A. I wish I could have talked to her. I never talked to Melody Stanton.

Q. Did the Boulder Police Department consider her to be credible?

A. This collective Boulder Police Department, I don't know what their opinion was of her, but
certainly Detective Hartkopp interviewed her and whether or not he found her to be credible, you
would have to ask him. But apparently so, he never said anything to the contrary.

Q. In your scenario that Mr. Hoffman had you read into the record, your description of the death of
JonBenet Ramsey, do you include in that description as accurate that there was a scream as described
by Melody Stanton?

A. According to an ear witness, Melody Stanton.

Q. So the answer is yes?

A. If the question is, was there a scream and do I believe there was a scream that this witness
heard, yes.

She later said maybe she was thinking about another night - - or didn't hear it - - or

everyone I have spoken to EXCEPT Charlie Brennan believes that Melody changed her story because she wanted out of the situation.

I posted someting else on a wrong thread - - it certainly belongs here...

"Thomas depo 39 - did you investigate???"


Q. Did you ever seek to interview the Richardson twins who lived with Melody Stanton?

A. No.

Q. Why not?

A. Because I was unaware of these people.

Q. Did anybody in the Boulder Police Department make an attempt, to your knowledge, to interview
the two 30-year old twins, the Richardson twins, that lived with Melody Stanton?

A. Not that I'm aware of.

I believe those boys are the sons of Melody Stanton from a previous marriage.

I wonder if they heard anything that night - - if they know anything. I wonder what they would say underoath about that night - - or about their mother and the scream.

Theory supported, in part, by basement window facing street

By Charlie Brennan
Scripps Howard News Service

BOULDER— A key argument supporting a possible intruder in the JonBenét Ramsey case is a belief by
some investigators that she was killed in a basement boiler room.
This theory is supported, in part, by the existence of a basement window facing the street, outfitted with an
open air duct, the Denver Rocky Mountain News has learned. That air duct may explain how a neighbor
could have heard a scream the night the child died.
The boiler room theory is further buttressed, sources say, by the fact that remnants of the paint brush used
to fashion the fatal garrote were found just outside that room, which is adjacent to the wine cellar where her
body was found.
When grand jurors toured the house and grounds Oct. 29, several were seen studying the boiler room
window and its unsealed air duct from the outside.
Lou Smit, who recently resigned his position as investigator on the case for Boulder District Attorney Alex
Hunter, believes the boiler room theory, sources say, and thinks it argues against a family member's
involvement in the crime.
Smit declined to discuss his theories Friday. "I wish I could, but I really can't, at least until I testify before
the grand jury," he said.
Smit, a former El Paso County homicide detective who came out of retirement to work for Hunter on the
Ramsey case, resigned Sept. 20. He cited frustration with other Ramsey investigators' reluctance to
consider suspects outside the family.
"The case tells me there is substantial, credible evidence of an intruder and lack of evidence that the
parents are involved," Smit said in his resignation letter. But the 2˝-page letter did not detail his reasons
for suspecting an intruder.
Melody Stanton, a Ramsey neighbor at the time, told police she woke with a start not long after midnight
Dec. 26, 1996, to a frightening scream; her statement was first reported by the Globe supermarket weekly
nearly a year later. ABC's "20/20" reported that Stanton typically slept with her window slightly open.
John and Patsy Ramsey have told police they heard nothing unusual after putting JonBenét to bed around
10 p.m. on Dec. 25.
Some investigators have had trouble reconciling that statement with the neighbor's account of a scream.
Smit is among those, however, who think the basement air vent opening toward the street — and no longer
connected to anything in the boiler room — could have broadcast the scream toward houses across the
street without the same scream being audible in the parents' bedroom on the third floor.
A source close to the family said auditory tests performed by police during a second search of the home in
the summer of 1997 determined that sound travels more easily from the basement out to the street than it
does up through the home's four levels.
Sources say Smit thinks that if the scream emanated from the boiler room, it's likely where the murder
occurred and that Smit can't envision a family member selecting such a space to commit such a crime.
JonBenét was strangled, had a fractured skull from blunt trauma and had injuries consistent with sexual
molestation.
"You wouldn't have to take her downstairs if you lived in the house," said an investigator familiar with Smit's
thinking, who would talk only speaking on condition of anonymity. "If you were living in the house, you'd
sure choose another place besides that."
JonBenét's body was discovered in a windowless basement room next to the boiler room by her father
about seven hours after her mother called 911. She reported finding a 2-˝-page ransom note demanding
$118,000 for the child's safe return.
The child's parents are under suspicion but proclaim their innocence. The murder is under investigation by
a grand jury that convened in Boulder on Sept. 15.
Robert Pence, former director of the FBI office for the Rocky Mountain region, sees the logic in Smit's
reasoning. "I think that would be one good reason that would point to an outsider," he said. "A lot of these
are spur-of-the-moment-type things, a rage or argument, something that got triggered, and wouldn't
necessarily call for the person — whether it's a parent or siblings or whatever — to take the victim to an
out-of-the-way room. I think it would explode right where it happened."
Even if Smit is right about the murder taking place in the boiler room, Pence still can't completely accept
Smit's conclusion that such a scenario bolsters the intruder theory.
One reason is the ransom note, which Patsy Ramsey said she found on the bottom step of a back
staircase while heading down to the kitchen early in the morning.
"If it were an intruder, the thing that would be most inconsistent would be the note," Pence said. "If it's an
intruder, you're not going to leave the body and that note anywhere near the same crime scene. That just
increases the trail of evidence."
An investigator close to the case also sees Smit's theory as flawed because no physical evidence was
found in the boiler room.
And, the source said, if an outsider killed JonBenét in the boiler room, why take the time — after a scream
loud enough to wake a neighbor — to move her body to yet another room?
"If that scream is loud enough to be heard, then that intruder is gone, because he knows Mom and Dad are
upstairs," the police source said. "With this scream, if she (Stanton) in fact heard it, if in fact it happened,
why stay? You're out of here. Are you going to waste additional time in there? Nah."
November 9, 1998

