Ransom note analysis

[mickey2942]

the note is what threw everything. People overthink when in crisis mode. The Ramseys knew their daughter was dead, and staged a bizarre scene to make it appear like a stranger. The note was part of the decoy, away from Ramseys.

Without the note, I could almost be convinced it was a stranger. The note was written in panic mode, by people covering a crime. Not realising the note itself, would highlight the parents being involved.

 

[CircuitGuy]

-"Fat cat": A term used in business. Patsy would not think to say that.

The rest of TheCuriousFrog's post makes sense, but I disagree with this statement. Fat Cat is precisely the type of language someone unfamiliar with business would use. It's something people who know that business makes money but don't understand the mechanics of it say.

The use of this term makes it sounds like disgruntled low-level employee. In RN, it feels shoehorned in, not relevant to the rest of the note. The idea that there are other "fat cats" out there they might target seems contrary to the purpose of a ransom note, which should be "you had better do what we say".

It seems like the writer ham-handledly worked the phrase in, trying to make it sound like a disgruntled employee wrote the note.

It really feels like someone who didn't understand how the business world, politics, or crime work. They're just saying words from movies, political shows, and other things they've heard on TV. It really sounds like a confused housewife to me, or someone expertly mimicking a confused housewife.

 

[CircuitGuy]

You are wrong. If Patsy had done as you say, she would have been in jail before lunch was served. Their biggest problem would be that they wouldn't have been able to avoid interrogation for 4 months. The ransom note put LE off balance and gave the Ramsey's the head start they needed.

You're saying the RN was believable enough to throw off LE at least for a while. Most of us here agree that the RN, at least after time to reflect on it and after learning the other facts of the case, is not believable. An FBI agent who saw the note before the body was found said he didn't believe the note. Why you think the RN threw LE off even for a little while?

 

[CircuitGuy]

I really don't think the long term effects of their decision even entered their minds. I think in a situation like that where one of your daughter appears to be dead and your son appears to be the culprit, a mother's instinct would be to protect the surviving child. Humans have certain instincts that are wired in to them that they are not even aware of. When that moment of tragedy hits, a person can go in to autopilot, following that instinct to protect.

I can't imagine such a situation. I do have a 7 y/o son and 5 y/o daughter. Like most reasonably affluent people, I believe in my ability to navigate my society's institutions. So if somehow my son killed my daughter, perhaps in some dangerous activity, I would not engage in an elaborate coverup. I would want my son to get help and in some way answer for the mistake. Covering it up just feels wrong.

It's such a crazy scenario; I can't be sure what I'd really do. Also, I may have a more stereotypical male view of him "answering for" what he did. Maybe my wife's reaction would be different. I would strongly object to an elaborate coverup, if my wife suggested it. A kid who makes a mistake and someone dies needs to face that reality and get psychological help.

 

[CircuitGuy]

PR made one that she thought sounded real scary and convincing. It also "explains" why she is dead, they didn't follow the rules.

I never understood, though, how it explains it at all. The note says if you call the police or tell anyone, she dies. PR immediately called the police and told friends. She died. But for this to make sense, the killer would have had to be in the house, hear her calling 911, and then kill JBR. Maybe they were planning to move the body somewhere away from the house and PR placed the 911 call early for some reason.

I'm not criticizing Annapurna's reasoning at all. I'm saying I understand why Annapurna used scare quotes around "explains" b/c it really doesn't explain it.

 

[CircuitGuy]

I think, the way the note is written, it is mostly for John to read between the lines and figure out what is going on, buried between typical lines from books and movies he was into. I think he was expected to follow this script, and take action and work some miracle and make everything OK. Instead, John tells Patsy to call the police.

Why would she write a note intended for the police's and prosecutors' consumption but with hidden messages to John? Why not just talk to him about it?

 

[InstantProof]

Why would she write a note intended for the police's and prosecutors' consumption but with hidden messages to John? Why not just talk to him about it?

If she were afraid to tell him what happened, and that JB was dead. But I don't have a particular theory I stand by.

 

[UKGuy]

I never understood, though, how it explains it at all. The note says if you call the police or tell anyone, she dies. PR immediately called the police and told friends. She died. But for this to make sense, the killer would have had to be in the house, hear her calling 911, and then kill JBR. Maybe they were planning to move the body somewhere away from the house and PR placed the 911 call early for some reason.

I'm not criticizing Annapurna's reasoning at all. I'm saying I understand why Annapurna used scare quotes around "explains" b/c it really doesn't explain it.

CircuitGuy,
BBM: The ransom note was written to explain why JonBenet's body was relocated and not to be found in her bedroom.

