The Case of JonBenet Ramsey-CBS Sept. 18

[Madeleine74]

Finishing her off with the garrote was murder - that was no accident.

Not if they thought she was already dead. Murder is a legal concept that requires intent. If they thought she was already dead and if they thought they were just staging the scene, then yes it's part of the killing, but would not be murder in the legal sense. Intent is the distinguishing factor that turns homicide into "murder."

 

[margarita25]

How neat! Didn't he do a Reddit AMA? Maybe he'd be willing to do a WS interview, too!

I thought I remembered reading on the reddit link, when asked if he had read theories on WS, that he said he hadn't had time...

 

[oceanblueeyes]

Hi Oceanblueeyes !

Good to see you posting on this thread!

Great questions about the D.A. !

I came across the following article written by Stanley Garnett, present D.A. of Boulder:

http://www.dailycamera.com/guest-opinions/ci_24389428/stan-garnett-boulder-district-attorney-jonbenet-ramsey-case

I found his paragraph from his article very interesting. It answers my question of why Mary Lacey sent a letter to the Ramseys stating that they are
"exonerated". This fact would be true, not by any evidence, but solely because they were never charged and more importantly - this case never
went to court.

Here is Stanley Garnett's paragraph:
"My, or my staff's view of what the evidence in the Ramsey case proves will only be stated in open court if a case is ever filed. In the meantime, everyone, including the Ramsey family, is entitled to the full presumption of innocence."

Nice to 'see' you here too, Zen!

This grabbed my attention:

Because no case has ever been brought against anyone in Ramsey, the community has had no resolution and the tabloid press has been free to speculate, sometimes recklessly, based on only parts of the evidence. There has been no public airing of all the evidence in open court, nor can there be, unless and until a case is filed, which has been an understandable frustration to the community.

So does this mean that the CBS team also is not privy to all the evidence the DA has?

 

[reintarnation]

However, veering from the forensic for a moment, I want to mention something psychological. This is a reference to behavior I’ve witnessed many times, not just in the course of their interviews with LE but also within their interviews with TV news folks. (If anyone wants to do a comparison of these interviews, many of the TV transcripts are still available on ffj, ws and acr.) Of course, what I wish to describe has been seen by many here, certainly it’s familiar to long-time sleuths like otg and cynic. It’s the manner in which PR and JR in particular change the goal posts, shift their stories.

There is a suggestion from Dr. P that JR put BR to bed with a flashlight. Now if that isn’t strange enough, then BR volunteers that he snuck downstairs to play with a toy. Assuming he went down the front stairs to the living room, one might expect he snuck downstairs with a flashlight, the one which JR used to put him to bed.

And in the April 1997 interviews (at least PR's), JR and BR stayed up late after coming home to put together one of BR's new Christmas toys.

I agree wholeheartedly with the rest of your post, too, questfortrue. All of these "funny little clues," as JR put it, serve to distract. What's important, IMO, is to find where those stories change, the context prior to their change (such as learning new evidence from BDA prior to interviews), and try to figure out why they are changing. Is it a red herring? Is it an attempt to distance themselves from a key piece of evidence?

 

[zencompass]

oceanblueeyes; Nice to 'see' you here too, Zen!

This grabbed my attention:

Because no case has ever been brought against anyone in Ramsey, the community has had no resolution and the tabloid press has been free to speculate, sometimes recklessly, based on only parts of the evidence. There has been no public airing of all the evidence in open court, nor can there be, unless and until a case is filed, which has been an understandable frustration to the community.

So does this mean that the CBS team also is not privy to all the evidence the DA has?


Hi Oceanblueeyes,

That is my thinking. Until and unless this ever goes to court, nothing will be released from the D.A.'s office.

 

[reintarnation]

(bbm)
Patsy claimed to have made the 911 call from that phone. I still question how a person fails to hang up a wall phone without the receiver falling to the counter. There was another phone (identical model) in the basement that was used as a desktop phone. I think that that was where the 911 call was made from with all three (four actually) Ramseys present after they had finished altering and staging the crime scene. (Just something to consider.)

