Sometimes the deception from the Ramsey camp is nothing short of stunning.
The following is the most openly dishonest assertion in the entire book:
A linguistics scholar, who studied the ransom note, offered his services. The police were still accusing Patsy of writing the note despite no credible handwriting experts supporting opinion.
The linguistics scholar believed in Patsys innocence, and wrote in a letter personally addressed to Patsy: I know that you are innocent, know it, absolutely and unequivocally, I would stake my professional reputation on it, indeed, my faith in humanity, I believe you were an ideal mother, wise, protective, caring and truly devoted. He described the ransom note and said: It appears to have been written by a young adult with an adolescent imagination overheated by true crime literature and Hollywood thrillers.
The expert was eager and willing to help find the real killer but his offer of help was rejected by the police.
The Other Side of Suffering, John Ramsey, page 128
Although JR doesnt name the scholar, he is, of course, Don Foster.
Here is a review of the truth regarding Fosters involvement in the case:
I finally heard the magic words while seated in the book-lined office of Don Foster, an Elizabethan scholar and professor at Vassar College in upstate New York, who just happened to be a h**l of a linguistic detective. Steve,said Foster, I believe I am going to conclude the ransom note was the work of a single individual: Patsy Ramsey.
[SNIP]
These days Fosters telephone was ringing off the hook as police and the corporate world sought his singular expertise in textual analysis. He was the best in the country at what he did.
District Attorney Alex Hunter enlisted his help in the Ramsey case, sending Foster a copy of the ransom note and the writing samples of various people, then following up with telephone calls. Foster told me that Hunter was particularly interested in Santa Bill and Janet McReynolds, and when the professor reported, They didnt write that ransom note, Hunter seemed to lose interest.
The DAs office turned him over to the police, Beckner assigned him to me, and I ferried out to New York stacks of various peoples writing samples. He explained that his work was based on much more than just one letter looking like another. Even the slightest things, such as the use of periods or the space before the start of a paragraph, could create a distinctive linguistic fingerprint. After all, it was the unconventional use of commas that had spurred his original theory about the Shakespeare fragment.
We cant falsify who we are, Foster told me. Sentence structure, word usage, and identifying features can be a signature.
Throughout the month, I furnished Foster with a wide range of material from a number of suspects so we would not be accused of stacking the deck. One of the first things he picked up on was Patsys habit of using acronyms and acrostics in her communications. She often signed off with her initials, PAPR, and used such phrases as To BVFMFA from PPRBSJ, which meant, To Barbara V. Fernie, Master of Fine Arts, from Patricia Paugh Ramsey, Bachelor of Science in Journalism. That, I thought, might somehow link to the mysterious SBTC acronym on the ransom note.
Foster was concerned that Alex Hunter still occasionally called to introduce his own theories and ideas and had told Foster there was no way the parents did this. To disclose such opinions to an independent examiner exposes them to attack in court, but Hunter didnt seem to care. The DA further risked tainting Foster by sending him copies of work done by other linguistic experts, but Foster refused to open those packets. In my opinion it was as if Hunter was trying to torpedo his own witness.
Steer clear of him. You work for the Boulder Police Department, not the DAs office, I told Foster.
Foster told me, Hes just desperately trying to find an intruder. Im not sure he has the resolve to pursue this in the direction that Im seeing.
JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, Steve Thomas, pages 291 - 292
Don Foster from Vassar, the top linguistics man in the country, made his conclusion firm in March. In my opinion, it is not possible that any individual except Patsy Ramsey wrote the ransom note, he told a special briefing in Boulder, adding that she had been unassisted in writing it.
With his sterling academic reputation and a track record of 152-0 in deciphering anonymous writings, this should have been a thunderbolt of evidence, but the DAs office, without telling us, had already discredited and discarded the professor. His coming to Boulder was a big waste of time.
In our case, Foster examined hundreds of writing samples from people ranging from family members to Internet addicts, from neighbors to Chris Wolf to the McReynolds family, and a library of books, films, and videotapes.
Patsy Ramsey wrote it, he said. Those are her words.
While Foster made that dramatic statement, Deputy DA Pete Hofstrom read a book and didnt look up. He occasionally rubbed his head and ignored the expert. I believed Hofstrom had already decided that Foster, with his definitive report, would never go before the grand jury, and he never did.
But that day in March, he built a wall of linguistic evidence before our eyes, brick by brick.
He explained that language is infinitely diverse and that no two people use it in quite the same way. They do not have the same vocabulary, use identical spelling and punctuation, construct sentences in the same manner, read the same books, or express the same beliefs and ideas. Ingrained and unconscious habits are virtually impossible to conceal, even if a writer tries to disguise his identity, he said. Individuals are prisoners of their own language.
