Jonbennet Ramsey

[timhau]

The fact that his DNA hasn't shown up in later crimes is a good indication that the murderer is no longer alive.

Does every DNA sample that the US law enforcement agencies collect automatically get compared to the DNA from the Ramsay case?

 

[Kestrel]

Does every DNA sample that the US law enforcement agencies collect automatically get compared to the DNA from the Ramsay case?

CODIS DNA profiles submitted to the national database are entered as a set of numbers. These get compared to all open cases currently in the database.

The profile from the Ramsey case would be one of the 5,163 forensic samples from Colorado currently in the NDIS database.

 

[Kestrel]

What if he'd been jailed for a different offence soon afterwards? Do they have DNA profiles of people in jail?

Some states routinely submit samples from anyone convicted of a major felony. But it is possible that Jonbenet's murderer was jailed before this was started or in a state that doesn't collect samples.

 

[Rolfe]

So, could be dead, could be in jail, even possibly might not have re-offended. Difficult one.

How bad is a "felony"? You don't have to be a great criminal to get your DNA collected round here, which annoys some people a lot, but on the other hand big-time cases have been solved because someone was picked up for something minor.

Rolfe.

 

[Kestrel]

There have been muttterings here that too many people's DNA is kept on file - including people who've never been charged, let alone convicted. People see it as an invasion of privacy. However, it's in cases like this you feel there may be some merit to it. There was a case fairly recently where a serious offender was caught because his son committed some minor misdemeanour, and it was realised that the paternal DNA of the sample was a match for the unsolved crime.

A full CODIS match points to a single individual, assuming they don't have an identical twin. A Y-STR test is used to pick out a male suspects DNA mixed with the DNA of a female victim. This test will match any male with common ancestors on the male line.

We have had false cold matches with the national fingerprint database. The most famous case involved a Seattle resident being matched to a partial print from the Madrid train bombing. The same kind of partial match could happen with a badly degraded forensic DNA sample.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Regarding the unknown male DNA, this article is of interest:

Trace Evidence Scrapings:
A Valuable Source of DNA?

It's relatively new in forensic science (maybe a decade) to collect these very tiny amounts of DNA. In the past only larger samples could be tested. What one needs to be careful of, however, is establishing a baseline for how often DNA unrelated to a crime can be found at the crime scene.

Whereas the DNA recovered from the pillbox was a single source, the friction swab contained a major (the wearer) and an unknown minor contributor. The hosiery was removed from the original packaging and worn for an afternoon prior to testing. During this time, the only individual to come in contact with this item was the donor. These results suggest that the extraneous DNA profile may have originated at the manufacturing site or was transferred from the wearer's environment (Locard 1930)....

...However, the friction swab produced a mixture of DNA from at least three individuals—both the wearer and her spouse are included as contributors. In four sample pairs, a mixture was present in both specimens.

...To account for the minor contributors in samples with mixtures, the cohabitants' (primarily spouses) STR profiles were compared to the results. In most cases, these individuals accounted for the other source of DNA in the mixture (Table 1). Additional DNA contributors were found in some samples, and their source remains unknown.

...Additional studies are being conducted to test the possibility of DNA carryover in washing machines during the laundering process in an effort to explain the presence of cohabitants' DNA on items of clothing.

When you start looking at very tiny DNA samples, you increase the detection of DNA from any number of as yet unknown potential sources.

 

[Segnosaur]

First of all, what exactly is your 'accuracy rate' when you do your analysis?

While I don't know about any cases of abuse that I missed, of the one's I've called CPS about, all were proved to be abuse situations except one and that one was not disproved, I just wasn't privy to the final outcome since it was a school child and not my patient.

Just wondering, how exactly do you know that the 'proven abuse situations' were actually correct? Did the people actually confess? (If not, I wonder if any of those were cases of "Ginger: I think there is abuse. Cops: Nurse says abuse so we arrest. Ginger: They were obviously guilty since they were arrested".)

And just how many of those situations where you correctly identified situations had the parents been constantly hounded (falsely) by police for months and months, and for which they had undergone some other trauma before you made your analysis?

Secondly, while you might be able to look for 'non-verbal' clues in your job, you do get to interact a lot more closely with the patients you see than you did by just watching the Ramsey's on TV. I also rather suspect that the type of things you're trained to look for are different than what you'd be looking for in the Ramsey case.

It's just not rocket science to detect the behaviors of people who are abused or who are abusing. There are very classic repeatable cues.

Once again though, you get a lot more opportunity to interact with the victims/perpetrators than you did when you did your analysis of the Ramseys. (And, might I add, you probably got to interact with victims a lot closer to the event than you did when you saw the Ramseys being interviewed.)

Thirdly, you said you're examining the patient for non-verbal clues. Given the fact that those are the people who have experienced the trauma, its quite possible that those people will give more definite clues than the supposed perpetrators.

No response given

Note that you didn't address that particular issue: That at least part of your accuracy might be due to the fact that you get to deal with both the victims and the perpetrators, giving you more information that you would have from any interview with the Ramseys.

So, while its possible to gain some information from non-verbal clues, I do not think the accuracy is high enough to over-ride other factors in the case, including the lack of motive and generally contradictory evidence (such as outside debris found at the scene and the presence of items used in the crime that were not found in the house).

How do you figure lack of motive? Death by accident during abuse is one motive.

What "accident" do you think had occurred? Falling out of bed (or something similar)? Then why fake the kidnapping, since accidents do happen.

Or are you suggesting the parents were doing something immoral, for which there is not one shred of evidence and the death was due to some sex game that went wrong. Well, the Ramseys have had their lives turned upside down... There is every indication that the family was happy and well-adjusted.

As for the non-verbal cues, the ransom note...

