Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Shirley Brady
#1
"SHIRLEY BRADY letter"
Published in the Boulder Camera - January 10th, 1997

This is an awful way to start a new year after you get "Happy New Year" wishes from everyone.

I really don't feel happy and I wonder, how long will this sadness last? I never expected such a tragedy as little JonBenet's murder. Although I have not seen her since she was a baby, I have talked to her mother several times. I'll always remember the family as kind, good people; a soft-spoken father who is kind and loving, and his children are his life, and a beautiful mother who is always radiant. She's the only woman I've ever seen who comes to breakfast in her housecoat and looks like a ray of sunshine.

I was the housekeeper and nanny to their little son who was born while I was there. Both are devoted parents and I was crazy about Burke. I used to rock him to sleep; he loved Handel's Messiah's "Halleluiah Chorus." I have in my heart and mind so many happy memories of the whole family including grandparents and aunts. The oldest children had so much grace and class, so well behaved and refined.

When I saw that little coffin and the grieving parents, I was stunned. Who could do such a violent, crazy deed? It is plain insanity for anyone to even think a family member would have done it. After Mr. Ramsey's oldest daughter died, JonBenet was his salvation to go on from his sorrow, loosing his oldest.

Burke adored his little sister. When I babysat, I watched him playing with her when she woke up. He would tell me she woke up so I could change her. He always was a highly motivated, intelligent child. He figured out at 5 months in his walker, how to unscrew every doorknob in his kitchen. I used to call him "Super Kid." I took him to the piano and took his little finger to play: "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." He enjoyed it at least five minutes, which is a long time for a six months old. He loved for me to read to him. I could write a book about them, titled "The Love of One Family."

I was asked how Mr. Ramsey is taking all the tragedies in his life. I said he has a tremendous inner strength - he is like the Rock of Gibralter. He will never ever forget it, but he lets God comfort him in the belief, what He does, he accepts it. Mrs. Ramsey is the same. When you have two people loving each other like they do, nothing can come between them. They share tragedies together.

Finally, as I wrote in their card:

God gave you JonBenet for a little while. Now she is in heaven, in the sunshine of God's smile.

God bless all of you for supporting them.

SHIRLEY BRADY
Americus, Ga.
Reply
#2
10/6/1997 People quote:

Last Christmas afternoon, Shirley Brady spoke to Patsy by phone. "I could hear kids giggling in the background," she says. "And Patsy said, Oh, John is out there cleaning the sidewalk so JonBenet can try out her new bicycle."
Reply
#3
Poster Anderson (Wilton Towe) met Shirley Brady and posted this on the Internet

"Meeing Shirley Brady"
Posted by Anderson on 16:44:52 9/23/98

I met Shirley Brady, the Ramseys former nanny, yesterday. She is a multifacited woman with a nack for telling storytelling unlike anyone I've ever know. Shirley is friends with Mother and came up with her to visit an old friend here in Atlanta. (Her friend is another story all together)

Shirley had nothing but good things to say about the Ramseys. She spoke highly of John and his patience with Burke when he was a baby. (BUT she told me that I look like John when I smile. AKKK). She had baby pictures of Burke and a picture of Burke and JonBenét taken at her first Christmas when she was only 4 months old. JonBenet was a beautiful baby.

Shirley told of Patsy going into labor with JonBenet at 2am. All in all she has left an impression on me that I won't soon forget. The topper was hearing her play the piano and sing the song that she wrote for JonBenet after she was murdered.
Reply
#4
   
Reply
#5
More from Anderson:

" Shirley told me about Burke rubbing egg yolk all over John's shirt while he was eating breakfast before going to work. John was very calm about it, continued eating and when he was finished he put Burke down and went and changed shirts. The point of Shirley telling the story was to tell how John never got upset with the children. She didn't have anything bad to say about him. Of course she left them when JonBenét was 6 months old and before Patsy's bought with cancer so

AND another post

Shirley brought a beautiful ceramic hand painted angel that she made herself that I'm going to hang on the tree for her. She has JonBenét's name stenciled on the bottom of it. She didn't bring nuttin for me but I had my picture taken with her. As soon as I get them from Mother I'll see about posting it.
Reply
#6
Little girl gets lost in public image of beauty princess
By Cindy Brovsky
Denver Post Staff Writer

Oct. 15, 1999 - She is enshrined in the public's memory as a young, precocious blonde, prancing on the stage during child beauty pageants.

