Slow Train Coming

3 Updated: April, 2001

Background: After grand jurors were chosen in April 1998, Boulder DA Alex Hunter and his staff looked at their collective murder trial experience (none within the last five years, and little prior) and decided they needed outside help. Hunter hired Michael Kane as special prosecutor in May.

Gov. Roy Romer, who has been pressured to replace Hunter with a special prosecutor by former Boulder Police Department Detective Steve Thomas in August 1988, instead urged him to secure even more outside help.

Hunter reportedly contacted the US Attorney Henry Solano to request that US Prosecutor Al LaCabe be assigned to the case. Solano, who had been appointed to his position after being selected as a finalist by John Ramsey's attorney, Hal Haddon, is said to have nixed the idea, saying that state prosecutors should be involved, not federal prosecutors. On September 4, 1998, Hunter named state prosecutors Mitchell Morrissey and Bruce Levin as special deputy prosecutors. Both have extensive experience trying high-profile murder cases.

Boulder prosecutors Pete Hofstrom and Laurence "Trip" DeMuth, who had previously assisted Hunter on the case have now resumed their regular duties. DeMuth will continue to advise on the case.


	Alex Hunter: Boulder County District Attorney: Hunter, 61, has served as Boulder County's chief prosecutor for 25 years. He was unopposed in the last seven elections. The son of two alcoholics, Hunter was raised in a New York City suburb. He attended the University of Colorado school of law and worked as an assistant district attorney before being elected to his current position as a Democrat in 1973. Hunter has been besieged by conflict with the Boulder police department in the Ramsey case. His record of plea-bargaining with defendants and letting them off with light sentences has come back to haunt him, as well as his perceived failure to prosecute cases he sees as not guaranteed winners in the courtroom. His fourth wife is a gynecologist. On March 9, 2000, Hunter announced he would not seek reelection and would retire at the end of the current term. Hunter said his future plans include spending time with family, doing legal work with his son, Kip Hunter, and giving speeches.

	Michael Kane: Special Prosecutor in the JonBenét Ramsey grand jury. Hunter tapped Kane, 46, in May. He was a prosecutor in the Denver District Attorney's Office from 1979 to 1986, and has worked for the U.S. Justice Department and the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office. He was working as deputy secretary for enforcement in the Pennsylvania Revenue Department when Hunter recruited him. On August 28, 2000, Kane was part of a seven-member investigative team from Boulder being led by Police Chief Mark Beckner, who went to Atlanta, Georgia to question John and Patsy Ramsey. The police had not questioned the couple since June, 1998. It was said the questioning would focus on evidence developed over the past two years and statements the Ramseys made in their book, "The Death of Innocence".

	Bruce Levin: Special Deputy Boulder County District Attorney; Adams County's chief trial deputy, on loan to Hunter for duration of Ramsey grand jury presentation. Levin also has experience before a grand jury - including a grand jury looking into the unsolved murder of a little girl.

	Mitch Morrissey: Special Deputy Boulder County District Attorney; Chief Deputy Denver District Attorney, on loan for the Ramsey case presentation. Morrisey's great-grandfather was a US attorney under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Considered the office's DNA expert, he has been with the Denver district attorney's office since 1984.



	Steve Ainsworth: Boulder County Sheriff's Detective loaned to the DA's office early in the investigation for a few months to help with investigative needs relating to the grand jury. (The Boulder DA's office does not ordinarily employ investigators.) He was asked by prosecutors to look at the murder case from a defense standpoint. Sheriff George Epp turned down Hunter's July 1998 request for Ainsworth's renewed assistance, saying his own workload was too heavy.

	Laurence "Trip" DeMuth: Assistant to Chief Trial Deputy Pete Hofstrom who was initially assigned to the Ramsey case and was sent to the house the day the body was found. He has returned to regular duty since the appointment of special prosecutors, but will still be available to advise. Like his immediate superior, he has been friendly with the Ramsey defense team, and helped Ramsey attorney Bryan Morgan formulate a series of reward ads which ran in local newspapers six months after the murder. DeMuth, along with Hofstrom and Smit, were believers in the "intruder" theory.

	George Epp: Boulder County Sheriff in charge of security at the Boulder County Justice Center. He has worked with Hunter throughout the investigation, loaning deputies on occasion to help with the case.

	Tom Faure, MD: Boulder County Chief Medical Investigator.

	Tom Haney: Denver DA's office investigator supervisor loaned to the DA's office in June, 1998. He assisted with interviews of Patsy Ramsey by the DA's office late that month and left shortly afterwards.

	Pete Hofstrom: Chief Trial Deputy DA who has been taken off the Ramsey case and returned to regular duty since Levin and Morrissey's appointment. Initially in charge of the Ramsey case, Hunter told Vanity Fair in mid-1997: "He's [Hofstrom's] the one that's keeping me advised...He's what I consider to be the lead guy." He was present in the Ramsey home 12/26/96. Hofstrom, a former San Quentin prison guard, is an old friend of some of the Ramseys' attorneys, Bryan Morgan in particular. Both Morgan and Hofstrom's family attend the same Boulder church the Ramseys attended, and Hofstrom hosted at least one of Patsy's handwriting sample sessions in his home. He advocated turning over police records to the Ramseys and denied the BPD's requests to subpoena the Ramseys' credit card and other records. He was a believer in the "intruder" theory, along with DeMuth and Smit.