Ransom note actually points away from the Ramseys... not only does the handwriting totally exclude the father, and can't be linked to the mother, it also contains phrases that were lifted from popular action movies at the time (like the movie Speed). Not exactly the type of entertainment that your typical beauty-pagent mother would be going to.

... and the fact John Ramsey retrieved the body when the police didn't search the house as he probably expected them to do were important.

This has been pointed out to you before, but you seem to ignore it....

In most cases where a killer is involved in a 'search' for the body, they typically will set things up so that they do not find the body themselves. When the father was searching the basement, he would have likely told his friend "you search the wine cellar (where the body was), I'll search some other area".

And as its been pointed out, it was the police themselves which encouraged the search; it wasn't the parents who initiated it.

The murder weapon made no sense unless one of the Ramey's did it. The objects used all came from within the house.

Umm.. no they didn't. The cord used did not match anything that appeared in the house.

There was no reason for a murderer to leave the body in the house...

Actually, there are reasons to leave the body in the house...

You leave the body in the house because you don't want to be caught carrying a dead body around. (Had some neighbor seen someone carrying a child from the house, it would have aroused suspicion...) Not only that, we don't even know if the killer had a vehicle.

...or commit the crime in the house.

The Ramsey's house was very large and the basement quite isolated. If the killer thought nobody would hear, why not stay in the house, instead of dragging a kid out to a car where they might be seen?

Heck, it might even have been part of his 'signature', to kill someone within their own home.

There was lots of reason to suspect the Ramseys. Their behavior added significantly to the list but it wasn't the only evidence.

Actually, yes it was pretty much the only evidence (and extremely poor evidence at that.)

But as for their behavior, there were numerous classic cues, most significantly emotion that didn't match the discussion.

As other people have pointed out, criminal profilers have stated that you can't depend on 'emotions' as a guide. People react to major traumas differently... Not only that, when the Ramseys were interviewed on television they had A: Gone through the trauma of loosing a daughter, and B: had both the police and media accuse them (probably falsely) of the crime. Don't you think that those things are going to have an effect on their emotional state?

If you look at actual scientific studies, both Skeptic Ginger and your father are wrong.

Actually, I have looked at the studies. There are many out there which don't support being able to detect deception.

The problem is, it's like assessing a number of diet plans and finding they all fail. Does that mean all diets ever will always fail?

On the other hand, its also like assessing psychics and fortune tellers... just because one psychic fails does that mean they all will?

So far, much of your 'evidence' has been composed of anecdotes, and when you have referred to 'studies', they're ones that haven't received anywhere near universal acceptance.

Never said she was completely wrong. I said that A: whatever 'skills' she has in picking up on non-verbal clues might be oriented towards the medical field, not to "lie detection/criminality", and B: even if her skills are better than "random chance", I still doubt they'd be good enough to over-ride other evidence (especially when there are alternate explanations for the parent's behavior)....

For the record, child and domestic partner abuse are both medical diagnoses and crimes.

You're splitting hairs here...

The point is, whatever "detection" ability you have is geared towards specific situations. I doubt whether you have ever had to make a determination where A: you don't have access to the victim, and B: the supposed 'suspects' had been hounded by the media/police for months, and C: any such contact is done outside the 'medical clinic' setting.

If this was not someone in the household, think how much time it would take to find the garrote, the paper and pen, write the note several times.

The Ramseys were out for several hours that evening, more than enough time to write a note, etc.

Did this guy bring the tape but not the ransom note? He brought the tape but used items in the house, not just to strangle the child, but to actually fashion a garrote?

We'll never know why the killer waited to write the ransom note inside the Ramsey house. Perhaps he had forgotten to bring a note from home. (Where is it written that killers have to have perfect memory?) Or perhaps he brought a note but decided to rewrite it once he was in the house. (The money asked for in the ransom was close to an amount received as a work bonus... perhaps the killer, while in the house, saw a pay stub and thought "this sounds like a lot of money... I didn't ask for enough ransom".)

As for the garrote... the killer likely bought the cord with him. Yes, he did use a paint brush from inside the house, but perhaps he had bought something to use which broke. Or perhaps he intended to just tie up the victim, and strangulation was something that occurred when he was inside.

There was evidence the child had urine and stool accidents at least occasionally if not often. While not significant alone, combined with the rest of the evidence that an insider committed the crime, Patsy is the most likely suspect and intolerance of her daughter's imperfect toileting is a common finding in abuse cases. It is the most likely motive.

Except Patsy was used to handling JonBenet's bed-wetting. There's no evidence that it had ever led to violence in the past. Do you honestly think she'd be OK with dealing with bed-wetting incidents for months and months with absolutely no sign of anger, then all of a sudden escalate to child-killing?

Did the police find finger or glove prints?

Police found a palm print which didn't match any of the members of the house!!!!.

The idea that someone might wear gloves during the initial stages of the crime, but remove them at other points (perhaps they needed to remove them to tie the knots on the garrote) isn't really that far-fetched.

By the way, how exactly do you explain the outside debris found in the basement? How do you explain the shoe print in the basement which didn't match anyone in the family?

 

[Segnosaur]

He arrived at the crime scene some days after the murder and learned that the Ramseys weren't cooperating with the police. This was his first red flag. The most damning evidence he found centered around the ransom note. In the first place, it was written in a woman's handwriting...

He might have meant that the handwriting was a partial match to the mother, not that it was generally a "woman's handwriting". (although the match was so broad that many people would also be considered a match.)

Second, what about the claim that ONLY the Ramsey's knew about the bonus? Maybe someone who worked in the mail room saw the check, got drunk at a bar, and complained to a friend that some rich prick made $118,000.00 in the place he worked. Once you knew about the bonus, doesn't that become THE most logical number to ask for as you know the guy can pay?

