Quiz--What is the coincidence?

[Maikai]

JonBenet Ramsey was supposedly the first murder in Boulder in 1996. In January 1997, the below article appeared in the Boulder Camera about another young woman's death---some said she was murdered but because she was poor, the police weren't interested in pursuing anything and said the death was accidental.

My Question is---is there a link between the two victims? What is coincidental about the two deaths?


DAILY CAMERA
A TALE OF TWO VICTIMS: QUESTIONS SURROUND HANDLING OF TWO DEATHS
Friday, January 10, 1997
Section: MAIN
Edition: FIRST
Page: 1A
By ELLIOT ZARET Camera Staff Writer

John and Patsy Ramsey's daughter died in Boulder two weeks ago. She was found strangled and molested - with duct tape over her mouth and her skull fractured - in the basement of her parents' 15-room Tudor home. Tight-lipped police have spared nothing in their meticulous search for the killer or killers of the beautiful little girl - the youngest daughter of a wealthy corporate executive and a former beauty queen.

Geraldine Vodicka's daughter also died in Boulder in December. She was found nearly naked with her face bloodied and beaten, face-down in a construction ditch near the low-income housing project where she lived. The coroner ruled the death of the epileptic grocery bagger - who was reported to have been an alcoholic - accidental. Police continue investigating, although Boulder Police Chief Tom Koby says he concurs with the coroner.


Boulder police say the murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was the only homicide in 1996. Others aren't so sure.
Some neighbors and friends of 37-year-old Lorraine Florence Lawrence, who died Dec. 4, said they don't believe the assessment that she died of exposure in a hole at a construction site near a Boulder Housing Authority apartment complex. They believe Lawrence was killed.

Comparing how police handled the two cases, they said, justice may be different for a poor woman like Lawrence and an affluent family like the Ramseys.

"I really believe justice will be served in the Ramsey case," said Tiffiney Johnson, a friend of Lawrence's who lives in the same housing com plex. "It's just the difference between rich and poor ... There's no doubt she was killed and everyone knows it."

Repeated attempts Thursday to contact detectives regarding the case were unsuccessful.

The neighbor who identified the body said Lawrence had been beaten so badly she couldn't recognize her friend's face. Lawrence's teeth were broken, her eyes were bloodied and blackened. A trail of blood led from her apartment to where her body was found, and police reportedly found a broken beer bottle next to a pool of blood about 20 yards away.

But two weeks after her death, the Boulder County coroner released an autopsy report saying Lawrence fell into the hole - presumably dazed from a seizure - and died of exposure to the cold.

There has been no explanation of how she could have replaced plywood and two heavy buckets over the hole, as construction workers reportedly left it and found it the morning they discovered Lawrence's body.

"I'm not sure what happened, but it's hard for me to believe what the police say - that she died because of the cold," said the neighbor who identified Lawrence's body; she asked that her name not be used. "It's obvious that people who have more money are going to get more attention than people who are average."

The police's treatment of the Lawrence case, some say, is starkly different from how the Ramsey case has been handled so far.

While Boulder police initially dispatched 15 officers to the scene of Lawrence's death, that number declined within days.

In the Ramsey case, 30 officers from Boulder police and other local law enforcement agencies have worked virtually around the clock - even sending investigators to Georgia and Michigan - since JonBenet's death the day after Christmas. The investigation continues.

Police spent almost 10 days carefully scouring the Ramsey house for evidence. They finished examining the Lawrence crime scene in about two days.

And while the coroner completed and released the autopsy report on Lawrence about two weeks after her body was found, more than two weeks have passed since JonBenet's body was found, and no such report has been released. The report is not expected for "a minimum of a week," according to the coroner's office.

Police also released a detailed report about two weeks after Lawrence's death, even though they said it was still being investigated. In the Ramsey case, virtually all public records have been sealed: 911 recordings, search warrant affidavits and lists of what was seized from the family home.

When Lawrence died, police immediately questioned everyone involved, including her mother, sister and stepfather. JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, flew to Georgia for their daughter's funeral. A week after her death, they were given a written list of questions; they have yet to be thoroughly interviewed in person. Police said they didn't question the Ramseys in order to give them time to grieve.

"If Lorraine's mom wanted to grieve and wanted time or wanted to leave the state, there's no way in hell they would've let her go," Johnson said.

