Around my shoulder was a backpack-filled with a white nylon cord, a roll of black duct tape and a black metal Mag-Lite. The ingredients of the bag were all too familiar to any Boulder cop-the same types of items that may have been used in the murder of 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey on Dec. 25, 1996.

It was nearly midnight on a warm summer night, May 1998, and the moon was shining brightly above the Flatirons. I quietly stepped out of my Dodge Intrepid, where I had been listening to John Fogerty singing "The Midnight Special."

As an investigative reporter tracking the little girl's killer, I found it helpful to carry such items. I hoped seeing these items would help me think like the killer, enter his mindset and, little by little, understand his personality.

I had developed a cozy professional relationship with Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter, who allowed me routine access to his office and frequently confided in me his views of the case. The top prosecutor told me he was concerned that the police were too convinced of John and Patsy Ramsey's guilt, and, as a result, no one was chasing other leads. I had already spent a year investigating the Ramseys, working undercover in the family's church, interviewing their friends and even traveling to John Ramsey's hometown to piece together his childhood. I still had my suspicions about Patsy, the former Miss West Virginia, but based on many months of research, I wasn't convinced she could have committed this brutal and ritualistic killing.

But now, I felt I owed it to JonBenét to look elsewhere. My search for her killer led me to isolated cabins burrowed deep in some of Colorado's rockiest canyons, through dark alleyways and into the heart of greater Denver's seedy sexual underground. Little by little, my case files began to shine a light into a dark corner of society that I never knew existed.

My reasons for suspecting an intruder stemmed from a theory developed by Lou Smit, a former Colorado Springs detective. Smit was a veteran homicide investigator who had worked on more than 200 murders over a course of 30 years. Based on several conversations I had with Smit, I was able to piece together what he believed happened that Christmas night when JonBenét was murdered. In time, I drew a mental picture of what could have happened. The following account is speculation, bolstered by my conversations with Smit and other members of the law enforcement community:

While the Ramseys were out having dinner, an intruder stealthily entered their home after removing a grate from a basement window-well in their backyard, and slipped into their home. In my mind, the killer was a young, high-risk pedophile, a social outcast with a God complex who believed he had the divine right to take life. This wouldn't surprise me since the intruder strangled JonBenét Christmas night and used a ransom demand of $118,000. Police thought the amount might be related to Psalm 118, part of which reads: "bind the sacrifice with cords unto the horns of the altar." Within minutes, the intruder began familiarizing himself with the house, perusing books, files and opening closet doors and dresser drawers. He also left an open copy of the Holy Bible on John Ramsey's desk to Psalm 35, a passage about being falsely accused of a crime.

While waiting for the Ramseys to come home, he wrote the infamous three-page ransom note with a Sharpie pen on a pad he found in the house. Then, he patiently waited in a second-floor guest bedroom located above the garage, next to JonBenét's bedroom. When the family arrived home at 10 p.m., the intruder hid under the bed and waited for the family to go to sleep. Then, he entered JonBenet's bedroom and attacked her with a stun gun on her back, then carried her downstairs.

On the way downstairs, he left the three-page ransom note on the steps. Before going into the basement, the intruder noticed an alarm panel with its lights on. Knowing that the alarm could be wired to any door or window in the house except the one he'd already come through, he carried JonBenét back to the basement. Once there, he tried stuffing JonBenet into a large hard suitcase he found so he could take her away without anyone seeing her. However, the suitcase didn't fit through the window, and the intruder couldn't get through the grate while carrying the little girl in his arms. Knowing he couldn't take JonBenét with him without exiting from upstairs and risking the alarm sounding, the intruder decided to sexually molest her in the basement of her own home.

Using a package of white nylon cord and a roll of black duct tape he'd brought with him, the intruder silenced JonBenét and bound her in a ritualistic choke-chain-like garrote, which enabled him to suffocate her, if necessary. He then tied the white cord to the paintbrush handle he'd broken into three separate parts. The intruder then sexually penetrated the six-year old with the sharp end of the paintbrush handle.