True. Or a couple of other possibilities...

- The killer, while in the house waiting for the family to return, could have come across some pay stub with the bonus amount on it.

- Someone once calculated that $118k worked out to approximately 1 million pesos, so the killer might have thought of fleeing the country. So, the fact that the ransom amount matched the bonus may have been a coincidence.

If it was the Ramseys, you'd think they would have an idea how much money they were actually worth; in that case, why settle for a piddling little $118k?

 

[Cainkane1]

I'm going to say this before this string fizzles. Jonbennet wouldnn't have been murdered if she hadn't been put on display in front of the wrong person. I would have loved to have had her for my daughter or Granddaughter. She was a adorable lovely little girl and she deserved a helluva lot better than she got. To hell with whoever did this to her.

 

[TraneWreck]

He might have meant that the handwriting was a partial match to the mother, not that it was generally a "woman's handwriting". (although the match was so broad that many people would also be considered a match.)



True. Or a couple of other possibilities...

- The killer, while in the house waiting for the family to return, could have come across some pay stub with the bonus amount on it.

- Someone once calculated that $118k worked out to approximately 1 million pesos, so the killer might have thought of fleeing the country. So, the fact that the ransom amount matched the bonus may have been a coincidence.

If it was the Ramseys, you'd think they would have an idea how much money they were actually worth; in that case, why settle for a piddling little $118k?

Yep, that's exactly the point. When you start with a conclusion, facts that have many possible explanations become subject to an intensely powerful confirmation bias. Even somthing as subtle as the order they're presented can have a potent impact.

It's especially concerning in an event with such gravity.

 

[PhantomWolf]

I'm going to say this before this string fizzles. Jonbennet wouldnn't have been murdered if she hadn't been put on display in front of the wrong person. I would have loeved to have had her for my daughter or Granddaughter. She was a adorable lovly little girl and she deserved a helluva lot better than she got. To hell with whoever did this to her.

Without knowing who was responsible, there is no way to claim this as anything beyond speculation. It could have just as easily been someone from John's work that had a grievance and decided to kidnap his kid, but it ended up going wrong when he/they killed her.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Just wondering, how exactly do you know that the 'proven abuse situations' were actually correct? Did the people actually confess? (If not, I wonder if any of those were cases of "Ginger: I think there is abuse. Cops: Nurse says abuse so we arrest. Ginger: They were obviously guilty since they were arrested".)

I know the outcome of the cases I am referring to. I'm not sure what you think happens when you take care of a patient and observe indications of abuse, then report the case to CPS. Generally, you find out at some point what the outcome of the report was. The patient is not discharged from the hospital without resolution to the charge and monitoring of the situation after the child is discharged.

It's a myth that health care workers go around making unsubstantiated charges against parents. It's more likely questionable cases are not reported when they should be. Usually when you confront parents with the facts, they don't all run to lawyers and insist on their innocence. More likely one of the parents either admits to it (these parents usually feel very guilty) or they report the adult that caused the injury if it is an abusing husband or boyfriend.

I repeat, diagnosing child abuse is not rocket science. Take a little time looking at all the medical and nursing data there is out there about child and other domestic abuse. It's a serious medical problem and just like one bases health care of pneumonia on evidence based medicine, the same is true for domestic abuse. Health care providers are not acting blindly here. There are recognizable signs and symptoms.

And just how many of those situations where you correctly identified situations had the parents been constantly hounded (falsely) by police for months and months, and for which they had undergone some other trauma before you made your analysis?

This is total nonsense.

Once again though, you get a lot more opportunity to interact with the victims/perpetrators than you did when you did your analysis of the Ramseys. (And, might I add, you probably got to interact with victims a lot closer to the event than you did when you saw the Ramseys being interviewed.)

I addressed this already.

Note that you didn't address that particular issue: That at least part of your accuracy might be due to the fact that you get to deal with both the victims and the perpetrators, giving you more information that you would have from any interview with the Ramseys.

I did address this. I said the interviews were only one piece of evidence. It's the whole picture here one has to look at. No single thing by itself exonerates or indicates guilt in this case.

It's a straw man to claim I have said the interview indicators of deceit was the sole reason to think the Ramsey's committed the crime.

What "accident" do you think had occurred? Falling out of bed (or something similar)? Then why fake the kidnapping, since accidents do happen.

No, I'm talking about accidental death during physical abuse. In other words, I don't think the killer meant to hit the child as hard as they did. Parents lose control. They get angry. Kids are often the victim of uncontrolled anger. To me that's purposeful abuse but an accidental death.

Or are you suggesting the parents were doing something immoral, for which there is not one shred of evidence and the death was due to some sex game that went wrong. Well, the Ramseys have had their lives turned upside down... There is every indication that the family was happy and well-adjusted.

There is not any clear evidence of sexual abuse. It is possible but unlikely. I think it unlikely one smashes a child's head in any kind of chronic sexual abuse. Usually kids are groomed for sexual abuse and don't fight the abuser.

Ransom note actually points away from the Ramseys... not only does the handwriting totally exclude the father, and can't be linked to the mother, it also contains phrases that were lifted from popular action movies at the time (like the movie Speed). Not exactly the type of entertainment that your typical beauty-pagent mother would be going to.

Patsy was not ruled out as the note writer, she just wasn't ruled in.

This has been pointed out to you before, but you seem to ignore it....

I answered this.

In most cases where a killer is involved in a 'search' for the body, they typically will set things up so that they do not find the body themselves. When the father was searching the basement, he would have likely told his friend "you search the wine cellar (where the body was), I'll search some other area".

Do you have evidence of what's typical in a case like this one?

And as its been pointed out, it was the police themselves which encouraged the search; it wasn't the parents who initiated it.

I answered this.

