT: Do you know if they were
12 home at that time in Christmas of 1996?
13 JOHN RAMSEY: I don't.
14 DAVID WILLIAMS: That the one with
15 the large antenna at the back?
16 JOHN RAMSEY: This one here,
17 that's Kenny Smith. I had met him also
18 actually. He owns a cheese store. He was a
19 nice little guy.
20 LOU SMIT: We had heard that there
21 was a caretaker in one of those two houses in
22 the back, someone was caring for the house right
23 about that time. I don't know if you know
24 anything about that or if you had heard anything
25 on that?

0759
1 JOHN RAMSEY: No, I don't. We had
2 heard once this lady lived here before these
3 people bought it.
4 LOU SMIT: (INAUDIBLE.)
5 JOHN RAMSEY: She was a single
6 divorced women or divorced woman, no kids, was
7 going to CU, and somebody told us that she took
8 in boarders and -- which we didn't know. It was
9 kind of a surprise. But she had sold the house
10 and -- that house actually sat empty for quite a
11 while. There was something -- there were some
12 students who lived in that house after she sold
13 it and these people moved in.
14 LOU SMIT: 777?
15 JOHN RAMSEY: Right. These people
16 did not move in right away. It was maybe almost
17 a year later.
18 LOU SMIT: Now, one of the thing
19 that I was always interested in is you have done
20 a lot of investigating into this, and you were
21 around, probably knew some of the people or some
22 of the people had talked to you like Joe
23 Barnhill across the street or maybe the nextdoor
24 lady to the south there. Did anyone, to your
25 knowledge, move out suddenly after this or did

0760
1 you have any indication that somebody may have
2 left suddenly?
3 JOHN RAMSEY: I don't remember
4 anybody doing that.

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(SNIP)

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0760
22 VOICE: The only two people that I
23 can think of who moved away, they may have been
24 neighborhood people, we don't know of them, but
25 the only two people that we know of that moved

0761
1 away that was in some way involved in this
2 incident or that's why they moved away, was
3 Randy Simons who moved a hundred miles east of
4 the city, and McReynolds. (INAUDIBLE).