This is my first ever post here, and it's a long one, so I apologize in advance for the length. If there's anything I've done wrong, please let me know!
I've been reading posts in this forum and I see that people here know that the ransom note has movie quotes in it, but no one has listed the quotes or seemed to give them much thought. I believe the quotes are important, because it's practically impossible to discern anything about the writer of the ransom note because so much of it was authored by Hollywood script writers. I checked imdb and wikiquotes and these are the quotes I found:
"Mr. Stone, listen very carefully. We have kidnapped your wife. We have no qualms about killing her and we'll do so at the slightest provocation ... You are to obtain a new, black, American Tourister briefcase, Model Number 8-1-0-4 ... In it, you will place $500,000 in unmarked, non-sequentially numbered $100 bills ... You will be watched at all phases of execution. If you fail to appear at the designated time, or if any phase is not carried out to our complete satisfaction, it will be considered an infraction of the rules, and your wife will be killed ... If you notify the police, your wife will be killed. If you notify the media, she will be killed. If you deviate from our instructions in any way whatsoever, she will be killed." - Ruthless People, 1986
"You will transfer one hundred million dollars from Grand Cayman Red Sea Trading Company to an account I designate ... You alert the media, I launch the gas. You refuse payment, I launch the gas. You've got forty hours, until noon, day after tomorrow, to arrange transfer of the money. I am aware of your countermeasure." - The Rock, 1996
"If I even think you're being followed, the girl dies. If you talk to anyone, I don't care if it's a Pekinese pissing against a lamppost, the girl dies ..." and "All right, now listen and listen very carefully." and "It sounds like you had a good rest. You'll need it." - Dirty Harry, 1971
"Do not attempt to grow a brain." - Speed, 1994
"It's up to you." and "Do not involve the police or the FBI. If you do, I will kill him." and "Do not inform the media or I will kill him." and "No tracking devices in the money or the cases or I will kill him." - Ransom, 1996
There are a lot of quotes here. They're located in the beginning, middle, and end of the ransom note. Based on this, I think there are probably other quotes in there but they haven't been listed at places like imdb so I haven't been able to find them.
All of these quotes have something important in common: they are all ransom demands from movies.
Because the movies are part of pop culture, I wondered if there were any other pop culture references in the note, so I started looking around. My first thought was that beheading/execution/remains for proper burial pointed to the book "A Game of Thrones" which was first published in 1996. A character in the book is executed by beheading and that person's remains still haven't made it home for proper burial. I also considered video games. In the 1990s there was a series of video games called Mortal Kombat, where one of the ways you could defeat your opponent was by beheading, and if you did well, the word "Victory" would pop up on the screen. Many games have the player join a faction at the start of the game, so I checked Wikipedia to see if older versions of games like Warcraft had factions. They did, but what I found interesting was that when I clicked on the word "faction" it took me to a definition for the word. This is what it said: "A political faction is a group of individuals ..."
There is only a slight fit with the rest of the pop culture references though, so I doubt if they're valid. I think almost all of the note is probably movie quotes. That's what I find so strange.
It looks like it took quite a bit of research to find and memorize all these quotes. The person who wrote the note is obsessed with fitting in every movie quote that has a ransom demand, even when it doesn't make any sense to do so. "Listen carefully" makes no sense in this context because this is a note, not a phone call. All those quotes made the note unnecessarily long. The writer doesn't seem to have the skill to edit the note so that it seems more realistic. I think the writer was determined to use the word "faction" in the note, but didn't know what it meant and looked it up in a dictionary or encyclopedia, and the definition made its way into the note. It's possible that the word "Pekinese" was replaced with "stray dog" because the writer didn't know how to spell Pekinese. I find it odd that the words business and possession were spelled incorrectly, but the word attache' is correct. There may be an explanation for this though. Perhaps the writer looked up information about the American Tourister briefcase and saw the word attache' used in the description and remembered how it was spelled, but only heard the words "business" and "possession" and knew what they meant, so didn't look those up.
We already know that the writer had an excellent memory for things that had been heard, so maybe s/he also had a great memory for things seen. Yet the letter writer is obsessed with fitting in so many movie quotes and can't figure out how to write an actual ransom note. The whole note, with all the corrections, looks like a rough draft for a school assignment by someone who doesn't have any idea how to write but who is still being a perfectionist about it. Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else think this could point to the writer being on the autism spectrum?