Umm.. no they didn't. The cord used did not match anything that appeared in the house.

I answered this.

Actually, there are reasons to leave the body in the house...

You leave the body in the house because you don't want to be caught carrying a dead body around. (Had some neighbor seen someone carrying a child from the house, it would have aroused suspicion...) Not only that, we don't even know if the killer had a vehicle.

Again, you are looking at a single thing and not the entire picture. If you killed the child, sure you might stash the body in the basement on your way out. Where did the death occur? Why clean up the murder scene if you were leaving the body? Why fashion the garrote? Remember, it was threaded through JBR's hair, so it was made during the assault.

You need to read through the possible scenarios which account for everything, in totality.

The Ramsey's house was very large and the basement quite isolated. If the killer thought nobody would hear, why not stay in the house, instead of dragging a kid out to a car where they might be seen?

That's a stretch.

Heck, it might even have been part of his 'signature', to kill someone within their own home.

Then why bother with the ransom note? Why write it more than once? For everything you can explain, something else doesn't fit.

Actually, yes it was pretty much the only evidence (and extremely poor evidence at that.)

I don't agree.

As other people have pointed out, criminal profilers have stated that you can't depend on 'emotions' as a guide. People react to major traumas differently... Not only that, when the Ramseys were interviewed on television they had A: Gone through the trauma of loosing a daughter, and B: had both the police and media accuse them (probably falsely) of the crime. Don't you think that those things are going to have an effect on their emotional state?

I answered this about a dozen times now.

On the other hand, its also like assessing psychics and fortune tellers... just because one psychic fails does that mean they all will?

So far, much of your 'evidence' has been composed of anecdotes, and when you have referred to 'studies', they're ones that haven't received anywhere near universal acceptance.

You are not bothering to address the research and/or the researchers I cited.

You're splitting hairs here...

How? I was addressing the concern health care workers were not crime experts. We aren't. But we are familiar with abuse diagnoses and cues to diagnosing.

The point is, whatever "detection" ability you have is geared towards specific situations. I doubt whether you have ever had to make a determination where A: you don't have access to the victim, and B: the supposed 'suspects' had been hounded by the media/police for months, and C: any such contact is done outside the 'medical clinic' setting.

I addressed this.

The Ramseys were out for several hours that evening, more than enough time to write a note, etc.

We'll never know why the killer waited to write the ransom note inside the Ramsey house. Perhaps he had forgotten to bring a note from home. (Where is it written that killers have to have perfect memory?) Or perhaps he brought a note but decided to rewrite it once he was in the house. (The money asked for in the ransom was close to an amount received as a work bonus... perhaps the killer, while in the house, saw a pay stub and thought "this sounds like a lot of money... I didn't ask for enough ransom".)

As for the garrote... the killer likely bought the cord with him. Yes, he did use a paint brush from inside the house, but perhaps he had bought something to use which broke. Or perhaps he intended to just tie up the victim, and strangulation was something that occurred when he was inside. ..

You are welcome to your opinion. I don't expect to change it.

Except Patsy was used to handling JonBenet's bed-wetting. There's no evidence that it had ever led to violence in the past. Do you honestly think she'd be OK with dealing with bed-wetting incidents for months and months with absolutely no sign of anger, then all of a sudden escalate to child-killing?

It's very common for abuse to occur without anyone knowing about it.

Police found a palm print which didn't match any of the members of the house!!!!.

One would think they might have matched DNA from the palm print to the trace DNA they found on JBR. It doesn't appear that is the case.

The idea that someone might wear gloves during the initial stages of the crime, but remove them at other points (perhaps they needed to remove them to tie the knots on the garrote) isn't really that far-fetched.

That wasn't what I was pointing out. I was pointing out that without gloves you would find more DNA. With gloves, you wouldn't find the DNA where it was found in the amounts it was found.

By the way, how exactly do you explain the outside debris found in the basement? How do you explain the shoe print in the basement which didn't match anyone in the family?

The evidence for and against an intruder can be found here. The evidence for an intruder is very convincing until you read the evidence against an intruder. This is true for just about every bit of evidence in this case.

It's my OPINION the total evidence together is best explained by the Ramsey's guilt. It's clear there are many different opinions in this case. That's just the way it goes sometimes.

 

[dropzone]

Patsy was not ruled out as the note writer, she just wasn't ruled in.

That's one of those things that people who are convinced of the Ramseys' innocence conveniently ignore. I'm not saying they were guilty, but I do not believe their guilt or innocence has been proven.

 

[PhantomWolf]

From your site.

Evidence Against an Intruder: Specific Evidence
1.House Alarm Off. No one disputes the Ramsey house alarm was not on, but this does not prove an intruder entered.

This is also not evidence that no intruder existed. It merely provides a reason for an intruder to go undetected.

2.Open Doors and Windows? The claim that there were 7 open windows and 1 door is disputed.

Not evidence that there was no intruder, it's only distuputing the evidence that an intruder could have gained entry, and there again, it's not evidence that none of the doors or windows were actually open, it's speculation.

3.Entry through Basement Window? No one disputes that in principle someone could have entered through the window well, but they argue strongly that if an intruder had done so, there would have been far more evidence of a disturbance both inside the well itself and inside the basement room in which this window is located.

And yet the police managed it without that disturbance when they did it. Again, not evidence, but rather speculation.

4.Broken Window. No one disputes the window was broken, but there is a major dispute about whether this was staged.

More speculation, it could have been broken by the tooth fairy too.

5.RDI theorists further argue that the failure of John Ramsey to bring this broken window to the attention of police when he went down to the basement at 10 AM is evidence of lying or cover-up.

And yet they later they note that Ramsey says the window had been broken a while, so why would it have seemed out of place had this been true?

