Officers, others change careers, residences but can't forget death of 6-year-old JonBenet

By Charlie Brennan
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

BOULDER -- The sight of Detective Ron Gosage directing traffic at the Boulder Creek Festival, wearing dress blues and a look of boredom, said it all: Life goes on.

With the JonBenet Ramsey grand jury nearing completion, Gosage remains a key player in the investigation -- his spot duty as a traffic cop on Memorial Day weekend notwithstanding.

But a cast of hundreds have come and gone from the Ramsey saga's stage in the 21/2 years since the 6-year-old was found beaten and strangled in her parents' basement.

Some players in the drama had their lives transformed.

There are the walking wounded -- and those who, although they may be happier in their current circumstances, say the Ramsey case is a shadow in their lives they can't completely shake.

As one investigator no longer working the case said: "You don't forget about it. You can never really forget about it."

As the case that has transfixed America winds down -- the grand jury is expected to reach its conclusion soon -- here's a look at some of the key players.

"I miss the hell out of police work."

No one who knows former Boulder police Detective Steve Thomas would be surprised to hear him say that.

Thomas, 37, ended 13 years as a police officer in dramatic fashion Aug. 6, 1998 -- the day JonBenet would have turned 8. He made public a lengthy resignation letter saying Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter's office had so compromised the investigation that he could no longer be part of it.

"It is with a heavy heart that I offer my resignation from the Boulder Police Department in protest of this continuing travesty," he wrote.

It was a tortuous decision for Thomas, who -- despite his youthful looks -- embodied many classic traits of an old-school, hard-nosed cop.

"It wasn't for the pay, or the hours, or the days off, that I was doing it," he said. "You find something you love doing; how many people are blessed to find that in life?

"But I consciously chose to leave it, and now that I'm doing something else, I've sort of closed that chapter and am moving on now."

Thomas and another former detective, Todd Sears -- a buddy with whom he passed through the police academy years ago -- have started their own business, Live Oak Construction, applying their hammers and nails to decks, remodelings, renovations and more. It's their busy time of year.

"The other thing I'm doing is knocking out the book," he said, referring to a project he has undertaken with veteran Boulder-area true-crime writer Don Davis, chronicling his experience with the Ramsey case. It is to be published by St. Martin's Press.

"That sort of occupies most of my time -- that, and just transitioning into civilian life."

Adjusting to his new life at times has been "difficult," said Thomas, who wouldn't rule out an eventual return to police work.

"I don't know," he said. "That's a possibility. We'll wait and see when all is said and done in this case -- if all is ever said and done in this case."

She was romantically linked -- by a tabloid -- to John Ramsey.

She opened her front door one evening to find a tabloid reporter armed with a camera.

She passed through a gantlet of badgering press and photographers at her office for weeks in the wake of JonBenet's murder.

Maybe that explains why Laurie Wagner would like her current whereabouts to be reported as: elsewhere.

"Just say, 'She has moved out of state,"' said Wagner, former spokeswoman for Access Graphics, where John Ramsey was president and chief executive officer at the time of his daughter's death.

Wagner, 44, took a stab at a radical career change, opening a gourmet pet food store in Arvada, but she closed it in February, victim of a bad location.

Now she's back in the high-tech field, she said. "Although I've moved into the Internet space. I have a senior executive-level position in marketing."

Wagner doesn't want to disclose her current employer.

"There was some concern, at one time, in terms of new employers, about whether I carried too much baggage for a company that has plans to go public. They overcame that, although that became a topic of discussion at one board of directors meeting.

"The concern was whether I would continue to be dragged into a public environment and associated (with the case) in a way that would in some way shed some kind of negative light on the firm that I joined."

To this day, said Wagner, she is sought out by people who believe she holds a key that might unlock one of the nation's most perplexing murder mysteries.

"I am still being contacted by people who want information, or who think I know something about what's happening, or who want me to reveal something that they think I know," Wagner said.

She was able to laugh off tabloid suggestions that she had a romantic relationship with John Ramsey. But public suspicion of criminal conduct on the part of Ramsey or his wife, Patsy, still offends her.

Wagner believes "absolutely and totally" that no member of the Ramsey family had a hand in JonBenet's slaying.

"I think it's a travesty that the person who did this has not been caught," she said. "The fact that someone has gotten away with this is horrifying."

Being as close to ground zero in the Ramsey case as she was, Wagner said, "continues to be part of my own way of dealing with troubles that I run into in my life; it puts things in perspective for me.

"Nothing is as bad as what the Ramseys have had to deal with."

But there's not a bright side, she said.

"For those people who are desperately trying to find some good out of a horrible situation, I see nothing of that.

