The Importance of the Pineapple

[Jayelles]

There was pineapple found in Jonbenet's digestive system which Lou Smit described as "the bugaboo". Why? Well, there is a time limit for food to travel through the digestive system. The pineapple could have been eaten BEFORE going to the White party at approx 4pm - but that means that jonbenet must have died VERY soon after returning home from the party. Alternatively, she could have eaten the pineapple on her return from the White's party - at approximately 9.30 pm. However, this means the Ramseys were lying about her being fast asleep ("zonked") and requiring to be carried up to bed and undressed by her parents.

Either way, the pineapple is an inconvenient problem for the ramseys and their supporters.

 

[sissi]

I don't think the cracked crab was identified within her digestive system. Where did it go? Was it in her stomach, and she "threw it up"?


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How long does food stay in my stomach? How long is it before a meal reaches the large intestine? The answer to such commonly-asked questions is not necessarily simple. First, there is considerable normal variability among healthy people and animals in transit times through different sections of the gatrointestinal tract. Second, the time required for material to move through the digestive tube is significantly affected by the composition of the meal. Finally, transit time is influenced by such factors as psychological stress and even gender and reproductive status.

Several techniques have been used to measure transit times in humans and animals. Not surprisingly, differing estimates have been reported depending on the technique used and the population of subjects being evaluated. Some of the techniques used include:

Radiography following a barium-labelled meal. Sequential radiographs can be used to determine when the front of the barium label reaches different regions of the digestive tube. Such meals are not very physiologic and the technique exposes the patient to repeated exposure to radiation.
Breath hydrogen analysis. A number of carbohydrates are very poorly digested or absorbed in the small intestine, but readily fermented by bacteria when they reach the large intestine. Fermentation liberates hydrogen gas, which diffuses into blood and is exhaled in breath, where it can be readily measured. Thus, after consumption of a meal containing a non-absorbable carbohydrate (lactulose or, more commonly, baked beans), there is a large increase in exhaled hydrogen when the carbohydrate reaches the large intestine. This provides an estimate of pre-colonic (stomach plus small intestine) transit time.
Scintigraphic analyses. Meals containing pellets or colloids labelled with a small amount of radionuclide (99mTechnetium, 113mIndium, etc.) are consumed, and the position of the radioactive label is sequentially monitored using a gamma camera.
Studies of gastrointestinal transit have clearly demonstrated two related phenomena important to understanding this process:

Substances do not move uniformly through the digestive system.
Materials do not leave segments of the digestive tube in the same order as they arrive.
In other words, a meal is typically a mixture of chemically and physically diverse materials, and some substances in this mixture show accelerated transit while others are retarded in their flow downstream.

An example of how ingested substances spread out in the digestive tube rather than travel synchronously is shown in the figure below. These data were obtained from a human volunteer that ingested a meal containing 111Indium-labeled pellets, then measuring the location of the radioactive signal over time by scintigraphy. It is clear that parts of the meal are entering the colon at the same time that other parts are still in the stomach.


The discussion above should help to explain why it is difficult to state with any precision how long ingesta remains in the stomach, small intestine and large intestine. Nonetheless, there have been many studies on GI transit, and the table below presents rough estimates for transit times in healthy humans following ingestion of a standard meal (i.e. solid, mixed foods).


50% of stomach contents emptied 2.5 to 3 hours
Total emptying of the stomach 4 to 5 hours
50% emptying of the small intestine 2.5 to 3 hours
Transit through the colon 30 to 40 hours

Remember that these are estimtes of average transit times, and there is a great deal of variability among individuals and in the small person at different times and after different meals.
http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/basics/transit.html

The pineapple is very LIKELY not a part of the crime, and was eaten before going to the White's.

 

[Sepka]

Is it possible that she had some pineapple at the Whites' party?