6.Suitcase Under Window. No one disputes the suitcase evidence, but again, this is as consistent with a staging theory as an intruder theory.

Not evidence against an intruder.

7.Foliage Under Window Grate. The foliage found under the window grate could have occurred during the police investigation of the house on December 26 and is not necessarily an indication of an intruder.

Could have been, speculation, and is not evidence of no intruder.

8.Spider Web on Grate. Moreover, a spider web was found on the grate and RDI theorists are insistent that an intruder would have broken/removed this web and that it could not have been re-spun before police arrived.

Finally something that can be considered evidence, unfortunately spiders can rebuild their webs at rather fast rates, the standard orb web can be done in just an hour, meaning that there was plenty of time to respin it after it was disturbed and before the police arrived.

9.If the window was broken the preceding summer as claimed by John Ramsey, then all the leaves/packing nuts could easily have blown into the basement over time and are not indicative of an intruder.

Again, speculation, and not evidence against an intruder.

10.Lights in Basement. No one disputes that lights were on in the basement, but this is as consistent with a staging theory as an intruder theory.

Again not evidence against an intruder.

11.Butler Door. RDI theorists dispute whether the butler door actually was found open, but if it was, this may easily have been the result of an early-arriving neighbor or police investigator and is not proof of an intruder.

More disputing the evidence based on speculation.

12.Duct Tape. "Plaintiff also notes that the strip of duct tape found on JonBenet's mouth had a bloody mucous on it and a "perfect set of child's lip prints, which did not indicate a tongue impression or resistance." (PSDMF P 53.)" (Carnes 2003:19). This suggests it was not used to silence her but instead placed on her after she was unconscious, an indication of staging. Why would an intruder stage the crime scene?

So with the final point, we have only the second actual piece of evidence in a section labelled as "Specific Evidence." Unfortunately burn marks similar to those a stun gun makes were found on the body, in an intruder senario, it is likely that Jon Bennet was rendered unconscious and then gagged with the tape to prevent her crying out if she awoke. This would be highly consistant with the tape not having a tongue impression or resistance and with there still being an intruder. Suggesting that it can only be because it was staged is false.

So in the end all there is as evidence that the Ramsey's did it is a lot of speculation, loud disputing of the evidence, and gut feelings. It still totally ignores the lack of the tape or cord in the house, the animal hairs not found elsewhere in the house, the palm print, the missing pad pages, the DNA, the stungun, and so on and so forth. Honestly, the 9/11 CT's have a better case than the RDI crowd.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

So then they'd have a body to get rid of. Unless you are suggesting they should leave it rotting in the cellar.

Nope. They get rid of the body completely. That would be a lot better than having the police find the body in the house.

I understand you don't see the evidence the same way I do. But you can't discount JR finding the body here by saying it doesn't make sense. When people stage a crime scene to cover up the accidental killing of their child (a not that rare of an event, sadly) you have people acting rashly, not necessarily rationally. If you stage the scene and expect the police to discover the scene you set up and they don't, you wouldn't reevaluate your plan, you'd find a way to have the scene discovered.

Then there is no point in debating the reason or logic of the Ramseys or the killer. Any scenario that might seem unreasonable, we can use the same logic and say, "Well, they might not have been acting rationally."

And yet it has the opposite effect on your assessment.

It doesn't have the "opposite effect." Nobody is saying his finding the body is proof that John Ramsey is innocent. I am saying that his finding the body cannot be considered suspicious, or an indicator that he is guilty.

The problem with the scenario is simple: if the killer left the body in the house (he did), and if John Ramsey was instructed to conduct a "top to bottom" search of the house (he was), it was awfully likely that he would be the one to find the body. He'd probably be even more likely than the police to find it, since he knows the house better. Had he found the body, say, in the middle of the woods, or in some place where it was unlikely he would be coincidentally, it might be suspicious. But given the circumstances, the whole thing is a wash. It's not inherently suspicious.

I agree in and of itself, finding the body is not evidence of guilt. However, finding the body was consistent with knowing where it was.

It's also consistent with him not knowing where it was -- and coming across it during a room to room search.

Since it was in his house, and since he was told to search the house, even if he didn't know where the body was, it was pretty likely he would find it sooner or later -- particularly if he was instructed to do a thorough search of the entire house.

But not the paintbrushes. And not taking the child to the basement instead of out of the house. And not taking the time to fashion an elaborate garrote. And not smashing the kid's head and strangling the child.

Still consistent with an intruder. The basement was the ingress/egress route. He very well have tried to knock her out, seriously injured her, then realizing she wasn't dead, made the garrote to finish the job. Or maybe he really did simply want to kill her, and the head blow didn't do it, so he made the garrote. Either way, nothing is inconsistent there. The only thing clear is that the garrote was not necessarily a planned event. That doesn't make it unlikely. Note above -- much like the Ramseys as the killer, there's no reason to think an intruder wouldn't veer from his plan, especially if it was disrupted.

And not writing the ransom note including writing it twice.

Why not? It actually makes a lot of sense to write the note in the house, with items from the house. The risk is spending longer in the house. But the reward is that there are no items to potentially trace back to you. The killer brought the things he needed that he couldn't reasonably expect to easily find in someone else's house (duct tape and rope, possibly a stun gun), and didn't bring items that he knew would be pretty likely to easily find (a pen and paper). There's also the possibility that the ransom note was spontaneous. He got there, felt confident after he realized everyone was asleep and probably wouldn't catch him, and left the note as a taunt to the Ramseys. It's the equivalent of saying, "Not only did I kill your daughter in your home, but I hung around in the house and wrote a note on your own pad of paper and you couldn't do a thing about it." The practice notes, interestingly, were never found, much like the duct tape and rope. If the killer was practicing to ensure disguised his handwriting, it would make perfect sense to take them with him.