Also, their claim about John reading the RN on the floor (in his underwear yet) wasn't necessary since he already knew what Patsy had written.

Very helpful, otg - thanks! Dogface pointed out today earlier in this thread the possibility that while PR made the call from a corded phone (let's just say it was the one she claimed to be at) JR could have been listening in to the call on a cordless phone. This would explain how PR hangs up but the call isn't immediately disconnected. It doesn't explain the voices at the end, unless you consider the following scenario: PR is on the phone with 911 (corded butler kitchen phone) while JR is there listening with a cordless phone. He can hear the 911 operator and can coach PR through the call as needed (maybe the reasons for some of her pauses, restating certain things?). She hangs up as BR is coming down the stairs right to that same area/hallway, and all three are picked up at the end of the call before JR turns his cordless phone off.

Thoughts?

 

[johnjay]

I don't think they have. If you read between the lines, yes, but nobody has said anything and nobody will. As to whether they will name the suspect? Wont happen, read the disclaimer at the end of the show.

They could say something like: based on the evidence we see, we all share the opinion that Burke killed JonBenet and the parents covered it up. That's a bit different than explicitly stating Burke killed his sister. Throw in a few disclaimers, roll the credits. Mystery solved.

 

[oceanblueeyes]

It's solved but they have not been able to arrest anybody and never will IMO

And they have stone walled the police from the get go , it's always been about them not there murdered child IMO

If it is solved then the DA would be very remiss in his duties if he did not come out and say it has been solved and who the suspect is by name. He can clearly give the legal reasons why whomever will not be prosecuted even though they know the evidence is full proof. To have a solved case keep dangling in the wind and remaining unsolved is not justice for JonBenet. The DA owes JonBenet to name her killer if he has the evidence proving who it is.

I am much more interested in what the actual DA will say than the ABC docu. I just read an article about him and he says no one knows all the evidence they have in this case. I highly doubt he would compromise this case by divulging evidence never seen before for someone to do a documentary. He certainly considers this case to still be open and unresolved.

I never saw them stonewall the police. I did see a family who knew they had a constitutional right to standup for themselves even to the police who had already honed in on them.

 

[margarita25]

A bite?

(Wow. This reminds me of little Malik Drummond, when we saw possible bruises on him, before it all came out what really happened to him... That looks like a possible bite to me...)

 

[minazoe]

I know I sound like a broken record...but I don't think anyone strangled her but BR. As part of his playing and toying with JBR after he struck her.. Perhaps he just wanted to see her die, perhaps he was obsessed with her AG doll. I think he tricked her, lured her and killed her. I think he enjoyed it tremendously.

I have no doubts that he tinkered and played with her body and his trains and the paint tray for quite some time...

An intruder comes prepared, removes the child and leaves no note. Small foreign factions don't write practice notes and leave flashlights at the scene..nor do they hang out in someone's kitchen preparing pineapple...it's obvious br was sexually aroused by his sister...

It's obvious that no adult would try to create a sex assault out of an accident...there is no reason for it, esp when it's supposed to be a botched kidnapping...my guess is that this was not the first time br had tried to kill JBR, and that Jr knew
Early on...

I do wonder where her body was found originally...

I smell lawsuits like crazy.

 

[Madeleine74]

If this is concrete evidence of guilt on Burke's part why doesn't the current DA come out and state they have the irrefutable evidence the killer was Burke Ramsey and the case will be closed due to his age at the time of JonBenet's murder? Why keep stating the case remains open but remains unsolved?

Because they don't have "irrefutable" evidence, there is evidence that shows BR cannot be excluded from the list of suspects. In addition PR is still on the list, as is JR. There are 3 possible suspects--which one actually swung the maglite onto JBR's head?

 

[wildebeest]

Did he go to get the ransom money the kidnapper had asked for in the note? Surely the police would be able to verify where he was during that time especially if he told them and gave them places and times he was during that 1.5 hour timespan.