 

[aussiesheila]

There was pineapple found in Jonbenet's digestive system which Lou Smit described as "the bugaboo". Why? Well, there is a time limit for food to travel through the digestive system. The pineapple could have been eaten BEFORE going to the White party at approx 4pm - but that means that jonbenet must have died VERY soon after returning home from the party. Alternatively, she could have eaten the pineapple on her return from the White's party - at approximately 9.30 pm. However, this means the Ramseys were lying about her being fast asleep ("zonked") and requiring to be carried up to bed and undressed by her parents.

Either way, the pineapple is an inconvenient problem for the ramseys and their supporters.

Well this 'Ramsey supporter' believes she was fed the pineapple (which incidentally I believe was drugged, this being the whole point of feeding it to her) by a visitor to her house that she trusted, some time between 11 pm and midnight, so the pineapple is most certainly not an 'inconvenient problem' in my case.

 

[aussiesheila]

I don't think the cracked crab was identified within her digestive system. Where did it go? Was it in her stomach, and she "threw it up"?
Remember that these are estimtes of average transit times, and there is a great deal of variability among individuals and in the small person at different times and after different meals.
http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/basics/transit.html

The pineapple is very LIKELY not a part of the crime, and was eaten before going to the White's.

Sissi, I don't think this article says one type of food can actually OVERTAKE another type of food consumed at an earlier time during the passage of each through the stomach, which is what I believe you are proposing might have happened in JonBenet's case.

This article is showing the rate of emptying from the stomach of only ONE meal. It doesn’t show what happens when a second meal is ingested several hours after another meal and before the stomach has completely emptied itself of the first meal.

 

[sissi]

Aussiesheila, Yes, I think it DOES say that.

Substances do not move uniformly through the digestive system.
Materials do not leave segments of the digestive tube in the same order as they arrive.
In other words, a meal is typically a mixture of chemically and physically diverse materials, and some substances in this mixture show accelerated transit while others are retarded in their flow downstream.

This could explain the cracked crab leaving before the more fibrous pineapple, however, I am thinking she threw up her last meal under the stress of events leading up to her murder.

 

[Voice of Reason]

A simple Google search showed to me that pineapple is one of the easiest foods to digest. Most websites I found put its digestion time at 2-3 hours. In fact, it is often eaten as an AID to digestion. I realize that we'll never know EXACTLY when JBR consumed the pineapple, but it seems like if we want to work with scientific probabilities and likelihoods, the pineapple was eaten 1-2 hours before death.

 

[aussiesheila]

Aussiesheila, Yes, I think it DOES say that.

Substances do not move uniformly through the digestive system.
Materials do not leave segments of the digestive tube in the same order as they arrive.
In other words, a meal is typically a mixture of chemically and physically diverse materials, and some substances in this mixture show accelerated transit while others are retarded in their flow downstream.

This could explain the cracked crab leaving before the more fibrous pineapple, however, I am thinking she threw up her last meal under the stress of events leading up to her murder.

Well sissi, I think when you have a meal it has all gotten into your stomach within the space of twenty minutes or so, and all gets churned up into one homogenous mixture. Every now and then the sphincter at the bottom of the stomach releases a little bit of the mixture into the duodenum, if any bits get to the sphincter that are too big to pass through they are retained in the stomach for a bit more churning, so in that sense there might be some bits that were swallowed in the last mouthful that might leave the stomach earlier that something in the first mouthful.

But I don't think if you ate a bowl of pineapple say 3 hours after you ate a bowl of cracked crab, that all the pineapple would pass through the stomach before any more of the cracked crab did. I think the pineapple would just get churned up into what was left of the the cracked crab, and the pineapple and cracked crab, having formed a mixture, would pass through more or less together.

As far as throwing up the cracked crab, she might have done but I don't think anyone observed her doing it, and I don't think there was any evidence found that she had. Which doesn't mean she didn't, but I don't think it is likely.

 

[sissi]

Exactly Aussiesheila, no one observed this, there was no area in the basement ,or anywhere in the house, where vomit was found. This is why I would so like this issue resolved. If we can prove the cracked crab did not digest that quickly, and find an answer to why it's gone, and that answer is "she was upset and vomitted", then we can safely look at the prospect of her being taken out of that house and returned dead.