http://web.dailycamera.com/extra/ramsey/1998/09jobene.html

Parents of slain girl not subpoenaed to testify

By Charlie Brennan
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

BOULDER -- The JonBenet Ramsey grand jury will hear from new witnesses
when it returns to work Thursday, according to a source close to the case.

And they're not John and Patsy Ramsey.

The parents of 6-year-old JonBenet, considered suspects in their child's
Christmas night 1996 slaying, still have not been subpoenaed to testify
before the grand jury probing her murder, the source said.

The Ramseys, who now live in Atlanta with their
12-year-old son, Burke, have steadfastly
maintained their innocence.

The grand jury's 18-month term expires Oct. 20.
Exactly who will testify is unclear.

Burke Ramsey is the only family member known
to have testified before the eight-man,
four-woman panel. His testimony came just prior
to the grand jury's May 25 meeting, which was
followed by a layoff lasting all summer.

The list of those not yet called as witnesses
contains another surprise.

A former executive at Access Graphics, the $1
billion Boulder computer software firm where John
Ramsey worked as president and chief executive
in 1996, said no one from that company has
appeared.

"I don't know anybody from Access who has been
called," said the executive who stays in touch with
past and present company officials.

A 21/2-page ransom note Patsy Ramsey said she
found in the house Dec. 26, 1996, when JonBenet
was discovered missing suggested a possible
business connection in the murder.

The note said the culprits represented "a small
foreign faction" who told John Ramsey "we respect
your business, but not the country that it serves."

Former FBI criminal profiler John Douglas, hired
by the Ramseys, also concluded the crime was
likely committed by someone outside the family,
and possibly by someone with a business-related
grudge against John Ramsey.

Scott Robinson, a Denver attorney who has
followed the case closely, said the fact that
apparently, few people -- if any -- from John
Ramsey's former business have testified, could be
telling.

"It means either the Boulder police have
exhausted, independently of the grand jury, every
slimly related lead, or the grand jury -- for
whatever reason -- has focused elsewhere in the
search for JonBenet's killer," said Robinson.

"The police, in general, have long had the
Ramseys as their principle and apparently sole
suspects. But even with that in mind, it would be
beneficial to any eventual prosecution to rule out
business jealousy or business-related anger as a
potential motivation for the murder of JonBenet."

Robinson said the fact that more witnesses are
scheduled to appear before the panel, which
resumes its meetings Thursday after a four-month
break, shoots down one popular theory.

"This suggests that the jury has not been spending
the last few weeks working out the bugs on a
report, in lieu of indictment -- which had been a
plausible explanation for the hiatus," said
Robinson, "and that they have not yet decided
what to do. They want to make sure that no voice
goes unheard before reaching a determination."

