Ramsey’s close friend and corporate attorney, who had been away snowshoeing, now arrived at the Fernies’ house. As he walked in, the family was kneeling in the living room praying with Rev. Hoverstock. Around 7:00 P . M . John Ramsey went for a walk with John Fernie and Dr. Francesco Beuf, JonBenét’s physician, who had brought over some medication for Patsy. When they returned a half hour later, Ramsey asked Bynum to represent him.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Ramsey told his friends over and over. Then, just after 8:00, he left alone to take a walk in the nearby foothills.
Earlier, at 7:00 P . M ., Detectives Fred Patterson and Greg Idler knocked on the door of the Ramseys’ housekeeper, Linda Hoffmann-Pugh. When she first saw the police, she thought something had happened to one of her children. They asked her to take a seat at the kitchen table, and then they took her husband, Merv, downstairs to the TV room. He wasn’t allowed to leave the room—even to get a beer—unless an officer accompanied him.
In the kitchen, the police told the housekeeper that JonBenét had been murdered. She screamed and couldn’t stop shaking. After Hoffmann-Pugh settled down, they asked her to print some words on a sheet of paper— Mr. Ramsey, attache, beheaded, and the number $118,000 —but Linda was too upset to write. Upon hearing the words, she assumed that JonBenét had been beheaded. She figured she and her husband were suspects.
The police spent three hours talking to the Pughs that night. Had Linda ever witnessed any signs of sexual abuse in the Ramsey household? Had JonBenét ever wet the bed? Had Linda seen semen, blood, or anything unusual on the child’s bed? On anyone else’s bed?
Hoffmann-Pugh confirmed for the police that the day after the Ramseys’ December 23 Christmas party, she had called Patsy to ask for $2,000 that she desperately needed to pay the rent.
In the basement TV room, Merv Pugh told the police that the previous night he had fallen asleep on the couch in front of the TV and that Linda had said she went to sleep upstairs in their room. This morning, Pugh said, he had been up at 5:00 A . M . and the family had left the house at about 10:00.
Linda Hoffmann-Pugh would know for sure she was a suspect when the police returned the next day to search her house and fingerprint her. At a local doctor’s office, she cried as the police yanked strands of hair from her head. As Linda gave saliva and blood samples, she wondered if JonBenét had been beheaded.
Meanwhile, Detective Jim Byfield had obtained a search warrant, and by 8:00 P . M . the police were allowed to begin searching the crime scene. Twenty minutes after they began, coroner John Meyer arrived. JonBenét’s body was still lying at the foot of the lighted Christmas tree in the living room, but now she was covered with a blanket and a Colorado Avalanche sweatshirt. Meyer and his chief investigator, Patricia Dunn, noted the ligature around the child’s neck and around one wrist. The cord around her neck had been pulled through a knot almost like a noose, and a broken, lacquered stick was tied to one end. They could also see a small abrasion or contusion on her right cheek, below her ear. Meyer had left the house by 8:30 P . M . Dunn stayed on to prepare the body for transport to the morgue.
At around 9:00 that evening, Patsy Ramsey lay down for a nap on an air mattress on the floor at the Fernies’ home, while Fleet White and John Ramsey drove to Denver International Airport to pick up Ramsey’s brother, Jeff, and his friend and broker, Rod Westmoreland. Patsy woke up an hour later. She discovered that her husband wasn’t there, and she began to sob, asking anyone near her, “Why did they do this? Why did they do this?” Patsy’s sisters, Pam and Polly, just in from Atlanta, arrived at the Fernies’ house to find Patsy still on the mattress on the floor. A few minutes later, John arrived with his brother and