Then, perhaps to satisfy his own bloodlust or simply silence her, the intruder stunned JonBenét on her face to incapacitate her and then strangled her. While struggling to breathe, JonBenét clawed at the rope, which explains the deep fingernail marks on her neck. Before she could get free, the intruder struck her across the head with an aluminum baseball bat which police found on the north side of the house. The killer then left the house through the basement window, perhaps using the suitcase as a step-up to the window well.

Police never found the roll of tape, the remainder of the cord or the sharp end of the paintbrush handle. They did, however, find an unidentified palm print on the door to the windowless room where JonBenét's body was discovered the next morning, as well as a boot-print from his climbing boots inside the room.

Despite her massive head wound, JonBenét barely bled. In addition, she had petechiae, indicating she had been strangled. Blood vessels underneath her eyes had ruptured, telling Smit she'd been unable to breathe at the time she was hit in the head. To Smit, this was proof the garrote had been around JonBenét's neck first, suggesting the murder had been premeditated. Since the FBI had no record on file of a parent ever killing a child with a garrote, Smit believed an intruder-a fantasy stalker-had committed the crime.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of an intruder was the foreign DNA commingled in her vaginal blood. It was a minuscule amount, but its "markers" matched those found in skin tissue under JonBenét's fingernails on both of her hands. Had JonBenét clawed her assailant while trying to break free from the garrote?

When Hunter first suggested I search for intruders, there were scant leads. Some involved former Access Graphics employees and others were just strange figures in the bizarre world of child pageantry. To date, the Boulder Police Department has considered 140 different people as possible suspects in the little girl's murder. With exception of the Ramsey children, says Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner, nobody has been formally cleared.

To acknowledge the fifth anniversary of JonBenét's death, the city distributed a press release with statistics about the $1.7 million investigation. It mentions 140 "possible suspects" who've been interviewed to date. What it doesn't convey are the macabre circumstances that link some of those 140 people to the investigation.

Investigating and interviewing some of the more intriguing people on that list, I learned some amazing things that changed the way I view life. What follows is a sampling of what I found:

The Prophet

Among the first "possible suspects" I studied was "The Prophet."

I had learned of The Prophet from an e-mail he sent his friends about how the Boulder police came to his apartment in 1997 to confiscate his Hi-Tec boots, a Sharpie marker and a stun gun-three things possibly used in JonBenét's murder.

The CU student came under investigation after police found his Internet site-a series of essays about sadomasochism, which included an instructional piece about Japanese bondage and how to tie complex knots.

On the website, known as "Wide Awake," The Prophet had posted a self-authored essay called "Barbie Doll, The Ultimate Fuck." His essay chronicled the sexual torture of Barbie in an extremely sadistic, vicious manner. When John Ramsey found JonBenét, the killer had left the girl's Barbie doll nightgown beside her.

Few people around town knew The Prophet. But during his college years, the manager of a local diner allowed him to hang a mobile of naked Barbie dolls from the restaurant's ceiling. As I was investigating The Prophet in the summer of 1998, I found a similar doll in the Ramsey's front yard, stuffed inside a tiny white sandal. I wondered if the shoe had once belonged to JonBenét. The blonde doll had a little white rope around her neck and a red spot marked on her gown by her vaginal area. I immediately called the police who collected the item into evidence.

In his book Mindhunter, former FBI profiler John Douglas-who was employed by the Ramsey's to profile the killer-described men who torture Barbie dolls and predicted they would eventually advance to torturing small, helpless girls.

The Prophet's Internet site featured strange graphics, with a variety of different kinds of hearts. Some hearts had spikes coming out of them. I recalled that when JonBenet's body was found, a small shape like a red heart had been drawn on her left hand.

So I decided to knock on The Prophet's apartment door in order to discuss these issues. A student told me the previous tenant moved to San Francisco. Today, The Prophet lives and works in Denver and remains among the ranks of the city's 140 "possible suspects."

The Chase Case

Four days shy of the first anniversary of JonBenet's death, CU student Susannah Chase was found dead on a Boulder sidewalk. She had been murdered while walking home from the Pearl Street Mall on Dec. 21, 1997. I knew from my conversations with John Ramsey that he suspected his daughter's murderer had also killed Chase, since they were both struck fatally in the head around Christmas time. In fact, Chase had been struck with an aluminum baseball bat.

