KoldKase,
I'm a fan of KISS or Mr Occam. After her pineapple snack, someone sexually assaulted JonBenet, whacked her on the head, then cleaned her up, redressed her. Then decided she had been abducted and dumped her body in the wine-cellar. Wrote a ransom note, then dialled 911 shouting my baby is gone!
mmm, why would the killer run upstairs to fetch longjohns then back down again to make sure JonBenet matches the R's version of events?
I think I was suggesting that the application of the paintbrush handle was a last minute adornment.
Indeed, why so? Why not nearly everything happening upstairs and only the application of the paintbrush handle occurring downstairs? Simply because that is where it was located.
That the paintbrush handle was located in the basement does not mandate that anything else happened in the basement?
Pretty much everything we discuss is speculation, since no one here with whom I'm familiar has ever held even one evidence report in his/her hand. Apply all the theories you please, but as soon as the element of speculation-based opinions is added in, no one can say anything is certain.
Well people keep inventing reasons for why their favorite theory is consistent. My observation is that the ligature device would not function as a garotte or EA device, due to the knotting and JonBenet's hair being entwined into the knotting. This does not prevent the cord being used as a ligature, which even Coroner Meyer asserts it was. I reckon the addition of the paintbrush handle was an afterthought, it did not play any part in JonBenet's initial asphyxiation.
I use the term "garrote" loosely, because it has been used since the crime to describe the cord/handle construction that without a doubt, to 100% certainty, based on the evidence and autopsy, killed JonBenet Ramsey.
We can google all day about what is a true garrote. In the end, it's shorter and easier to call the cord that strangled the child, with an attached "handle" tied onto it, a garrote.
As for how it functioned, that has been argued from the beginning. Since we've had so many sources and lots of them contradict each other, I've turned to the knot anyone can clearly see and duplicate in photos of the wrist bindings. It's easy to construct and it works as a slip knot, which I've already said many times. If people don't want to do that simple test, then I guess they don't.
But until someone can make a convincing argument to me that the person or persons who tied that slip knot on that wrist binding for some reason used a different knot on the cord around her neck when that same knot would have worked just as the one on the cord did--and strangled the child to death, I believe I'm sticking with what my own eyes can see.
If the "handle" wasn't used to pull the cord around the neck, engaging the slip knot until the cord rolled up the neck, tighter and tighter, then embedded into the upper, smaller section under the head but passing over the delicate neck bones without damaging them, then it wasn't. But we don't know that, do we?
People tend to believe what suits their theory, but we really don't know for certain until experts testify at trial and a jury becomes finder of fact. That's not going to happen. So we have Meyer's report stating the knot was an overhand/Granny knot--but he probably did not stop the autopsy to do an expert evaluation of it like the Canadian Mountie knot-expert eventually did some time after the autopsy, if memory serves--and I've never seen a whisper as to what Mr. Tassle determined about the knots; and we have the wrist binding pictures which prove to me that whoever was tying these knots full well could construct a deadly slip knot--and did so on the wrist binding.
Occam's Razor: if there's one clearly in sight, the one we can't see clearly but which functioned the same probably was the same knot. And that's my speculation based on evidence, not on searching to substantiate a theory for some reason I'm sure I don't know about.
Not really, its simple, remove the staged elements and focus on what is left and it will all fall into place.
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Staged: the duct tape was put on the body after the child was bludgeoned and strangled. The proof is in the saliva that drooled down her face and dried when it turned to the right. The proof of that is in the autopsy photos where the tape residue can be observed over the dried saliva. There would have been no saliva drooling down her face if the duct tape had been applied before she was unconscious, at least. Since the direction of the drool flows down the right side of the face, it follows it did so when her head was turned into the position in which it was found when rigor mortis had set in at approx. 1 pm--to the right. That equates with the duct tape being staged after death.
Staged: the wrist bindings were clearly not put on the child to stop her from escape. They were loose with long cord between wrists; there is no post mortem indication they restrained her in any way or that she ever pulled against them, either. Therefore, the wrist binding was staging.
So was the "handle" solely for staging? She died from being strangled by the cord to which it was tied. So the jury is out.
The paint chip and basement carpet fiber found at autopsy on the child's chin came from paint which matched that in Patsy's tray. The remaining brush end of the paintbrush used to construct the "handle" of the ligature was found in the same paint tray, in the basement. Attempting simplicity, I can't conclude that someone ran back and forth and back and forth, rather than brought the child down to the basement where evidence repeatedly indicates various elements of the strangulation probably occurred.
An infinite number of theories through the years tell me maybe the case is not as simple as you think. The evidence tells the tale, but as has been observed, there's nearly too much evidence in this case.