Article in the Atlanta, Texas Citizens Journal - July 8, 2001

Website offers open forum on Butts' murder
How does a shy housewife living in North Carolina suddenly become a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case in Colorado?

Well, that's a long story, but this reclusive figure who goes by jameson (with a small J) has joined forces with two journalists from Atlanta, Texas, and a man who will just be known as "Sam" and has created a website that hopefully will eventually shed some light on a murder case that has baffled authorities for almost a decade.

Atlanta journalists Sonny Long and Charley Harrist and Sam have provided jameson with public documents connected to the Jan 27, 1992 triple homicide of an Atlanta woman, Gerri Faye Butts, and her two children, Jessica, 11, and MacKenzie, 3.

What jameson is doing is building a website that wil be devoted to an open forum on the unsolved Butts case.

Does it work?

A website she created on the JonBenét Ramsey murder case has received national recognition and has made an enormous impact on that much publicized case.

Already since she first posted information on the Butts site back on June 25, hundreds have visited the website and made comments or asked questions.

Local newsman and writer Long has been involved from the beginning.

"I've covered the case since the day it happened, and am glad to do anything I can to help keep it alive and this messsage board seems like a great idea." Long said of the website.

"I've followed the Butts case from afar until I moved back here in the last couple of years," Harrist said, "I have been amazed by the misinformation I have heard regarding this case."

Harrist said he contacted Long after hearing from jameson to see what he thought about the possibility of working together to try to create new dialog on the stagnant case.

"I have a lot of respect for Sonny and appreciate his interest in the case and have read most of his stories over the years about a case that I realize has become very personal to him." Harrist said.

It's a shame that no one has been brought to justice for these horrendous crimes," Long said. "We're talking about a a great little town here - a place I've chosen to live - and someone who committed a triple murder - someone who murdered children - is walking around among us. That scares and saddens me."

Three days after the murders, Long's father died.

"So those two events have always been kind of inseparable for me," Long said. "It's emotional."

Long, editor and publisher of East Texas Media, and Harrist, editor of The Citizens Journal, met and discussed the case and agreed that jameson's idea of devoting a website to the Butts murder case would be a worthwhile project and could lead to new developments.

Both journalists talked with jameson and were assured that the website would be open to all who wished to participate and would not be a public forum to villify the main suspect arrested shortly after the triple murder.

"When I first started following the JonBenét Ramsey case, I was horrified at how quickly they turned on her family and the lynch-mob mentality of the sites ont he internet about the case," jameson said.

Jameson became "addicted" to the case and refused to give in to that mentality and held her ground despite being often maligned for her stance. She would spend as much as 20 hours a day reading about the Ramsey case.

"I am extremely and painfully shy," said the soft-spoken jameson in a telephone interview with the Journal. "My husband didn't really take my "hobby" very seriously until one day when I received a FAX at his office of the Ramsey autopsy before it had been released publicly. He rushed home with it and from that day forward knew I was very serious about what I was doing."

So prolific was jameson's writing and her knowledge of the Ramsey case that a Vassar literature professor in June of 1997 - believing she was John Andrew (JonBenét's brother) posting on the internet under the name of jameson wrote the Ramseys and told them he could identify the killer.

"I know you are innocent - KNOW it - absolutely and unequivocally," Prof. Don Foster wrote to Patsy Ramsey, the mother of the victim. "I would stake my professional reputation on it."

That reputation by Foster had come through his involvement in other works such as the discovery that Shakespeare was the author of a centuries old manuscript, being hired by the FBI to prove ted Kaczynski wrote the Unibomber manifesto and that author Joe Klein was the anonymous writer of "Primary Colors."

Foster analyzes not the handwriting, but the text, the content and syntax of materials - particularly the use of language, grammar, source material, borrowings, political and reigious opinions and anything that might enter into making a piece of writing distinctively one person's or another's - from punctuation to spelling and so on.

Jameson called Foster at his home in Poughkeepsie, NY, on June 25, 1997. They talked for 49 minutes and Foster was obviously shocked to hear jameson's soft, obviously female voice, she said.

"Foster refused to give up his theory," jameson said. ""Instead, he decidedthat jameson was still John Andrew Ramsey and he had been talking to the female relative who had been harboring the killer."

Later, Foster would obviously realize his mistake - although he has never publicly acknowledged it - and would claim that it was indeed Patsy Ramsey who had written the ransom note left at the scene of her daughter's murder.

It was a situation that would eventually force jameson out of her seclusion and into an appearance on CBS' " 48 Hours" television news magazine.

"It took me 10 days to finally get up the courage to go on camera after CBS had flown me to Boulder," jameson recalls.

A website started by jameson on another Colorado case eventually brought forward evidence that helped clear a suspect in that case, she said.

Of the Butts case, jameson says, "I don't have a dog in this. I don't want this website to be used to lynch anybody. It will be an open forum and my interest is in making a difference."

Jameson said she has talked to Atlanta Chief of Police Mike Dupree and Cass County Criminal District Attorney Randal Lee and informed them of the venture and received E-mail addresses which will allow her to communicate with them.

For those who wish to send tips, they may do so at Buttsinfo@aol.com , jameson said.

"If anonymity is mandatory, I will work with you to make it happen." jameson said. "I just want to make sure no one pretends to be someone they aren't - that no one borrows someone else's identity to post."

"I encourage all interested parties to step up and be heard - the forum is moderated, will focus on the case and will not be filled with garbage - but anyone and everyone is encouraged to participate."

Long and Harrist join jameson in that effort.

"I have found that by doing this that we open up this case to the scrutiny of people all over the country who have expertise in forensics, criminal investigation and legal expertise - not to mention to someone out there who DOES have information in this case and who has not come forward with it," Harrist said.

"Someone knows who did it and any discussion - even 10 years later - might finally bring out the truth," Long said.

The website can be accessed at www.jameson245.com or at www.webbsleuths.com.

For more documents go to http://butts_info.tripod.com/buttsfamily/