Evidence man

Persistence, keen eye have helped sleuth solve other killings

Todd Hartman, News Staff Writer

Published May 5, 2001 at midnight

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Retired detective Lou Smit had a different view of the JonBenet Ramsey killing even before he was hired to help with the case.

It was March 1997, three months after the slaying, and Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter was looking to add some investigative muscle. He wanted the longtime Colorado Springs homicide cop on his team. First though, Hunter asked for Smit's take on the now-infamous ransom note found in the Ramsey home.

"I told Alex, 'Look, I don't know if you're going to hire me, but I'll give you a freebie,' " Smit recounted. "Whoever wrote this note did not do it after the murder."

That would be the first of many times that Smit's intuition, refined over a career spanning three decades and more than 200 homicide cases, ran counter to that of Boulder police.

Boulder detectives believed strongly that Patsy Ramsey wrote the note in a panic after the 6-year-old girl was killed, sometime between the night of Dec. 25 and morning of Dec. 26, 1996. Smit believed there was no way that someone could have penned the clearly worded letter in the adrenaline-filled aftermath of a killingf. He also believed that its violent language could not have come from John or Patsy Ramsey.

Eighteen months and countless disagreements later, Smit parted ways with Boulder authorities, convinced that their early fixation on JonBenet's parents took the investigation the wrong way from "day one."

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Evidence pointed to an intruder, not the Ramseys, Smit believed, and Boulder authorities were eliminating some suspects too easily and ignoring others altogether.

Smit resigned his position at the Boulder District Attorney's office in September 1998 but vowed to continue the search for JonBenet's killer independently.

Since then, Smit, 66, has devoted thousands of hours of his own time to finding the killer, and pushing for the Boulder police to shift their focus.

In a home office in his small duplex, pictures of the girl hang on the doors of a supply cabinet. Boxes of material related to the case rest on shelves. His computer is filled with Ramsey-related material, including a growing list of information about possible suspects.

Smit said he works only for JonBenet -- not her parents, as some have claimed. He hasn't taken a nickel from the Ramseys, he said, and has turned away numerous offers to sell his story. "I could have made a fortune," he said.

Smit started his law enforcement career at the Colorado Springs police department in 1966. Later he worked for the El Paso County Coroner's Office, the district attorney's office as an investigator and the sheriff's office as captain of detectives.

Over the years, Smit gained a reputation as an "evidence man." He solved cases through meticulous organization of case files, keen attention to detail and a willingness to do the tedious work necessary, as well as a talent for building rapport with criminals.

Robert Russel, a former district attorney in El Paso County, recently filed a court affidavit on behalf of Smit, describing his work in the region as "near legendary" and calling him "the best police detective I have ever known."

Smit's track record includes catching the killer of Karen Grammer -- actor Kelsey Grammer's sister -- a 1975 case he cracked, in part, by his habit of driving by the crime scene every morning to sip his coffee, say a little prayer and hope he may notice something he missed before.

In this case, the scene was an alley. After two or three weeks of his morning visits, Smit was struck by the idea that the killer, instead of running out of the alley after the crime, went down the dead-end to an apartment complex. That seemingly minor notion led him to solving the case.

Reviewing the files of a 1982 case, he noticed a three-year-old note from a Florida police officer who said he had caught a man involved in a shopping-center murder case similar to the one Smit was reviewing in Colorado Springs. According to the letter, the man once lived in Colorado.

Smit ran a check, but the man had no Colorado criminal record. Just to be sure, Smit checked traffic offenses and hit pay dirt. Three days before the slaying, the man had received a traffic ticket on the west side of town, placing him near the scene of the crime.

After a little more snooping, Smit visited the suspect in Florida, broke the ice with some cigarettes, then bluffed. The man confessed.

In perhaps Smit's most famous case -- and one with similarities to JonBenet's -- he cracked the 1991 kidnapping and murder of 13-year-old Heather Dawn Church simply by taking another look at old evidence.

Studying the case three-and-a-half years later, Smit found two things: a crime scene photograph showing a window screen slightly out of alignment and a set of fingerprints taken off the window that had never been identified. Police had tried to match the prints, but Smit wanted to try again.

He had them plugged into additional databases. After searches through more than 90 local and state archives, police agencies in California and Louisiana showed matches. The fingerprints belonged to a man living just a half-mile away from the Church home.

Robert Charles Browne confessed that he killed Heather when she surprised him during a burglary. The conviction exonerated the father, Mike Church, who had been under suspicion in the case.

"Luck," Smit calls it.

Thorough police work, his colleagues say.

"Lou Smit's thinking today is the same as it was 25 years ago," Russel said. "His thought process is to go get all the little pieces -- and he has the patience to do it."

