Not you specifically, UKG, but a reminder to everyone:
Don't get too focused on the term "digital" penetration. The coroner and the other experts who were consulted agreed that the injuries were consistent with digital penetration. There was material from the paintbrush that was found (and confirmed microscopically) in her vagina.
If you think about that, does it really sound like something done by an adult?
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Hm. Good point, but actually, it does sound like an adult to me.
Because very early in this case, I'm talking about when we found out that the child had a "paintbrush" inserted into her like that, I immediately thought there HAD to be something going on there other than sexual abuse.
I may be wrong, of course, but it seemed like a desperation, an attempt to cover up the prior sexual injuries by a someone who in fact couldn't bear to use his/her own hand to defile the child like that
See, here's the problem: if someone were sexually assaulting her that night with a PAINTBRUSH, why would this person do that?
I can see why someone so determined as Smit to believe these "good Christians" couldn't have possibly committed such a thing on their own child came up with OH! It must have been a sadistic pedophile! It does seem quite cruel.
But since I see no significant evidence any intruder came into the home that night, I asked myself why, looking at the three remaining suspects who were in the house, would parents do such a thing to a child they clearly loved?
Let's say it wasn't Burke, just for the sake of argument, so it was a parent inserting that paintbrush so cruelly into the child. What would be the benefit?
If the child had already been sexually abused that night, then she was already bleeding, already had vaginal injuries that would show up at autopsy.
So why do such a cold, brutal thing to her dying body?
To cover up PREVIOUS vaginal injuries, of course. Injuries that happened before that night. Which is why in this theory, there was no sexual abuse going on THAT particular night. That's why the paintbrush was needed to inflict fresh injuries: to cover up the older abuse.
So if you're following: once the head blow was struck, once the child was dying, whatever caused someone in that family to decide she had to be strangled with a ligature, what also had to be covered up was THE PRIOR MOLESTATION.
If this is the way the logic went that night, then that person KNEW about the prior molestation.
And Patsy Ramsey did, IMO, because of the phone calls to Dr. Beuf after hours on Dec. 17; because of the fact that there would have been bleeding Patsy would have seen in JB's underwear; because JB might have decided to tell on someone; because friends were already noticing something had changed in JB and the change wasn't good, described by more than one as JB looking burned out; and finally because Patsy told her good friend Pam Archuleta that JB was "flirting" and "too friendly."
This child was murdered. She was sexually assaulted in a very strange way the night she was brutally killed. Maybe I'm just a cynic myself at this point in six decades of living among human beings, but I find the fact that she had chronic vaginal injuries TOO COINCIDENTAL to believe this was somehow unrelated.
Maybe it's because the Ramseys and their excusers have never stopped denying THE FACT that she had vaginal injuries prior to the night she was murdered. Maybe it's because the evidence is too strong that Patsy wrote the note. Maybe it's because there is too much evidence that leads straight to the family, and they have been running from it ever since.
But there is only one way I can see an intruder in that home, that night: he would have to have been a genius of crime and misdirection and the luckiest killer in history as the family did every single thing they could to appear guilty and help him escape from justice.
Of course it's just my opinion, and I can make other arguments with other theories as you suggest: that Burke used the paintbrush on his sister, and he struck the head blow, and possibly was the one who also strangled her with the ligature.
Because in actual fact, there was none of the three in the home that night who was not capable of committing every element of this crime, except for writing the note: that was clearly Patsy.