Foster dissected the ransom note, explained that the wording contained intelligent and sometimes clever usage of language, and said the text suggested someone who was trying to deceive.
The documents he studied from Patsy Ramsey, in his opinion, formed a precise and unequivocal match with the ransom note. He read a list of unique matches with the note that included such things as her penchant for inventing private acronyms, spelling habits, indentation, alliterative phrasing, metaphors, grammar, vocabulary, frequent use of exclamation points, and even the format of her handwriting on the page.
[SNIP]
In the decade prior to the homicide, Patsy freely inter-changed the manuscript a and the cursive a. But in the months prior to December 1996, she exhibited a marked preference for the manuscript a. The ransom note contained such a manuscript a 109 times and the cursive version only 5 times. But after the Ramseys were given a copy of the ransom note, Foster found only a single manuscript a in her writing, while the cursive a now appeared 1,404 times!
That lone exception was in the sample that her mother had unexpectedly handed to Detective Gosage in Atlanta.
Not only did certain letters change, but her entire writing style seemed to have been transformed after the homicide. There were new ways of indenting, spelling, and writing out long numbers that contrasted with her earlier examples, and she was the only suspect who altered her usual preferences when supplying writing samples to the police.
Foster used an overhead projector to describe Patsy Ramseys habit of creating acronyms and acrostics, which she did with astonishing frequency.
[SNIP]
On and on Foster probed, racing through numerous compelling points that left little doubt the ransom note came from Patsys hand. The Vassar scholar explained that as people change over time, they incorporate some of what they read and experience into their language. The Ramsey library contains many books that were sources for Patsy Ramseys nine-teen ninety-five and ninety-six writings, many of which also contain startling verbal or other detailed parallels with the Ramsey homicide and attendant staging, including language that appears in the ransom note, he said.
When Foster was done, DA Alex Hunter said he needed time to digest the mass of information that had been presented. Pete Hofstrom closed his book and walked away, seemingly bored.
I was totally engrossed by the presentation and thought Foster had thoroughly tied Patsy to the ransom note. It was a bombshell of evidence. So why did the DAs office seem so dismissive?
The district attorney continued to call Foster privately over the coming weeks, and Foster told me he was puzzled by Hunters reluctance to move forward. How can anyone still think this was the work of an intruder? This case appears solved. Now it needs to be prosecuted.
The answer came several weeks later when Pete Hofstrom sent over a package from an Internet junkie named Susan Bennett, who had been in contact with Lou Smit.
Her material indicated that back when Foster was just another Internet observer without access to official information, he had gotten involved in an Internet chat about JonBenét with Susan Bennett, who used the name of Jameson on the Net Foster once guessed incorrectly that die anonymous Jameson was really John Andrew Ramsey, the oldest son of John Ramsey.
Then Foster wrote a letter to Patsy Ramsey, suggesting that he thought she was innocent. Those statements were made before Foster was brought aboard to look at the case file, after which he changed his conclusion 180 degrees. To me, that only strengthened his position, not weakened it, for it showed he had no anti-Ramsey bias. Once the professor had access to the actual case documents, he changed his mind.
Bob Keatley, our in-house counsel, then pointed to the post-mark on the envelope, July 1997.
One detective yelled, Theyve had these *advertiser censored****g documents for ten months! It had lain in the DAs case file all year, while I was working with Foster, and Hunter himself was calling the professor with suggestions.
The DAs office knew all about the damaging information before the professor conducted his studies or came to Boulder and even while Hunter was pumping him about other possible suspects. In my opinion, Foster apparently had value until the moment he pointed his finger at Patsy Ramsey.
I believed that if Foster had said Santa Bill McReynolds or Chris Wolf or any of a dozen other suspects wrote the note, the DAs office would have been off and running after them. But now Pete Hofstrom dismissed Foster with a terse The defense would eat him alive.
They should have fought to use Fosters expertise as the premier linguist in the nation, and explained to the jurors the totally different conditions under which he made his earlier statements. Thats what courtroom argument is for. Take your best shot, and let the jury decide. The defense might have eaten him alive, but Foster might have taken a bite out of them instead.
With Fosters conclusion and the panel of doctors who confirmed prior vaginal trauma, we felt we had met the criteria set by Pete Hofstrom for prosecution.
Instead Foster was consigned to the DAs junk pile. Losing him was a devastating blow.
JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, Steve Thomas, pages 313 - 317
As we left the auditorium, the detectives could feel the current of excitement. The state attorney generals office and our Dream Team were lobbying for Don Foster to be used as a witness in court.
JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, Steve Thomas, page 344
I said that more than a dozen points led us to the Ramseys. Prior vaginal trauma came first. Then I went through die ransom note, the pen, pad, handwriting, and practice notes, as well as the textual analysis and Don Fosters conclusion that Patsy was the author.
JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, Steve Thomas, page 345
Then at the end of July Don Foster, the Vassar linguist who had helped make our case, telephoned to tell me that the DAs office had just dismissed him. Not only did they fire Foster but they informed him that he was through doing this kind of work. Citing his Internet comments to Jameson when he knew nothing about the case, they declared that his later conclusions, when he knew everything, were unreliable.
Rather than fight to use his testimony, they declared that he would be open to impeachment on that one issue. Further-more, Foster was given the plain message that if he didnt contact the FBI and other law enforcement agencies hed worked for and admit that he was compromised and damaged goods, then the Boulder DAs office might make the call. Hes cooked here, said one detective.
It was a ridiculous attack on the mans sterling reputation. Without Don Foster the case against Patsy Ramsey was much more difficult, but the DAs office threw him overboard. Not only did they want him off the case but it appeared they wanted to ruin his life. It was so like them, I thought to go after the dissenters, those who didnt agree with them. The DAs office wouldnt stand up to Team Ramsey but had no hesitation about burning good people who stood in their way.
JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, Steve Thomas, page 371
From Perfect Murder, Perfect Town:
Hunter thought that Foster might be helpful in the Ramsey case. Just before the July Fourth weekend, he called Foster, who told the DA that he had once written a letter to Patsy Ramsey and another to her son, John Andrew, while following the case on the Internet. He said he had wanted to lend them some support. Hunter saw no conflict of interest.
Foster agreed to analyze the ransom note for the DAs office. He would also be sent Janet McReynoldss play Hey, Rube, Christmas letters and articles written by both Janet and Bill McReynolds, some of Patsy Ramseys writings, and transcripts of the Ramseys January 1 and May 1 press conferences. Not long after speaking to Foster, Hunter said that this case will come down to linguistics.
[SNIP]
For months the Boulder police had been collecting Patsys handwriting samples: beauty-pageant entry forms, school documents, applications, and business letters. They had recently visited the offices of Hayes Micro Computer in Norcross, Georgia, where Patsy had worked before marrying John. There they found more handwriting samples. This material was relevant for handwriting analysis but was of limited value to Donald Foster. He needed lengthy texts and examples of Patsys prepared and extemporaneous speeches. These would take time to find and even longer to analyze.
Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, Lawrence Schiller, pages 422 - 423
In mid-January, Beckner told Hunter that Donald Foster, the Vassar linguistics expert who had been working on the case with them, at Hunters suggestion, was making some headway with his analysis. Beckner was eager to hear from Foster.
Steve Thomas had visited Foster earlier in the month, taking along hundreds of pages of writing from many different suspects, including Patsy and John Ramsey. Foster had followed the case on the Internet long before he was sought out to work on it. He had even entered some of the chat rooms and discussed the case with people like Jameson.
Foster was impressed with the detective. I cant tell you what our theories or the evidence are, Thomas had said. And Im not going to prejudice your thinking. Foster found that kind of commitment to justice unusual. He had heard the same thing from Hunter when they first talked on the phone. To the professor, both men seemed dedicated to finding JonBenéts killer.
In his work, Foster always began with the assumption that no detail, however small, is irrelevant. Something as seemingly trivial as a period after the abbreviation Mr. can be a vitally important clue. In this example, it could suggest someones nationality: Americans use a period after the abbreviation but British writers do not. In one murder case, Foster identified the author of a document as someone educated in India. Among other clues was the misspelling of the name Rhonda as Rondha. In addition to such minutiae, Foster tracked down source material such as books, TV shows, movies, or music lyrics that might have influenced the writers whose documents he analyzed.
Beckner hoped Foster would name Patsy Ramsey as the author of the ransom note, and he asked Hunter if he would consider filing a motion to admit linguistic evidence when he filed charges against Patsy. It was the first time Hunter had heard Beckner name a suspect in connection with the death of JonBenét.
Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, Lawrence Schiller, pages 603 - 604
At the end of March, Donald Foster, the Vassar linguistics expert, delivered his written report to the Boulder police. It was almost a hundred pages long and concluded that Patsy Ramsey had written the ransom note. It was key evidence, Beckner told DeMuth. He went on to explain how Foster had come to his conclusion. DeMuth pointed out that it would not be admissible in a Colorado court.
My guys think youre an *advertiser censored*****e, Beckner said to him, but were going to need an *advertiser censored*****e to fight for us. He asked DeMuth to persuade Hofstrom and Hunter to use Fosters report and conclusions as evidence before the grand jury. DeMuth remained neutral; he agreed only to discuss Fosters findings with his colleagues. Later that afternoon, Hunter, Hofstrom, and DeMuth met. They decided to draft a letter to Beckner stating that the DAs office could not accept Fosters conclusions as evidence of Patsy Ramseys culpability.
Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, Lawrence Schiller, pages 629 - 630
Alex Hunter had watched 20/20 fearing the worst. The attack on him wasnt as bad as he had expected. But listening to Fosters conclusions regarding Patsy and the ransom note, he knew there was another side to that story, which the Ramseys attorneys were sure to make public. Several months earlier, Bryan Morgan had given Hunter a copy of a letter that Foster had written to Patsy Ramsey in the spring of 1997, before he agreed to work for Hunter. The DA was aware that Foster had followed the case on the Internet from February 1997 and that he had also written to Patsy. But when Morgan told him about the second communiqué, which Foster sent to Jameson, who ran an information Web site on the Internet, Hunter was dismayed. It seemed that at first Foster believed that Jameson was in fact John Andrew. Foster, after e-mailing Jameson/John Andrew a series of Internet communiqués, was told by Jameson that she was Sue Bennett and not John Andrew. Foster soon after asked Bennett to turn herself in to the police for her part as an accessory to the crime of murder. In the same communiqué to Jameson/Bennett, Foster said John Andrew and Jameson were one person and indicated that he believed that John Andrew was involved in the death of JonBenét.
In Fosters letter to Patsy, he had written, I know you are innocentknow it absolutely and unequivocally. I will stake my professional reputation on it, indeed my faith in my humanity. He also said that his analysis of the note [at the time] leads me to believe you did not write it and the police are wasting their time by trying to prove that you did. Even though Fosters spring 1997 conclusions were based only on the fragments of the ransom note that were available at the time, there was a powerful contradiction between his conclusion at the time and what he said in 1998.
Did you think the Ramseys were going to forget about his letter? Wise said to a reporter when word of it leaked. In his final report, Foster used strong language to state that Patsy Ramsey had written the ransom note. In the letter to Patsy claiming he was sure she didnt write it, Foster had used almost the same language.
Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, Lawrence Schiller, pages 737 - 738
Just to be clear, there is no way that John is somehow unaware that Foster identified Patsy as the author of the ransom note after he received a good sampling of exemplars and other material from the BPD.
As a matter of fact, his own words from Death of Innocence serve to indict him.
One of the most bizarre twists in the Internet spectacle came from an enthusiast who is a professor in the English Department at Vassar College. Donald Foster considered himself an expert in linguistic text analysis.
[SNIP]
On May 22, 1997, Foster made his first contact with Jameson, applauding her for reminding the anonymous Internet voices that the Ramseys were innocent until proven guilty. He placated her with the idea that he wanted to write a book on people who were anonymous hats.
[SNIP]
Foster had also written a full-page letter to Patsy proclaiming his belief in her innocence and stating that he would both stake his reputation and faith in humanity on the fact of her not being guilty. In addition to this magnanimous sweep of generosity, Foster had another motivation for writing. He wanted Patsy and me to use him to find the killer. When we didnt respond, he went to the Boulder police with a similar offer, only he must have left out the part about Patsy being innocent.
Foster then gave Jameson his home phone number and asked her to call him. When she called, he heard her soft, obviously female voice and was shocked. Foster quickly became quite uncomfortable with the information he was being given but believed his analysis of Jamesons writings was correct. He was convinced that he had not spoken to the Internet poster Jameson (whom he believed to be John Andrew) but to an accomplice named Susan Bennett, probably a cousin who had been hiding John Andrew in her North Carolina home. Foster refused to admit that his assessment of Jamesons writings was off.
[SNIP]
On June 29, 1997, Foster sent a long certified letter to Mrs. Susan Bennett, offering to go between her and the police if she would turn herself in to the authorities for her part in the Ramsey crime. Foster now was convinced that Susan had been allowing John Andrew to use her computer to send out information. He still hadnt gotten the point that Susan Bennett was Jameson.
[SNIP]
Late that summer, Jameson learned that the Boulder police intended to introduce Foster as an expert witness for testimony in the grand jury setting in an attempt to get an indictment against Patsy. By that time Foster had decided he was wrong about Jameson. Instead Foster now believed that Patsy clearly was the only one who had written the thirty-one-sentence ransom note, and he would testify for the police as an expert.
[SNIP]
Jameson took the story of Fosters claims against her to the district attorneys office. Donald Foster, she said, was anything but a credible witness, but the DA never contacted her. With the help of Colorado University professor Michael Tracey, one of the producers of the JonBenéts America documentary, Jameson brought her story to CBS. In April 1999 she appeared on 48 Hours
Death of Innocence, John Ramsey, pages 307 - 310
