Steve Thomas did not come right out and say it during the Websleuths podcast with Jim Kolar a few years ago, but he clearly respects Kolar a great deal - Kolar was his boss for a time - and implied that Kolar's conclusions gave him pause for thought. I know he's a private citizen with a private life now and he'll likely not comment further than this, but it seems as though Thomas may be a BDI now.
No one ever answers my direct questions about Patsy's motive (or John's, as the case may be) for starting this. Fanciful theories abound, but none ever fit with the actual evidence. That injury is evidence of a hard strike to the head, not a angry slam against a sink. An accident like a fall down the stairs probably wouldn't have caused that extensive a fracture either, as unlike adults, young children tend to bounce when falling down stairs. My four year old niece fell down an entire set of hard basement stairs and didn't sustain so much as a bruise. The ER doctor said simply "Kids bounce. They instinctively know how to roll to protect themselves and their small body mass tends to minimize any damage". And of course a tumble down the stairs would have led to a 911 call, not strangulation.
I also don't see parents fashioning a toggle rope, even if they decided to "finish her off". The way that item was made says "boy" to me, especially a Boy Scout. [FONT=&]I think what makes this case so challenging for so many is that its hard to know where the murderer left off and what was after-the-fact staging done to protect the murderer. Here we can only speculate, but I seriously doubt the murderer was the one who tried to make this look that a kidnapping gone wrong. [/FONT]