When asked about the different handling of the two cases at Thursday's public forum, Koby said it was only perceived to be different because of media hype.

"Why has the media given so much attention to this case and literally no attention to the case you described?" Koby responded when questioned about the Lawrence case.

"The notion that we have treated them differently - any legal expert will tell you we have handled this case exactly as it should be handled ... If you go back and assess the homicides that Boulder has had, because they are infrequent events, you will find a similar response."

 

[eileenhawkeye]

From reading the description of Geraldine's condition, it does sound like she was murdered. I don't know how deep this hole was, but it had to be pretty deep if she wasn't recognizable after she fell in it.

The Boulder LE probably put more work into JonBenet's case, not just because she was wealthy, but because of the publicity. John and Patsy certainly weren't going to pressure LE to solve the case, but because the media decided to cover it, they had to act the part of grieving parents whose daughter was murdered by an intruder. Look at the Midyette case; they were rich too but the national media never picked up the case.

I've seen people blame Boulder LE and JonBenet's case for why cases hundreds and thousands of miles away are unsolved. Hey, many Americans can't locate the USA or Iraq on a map, so I'm not surprised that many of them don't know that there are thousands of police departments throughout the country who each have a jurisdiction. LOL

 

[Maikai]

Off topic, but there is a connection between John Ramsey and the Midyettes. The father is a well known land developer in Boulder. Access rented space from the father on Pearl Street, and was planning on expanding into more space (around 28,000 sf) on Pearl Street owned by the father. When the articles started coming out about the Midyette baby, the thought did occur to me-----where was the son on l2/25/96? In any event the Midyette baby story is awful---I know a lot of time and effort was put into the case--even getting outside experts to determine if the baby was born with a condition to cause the injuries. And, you're correct----the Midyette's lawyered up fairly early.

"Alex Midyette's father is Boulder architect and businessman J Nold Midyette, who owns a part of the east end of the Pearl Street Mall estimated to have a market value of about $80 million."

(Daily Camera article dtd. 10/96--two months before the murder)


DAILY CAMERA
ACCESS GRAPHICS SALES SOAR
DISTRIBUTOR OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE HAS GROWN NEARLY 2,000 PERCENT SINCE 1990.

Tuesday, October 8, 1996

Section: BPLUS
Edition: FIRST
Page: 6D
By Tom Locke Camera Business Writer


In Boulder high-tech circles, growth is nothing extraordinary, so it takes super expansion to really raise some eyebrows.

Access Graphics Inc. is a good candidate.


In 1990, Boulder-based Access posted $59 million in sales. In 1996, it expects revenues to be nearly 2,000 percent higher.
"This year we will do about $1.2 billion," said Laurie Wagner, Access vice president for worldwide business development.

Access Graphics, a subsidiary of Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp., is a distributor of mid-level computer hardware and software, emphasizing Unix operating systems. It acts as an intermediary between manufacturers and "resellers" that sell to end-user businesses.

Its success in that niche is translating into a need for more employees and more office space in Boulder.

Access' total employment grew from 120 in 1990 to 430 by December of last year. It is 550 now and is projected to be 680 by the end of next year.

The Boulder share of that employment was about 90 in 1990 and 295 by December of last year. It now stands at 380, and should be about 470 by the end of next year.

Those 90 or so new hires during the next 15 months will occur in a variety of areas such as sales and marketing and technical support, Wagner said. The growth has brought a need for more space, and Access has worked out a 10-year plan with real estate developer J. Midyette to eventually supply 48,000 square feet to supplement the 52,000 square feet the company already occupies in Boulder.

Midyette is adding a third floor of 6,000 square feet to the building at 1414 Pearl St., adjacent to the Access headquarters building at 1426 Pearl St. Access plans to move into that space in January or February.

In addition, Midyette is building a new 26,600-square-foot office building across the street at 1433 Pearl St., and Access will initially lease 22,000 square feet for occupancy in July.

What's driving the growth?

One key cause is the expansion of the Unix marketplace and the partners Access has picked. More than half of its business comes from sales of hardware made by Mountain View, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems Inc. Access is one of only two distributors in the country that Sun has authorized to sell to resellers. The other authorized distributor is Merisel Inc. of El Segundo, Calif.

