Friday, February 28, 2020

The JonBenet Chronicles: Chapter 4: Burke Ramsey, JonBenet, Fleet White Jr. Father's Wild Parties And Bill McReynolds.

John borrowed money from Patsy's dad and with it, in the basement of their home, they launched "TecSpec" which sold computer equipment for other companies. Patsy handled the office and her mother helped out in sales. When neighbors complained about the delivery trucks, John rented office space at the airport so he could fly in his spare time.

John, with two other entrepreneurs, created MicroSouth, a distributor of computer instrumentation. The company was successful and linked with the California firm, Calcomp. They also created Advance Product Group in 1986, which Patsy's dad was hired to run.

APG then merged with CAD Distributors in Boulder and CAD Sources from New Jersey to form Access Graphics, which would primarily sell  Sun Microsystem components.
Also in 1986, Burke Ramsey was born. As a child he always was highly motivated and intelligent. He figured out at 5 months in his walker, how to unscrew every doorknob in his kitchen. His former nanny in Atlanta called him "Super Kid." He loved being read to.

In 1989,  Access Graphics merged with another firm. For more than a year, he commuted from Atlanta for his job as vice president of sales.
JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was born on Monday August 6th, 1990. It would turn out to be a sweltering day, but it would also turn out to be a joyous one for the Ramsey family. JonBenét was born at 1:36 a.m. at Northside hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. She weighed six pounds and nine ounces. This beautiful little girl with blonde hair and green eyes, that her mom would refer to as "Sugar", would never get to see past age 6. However, during those six years, her smile would brighten up the lives of everyone she'd meet.

JonBenet Ramsey rarely cried. "That baby was a little angel,'' said Shirley Brady, who worked as a housekeeper and baby sitter for the Ramseys in Atlanta. "She always woke up with a smile. You wouldn't know she was up because she hardly made any noise, but you would find her in her crib, laughing and cooing.''

Patsy Ramsey wanted her daughter to have a French name and be named for her husband, John Bennett -- thus, JonBenet.


JonBenét was funny and spunky. She wanted to be an Olympic ice skater when she grew up. She liked drawing suns and birds. Her favorite TV channels were Nickelodeon and the Discovery Channel. She loved Shirley Temple movies, sparkly things and homemade fruit rollups. JonBenet loved fruit, but her favorite food was macaroni and cheese. She hated tea, but loved to make lemonade with her half brother, John Andrew. 


As she got older, she started to turn into a bit of a tomboy. Despite having asthma, she always wanted to hike and play outside with her older brother Burke. She would also make sure Burke got his share of  attention. 

In 1991, John Ramsey seized control of the new company and relocated his family to Boulder. Among his new hires were his old friends Jeff Merrick and Jim Marino. John then sold Access to Lockheed Martin Corporation and continued to run it as president and C.E.O.  

In November 1991, the family move to Boulder, and a $500,000 brick 6,800-square-foot Tudor-style house in a quiet, upscale neighborhood on 15th Street. Over the next two years, Patsy remodeled and decorated her new home, spending $700,000. She was thrilled to have the house listed on the Boulder Christmas tour, as well as on the home tour. Visitors recall her greeting them at the door with JonBenet and Burke by her side, all of them in matching sweaters. Featured in JonBenet’s room were her trophies, sashes, and medals. One visitor said that in the huge master-bedroom suite Patsy’s Miss West Virginia dress and her Miss America competition sash were laid out on the bed.

Although the Ramsey family had been Presbyterians, they joined St. John’s Episcopal Church. John and Patsy dropped many of their friends and acquired new more influential ones.

Patsy did everything on a grand scale. She redecorated their vacation home in Charlevoix, on Lake Michigan. John got very angry and Patsy and threw his credit cards on his desk and said, "She’s gonna spend every last penny I make."
Elizabeth Pasch Ramsey was pleasant and soft spoken. She also was an airline stewardess. On January 8th, 1992, she and her boyfriend, Matthew Derrington, 22, died when his BMW collided with a bakery truck near Chicago during bad weather. The couple was on their way to the airport with Derrington in the driver's seat. Derrington sped up when going through an intersection in Illinois and lost control sliding into the truck.The other driver was not cited. Elizabeth Ramsey died of massive internal injuries.

