The FACT is (and I really mean FACT) - Michael Tracey is not a reliable source. He may have access to inside information, but he has not demonstrated any degree of logic in piecing it together.
He has made three documentaries each of which was shown first in the UK and then in the US. The first two differed slightly from each other. The third documentaries were completely different - by necessity.
Two years ago, Tracey III was shown here in the UK. It promised to reveal details of a "Prime Suspect" in the Ramsey case. As one of the few diehard British followers of the case, I prepared to follow every detail of the forthcoming broadcast so that I could relay them to my fellow case followers in the US.
The first signs of "trouble" (not the best word, but I'm trying to work quickly here) was when I posted the details of a preview/review which had been written about the programme. It stated that the programme would link Jonbenet's killer to the murder of another little girl in Colorado and the article bore a photo of Lou Smit and quoted him about his intruder theory. I was just the messenger for this article - just passed on what it stated. Next thing, jameson started a thread saying that she had e-mailed my post to Michael Tracey and this was his reply (copied and pasted - all spelling errors are presumably Tracey's):-
THIS IS NONSENSE - YOU CAN QUOTE ME ON THAT - LOU SMIT WAS NOT INVOLOVED IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM IN MAKING OUR DOCUMENTARY AND THEREFORE CANNOT HAVE SAID ANYTHING ABOUT MICHAEL HELGOTH. ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET GETTING THINGS WRONG - IS IT GENETIC?
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WHOSE THE OTHER GIRL? WRONG AGAIN
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NEWS TO ME. THE MAIN PIECES IN THE MEDIA HAVEN'T BEEN DONE YET. AND IT'S NOT A TV STAION IT'S A NETWORK.
The last sentence "and it's not a tv station it's a network" tells me a lot about Tracey. My calling it a tv station was perfectly correct. Network is an American term - we call them tv stations here. He should know that:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_station
Anyway, I digress. In his snotty, shouting, badly-spelled e-mail, Tracey insulted me and claimed that he idn't know who the "other girl" was and he also claimed that Lou SMit wasn't involved in the making of the documetary - it was clear from his response that he didn't do his homework and wasn't even familiar with the facts of his own documentary!
1) In fact, it was the person who wrote the preview who quoted Lou Smit - I only reported what she wrote. The fact that she had done so in her preview (and there was even a photo of Lou Smit as Enola will testify - she posted a scan of the review) was highly suggestive that SMit was in the documentary. Had Tracey done his homework, he would have realised that.
2) His documentary included a clip of John San Augustin stating that murderers often record vidoe of tv coverage of their crime - and Helgoth had tv coverage of the murder of little Allie Berrelez in the middle of a TV movie. The implication was perfectly clear. They were offering this as evidnce that hegoth was a murderer. If murderer's record news footage of their crimes - what wa the significance of Hegoth havign news footage of Allile Berrelez's murder????
This first encounter that I had with Michael Tracey made me think that this Professor of Journalism sounded a bit like a buffoon to me - someone who made rash judgements without checking his facts.
I e-mailed the person who wrote the preview and asked her if she'd actually watched the docuemtary before writing her preview - she said she had.
Then I got to see the documentary. I transcribed it for the forum and that took me a few hours. I double checked it for accuracy and posted it. Then I set about getting some screen captures. I had actually bought a dvd recorder specially for this purpose!
We knew in advance that the documentary was going to offer Michael helgoth as a suspect in the ramsey case - but case followers knew that there was nothing to tie him to the scene. He owned Hi-tec boots and may have owned a stungun which didn't match the marks on Jonbenet's body - but apart from the fact that he committed suicide on the day after Alex Hunter's speech, that was all.
In fact, the documentary offered the theory that Michael helgoth HAD been involved in the murder, but that he wasn't actually the killer -he was just an accomplice. The *real* killer was not named. The documentary inclued footage of some friends of Hegoth describing a bad man - someone who frightened them all and who had gone to jail for assaulting his wife in the May of 1996.
However, one thing immediately troubled me about the documentary. It seemed to present Ollie Gray and John San Augustin as though they were the official investigators in the case - and I knew they were Ramsey-hired PIs.
