First venture into theoretical posting...please be kind!
I have been PDI since the initial murder, as soon as I saw Patsy say "we feel there are at least two people who know" and "we don't know if it's a he or a she..."
Lately I've been more and more willing to consider BDI...the one thing that I cannot believe is that Burke would ever have been handed over to the Whites so easily and early. Whether admonished to keep quiet or not, they would have HAD to be more possessive of his person if he had done it and could even remotely think of telling anyone. For that reason I can't turn BDI.
My thoughts (just musings, and MOO) about the murder and staging:
1) is it possible that PR was the one who planted the idea of a secret visit from Santa after Christmas in JB's mind, so that she could wrap and stash gifts in the WC and lure JB to the basement where Santa may have "just visited?" Using the flashlight because "it's a secret" and perhaps even having left out pineapple and tea earlier, for "Santa?"
2. Is it possible that PR planned to kill JB much earlier, had already written most of the RN tucked away in middle pages of her pad, and had already planned to cast it as a kidnapping and to blame any and every possible person she could in the note? I feel (MOO) that the last, more desperate and personal part of the RN was added after the murder, as both a warning and a plea to JR to remove the body so her staged kidnapping could proceed as she planned. This is why the note gets mean, threatening, and has a much different tone than the almost comically derivative content of the (earlier-penned) part of the note?
3) Having lived with a mother who was never abusive, but never really present either, who was still childlike in her worldview due to terrible sexual, verbal, and physical abuse in her childhood, and who lived a rich fantasy life of religion to the point where she begged Jesus to give her physical stigmata, and gave up her bedroom to sleep in a 4 foot wide hallway closet....I can say that just from what I've studied about PR, the possibility of near-psychotic religious delusion is very, very real as I see it. Might PR have sacrificed JBR, not as an angel to help PR in the afterlife, but as an offering to God to KEEP PR FROM DYING?
I mean...she firmly believed her cancer being cured was divine intervention. She appears to have been seeing signs everywhere leading up to Christmas, from the choice of purple to the MyTwinn "corpse" in its box, etc. I personally, knowing a similar psyche given to signs, believe she saw these as God sending an instruction and a confirmation of the course beforehand...not as "looking back" realizations. (MOO).
4) Is it possible that, in the grip of believing God demanded a sacrifice, (as both atonement for her own abuse (MOO) of JBR, and as a trade for continued survival) that there was a "God complex" in which PR saw herself as sacrificing her only child who WAS ALSO HERSELF, two persons in one "God," as it were, and set JBR up to act as a Jesus figure in this metaphor? I know it sounds crazy and I think of BrotherMoon and others who've been banned over such ideas...but I just can't shake what I feel might be a very real possibility. PR did say that she believed JBR's death would save many people, or something like that, and that JBR had been special, or had been meant for a larger purpose, or something similar, didn't she? I can't recall the actual quotes, so MOO.
Lastly for now, I believe (MOO) that PDI, by herself, with RN pre-readied, then proceeded to finish the RN as instructions for what exactly "is up to you now, John...," that she may have tried to convince JR it had been BR, until BR appeared during the 911 call (or perhaps had ventured into the basement for his toy and had seen what had been done to JBR?) at which point there was no removing the body as she'd hoped JR would, so both JR and PR completed the staging.
This would explain why BR knew there was a knife at the CS (put there to convince JR it was BR???), why he was allowed to leave (they may have convinced him it was a real RN left by an intruder), and why JAR insisted on "forgiveness..." If everyone thought it had been BR, this would all make sense.
I realize there are flaws with some of this thinking, and I claim no expertise or special knowledge. I am just wanting thoughts on my thoughts to help me decide further thoughts. Lol.
Toward the "JBR as Jesus" scenario:
JBR dressed all in white, wrapped like a shroud in a white blanket, strands of green garland (crown?) in her hair, placed in a remote concrete tomb. Wearing a shirt with a star on it (star led the 3 wise men to Jesus...)
Extra length of cord between wrists...could she have been posed in a crucifixion pose? Not necessarily hanging, even flat on the ground (her arms above her head).
The Lazarus reference the minute PR saw the body. Lazarus was revived after 4 days, Jesus on the third day. Depending on TOD (or intended day of death), PR's birthday was either 3 or 4 days later.
I keep thinking of the story of "the binding of Isaac," in which Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son under direct orders from God, only to be stopped at the last minute. This story involved binding to an altar and the raising of a knife.
One more RN observation: in mentioning every possible decoy to throw suspicion off the RN writer (foreign faction, business associations, leaving it on the spiral stairs a la LHP), the note also states "we will call you between 8 and 10..." what else was "between 8 and 10?" Burke.
Okay. I have spit some of this out. Please be gentle, kind. Etc. I love this forum. I am open-minded and friendly to ideas. I like to think I might open up some new ways of looking at possibilities, but I realize it's more likely that I will be seen as an inventor of figments. I live with my own mental illnesses, though nothing violent or psychotic. Don't need meds but do have some personal background for the concepts I outline. They DO sound crazy, but I have seen them play out in lesser ways in those I love.
ALL OF THE ABOVE IS MOO, and more brainstorming fruit than opinion.