It has no other purpose and as staged evidence is useless for showing motives, etc. On the Ramsey telepathy, why did PR not talk JR out of calling the police, and how does PR know JR will get the right message?

.

 

[singularity]

I never understood, though, how it explains it at all. The note says if you call the police or tell anyone, she dies. PR immediately called the police and told friends. She died. But for this to make sense, the killer would have had to be in the house, hear her calling 911, and then kill JBR. Maybe they were planning to move the body somewhere away from the house and PR placed the 911 call early for some reason.

I'm not criticizing Annapurna's reasoning at all. I'm saying I understand why Annapurna used scare quotes around "explains" b/c it really doesn't explain it.

I agree. Whether someone thinks it was Patsy or Pee Wee Herman that whipped up that note, Jonbenet is obviously dead long before it was written so I don't buy that explanation. Never did.

I've never been much of a RN analyzer. I think the note is more of a distraction than anything else yet will be analzyed til the cows come home. The note is interesting in the sense it played a key role in the paradoxical nature of the crime(on its surface)

- Why were no traces of a possible suspect ever found?

Lou Smit didn't send you the memo? There's a boot print, a packing peanut, and John swore to God they didn't do it.

If the Ramseys are involved in this and the writer of the ransom note wore gloves, then there is a point where it moves from accident and/or rage to cover up. At what point would parents realize that there's going to be a criminal investigation and that from this point on they will have to wear gloves? It's more usual for a parent to claim their child had disappeared and they don't know what happened. I'm just presenting these questions because I'm working my way through my own theory and this is a defining moment in a person's life. It's a huge milestone. Huge. You can't redefine yourself after you do something like this.

Great question. It would depend on exactly how events unfolded that night. I would say the moment they broach the subject of strangling her that is when they reach the point of no return. Any moment before that no matter how severe the injury, they could rush her to the hospital or call 911. Let the chips fall where they may. The moment one person even considers murder in such a situation, both parties would have to start covering their rumps and hatching a plan, no matter how elaborate.

I agree with InstantProof that this house was dysfunction junction and that's why it led to this tragedy. Obviously I don't know exactly what happened that night but IMO if we're dealing with a rage attack(the head blow) or even accidental, if she had never been abused she would have taken a ride in an ambulance instead of a trip to the basement. I don't think this was a "mercy killing" like some believe. They were interested in saving themselves, not her. Her body was tossed in that cellar like refuse and once "found", they couldn't get away from her any quicker than they did. Had I been her parent, BPD would've had to physically remove me from the house because I wouldn't let her body lay there alone for hours. They practically ran. They wanted to fly away...literally.

I think that if after the head bash, if the Ramseys had called 911, they had enough $$$ and access to lawyers to bury the case. They made the decision instead to strangle their daughter to death. Even if the public was not aware of the story, everyone who knew them would know that either Burke, John, or Patsy had gone into a rage, bashed JonBenet in the head, and she is now brain dead in a hospital bed. Of course they could just tell people that she fell down the stairs but people would still be talking and the truth would likely get out. Perhaps the CNN interview was their way of speaking out to their social circles in four different states.

I don't think John and Patsy decided to strangle their daughter because they were scared of going to jail. They had more than enough money and connections to prevent that from happening.

Great point. There was definitely potential to bury the story. No one knew how huge the story was going to get at the time. Remove one layer like the pageant footage and it never gets 24/7 coverage. Had she survived like in your scenario, the rest of the country never would've even heard about Jonbenet.

Like I said, whoever did it, John made them angry. The worst thing you can do to a person is to harm their child. I'm not 100% it was the church , it could have been a colleague, but evidence leans more toward the church.
.

What evidence? I see the same amount of evidence it was the guy running the hot dog stand near the court house as I do that she was murdered by a church.

 

[CircuitGuy]

The ransom note was written to explain why JonBenet's body was relocated and not to be found in her bedroom.

It has no other purpose and as staged evidence is useless for showing motives, etc.

Why do you think the body was located in the basement? It would be easier to locate the body in the bedroom and skip the note.

Maybe it's what andreww suggested: The long note plus moved body in the basement give the police a bunch of info to spin on. I would be surprised if that long RN helped. It seems more believable if they had said they heard a struggle, confronted an intruder, the intruder fled, and they realized he had killed their daughter. Andreww says in such a scenario the Ramsey's would have been separated and questions and the crimes scene would have been better protected. Maybe that's true. I can't believe they didn't do that given the scenario of a the RN and then finding body in the house.

I keep coming back to one of the Ramsey's doing it, PR coming up with the lamest coverup imaginable, and then by sheer luck the dumb coverup works.

