I believe that Burke is to blame for the murder of his sister, that he killed her in a fit of anger, something to which kids are prone. His parents covered it up fearing the loss of their other child. I will be missing some evidence here, and I am aware of that, but I will put in all the evidence that I remember off the top of my head - whether it applies to the theory or not.
1. Children are put to bed.
2. JonBenet wakes up in the middle of the night hungry, and decides to go downstairs for a snack. She finds her big brother eating pineapple at the table, a large torch nearby. Photographs of the house taken by investigators that day show a bowl full of pineapple with a spoon on the table. Fingerprints taken indicate that Burke was eating out of that bowl.
Alternative theory is that Burke was awake and fixed JonBenet the bowl of pineapple explaining his prints on the bowl.
3. Main theory would suggest that JonBenet took some of Burke's pineapple from his bowl and ate it. The result in my opinion is that Burke got angry and hit JonBenet with that torch.
My alternative hypothesis is that while she was eating her pineapple, she and Burke were talking and she said something that enraged Burke, where he hit her with the torch.
There was evidence to suggest this, in that JonBenet's stomach there was found organic matter that experts believed was pineapple, and that since it wasn't fully digested, it happened close to her murder. As this evidence correlates to both theories, I will put it here at the end of this point.
4. The noise from Burke hitting JonBenet with the flashlight (and JonBenet's probable resulting scream and the thump of her falling to the floor) woke at least one parent who either woke the other before going downstairs and finding the culprit of the noise, or after going downstairs and either yelling at Burke or at the other parent. Believing her dead, they panicked.
5. Out of an irrational fear of retribution from the law upon their 'surviving' child, the parents decide to stage the crime as a break and enter gone wrong. My belief is John garottes (a then comatose) JonBenet, which unbeknownst to them all actually ends her life. This means he of course has used objects from within the house, such as a paintbrush belonging to Patsy.
He then moves her body to the basement. In the mean time, Patsy gets a notepad from somewhere in the house and pens an unusually long, oddly specific ransom note.
My evidence in this is that the pad is confirmed to be from the Ramsey house (which is uncommon for a ransom note since they are normally brought fully formed to a crime scene), and John's bonus from work that year is the EXACT amount listed on the note ($118 000). To me that indicates that someone from the family wrote that note. And why would they write that note if they had nothing to do with the murder? Why would the grieving family intentionally try to deceive the police like that if they wanted to know who the murderer is?
Another point is that experts believed (I am aware they couldn't conclusively prove this) that the handwriting was very close to Patsy's own writing.
6. Once the scene is sufficiently set, Patsy calls the police department at 5:52 am. Immediately after this, she calls family and friends who flock to the scene.
I have a question about the search here. If Patsy and John had nothing to do with their daughter's disappearance, why did they not search the whole house? Seems strange to me that
7. Police play a part in this too, though not (I believe) on purpose. Their folly was not to cordon off the whole house as a crime scene, but just JonBenet's bedroom. This means that when the Ramsey's family and friends appear on the scene, they are allowed in the house and compromise whatever evidence was in and around the kitchen area.
8. Finally the basement is searched, at 1 pm that day, where John Ramsey opens the door to the basement and 'finds' his daughter there. To further compromise evidence, he moves that already moved and staged body upstairs, potentially destroying incriminating evidence against his family further.
I will put in some extra evidence here:
- The doors to the house were not locked. This could mean that an intruder could have gotten in and murdered JonBenet, but there are a few reasons why I do not believe this to be the case. As far as I remember, there were no footprints found around the house that were deemed suspicious (but again, police incompetence has potentially forever obscured the truth about this case). I also believe this as there was NOTHING demonstrated as not belonging to the Ramsey family in the house. If there was some sort of B&E, I believe there would be proof of this in some sort of evidence found in the house (or even missing valuables?).
- The DNA found in JonBenet's underwear was investigated and never linked to someone in a US criminal database. Though this is not a big deal (there are people who commit crimes and are not caught), there was an experiment done on one of the documentaries surrounding this case (though I cannot recall which one) which tested an unopened pack of women's underwear for DNA samples and discovered DNA from somebody who interacted (i.e. touched) the underwear during the production or packaging process. Therefore, to me the DNA obtained from two separate persons not found in the database could just be unrelated to the case entirely.