Why leave the body? Either you murder the kid and leave, or write the ransom note and take the child, dead or alive with you. Or you have a bizarre sex fantasy involving the garrote and you take the child to a location where you will have privacy and time.

Why would the killer take a dead body with him?? That wouldn't make sense. Then he has to dispose of it (much like why you suggest the Ramseys would want the body to be found). Even walking in the middle of the night, carrying around a dead body would be a pretty risky thing to do -- and for what advantage? If his goal was to murder JonBenet, then there is no reason he would take the body with him. He'd want the Ramseys to find it. If his goal was to kidnap and it went wrong, he sure wouldn't want to carry the body around with him. Also, if the killer exited through a basement window, it wouldn't be particularly convenient to take a body with him -- even one as small as JonBenet.

Why go to a middle room in the basement as well? That's like purposefully fleeing down a dead end.

It was a directly forward from the stairs, and not far from his exit route. Here is a diagram of the house. The killer went down the stairs, went straight ahead (also where he picked up the paintbrush), garroted JonBenet, left her body, then proceeded on to his exit route. He had just spent a decent amount of time upstairs in the house, I doubt he was concerned about going an extra room into the basement.

Either way, I could ask the same question about the Ramseys: if they wanted the body to be found, why stick it in an out of the way place? Why not put it somewhere a bit more likely to be discovered. Why not leave it in the room with the window? That would reinforce the idea that the killer escaped there.

You can take any number of single pieces of evidence here and say this isn't logical if [X] committed the murder. But when you look at the entire picture, there is no outsider hypothesis that fits all the evidence better than a family murder covered up.

Obviously I disagree.

Would an outsider murder the child in the bedroom? Upstairs where other family members were? It makes a bit of noise to crack a person's skull as badly as JBR's skull was fractured. Do you think the guy took the kid to the basement instead of going out the door? There was no murder scene found. So that means the killer had time to erase traces of the scene. That's not a guy in a hurry to leave. Why would he even bother given he was leaving the body behind?

I'm not sure what you mean by "there was no murder scene found." I haven't read anything that suggests the killer did any extensive clean-up of the crime scene.

As for whether an intruder would murder a child in the bedroom... sure, why not? The Lindbergh baby was snatched from his crib while his parents were awake and in another room. So this isn't without precedent. And yes, I think he took her to the basement -- because that's where he entered and exited the house. Much less risky then strolling out the front door -- even at night.

The garrote was not made and brought to the room. JBR's hair was threaded through it. That means it was fashioned around the child's neck, not made and then wrapped around the neck.

Yes -- a particularly brutal and deliberate method of killing somebody. To believe the Ramseys did this, you'd not just have to believe that they accidentally hit her over the head, but that they then finished the job by brutally strangling her to death. That would not just make them murdering parents, it would make them almost sociopaths.

I'd like to hear your hypothesis of how an outsider would have proceeded through the house, what occurred where and when that makes more sense than an accidental killing during physical abuse and a subsequent staged crime scene to cover it up. It's not hard, if you put the parents in as murderer and accomplice in the cover up. But try to do it with an intruder and you need a lot of stretching of the probable.

Enters through the basement. Moves upstairs. Writes the ransom note (practicing a couple of times to disguise his handwriting). Moves upstairs to JonBenet's room. Uses a stungun (maybe) to subdue her (consistent with wounds on her body). Ties her up and duct tapes her mouth. Brings her to the basement. Bashes her over the head, and then garrotes her (or the reverse. Since the garrote was made with something nearby, I tend to think it was used to 'finish' the job after the blow to the head didn't quite kill her). Maybe he does it for sexual thrill, maybe because he intended to kill her all along. Maybe she gets noisy or uncooperative and he tries to knock her out and hits her too hard. Who knows. But he drops the body off, and exits through the window again -- taking with him the duct tape, rope, and practice letters.

Some of that is political. Defense attorneys can always produce experts who say there's no evidence. The Ramsey's had some influence in that police department which could explain the opinions you note.

Lou Smit was hired by the Boulder PD to head the investigation. I doubt the Ramsey's "influence" did anything to him, and there is certainly no evidence it did. The Boulder PD was pretty focused on the Ramseys being guilty, so it's tough to argue the Ramseys "influence" had much impact. The Federal Judge made her ruling in a libel case brought against the Ramseys, so it is unlikely their "influence" had anything to do with her assessment. The only person on the list I gave who was "produced" by the defense was Douglas, who is otherwise a very well respected and experienced investigator. Like it or not, there are some very experienced, qualified people who find the intruder theory more compelling than the Ramseys being guilty.

The DNA evidence of an unknown male was too small to also make sense. If he had gloves on, you wouldn't find it in the places it was found. If he didn't you'd have a lot more of it and maybe fingerprints. The amount of DNA we are talking about here is consistent with contamination from any number of sources, most likely on JBR's dirty hands.

Dirty hands that co-mingled the same DNA with bloodspots in her panties, as well as two separate areas on the outside of her tights? That's stretching it. The DNA found makes perfect sense if the killer wore gloves and then took them off to sexually assault JonBenet.

Did the police find finger or glove prints? So did the guy wipe everything off he touched? That's a lot of cleanup.

The crime scene was so badly botched, with so many people -- friends, family, police etc. walking around, if the killer was wearing gloves, it wouldn't shock me if they missed the glove prints, or any glove prints they did find were virtually worthless, since they could have easily come from the police themselves or anyone else who was there. Plus, being winter, it wouldn't be shocking to find glove prints. In any event, I don't even know if they searched for glove prints. But they did find brown fibers that could be consistent with a pair of gloves, on JonBenet's body. They were fibers that didn't match anything else they found in the house, in any event -- another sign of a third party being there.