On the Ramsey telepathy, why did PR not talk JR out of calling the police, and how does PR know JR will get the right message?

I agree completely.

 

[UKGuy]

Why do you think the body was located in the basement? It would be easier to locate the body in the bedroom and skip the note.

Maybe it's what andreww suggested: The long note plus moved body in the basement give the police a bunch of info to spin on. I would be surprised if that long RN helped. It seems more believable if they had said they heard a struggle, confronted an intruder, the intruder fled, and they realized he had killed their daughter. Andreww says in such a scenario the Ramsey's would have been separated and questions and the crimes scene would have been better protected. Maybe that's true. I can't believe they didn't do that given the scenario of a the RN and then finding body in the house.

I keep coming back to one of the Ramsey's doing it, PR coming up with the lamest coverup imaginable, and then by sheer luck the dumb coverup works.


I agree completely.

CircuitGuy,

Why do you think the body was located in the basement? It would be easier to locate the body in the bedroom and skip the note.

Locating the body in JonBenet's bedroom means, with no intruder forensic evidence that the three remaining R's are prime suspects, facing immediate arrest.

Authoring a ransom note implies an intruder, i.e. the latter is said evidence, but the kidnapping fails and JonBenet is killed, with the intruder dumping her in the basement, thus explaining why she was not found in her bedroom, so the R's constructed their version of events around this scenario?

One qualification to the above scenario, which only varies in its detail, is that JonBenet was hidden elsewhere in the basement, and moved to the wine-cellar mid-morning by JR, so explaining Fleet White's not seeing JonBenet when he looked in that morning.

The case is definitely RDI, we can eliminate both JR and PR, minimally in the manner of the Grand Jury, leaving BDI.


.

 

[Foreign Faction]

CircuitGuy,

Locating the body in JonBenet's bedroom means, with no intruder forensic evidence that the three remaining R's are prime suspects, facing immediate arrest.

Authoring a ransom note implies an intruder, i.e. the latter is said evidence, but the kidnapping fails and JonBenet is killed, with the intruder dumping her in the basement, thus explaining why she was not found in her bedroom, so the R's constructed their version of events around this scenario?

One qualification to the above scenario, which only varies in its detail, is that JonBenet was hidden elsewhere in the basement, and moved to the wine-cellar mid-morning by JR, so explaining Fleet White's not seeing JonBenet when he looked in that morning.

The case is definitely RDI, we can eliminate both JR and PR, minimally in the manner of the Grand Jury, leaving BDI.


.

Brilliant! Simply brilliant!

 

[singularity]

It seems more believable if they had said they heard a struggle, confronted an intruder, the intruder fled, and they realized he had killed their daughter. Andreww says in such a scenario the Ramsey's would have been separated and questions and the crimes scene would have been better protected. Maybe that's true. I can't believe they didn't do that given the scenario of a the RN and then finding body in the house.

It never would have worked. They had just bludgeoned, strangled, and staged the murder of their six year old daughter. They're cowards. Snowball's chance in hell they had the nerve to self inflict defensive wounds to make a struggle with an intruder look believable.

 

[CircuitGuy]

It never would have worked. They had just bludgeoned, strangled, and staged the murder of their six year old daughter. They're cowards. Snowball's chance in hell they had the nerve to self inflict defensive wounds to make a struggle with an intruder look believable.

I'm saying they could say they heard noises consistent with a struggle (actually the intruder murdering JBR), saw an intruder, the intruder fled immediately, and then they realized the intruder had killed JBR. That would require them to call the police reasonably shortly after she died. That story would be much more believable than the RN.

 

[CircuitGuy]

CircuitGuy,
Locating the body in JonBenet's bedroom means, with no intruder forensic evidence that the three remaining R's are prime suspects, facing immediate arrest.

I agree they would have faced immediate arrest without the RN. I think, however, they were at greater risk of arrest with the RN once the body was found. If I had never heard of this case, I would assume the police would find the body within minutes. They got bizarrely lucky it took so long to find the body and that they were arrested immediately when it was found.

 

[Teresa]

My idea only, Patsy was threatening John as a warning. "I'll spill the beans about you molesting JonBenet if you don't protect me now." I think this is why the two of them stayed together after the murder. They both had secrets and needed each other. Just my opinion.

 

[snapdragon2]

Hi! It's my first time on this topic, and I have a question. Perhaps it's been addressed already, but there is soooooo much to read...I hope you don't mind if I ask the question instead of wading through it!

How many people were aware of John's $118, 000 bonus? Who were they? Because that is too much of a coincidence. Whoever did it knew about this bonus. So did they identify all of the people who may have known about it? Thanks!

