The Case of JonBenet Ramsey-CBS Sept. 18

[HarmonyE.]

Didn't Kolar say in one of the interviews that the strangulation was NOT staging but part of the crime? Did he change his mind over night?

He did not say he changed his mind. He only agreed with the others that Burke started this. The others believed the garroting was staging. Kolar thinks the whole killing was done by Burke and that's possible too. But he did not speak to that last night.

 

[Hatfield]

I totally agree, if only they would of said it was a terrible accident, Burke would of gotten the help he really needed. No cover up and lies needed. 20 years of lies and money wasted just so Ramsey's could pretend to be a perfect family. So very dysfunctional...........aging beauty queen and a millionaire............

And maybe PR would be alive today. From personal experience with a relative with fighting cancer you have to be in a positive mood and get worked up to fight it with confidence. I really believe that once she was diagnosed that this case got her very depressed and she did not fight the cancer as she would have if she didnt have this huge distraction in her life. The cancer may have got her anyway but this case sure did not help her fighting it.

 

[reintarnation]

The pineapple wasn't found in her stomach but in her duodenum. There's a very long discussion of this in the threads. If your familiar with Monty Python, the discussion goes along the line of "the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow." The questions are of how fast pineapple passes through the stomach into the duodenum. From there you ask how much time it remains in the duodenum before it passes to the lower intestine and becomes so digested that it can't be identified.

There was also nothing actually found in the stomach. That can happen if the stomach has processed all the food and moved it to the duodenum. It can also happen if the contents of the stomach are expelled. In this case, JB could have gone into convulsions and simply threw up anything in the stomach leaving only the contents that have passed through the pyloric sphincter to remain in the duodenum.

Pineapple is full of sugars and natural fibers. It's moved into the duodenum faster than many other foods.

This is why JB taking a piece of pineapple from the table and running isn't the most well thought-out theory. There just wasn't the time in that scenario to get the pineapple into the duodenum. There had to be some time for the stomach to do its job.

Wow, I learned all of that stuff here except for swallows that carry coconuts. For that Money Python takes the blame.

Great post, Bold Bear! Love the MP references.

I agree, I don't think the head blow happened while she was sneaking pineapple or it wouldn't have had time to digest that much. Or is it possible for the body to continue digesting in that state?

IMO, the significant part of this is that the pineapple wasn't found with other food that she consumed at the Whites' party. From the special last night, it would appear that her dinner had been completely digested, therefore, the pineapple had to have been consumed later.

 

[SecretaryGal]

Both Spitz & Lee were adamant that the evidence from JBR does not show a sexual crime. They said the the sliver of wood found was microscopic. They think a sexual motive was not what this crime was about -- it was the head blow as a result of anger/rage in the moment.

All the investigators agreed that the garrotte was part of the staging -- that it was designed to make it look like an adult did the crime. The whole focus was to take attention away from the remaining child, who they were trying to protect.

The head bash was the primary cause of what transpired. They believe that was done by BR.

Everything else, *everything* was staging after that and did not involve BR, they postulate.

Well, how DID the microscopic sliver of wood get there?

 

[Sphinx]

I can't help but think that whoever hit JonBenet in the head also strangled her. I could see staging with the duct tape over the mouth and wrist cords, but the garotte would be overkill and not even necessary to try and stage a sexual assault. I'm kind of with Warner Spitz on it not being accidental. Also, they discussed the idea of no adult would use a train track to jab a child and try to wake her, and Spitz said there was no circulation at that time. So, JonBenet would have had to of already been strangled and dead when jabbed with the train track.

Regarding the strangulation -- if it did not work right away with the garrote ( inexperienced person finishing staging ), Jon Benet could have easily been killed by putting duct tape over her mouth ( which was done ) and then holding her nostrils shut, since she was unconscious, and likely legally brain dead as Dr. Spritz states.

 

[Karinna]

I totally agree, if only they would of said it was a terrible accident, Burke would of gotten the help he really needed. No cover up and lies needed. 20 years of lies and money wasted just so Ramsey's could pretend to be a perfect family. So very dysfunctional...........aging beauty queen and a millionaire............

I agree, i think the whole thing is just very sad & tragic. I can't see why the Ramsey's had to go to such lengths in what we believe happened. They ultimately only hurt themselves. I think people would of been very sympathetic toward them if some of our theories are correct and they had been truthful.

 

[HarmonyE.]

I know you believe that and I respect your viewpoint even though I do not agree with it.

Touch DNA has long been proved as credible for many years and suspects have been arrested and convicted when touch DNA evidence was left behind. The touch DNA held up on appeals as well.

I haven't seen any proof this was transference. It is very consistent with it belonging to the murderer of JB especially the specific locations where the same male DNA was found on her garments.

Not saying it can't be credible, just that it has to be viewed carefully and in light of the specific fact pattern. We are talking about small specks of easily transferable genetic material. And the fact pattern here does not even remotely suggest an intruder. I get that people have been buying the Ramsey spin for almost 20 years, but kidnappers don't write pages worth of phony ransom notes in handwriting that looks an awful lot like Patsy Ramsey's and innocent parents cooperate with investigations.

 

[HarmonyE.]

Well, how DID the microscopic sliver of wood get there?

Staging with the paintbrush.

 

[johnjay]

I agree with both of you. Why not just call 911 and report a horrible accident. I do believe with out a doubt they covered up for their son. They also knew of his previous actions against his sister. His interviews with the therapist were very telling.

