Notebook
BY MELISSA AUGUST, HARRIET BAROVICK, VAL CASTRONOVO, MATTHEW COOPER, TAM GRAY, JEFFREY KLUGER, DANIEL LEVY, LINA LOFARO, DESA PHILADELPHIA AND CHRIS TAYLOR
Crime Did an Intruder Kill JonBenet Ramsey? Although no suspects other than JOHN and PATSY RAMSEY have been named in the 1996 murder of their daughter JonBenet, a key figure in the investigation remains convinced that the killer was a pedophile bent on kidnapping who broke into the Boulder, Colo., home and assaulted the six-year-old while her family slept.
LOU SMIT, a retired Colorado Springs homicide detective, worked on the case for 18 months before quitting in protest over the direction the probe was going. Smit formed another theory using key pieces of evidence. He believes the killer may have spotted JonBenet as she glided by in a convertible in Boulder's holiday Parade of Lights. On Christmas night, while the family was out, he entered through a basement window, roamed the house and penned a ransom note, using a legal pad and black Sharpie marker he found near the kitchen.
Around midnight, after the family's return, he slipped upstairs to JonBenet's room and, using a stun gun, temporarily immobilized her. He carried the youngster to the basement and sexually assaulted her while simultaneously choking her, apparently for the thrill, with a garrote--a favored tool of pedophiles, Smit says--fashioned from the handle of one of Patsy Ramsey's paintbrushes.
When JonBenet woke, tore the duct tape from her mouth and began screaming, Smit theorizes that the killer panicked and struck her, perhaps with a heavy flashlight. With no time to retrieve his note from upstairs, the killer broke a window and fled. Later, police found a scuff mark from what appeared to be a boot on the nearby wall as well as unidentified boot and palm prints.
From his experience with more than 200 murder and fantasy-stalker cases, Smit believes the killer intended to go to Mexico--that is why he demanded the odd sum of $118,000, which at the time was close to a million pesos, and some of it in $20 bills, for easy exchanging. "I believe the Ramseys are innocent," says Smit. "If it's an intruder, it's not the parents, and I think it's that simple." He adds, "The theory doesn't determine the evidence. The evidence should determine the theory."
Those were comforting words to JonBenet's family. JEFF RAMSEY, John's brother, told TIME, "We want to do whatever we can to find the killer, hopefully with the help of law-enforcement agencies."
BY RICHARD WOODBURY AND JEFFREY SHAPIRO/BOULDER
Follow-Up Air Force Disowns $32 Million T-3 Planes The Air Force last week grounded forever the training plane that killed three rookie pilots and their instructors at the Air Force Academy. The service spent $32 million on 110 of the prop-driven T-3 Fireflies in the early 1990s. Its goal: to put fledgling pilots into acrobatic maneuvers that would screen out pilots who would have later failed at more demanding--and costlier--jets.
But after the six deaths at the academy, from 1995 to 1997, the Air Force "temporarily suspended" the T-3 training program and spent $6 million trying to fix the plane's engine woes. Air Force headquarters ordered a thorough investigation into the T-3 following questions raised by TIME in January 1998. Defending the plane after the article ran, GENERAL LLOYD NEWTON, chief of Air Force training, pledged to fly one of the planes before another rookie pilot did.
On Oct. 1 Newton told top Air Force officials that the T-3 fixes wouldn't be completed for up to two years, and the brass ordered the program scrapped. "For me, obviously, it's too late," said Linda Fischer, whose son Dan died in the first T-3 accident. "But it's good to know that no one else at the academy will suffer because of that plane."
BY MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON
For Left-Handed Caddies Named Gatlin: Payday! Financing a higher education is easy if you are a lefty and attending Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pa. Thanks to a southpaw benefactor who felt discriminated against, junior and senior lefties can get up to $1,000 a year as long as they need help. The scholarship is just one in a long list of odd grants, some tied to a specific school but most for the college of your choice. Which ones do you qualify for?
--Up to $9,000 for those who served as caddie at a Golf Association of Philadelphia club
--$8,000 for those named Gatlin or Gatling who attend North Carolina State University
--$3,000 for the children of licensed harness-racing drivers
--$1,000 for grain millers and their dependents
--$800-$1,000 for descendants of worthy Confederate veterans
--$250-$1,000 for those who grew up as "freethinkers"
--$300-$400 for greater New Bedford, Mass., residents whose ancestors were seafarers
--$300 for eagle scouts at Johnson & Wales University
--$3,333-$10,000 from David Letterman for telecommunications students at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.
--Endowments for those named Hudson or Baxendale who attend Harvard
Numbers 1,021 Number of days between JonBenet Ramsey's murder and the inconclusive end of the grand jury probe
1,114 Number of days between President Clinton's signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and its rejection by the Senate
21 Years that lead paint has been banned
66% Proportion of American houses that still have lead paint in them
890,000 Number of children ages one to five who have "elevated" levels of lead in their blood
1 Lead-paint lawsuit filed by states
68 Percentage of doctors nationwide who have not exercised in the past year
5 Number of times doctors are more likely than computer programmers to have fast food for lunch; 57% of doctors eat it three times a week or more
1 Position of doctors in a survey to determine which profession would most like to see marijuana legalized
Sources: AP, Washington Post, New York Times, survey of 1,300 professionals
Special Treatyment NOT PLAYING BALL The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear weapons, which the Senate rejected last week, isn't the only international treaty that the U.S. has refused to sign or ratify. Here are some others:
TREATY Land Mine Ban Treaty GENERAL PURPOSE To ban the use, stockpiling, transfer and production of antipersonnel land mines OTHER HOLDOUTS Cuba, Finland, Turkey, China, Russia
TREATY International Criminal Court Treaty GENERAL PURPOSE To establish a court with jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes OTHER HOLDOUTS China, Iraq, Libya, Qatar, Yemen, Israel
TREATY Kyoto Protocol GENERAL PURPOSE To reduce greenhouse-gas emissions OTHER HOLDOUTS China, India, Mexico, Brazil
TREATY U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child GENERAL PURPOSE To protect children from human-rights violations OTHER HOLDOUTS Somalia
TREATY Convention on Biological Diversity GENERAL PURPOSE To protect threatened plant and animal species OTHER HOLDOUTS No developed nation
TREATY League of Nations GENERAL PURPOSE To maintain peace around the world OTHER HOLDOUTS Germany, Italy and Japan signed but later withdrew
Talk About a Full Moon Now any earth dweller can make his or her mark on our dusty satellite. For a mere $38, Applied Space Resources ) will etch one page of your text or photos on an "Eternity Disk," left, which will be left on the moon by Lunar Retriever 1 in 2002. With luck, future moongoers may be able to find it among all the other stuff left behind by 14 Soviet and 24 NASA spacecraft:
Six U.S. flags
Two golf balls hit by Alan Shepard
Leather-bound Bible
Six loads of garbage, mostly tools and bags
Five nuclear-powered experiments
Family photo left by Charles Duke
Rookie astronaut pin left by Alan Bean
Figurine commemorating astronauts who died on duty
Two plaques with Nixon's signature
Vial containing astronomer Eugene Shoemaker's ashes
Three lunar rovers
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