Another element for growth is the company's geographic expansion, Wagner said. "That's the direction we're moving, toward being a global company."

Access entered the European market in 1994 and now has 100 field sales representatives there. It also operates in the Canadian market and entered the Latin American market in June with the opening of an office in Mexico City.

Key to Access' business is the support it provides to its 5,000 reseller customers in areas such as technical information, sales positioning, and service or maintenance contracts. For instance, a reseller that has bought equipment through Access and is having technical problems installing it can call Access for guidance.

"I think one of their biggest strengths is they meet our needs from A to Z," said Bruce Alexander, operations manager for Graftek Inc., a Boulder-based software developer and value-added reseller of Sun equipment.

For instance, he can gain up-to-the-minute reseller price and end-user list price information on equipment through the Access site on the World Wide Web.

Greg McKnight, vice president of sales and marketing for the Root Group, a Boulder-based reseller, said that Access has helped his company in understanding Sun Microsystems and has also helped it in developing opportunities in the marketplace.

He noted that a reseller can get a variety of hardware and software products from Access to integrate into a solution for an end-user. That's an appealing alternative to dealing with a number of different suppliers, particularly when delivery can be ensured within 24 hours.

To do that, Access needs to buy the necessary hardware and software, and warehouse it for a quick turnaround to resellers. That takes capital, and being a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin helps. "I think one of their biggest strengths is they're financially sound," said McKnight.

Would Access Graphics ever go public? Wagner acknowledged there have been rumors to that effect, but, she said, "We don't have any specific plans to go public at this time."

The relationship with Lockheed Martin has provided Access with the money it has needed to fund its growth, Wagner said. That relationship dates back to the formation of Access out of three companies in 1989. Lockheed subsidiary Calcomp, of Anaheim, Calif., bought a minority interest in Access when it was formed, and Lockheed bought the rest of Access in 1991.

On the supplier side, Access can take some of the load off manufacturers by helping estab lish a network of competent resellers and training them. In addition, it can lower the manufacturer's technical service costs. For instance, Access takes 7,500 calls a month relating to Sun Microsystems equipment and refers less than 1 percent to Sun.

Mountain View Calif.-based Silicon Graphics Inc. was dealing directly with resellers prior to deciding to use Access as a distributor in August 1995. Now, resellers get technical support involving Silicon Graphics hardware that involves a whole-solution approach. That reduces finger-pointing between hardware and software suppliers when a technical glitch arises.

Frank Hensley, a sales director for Exabyte Corp., a Boulder-based storage-systems provider, says the key to Access' growth has been its ability to focus on a specific market, Unix-based solutions, and its sophisticated technical expertise necessary for that market. Among the Access advantages he pointed to are its economies of scale in warehousing, technical expertise for entire solutions, and carrying reseller receivables that a manufacturer doesn't want to worry about.

"It lets manufacturers do what they're good at," Hensley said.

Distributors have been consolidating across the country to realize economies of scale, and Access is keeping pace. Said Hensley: "I haven't got a stronger distributor in the country."

 

[Maikai]

Back to Vodicka....this is the first article in the Daily Camera at the beginning of December. There is a link between the mother and the Ramseys, which I'll get to later. At the time Lorraine died, the Ramseys were riding high---Patsy's cancer was in remission, Access was doing great....the kids were doing great. On the other hand, the Vodicka's weren't wealthy by any means--quite the opposite. Lorraine left a nine-year old son behind (I don't know who eventually got custody)....at the time of the article several of her family and friends thought she was murdered.


DAILY CAMERA
BODY FOUND AT BOULDER WORK SITE
Thursday, December 5, 1996
Section: MAIN
Edition: FIRST
Page: 1A
By ALLI KRUPSKI Camera Staff Writer
Caption: PHOTO:
By Crissy Pascual Daily Camera

CRIME SCENE: Police investigate the site where a construction worker found the body of a 37-year-old Boulder woman.

As her grieving mother and sister watched Wednesday morning, authorities removed the body of a 37-year-old Boulder woman from a construction site ditch close to her apartment near the North Boulder Recreation Center.

A Twin Peaks Excavating foreman discovered the body of Lorraine Florence Lawrence face down in the hole near the Boulder Housing Authority's apartment complex in the 3100 block of Broadway about 7:50 a.m. Wednesday, Boulder police said.


