BBM Good point! JR went out of his way that morning to convince LE there was no way someone got in the house. He said that he broke the window the summer before, and that all doors and windows were locked, that he'd checked on them the night before.
I've never understood why he did that. It's almost like he was pointing to the family by claiming no one else could have gotten in.
IMO he did it for this reason - the broken pane of glass makes the window look like an entry point. It would seem to require further investigation. Further investigation reveals that the grate over the window well is still in place (why would an intruder who left via the window turn around and replace the grate?) and there was a spider web attached in part to the window and in part to the grate. (How could the web be intact if an intruder came in/out that way?)
The broken pane made it look like a staged entry point. A badly staged entry point. Or perhaps an incompletely staged entry point. Put a badly/incompletely staged window together with an obviously fishy RN, then hours later add in a dead body, and you've got a murder committed by a family member who cooked up a phoney kidnap scenario to cover up the murder.
If JR and/or PR were trying to blame JBs death on kidnappers, why not point to the window as the place where kidnappers came in/got out? It would be perfect, except that the grate and web make it unbelievable.
Months later of course, the story changes. JR couldn't take back the claim that he had broken the glass, but he claimed he'd been down the basement early in the morning and saw it open about an inch. Of course this slipped his mind, and he forgot to mention it on the morning of the 911 call, despite having a conversation with the police about the security of the windows and doors.
He would also "remember" finding the suitcase oddly positioned under the window, and thinking that it doesn't belong there. This too slipped his mind on the morning of the 911 call, despite a conversation with the police about windows and doors.
In subsequent interviews, he could not recall if the window had been repaired after he broke into the house when he forgot his key. So, on the morning of the 26th it's clear the "intruder" didn't break the window, JR did, by his own admission. But later when he and LS are pushing the intruder through the window theory he isn't sure if the window was ever fixed or not, so now it's not certain if the window was broken because JR did it back during his summer break in, or if it's broken yet again, by the "intruder".
If we couple JR's faulty memory, with a couple fresh glass fragments in the basement (One of which FW picked up and placed on the suitcase) and LHPs claim that she (as housekeeper) doesn't remember cleaning up any glass, we can be pretty sure the window wasn't broken that past summer.
On the morning of the 26th JR didn't expect anyone to believe an intruder had come through that window. Yet he had broken glass, a fake RN, and within a few hours he knew there would be a dead body. It would look like he was in the process of staging a break in. IMO, that is exactly the case. He was staging a break in (after all the kidnappers had to get in some way) but had not completed all the details.
If he and PR were working together of course he finishes the window staging, then, and not before, PR calls 911.
He wasn't pointing to the family, he was desperately trying not to have the police recognize an incompletely staged entry point for the fictitious kidnappers.