After JonBenet died, police took an unusual interest in what had happened to Elizabeth. Police reviewed the autopsy report. They said that they were following up “on any and all leads in the Ramsey investigation.” The autopsy review, though, suggests just how much the police may have considered the Ramsey family as suspects.

John bought a plane and stenciled Beth's name on the cabin. When his cataracts got really bad, he hired a pilot to fly his plane. He also had a boat that he named "Miss America."

Later in 1992, John's father died.

In June of 1993, Patsy was diagnosed stage 4 cancer. Patsy enrolled in an experimental treatment program at the National Cancer Institute. Shuttling every three weeks between Boulder and Bethesda, Md., she was given a powerful drug cocktail of cisplatin, Taxol and cyclophosphamide. She was ill for months, with Nedra looking after the children.

For JonBenet's fourth birthday she received her cherished puppy, Jaques, whom she loved playing fetch with. 

JonBenet went to High Peaks Elementary School, where academically she flourished. She earned high marks for identifying words, counting to 100 and recognizing patterns. She was a year ahead in math. Socially, she was praised by her teacher for being thoughtful, courteous, respectful and diligent.

JonBenet often spent kindergarten nap time trading secret hand signals and soft giggles with a little boy on the next mat. She received an "I caught you being good award" from her principal.

Patsy Ramsey began entering JonBenet in pageant after pageant. 

By age six, JonBenet had already won multiple pageant titles, thanks to her bouncy blonde hair, poised smile and glittery. costumes. The titles she held were: America's Royal Miss, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl, Little Miss Charlevoix Michigan, Little Miss Colorado, Little Miss Merry Christmas, Little Miss Sunburst, and National Tiny Miss Beauty. JonBenet's pageant costumes were always pink, probably because pink and purple were her favorite colors.

She first became excited about participating in pageants after seeing her mother on stage at a pageant reunion. JonBenet's first pageant was at Twin Peaks Mall in Denver. She sometimes gave away her prizes to pageant newcomers who hadn't won anything.

JonBenet appeared on the cover of the Babette's Talent and Gazette.

JonBenet loved singing. She received a Karaoke machine in 1994. She also was in the Boulder Philharmonic Choir. Besides singing, JonBenet could tap dance. She was in the local dance group the Amerikids. She could play the violin and the piano. The last piece she learned to play was a Japanese children's folk song called "Cuckoo".

JonBenet would go to Camp Sauba, where she won the award "Camper Of The Year." She was in the Daisy Troop 2349 Girl Scouts in Boulder.

In January of 1994, Burke hit JonBenet in the cheek with a golf club. 

In March of 1994, after months of chemotherapy and two surgeries, Patsy's cancer went into remission. Patsy saw this as a divine miracle. She became deeply religious, though she fretted that she might never see her children graduate or marry.

"I told you the good Lord won't let me die,'' Patsy Ramsey told Brady. "I want to live so I can raise my children.''

Allegedly JonBenet was not an easy child. Her family would talk about incorrigible she was but at the same time they talked about how she was so cute that eventually she'd be Miss America. What they didn't talk about was the was the fact that JonBenet was a chronic bed wetter. The only housework Patsy Ramsey ever did was to change and wash JonBenet’s sheets every day before their housekeeper, Linda Hoffmann-Pugh arrived for work. “There was a plastic sheet covering the mattress,” Hoffmann-Pugh explained. She also claimed that JonBenet wore Pull-Ups during the day. In the three years before the child’s death, Patsy took her to a pediatrician 30 times.

While John Ramsey became increasingly focused on his company’s skyrocketing growth, Patsy spent her energy on her daughter’s career and on charities and shopping. She organized several of the programs at her children’s schools and offered to underwrite her softball league, Moms Gone Bad, for its first two years. She developed a tight-knit circle of well-to-do mothers, including Priscilla White and Barbara Fernie.
Fleet and Priscilla White were very close family friends of the Ramseys in part because they had 2 children similar in age to Burke and JonBenet. They lived four minutes from the Ramsey house.