But JonBenet Ramsey was really a pretty typical 6-year-old girl, those who knew her say.

She liked kindergarten and was just starting to excel in math. She asked her family's landscaper questions about thorns on roses. She was eager for Santa Claus to visit on Christmas

"I can tell you that JonBenet was highly intelligent,'' Shirley Brady, a former Ramsey nanny, said Thursday. "Mrs. Ramsey taught her how to answer the phone when she was just 22 months old. I called once and she said, "Hello, who is this?' When I told her "Mrs. Brady,' she said in her tiny little voice, "Who is Mrs. Brady?' She remembered when I told her it was Nanny.''

Brady came to work for JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, when they were living in Atlanta in the late 1980s, before they moved to Boulder in 1991. She initially was hired when the couple's son, Burke, was born, and then she helped raise JonBenet until she was 6 months old.

"In the three years I was in that house, there was never an argument, never voices raised,'' Brady said.

That's why Brady, 72, says she never has wavered in her belief that the Ramseys are innocent - even though they have always been suspects in the girl's murder. On Wednesday, Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter announced that, after a year-long review of the case by a grand jury, no one would be charged in the case.

"I'd like to shake every one of the grand jurors' hands because they know this mother and father couldn't have hurt their child,'' Brady said. "Mrs. Ramsey survived cancer. Why would she kill the only little girl she would ever be able to have?''

In Lawrence Schiller's book "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town,'' friends are quoted saying that JonBenet's life was more than her beauty-pageant competitions.

Landscaper Brian Scott told Schiller how the little girl used to follow him around the family's Boulder yard asking numerous questions.

"Do roses know their thorns can hurt?'' she asked him one day.

Scott also remembers how JonBenet started to cry one day when she said she missed her father when he went on trips. But in the next minute, her playful side emerged.

"I saw JonBenet was scooping up the leaves from the top of the barrel and hurling them over her head into the wind,'' Scott recalled.

Barbara Kostanick's daughter attended school with JonBenet.

"I remember the first time I saw them together - they looked so cute playing on the monkey bars,'' she recalled in Schiller's book.

Pam Griffin, a seamstress who made JonBenet's pageant costumes, said the Ramseys had a loving relationship with their daughter.

"And then there was all the love in JonBenet's eyes when she spoke to her father,'' Griffin said. "Everything he said was important to her.''

Those kinds of memories don't surprise Brady. She said the Ramsey family were thoughtful of each other and very loving.

"The public never met the Ramseys, so they jump to these horrible conclusions that just aren't true,'' Brady said. "They were a loving family who never could have hurt each other. I know that is the truth.''
Reply
#7
from Steve Thomas' deposition

Q. Did you ever interview Shirley Brady, who had been a housekeeper for the Ramseys for almost
four years?
A. The name sounds familiar and if it's the person I'm thinking of who resided in Georgia I think
Harmer or Gosage conducted that interview.
Q. They would have prepared a report?
A. I would think so.
Q. Shirley Brady tells me that she got a phone call and about a five-minute interview and when she
said she made it pretty clear that the Ramseys weren't in any way the type of people that could be
involved in this, that the interview ended and she never heard from anybody again. Does that sound
like a thorough investigation if that's true?
A. It depends on what the detectives were doing. I don't know what they were doing.
Q. Well, you know if you have got to -- if you're spending a lot of time with Linda Hoffmann-Pugh
who had worked for them less than two years and only worked part time and you want to know all
about this family's background, a thorough investigation, wouldn't you believe, sir, from your experience
as a police officer that you're going to spend more than five minutes on the phone with someone who
was a housekeeper for three years?
A. For some reason in my mind, and I may be wrong, I don't think Mrs. Brady was ever in Colorado
with the family. There was apparently nothing that the detective who interviewed her felt was worth
more than their five minutes. You would have to ask them.
Q. So you had to be in Colorado with the family in order to be a significant witness as to their
background?
A. No, not to their background.
Q. That doesn't make any sense, does it?
A. No.
Q. I didn't think it did.
Reply
#8
'A future promise is gone'
Slain 6-year-old buried in Georgia
By PATRICIA J. MAYS
Associated Press

January 1, 1997

It was a dismal homecoming Tuesday for the family of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey as they mourned the child beauty queen in the church where she was baptized and where her parents were married.