It was Smit's habit of driving by the crime scene every day that lead to criticism that he is too close to the Ramseys.

On June 6, 1997, three months into his work on the case, Smit did his daily drive to the Ramsey house to sit and think. This time, though, he bumped into the Ramseys themselves, who were staying with nearby neighbors.

INTERACTIVE POLL

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Smit and the couple waved to one another, and both parties pulled over. After some chatting, John asked Smit if he would pray with them. Smit suggested they do it inside his van. Smit said Ramsey's prayer was to the point: "I pray that someday this nightmare will end and we will find the killer of our daughter." Smit then wrote up a report of the encounter.

Several Boulder law enforcement officials and radio talk show critics have derided the prayer episode. They complain that Smit, deeply religious, let his faith cloud his judgment of JonBenet's parents, both devote Christians.

Smit laughs it off: "I've put plenty of Christians in jail." In a recent book on the JonBenet killing, Smit is even quoted as telling a colleague he'd follow the evidence "if it led to Jesus Christ."

The prayer with the Ramseys was sincere, Smit said, but it was also about opening lines of communication between police and the family. Smit said he was the first investigator on the case to attempt to get close to the Ramseys -- a technique that has worked time and again in Smit's career. Police hostility to suspects is a mistake, he said.

Instead, Smit said, you want to learn as much as you can about potential suspects. He is so good at building rapport, some of the criminals he's put away write him letters from prison. Smit shared beers in Hong Kong with a murder suspect and took another out to dinner before the man agreed to show him where he had killed a woman.

"I'll hug them, I'll kiss them, whatever it takes," Smit said.

Building rapport also can help a cop determine whether he's on the right track, Smit said. After getting to know the Ramseys, he is convinced they could not have killed their daughter. He describes them as loving parents with no history of mistreatment of their children. The brutality suffered by JonBenet came from someone who "thinks and acts like a criminal."

Through the course of the investigation, Smit grew increasingly worried that the Boulder police were spending the bulk of their resources building a case for Ramsey guilt.

He describes the Boulder detectives as good people but inexperienced in homicide investigations. One of the case's leading detectives, Steve Thomas, for example, had never before investigated a homicide. He eventually wrote a book accusing Patsy Ramsey of the killing.

When Boulder District Attorney Hunter decided to take the case to a grand jury, Smit resigned, saying he could not be part of the "persecution of innocent people."

"This case tells me there is substantial, credible evidence of an intruder and lack of evidence that the parents are involved," Smit wrote.

Later, Smit sought to testify before the grand jury. After prosecutors denied him, Smit took his battle to court, and won, testifying in March of 1999. The grand jury did not indict.

Later that month, Smit won a court-ordered stipulation allowing him to keep a copy of a computer Power Point presentation he had prepared detailing his findings.

He admits he's "obsessed," calling the case toughest he's ever undertaken.

Though retired, he continues to pursue it.

On a typical day now, he's up at 5 a.m. and at the YMCA by 5:30 a.m. to play racquetball and lift weights. He returns home to his wife Barbara, reads the paper, does a crossword and takes a nap.

After that, he often works the case. He sometimes works with Ollie Gray, a Ramsey-hired investigator who also lives in Colorado Springs. Many times, Smit is up until midnight, sometimes cruising the JonBenet Web sites to read the latest chatter on the case.

This isn't the first time Smit has gone public with evidence. In March of 2000, he granted interviews to Newsweek and local newspapers. He discussed the open basement window, a fresh print from a specific brand of boot, the garrote used to choke JonBenet and a handful of other clues.

Now, Smit has taken public almost the entire case for an intruder, withholding only some of evidence related to hair and fibers.

"I'm going to take a lot of criticism," Smit said. "But sometimes you have to take chances."

Besides putting pressure on Boulder police to look harder at the possibility of an intruder, Smit is trying to flush out new information. Maybe, he said, somebody will see something. Maybe someone will notice the knot, or garrote, and know someone who can make one. It's worth a shot, he said.

Smit said that in almost every case, he is drawn to the victim's shoes. Thoughts flash through his mind: When were they put on? Did the victim have any idea it would be the last time? That those laces never would be tied again?

JonBenet wasn't wearing shoes, but Smit believes that the question, which he implores the police and public to ask, still applies:

"Shoes, shoes, the victim's shoes," Smit wrote in his resignation letter to Alex Hunter, "who will stand in the victim's shoes?"

On his computer screen, he displays the answer. Along with a picture of JonBenet, the first slide of his intruder presentation bears the message:

"Standing in her shoes is 'our' responsibility."

Contact Todd Hartman at (303) 892-5048 or hartmant@RockyMountainNews.com.

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