"We are treating it as a suspicious death," said city spokesman Kelvin McNeill. "It appears that the hole was properly covered and access to it was limited."
Police would not comment on the condition of the body or possible suspects. The Boulder County coroner's office planned to conduct an autopsy today.

Workers had covered the 6-foot hole with two pieces of plywood and two heavy buckets Tuesday night.

"We had it secured, so nobody could lift the plywood. It was safe so nobody could fall in, and there was equipment parked around it," said J.D. Lemmel, who found the body.

"When I got there this morning, the plywood was broken. And when I looked in, she was only in panties and a T-shirt," Lemmel said.

Lemmel notified police, who said they found a trail of blood leading from the apartment building to the hole, as well as a broken beer bottle near the scene. Investigators removed the body about 1 p.m. as runners and recreation center users stopped and stared.

Two murders occurred in Boulder in 1995, and as of July none had taken place in the city this year, McNeill said.

Geraldine Vodicka, Lawrence's mother, said her daughter "had epilepsy, but I don't think that's why she's dead today. I think someone killed her."

Dominique Vodicka, Lawrence's sister who moved into the North Boulder apartment complex three months ago, said: "A neighbor saw her last night at 9 p.m. sitting on the ice in her underwear, with a black eye and blood dripping from her eye and there was a ... guy walking near her. (The neighbor) made her go inside, but he never called us."

The neighbor should have informed the family, said Jonathan Smith, a family friend.

"If it looked like she had been punched or hit, and if he had called us or the police, she would be alive today," Smith said."She wouldn't have hurt a fly, and she didn't deserve to die."

Family members said they will remember Lawrence's gentle disposition. The mother of a 9-year-old son, Chad, and the oldest of five children, Lawrence had worked as a bagger at Safeway at 2798 Arapahoe Ave. for the past four years, Geraldine Vodicka said.

"Lorraine liked reading and taking long walks," her mother said, noting that Lawrence had lived in the complex for roughly nine years. "She was just a sweet person who never bothered anybody or fought with anyone."

But Lawrence had encountered violence in the past several years, according to records from the Boulder County Sheriff's Department. Records show she reported an assault in May 1990, a domestic dispute in January 1991 and saw a friend harass her sister, Elaine Romero, in October 1996.

Neighbors said they occasionally heard Lawrence argue with friends, but did not notice any unusual noise Tuesday night. Some residents, however, said they heard a car speeding away during the evening.


Irving Tejeda, who lives in the apartment next to Lawrence's, said he noticed her "wide open" front door at 7 a.m. Wednesday. "The lights were out, and it was cold," he said.

Staff writer Margie McAllister contributed to this report.

 

[DeeDee249]

Whatever side of this fence we sit on, you've done an excellent job of pointing out how differently the law and law enforcement treats the wealthy and powerful as opposed to the poor.

 

[Maikai]

Whatever side of this fence we sit on, you've done an excellent job of pointing out how differently the law and law enforcement treats the wealthy and powerful as opposed to the poor.

That's true...but there's more. How would you or your friends and family feel if it were your daughter found dead in a construction ditch,and you felt she was murdered but the police closed the investigation?

 

[Maikai]

There is a point, to my postings, which I'll reveal.........Below is an article DATED 12/20/1996 which appeared in the Daily Camera regarding Lorraine. Note Ellers comments about there being no outward evidence of a crime...also further down she was not sexually assaulted. At the end of the article some still questioned an accidental death.

DAILY CAMERA
CORONER: EXPOSURE KILLED WOMAN< BODY WAS FOUND IN DITCH DEC. 4; POLICE INVESTIGATION CONTINUING
Friday, December 20, 1996
Section: TODAY
Edition: FIRST
Page: 1B
By ALLI KRUPSKI Camera Staff Writer

The Boulder County coroner's office ruled Thursday that a 37-year-old woman found dead in a construction site hole near her apartment died of exposure to the cold as the result of seizure disorder complications.

But Boulder police continue to investigate the death of Lorraine Florence Lawrence.


"We need to check on foot and hand prints on some items," said police Sgt. Tom Wickman.
A Twin Peaks Excavating foreman discovered Lawrence's body about 7:50 a.m. Dec. 4 face down in a 6-foot ditch at the Boulder Housing Authority's apartment complex in the 3100 block of Broadway. "She was only in panties and a T-shirt, but we had the hole properly secured," said J.D. Lemmel, who found the body. "We put cones around it, and when I got there in the morning, the plywood was broken," he said.