Easy to call 911 if you find your daughter dead from a blow to the head which obviously could have been a terrible accident. Not so easy to call 911 if you find your daughter dead with a rope around her neck and think your son is responsible - because that's no accident.

 

[reintarnation]

Assuming they are 100 procent right and BR is responsable for the blow only that leaves us with one of the parents being guilty of murder cause the AR lists both head wound and strangulation as COD.the problem is..you can't tell which of the two put the cord around her neck..back to zero re charges

We might get a better idea if they allow the garrote and cord to be DNA tested!

 

[human]

The smearing of feces and the bed wetting makes me wonder what was going on in that house

 

[johnjay]

then why did he clean the blood up and put new panties on her

There is no reason to believe these parents harmed their daughter when she was alive or dead. I find it absurd to think they garroted her and then wrapped her in a blanket after cleaning her up and changing her clothes.

 

[Brendon]

Because every fact pattern is different and because touch DNA can be extremely misleading. All sorts of tiny, innocuous direct and transferred DNA can turn up using trace DNA. JonBenet, her family, the people she came in contact with did not live in a vacuum.

The DNA of 6 unknown people turned up on/about JonBenet's body - 5 male and 1 female. I don't think six people assaulted and killed her that night and a single killer alone would have left far more than a few cells given all the activity that took place in the kitchen and the basement. Further, as was demonstrated last night, there was no way a single intruder came through broken window without leaving far more evidence, and the ransom note was over-the-top staging to deflect away from what really happened.

It was an inside job.

I have a problem with it being an inside job. I just can't write that script once Burke hits Jonbenet, and the parents find her. Let's look at that. They find Burke has hit her, her eyes are rolling and she is brain dead. So Mum or Dad goes out and ties a rope around her neck and finishes the job. And Mum goes off to write the ransom note. About 6/7 hours later they ring the police. They have not slept. For then next decade, not one of them, no matter the pressure bought to bear, confesses. Surely after all that time, one of them would have turned on the the other two. If the cover up was the mother's idea, the father would eventually break down, and vice versa. The boy would be much more traumatized if he did it and lived through all that. Unless he had a major personality disorder - which has never come out. Being awkward and shy is hardly the same as being a psychopath.

The mother finds her dying daughter and garrotes her to cover up an accident?!

If such a thing happened, the parents would be in hysterics, trying mouth to mouth (DNA), calling for help. The boy would be totally traumatized by the consequenses of what he did, and his parents reactions. The parents would convince themselves it was an accident as they explained what happened to the police. This approximations sort of rings true. The cover-up script makes no sense regarding basic human nature.

 

[Hatfield]

I agree with this also. I think Burke did a lot more here than a lot of folks believe and I do believe it was intentional.

The CBS part 2 was very eye opening to me as I closely watched BR. When you watch him very closely and focus only on him he is very sneaky and makes the snide laughs and giggles as he thinks he is getting away with lying to the interviewers. He treated the interviews like a big game and he had some obvious "tells" when he was lying.
He also told a lot of truths as well but did it smartly without giving much information to them. He is one really smart kid at that age.

The "tells" for me was mainly these:

-he would end with "you know" when he wanted the interviewer to believe more in what he was saying
-he would squirm and move his body around during some of the lies
-he would giggle and laugh after some of the lies

When he said "i know what happened". OMG that was when I knew he did it for sure.

 

[buggiegirl]

It's hard to imagine a mom doing this to her precious daughter.

Honestly, IMO it's the most "mom" thing to do. Cleaning up your baby if she's wet? If Burke did the rope and the head bash and Patsy was just cleaning up afterwards, she had to be devastated.

 

[bxbbysoxer]

He did not say he changed his mind. He only agreed with the others that Burke started this. The others believed the garroting was staging. Kolar thinks the whole killing was done by Burke and that's possible too. But he did not speak to that last night.

I remember watching him for most of the show thinking 'speak up!!' Even when he finally did throw out a theory, it still felt very held back. Like when he did that AMA a bit ago.

 

[Karinna]

If i understood what the theory of the investigators on the show was about, they were alluding to the scenario that JBR had died from the blow to the head from blunt force trauma, and she was already deceased when whatever was jabbed into her back, train track?, had happened. So that would mean all the rest was staging?

 

[bxbbysoxer]

If such a thing happened, the parents would be in hysterics, trying mouth to mouth (DNA), calling for help. The boy would be totally traumatized by the consequenses of what he did, and his parents reactions. The parents would convince themselves it was an accident as they explained what happened to the police. This approximations sort of rings true. The cover-up script makes no sense regarding basic human nature.

The cover-up script only doesn't make sense if you go off the idea that the only thing that happened was that Burke hit her over the head. There have been a range of things to suggest that there was more going on in that house, whether Burke was the one doing it or not. JMO.

 

[Hatfield]

In another case I remember someone said that our fingernails will continue to grow some even after heart stops. Same with hair I believe.

Does a body involuntarily digest food for a little bit after the heart stops?
If so, do we know how long a body may continue to digest?

 

[MaryMac250]

The general theory that Burke whacked her on the head is not reckless; it's almost certainly what happened here. Unless and until Burke decides to tell the truth, we'll never know exactly what happened. The snatched pineapple was suggested as one possible scenario. If she snatched and ran and he chased her, she had time to swallow it before being hit and she didn't die until sometime later.

But of course it could have been something else that actually set Burke off. We'll probably never know what it was.

I agree. Let's just hope Burke, being the out and about, free person that he is now, does not get set off by someone else. Surely, JR provides 24 hour supervision.