Credit: Boulder City Police Department
A former lead detective on the JonBenét Ramsey murder case—and the person who interviewed JonBenét’s parents four months after the murder—has been disciplined for failing to investigate cases. However, not all parties involved agree the relatively minor reprimand doled out fits the seriousness of the misconduct.
Last week, the Boulder Police Department (Colorado) announced they disciplined Commander Thomas Trujillo on Nov. 1, along with four others within his chain of command for “officer misconduct.”
According to the press release from the Boulder Police, in July 2022, department officials became aware of cases assigned to Trujillo that had not been investigated or investigated fully between 2019 and the present.
Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold then brought the discovery to the Professional Standards Unit (PSU) and the Independent Police Monitor with allegations of several different rule/policy violations. Both bodies upheld the violations in August, paving the way for Herold to impose final disciplinary action.
She did that in November.
Trujillo received an involuntary transfer to another division and a three-day suspension without pay. He is also now on a performance improvement plan.
Meanwhile, Officer Kwame Williams was suspended for five days without pay, and Sergeant Brannon Winn was suspended for one day without pay. Commander Barry Hartkopp was given a one-year letter of reprimand, and Sergeant David Spraggs was allowed to retire.
The Police Oversight Panel disagreed with the minor disciplines handed down by Herold, so much so that a founding member resigned over the decision. Collectively, the panel recommended termination of all five officers.
According to Boulder Beat, Martha Wilson—who was appointed as one of the original nine panelists in January 2021—resigned in November over frustration with the group’s limitations in holding officers accountable. Multiple panelists told the local news outlet that there is a pattern of the panel’s recommendations being ignored. They believe the two-year old ordinance that created the civilian oversight group needs updating to give it more authority.
Wilson, specifically, wrote that she was “resign[ing] in protest” because the “key-sized sliver of information” the panel is allowed to share with the public “was reduced further to the size of a pin.”
While Harold says she regrets that the misconduct happened, she says Trujillo was “apparently overwhelmed” by his caseload. Accordingly, the police chief has helped rewrite the department’s investigations’ case management policy to provide for new workload standards, including limiting the number of cases a detective may handle.
John Andrew Ramsey, JonBenet’s half-brother who has been critical of the Boulder Police Department’s handling of his sister’s murder case, retweeted a link to the BPD press release—and added “Christmas came early. #jonbenetramsey #BoulderColorado”
In November 2022, BPD released an update on the JonBenet Ramsey case, saying they are talking with private DNA labs, as well as consulting with the Colorado Cold Case Review Team starting in 2023. The announcement came six months after John Ramsey reignited the conversation about his daughter’s murder when he was a speaker at CrimeCon 2022.
During a Q&A session on stage, John was asked “what is something you have done to help find JonBenet’s killer?” He answered that he has offered to pay for the testing of DNA evidence, but has been turned down. It’s this DNA evidence—which he says has never been tested before—that he wants transferred away from the Boulder police to an independent agency.
“Somehow we’ve got to force the police, or take it away from them, the ability to go ahead and test some of the crime scene evidence that was never tested for DNA,” John said. “Why that’s never been done and will never be done by the police baffles me.”
Subsequently, a petition was launched on change.org asking Colorado governor Jared Polis to place DNA testing decisions for the JonBenet Ramsey case in the hands of an agency that is not BPD. As of the morning of December 14, the petition has 29,525 signatures.