Brefie said:
Sorry about starting a thread, but I am having a debate with a friend who says that it was John who called the hardware store that Patsy had shopped in just before Christmas. Was it McGurkin's?
I say it was revealed to be a hoax, but I cannot find confirmation.
If anyone knows I would be really grateful.
Thanks!
Not John. I believe its in ST's book but I can do a quick check of Schiller's index. I try not to wade through ST page by page looking for things.
Added:
Google was faster
http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/rapp.htm
The Secrets: Who Got Them, Who Used Them
[...]
One client was Al Schweitzer, a prominent Denver detective who does investigative work for television and tabloids. Dahlia Roemer, a spokeswoman for ABC-TV, said that Schweitzer had worked twice as a consultant for the ABC News program "20/20" but that he had not done investigative work for ABC.
Schweitzer said that he had done some investigative work for the network, but that he never used Touch Tone to get information for ABC. He added that he stopped using the company more than two years ago after disagreeing with Rapp over some of his methods.
Records show that one of the largest users of Touch Tone was a Florida detective agency, Action Research Group. Its Touch Tone bills for the first four months of this year totaled more than $20,000. Joe Vepante, the owner of Action Research, said he mainly got information for banks on people who had bad debts.
Former Touch Tone employees said information on celebrities and victims of accidents had been extremely valuable because it could be sold over and over. For instance, in a letter to one client about the JonBenet Ramsey slaying, Rapp listed 14 categories of items for sale, ranging from phone and credit card records for the girl's parents to phone records for the family's private detective and the home address and phone number for the Boulder police detective investigating the death.
The indictment of the Rapps spelled out how they obtained some information about the Ramseys. Within days of the child's death on Dec. 26, 1996, callers from Touch Tone used pretexts to obtain American Express credit card records for her parents, John and Patricia Ramsey, according to the charges. Those records showed that purchases were made at a Boulder hardware store several days before the child's death.
On Jan. 14, 1997, a Touch Tone investigator called McGuckin Hardware pretending to be "John" and asking for information concerning two American Express charges. The investigator followed up with a letter identifying the charges and seeking the invoices. The letter was signed "John Ramsey."
Six days later, the hardware store provided the information on the purchases, which investigators said later found its way into an article in the tabloid Globe.
Lawrence Olmstead, who operates a research firm called Press Pass Media in Palmdale, Calif., acknowledged that Rapp sent him a letter offering the Ramsey information for sale but Olmstead said he did not buy any of it.
Olmstead acknowledged that he often bought phone numbers and addresses from Touch Tone on behalf of news media clients, whom he would identify only as some tabloids and mainstream media.
"A lot of guys make promises, but James really delivered," said Olmstead, who said everything he bought was used in legitimate news media inquiries.
Brown and Maroney of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said in an interview that Touch Tone records showed that Olmstead bought American Express records and phone records for Ennis Cosby, the son of the actor Bill Cosby, after the younger Cosby had been killed along a Los Angeles freeway in January 1997. Olmstead denied acquiring information about Cosby.
[...]