The tape and rope being pieces within the house but not on their original spools is not hard to imagine. The Ramseys tossing the tape roll and/or rope source is not implausible.

Except the police searched all over the police -- the house, trash cans, etc. -- for them and found nothing. And if they were smart enough to get rid of the duct tape and rope, why would they leave the pad of paper and pen in plain sight? Why leave part of the paintbrush in the art tub and then get rid of another part of it (one piece was never found)?

Like I said -- I wouldn't say 100% that they are innocent -- but an intruder scenario absolutely fits the evidence that is there, and it fits at least as well as any other scenario. There is nothing in the evidence that rules out an intruder, and there is plenty of evidence that suggests that there could have been one.

 

[patchbunny]

So, could be dead, could be in jail, even possibly might not have re-offended. Difficult one.

How bad is a "felony"? You don't have to be a great criminal to get your DNA collected round here, which annoys some people a lot, but on the other hand big-time cases have been solved because someone was picked up for something minor.

Rolfe.

IANACOAL, but I believe a felony in the United States is a crime where the penalty is more than 1 year in jail, or a fine of more than $1,000. As for what that includes, it can vary between states, but from Wikipedia,

Crimes commonly considered to be felonies include, but are not limited to: aggravated assault and/or battery, arson, burglary, illegal drug use/sales, grand theft, robbery, murder, rape, and vandalism on federal property. Broadly, felonies can be categorized as either violent or non-violent (property and drug) offenses.

 

[patchbunny]

I saw a special on TV about a possible suspect in this case. He was a known psycho who like to strangle kittens and such. He was in the area at the time and he had been overheard saying he wanted to bash someones head in. HHe was part of some petty organised crime gang and one day he was found dead. He had been shot to death and an attempt was made to make it look like a suicide. Police have no hard evidence against him but a theory is out there that suggests that when this gang found out he had killed Jonbennet they had killed him to keep his mouth shut. He had worn boots and they were similar to boot prints found outside a window where police thought someone had broken the Ramseys house. Anyone else remember anything about this?

I remember that covered, I think, in the Enquirer. I never heard how much credibility the theory had.

 

[Fnord]

I remember that covered, I think, in the Enquirer. I never heard how much credibility the theory had.

Credibility? In the Enquirer? The first I ever read of this theory was in the post above, so how much credibility could it have?

 

[Segnosaur]

Just wondering, how exactly do you know that the 'proven abuse situations' were actually correct? Did the people actually confess? (If not, I wonder if any of those were cases of "Ginger: I think there is abuse. Cops: Nurse says abuse so we arrest. Ginger: They were obviously guilty since they were arrested".)

I know the outcome of the cases I am referring to. I'm not sure what you think happens when you take care of a patient and observe indications of abuse, then report the case to CPS....
It's a myth that health care workers go around making unsubstantiated charges against parents.

Can you honestly say that each and every allegation made against a parent for child abuse by a health care professional is valid? That you never get mistakes made?

Usually when you confront parents with the facts, they don't all run to lawyers and insist on their innocence. More likely one of the parents either admits to it (these parents usually feel very guilty) or they report the adult that caused the injury if it is an abusing husband or boyfriend.

Really? Strange... you were claiming your experience helped you detect 'guilt' in the Ramseys, yet the way the Ramseys were acting seems to be in contradiction to what you claim "usually" happens.

I repeat, diagnosing child abuse is not rocket science. Take a little time looking at all the medical and nursing data there is out there about child and other domestic abuse. It's a serious medical problem and just like one bases health care of pneumonia on evidence based medicine, the same is true for domestic abuse. Health care providers are not acting blindly here. There are recognizable signs and symptoms.

Yeah, I'm sure there are signs that show up when child abuse occurs. But you have the beneifit of talking to both the victim and the parents, of actually seeing physical evidence, etc.

And just how many of those situations where you correctly identified situations had the parents been constantly hounded (falsely) by police for months and months, and for which they had undergone some other trauma before you made your analysis?

This is total nonsense.

No, its not. You claim you detected guilt in the Ramseys based on your experience analyzing patients. Yet if the same 'symptoms' can have multiple causes (e.g. guilt vs. exhaustion/frustration/etc.) and you have no experience or method of detecting which of those causes was the cause, then your 'guilt detection' must be called into question.

Note that you didn't address that particular issue: That at least part of your accuracy might be due to the fact that you get to deal with both the victims and the perpetrators, giving you more information that you would have from any interview with the Ramseys.

I did address this. I said the interviews were only one piece of evidence.

But the fact that you consider your analysis of the interviews to be evidence at all is false. I'm dealing with one issue of B.S. at a time.

Or are you suggesting the parents were doing something immoral, for which there is not one shred of evidence and the death was due to some sex game that went wrong. Well, the Ramseys have had their lives turned upside down... There is every indication that the family was happy and well-adjusted.

No, I'm talking about accidental death during physical abuse.

Except there was no evidence at all of physical abuse at any point prior to the night of the murder. Do you believe parents all of a sudden "snap" and start molesting/abusing their daughter when there was no incidence of it happening prior to that point?

Ransom note actually points away from the Ramseys... not only does the handwriting totally exclude the father, and can't be linked to the mother, it also contains phrases that were lifted from popular action movies at the time (like the movie Speed). Not exactly the type of entertainment that your typical beauty-pagent mother would be going to.

Patsy was not ruled out as the note writer, she just wasn't ruled in.

Ummm.... go back and read what I wrote.

I wasn't referring to the handwriting; I was referring to the content of the note, the phrasing used. Like said, the phrasing in the note has phrases lifted from action movies that your typical beauty-queen mother isn't likely going to watch.