The Whites had left California because they felt the fast life around Newport Beach was a poor place to raise children. They had originally thought of moving to Aspen, where Fleet’s parents had a home and where Fleet and Priscilla and their children had spent considerable time.  Ultimately they settled in Boulder. The children from both families became instant friends and enjoyed frequent trips to and from each other’s houses, which they could accomplish on their own with complete freedom, via backyards or front sidewalks. 

Priscilla was a fun-loving California girl who liked to entertain and had a good sense of humor. She and Patsy quickly hit it off, and they enjoyed each other’s company. 

Fleet was an oil magnate. His father, Fleet White, Sr., was reported to have had a natural gas drilling company in California. He may have worked for his dad for a period of time before coming to Colorado.

Fleet was a very experienced sailor.

Fleet's father allegedly used to arrange wild parties involving sex and drugs.with celebrities like Goldie Hawn in California, and in Aspen, Colorado. A actual police report made by a woman with verifiable family ties to Fleet White claimed in great detail and credibility, that John Ramsey aka "Uncle Johnny" was the money man who managed and laundered the profits from the porn the ring produced using this woman, her siblings and cousins as the "talent". The woman produced therapy records to show she had talked about this ring well before the murder of JonBenet. Her therapist was harassed and threatened by members of her family. She claims her mother and little niece were present when JonBent was killed. Her niece is/was horrifically traumatized. The minute it was clear the woman had blown the whistle, her family hustled the niece out of the country.  

Barbara and John Fernie were close friends of the Ramsey family and lived only 23 minutes away. John Fernie was a developer.
Pamela Griffin also became a close friend of Patsy. Pamela sewed many of JonBenet’s costumes for her pagents and her 19-year-old daughter, Kristine, also a pageant winner, coached and baby-sat JonBenet. Pamela also was a former registered nurse.

Speaking of JonBenet and her pageants, her aunt, Pam Paugh, claimed that JonBent loved them. "JonBenet would have done a pageant every day if Patsy had let her, but Patsy said no: ‘Church comes first on Sunday, and the other days we’ll do pageants or whatever,’"  said Pam.

One of JonBenet's former nannies disagreed. “She would say to me, ‘I don’t want to walk down the runway. It scares me.’ She liked to perform but didn’t want to have to compete.” 

Some pageant moms claimed that JonBenet seemed to be enjoying herself. Others say they had glimpses of a strain on the child. 
One often-told story took place at Pasta Jay’s, a restaurant run by the Ramseys’ close friend Jay Elowsky. According to one version: “It must have been some kind of dress-up affair or pageantry thing, because JonBenet was all dressed up with makeup and a gown. She got cold and went up to her mother and said, ‘Mommy, I’d like to wear my jacket. I’m cold.’ And Patsy said firmly, ‘Not now, honey, you’re still on display.’ ”

Jay Elowsky was also a business partner of John Ramsey. John was an investor in Jay's restaurant. Jay got himself in hot water after JonBenet's death. In 1997, Jay threatened three men with a baseball bat — men he believed were reporters looking for the Ramsey family, who had been in hiding since JonBenét's murder. The restaurant owner had a loaded gun in his vehicle, although he never displayed it.
Originally booked on suspicion of felony menacing and unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon, Elowsky was allowed to plead guilty to a single charge of misdemeanor menacing in a plea agreement with the district attorney`s office.

A year later, Jay was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence while still on probation for the 1997 incident. But he was not charged with violating his probation.

Jay introduced to John Ramsey to Mike Glynn, a former divinity student, in 1991, when he was the recruiting coordinator for the University of Colorado’s football team. He needed someone to donate computer equipment to the school. John came through with the computers and in time offered Glynn, who spoke several languages, a position on the international side of his company. With daughters close in age, the Glynns and the Ramseys often socialized. “The family was almost make-believe. Too perfect. It was like Ozzie and Harriet came to Boulder,” said Glynn. “But John could get really angry. I saw this on a few occasions involving business. Shouting and threatening. His eyes bulging like you cannot believe. It seemed like Jekyll and Hyde.”

Mike Glynn quit Access for job at CompuWare in Tucson, Arizona in 1996 to be closer to his wife's ailing mother

In October of 1994, JonBenet went to a plastic surgeon to remove the scar for the golf club incident.