Those who have not yet appeared include former
Ramsey neighbor Melody Stanton. Stanton, who
has since moved out of Boulder, lived across the
street from the Ramseys and told police she heard
a child's scream not long after falling asleep
Christmas night.

Her comments to police about the scream have
been the subject of much analysis for what that
scream might say about the possible time of
death, and for what it might say about where, in
the Ramseys' expansive home, the killing might
have taken place.

Authorities have never specified a time of death in
the case. The Ramseys told police they put
JonBenet to bed shortly after arriving home from
a party shortly after 9:30 p.m. on Christmas
night.

Among those witnesses who might still be
scheduled could be some of the same case
investigators who passed through the courtroom
in the grand jury's first days last fall.

Former prosecutor Dave Heckenbach, who ran
grand juries for the Denver district attorney's
office from 1986 to 1992, pointed out that as
recently as early summer, some of those
detectives were still actively interviewing
witnesses and seeking additional evidence.

"If they've done a lot of work, between the last
time they met and now, the grand jury would
have to meet a few times -- or have one
megasession, depending on how much work the
police have done in the interim."

September 22, 1999

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Clearly Melody had not changed her mind at this time - - Shapiro, Coffman, Brennan and others would have known if she had - - it seems she was friendly enough with reporters.

THE SCREAM

Smit's argument: A scream reported by a neighbor could have come
from the basement without the parents' hearing it.

"Terrifying" scream: Neighbor Melody Stanton, who lives across the
street from the Ramseys, about 150 feet to the south, reported hearing
"the most terrifying child's scream I have ever heard" between midnight
and 2 a.m. She slept with her window partially open.

Noise path: Tests conducted by Smit
indicate noise from the wine cellar is heard
more easily from Stanton's bedroom than
from the Ramsey's third-floor bedroom
because the noise travels through a vent to
the outside and across the street. The
Ramsey house has no third-floor windows
on the same side as the vent, and there are
three carpeted, furnished floors between the basement and the third
floor, which muffle or block noise from the basement.

Concrete on steel: Stanton woke her husband at the sound of the
scream. He has reported hearing the sound of steel hit concrete shortly
afterward. This could be the sound of the metal grate hitting the cement
window well -- perhaps a sound created when an intruder fled through
the basement window.

Response: Thomas said a scream is audible from the Ramsey
bedroom. Stanton originally said she didn't hear anything. Later, she told
police she hadn't been truthful because she didn't want to get involved.
In one instance, Stanton said the scream might have been "negative
energy" from JonBenet. But a detective eliminated that from a report
because Stanton insisted the scream was audible and never returned to
the "negative energy" statement.

By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News
April 25, 2003

BOULDER - The latest developments in the JonBenet Ramsey murder
case continue to ripple through the legal community.

On March 31, U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes ruled that evidence
supported the theory that an intruder killed the 6-year-old girl. A week
later, Boulder district attorney Mary Keenan endorsed the judge's
finding.

Carnes issued her 93-page ruling when she dismissed a libel-slander
lawsuit brought against the Ramseys by Boulder journalist Chris Wolf.

The Ramseys had written a book naming Wolf as a suspect in their
daughter's 1996 murder, and Wolf contended that the couple showed
malice because they allegedly knew Patsy Ramsey was the guilty party.

Carnes said Wolf and his lawyer didn't prove that JonBenet was killed by
her mother.

"As a legal matter, if plaintiff cannot prove, by clear and convincing
evidence that defendants committed this crime, he cannot demonstrate
that their statement concerning his status as a suspect were (sic) made
with the requisite malice," Carnes ruled.

But Carnes' ruling was based only on the facts presented by the
Ramseys and their lawyer, L. Lin Wood, and Wolf and his lawyer, Darnay
Hoffman - and not on a comprehensive review of investigators'
40,000-plus pages of evidence.

"The facts that were provided to the court were, in many cases, not
consistent with the facts that were developed in the criminal investigation
because the civil litigants understandably didn't have the resources
available to them that the police department did," said a source close to
the case who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In fact, two "facts" in the first five pages of Carnes' ruling don't agree
with police investigators' findings.

• On the fourth page, the judge writes that on the night of the murder
both JonBenet and her older brother fell asleep on the 11-block drive
home from a Christmas party at the home of Fleet and Priscilla White.
But investigators don't believe JonBenet's brother fell asleep on that
short drive.