"I see only tragedy and heartbreak out of this. I see nothing good that has come out of this."

Lou Smit, a legendary homicide investigator in El Paso County, came out of retirement in March 1997 to work on the Ramsey case for District Attorney Hunter.

Smit resigned somewhat noisily -- with a 21/2-page letter that leaked quickly to the media.

But while Thomas departed in protest over what he considered a hamstrung investigation, Smit left in answer to what he perceived to be a reckless railroading of the Ramseys.

That's not the only way in which Thomas and Smit differ.

Will Smit be writing a book on his 11/2 years in the Ramsey vortex?

"No way," he replied, without hesitating.

The 64-year-old Colorado Springs resident said he's enjoying his second try at retirement.

"I'm just basically taking care of my wife," said Smit, whose wife has a long-term illness. "I'm having a nice, quiet time with my wife and family."

But the more Smit talks, the more he reveals it's not so simple.

"I'm also working on kind of a software thing on crime-scene investigation," he said. "It's just basically a software package on how to organize crime files and case reports. My son's helping me with it a little bit."

Smit's also a fitness buff; one of his more vivid memories from the Ramsey case has nothing to do with the investigation. It's the time he and former Ramsey prosecutor Trip DeMuth worked as the support crew for a woman running in the grueling Leadville 100 ultra-marathon.

Now he keeps trim with a game of raquetball nearly every morning.

And Smit finally concedes he's targeting another goal in what passes for his "retirement."

"My whole goal is to find the killer of JonBenet," he said. "I hope that I can be part of that, someday."

Even for those who knew him, Tom Koby's new look is prompting double takes.

Koby, the former police chief who left Boulder city government in December, blended into the crowd on a recent sunny spring day along the Pearl Street Mall in his hiking boots, jeans and plaid long-sleeve shirt.

He's sporting a full salt-and-pepper beard, and his hair flows well over the back of his shirt collar.

There's little resemblance to the embattled but defiant man in a conservative suit who told a national television audience, while criticism rained upon him from all directions, "We've done it just right."

Koby served as Boulder's police chief from 1991 until mid-1998, earning high marks from some for his embrace of community policing. But rank-and-file officers voted no-confidence in his leadership.

Koby had planned to retire in December 1998. But the former acting city manager reassigned him to oversee special projects in the city manager's office in his last six months of employment.

Friends and former colleagues say Koby, 49, is happy and relaxed. It's his first year out of uniform since he joined the Houston Police Department in 1969.

Koby, reached at his new home outside Boulder County last week, repeated his long-standing vow not to talk to the media.

Financially secure, Koby and his wife are taking a year off to travel and relax, according to acquaintances. Before he left Boulder, Koby said he was unsure if he wanted to be a police chief again, although he said he'd had several offers from undisclosed cities.

An avid skier and bicyclist, Koby served as a weekly volunteer for Winter Park's disabled ski program during the past ski season. His lone semi-public appearance came in late March, when he participated in a panel on public policy and trust in the media at the University of Maryland.

Jeff Shapiro was a reporter for a supermarket weekly -- emphasis on was.

Shapiro, a former Globe reporter, "found religion," said University of Colorado journalism professor Michael Tracey. Now he wages war on the industry that employed him through nearly the first two years of the Ramsey saga.

Shapiro, 26, said he is working on a documentary film with Tracey and British film producer David Mills.

"It's about how tabloids are corrupting the judicial process in America, as well as violating the rights to privacy of various individuals, celebrities and private citizens," Shapiro said.

Time magazine hired Shapiro to work as a stringer, and he sold a free-lance cover story about the supermarket weeklies to Washington Monthly.

A resident of Boulder until the Ramsey case ends -- if it ends -- Shapiro also will assist Time in its coverage of the case.

Shapiro came under fire when it was revealed he had won the confidence of Hunter and Thomas, then played the prosecutors and police against one another to score front-page stories for the Globe.

"I would say that my only regret is that I should have been more cautious," Shapiro said.

"You have to be very careful not to become too involved in an investigation while you're covering it, and you have to remember that your sources are your sources and you should not regard them as personal friends -- which is something I think I did out of youth and naivete."

One of the most controversial figures in the early months of the investigation was Police Cmdr. John Eller, who headed the detective bureau.

He clashed with one of his top investigators, Sgt. Larry Mason, was threatened with a lawsuit, then resigned in February 1998 after the city paid Mason $10,000.

Eller moved back home to Florida. He didn't get the job as police chief in Key West.

Reached at his home in the Miami area, Eller was asked about his current activities.

"There's nothing that I want to talk to you about," Eller said quietly, "ever."

Staff writer Kevin McCullen contributed to this report.

June 6, 1999