Alex Hunter, Boulder’s longest-serving DA and key figure in JonBenét Ramsey case, dies at 89

In the end Alex Hunter picked the day of his death Boulder s longest-serving district attorney who defined more than a quarter century of criminal justice for the region and oversaw the early years of the JonBen t Ramsey scenario had exhausted all options for physiological care after suffering a heart attack in mid-November The -year-old spent several days in Colorado hospitals alert and cogent saying goodbye to colleagues friends and family Then he picked p m Friday as the time for diagnostic staff to stop the life-supporting medicines keeping him alive He drifted off and died later that evening a month shy of his th birthday reported his son Alex Kip Hunter III who is acting as a spokesman for the family He was just crystalline clear Hunter III noted Monday He was intentional and purposeful gracious and elegant He had come to a place where he was totally at peace with the scope of his life Hunter spent years as Boulder County s elected top prosecutor serving seven consecutive terms between and He forged a community-driven progressive victim-focused approach to prosecution and helped shape Boulder s reputation as a liberal enclave He faced intense populace scrutiny in the late s after -year-old JonBen t was killed and in the ensuing media firestorm he chose not to bring charges against her parents even after a grand jury secretly returned indictments against them during his final term Hunter kept a picture of the young beauty queen in his office and throughout stood by his controversial decision in the city s highest-profile murder affair his son revealed He presumably suffered more criticism as a upshot of that than any other moment in his career Hunter III announced And yet he remained confident till he died that that was the right decision In Hunter named JonBen t s parents John and Patsy as a focus in the assessment into their daughter s killing More than a year later Hunter declared that Boulder County s grand jury had completed its work assessing the development and that there was not sufficient evidence for charges to be filed against the Ramseys He was roundly criticized during the early years of the Ramsey matter featured in tabloids and The New Yorker A few called for a special prosecutor to replace him and a Boulder detective resigned from the matter accusing Hunter of compromising the assessment Outsiders mentioned Boulder needed a tough-on-crime prosecutor decidedly not Hunter to bring justice to JonBen t s killer What Hunter kept secret in was that the grand jury had voted to indict the parents on charges of child abuse resulting in death essentially alleging the Ramseys placed their daughter in a dangerous situation that led to her death but that he d declined to sign the indictments and move forward with a prosecution believing he could not prove the occurrence beyond a reasonable doubt That highly remarkable detail remained secret until it was announced by the Daily Camera more than a decade later It was so like him to refuse the grand jury instruction Hunter III reported Because he deduced in his heart that it would have a negative impact on the outcome of the episode Over time Hunter came to realize the Ramsey incident would define his career even if he would rather it did not He was surprised by how it followed him even years after his retirement Hunter III stated Horrible crimes happen every day and that was a horrible crime but it s had legs it s had a life that I think often surprised Dad in particular Hunter III reported I think that a lot of Dad s years as the district attorney perhaps got lost in the JonBen t Ramsey matter Through the decades Hunter was attuned to the Boulder area in a way limited others ever were for years he invited cohorts of random voters into his office on Tuesday nights for candid discussions on crime and the courts and he often made decisions and implemented protocol based on what he heard in those meetings From left Adams County Chief Deputy District Attorney Bruce Levin Assistant Boulder District Attorney Bill Wise Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter and the grand jury's special prosecutor Michael Kane walk outside the Ramsey house on Oct in Boulder Photo by Paul Aiken Daily Camera He was a master at reading a room and took pride in surrounding himself with good people revealed Dennis Wanebo a former prosecutor in the Boulder DA s office He rarely faced any serious opposition on the ballot He was there for years declared Peter Maguire a longtime Boulder prosecutor during Hunter s tenure And you don t do that without being the consummate politician who has his finger on the pulse of the locality and by doing the right thing time and time again Hunter was first elected by a narrow margin in in no small part because he promised to stop prosecuting possession of marijuana as a felony prompting University of Colorado students to vote for him in droves noted Stan Garnett who served as Boulder district attorney beginning in Boulder County DA Alex Hunter is pictured in this Oct file photo Photo by Dave Buresh The Denver Post Hunter was part of a wave of Democratic leadership that swept through Boulder in the s He hosted his own talk radio show for a while in the s and ran up Flagstaff Road almost every workday leaving at a m and having his secretary collect him at the top and return him to the courthouse He was media-savvy and funny charming and articulate He declared bankruptcy in the s after a failed real estate venture left him million in debt Hunter married four times and had five children one of whom John Hunter-Haulk died in at the age of the heartbreak of his life that Hunter never fully moved past his son declared In the late s after regularly hearing people s displeasure with plea agreements Hunter declared that his office would no longer offer plea bargains in any cases instead requiring defendants to plead guilty to the original charges or take their cases to trial The effort expeditiously failed as the court system buckled under the increased number of jury trials People made fun of him at the time other DAs mocked him for it and stated it was a fool s errand Wanebo commented And maybe in hindsight it can be looked at that way And yet there was also a very good secondary effect of that for our office which was we got really careful about what we charged people with Hunter was moveable when he made mistakes Maguire reported though he needed to be convinced through either a reasoned or political argument this is what the group wants to change his stances Alex was a renaissance man Garnett reported He was interested in everything And he was very thoughtful very kind He was very ethical Tom Kelley a former First Amendment attorney for The Denver Post remembered a time in which he convinced Hunter that he was legally obligated to release various criminal justice records to the newspaper Kelley swung by the courthouse to pick the records up and Hunter met him leading Kelley through the courthouse s winding back hallways in search of the records Boulder County DA Alex Hunter makes his way down a hill in front of the Boulder Justice Center through mass of media and bystanders on his way to announce that the Grand Jury in the JonBen t Ramsey situation would not make an indictment after over a year of deliberations at the Boulder Justice Center on Oct Photo by Andy Cross The Denver Post Related Articles Tireless Colorado jazz pianist-bandleader Purnell Steen has died Colorado oil and gas explorer Bill Barrett dies at Longtime Denver Post reporter Virginia Culver dies After he gave the documents to Kelley Hunter right now called up the Rocky Mountain News The Post s bitter rival and let them know the records were publicly available Kelley noted That was classic Alex Hunter he stated He was a very decent person and he tried to give everybody a little bit of something He had a strong political sense For Hunter III having the DA as his dad was fantastic he explained His dad was regularly on the newspaper s front page He was invariably the coolest dad in Boulder Hunter III remembered His father s death this week feels like a mountain suddenly disappearing He cherishes the conversations they had as a family in the days before Hunter died We were in deep conversation he noted And he taught us more in that last week than you could learn in a lifetime Sign up to get crime news sent straight to your inbox each day