The ransom note

SuperDave said:

"We know Patsy was in the habit of signing her correspondence with acronyms."

How many other people knew that then?

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I'm not sure when this became public knowledge.

The sad truth is this case was botched by the police in the first hours & even with mountains of circumstantial evidence that pointed directly to the Ramseys the DA was too intimidated to take action.

LI_Mom said:

The sad truth is this case was botched by the police in the first hours & even with mountains of circumstantial evidence that pointed directly to the Ramseys the DA was too intimidated to take action.

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Baloney. Hunter took the action he wanted to.

You obviously have never set foot in Boulder.

Paradox, I think you might be right. Maybe the ambivalence we saw all along was just Hunter trying to figure out how NOT to be forced to trial.

If JB was killed in Ga, she would have gotten justice in the courts, I'm sure.

JR explains this very good himself.


5 MIKE KANE: Do you feel like if
6 there were no note, the finger would point more
7 to you or less to you? When I say you I mean
8 your family.

9 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, I mean that
10 was Patsy's reaction, she said thank God they
11 left a note. I said what do you mean by that,
12 he said well, they left some evidence, so he was
13 going to follow it that way.
14 So yeah, I mean I think if somebody
15 was really trying to frame us, it could have
16 been a lot more obvious and a lot less -- a lot
17 more likely to do that.

Yes, just think of it. If there were no RN what would this case look like.:waitasec:

tumble said:

JR explains this very good himself.


5 MIKE KANE: Do you feel like if
6 there were no note, the finger would point more
7 to you or less to you? When I say you I mean
8 your family.

9 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, I mean that
10 was Patsy's reaction, she said thank God they
11 left a note. I said what do you mean by that,
12 he said well, they left some evidence, so he was
13 going to follow it that way.
14 So yeah, I mean I think if somebody
15 was really trying to frame us, it could have
16 been a lot more obvious and a lot less -- a lot
17 more likely to do that.

Yes, just think of it. If there were no RN what would this case look like.:waitasec:

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Great point. The fact is, there is a ransom note "found" by Patsy, handed to John by Patsy, pointed out to the 911 screener by Patsy, S.B.T.C Victory! told to the screener by Patsy, in Patsy's handwriting.

Thank God "they" left a note. Patsy wanted "them" identified. That's why she wrote the note, that's why she invited the world into her home. "They" were inside Patsy, and "they" did the crime.

"The sad truth is this case was botched by the police in the first hours & even with mountains of circumstantial evidence that pointed directly to the Ramseys the DA was too intimidated to take action."

And yet, that fool in North Carolina goes forth with NO evidence!

"Thank God "they" left a note. Patsy wanted "them" identified. That's why she wrote the note, that's why she invited the world into her home. "They" were inside Patsy, and "they" did the crime."

It's sad, but most likely true.

Speaking of the Ransom letter....

http://www.simulstream.com/mp3/ransom_letter.mp3


Other Ramsey parody songs here:

http://www.simulstream.com/mp3.html

Bart Baggett at the Handwriting Univer. is going to be on several show coming up soon

see what he has found already!
http://myhandwriting.com/celebs/johnmarkkarr.html

good find! Notice the chain of events there, he signed the court order in oct 2001 and had already applied for a passport. The expiration date of the passport is 11/2011 which means it was issued November 2001. It normally takes about 6 weeks for regular processing, but you can expedite it for a fee. So he wasted no time getting his passport for the flee together. He was definitely running. Of course this doesn't make him guilty of JBR. Whose address in Georgia did he use? Brother's?

I can't wait to see the other source that matches.

terralee said:

Dont get me wrong I think one of the Ramseys penned the ransom note, but Ive always thought it was wierd that there were no tears found on the paper, think about this, with all that went on that night how could anyone be composed, and not in a state of chaos, and yet be be able to pen a ransom note that was pristine?

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Scene 1, a day or so before 12-2-96: The note contents are drafted as part of a planned drama/scheme that does not involve either a death or a real kidnapping. Later the note is recopied in preparation for the scheme. No sadness, no tears, no anguish or distractions to hinder the inclusion of lines from movies...they are already drafted out.

Subsequent scene, Christmas night or early AM:The note is ready. The plan is either implemented with a mishap, or the events that necessitated the fake kidnapping scheme escalate to a critical injury to JonBenet. Whether accident or not, the exposure of the events and/or scheme would be catastrophic to the family in conjunction with the death. The note and the injured or dead JonBenet are merged into the feeble cover of a kidnapping in which the perp leaves the "target" behind. And really, what else besides telling the damning truth could they do? And of course they're devastated, of course they mourn, and of course they feel a horrific loss for which they feel "not guilty". And if the scheme involved a helper, he just might be a real killer they would have tremendous ambivalence about seeing caught.

I went to the handwriting link above. Does anyone have a link to a sample of Karr's handwriting when he's not writing in all uppercase? It's really hard to compare the note to the application because it's all uppercase. Also, did anyone ever come across a sample of Patsy's handwriting? Thanks.

dragonfly said:

Bart Baggett at the Handwriting Univer. is going to be on several show coming up soon

see what he has found already!
http://myhandwriting.com/celebs/johnmarkkarr.html

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It seems a little odd to me that on his application for employment at the school in Bangkok he gives an an address on Paces Ferry Road in Vinings, GA as his address in country of origin.

The address he gives is just a few numbers off from that of the Ramseys when they lived in Vinings.

Man, this dude is weird.

i.b.nora said:

It seems a little odd to me that on his application for employment at the school in Bangkok he gives an an address on Paces Ferry Road in Vinings, GA as his address in country of origin.