Her funeral came five days after she was found strangled in the basement of her family's luxury home in Boulder.

Her casket was adorned with pink flowers, and a small white teddy bear sat next to it at Peachtree Presbyterian Church.

Her mother, veiled in black, wept during the funeral service.

"When a child is lost, one feels that a part of a future promise is gone," the Rev. W. Frank Harrington told mourners. "All of us who are parents fully expect that our children will live long after we are gone."

The family moved from Atlanta to Boulder in 1991. The girl's body was discovered Thursday in the family's Tudor-style home about eight hours after she was reported kidnapped.

Harrington made little mention of the girl's killing.

"I promise you today, she is safe and secure in the hands of the Lord," he said.

Many wept at the hymn "Jesus Loves Me."

JonBenet was buried at a cemetery in suburban Marietta. Her parents and other relatives placed yellow long-stemmed roses on her casket before it was lowered into the ground.

Shirley Brady of Americus, Ga., who worked as a nanny and baby sitter in Atlanta for JonBenet and her brother, Burke, 10, said the family was loving and close-knit.

"They had strong family ties. They never raised their voices, never argued," Brady said.

A Christmas letter from the Ramseys said JonBenet was enjoying kindergarten and had been moved ahead to first-grade math, Brady said.

The family had planned to celebrate Patsy Ramsey's birthday with a New Year's cruise, she said.
Reply
#9
By ALLI KRUPSKI
Camera Staff Writer

Sunday, January 26, 1997

At just 6, JonBenet Ramsey seemed to relish the public limelight, singing and dancing, winning national beauty pageants and attending an academic specialty school.

But the little girl's death has placed her in an entirely different spotlight. Her father, John, found her strangled in the wine cellar of the family's 15-room, ornately decorated home at 755 15th Street on Dec. 26. About eight hours earlier, her mother, Patsy, a former Miss West Virginia, reportedly found a ransom note demanding $118,000 and called police.

The mystery of her death - heightened by police investigators' silence, the family's behavior, and the national media scrutiny - has captivated the country.

Now, one month later, JonBenet's parents and brothers Burke, 9, and John Andrew, 20, remain in seclusion and have begun to reassemble their lives. Boulder police, however, still have not identified any suspects or formally interviewed the parents.

"I don't know if they'll talk to police or if things ever will be the same for them, but they're getting better," a family friend said. "John's going to go back to work, and Burke's back at school. I don't think they'll ever feel more normal again until the press starts to leave them alone."

The homicide has captured national attention: Reporters from TV networks and newspapers across the country file regular, if not daily, reports; Newsweek, People and several tabloids have featured the former Little Miss Colorado on their covers. Lately, the number of reporters and TV and radio personalities has dwindled.

"I think, at first, people were enthralled, but now people are sick of hearing about the whole thing," said Mark Oberman, a 37-year-old Boulder resident. "I just think the police need to hurry up and make an arrest, or at least tell us a little bit more about what's going on, so the rumors will just stop flying and the press will move on to another story."

Police have narrowed the field of suspects, but otherwise refuse to release new information or confirm details leaking out about the murder, such as where the killer strangled the girl or the time of death.

For example, the killer reportedly struck the beauty queen's head with a blunt object, such as a baseball bat or golf club, and sexually assaulted her. "She had bruises indicating something like that, and the person most likely used some type of instrument," a source close to the investigation said.

Police have questioned friends and relatives about the family.

"They asked me if the (John Ramsey's) first divorce ended because of child abuse and ... how the children acted when they were around their daddy," said Shirley Brady, the Ramseys' nanny in Atlanta from 1986 to 1989. "I told them there was no way the divorce could have ended because of child abuse and that the children loved being around their daddy. He was gentle and he adored them."

John and Patsy Ramsey appeared on CNN to discuss the crime. They also have hired a media consultant, two private investigators, two criminal defense attorneys, a former FBI criminal personality profiler and a hand writing analyst. As the so-called "Ramsey team" and authorities search for clues, the family continues to struggle with its grief.

