Hi, sissi. Glad to see you're still here and, as yet, unblocked.
Salient features of John's 1998 interview with Kane and Smit, repeated below for ready reference (not necessarily in the correct order):
9 JOHN RAMSEY: With the lights off at night
10 it would have been hazardous because there's a lot
11 of junk piled in here. This door was kind of
12 blocked with boxes and a little chair. And you
13 could move the chair and then walk right in. But
14 it would have been pitch black; it would have been
15 tough.
13 LOU SMIT: And he would have had to move
14 it back, if he was in there trying to get out, is
15 that correct?
16 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah.
17 LOU SMIT: So that's not very logical as
18 far as --
19 JOHN RAMSEY: I think it is. I mean if this
20 person is that bizarrely clever to have not left
21 any good evidence, but left all these little funny
22 little clues around, they certain are clever
23 enough to pull the chair back when they left.
22 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, when I came down, I
23 mean, one of the things I noticed, okay, that door
24 is still blocked?
25 MIKE KANE: What do you mean it was
0172
1 blocked?
2 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, there were some boxes
3 and there was like a barstool kind of thing
4 sitting there. It wasn't obvious to me that
5 anybody had gone through because I had to move the
6 chair to get in, which I did.
Some observations: JR said, "This door was kind of blocked with boxes and a little chair. And you could move the chair and then walk right in." Apparently, the chair was not ponderously heavy. MK asked, "What do you mean it was blocked?" JR replied, "Well, there were some boxes and there was like a barstool kind of thing sitting there." I assume the "little chair" and the "barstool kind of thing" were one and the same. JR said, "It wasn't obvious to me that anybody had gone through because I had to move the chair to get in..." With this statement, John is not saying the chair blocking the doorway convinced him that no intruder had passed through it, just that he/she had not obviously gone through that doorway. He entertained the possibility that the clever intruder, who left "all these funny little clues around", was clever enough to pull the chair back when he/she left.
Some questions: What were all the "funny little clues"? How did it benefit the intruder to replace the chair (barstool?) upon passing through the doorway? A "little chair" blocking a doorway will bamboozle the investigators? What is "clever" about this maneuver?
Why was the doorway to a room frequented by Burke blocked by a chair? Is it possible that the "little chair" was placed there in front of the doorway to the train room by the last person to explore the basement (FW?) before John went down?
Is it possible that the "little chair" had been blocking the hallway leading to the laundry area, and that in order to traverse the hallway to the laundry area, the "little chair" was moved to the position where John found it? Well, gee, he did say he noticed, "that door is still blocked?"
Does John seemed puzzled by the chair blocking the doorway? Erase the question mark and what do you have?
Answer: The door is yet blocked, but John is not puzzled. So, we have two puzzles: (1.) John finding the doorway blocked after FW and French have been in the basement--BTW, I recollect that PMPT reported that FW entered the train room and surveyed the broken window, found some glass shards and moved the suitcase in the process--and (2.) John being puzzled for some unknown reason to find the chair "still" blocking the doorway.
Maybe John expressed puzzlement regarding the chair in the doorway because he'd anticipated evidence of an intruder entering and/or exiting through the window.
So, yes, it is important to understand John's puzzlement and to ascertain when he last encountered the chair in the doorway prior to encountering it when he explored the basement the first time that day between 7:30 and 8:00, as he recollected....with a little help from his interrogators. He said he was only in the basement twice that day (Dec. 26), the second time being in the afternoon when he discovered JB's body.
Don't you wish Mike Kane had asked, "What do mean it was STILL blocked?"
Let's see, was the chair in the train room or in the hallway....oh, never mind; it wasn't on the "inner side"; it was on the "lock side". Better to store a chair and boxes in a hallway than to store them within a room???