June 1998 John Ramsey Interrogation by Lou Smit and Mike Kane (December 6, 1996 Christmas Parade)

0072
23 LOU SMIT: (INAUDIBLE) how JonBenet was exposed
24 during that particular time of her exposure?
25 JOHN RAMSEY: The biggest exposure which, say

0073
1 in retrospect, would be how stupid could we have
2 been. But when she was in a children's parade in
3 Boulder, I think it was December 6th or early
4 December. And the kids had done it before.
5 Actually they did it the year before as well. It's
6 a neat children's parade. All the kids, and kids
7 love to be in parades, and it just seemed like a
8 fun thing for the kids to do. There's people
9 lining the streets up and down.
10 LOU SMIT: Were you there for that?
11 JOHN RAMSEY: We were not; we were out of
12 town. And Patsy's mother was there taking care of
13 the kids, and they had prearranged for JonBenet to
14 go with Pam Archuleta who was, I think at the
15 time, (INAUDIBLE) United Way. So she drove her
16 little red convertible and JonBenet and that other
17 little girl sat up on the back.
18 LOU SMIT: Who was the other girl?
19 JOHN RAMSEY: Again, Patsy would know. I don't
20 know her name. But she was one of the little
21 pageant girls from Denver, I think. A dark haired
22 girl. I have a picture of that.
23 LOU SMIT: Okay.
24 JOHN RAMSEY: Which I can get for you.
25 LOU SMIT: I think I'd like a copy of that,

0074
1 if I could.
2 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah. And the car might have
3 had -- I think Patsy would normally put her name
4 on the side of the car with a little magnetic-like
5 pageant clothing. But basically I think it was
6 like a red Christmassy velvet dress.
7 LOU SMIT: And was that right downtown? Where
8 was that at exactly?
9 JOHN RAMSEY: Oh, it goes down, what is it
10 Walnut, I think. It goes down to Walnut and then
11 it kinds lines around and comes back. It's in the
12 early evening.
13 LOU SMIT: (INAUDIBLE) I've got my copy so,
14 like I said --
15 JOHN RAMSEY: I mean, what concerned me
16 afterwards as we started looking into who could
17 have possibly done this is a lot of, as I said
18 earlier, there's a lot of good people and there's
19 a lot freaks out there, and we were just kind of
20 ignorant of that. And she was certainly exposed,
21 occasionally exposed to the freaks.

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(SNIP)

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0293
18 MIKE KANE: Okay. Now I think yesterday
19 that you mentioned when one of the parades on
20 December the 6th, that you were away then. Do you
21 recall where you were then?
22 JOHN RAMSEY: We had gone to New York
23 that weekend with Susan and Glen Stine. They
24 invited us to go. I forget when Glen came back, it
25 was like a Friday and they came back on the Sunday

0294
1 or something like that.
2 MIKE KANE: Where did you stay then?
3 JOHN RAMSEY: I can see the place; I
4 can't tell you the name. Patsy might remember.
5 MIKE KANE: In Manhattan?
6 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah, it was downtown. It
7 was near the theatre district. The Marriott or
8 something like that.

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(SNIP)

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0462
10 MIKE KANE: Okay. All right.
11 Yesterday, you said something about on the -- a
12 couple of things that on the 20th or on the 6th
13 of December she was in that little parade. What
14 is that parade? Is that a parade for kids or a
15 parade of kids?

June 1998 John Ramsey Interrogation by Lou Smit and Mike Kane (December 6, 1996 Christmas Parade)

0462
16 JOHN RAMSEY: A parade of kids.
17 Kids are in the parade.
18 MIKE KANE: Okay.
19 JOHN RAMSEY: High school band
20 and it was full of kids.
21 MIKE KANE: You said her name was
22 on a car?
23 JOHN RAMSEY: I think so, I am not
24 positive of that, but it's quite probable.
25 MIKE KANE: Why do you think it's

0463
1 probable?
2 JOHN RAMSEY: Because Patsy
3 tended to do that.
4 MIKE KANE: Do what, do you know
5 what --
6 JOHN RAMSEY: JonBenet Ramsey,
7 Miss Little Colorado or whatever.
8 MIKE KANE: Okay, so it was in
9 connection with being miss --
10 JOHN RAMSEY: Right.
11 MIKE KANE: Did you have like a
12 sign or placard or something like that?
13 JOHN RAMSEY: She had an I think a
14 little magnetic or this a little sign that kind
15 of adhered to the side of the car.
16 MIKE KANE: Okay, she had that made
17 up?
18 JOHN RAMSEY: She was in a
19 couple of little parades in Charlevoix where
20 they, you know, little small town, brought your
21 own Corvettes and kids would be on the back and
22 JonBenet was in a couple of those.
23 MIKE KANE: You guys were out of
24 town that weekend. I think you said that Mike
25 Archuleta's that wife is the one that took --

0464
1 JOHN RAMSEY: She drove the
2 car, she was there as United Way. I think
3 Patsy's mom was there. She took care of the
4 kids while we were away, so I don't know who
5 picked up, how the logistics were handled but –

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(SNIP)

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0465
11 MIKE KANE: Was it for you
12 personally you didn't like the attention or for
13 your family?
14 JOHN RAMSEY: Um, I was starting
15 to think geez, you know, we need to -- because
16 we had -- we had had, you know, since Jeff
17 Meric and we had a couple of other employees who
18 were let go. Not that I even knew, but that
19 didn't go happily and I just was starting to
20 think about I better, you know, I need to start
21 thinking about visibility.
22 MIKE KANE: How do you square that
23 with Little Miss Colorado pageants?
24 JOHN RAMSEY: That was part of
25 what I guess was starting to think about. I

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1 mean in retrospect it was totally foolish, but
2 it was, I mean these -- see, if you don't think
3 like an evil person, you assume everybody else
4 is kind of normal like you, and these little
5 pageants were in a little room with the parents
6 and these little parades in Charlevoix were you
7 know, small town parades, everybody knew each
8 other, and we just kind of a fun thing for kids
9 to do. It was innocent.
10 We had falsely, I think, assumed
11 that Boulder was a small innocent town. We
12 used to go back to Atlanta and our friends would
13 talk about their security systems and you know
14 if you shoot the guy, be sure to get him in the
15 house, you know. And God, we don't talk about
16 this stuff in Boulder. It was just, you know,
17 being out of that environment and coming back to
18 it, it just was astounding to us. We thought we
19 were in safe little Boulder, nothing ever
20 happened in Boulder.