Bugging a Gravestone

Steve Thomas, a lead detective on the JonBenet case, chronicles the tragicomic investigation

Seven months after JonBenet Ramsey's murder, with the investigation going nowhere, police detectives in her hometown of Boulder, Colo., took an extraordinary gamble. They flew to Atlanta, Ga., where her parents had moved after the killing, and drove to the suburb where the children's beauty-pageant queen was buried. On the eve of what would have been her seventh birthday, Aug. 6, 1997, the investigators broke into St. James Episcopal Cemetery with the help of a Georgia state cop who picked the lock on the gate. The Boulder detectives then planted a hidden microphone and camera a few feet from JonBenet's resting...

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