Marietta, Ga. – On a recent morning there was, for at least a moment, a calm surrounding JonBenét Ramsey.
A mossy-barked dogwood tree spreading over the little girl’s gravesite dripped with the morning rain. In the distance, a church bell chimed out the hour.
This corner of quiet – St. James Episcopal Cemetery – is JonBenét’s final resting place. On Thursday, her mother, Patsy Ramsey, will be buried here as well, next to her daughter.
Members of the church that gives the cemetery its name are bracing for the quiet to end. They are expecting hordes of media and legions of looky-loos to trample the grounds and clog the narrow pathways. And they worry that the dignity of the person and the place could be trampled too.
“It will be a zoo Thursday,” said Erika Price, chairwoman of the St. James Episcopal Cemetery Trust.
“It just borders on the ghoulish,” said Anne Brown, a receptionist at the church. “People just want to rubberneck. … It’s ludicrous.”
The cemetery is perhaps an eighth of a mile square. A tall iron fence rings its borders, and magnolia trees, which blossom in the spring, form a wall.
Inside are the graves and plots of families dating back to the Civil War. Mildew and age have overcome some of the tombstones, while others sparkle bright and new.
When the moan of a passing train whistle fades and the congenial groundskeeper turns off his string trimmer, there is a powerful stillness.
“There are lots of stories behind these tombstones,” Paul McFarland, who has been tending to the cemetery for more than two decades, said in a slow drawl.
An oil company founder and a military general and a former Georgia governor, who died in 1860, are all buried here.
But the grave that most visitors travel from across the country to see is nestled beneath that dogwood tree.
When JonBenét was buried, the media descended onto the cemetery, Price said. Some put cameras with telescopic lenses atop the school across the street. Others stuck cameras between the fence posts. After the service, church members found microphones hidden along the fence, Price said.
In 1997, on the first anniversary of JonBenét’s death, Boulder police reportedly bugged the cemetery, hoping somebody would make a graveside confession, according to one of the many books about the mysterious murder.
Even though nearly a decade has passed, people still come to see the grave, Price said. Most of them never knew JonBenét or her parents. But angel ornaments and wind chimes hang off the branches of the dogwood tree, tokens from visitors. Stuffed toys and trinkets often rest upon the gravemarker.
One man takes a bus every year from his home up north to Marietta. He sits on the bench next to JonBenét’s grave, eats and leaves a little gift, Price said.
“I just think the whole thing captured everybody’s attention,” said Jean Wright, who looked after the cemetery for about six years. “Children are killed every day, and I don’t know why this one got everybody’s attention. But I opened and closed the cemetery for six years, and almost always, there was somebody there.”
People leave notes, handwritten on cards or slips of paper. Inevitably, the morning dew soaks them and then breaks them apart. But there’s always another one coming soon.
A note dated June 17, a week before Patsy Ramsey’s death, began, “You dear folks have been in our thoughts and prayers. We read your book and wept with you in your loss and pain.”
The Ramsey family likes the trinkets, Price said. Patsy and her husband, John, came to the cemetery to resod the ground around JonBenét’s grave, McFarland said.
The cemetery is a reminder of the sorrows that have visited John and Patsy’s families.
Next to JonBenét’s grave is that of Elizabeth Ramsey, John’s daughter from a previous marriage, who died in a car crash in 1992 when she was 22. In front of that is the grave of Nedra Paugh, Patsy Ramsey’s mother, who died in 2001.
On Tuesday morning, Donna Hatterick and Sharon Wilson, friends of the Ramseys, arrived with buckets of fresh flowers, a rake, a shovel and other gardening tools. They said they wanted to beautify the gravesite before Thursday’s funeral.
“We love Patsy and John,” Wilson said. “They’d do it for us. It’s just a small gesture we can do for them.”
By Tuesday evening, the women finished their work. The flowers had been planted and the tombstones had been scrubbed, and the cemetery once again sat empty and quiet.
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