Overall, the documentary suggested that Mr X and Hegoth were responsible for:-
Boulder midnight burglaries
Possible invovlement in the murder of Allie Berrelez
the murder of JonBenet Ramsey
Then they suggested that Mr X murdered Hegoth and that he was the attacker in a later case - known as the DanceWest case in which an intruder broke into a house and assaulted a young girl.
Most intriguingly, the investigators claimed that this bad man - Mr X had "disappeared" ....
My own first reactions about the documentary are well documented - I was excited and thought the theory was compelling. I wondered who this guy was.
As I set about doing screen captures, I watched as documentation was panned on the screen - documetation pertaining to Mr X. his name was blacked out, but there were other details which weren't. One was a physical escription of him. I still-framed it and peered at the tv. I could make out that his physical description said he was in his 50s, that he was 6ft 0/1 and that he had brown eyes and hair. I could also make out some other details - code numbers pertaining to his arrest and case numbers.
I then went online and did a search which revealed that it was possible to search a database in Colorado on these details for a small fee. On doing so, I returned two separate documents with the same guy's name on them! Was this JonBenet's killer?
I didn't know what to do with this information. I am a stickler for integrity - having been a research assistant for some years and I knew that it was important to have the information independently validated. So I e-mailed Why_Nut and Tricia and told them that I might have the name of Mr X but that I really wanted them to independently verify what I had done. So I sent them copies of the documentary on DVD and screen captures of the documentation. Soon I had e-mails from both of them confirming the name of the guy whose details I had. There was no doubt that this was Tracey & Co's "Prime Suspect". I had also proof that anyone could have obtained that information if they had seen the documentary.
Tricia then bit the bullet. She found out more about Mr X and tracked him down very quickly. If Tricia wishes to discuss her communications with Mr X, she can do so herself, but it was quickly evident that this guy:-
a) hadn't disappeared
b) hadn't been in Colorado at the time of the murder and was claiming to have several alibis (he was actually on probation in another state and records show he did not default on this).
c) wanted very much to clear his name and offered to take a DNA test
d) was pretty angry about the whole thing!
Another thing became apparent - no attempt had been made to contact Mr X - not by Tracey or by the Ramsey PIs who took part in the documentary. This guy had an unusual name which turned up on a Gogle search. his website had contact e-mail and telephone details - both of which DID contact him. So why did they claim he'd "disappeared"? Were they so incompetent? Or were they afraid that they would find he wasn't involved and spoil a good theory?
Either way, I had a closer look at the documentary and discovered yet another discrepancy. The documentary linked the Dancewest assault with the Ramsey case. I looke up details about the DanceWest case and discovered that there was a witness description of the perp - he was described as being in his 20s, about 5ft 7 with blonde hair and a jutting out chin. Remember the physical description of Mr X on the documentation which Tracey and Co had - in his 50s, over 6ft tall with brown hair and eyes....
He couldn't be more different!!!!! That was like having a crime committed by someone resembling Leonardo di Caprio and offering up Elvis Presley as a possible match!
There was a furore after Tricia revealed Mr X on the forum. The RST were critical and blamed us for exposing the man when kind Mr Tracey hadn't (no - he'd only made a documentary accusing the man of multiple homicides!). Mr X wasn't annoyed with us - he rightly blamed his false accuser.
Having proved to be a horrendous piece of nonsense at best, Tracey's documentary had to be completely re-worked before it could be shown in the US. The American version made no reference to Mr X.
Now we have Tracey claiming to have been in e-mail contact with John Karr for 4 years and Ollie Gray is involved yet again. can anyone blame us for wondering about the Michael Tracey element? A man who makes snotty responses in e-mail about a report he hasn't read, a man who makes a documentary accusing a man of multiple murders and claiming that he has mysteriously disappeared when all he hd to do was type the man's name into Google and he'd get a phone number which would enable him to ask the man where he was in December 1996???
I am very glad to see that Peter Boyles has Tracey's number and is asking all the right questions! I hope he read this.