On December 3rd, 1994, Historic Homes For The Holidays Tour features the Ramsey house. Patsy had started in September preparing her home. 14 maids scrubbed the house and a team of decorators were given a open check book. The basement was turned into headquarters for the guides. 1500 to 2000 people walked through the house. Ten volunteers manned the house every hour.


Lockheed Corporation began merging with Martin Marietta in 1994 but technically the merge wasn't completed until March of 1995. Lockheed Martin, as it was called after the merge, is an American global aerospace, defense, security and advanced technologies company with world wide interests. It is the world's largest defense contractor. Lockheed Martin had special security measures in the event that any directors or members of the family are taken hostage or attacked in some way in order to ransom the company. It is called SOP, which stands for Security Operations Procedures. They also had an established protocol with the FBI to respond to any threat to an executive in the company or a member of the family, especially if there is an indication of foreign terrorism.

Boulder architect J. Nold Midyette (the father of Alex Midyette, who was found guilty of criminally negligent child abuse of his infant son) helped build an expanded headquarters. He did business with Access Graphics, as did Root Group, another reseller in Boulder; says that Access represented "Sun Microsystems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif." as well as "Silicon Graphics Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., and Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif."; notes that Calcomp of Anaheim CA, which became a minority investor in Access Graphics after it formed from the merger, was a Lockheed subsidiary, and Lockheed subsequently bought all of Access in 1991.

The rumor is Access Graphics was working with the Department of Defense, Lockheed, Unisys and the University of Colorado Boulder on some highly secretive technology used to process satellite imagery.  Back in the late 80's and early 90's putting together imagery like that was still a time consuming task that required skilled technicians and most of the images were still on photographic paper. It is believed Access Graphics was deeply involved in developing software that digitized and stitched together large amounts of satellite imagery; and that this imagery had significant military applications.

The University of Colorado Boulder is home to the US National Satellite Land Remote Sensing Data Archive, the National data node for access to state and national agency data sets, the USGS DRGs Digital Raster Graphics, rumored Area 51 replacement Aurora etc. Combinations of high altitude and thermal imagery were being deployed to help locate burning oil wells out in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert.

In October of 1994, JonBenet went to a plastic surgeon to remove the scar for the golf club incident.

On December 3rd, 1994, Historic Homes For The Holidays Tour features the Ramsey house. Patsy had started in September preparing her home. 14 maids scrubbed the house and a team of decorators were given a open check book. The basement was turned into headquarters for the guides. 1500 to 2000 people walked through the house. Ten volunteers manned the house every hour.

In April of 1995, JonBenet wins the Colorado All Stars Christmas Pagent.

Patsy is interviewed by Boulder Women's Magazine.

In October of 1995, JonBenet won Little Miss Colorado Sunburst.
John Ramsey won the "Entrepeneur of Distinction" Award.
John appeared in Boulder County Business Report.
At his first party in the Ramsey home in 1995, Bill McReynolds said he was instantly struck by JonBenet’s quiet smile and her “pensive, almost retiring” ways. He saw within her something he described as an angelic glow. 

JonBenet handed McReynolds a vial of gold glitter as he was leaving. No child had ever given him a gift while playing Santa.

McReynolds was born in Donna, Texas, in 1930, and received his degree in journalism from the University of Texas. After a stint in the Army, McReynolds returned to his Alma mater and taught for five years before moving to Minneapolis to attend the University of Minnesota. He earned his doctorate in American Studies and was hired by CU's journalism department in 1968. McReynolds and his wife spent the next 30 years in Boulder, raising three children. After his retirement from CU in 1992, the couple moved to Rollinsville. That is when McReynolds' fascination with Santa Claus began, said his wife. 

He played Santa Clause at several Ramsey parties.

JonBenet's nickname for Bill McReynolds was "Old Sam".

McReynolds and his wife, Janet, were also neighbors of the Ramsey family. 

Janet is a playwright and a film buff. She wrote a play called "Hey Rube" 20 years prior before JonBenet's death. The play is about a child was abused and tortured in a basement.

The McReynolds' 9-year-old daughter was reportedly abducted on Dec. 26, the same day JonBenét was found dead, only years prior in the 1970's.


One of Bill and Jane's sons, Jesse McReynolds, was living in their basement during Christmas time.

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