Imagine seeing your name and picture on the front page of the newspaper because you are the prime suspect in a vicious killing.
You aren’t charged with the crime, but no matter how hard you try to explain that you didn’t do it, people don’t believe you.
That’s how Patsy Ramsey spent the last nine and a half years of her life until her death at age 49 nearly two months ago of ovarian cancer. Her then-6-year-old daughter, JonBenet, had been found dead — beaten and strangled — in the basement of their Boulder, Colo., home Dec. 26, 1996.
Until the arrest in Thailand last week of John Mark Karr, a 41-year-old teacher who confessed to killing the little beauty-pageant contestant, it looked as though Ramsey might remain under what Boulder police had termed an “umbrella of suspicion.”
It seems cruel for a newspaper to shine such a harsh spotlight on a grieving mother, but what if the police were right?
They had taken several samples of her handwriting to compare it with a ransom note found in the home before JonBenet’s body was discovered, and still they couldn’t rule her out as a suspect.
JonBenet’s death had piqued the interest of people nationwide. Could newspapers ignore the police investigators’ opinion that her mother was to blame?
Patsy Ramsey was not alone in that frustrating — no doubt infuriating — circumstance.
Do you remember Richard Jewell?
He came to public attention in 1996, too — first as the heroic security guard who alerted police to an abandoned knapsack at Centennial Olympic Park during the Olympic Games. Quickly, though, he became the prime suspect in the deaths of two people and the injury of 111 others after the bag exploded, sending nails and screws into a crowd at a late-night rock concert.
Like Patsy Ramsey, Jewell, 33, was never charged with that crime. Also like Ramsey, though, his name and picture for several months were front-page fare because someone in the Federal Bureau of Investigation leaked the agency’s suspicion to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
For months, Jewell lived under that cloud and was out of work. When a federal prosecutor finally exonerated him, Jewell said, “The FBI and the media almost destroyed me and my mother.”
As in the Ramsey case, there was pressure on law enforcement to get to the bottom of a high-profile case and competitive pressure on the news media to be first with any new developments in the investigation. That can be a volatile mix — one that, if not handled deftly, can leave an indelible stain.
Last month, on the 10th anniversary of the bombing, Jewell told The Associated Press, “I dare say more people know I was called a suspect than know I was the one who found the package and know I was cleared.”
He was honored at the Georgia Capitol earlier this month for saving lives by moving people out of range before the knapsack exploded.
Closer to home, Ed Humphrey, too, ended up front-page news.
A teenager with a scarred face in 1990, he found himself in the Brevard County Jail, charged with aggravated assault for pushing his 79-year-old grandmother, who then fell and hit her head on a fireplace mantle. Humphrey had stopped taking medication for his manic depression and had arrived at his Indialantic home late at night after driving from Gainesville, where he attended the University of Florida.
His bail, first set at $10,250, quickly rose to $1 million — but not because of the altercation with his grandmother.
In the several days before he arrived home, police in Gainesville had found the mutilated bodies of five college students. Humphrey’s bizarre behavior while he was not taking his medication had led neighbors and acquaintances in the panicked college town to alert law enforcement.
Just as in Boulder and Atlanta, police and prosecutors were desperate to find the madman loose in their city, and Humphrey looked like a good bet. The extraordinary bail and ensuing comments by police made clear to the news media that he was the prime suspect.
Jim Leusner, part of the Sentinel team that reported about those killings, remembered, “There was great competition [among the news media] to keep up.” The coverage remained on the front page for several days running, and much of it focused on Humphrey.
Humphrey, though, was not the killer.
Eventually, he was cleared and someone else convicted. He resumed taking his medication, worked his way through college and, in 2000, graduated from the University of Central Florida — in a ceremony Leusner covered.
“You don’t realize the power you have as a reporter,” Leusner said, reflecting on the whole experience. “With a couple of keystrokes, you can damage someone’s life. Ed Humphrey is the case that brought that home to me.”
This past week, as the district attorney in Boulder awaited the arrival from Thailand of John Mark Karr, John Ramsey, JonBenet’s father, cautioned against rushing to judgment.
Good advice.
The news media should keep you informed. They also should consider the consequences if, despite what those in law enforcement think, the suspect is innocent.
