Koldkase, I am very interested in this extract you posted on this thread over at FFJ:
"As pressure in her skull increased, JonBenét was beginning to
experience the effects of brain death. Her neurological and
biological systems were beginning to shut down, and she may
have been exhibiting signs of cheyne-stokes breathing. These are
short, gasping breaths that may be present as the body struggles to
satisfy its need for oxygen in the final stages of death."
I know that there has been much discussion about how and why a parent with any kind of love could strangle their child..it seems inconcievable to us, and rightly so.
But when I read that paragraph I start to think about how appallingly awful it actually would have been to witness that - to find that your little girl is not dead after all (as might have been assumed), and she lies there gasping for breath, dying horribly before your eyes, while you can do nothing. In that situation is it not possible that under duress that we can't imagine, and thinking that would already be skewed, that the strangulation, horrible and unimaginable as it is, might actually have been an (albeit twisted) act of mercy? a quick death, as opposed to a horrid, long drawn out, gasping death? (I appreciate that if Jonbenet never regained consciousness then she would not have felt this, but to the viewer this is how it would have appeared, that she was definitely suffering terribly.)
This thought makes me look at things slightly differently, and reinforces what a poster once said, that it was a tragedy of shakesperian proportions.
I hope it's ok to post this here, I wasn't sure which thread to put it in.