• On the fifth page, Carnes refers to a scream coming from the Ramsey
home purportedly heard by a neighbor across the street, near the
presumed time of the murder. But that neighbor, Melody Stanton, has
long since recanted her story about the scream.

Critics of the Carnes ruling point more often to the failure of Hoffman,
Wolf's lawyer, to effectively challenge or counter Wood's assertions on
behalf of the Ramseys.

Carnes' ruling reveals at least 16 occasions in which the judge indicates
that a fact alleged by the Ramseys and their lawyer goes virtually
unchallenged by Hoffman.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recanted to WHO? I understand she told Charlie Brennan that she was confused - - maybe it had been another night, not the night of the murder at all.

Frankly, I don't buy it.

She was talking about it right after the murder - - talking about it to neighbors, cops, reporters. Years later she says NOW, letme think..... maybe I don't know.....

I think she wanted out of the media circus.

I don't think she lied in 1996 or 1997 - - I think she lied much later.

I wonder what Luther has to say about all this.

I wonder if the twin adult sons who were there that night might shed some light on what happened there.

Maybe she recanted to the Ramsey family's own investigator, Ellis Armistead. I know you have your differences with him, but your opinion of him does not matter; what matters is what opinion was held of him by John and Patsy themselves, who were happy with him for three-and-a-half years. His opinion on Melody Stanton as of December 2001:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_912274,00.html

And he learned that much of what the public considered "evidence" in the case, was something less. For example, Armistead is unsurprised that former Ramsey neighbor Melody Stanton, who reported hearing a scream the night JonBenet died, now believes she heard it two nights before the murder -- if she heard one at all.

"The 'scream in the night' thing, I put it in the classification of a lot of this quote, unquote, other evidence," Armistead said. "It became more and more unreliable, as the case progressed."

Sounds to me like Brennan is the one telling Armistead that Melody changed her story and he said he wasn't surprised.

This case has died down tremendously in recent years.

I think most of the internet posters are jaded since we talk about it all the time. But to most people its a thing of the past.
Thats why it doesnt make sense to get out of the case nowadays.

Its hard for me to decide if shes telling the truth or not.
For her to say it may have been 'negative energy' from JonBenet makes me think shes a bit of a nutcase.

If she heard such a horrible scream why didnt she call 911, or at least go and investigate? Why didnt the husband hear the scream? Why didnt she hear the metal hit the cement?

Im interested if anyone knows their time-frame from when they heard the scream and then the metal/concrete sound.

It is obvious that something woke her up, and that she thought that something was a scream. Being asleep at the moment might make the event seem surrealistic afterwards, especially if one wants to disassociate themselves from the investigation
but her husband's recounting of events has never changed. That plus the fact that the air duct acts as a megaphone amplifying sounds in the direction of the Stanton house, and the probability of the murder taking place in the basement boiler room tell me that there probably was a scream that she heard.

I don't believe in "negative energy" and it is possible that she heard a scream from some other source than the Ramsey's house.

Aside from the scream question, Mr. Stanton did hear a metal striking concrete sound coming from the Ramsey house, and he wasn't asleep when he heard it. I think that is very significant.

On the other hand, I would expect someone entering or leaving thru the metal grate to be deliberate and careful not to make any noise....I wouldn't expect them to just drop the grate into place carelessly. Besides, I don't think this was a heavy cast iron grate (at least it doesn't appear to be) but a series of metal bars held together with metal rods. It would be much more manageable than a cast iron grate-not likely to get away from someone.

To some people that might seem nutty, but where I live people talk like that all the time. Sedona, Arizona "the spiritual capital of the world" (those are not my word BTW)

It's part of a New Age philosophy and to people who are into that it's not strange at all. Kind of like Christians who might say "God told me" or "I was healed by the Lord" or something like that.

Boulder is a lot like Sedona. A lot of ex-hippies moved to this area in the late 70's and it's pretty eclectic. I imagine people like Melody are pretty common there.

The scream story is strange. When I first read her account of it, it didn't seem credible. I can't find the source I read so I can point out exactly what it was about her story that bothered me. When I do, I'll post it. I wondered if she had made up the story so she could be part of the action, but her husbands story about the metal scraping sound tends to cooroborate her story, as that piece of information wasn't known at first.

I don't know that most people would call 911 after hearing a single scream in the middle of the night. Waking up from a single scream, she might even have thought she dreamed it or something. If the screams had continued she probably would have called police.