Now I pick up my waiting copy of "The Other Side of Suffering". I have not had the guts to get started on it because the publishing of it is what got me riled enough about JB's case to start posting. But I figure, OK, if I have to just back off for a while and let some of my quirky obsessions have a break, then I will just try to take an objective look at what Mr. Ramsey has had to say.
On page 12, he is recounting making the plans for the ransom money and is now just waiting for the ransom call. Which is not coming. He says:
"I remember last summer when I got locked out of the house; I broke a pane in a basement window, reached in and pulled open the latch, and was able to climb inside. Patsy had asked our cleaning lady's husband to fix that window. Had it been fixed? I rush downstairs to check. No. The pane is still broken. The window stands wide open. A big old Samsonite suitcase is set beneath the window. Who put that there? The suitcase is like a stool to climb up and crawl out the window. ......I rush up the stairs. I tell one of the policemen about the window. I can barely form the words. I'm sick to my stomach. I have to keep my wits about me...."
Does this sound like the other police and witness accounts we have?
Then, on pg. 15, JR says this: "The female detective asks me to take someone with me and go through the entire house to see if anything is unusual or out of place. Okay, sure. We decide to work from the bottom up since the third floor has no access to the outside. "Right. Basement first," and we head down the stairs. My legs are trembling and I stumble on the stair. I regain my balance. I head down the basement stairs and into the room where Burke's electric train is set up. I show my friend the broken window, which is still open, the samll splinters of glass on the floor and on the suitcase. This isn't right. The suitcase shouldn't be here. Did the kidnapper take my child out the basement window? My friend didn't tell me he had already noted the open window when he was down here earlier. I'm feeling dizzy."
So which is it, the window was broken earlier, and the glass didn't get cleaned up, and there is a suitcase sitting there that shouldn't be there, but if it was just recently put there, how could glass from a window broken BEFORE it was put there, end up on it - as JR said just a few pages later?? If the suitcase had been there all along and had glass on it from JR breaking the window in the summer, why did he then wonder why the suitcase was there and say it wasn't right??
And if have to recant a bit on my former truce. I will accept that JB was not in the suitcase after she was finally dead. But I can also accept that JB might have been carried from her bedroom to the basement in that suitcase being unconscious, but still alive. There was activity involving her death which connects to the basement near the paint tray, and I believe she could have been removed from the suitcase alive, and the final evils against her happened in the basement, with the suitcase being carelessly abandoned.
If the suitcase was abandoned and left below the window, in order for it to have glass found on and near it, the window had to have been broken that night, and not earlier in the summer. And it would have been done intentionally in order to provide and entry/exit for an intrude/kidnapper.
We know how the suitcase got under the window - FW set it there. He said so. We know how the glass got on the suitcase - FW picked it up off the floor (or was it the window ledge?) and set it on the suitcase. He said so.
There is no way broken glass was still on the floor from the previous summer, not when the kids played in the area. It would have been cleaned up, and a good job would have been done.
IMO there is no way the window remained unfixed from summer through Christmas. The window was broken the night of the 25th/morning of the 26th.
While it's possible that JB was placed in the suitcase, unconscious but alive, and taken downstairs, I'm not sure why this would be done. It's easier just to carry her down, sans suitcase.
I'm not really sure she'd actually fit in the suitcase, but let's say yes, for the time being. Does the killer know she isn't dead? He must, as there would be no reason to take her out later if she's dead. At least there is no reason not to put her back, after garrotting her, if the suitcase is the planned method of removing the body from the home. We know she wasn't in the suitcase when JR "found" her, so either the suitcase was never part of the plan, or the plan changed, but why would it change?
If the killer didn't know she's dead, when placing her in the suitcase, how could he be sure she wouldn't regain consciousness while being twisted like a pretzel to fit into the suitcase? She'd have to be folded like origami to fit.
If she'd been placed in the suitcase to be carried from her room to the basement the sham and duvet would have had to be removed up stairs. That would mean JR would have to go back up and get them, then carry them down and put them back in the suitcase. That would also mean he put the book in the suitcase which must mean it was in the suitcase when it was upstairs - otherwise why do it? Which doesn't solve the riddle of why a Dr. Seuss book is in the suitcase in the first place.
If it was a joint venture (and it wasn't) there was no reason to put her in the suitcase. At least no reason having to do with hiding the body from view of the other parent.
If it's JDI, and PR woke up and came in the BR while JR was stuffing JBR into the suitcase, how was he going to explain it?
I don't see much reason to suspect she was ever placed in the suitcase before death. DeeDee makes it clear to us that she was never placed in the suitcase after death.
The desire to involve the suitcase comes from three places -
1) LS tries to sell the theory that the intruder climbed out the window by standing on the suitcase. We know that isn't true because a) FW says he placed the suitcase there, b) there is a more stable chair in the same room, and c) the grate and web are in place making it obvious no one left via the window.
2) CBI thinks that the fibers from the sham/duvet are on JB's top. However, as the Rocky Mountain News reported on 4 May, 2001, the FBI disagrees. We have a split of opinion by two expert agencies. Even is CBI is right and the FBI is wrong, we still don't know where the sham/duvet were in the hours before the murder. We don't know if the transfer method was primary or secondary. We can't rule out innocent transfer well before the murder took place. It's as meaningless as all the other fiber evidence. JR's prints, if they are in fact on the suitcase, are not suspicious because it's an ordinary object commonly kept in his home, and he's explained handling the suitcase in months past. Which brings us to
3) The desire of internet sleuths to catch a Ramsey in a lie. But there is no reason at all why a man couldn't pick up a suitcase and move it from one part of his house to another. So no lie has been proven. Nor should a lie be assumed, as difficult as that is when listening to JR. Fingerprints don't have time stamps so he could have handled the suitcase for the first time ever the night of the murder. Or he could have moved it months before, just as he claims. No way to tell.
So, the most sensible thing to do is say that the suitcase may or may not have been involved in the crime, and there is no way to tell. It's a time waster and an energy waster. There is no reason to speculate that JBR may have been placed in the suitcase at any time because we cannot confirm or falsify such a claim. We cannot solve the crime by looking at the suitcase.
I give you credit for being willing to read the R's book. You must be absolutely dedicated to the case. I wouldn't touch their book with latex gloves on.