30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Monsters or monstrously unlucky?, June 22, 2000
This is a book about three distinct, yet intimately interrelated stories, told as one. First, there is the story of the murder of JonBenét Ramsey; second, the story of the investigation of that murder and the antagonism between the Boulder Police Department and the District Attorney's office; and third, the media coverage of these events.
I think Schiller does a workman-like job on all three, but for readers primarily interested in the story of the murder of JonBenét, this book, at about 800 pages, is a bit too much. For those interested in the politics and pecking order of the judicial system as practiced in Boulder, Colorado, this is probably a fascinating read from cover to cover. The story of the media is also interesting, but too narrowly focused on the tabloid coverage, especially the material about Jeff Shaprio, then working for the Globe. Stories from the local (Colorado) media are quoted liberally throughout the text, but the day-to-day inner workings of the local press is not detailed. Some of this material seems pasted in as though Schiller began to weary of his subject. The detail about the Colorado judicial system, often presented in footnotes at the bottom of pages, was legalistic and not really illuminating. Additionally the text is marred by typos of the kind not caught by spell checkers, including the wrong "their" near the bottom of page 385, an extraneous article on line 11, page 501, and most significantly, an "isn't" for an "is" on page 227. (Actually the sentence in that footnote doesn't make sense with either an "isn't" as written, or an "is" as seems indicated.)
On the plus side Schiller does an excellent job of making some of the players come to life including the very tricky Jeff Shapiro, the tabloid reporter who insinuated himself into the district attorney's offices, made friends with the Boulder police, joined Ramsey's church and even talked at length with John Ramsey on the phone (something Schiller was not able to do). The portrait of the sincere and tremendously dedicated Det. Steve Thomas was also good, as was that of retired detective Lou Smit, who befriended the Ramseys. Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter comes across primarily as a politician. I also appreciated the floor plan of the Ramsey house in Appendix A and the character list at the back of the book. The name index was also valuable, although I think there should have been a subject index as well.
Because I didn't know the details of the case before reading this book, for me, the most important parts are pages 497-499, where the FBI profilers present their extremely powerful arguments against the intruder theory, and pages 660-670 where there is a summation of the evidence gathered by the Boulder police.
Reading between the lines we can see that John Ramsey himself is a slightly "superior," somewhat cold and calculating man with some prejudice against the relatively liberal culture of Boulder, Colorado and against the poor (see page 690 where he argues that Bill McReynolds, who played "Santa Claus," should be a suspect partly because "he doesn't have two nickels to rub together"). Nonetheless one imagines that John Ramsey loved his daughter (and she loved him) so that it is untenable to think that he could have deliberately murdered her. Furthermore he has too much control of himself to have accidentally struck and killed her. On the other hand Patsy Ramsey comes across as someone with particularly shallow values predicated almost entirely on appearance who has a temper that she could very well lose. Her love for her daughter is less clear than her husband's, although her need for JonBenét to succeed and thereby reflect favorably upon herself is very strong. One imagines that she could punish her daughter very severely but outside of public scrutiny. One further imagines she would seek to cover up anything that would make her look bad. One very telling observation in the book (p. 13) is that the ransom note was the "War and Peace of ransom notes." The Patsy Ramsey seen in this book is a person who does everything in a flamboyant and overdone manner.
I don't think, however, that the evidence as presented here is strong enough to draw a definite conclusion about who killed JonBenét. One thing is clear: John and Patsy Ramsey are either monstrously unlucky, or they are monsters.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I HATE TO SAY "I TOLD YOU SO," BUT . . ., January 25, 2000
I first read "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town" when the hardback came out. When the grand jury reached its no-prosecution decision, my reaction was, sadly, "What took you so long?" The JonBenet case was a mess from the git-go and probably few people believe justice will ever be done, at least not the people who take the trouble to read Schiller's well researched and accurate book.
The crime scene was messed up before the little girl's body was even found and things just went spinning out of control. The Boulder police weren't flat-out incompetent, they were just out of their league dealing with this type of murder. Part of the trouble with this case--for us spectators, anyway--was that it was made for trash journalism more than for serious print. The Ramseys are an attractive couple who lived in a nice house in a wealthy neighborhood in a photogenic city and had an adorable little girl who left a legacy of charming videos--grist for TV and tabs. Tragically, children from less privileged backgrounds are killed everyday and we don't hear about it.
But Schiller, a serious journalist, had to contend with an overwhelming mass of details and confusing, often contradictory evidence, not to mention some real prima donna-type egos in the Boulder law-enforcement and legal community. I think he did a very good job in presenting all those details--but I don't deny that at times "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town" is rough going. It just doesn't have that neat, three-act structure of most true-crime accounts, and it probably never will. But you can read this book for an account of how well the system DOESN'T work and draw your own conclusions as to what might have happened that fateful holiday night in 1996.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Presents the Evidence But Raises Questions, April 20, 2000
Lawrence Schiller's "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town" dispassionately presents the evidence in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case and lets the reader decide. Most of the criticism of this voluminous book are that Schiller does not tell us who killed JonBenet-it does not end like some great detective novel with the killer finally revealed on the last page. Schiller, rightly I think, takes us through the contradictions and twists and turns of the case without imposing his point of view. He also shows us why it is so difficult to solve this complicated case. The author also reveals, sadly, how an indictment of the killer will probably never occur. This is illustrated by the conclusions of two different detectives-both with access to the same evidence. One firmly believes that the Ramseys are the culprits while the other passionately argues not only that the murderer was an intruder but that the Ramseys are innocent. While certainly there is a cloud of suspicion over the Ramseys, because some compelling evidence points to them, there is equally compelling evidence that points away from them.
I gave this book four stars because, while the book is exhaustive in its presentation of the evidence, I believe that too much time was spent on the politics of the investigation and the disputes between the District Attorney and the police-this part of the story is just not that interesting. Schiller would have had a tighter and more engrossing book if he had just focused on the evidence. Nonetheless, even at 814 pages, this is a compelling read. [Note: Schiller does the reader a great service by providing a "Character List" with the name and a brief description of each participant in the case. Consequently, if one person shows up several times, but separated by several hundred pages, you can immediately jog your memory as to who that person is.]
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