Weren't they going to fly out that day to Atlanta. They never lived another night in their home after she was found murdered there, did they?

I believe they were flying to their vacation home in Charlevoix, MI, the next day.

IMHO

 

[dogperson]

Until the last couple years I had never even thought of BR as the suspect but this theory seems to pull together all the weird pieces of the puzzle. I've never been a PR did it theorist; I believe her life revolved around Jon Benet and she loved her dearly. But we have what seems like a frequently absent father who seems emotionally distant. A mom who loves her kids but is probably too sick a lot of the time to supervise them, and when she's involved with them, the focus is more on JBR than BR. Some kind of dysfunction and sibling rivalry maybe grew out of that, along with possibly other issues BR had, and maybe even something happened Christmas day that really bothered him. JBR got better gifts, got more attention, etc.
If he did the head bashing and the garrotte (possibly the paintbrush too) that leaves the parents with just the ransom note and the cover up. I could never imagine how a parent could strangle their child to cover up for the other one bashing them in the head. Why not just claim an accident? (Kids were playing, JBR fell and hit her head, or BR accidentally hit her with something.) But if your child garrotted his sister and perpetrated a sexual crime on her, then I can see the parents going to such lengths to protect him. I don't sympathize with the parents. If they knew there were serious problems, they should have been addressed long before it came to this, but it relieves us of having to imagine PR or JR doing the garrotte and the paintbrush. It leaves them with a horrible and unimaginable tragedy with one child dead and one who caused the death.
Also, I wonder about the wine cellar door that had the lock high up at the top and a chair nearby. Could BR have used the chair to stand in to reach the lock?

 

[zencompass]

Here is an interview of Stanley Garnett in 2015. Of interest is the segment concerning the letter of exoneration sent by Mary Lacy:

http://getboulder.com/boulder-county-district-attorney-stan-garnett/

This is the segment:

Interviewer: "Many of us are still troubled by the outcome of the JonBenét Ramsey murder. You’ve disagreed with former DA Mary Lacy’s exoneration of the Ramsey family. Why?

Stanley Garnett: "We would love to get justice for JonBenét. As I’ve said from the very beginning, the definitive issue with the JonBenét case is, what does the evidence show? I disagreed with exoneration [of her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey] because I did not think it was the appropriate role of the district attorney to issue an exoneration in a case like that.

[After] grand-jury documents were revealed, I did a guest opinion which said that district attorneys are not priests. Everybody is presumed innocent. Our job is to determine whether there’s enough evidence to charge someone, and if there’s not, we pretty much keep our mouths shut and move forward.

The evidence in the Ramsey case is extremely confusing, extremely compromised. It’s been a fundamental problem with that case from the very beginning, from the crime scene to an unlimited number of mistakes made in that case by the police, by the prosecution, by all kinds of folks. So I felt that the exoneration gave a definitive sense to the case that is not warranted by the state of the evidence, and I also think it’s confusing if people believe that the district attorney’s job is to go around issuing absolution to people."

 

[minazoe]

I know I sound like a broken record...but I don't think anyone strangled her but BR. As part of his playing and toying with JBR after he struck her.. Perhaps he just wanted to see her die, perhaps he was obsessed with her AG doll. I think he tricked her, lured her and killed her. I think he enjoyed it tremendously.

I have no doubts that he tinkered and played with her body and his trains and the paint tray for quite some time...

An intruder comes prepared, removes the child and leaves no note. Small foreign factions don't write practice notes and leave flashlights at the scene..nor do they hang out in someone's kitchen preparing pineapple...it's obvious br was sexually aroused by his sister...

It's obvious that no adult would try to create a sex assault out of an accident...there is no reason for it, esp when it's supposed to be a botched kidnapping...my guess is that this was not the first time br had tried to kill JBR, and that Jr knew
Early on...

I do wonder where her body was found originally...

I smell lawsuits like crazy.