 

[Bev]

if the cracked crab was served @ 6pm and then the crab would have had plenty of time to digest. The digestion of the pineapple had been interrupted, which is why it was only partially digested. No stranger is going to sit in the house and feed a kid pineapple with the rest of the family in the house. This is like the paper bag fiber evidence - there's a perfectly reasonable and sensible explanation for both.

 

[tipper]

if the cracked crab was served @ 6pm and then the crab would have had plenty of time to digest. The digestion of the pineapple had been interrupted, which is why it was only partially digested. No stranger is going to sit in the house and feed a kid pineapple with the rest of the family in the house. This is like the paper bag fiber evidence - there's a perfectly reasonable and sensible explanation for both.

Don't forget the crab was an appetizer not the meal. She may have only eaten a small amount and then gone off to play and not eaten anything else. Or just eaten candy.

 

[Toltec]

Don't forget the crab was an appetizer not the meal. She may have only eaten a small amount and then gone off to play and not eaten anything else. Or just eaten candy.

Priscilla White set aside a small plate of cracked crab for JonBenet....but no one witnessed her eating it.

The pineapple was served to JonBenet by Burke or Patsy....as their fingerprints were on the bowl. Patsy adamently denies feeding JonBenet pineapple....

Does anyone know if Burke was asked whether he served JonBenet pineapple? I know he was interviewed several times...but no mention of the question of the pineapple.

 

[Eagle1]

Priscilla White set aside a small plate of cracked crab for JonBenet....but no one witnessed her eating it.

The pineapple was served to JonBenet by Burke or Patsy....as their fingerprints were on the bowl. Patsy adamently denies feeding JonBenet pineapple....Does anyone know if Burke was asked whether he served JonBenet pineapple? I know he was interviewed several times...but no mention of the question of the pineapple.

Would you eat cracked crab at age six? Even as an appetizer? Especially if you weren't feeling well, and I tend to agree with Toltec that JonBenet probably didn't eat much at the Whites, maybe nothing, reason she was hungry for pineapple. Fresh pineapple that you cut up yourself, or even the packaged chunks in produce, is great.

Wasn't she not feeling well that day and wasn't she lying down on little D's bed, reason PW set aside a plate for her? Wouldn't that suggest that probably the pineapple was eaten after they'd arrived home? I'm not insisting that was the case, of course. Just a thought.

I too have often wondered if Burke was asked whether he helped her get the pineapple. Probably he was asked and we just didn't hear about it. During the Grand Jury maybe? There's supposed to be a new book coming out in the spring, but probably it won't tell us either.

 

[aussiesheila]

Exactly Aussiesheila, no one observed this, there was no area in the basement ,or anywhere in the house, where vomit was found. This is why I would so like this issue resolved. If we can prove the cracked crab did not digest that quickly, and find an answer to why it's gone, and that answer is "she was upset and vomitted", then we can safely look at the prospect of her being taken out of that house and returned dead.

Sissi, I'm not sure that I understand what you mean when you say the cracked crab was 'gone'. As I understand it she probably ate the cracked crab at about 7 pm, or maybe even 8 pm. So if she was murdered at 2 am the cracked crab would have left the stomach and even have travelled past the duodenum and into the small intestine where it would not have been recognisable as cracked crab any more, and this is the explanation as to why it is 'gone'.

 

[Eagle1]

A simple Google search showed to me that pineapple is one of the easiest foods to digest. Most websites I found put its digestion time at 2-3 hours. In fact, it is often eaten as an AID to digestion. I realize that we'll never know EXACTLY when JBR consumed the pineapple, but it seems like if we want to work with scientific probabilities and likelihoods, the pineapple was eaten 1-2 hours before death.

I agree, and the pineapple bowl in the kitchen had Burke's fingerprints, so the pineapple wasn't eaten at the Whites'. I doubt she ate any cracked crab. She had not been feeling well that day.

