This can be entirely explained if you look at Burke as a traumatised little boy, grieving the murder of his loved sister, and having to live with her murderers and cooperate with the cover up.
Children of the abused blame themselves. They make up excuses for their abusive parents, and still love them no matter what horrors they inflict.
Abused children almost always wish to return to abusive parents.
They can be manipulated very, very easily.
I think what you see as "not caring", I see as denial. He just shut it down.
God knows he had some role models on how to do that.
I used to think the adult Burke owed it to his sister to tell what he remembers of that night.
Now I believe that he actually remembers nothing...it was so traumatic he has blocked it out completely.
As an adult survivor of childhood abuse, I remember next to nothing of the detail.
:banghead:
My mother is also a survivor of childhood abuse, and she remembers every haunting detail nearly 40 years on - so I suppose we can agree that BR's memory of the night is debatable. You see BR as a traumatized little boy, I look at him as the indifferent perpetrator of the crime, perhaps even proud of himself - good riddance to bad rubbish as they say. Now he's got the parents all to himself. If you look at the details of BR's interview w/ the child psychologist only 12-13 days after his sister was found brutally murdered, you'll actually notice a lot of indicators that he was hiding something. He felt safe; he lied about wetting the bed; his answers reeked of indifference; he'd rather just play his nintendo; he was "getting on with his life." If it was so traumatic for him, how come he didn't show any emotion less than two weeks after her death? How come he wasn't crying as FW drove him over to his house mere hours after his sister was found murdered in their house? Surely he knew why everyone was at his house, including the police? How come he didn't ask about his sister? Why didn't he include his sister in the drawing of his family? Why is he so frank and blunt when asked what happened to his sister? It doesn't seem to qualify as denial. The whole bit about getting anxious when talking about uncomfortable touching, and his "secrets" are all indicators for me that the kid was hiding something. As a reference, I'm talking about the passage from the first post in this thread: [ame="http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144585"]What do Burke's interviews tell us? - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community[/ame]
And this: "Burke's explanation to the doctor was 'someone took her quietly and took her down in the basement took a knife out or
hit her on the head.'"
When were the autopsy details released that said she was hit on the head? Even if they were released prior to his interview, I thought he didn't ask his parents anything about his sister's death, so how would he know? I think it's a long shot that he would completely guess she was hit on the head and have gotten it right; although the knife reference was seemingly off, was it? If BR did play a part in this, it certainly could have played into the storyline. BR quietly took his sister to the basement after feeding her some pineapple to snoop for more Christmas presents - note the well known picture of presents unwrapped at the ends in the basement. They were snooping around, he took the knife out, scared his sister and she screams, and bonked her on the head to shut her up. PR wakes up, JR doesn't - he took the Melatonin tablet. PR used that same pocketknife to cut the cord, IMO.
On another note that ties into my belief of BR's guilt, the fact that Michael Kane referenced the grand jury's interest in Burke's aluminum baseball bat and the fact that he admitted he owned Hi-Tec boots (grand jury, see below) are also highly suspicious for me (referenced in Patsy's 8/00 Atlanta interview - just ctrl + F grand jury:
http://www.acandyrose.com/2000ATL-Patsy-Interview-Complete.htm), and it leads me to believe that the grand jury uncovered a lot more about BR than we will ever know. Perhaps the reason that no indictment was handed down was due to the fact that BR was 9 at the time of the murder, and couldn't have been charged. And since BR couldn't be charged, the DA's office would rather leave it alone (i.e. not charge PR or JR with conspiracy, cover up, what have you) because BR would have been dragged through the mud and it would have further ruined his life when the details were hashed out. I truly believe PR was involved in the cover up, as Kane referenced the fibers from the jacket being found all over the crime scene:
"5 we believe the fibers
6 from her jacket were found in the paint
7 tray, were found tied into the ligature found
8 on JonBenet's neck, were found on the blanket
9 that she is wrapped in, were found on the
10 duct tape that is found on the mouth, and
11 the question is, can she explain to us how
12 those fibers appeared in those places that
13 are associated with her daughter's death.
14 And I understand you are not going to answer
15 those."
LW, spin doctor and great defense lawyer he is, doesn't allow PR to comment on the fibers to attempt to explain why they would be there as asked by Kane. One thing's for sure, there's no chance this was committed by an intruder. That's just completely asinine, and any reasonable person would arrive at that conclusion, IMHO. The ransom note alone is the most overarching, convincing evidence that there was no intruder in the house that fateful night. Hopefully I'll live as long as BR, and maybe he'll make a death-bed confession. It's about the only chance we've got. Sorry for derailing the thread, had to splurge here. Feel free to tear me apart.
