Jonbennet Ramsey

[Tricky]

A number of posts have been moved to AAH for personalizing the discussion (rule 12) and similar digressions. Please discuss the topic and not each other.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Tricky

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Am I the only one getting flashbacks to the Cleveland child abuse allegations with this one?

Rolfe.

Nope.

Next stop: McMartin Preschool.

All aboard the crazy train!

 

[Alferd_Packer]

Yes, that's certainly possible. I'm not familiar with O'Sullivan, so I don't know what papers she has or hasn't written. . . . .

Oliver Sacks wrote about such people in his book, "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat."

 

[Cainkane1]

Heres Jonbennets autopsy report.

http://crimeshots.com/AutopsyReport.html

 

[TraneWreck]

I highly recommend everyone who has not read this article to do so:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

It exhibits in detail almost everything being discussed in this thread.

A professed "expert" who wanders around a crime scene like Adrian Monk sets up a completely biased framework by announcing a conclusion. Then all of the eyewitnesses subtly change their stories (not intentionally) to match this established understanding of events. The poor gentleman is convicted because of horrible science and the fact that he was behaving strangely and appeared to be guilty.

*Warning, Opinion* As a lawyer and someone who has studied very closely a number of bad death penalty cases, I am almost at the point where I think all eyewitness testimony should be disallowed in court cases. That fuzzy science stuff is a close second, but those issues tend to be dealt with naturally--better techniques supplant outdated ones, except in Texas, evidently.

In any case, the way to think about the issue, as with all due process/legal system questions, is to imagine yourself in the place of the defendant. NO ONE would argue in favor of pupil dilation analysis or body language experts or whatever hocus pocus happened to be popular at the time if their ass was on the line.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I wasn't talking about your claim to be a walking lie detector, I was talking about your claims about the evidence, you know, where you claimed that the father waited until he couldn't wait any more and went off to "find" the body, except that in reality he was told to go and look for anything out of place by the police. And you remember when you claimed that the murder weapon was the from the Ramsey's house, yet in reality the duct tape and cord matched nothing in the house? You seem to be totally ignoring all of the physical evidence that points away from the Ramsey's and focusing totally on your on gut. Very poor investigation that, worthy of a 9/11 CT.

The garrote was made with P Ramsey's paint brushes.

The rope and tape could have been from within the house or not. The sources have not been found. But that makes the scenario even more likely to have been staged. You bring tape and a rope but you use paint brushes in the basement for some elaborate strangling device?

Like I've said several times, it's the totality of the evidence, not any single piece. Nothing is exculpatory by itself. Everything from the tape to the DNA traces have multiple potential explanations. But when you look at everything together it points to the family.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It makes it a whole heck of a lot less suspicious, and directly contradicts your contention that he got "impatient" and so went and found the body himself. It's not like he had any reason to think the police would tell him to do a thorough search of the house at some point.

But as far as I can tell, by your logic, in any scenario whatsoever where John Ramsey is the one who discovers the body, it is a strike against him.

I'm not sure how his finding the body would be consistent with a "staged crime scene." So John Ramsey elaborately stages a crime scene, including sexually assaulting his daughter (or her corpse),

No sexual assault was certain.

binding her, duct taping her mouth, etc.... and then rushes to the basement to unstage it? For what purpose? How would ensuring he was the one to find the body work to his advantage at all? And why would he be "impatient" for police to find the body to begin with? It's not like it was going anywhere.

The crime scene technicians had already left.

The child is accidentally killed. They make it look like a murder. The ransom note was a clumsy addition. The cops come. They do their thing. They don't find the body. Of course the Ramseys are going to be concerned, now what? The plan didn't go as expected.

You're assuming J Ramsey cared about the details of the staged scene specifically. He was just as likely to be concerned about making his reaction to the discovery look authentic.

In fact, he "unstaged" a key piece of evidence that would have worked in his favor: he moved a suitcase that both men said was below the window that an intruder could have used to step on/off. If you're going to stage a crime scene and make it look like an intruder came in, why would you then move a potential key piece of the scene? That scenario is what makes little sense.

I'm not sure that is what happened regarding the suitcase. You might want to re-read the account.

Plus, your statement that John Ramsey knew "right where to look" is wrong. They did a room by room search of the basement. They checked crawl spaces, under the dining room, etc. Consistent with a room by room search, they came across the body in one of the rooms they looked. It wasn't the first room they went through, and there is nothing to suggest John Ramsey had any idea "right where to look."

Again, you can re-read the account. It is consistent with JR knowing where to look.

That, and as PhantomWolf pointed out, not all the items came from the house, as you claimed.

I did not claim that. I said it made no sense that the items which did come from the house would be combined with the items an intruder supposedly brought in.