"They're taking their first tentative steps to try to regain some normalcy to their lives," said Pat Korten, the Ramsey's media consultant. "They are getting out a little bit and getting support from friends ... because if they didn't, it would be almost impossible to cope."

John Ramsey, president of Boulder-based Access Graphics, temporarily stepped aside from his position but may return to his job this week, company spokeswoman Laurie Wagner said.

"He has not picked a specific date yet," she said.

Last week, several reporters staked out the business hoping for a glimpse of Ramsey, authorities said. "A reporter got into the back stairwell watching for John on Wednesday, but he was asked to leave," Wagner said.

Ramsey will not field questions as he walks into the building, she said.

"When he's back, as far as the business goes, everything will return to normal," Wagner said. "We might create an opportunity for employees to speak with him one on one to express their condolences rather than just bumping into him in the hallway."

Burke Ramsey recently returned to his fourth-grade class after officials counseled staff and students, Boulder Valley School District Superintendent Lydia Swize said.

Meanwhile, police await the results of tests of handwriting, blood and hair samples from the Ramseys, several friends and others.

"We receive them (from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation) as they are available," city spokesman Kelvin McNeill said. "The interview is a matter of scheduling, and the investigation is proceeding as planned." But McNeill's words did not comfort one Ramsey family friend.

"I know the police are working hard," he said. "I just wish they would arrest whatever monster did this, because there is a madman loose in Boulder. It just needs to be resolved, so the Ramseys can truly start to deal with their grief and have a private life again.
Reply
#10
. "Ramsey family bio' "
Posted by MaskedMan on Jan-22-00 at 02:32 PM (EST)
"SUCH GOOD PEOPLE"
Friends describe JonBenet's parents as kind, generous and devoted to their family
[excerpts]
by Lynn Bartels
Rocky Mountain News, Jan. 12, 1997
Shirley Bradley needed a job in the worst way.
The aging nanny was out of work and had nowhere to live. She turned in desperation to John and Patricia "Patsy'" Ramsey. And even though their first child wasn't due until four months later, Bradley started working for the Ramseys the next day.
It's that good-hearted generosity that makes it hard for friends of John and Patsy Ramsey to connect them with the horror discovered in the basement of their luxurious Boulder home the day after Christmas.
The body of JonBenet, their beautiful, precocious 6-year-old daughter, lay in a little-used room behind a door that had been jammed shut. The kindergarten beauty princess had been sexually violated and strangled. No one has been ruled out as a suspect, not even John and Patsy Ramsey.
And that riles their friends.
"I'm so heartsick," said Nancy Turner Lawton, who dated John Ramsey in high school and college. "He is a kind and a good man and for this to happen to him makes me sick."
John Ramsey's high school friends from Okemos, Mich., remember their classmate as extremely quiet. He brought his beautiful young wife, Patsy, to his 25-year high school reunion. Almost a decade later while having dinner with one of the groomsmen from his first marriage, Ramsey offered to pay for the 35-year reunion.
Lawton started dating Ramsey during their senior year in 1960-1961. She often spent weekends with the Ramsey family -- James "Jay" Ramsey, his wife, Mary Jane Bennett Ramsey, and sons John and Jeff -- at their summer cottage in Michigan.
She described them as a "reserved" family of modest means.
Ramsey's father passed his love of flying, boating and golfing to his oldest son...
After high school, John Ramsey attended Michigan State University, where Lawton eventually enrolled. They dated three and a half years before deciding to see other people.
One day in art class, Lawton mentioned the breakup, and classmate Lucinda "Cindy" Lou Pasch piped up.
"She said, 'I don't think you better say anything else. John asked me out this weekend,'" Lawton recalled. "It was just an unbelievable coincidence." Lawton cherishes the relationship she had with John Ramsey, with whom she has kept in touch. "He was a quality kind of person, and everything in my relationship with him proved that to be true," Lawton said. "He was a complete gentleman."
John Ramsey was president of Theta Chi fraternity. Cindy Lou Pasch was a Delta Gamma. They announced their engagement in December 1965.
They graduated the next June...