 

[snapdragon2]

My theory is this: I agree with the first post on this thread, that the note was written by someone educated, etc. But I don't think it was the Ramseys. It's a very long note. In a panic, I can't imagine anyone writing something as involved as that. Also - why would they even bother with that? If something had really happened to her and they wanted to hide their culpability, it would make more sense for them to try to get rid of her body. There was no inkling of psychopathy in either of them, and what was done to their daughter was so brutal I can't imagine anyone doing that to their daughter without severe mental issues, even in anger.

I think that whoever did it either worked at John's company or knew someone (girlfriend? wife?) who did. That person was somehow aware of John's bonus. He had been watching JonBenet for awhile and planning to abduct her. He may have been at that Christmas party they threw and saw the lay-out of the house - maybe that event gave him the incentive to implement a plan at that point. I think he broke in and took JonBenet (wasn't it thought that a stun-gun may have been used?) I think he wrote the note ahead of time with the idea that if he left it, the police would be looking for a kidnapper, not a pedophile. He left the note and proceeded to try to get her out of the house, but wasn't able to. So he assaulted her there (and maybe because that wasn't part of the plan, he was unable to keep his dna from being left behind on her underwear) and killed her, both hastily. But the only way to really check out my theory or at least parts of it would be to take a look at the employees and figure out who might have been privy to the information about the bonus. The note used the word "fatcat", which, to my understanding, is a negative word for a rich person (there's more to the definition than that) possibly indicating resentment towards John, which someone in the company might have. Perhaps it was the wife or girlfriend of someone who would know and he pumped her for information. Just a couple of ideas. (Since I'm new to all this, it's probably already all been said and discounted! But I'd love some feedback!)

 

[Foreign Faction]

My idea only, Patsy was threatening John as a warning. "I'll spill the beans about you molesting JonBenet if you don't protect me now." I think this is why the two of them stayed together after the murder. They both had secrets and needed each other. Just my opinion.

I really like what you say here, Teresa. I personally have always thought of the RN as both a subconscious confessional by PR but ALSO a not-so-subtle warning to JR as well.

 

[singularity]

My theory is this: I agree with the first post on this thread, that the note was written by someone educated, etc. But I don't think it was the Ramseys. It's a very long note. In a panic, I can't imagine anyone writing something as involved as that. Also - why would they even bother with that? If something had really happened to her and they wanted to hide their culpability, it would make more sense for them to try to get rid of her body. There was no inkling of psychopathy in either of them, and what was done to their daughter was so brutal I can't imagine anyone doing that to their daughter without severe mental issues, even in anger.

I think that whoever did it either worked at John's company or knew someone (girlfriend? wife?) who did. That person was somehow aware of John's bonus. He had been watching JonBenet for awhile and planning to abduct her. He may have been at that Christmas party they threw and saw the lay-out of the house - maybe that event gave him the incentive to implement a plan at that point. I think he broke in and took JonBenet (wasn't it thought that a stun-gun may have been used?) I think he wrote the note ahead of time with the idea that if he left it, the police would be looking for a kidnapper, not a pedophile. He left the note and proceeded to try to get her out of the house, but wasn't able to. So he assaulted her there (and maybe because that wasn't part of the plan, he was unable to keep his dna from being left behind on her underwear) and killed her, both hastily. But the only way to really check out my theory or at least parts of it would be to take a look at the employees and figure out who might have been privy to the information about the bonus. The note used the word "fatcat", which, to my understanding, is a negative word for a rich person (there's more to the definition than that) possibly indicating resentment towards John, which someone in the company might have. Perhaps it was the wife or girlfriend of someone who would know and he pumped her for information. Just a couple of ideas. (Since I'm new to all this, it's probably already all been said and discounted! But I'd love some feedback!)

I used to think such scenarios were possible as well....disgruntled co-worker, a John mistress/Patsy fling,etc.

It's not. If anything rules out this possibility, it's how the notepad is bouncing all over the house throughout the time frame of the murder/staging and shockingly they wound up with photographic proof of this. If a random intruder did this crime, John and Patsy have no reason to be moving this notepad around. Innocent people would not know that their own notepad had been used.

As far as everything being discussed before, of course it has. It's a twenty year old case. Doesn't mean you cant talk about it here or on some other crime forum. Cases much older than this are still discussed to this day.

This could be a very interesting year for this case. That series planned for the fall could possibly give us some unknown details. They're going to need to bring something new to the table...easiest way to do this is never before seen photographs. I'd prefer to see the Whites Christmas party photos as there has to be something in them for it to continually get brought up in their interviews but photos of this notepad in places it shouldn't be would be just as intriguing.