There is no point in belaboring each and every detail here. The best explanation for the whole account, all the details, all the interviews is the Ramsey's did it. For every single piece of data there are multiple potential explanations. But for the entire body of evidence there is only one likely explanation.

 

[Cainkane1]

The garrote was made with P Ramsey's paint brushes.

The rope and tape could have been from within the house or not. The sources have not been found. But that makes the scenario even more likely to have been staged. You bring tape and a rope but you use paint brushes in the basement for some elaborate strangling device?

Like I've said several times, it's the totality of the evidence, not any single piece. Nothing is exculpatory by itself. Everything from the tape to the DNA traces have multiple potential explanations. But when you look at everything together it points to the family.

The family or someone known to the family. There was an unsubstantiated article that a child porn ring was going on and different people were molesting different girls. Like a very sick evil wife swapping organization using children instead of wives.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Am I the only one getting flashbacks to the Cleveland child abuse allegations with this one?

Rolfe.

I wasn't familiar with the Cleveland case without looking it up. I do know a lot about 3 similar cases to the Cleveland case here in the US. One here in Wenatchee, WA, one in California (McMartin Case) and the Little Rascal's Daycare case in North Carolina. Those cases have absolutely nothing to do with this case. In fact, the evidence in those cases clearly demonstrated they were hysterical eyewitness fantasies created by the interviewers' suggestions. Tragic miscarriages of justice. I actually donated $100 to the defense of one of the Little Rascal victims, the cook who refused to plead guilty and was falsely convicted and given life in prison. She was a single mother and hit my heartstrings after seeing the case on Frontline. She was eventually exonerated.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The point I tried to raise and that Ekman clearly states in the article linked is that you may see a facial expression of an emotion, the expression does not tell you what caused it.

I got that point. I've not said here that I based my conclusion solely on the Ramseys' interviews. I said their interviews revealed a disconnect between what they were saying and the emotions they were expressing. Their behavior in the interviews was but one piece of the total evidence.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

No, you're not.

Anyone who thinks they're almost infallible at catching liars are either a terrific asset to an investigation or a huge danger to all the innocent people nearby.

More straw if this is supposed to be what I've claimed.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

One of the features of that case was that Marietta Higgs had read about the technique of "reflex anal dilatation" to diagnose sexual abuse of children. She experimented a little with it, in particular finding a negative result when she tried it on her own children. She then decided a positive result was highly reliable as an indication that the child had been subjected to anal abuse, and started doing the test on many of the children coming to her clinic. Over 100 children were removed from their parents as a result of this. The problem was that there are other reasons for that test giving a positive result, and many of the parents she accused of child abuse were innocent.

God preserve us from "health professionals" who are utterly confident about a test they've read about and then confirmed their biases.

Rolfe.

More straw.

You all seem to be so certain about what you think I've said here. And yet it isn't what I've said at all. Very ironic.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I highly recommend everyone who has not read this article to do so:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

It exhibits in detail almost everything being discussed in this thread.

A professed "expert" who wanders around a crime scene like Adrian Monk sets up a completely biased framework by announcing a conclusion. Then all of the eyewitnesses subtly change their stories (not intentionally) to match this established understanding of events. The poor gentleman is convicted because of horrible science and the fact that he was behaving strangely and appeared to be guilty.

*Warning, Opinion* As a lawyer and someone who has studied very closely a number of bad death penalty cases, I am almost at the point where I think all eyewitness testimony should be disallowed in court cases. That fuzzy science stuff is a close second, but those issues tend to be dealt with naturally--better techniques supplant outdated ones, except in Texas, evidently.

In any case, the way to think about the issue, as with all due process/legal system questions, is to imagine yourself in the place of the defendant. NO ONE would argue in favor of pupil dilation analysis or body language experts or whatever hocus pocus happened to be popular at the time if their ass was on the line.

In this case the Ramsey's were saved by poor police work. But as for the looking guilty aspect, that misconstrues what the Ramsey interviews revealed and the fact the interviews were only one piece of the puzzle. You certainly won't find me arguing against the many cases of wrongful conviction. I've posted about the Innocence Project many times. The majority of those cases come down to convictions based on faulty eyewitness testimony.

 

[Rolfe]

More straw.

You all seem to be so certain about what you think I've said here. And yet it isn't what I've said at all. Very ironic.

One person might misunderstand another. However, if all other participants in a thread take the same meaning from what you say, and that is not what you meant, you might consider that you're not being as clear as you think you are.

To explain the Cleveland thing again, a "health professional" (a hospital paediatrician) read about a particular test (for child sex abuse). She tried it out a couple of times, decided it was reliable, thought she'd got the hang of it, and started using it for real with an extraordinarily arrogant insistence that her conclusions were undoubtedly correct.

