Police Setting Up Interviews With Slain Girl’s Parents

BOULDER, Colo. — Police finished searching the posh home where a 6-year-old beauty queen was found strangled the day after Christmas, and they prepared to interview her parents for the first time.

“It’s simply a matter of scheduling. We are in the process of getting those interviews set up,” police spokesman Kelvin McNeill said Sunday.

John and Patricia Ramsey have not spoken with investigators since the body of their daughter, JonBenet, was found in the basement of their 15-room Tudor home, about eight hours after the discovery of a ransom note.

The Ramseys, who lived in Georgia until 1991, were in Atlanta last week for JonBenet’s funeral. They dropped out of sight soon after returning to Boulder on Friday, while their lawyers negotiated their police interviews.

“We have no comment on the whereabouts of the family,” McNeill said. “We are in the process of getting interviews set up. We expect the family to continue being cooperative.”

Both parents have hired attorneys, as well as a private investigator and a media consultant. When Patricia Ramsey said in a CNN interview last week that “there is a killer on the loose,” Boulder officials quickly denied it but refused to elaborate.

Police have released few details of the slaying, saying only that the former Little Miss Colorado died of asphyxiation.

However, Denver newspapers, citing unidentified sources, reported over the weekend that JonBenet’s killer fractured her skull before tightening a cord around her neck and that the paper used for the three-page ransom note appeared to have been torn from a tablet in the Ramsey home.

Officers completed a 10-day search of the house Saturday, and McNeill said detectives who traveled to Georgia were expected back in Boulder by late today.