	Mary Keenan: Deputy DA who was present in the Ramsey house the day the body was found. Her specialty is sexual abuse and assault. Keenan ran for and was elected to the office of Boulder County District Attorney in November 2000. She officially took office on January 9, 2001. She is the first new Boulder County District Attorney since Alex Hunter took office in 1973.

	Suzanne Laurion: Spokesperson for Boulder DA's office. She was hired by Hunter to deal with the media and has been authorized to work 20 hours per week. Laurion doubles as a lecturer at the Colorado University School of Journalism and Mass Communications, but has taken a leave-of-absence fall semester 1998. She received her doctorate in 1993 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, specializing in media-effects research.

	Pete McGuire: Chief Deputy DA and supervisor of the county court division. Nicknamed "Brains" by Hunter, reflecting his methodical thinking and organizational skills, McGuire was present in the Ramsey house the day the body was found. He has been with the Boulder DA's office since 1978 and specializes in violent crimes.

	John E. Meyer, MD: Boulder County Coroner since 1987, Meyer performed the autopsy on JonBenét 12/27/98. He first examined the body at the scene at 8:20 pm 12/16/96, over seven hours after it had been discovered in the "wine cellar" of the Ramsey home.

	William Nagel: Chief Appellate Deputy District Attorney who has occasionally spoken for the DA's office regarding the case. In late May 1997, he became the first from that office who officially mentioned that there was the possibility of an intruder.

	Dan Shuler: Witness interview specialist with the Broomfield Police Dept. who interviewed Burke Ramsey for 6 hours in Atlanta 6/10-12/98. Has a MA in psychology and counseling and specializes in juvenile cases.

	Lou Smit: A retired Colorado Springs and El Paso County homicide investigator, he joined Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter's staff as a Ramsey case investigator and liaison between the DA and the BPD in March 1997. He cut back his hours to part time in the summer of 1998, and submitted his letter of resignation in late September 1998, initially citing his wife's illness as the reason. He publicly released his resignation letter September 26, claiming he had resigned because the Ramseys were innocent and that the BPD had ignored leads that an intruder was the perp. Smit vowed to aid the Ramseys in their quest for the real killer. He solved 90 percent of the 136 homicides he investigated in his career. Smit, a born-again Christian, appeared to bond with the Ramseys, who in turn have expressed their faith in him. He was characterized in Vanity Fair as a "delusional old man," and has been thought by many to be the main source of discord between the DA and the BPD. He was seen to be aligned with Hofstrom and DeMuth, who have also left the team.

	Bill Wise: Assistant District Attorney who often served as spokesman for the DA's office early in the case before Suzanne Laurion was hired. He has been a general partner since 1969 in a commercial complex in Boulder in which Hunter and William Gray (the Ramseys' civil attorney) are limited partners. Wise retired at the same time as Alex Hunter (January 2001).

These four district attorneys of neighboring counties were tapped by Hunter early in the case to serve as his advisors. Governor Romer consulted with them to decide how to respond to the August 6, 1998 letter by Steve Thomas requesting that Hunter be replaced by an independent prosecutor. All are Democrats.


	Bob Grant: Adams County District Attorney who has appeared on numerous talk shows. Grant, perhaps the most vocal member of the team, was recently involved in a domestic incident in which he called police to intervene in an altercation with his wife. Some questioned why no action was taken by police against either party.

	Jim Peters: District Attorney for Arapahoe County.

	Bill Ritter, Jr.: Denver District Attorney who was appointed Denver District Attorney by Governor Roy Romer on May 27, 1993. He was elected to a two-year term in November, 1994 and reelected to a four-year term in November, 1996.

	Dave Thomas: Jefferson County District Attorney.

Note: Some of these experts may have been initially consulted by the BPD and not the DA. However, they are included here as they are potential grand jury expert witnesses who would now be working with the prosecution team.

	Marilyn Van Derbur Atler: 1958 Miss America who has been an advocate for incest survivors since going public with the story of how her millionaire father abused her from the time she was 5. She was consulted early in the case about the dynamics of incest. Her past involvement in beauty pageants was an additional factor of interest to investigators.

	Deborah Chavez: Forensic chemist with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation who most likely has been consulted about the chemical breakdown of the ink on the ransom note. She is the wife of CU journalism professor Ray Chavez. Chavez testified before the grand jury October 29, 1998.

	Michael Doberson, MD: Arapahoe County Coroner who was asked by Ramsey case investigators in June 1997 if red marks on JonBenét Ramsey's body could have been caused by a stun gun. Doberson, who had cracked a murder case in Steamboat Springs by exhuming a body and determining that a stun gun was used, said the only way to know would be to test the tissue around the marks on the body, which would require exhumation. The possibility a stun gun was used in the murder was leaked to the media in December 1997.