Not long after the Chase murder, I would learn of a man known as "The Warrior"-an American Indian who had studied political science at the University of Colorado at the time of Chase's murder. The Warrior was a tall, violent young man who had nearly killed his mother in Virginia by striking her across the head with a shotgun. Police stumbled across The Warrior when someone filed ethnic intimidation charges against him for leaving a threatening, anti-Semitic message on an answering machine. "I will find you," The Warrior said. "Do you hear me? Do you understand me? I will steal your breath from you."

Police became concerned when they went into the bedroom of his apartment and found it wallpapered with hundreds of news clippings from the Chase and Ramsey murders.

A judge issued an order to have DNA samples taken from The Warrior. The order recounted information The Warrior's roommate had told investigators. The roommate told investigators that The Warrior had made a bumper sticker that stated: "I killed her." The roommate reportedly asked The Warrior, "Which one-Susannah Chase or JonBenét Ramsey?" The Warrior replied, "Either, or."

I was looking forward to meeting The Warrior when I received a disappointing call from one of my colleagues, Matt Sebastian-who was the lead police reporter for the Boulder Daily Camera. Sebastian, who himself was hot on the trail of The Warrior, told me that The Warrior had an air-tight alibi in the Chase case-namely, proof that he was out of state at the time of her death.

The Falcon

As suspicion surrounding The Warrior waned, I became aware of another CU student who was finding himself under the umbrella of suspicion surrounding JonBenét and Chase. Matthew Falcon came under scrutiny by police after he was arrested in connection with a vicious assault. He had asked a young woman for directions, then struck her across the head with a metal rod, causing her to stumble and fall. When she came to, Falcon apologized and asked the woman if she was OK. When the woman nodded and asked him the same question, Falcon shook his head. "No. Run while you still can," he warned her. Police quickly located the man and charged him with assault. He was considered a suspect in the Chase case, but was eventually cleared.

The Santa

I was sitting inside my Pearl Street apartment looking through my case files when I got a curious call from a Boulder detective asking me for information.

"Do you know where we could find Charles Kuralt?" he asked, referring to the revered TV journalist.

His question related to a new lead that had developed regarding Bill "Santa" McReynolds. Most in Boulder knew McReynolds-a white-bearded, pot-bellied former professor of journalism at CU who enjoyed playing Santa during his retirement.

McReynolds had played Santa at the Ramsey's Christmas parties in the past. Patsy had planned to cancel that year's Christmas party since she was exhausted from her recent 40th birthday bash at the Brown Palace Hotel. But that all changed after McReynolds told Patsy that Kuralt's crew had contacted him. Kuralt was doing a show on men who play Santa, and if Patsy was willing to have the party, he could produce Kuralt on her front doorstep.

Despite the fact that Patsy had the party on Dec. 23, Kuralt bowed out after getting tired of following McReynolds during the daytime. Later, the Ramseys wondered if McReynolds used the Kuralt story as a way to see JonBenét at the Christmas party.

McReynolds was linked to some other strange phenomena that landed him a prime spot under the umbrella of suspicion:

A friend of the Ramseys told police JonBenét had confided in her that Santa promised her a special visit after Christmas was over. His own 9-year-old daughter, Jill, had been kidnapped by a sexual predator on Dec. 26, 1974. Jill and her friend were eventually brought home. Jill had escaped violence, but her friend, who was sexually molested, had not. The assailant was never found. Janet McReynolds, a.k.a. Mrs. Claus, had written a play in 1976 called Hey Rube, about a girl adopted by foster parents who sexually abused her in a basement cellar. The play was a flop, but it didn't stop Boulder police from passing out copies to the Ramsey investigative team. McReynolds loved JonBenet. His fireplace was littered with photographs of her. When Newsweek reporter Dan Glick visited McReynolds at his Nederland home, McReynolds showed him a small wooden harp with the names of dead children carved on it's side. When McReynolds held the harp up, he shared a small secret with the veteran reporter, who later shared it with me.

"I've saved a small place right here for JonBenét's name," McReynolds told Glick.

Police were suspicious of McReynolds, but with no hard evidence the search continued. McReynolds, tired of public scrutiny about his connection to the Ramseys, fled Boulder with his wife and moved to Illinois.