The family moved to Atlanta in 1973, where Ramsey had accepted a sales job with a California-based computer electronics engineering company.
John and Cindy Ramsey separated in 1977 and divorced the next year. Cindy Ramsey got the house, the 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass station wagon and custody of their children...
Friends say John Ramsey was single for at least a year before he saw a stunning woman enter an apartment complex in Atlanta. She was Patricia Ann Paugh, Miss West Virginia 1977, who won a talent award at the Miss American pageant for a dramatic reading she wrote herself.
"He ran (up) a flight of steps to try to see who she was, and she disappeared. But he eventually found her," Patsy Ramsey's mother, Nedra Paugh, told the Boulder Daily Camera. Ramsey married Paugh in 1980 at the Peachtree Presbyterian Church near Atlanta. He was 37, she was 23.
For much of the 1980s, the Ramseys lived just north of Atlanta on a quiet street that dead-ends into a wooded glade near the Chatahoochie recreation area. It was from the basement of this home that John Ramsey ran the fledgling computer company that would later become Access Graphics, and would make him a millionaire.
"He had a lot of vision," said next-door neighbor Joe Saportas, a computer consultant.
Patsy Ramsey became pregnant with their first child six years after they married. That same year, nanny Shirley Brady found herself out of a job when two elderly women she had been working for had to go to a nursinghome. In desperation, she turned to the Peachtree Presbyterian Church and was referred to the Ramseys.
When she explained her predicament to John Ramsey, he hired her on the spot, although the baby wasn't due for several months. He remodeled their home to make an apartment for her next to the nursery.
"That's the kind of people they are," said Brady, who is 69 and lives in a retirement home in Americus, Ga. Brady heard the couple leave for the hospital when Patsy Ramsey went into labor. "The next morning Mr. Ramsey came dragging his feet up the stairs," she said. "He said, 'Well, we have a boy.' He was delirious. He was so happy." Burke Hamilton Ramsey was born Jan. 27, 1987.
Brady said John Ramsey's children from his first marriage were frequently at the home. "They loved their daddy. And they were such well-behaved children and such high class. Their father dropped everything for the children," she said.
Brady only worked for the Ramseys for two years, but she kept in touch and shared Patsy Ramsey's excitement when daugher JonBenet -- a French derivative for her father's name, John Bennett -- was born Aug. 6, 1990.
"Patsy told me she was beautiful, but oh, I couldn't believe it when I saw her. JonBenet looked like a big doll with those long eyelashes," Brady said.
Neighbors Vesta and Charles Taylor considered themselves an extra set of grandparents to Burke and JonBenet, and visted often with the Ramseys.
"They just lived for those kids," Vesta Taylor said.
The Ramseys moved to Boulder in 1991 after his company merged with Boulder-based Access Graphics and another firm.
Patsy Ramsey was initially disappointed to leave her family, her friends in Junior League and the gardening club and her newly renovated home...
"But she would do anything for her husband. She was very proud that Mr. Ramsey was made president of the company."
The Ramseys bought a 15-room mansion near Chautauqua Park that has been remodeled over the years... And Patsy Ramsey instilled her passion for beauty pageants in JonBenet. The two had become a fixture on the pageant tour. JonBenet wore elaborate costumes, sophisticated makeup and dazzled judges with her presentations, all under her mother's tutelage.
But tragedy hit the Ramseys in 1992. John Ramsey's oldest daughter, 22-year-old Elizabeth Ramsey, and her boyfriend Matthew Derrington were killed in a traffic accident near Chicago when their car hit a bakery truck. The roads were slick, the Illinois State Patrol reported...
Shirley Brady called Patsy Ramsey on Christmas, the day before JonBenet was murdered. Patsy Ramsey was upbeat and excited. She would turn 40 that Sunday. She had beaten the cancer. The family was leaving for Charlevoix for the New Year holiday. And JonBenet was competing in the Little Miss Hawaiian Tropic beauty contest on Jan. 5 in Colorado.
"It's funny how you can get so attached to people who are so good and loving," Brady said. "They were such good people. Never a harsh word. Kind expressions to one another. "I tell you, when I was looking down at the little girl in that coffin all these things come back in my mind," she said.
"There is no chance at them being guilty."
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)