BOULDER, Colo. (Court TV) — Besides claiming that JonBenet Ramsey's mother, Patsy, had a "hard side" that led investigators to believe she was capable of harming her daughter, Lawrence Schiller's new book on the two-year-old unsolved crime suggests that bickering — and a conspiracy to oust a former lead investigator — hindered the investigation.

According to excerpts of Perfect Murder, Perfect Town printed in the "Denver Rocky Mountain News," Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter told tabloid reporter Jeff Shapiro early in the investigation that he hated then-lead investigator John Eller. Handing Shapiro Eller's resume, Hunter reportedly told Shapiro that the investigator was worth investigating.

The Boulder police chief removed Eller from the case 10 months after the investigation began. Eller resigned from the police department last March. A local Colorado TV station also reported that one excerpt suggested Hunter was such a willing source of information for Shapiro, he once called John and Patsey Ramsey's defense lawyer Bryan Morgan in front of the reporter to get an answer to a question.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," Shapiro was quoted as saying. "The DA was calling Ramsey's criminal defense lawyer right in front of me to get the information that I had asked for."

Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, also suggests that investigators knew about Hunter's arrangement with Shapiro and thought that the relationship hurt the progress of the investigation. The book reportedly says that one detective wore a body wire and secretly taped Shapiro as he described Hunter's accessibility.

The alleged wire-tapping incident — and Hunter's alleged leaks to the press — disturbed and frustrated several investigators, including former Boulder detective Steve Thomas, who resigned from the Ramsey case and department and accused the district attorney of impeding the investigation.

In his resignation letter, Thomas alluded to an informant who told him about "conduct occurring inside the district attorney's office, including allegations of a plan intended to destroy a man's career."

Shapiro has refused to comment on whether Hunter was his prime source of information or whether he told Thomas about his relationship with the district attorney.

Although the Ramseys remain under suspicion in JonBenet's death in December 1996, they have repeatedly maintained their innocence. In his book Schiller theorized that JonBenet's killer was familiar with the house and knew where the family kept the blanket in which her body had been wrapped. He also revealed that police evidence convinced Hunter to take the case before a grand jury.

The evidence, Schiller wrote, included the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's conclusion that four fibers found on the duct tape that had covered JonBenet's mouth were consistent with the jacket her mother wore Christmas night.

Schiller also wrote that the fine-line Sharpie pen used to write the ransom note was one that belonged to Patsy Ramsey and was found in a cup "right beside the phone in the kitchen where Patsy always kept them." In an interview with "Good Morning America" on Tuesday, Thomas supported Schiller's theories.

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