The Wolf

One day, I got a tip with new information regarding a man I'd met months before-Chris Wolf.

I didn't know it at the time, but recent information indicates he may have known McReynolds while studying at the University of Colorado-despite claims by each man that they've never known each other. Chris Wolf was a local reporter whose girlfriend, Jacqueline Dilson, had accused him of killing both JonBenét Ramsey and Susannah Chase. I initially met with Wolf in the fall of 1997 to tell him what I had learned, although he had a difficult time accepting the fact his own girlfriend was the tipster who caused his most recent ordeals.

Despite his reputation for being somewhat aggressive and argumentative, I sensed a deep sadness within Wolf that often made me feel sorry for him.

He had traveled throughout the United States and Latin America, where he quickly bonded with poverty-stricken peasants and adopted an anti-imperialist political view on the world. Eventually, he moved to Boulder where he earned a master's degree in journalism at CU and went on to work as a mountain climbing instructor for Outward Bound, an outdoor confidence building program.

Later, Wolf worked at various local newspapers as a reporter, where he sometimes engaged in passionate arguments with his co-workers about politics. Wolf had a peculiar past-including a history of working as a male stripper and a 1992 indecent exposure charge to which he pleaded guilty. These facts were revealed by Wolf just recently during a deposition by lawyers for the Ramsey's, who are defending the couple against a libel suit filed by Wolf. Wolf is suing the Ramseys because they named him as prime suspect in their book The Death of Innocence.

Wolf became a surprising suspect in the JonBenét case when Dilson told police only two weeks after JonBenét's murder that Wolf had disappeared the night JonBenét was killed. She told police Wolf was wearing a tennis club-style sweatshirt, which said "Santa Barbara." Since the supposed foreign faction claiming responsibility for JonBenét's kidnapping in the ransom note identified itself as "SBTC," Dilson wondered if it stood for "Santa Barbara Tennis Club."

Dilson also claimed:

She saw a package of cord on his dresser. He owned mountain climbing boots. He often expressed hostile emotions when talking about John Ramsey and Access Graphics' parent company, Lockheed Martin, which he believed was responsible for exploiting third-world countries. She awoke in the early morning hours of Dec. 26 to find Wolf with mud on the Santa Barbara sweatshirt and a pair of black jeans. When she asked where he'd been, he grew angry with her.

There was one other interesting possible connection. Wolf worked as a reporter for the Boulder County Business Report at the time of JonBenét's murder. I learned that police had found an issue of the newspaper in the Ramsey house, which featured a story about John Ramsey. There was a heart drawn around Ramsey's picture and on the inside of the issue was a separate story, written by Wolf. It sounded like a strange coincidence, nothing more.

Nevertheless, I was intrigued enough to visit Dilson. She allowed me to read Wolf's journals. As I read about his journeys in El Salvador, I realized that Wolf's Marxist viewpoints were strikingly similar to the politics expressed in the ransom note.

Wolf had previously said that before JonBenet's murder, he'd never even heard of Ramsey's company, Access Graphics. But based on his reporting notes, he actually interviewed a company spokeswoman there several months before the murder took place. Had he simply forgotten? Perhaps. Reporters don't remember many of the stories they write, especially the softer features.

Later, when I was examining Wolf's boots, Dilson approached me.

"Can you feel it?" she asked me. I nodded slowly. I felt something-my heart was pounding, and little by little I began to feel like I was getting closer. Perhaps an intruder had killed JonBenet, but two important facts seemed to work in defense of Wolf:

Handwriting experts in New York said he was not the author of the ransom note. His climbing boots were Danner's, not Hi-Tec, like the print at the Ramsey house.

My suspicion of Wolf resurfaced briefly when his ex-roommate told me he had once tried to date Susannah Chase. He later told Boulder Weekly Editor Wayne Laugesen he was friends with Susannah Chase, and often visited the woman at a health food store where she worked as a clerk. When Boulder police asked me if I thought Wolf had killed Chase, I told them I didn't. Eventually, Wolf was cleared in the Chase murder after I convinced him to cooperate with authorities by giving them his DNA.