Workers covered the hole Dec. 3 with two sheets of particle board and two heavy tractor buckets, police said.

"People who have seizures are known to be in a state of confusion following a seizure. We believe that she was in that state and was wandering around the complex," said Dan Pruett, a medical investigator with the coroner's office. "At some point, she fell into the construction hole, where she was exposed to the cold."

Neighbors heard a scream and a thump between 1 and 2 a.m. Dec. 4, said Detective Ron Gosage.

Some residents said they noticed a man and a woman arguing and a car speeding away during the evening.

About 11 p.m., a resident saw Lawrence sitting outside on ice in her underwear with blood dripping from a cut above her right eye. The neighbor escorted Lawrence back to her apartment.

Police would not comment on a pool of blood and a broken beer bottle on ice found in the parking lot about 20 yards from the hole. Investigators also located blood inside Lawrence's apartment and skid marks outside the complex.

"There are a lot of things present, but nothing that links them together," said Cmdr. John Eller, noting that at one point 15 detectives worked on the case. "There is no outward evidence of any criminal act. We may never know the answer to exactly what happened."

Residents, however, said Lawrence walked around in her panties in front of the North Boulder Recreation Center on Oct. 6 and again nine days before she died, Wickman said.

"It shows a pattern of behavior," he said. Police plan to test the particle board for weight tolerance levels, he added.

"I don't know if she was heavy enough to have fallen in," said Geraldine Vodicka, Lawrence's mother. "I don't know what to think about what happened or how long she could have been in there."

Coroner's officials do not know how long Lawrence remained in the ditch.

"She was either too confused to get out or couldn't get out," Pruett said.

Medical investigators did not find evidence of sexual assault or alcohol, Pruett said. Lawrence, however, had injested cocaine and an anti-convulsant drug, Phenytoin, sometime before her death, he said.

"We don't know how much or when she took it," Pruett said. "She wasn't wearing a lot of clothing, and she could just have easily have died if the hole wasn't there."

The coroner's conclusions, however, did not reassure some residents of the apartment complex.

"There are just too many unanswered questions," said Christine Gomez, who has lived in the complex for six months. "Until they get answered, I don't know if I'll feel safe here again."





20/96 which appeared in the Daily Camera.

 

[Maikai]

NOW.....the very next day there is the Access article on John Ramseys success. The Vodicka family and friends are distraught....the Ramseys are flying high. Still don't kinow the connection????

Access celebrates $1 billion mark
By TOM LOCKE
Camera Business Writer
December 21, 1996

A billion bucks. That's enough to make anybody celebrate.

So when Boulder-based computer distributor Access Graphics Inc. passed the $1 billion mark in 1996 revenues, it tossed a luncheon party at the Hotel Boulderado on Friday.

A dixieland jazz band made the rounds at Access' Boulder offices Friday morning to announce the celebration and later played at the Boulderado.

John Ramsey, president of Access Graphics, thanked about 300 employees at the gathering and told them it couldn't have happened without them. The $1 billion in sales is about a 25 percent increase over the $800 million the company posted last year, and Ramsey foresees continued growth.

The next major milestone party, when the company reaches $2 billion in revenues, will come "before the end of the decade, that's for sure," he predicted.

Reaching the billion-dollar mark has come relatively quickly for Access, which was formed in 1989 from the merger of three companies: CAD Distributors Inc. of Boulder; CAD Sources Inc. of Piscataway, N.J.; and Advanced Products Group of Roswell, Ga.

In 1990, Access posted $59 million in sales and had 120 employees. While revenues have grown about 1,600 percent, employment has grown about 358 percent, to 550 employees. About 380 employees are in Boulder, 100 in Europe, 20 in Mexico City, 12 in Canada and some at warehouses in California and Pennsylvania.

Access Graphics, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp., gets about 60 percent of its revenues from selling hard ware and software from Sun Microsystems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif.

Sun, known for its Unix workstations and Java software, is planning an office campus of more than 1 million square feet with more than 3,500 employees at Interlocken business park in Broomfield.

Access is one of two distributors for Sun in the United States that is authorized to sell to resellers, which get customer support from Access in selling to end-users.