Didn't Lou Smit say there was also a bowl upstairs on JonBenet's bureau which had contained pineapple? If so, maybe Burke had spooned out some into another bowl for her to take back to bed with her.

 

[UKGuy]

Aired November 12, 2002 - 21:00 ET
http://www.acandyrose.com/11122002lkl-linwood.htm

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's move to another topic.

J. RAMSEY: The question is, how did fibers of your shirt get in your daughter's underwear? I say that is not possible. I don't believe it. That's ridiculous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So you're saying police invent things to try to get respondents to respond?

WOOD: That was invented. We know that there were black fibers found, they claim, but there were no black fibers found in the areas of Jon Benet's underwear, as claimed in that question. The Boulder Police Department did not even ask for the Ramseys to provide the department with the clothes they were wearing the night of Jon Benet's murder for over one year. They couldn't even remember what they had worn. They had to go back and look at photographs to try and reconstruct what they wore that night.

KING: And now, one other thing in this segment, the pineapple. There was pineapple found in Jon Benet's stomach in the autopsy. Patsy Ramsey said she didn't feed Jon Benet any pineapple that night, but pineapple was found in Jon Benet's stomach. Police say that Patsy's fingerprints were found on the bowl of pineapple. Police say they can't be hers. Police say she is lying about this, then she's probably lying about other things. Here is Patsy's response to those accusations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were the remains of pineapple in Jon Benet's system.

P. RAMSEY: I have heard that, yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. So this isn't a shock to you?

P. RAMSEY: No it is not, no. But I did not do this. If she ate that, somebody put that there. I don't know when she would have eaten it. She was sound asleep when we got home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. And what if those fingerprints belong to one of the two of you?

P. RAMSEY: Well, I don't know.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, now wait a minute. You started that line... P. RAMSEY: I didn't put the bowl there, OK? I did not put the bowl there. I would not do this setup.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, but let's go back to your line of reasoning here. Now, talk to me.

P. RAMSEY: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Look at me.

P. RAMSEY: If they're not yours and they're not John's, then they would be somebody else's.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

I mean, there was somebody in our home that night besides my husband, my son, my daughter and myself that killed our daughter. You know? Could they have fed Jon Benet pineapple?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Did that answer the pineapple question?

WOOD: I have to tell you, the pineapple question is still a confusing one for me because the logic of the police escapes me.

They claim that there was pineapple or a substance like pineapple found in Jon Benet's intestinal tract upon autopsy. The digestive time for pineapple is so varied that I don't think anyone could pinpoint with any accuracy when she might have eaten that substance, if it was pineapple.

There were any number of victims' assistants and individuals at the Ramsey house the morning when they thought this was a kidnapping. Whether that bowl was placed there then or whether it was placed there earlier. I don't think Patsy Ramsey has ever denied that it was not her fingerprint. I think she's just made the consistent point from Day One, just as John has, when they got home that night, Jon Benet was asleep. They took her from the car, they put her to bed. They did not feed her pineapple that night.

KING: More when we come back. Don't go away.

Patsy states categorically she did not lay out any pineapple, and that she and John placed an already asleep JonBenet straight to bed on arrival back from the Whites.

Lin Wood, asserts that this is a consistent point which is attorney-speak for, it may not be true but currently I have no Ramsey statements that state otherwise.

Patsy says: 'I did not put the bowl there. I would not do this setup.' Interesting use of language, one has to speculate just what kind of setup she may entertain ?


.

 

[UKGuy]

I agree, and the pineapple bowl in the kitchen had Burke's fingerprints, so the pineapple wasn't eaten at the Whites'. I doubt she ate any cracked crab. She had not been feeling well that day.

Didn't Lou Smit say there was also a bowl upstairs on JonBenet's bureau which had contained pineapple? If so, maybe Burke had spooned out some into another bowl for her to take back to bed with her.

Eagle1,

Yes Lou Smit when asked to explain away evidence that contradicts his Intruder Theory claimed the Intruder took some pineapple up to her bedroom in a tupperwear bowl and fed it to her.