Boots

As I wrestled with my personal investigation of Wolf, I heard about "Boots." Once upon a time, Boots lived with a local woman and her 4-year-old blonde daughter, until the two had an explosive argument that led to their break-up. The woman accused the man of masturbating under his blanket while her daughter was sitting on his bed. Boots lived in a small shack at a local junkyard on Valmont Road, where he also worked.

On Feb. 13, 1997, DA Hunter had a press conference in order to send a message to JonBenet's unknown killer: "You will pay for what you have done, and we have no doubt this will happen." The next day, Valentine's Day, Boots was found dead in his apartment. Supposedly, he had killed himself with a shotgun. Immediately, he became another "possible suspect"-albeit a dead one-in the Ramsey murder.

But the theory that JonBenét's killer got spooked and took his life had a gaping hole in it: The suicide began to look like a murder. Boots was right-handed and the bullet's trajectory went from left to right. In addition, someone had placed a pillow in front of his chest before firing the gun, something professional killers do to muffle the noise of a gunshot. In addition, Boots was a former military sharpshooter and parachutist who had been trained to use an M16 Rifle and hand grenades. I wondered: If Boots was a sharpshooter, why the odd trajectory?

When police took crime scene photos at Boots' apartment, two items grabbed their attention. Not only was there a pair of Hi-Tec climbing boots by the dead man's feet, there was a stun gun beside his hand and a Taser in the distance. Supposedly, Boots also owned a baseball cap with the letters "SBTC" on it. Later, a friend of Boots found a videotape in the dead man's apartment that intrigued police. It was footage of a newscast from a couple of years before. The news story featured an unsolved case involving a kidnapped and murdered 6-year-old girl. Was the newscast a random recording left behind by someone else? Or was it a trophy of some kind?

Since the ransom note refers to at least two other kidnappers, Lou Smit believes it's possible more than one person was involved. It was strange that some of the exact items used in JonBenet's attack had been found next to his body. Had the second kidnapper killed his ex-partner hoping to get police detectives off his trail? If so, his ploy failed. Even though Smit and I found the Boots' story compelling, Boulder police weren't biting-at least not hard.

The Saint

"Thomas Aquinas" was a transient. A paranoid schizophrenic who collected his mail at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church on 14th Street, only a block from the Ramsey home. Oregon law enforcement authorities say he tried to strangle his mother, and he managed to make Oregon's registered sex offender list in 1991 for molesting a young girl. He later spent time in a mental health facility.

Eventually, the disturbed man found his way to Boulder and fell under suspicion after Boulder police learned he had broken into a building at CU. Looking through the transient's backpack, police found a stun gun and a poem he'd written about JonBenét and Susannah Chase.

Eventually, I learned that Aquinas and I had crossed paths at JonBenét's home during a one-year anniversary vigil for the girl. Photographs taken by private investigators working for the Ramseys revealed that Aquinas was in the front row, holding a folder sealed tightly with a strip of smooth, black duct tape. Authorities seem to have lost track of Aquinas, and at least one private investigator working on the case says he'd love to find the man. Kidnapping kits

Since I began working on JonBenét's murder five years ago, I've encountered many people who ask me the same thing when I espouse the intruder theory. "But who would try to kidnap a little girl like that?"

I tell them about Gary Dale Cox in Texas. I read about Cox, suspected serial child abductor in the Fort Worth area, in the Houston Chronicle. Cox, the newspaper reported, killed himself after police began closing in on him. In his trailer and car were an abundance of duct tape and cord as well as a stun gun. It dawned on me: The items used in JonBenét's murder could almost be considered a standard kit used by serial child kidnappers and pedophiles.

I often reflect on my conversations with Alex Hunter, whom I credit with having had the courage to resist public pressure to indict the Ramseys. Hunter knew there wasn't enough evidence to try the Ramseys or anyone else at the time. "I think there's more to this than we realize," Hunter once told me. "We owe it to that little girl to find the truth-no matter what it costs."

Like some police and private investigators, I have made a personal commitment to continue investigating this case until it is solved. And I firmly believe it will be solved. If I never know the identity of JonBenét's killer, I will know this as a result of my pursuit of him: People are strange. Society is strange. And truth is so much stranger than fiction.

Originally published in The Boulder Weekly - Dec. 20, 2001