Ramsey said an important factor in Access' success has been the mix of products and companies it represents. Among the most important, besides Sun, are Silicon Graphics Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., and Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif.

 

[Whaleshark]

biting.....
so you're suggesting Lorraine's family got justice for their daughter and got revenge by taking the Ramseys' daughter?

 

[Maikai]

biting.....
so you're suggesting Lorraine's family got justice for their daughter and got revenge by taking the Ramseys' daughter?

Close...not necessarily the family...could have been someone associated with the family that wanted to help the mother out. Lorraine's son was the same age as Burke, and no father mentioned.

The coincidence is......about a year later the Daily Camera solicited for funds for a tombstone for Lorraine. The family had fallen on hard times, and could not afford a tombstone. A followup article was done---wish I would have saved it, but I didn't---or misplaced it somewhere. I believe there was a photo of the tombstone and Mrs. Vodicka and one of her daughters at the cemetery. The article mentioned that Mrs. Vodicka had been a housekeeper for the Ramseys! She said something like she was a sweet little girl...that was it. From there I searched and found the articles on Lorraine's death.

I did some checking, including public records. There was someone connected with the family that had a criminal record as a juvenile and adult. The latest was a few months earlier, where purses were stolen from a daycare center, with checks forged at several local businesses. Mrs. Vodicka did not leave her employment on good terms. I don't know where I'm recalling this from, but I think her grandson on occasion went to the Ramseys and played with Burke. I'm not saying that's a fact....but something in the back of my mind.

The article on the 20th has Ellers saying they could find no proof of a crime when it came to Lorraine.......and there was no sexual assault. In the case of JBR there was no question a crime was committed...she was garrotted and her skull fractured, and she was sexually assaulted.

Grief does strange things....someone that knew of the prior relationship between Mrs. Vodicka and the Ramseys and upset with the way Lorraine's death was handled, could have been involved. Lorraine would have been the first murder of the year.......instead it was JBR. It could have been revenge.....could have been for money. Then again, just a coincidence like so many other coincidences with other people.

There was more on Lorraine....I believe there was a lawsuit that was settled with the construction company. I'll post one more followup story on Lorraine AFTER December 1996. There may have been a plausible explanation for an accident. However, that wasn't known in December.

 

[Maikai]

Concluding article on Lorraine's death---2/97


DAILY CAMERA
CASE NOT CLOSED IN LAWRENCE DEATH< POLICE LEAN TOWARD EXPOSURE AS CAUSE
Wednesday, February 12, 1997
Section: MAIN
Edition: FIRST
Page: 2A
By ELLIOT ZARET Camera Staff Writer

Boulder police investigators still haven't closed the book on the death of Lorraine Florence Lawrence - found dead at a construction site Dec. 4 - even though the Boulder County coroner concluded the death was accidental nearly two months ago.

"They do their own investigation and we do our own investigation," said police Detective Ron Gosage. "Some of it's the same and some of it's different."


The coroner determined that 37-year-old Lawrence - found partially clothed with bruises on her head and side in a hole near the public-housing apartment complex where she lived - died of exposure to the cold after wandering disoriented following a seizure. Temperatures hovered near freezing that night.
"This all fits together pretty well and pretty logically," said Boulder County Coroner Dr. John Meyer. "Our burden of proof is preponderance of the evidence - what's more likely than not. It's not beyond reasonable doubt, because we can't prove a negative."

The case has been the subject of public controversy after some neighbors criticized police andling of the case, compared to the intense investigation into the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

But Meyer said that controversy may have been fueled by some media inaccuracies. For instance, Meyer disputed reports that the construction hole where Lawrence's body was found had been re-covered with plywood boards that covered the hole the day before.

Lawrence's body was found leaning against a broken board in the hole, her leg scraped and bruised, said Meyer. The board was half-inch particle board - not plywood - something chief medical investigator Tom Faure described as "relatively lightweight." A person stepping on it, he said, could easily have fallen through.

The coroner initially investigated the case as a homicide, but an autopsy report showed the bruises and cuts on her face did not cause her death. There also were no other signs that her death was caused by some sort of beating or injury.

"She had injuries on her that someone looking at her would say she was beaten," said Meyer. "We're looking at the totality of the information that we have, and we don't think she was beaten. ... If we had found in the autopsy skull fractures or a ruptured spleen, that's a homicide - no question about it."

