Investigator says JonBenet's grave was bugged

DENVER - One of the former lead investigators in the JonBenet Ramsey case claims Boulder detectives staked out the child's grave site seven months after her murder and planted a microphone and hidden camera, hoping to hear a confession.

Steve Thomas, who resigned from the case in 1998 after accusing District Attorney Alex Hunter of not being aggressive enough, revealed the move in a Time magazine story to be published today.

Thomas said John and Patsy Ramsey, who did not visit the grave during the stakeout, were the primary targets. They have denied involvement in their daughter's death.

Thomas said Boulder detectives flew to Atlanta, where the Ramseys moved after JonBenet's slaying, in August 1997 on the eve of what would have been her seventh birthday.

Investigators broke into St. James Episcopal Cemetery with the help of a Georgia state trooper who picked the lock, Thomas told the magazine.

The detectives planted a microphone and hidden camera a few feet from JonBenet's grave and listened in vain for three days from a nearby high school.

The only things they observed were curiosity seekers and a salesman selling a burial plot to an elderly couple.

Thomas recounts the graveyard stakeout in his new book "JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation," due out tomorrow.

According to the Time summary of the book, Thomas theorizes that Patsy Ramsey killed her daughter with a blow to the head in a late-night rage over the child's bed-wetting problem. Thomas alleges that she wrote the ransom note and carried JonBenet's body to a basement storeroom.

Thomas believes John Ramsey was asleep at the time but helped his wife cover up the crime, according to Time.

A phone call to Ramsey lawyer Hal Haddon was not returned yesterday.

Hunter said he is afraid the book could compromise the case.

"This guy is pecking at the bones of a poor little dead girl," he said. "It is blood money."