BINGO! I think you hit on it,
Heymom. When making up a story, people tend to incorporate things that actually happened into their story. Everyone does (not that I would know anything about making up stories :blushing
. I think the reason is that the person thinks that if some of what happened can be verified or is known, that will add credence to the rest of the story.
Consider this scenario:
Burke causes JonBenet to scream, panics, hits her over the head to shut her up, and then (like kids that age might do), he doesn't know what to do to make it all go away. So the best thing is to simply run away so as not to be caught near what happened. Then they can deny any knowledge of what happened. "
Who, me? I wasn't even there. I don't know what happened. I was here in my room sleeping."
Patsy, still up and packing for the next morning's trip, hears JonBenet scream. She goes down the stairway to the second floor, looks in her room, and doesn't see her. She looks in Burke's room, where she said she often goes in the middle of the night, and doesn't see her there. Now she panics and "goes psycho," as related by Burke.
"
Where's my baby, where's my baby?"
(IMO, Burke may very well have been telling us something he does remember from that night.)