The coroner also researched Lawrence's medical history. It was that history that convinced him Lawrence died accidentally.

From the woman's medical records Meyer learned that Lawrence, who suffered from epileptic seizures, had been found wandering around semi-clothed, bruised, bloody and confused on several instances, including the night before her death. Meyer said such a period of confusion is common immediately following a seizure - called a "post-ictal state."

In another instance in October, Lawrence was brought to the emergency room by a stranger who found her outside her apartment half naked, incoherent and covered with blood.

Such instances were most common when Lawrence was not taking her prescribed seizure medication, Dilantin, Meyer said. The autopsy found levels of the drug in her bloodstream, but they were below "therapeutic levels" - in other words, she had been off her medication. Cocaine also was found in her system, officials said.

Meyer and Faure sat down with members of the family and told them how they believed Lawrence had died - that she wandered around in a disoriented state after a seizure and fell into the hole, where she died of exposure. The bruises and blood on her, they said, were self-induced.

They then sat down with police investigators, who did not object to the ruling.

But police are waiting for evidence from CBI labs before they decide whether to close the case. Those results are expected soon, said Gosage, who added that the long wait
is simply due to the CBI's caseload.

Gosage agrees that Lawrence was not beaten, nor "struck with anything that we can tell." As for a broken beer bottle found near some blood on the parking lot, "I think the broken beer bottle was a coincidence," Gosage said, adding that only the bottom of the bottle was found in the parking lot.

"We're strongly leaning toward the coroner's conclusion," said Gosage. "I won't be able to say 100 percent until we get (CBI evidence) back."

 

[eileenhawkeye]

I found an article about JonBenet's case in the tabloids from The Denver Post in February 1997 and it had this line:

Two sources are named in the story, former Ramsey housekeeper Geraldine Vodicka and the family's media adviser Pat Korten.

The housekeeper says Mrs. Ramsey was paranoid that her husband "would be tempted by any pretty young girls he came in contact with." Therefore, women hired for the household staff had to be "heavier, older and less attractive" than Mrs. Ramsey, the housekeeper said.

Remember; that quote supposedly given by Geraldine is from a tabloid so it might not be true.

 

[Maikai]

Interesting...hadn't read where she talked to the tabloids and I wondered why not, with all the money they were throwing around. If she did say that, then I'd wonder what else she has said and to whom. Weird

 

[Whaleshark]

Looks like you've been considering this possibility for over 10 yrs now....you are archived on A Candy Rose, etc. with this same theory...

It does seem an interesting angle, but whether someone from the Vodicka family/friends is the intruder, or someone else, they still have to be doing all those things in the house, and not worry about Burke or anyone else discovering them during that time since they have not detained or incapacitated any of the Ramseys in any way. You still need an adult knowing about John's good southern common sense and fat cat info, and utilizing attache and small foreign faction in the RN as well. And all the other associated events, etc.

 

[Tadpole12]

Maikai, thank you for compiling and posting the info re the Vodicka
family connection here at the WS JBR forum.

 

[Maikai]

Looks like you've been considering this possibility for over 10 yrs now....you are archived on A Candy Rose, etc. with this same theory...

It does seem an interesting angle, but whether someone from the Vodicka family/friends is the intruder, or someone else, they still have to be doing all those things in the house, and not worry about Burke or anyone else discovering them during that time since they have not detained or incapacitated any of the Ramseys in any way. You still need an adult knowing about John's good southern common sense and fat cat info, and utilizing attache and small foreign faction in the RN as well. And all the other associated events, etc.

Thank you---I checked the site--didn't realize A Candy Rose had put it on her website. Every few years or so I drag it up---I find it curious...particularly with the timing of the two articles. I've wondered if the reason the note was written in the house, not only because of opportunity, but if Burke could have possibly been the original target, and they had a note saying "your son" but found when they were in the house that his room was too close to the parent's. The other sayings are a question mark and where they came from. I can't see the parents putting in obvious references to sayings that could be traced back to them. Attache is a strange choice.

 

[DeeDee249]

BR's room was no closer to his parents than his sister's. Both kids' rooms are on the second floor. In fact, JB's room was closer to the stairs, which also went up to the parents' 3rd floor bedroom.