In most cases where a killer is involved in a 'search' for the body, they typically will set things up so that they do not find the body themselves. When the father was searching the basement, he would have likely told his friend "you search the wine cellar (where the body was), I'll search some other area".

Do you have evidence of what's typical in a case like this one?

I am going by statements made by John Douglas, in his book "The Cases that Haunt Us". In his book, Douglas specifically discusses the issue of the father 'finding' the body.

Now, Douglas is a former FBI profiler. He has several decades of experience analyzing various murders and crimes. While I don't have exact statistics on how often this situation happens, I'm assuming that, given the number of cases he has examined, Douglas would have at least a general idea what is most common.

Actually, there are reasons to leave the body in the house...

You leave the body in the house because you don't want to be caught carrying a dead body around. (Had some neighbor seen someone carrying a child from the house, it would have aroused suspicion...) Not only that, we don't even know if the killer had a vehicle.

Again, you are looking at a single thing and not the entire picture.

I'm dealing with one issue at a time. It was you who suggested there was no reason for a stranger to leave the body in the house. I was addressing that specific claim.

If you killed the child, sure you might stash the body in the basement on your way out. Where did the death occur?

The death likely occurred in the basement. Most logical (it was isolated from the rest of the house, would have provided privacy.)

Why clean up the murder scene if you were leaving the body?

Ummm... how about to destroy/eliminate any evidence as to your own identity?

Why fashion the garrote? Remember, it was threaded through JBR's hair, so it was made during the assault.

Uhhh... so? Killers have their fetishes. Not exactly surprising.

Why did Jack the Ripper dissect his victims when he could have stabbed them once and moved on? Why did Robert Hansen strip his victims and hunt them for sport when a single shot 'execution style' would have been more efficient? For whatever reason, some murders get fixated on a particular image or thought.

You need to read through the possible scenarios which account for everything, in totality.

There are certain things we will never know about the case (regardless of who the killer is). The problem is, there are just as man (if not more) issues that just don't make sense or are unanswered if you assume the parents were the killers as if strangers were.

The Ramsey's house was very large and the basement quite isolated. If the killer thought nobody would hear, why not stay in the house, instead of dragging a kid out to a car where they might be seen?

That's a stretch.

Nope, its not. Their house was huge. The parent's room was about as far from the wine cellar as you can get. If I remember correctly, they even did sound tests to see if people in the upper floors could hear sounds in the basement (which they couldn't.)

Then why bother with the ransom note? Why write it more than once?

At this point, I doubt anyone will ever know why there was a ransom note. Perhaps the killer actually intended to kidnap the girl and the death was partially accidental. Or maybe it was a way to taunt the family. As for writing it more than once... the killer was in the house for an extended period of time before the family returned; why not rewrite it?

For everything you can explain, something else doesn't fit.

Actually it fits better than the idea that the parents wrote the note. Why would the Ramseys pick such a small ransom when they knew their own wealth? Why would the note have references to movies the parents wouldn't likely be watching?

Police found a palm print which didn't match any of the members of the house!!!!

One would think they might have matched DNA from the palm print to the trace DNA they found on JBR. It doesn't appear that is the case.

Not sure if any attempt was made to check the palm print for DNA, but its quite likely that there was not enough and/or the DNA was too degraded to be matched to that found elsewhere.

You are not bothering to address the research and/or the researchers I cited.

The research has already been addressed by others in this thread.

The idea that someone might wear gloves during the initial stages of the crime, but remove them at other points (perhaps they needed to remove them to tie the knots on the garrote) isn't really that far-fetched.

That wasn't what I was pointing out. I was pointing out that without gloves you would find more DNA. With gloves, you wouldn't find the DNA where it was found in the amounts it was found.

Ummm... So? As I pointed out before, gloves can be removed. The killer could have wore gloves most of the time but taken them off at certain points, thus leaving some DNA behind, but not as much as if they had gone gloveless the whole time.

By the way, how exactly do you explain the outside debris found in the basement? How do you explain the shoe print in the basement which didn't match anyone in the family?

The evidence for and against an intruder can be found here.

First of all, I was asking how you would explain things like the outside debris in the basement.

Secondly, did you actually read that web page? Look through the list of evidence that they give against the intruder theory... notice something? None of the points they raise specifically disproves that there was an intruder, they just claim "it could be staged", over and over again.

On the other hand, look at the evidence given for the intruder... most of the points bring up specific issues that simply don't make sense if the parents had done it. Things like:
- Fibers inconsistent with clothing in the house. Think they went and specifically planted fibers and then disposed of the clothes it came from? If so, why didn't they dispose of the pen, etc. used to write the note?
- Pubic hair not matching anyone in the family (or do you think the family kept a collection of pubes from strangers for such an event?)
- animal hairs contained on the tape not maching any pets in the house (or do you think the Ramseys ran out and collected some dog hairs just in case they needed to stage the crime?)

 

[Segnosaur]

The evidence for and against an intruder can be found here. The evidence for an intruder is very convincing until you read the evidence against an intruder. This is true for just about every bit of evidence in this case.

One other note about Skeptic Ginger's claims and this particular web site. (Phantomwolf did a great job of debunking the anti-intruder claims presented....)

Part of the content used in the page refers to a book by Laurence Smith, who claimed that Patsy was the killer and that her husband didn't know what had happened. Yet Skeptic Ginger keeps claiming that the husband was involved because he 'knew' where the body was.

So, what is the case? Does the web site contain a good description for the evidence against the intruder theory (in which case you have to discount the whole "Husband found the body=guilty" claim)? Or do you want to keep claiming the husband knew where the body was, in which case you have to view content on that web site as flawed? Or do you want to have your cake and eat it too?

This is rather like your average 9/11 conspiracy theory, where they take different scenarios that have incompatible elements and try combining them even if contradictions ensue.