 

[Schuby]

Until the last couple years I had never even thought of BR as the suspect but this theory seems to pull together all the weird pieces of the puzzle. I've never been a PR did it theorist; I believe her life revolved around Jon Benet and she loved her dearly. But we have what seems like a frequently absent father who seems emotionally distant. A mom who loves her kids but is probably too sick a lot of the time to supervise them, and when she's involved with them, the focus is more on JBR than BR. Some kind of dysfunction and sibling rivalry maybe grew out of that, along with possibly other issues BR had, and maybe even something happened Christmas day that really bothered him. JBR got better gifts, got more attention, etc.
If he did the head bashing and the garrotte (possibly the paintbrush too) that leaves the parents with just the ransom note and the cover up. I could never imagine how a parent could strangle their child to cover up for the other one bashing them in the head. Why not just claim an accident? (Kids were playing, JBR fell and hit her head, or BR accidentally hit her with something.) But if your child garrotted his sister and perpetrated a sexual crime on her, then I can see the parents going to such lengths to protect him. I don't sympathize with the parents. If they knew there were serious problems, they should have been addressed long before it came to this, but it relieves us of having to imagine PR or JR doing the garrotte and the paintbrush. It leaves them with a horrible and unimaginable tragedy with one child dead and one who caused the death.
Also, I wonder about the wine cellar door that had the lock high up at the top and a chair nearby. Could BR have used the chair to stand in to reach the lock?

This comports best with how I see the case too but the one thing I keep bumping up against is BR's age at the time. That children can engage in psychopathic violence is well documented but sexual sadism in someone who hasn't yet gone through puberty is hard to wrap my head around.

 

[oceanblueeyes]

Because they don't have "irrefutable" evidence, there is evidence that shows BR cannot be excluded from the list of suspects. In addition PR is still on the list, as is JR. There are 3 possible suspects--which one actually swung the maglite onto JBR's head?

Oh I thought all the hype about this documentary was when they were questioned as to whether they would be naming someone specifically by name and their answer was 'yes.' Sounds pretty specific to me.

This was an article I read that had the transcripts of the interview done by those making this ABC documentary.

 

[asyousay]

If it is solved then the DA would be very remiss in his duties if he did not come out and say it has been solved and who the suspect is by name. He can clearly give the legal reasons why whomever will not be prosecuted even though they know the evidence is full proof. To have a solved case keep dangling in the wind and remaining unsolved is not justice for JonBenet. The DA owes JonBenet to name her killer if he has the evidence proving who it is.

I am much more interested in what the actual DA will say than the ABC docu. I just read an article about him and he says no one knows all the evidence they have in this case. I highly doubt he would compromise this case by divulging evidence never seen before for someone to do a documentary. He certainly considers this case to still be open and unresolved.

I never saw them stonewall the police. I did see a family who knew they had a constitutional right to standup for themselves even to the police who had already honed in on them.

We will have to agree to disagree


I think the family are vile and have done everything within there power to stop the truth coming out. If Burke is guilty (I believe he is) then I don't even blame him. He grew up in a toxic environment where his sister was clearly loved and adored and was the favourite with Patsy and he was angry and prone to lashing out which was probably a cry for attention. And that night he lashed out again at his sister with tragic consequences and the parents covered it up.

 

[margarita25]

This comports best with how I see the case too but the one thing I keep bumping up against is BR's age at the time. That children can engage in psychopathic violence is well documented but sexual sadism in someone who hasn't yet gone through puberty is hard to wrap my head around.

I wonder if Foxfire has any thoughts on this. He has mentioned budding serial killers acting violent as young as age 14 iirc, but 9 or 10? I'll pm him, curious as to his thoughts on this...

 

[johnjay]

This comports best with how I see the case too but the one thing I keep bumping up against is BR's age at the time. That children can engage in psychopathic violence is well documented but sexual sadism in someone who hasn't yet gone through puberty is hard to wrap my head around.

I think more like satisfying the curiosity of a young boy than sexual sadism.