A large number of non-abused children were removed from their parents on her say-so.

Rolfe.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The family or someone known to the family. There was an unsubstantiated article that a child porn ring was going on and different people were molesting different girls. Like a very sick evil wife swapping organization using children instead of wives.

That's not a scenario which fits the evidence. An angry parent losing control resulting in an accidental death fits the evidence.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

One person might misunderstand another. However, if all other participants in a thread take the same meaning from what you say, and that is not what you meant, you might consider that you're not being as clear as you think you are.

Rolfe.

So if you were in a room full of 911 Truthers, they'd be right by majority rule?

I don't think so. I've posted the specific straw men here.

A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[1][2]

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I highly recommend everyone who has not read this article to do so:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

It exhibits in detail almost everything being discussed in this thread.

A professed "expert" who wanders around a crime scene like Adrian Monk sets up a completely biased framework by announcing a conclusion. Then all of the eyewitnesses subtly change their stories (not intentionally) to match this established understanding of events. The poor gentleman is convicted because of horrible science and the fact that he was behaving strangely and appeared to be guilty.

*Warning, Opinion* As a lawyer and someone who has studied very closely a number of bad death penalty cases, I am almost at the point where I think all eyewitness testimony should be disallowed in court cases. That fuzzy science stuff is a close second, but those issues tend to be dealt with naturally--better techniques supplant outdated ones, except in Texas, evidently.

In any case, the way to think about the issue, as with all due process/legal system questions, is to imagine yourself in the place of the defendant. NO ONE would argue in favor of pupil dilation analysis or body language experts or whatever hocus pocus happened to be popular at the time if their ass was on the line.

Did you see the picture? He looks guilty. I'm an expert in this area, and I've never been wrong.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

The crime scene technicians had already left.

The child is accidentally killed. They make it look like a murder. The ransom note was a clumsy addition. The cops come. They do their thing. They don't find the body. Of course the Ramseys are going to be concerned, now what? The plan didn't go as expected.

Concerned about what? The police not finding the body would make them concerned? Why??? If anything, it would work to their favor. Not finding a body would make it look like an actual kidnapping, and make their alleged fake note far less "clumsy." If someone accidentally kills their daughter and wants to conceal the crime, I have a hard time seeing how they would be concerned if the police didn't find the body.

You're assuming J Ramsey cared about the details of the staged scene specifically. He was just as likely to be concerned about making his reaction to the discovery look authentic.

He could make his reaction authentic without finding the body himself. All finding the body himself does is cast suspicion upon himself.

Again, you can re-read the account. It is consistent with JR knowing where to look.

Again I ask you: What scenario in which John Ramsey finds or is involved in finding the body would not be consistent with him "knowing where to look"? As far as I can tell, this is circular logic: John Ramsey found the body because he knew where to look. And the proof that he knew where to look is that he found the body.

I did not claim that. I said it made no sense that the items which did come from the house would be combined with the items an intruder supposedly brought in.

It makes a lot of sense, particularly if the whole thing was a kidnapping gone bad. The items not found were consistent with what somebody would bring for a kidnapping: the duct tape, and the rope.

There is no point in belaboring each and every detail here. The best explanation for the whole account, all the details, all the interviews is the Ramsey's did it. For every single piece of data there are multiple potential explanations. But for the entire body of evidence there is only one likely explanation.

If there is "only one likely explanation" then we wouldn't be having this discussion. The reality is, the evidence is at least as consistent, if not more consistent, with an intruder. There is an obvious entry and exit point, items used in the crime not found in the house, DNA evidence found in three separate places both on the outside and in the panties of JonBenet's clothing, and so on. Lou Smit, a veteran detective hired by the Boulder Police to head the investigation team, looked at the evidence and believes it convincingly points to an intruder. John Douglas, a veteran FBI agent and serial killer expert, says the same. Judge Julie Carnes, a Federal Judge and former prosecutor, ruled there is "virtually no evidence" that the Ramseys murdered their child. Etc.

I'm not going to stay it is an open and shut case either way, but claiming that there is "only one likely explanation" that fits the evidence is absurd.

 

[TraneWreck]

Did you see the picture? He looks guilty. I'm an expert in this area, and I've never been wrong.

He does have a tattoo, after all.

 

[Rolfe]

So if you were in a room full of 911 Truthers, they'd be right by majority rule?

Now it's you creating straw men. I said, if everying you're talking to takes the same interpretation of what you say, and that's not what you meant, you might perhaps consider that you haven't explained yourself very well.

That would apply whether they were all Twoofers, or homoeopaths, or Bigfoot proponents.

Rolfe.