	FBI's Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit: This Unit of the FBI, based in Quantico, Virginia is known as CASKU. Agents in this unit have advised both police and prosecutors in the case, as have FBI forensics people.

	Donald Foster: Linguistic expert from Vassar College who was hired to examine the text and format of the ransom note and writing samples of Patsy Ramsey. Although he determined Patsy Ramsey wrote the ransom note, Patsy's attorney, Patrick Furman, stated 9/26/98 that Furman had contacted Ramsey attorneys to offer his services in June 18, 1997, at which time, according to Furman, Foster said he believed Patsy did not write the note and offered his services to the Ramsey team. The Ramsey team did not hire him. Foster claims to have determined that Joe Klein authored Primary Colors, that Ted Kaczynski wrote the Unabomber Manifesto, and that a poem previously unattributed to Shakespeare was indeed written by him.

	Gary Gomez: Special Agent and spokesman for the Denver FBI office.

	George Herrera: CBI fingerprint expert. Herrera specializes in examining latent fingerprints lifted from crime scenes. He may have been asked to testify about prints found on the ransom note or somewhere else in the house. One such print has long stumped investigators. A palm print found somewhere in the Ramsey home remained, at least until earlier this year, unidentified. Police as late as February were taking palm prints during routine witness interviews in hopes of matching the mystery print. Herrera testified before the grand jury October 29, 1998.

	Richard Krugman: Expert in child abuse, Dean of CU's medical school since 1992. He is the former director of the C. Henry Kempe National Center for the Treatment and Prevention of Child Abuse. He has assisted in over 100 child homicides, and Hunter consulted him early in the case as to whether JonBenét was sexually abused. Krugman, relying on the autopsy records, couldn't say definitively. Krugman called child abuse a national emergency, and expressed hope the JonBenét Ramsey case would bring more attention to this problem.

	Robert Kupperman: Expert on both domestic and international terrorism. Kupperman is a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and was hired by Hunter to study the ransom note. He is a former chief scientist of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, worked in the White House Office of Emergency Preparedness from 1967 to 1972, and was on FEMA's advisory board until 1996. He has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from New York University and has taught at the University of Maryland and New York University.

	Henry Lee: Lee, director of the Connecticut State Police Forensic Laboratory and criminalist who was a key expert witness for OJ Simpson. He joined the prosecution team at Hunter's request in mid-February, 1997. Lee, who has worked on more than 10,000 criminal cases during his 35-year career, is considered by many criminologists to be the best crime-scene investigator in the country, if not the world.

	Peter Mang: CBI Inspector who has occasionally served as spokesperson about the case for the CBI.

	James J. McCann: Associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California at Davis Medical School. McCann is medical director of the Child Protection Center there and specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of child abuse and neglect and has established diagnostic benchmarks for evaluation of sexual abuse. He is expected to testify that JonBenét was molested prior to the night she was murdered.

	Barry Scheck: A professor at Yeshiva University's Cardozo School of Law and former member of the OJ Simpson and "Nanny" defense teams. Scheck specializes in DNA evidence and crime scene analysis. Hunter asked him to join the prosecution team in mid-February as a pre-emptive move as much as anything, so the Ramseys could not hire him. He has met with prosecutors in Boulder several times, but has downplayed his role in this case.

	Werner Spitz, MD: Former Chief Medical Examiner in Detroit and Professor of Pathology at Wayne State University's Medical School. It was announced in November 1997 that Hunter had asked him to consult in the Ramsey case. Spitz testified before congressional committees investigating the deaths President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. He also testified in the civil wrongful death suit against OJ Simpson, stating his opinion that the attack on the victims was very swift.

	Mark Stolorow: Chief of Operations for Cellmark Diagnostics, a private laboratory in Germantown, Maryland and the nation's largest private forensic lab. Cellmark did DNA testing for the BPD.

	John Van Tassel: Forensic knot specialist from Canada who was consulted about the garotte found around JonBenét's neck and the rope tied around her wrists. He is a corporal in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and one of the only knot specialists in the world.

	Chet Ubowski: CBI Handwriting Laboratory supervisor. A specialist in questioned documents, he examined the ransom note and handwriting samples of many potential suspects in the case. Ubowski determined that the ransom note came from Patsy's pad, which was kept in the home, and he also discovered the existence of the practice note in the same pad. His requests for historical samples of Patsy's writing were the basis of the search warrants for the Ramseys' Charlevoix, Michigan home. He excluded John and Burke as being the writers of the note, but was unable to exclude Patsy. He was also unable to say definitively that she wrote it. Ubowski testified before the grand jury October 15 and October 27, 1998.

	Carl Whiteside: Director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation at the time of the murder. Whiteside, retired July 1, 1999 after 28 years with the state crime unit. Bob Cantwell, chief of staff for the Colorado Department of Corrections and a 27-year veteran of the Denver Police Department, was appointed to succeed Whiteside as CBI director. Cantwell, once served as a bodyguard for Elvis Presley and was one of three Denver police officials who received a luxury car from Presley as a gift.

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