The address he gives is just a few numbers off from that of the Ramseys when they lived in Vinings.

Man, this dude is weird.

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Did HE ever live in Vinings? That is weird!

LI_Mom said:

Paradox, I think you might be right. Maybe the ambivalence we saw all along was just Hunter trying to figure out how NOT to be forced to trial.

If JB was killed in Ga, she would have gotten justice in the courts, I'm sure.

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Plenty of people are killed in Georgia do not get justice. I can name a couple myself.

UKGuy said:

One of the very few who do not think Patsy authored the note is Gerald R. McMenamin an eminent Professor of Linguistics.

Dr. McMenamin has taught various courses and special training seminars in
linguistic stylistics and has worked on more than 250 civil and criminal cases
of questioned authorship. He is the author of several publications in forensic
linguistics, including the book Forensic Stylistics

In his book:
Forensic Linguistics Advances in Forensic Stylistics he uses JonBenet as a case study.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction and concluding paragraphs ...

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"....Professor McMenamin’s choice of the features used in document comparison is arbitrary and subjective, and unmotivated by any empirical research; another set of features could well have been chosen that would have given very different results. His method could not pass the test of independent replicability...."

Geoffrey Nunberg quoted by Carole Chaski in "Best Practices and Admissibility of Forensic Author Identification"


McMenamin states that he chose style-markers for Patsy that contrast with the ransom note--and then later concludes that she is excluded as the author because she doesn't share style-markers with the ransom note writer. Below are Patsy's style-markers according to Gerald McMenamin:

PR 01 Correct spelling of "business"
PR 02 Correct spelling of "possession"
PR 03 Misspelling of "advise" as "advize"
PR 04 Lack of correction in spelling "denied" (She would have had to spell it "din..." and then fixed it)
PR 05 Misspelled "burial" as "buriel" (Got a real chuckle out of that.)
PR 06 Misspelling and correction of "advise" as "advize" with additional correction
PR 07 Misspelling of "scrutiny" as "scruitiny" in passes 1 and 2 (after which she spells it right)
PR 08 Use of capital "S" in "Southern"
PR 09 Presence of periods in "am"
PR 10 Periods (instead of "!") after "Victory" in passes 2 and 3 (and 4, 5)
PR 11 No periods used in "SBTC"
PR 12 "Unharmed" is one word (Uh ahem, excuse me, in pass 5 she writes "un harmed.")
PR 13 Using the correct article in "an earlier"
PR 14 "Pick up" has no hyphen
PR 15 Writes "counter measures" (She writes it as one word in her individual word exemplars)
PR 16 Use of single word for "outsmart"
PR 17 Use of single word for "underestimate"
PR 18A $118,000. has no trailing zeroes
PR 18b $100,000. has no trailing zeroes
PR 18C Wrote "100 dollar" without "$"
PR 18D Wrote "$18,000." with no trailing zeroes in pass 3
PR 18E Use of word "dollar" without "$"


"Lack of correction in spelling 'denied'" is particularly amusing. Does McMenamin really think that correcting the spelling of "denied" is a style-marker for the ransom note writer? That the ransom note writer habitually does that?

Provided that Patsy did write it, she certainly isn't going to be in the same psychological mind-set when writing exemplars as she was when writing the note.

icedtea4me said:

Provided that Patsy did write it, she certainly isn't going to be in the same psychological mind-set when writing exemplars as she was when writing the note.

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I think they would be similar: fear verging on panic. And she would be disguising her handwriting for both.

She gave three exemplars on January 4, the first from dictation. No clues are supposed to be provided about spelling and punctuation. Even so, Patsy matched the ransom note's "situation, such as Police, F.B.I., etc.," very well, failing only to capitalize "police." (But she did capitalize it on the third.) And she also put a "!" after "Victory" right off the bat, though she replaced it with a comma subsequently.

After the January 4 session, her lawyer was provided with a copy of the ransom note. Her February 28 session reflected this opportunity to identify traits flying farther below the level of consciousness, like her manuscript "a."

fr brown said:

I think they would be similar: fear verging on panic. And she would be disguising her handwriting for both.*snip*

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But would she have just witnessed and/or had a hand in the death of her daughter moments before writing the exemplars?

icedtea4me said:

But would she have just witnessed and/or had a hand in the death of her daughter moments before writing the exemplars?

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No. I'm not sure what you're hinting at.

You're also assuming that she sat down and wrote the ransom note around midnight or 1am. The phone call to 911 wasn't until 5:40. She could have written the note at any time in between.

I suspect the note was the last major thing she did. There are nine missing pages in the pad, suggesting a number of drafts. The end of the note seems hurried, like she was conscious of running out of time.

fr brown said:

You're also assuming that she sat down and wrote the ransom note around midnight or 1am. The phone call to 911 wasn't until 5:40. She could have written the note at any time in between.

I suspect the note was the last major thing she did. There are nine missing pages in the pad, suggesting a number of drafts. The end of the note seems hurried, like she was conscious of running out of time.

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I realize that "running out of time" doesn't make sense if Patsy and John were both involved. They would have taken a few extra minutes to make it look like they just got out of bed: put on pajamas, collect their teddy bears.

Both Kolar and Thomas think that John slept through the night. Presumably physical evidence supports his story--wet toothbrush, sink, shower, razor, mussed bed--while at the same time evidence does not support Patsy's.

No doubt Patsy would have been planning to take her makeup off, pajama up and get in bed for a few minutes. Didn't work out.