Lou Smit retired from the investigation because nobody would believe his Intruder Theory!

The forensic evidence refutes Lou Smits Intruder Theory comprehensively, and by extension invited guests etc.

The single greatest obstacle to any progress in the JonBenet homicide case was Lou Smit. His Intruder Theory has been promoted both by the media and the Ramseys for different purposes.

.

 

[Voice of Reason]

Lin Wood in classic lawyer talk:

They claim that there was pineapple or a substance like pineapple found in Jon Benet's intestinal tract upon autopsy. The digestive time for pineapple is so varied that I don't think anyone could pinpoint with any accuracy when she might have eaten that substance, if it was pineapple.

I find it absolutely laughable that anyone would question that this was indeed pineapple. There is only one reason to question it: because it makes your client look like they've been lying. And where does Wood come up with this digestive time for pineapple is so varied? There is nothing varied about it. Digestive time in different people under different circumstances might be varied, but the digestive time of pineapple, as a general matter, is rather consistent.

The bottom line is this: there was pineapple in JBR's system. There was a bowl of pineapple on the Ramsey's table. Nobody has come forward with a reason for this bowl to be on the table other than speculation, and nobody has acknowledged putting it there. The rest of the facts are subject to interpretation, but I think that much is clear.

 

[aussiesheila]

I find it absolutely laughable that anyone would question that this was indeed pineapple. There is only one reason to question it: because it makes your client look like they've been lying. And where does Wood come up with this digestive time for pineapple is so varied? There is nothing varied about it. Digestive time in different people under different circumstances might be varied, but the digestive time of pineapple, as a general matter, is rather consistent.

The bottom line is this: there was pineapple in JBR's system. There was a bowl of pineapple on the Ramsey's table. Nobody has come forward with a reason for this bowl to be on the table other than speculation, and nobody has acknowledged putting it there. The rest of the facts are subject to interpretation, but I think that much is clear.

I agree with what you have said here, Voice of Reason. I think Lin Wood wants to protect his clients at all costs so will always try to put the best spin on anything but he has trouble explaining the pineapple and unfortunately has come up with incorrect explanations. I do not think the pineapple destroys the 'intruder' theory at all.

I do not believe the Ramseys fed JonBenet the pineapple. I do think it quite possible however, that several hours after she had originally put the sleeping JonBenet to bed, Patsy got the bowl out of the cupboard and set it on the table for the 'night visitor' to empty the pineapple into. As long as the 'night visitor' wore gloves or made sure he didn't touch the bowl at all, his fingerprints would not have been left on it.

If the BPD say that Burke's fingerprints were on the bowl and that statement is correct, then I think his prints must have been there from some previous time. Maybe Patsy's fingerprints got there some previous time also.

I also think it is possible that the BPD fingerprint evidence is flawed. It is not like a person ever leaves a complete set of 10 or even 5 perfect prints on something they have touched. It's more like there will be several partial prints from several fingers and the analysts may not even know when they are looking at the prints, which of the 10 fingertips they came from. Then they only have to come up with a certain number of matching points to reach an arbitrary standard where they can call it a 'positive match'. So it is not a highly exact method. I can't give any references but I'm sure I have read somewhere where people have been convicted on incorrect fingerprint analysis.

Given that the BPD were so desperate to incriminate the Ramseys I wouldn't be surprised if they 'nudged' marginal fingerprint results into the 'positive match' direction.

 

[narlacat]

<<Patsy got the bowl out of the cupboard and set it on the table for the 'night visitor' to empty the pineapple into. As long as the 'night visitor' wore gloves or made sure he didn't touch the bowl at all, his fingerprints would not have been left on it>>

Why would the 'night visitor' have been worried about leaving prints on the bowl?
In your theory, don't you think that JonBenét's death was unplanned?
That JonBenét's death happened by accident by a new member of the 'ring'?
Didn't you say she got fed the pineapple before being taken downstairs for the 'festivities'?
I don't get it