John didn't even hesitate to send him away and Patsy barely even acknowledged Burke leaving the house. If he had anything to do with her murder can you really picture that?
John and Patsy: "Burke killed her but lets send him on over to Fleet's house to play Nintendo. The cops and even the FBI might go interview him while we sit here waiting for these people to find the body for six more hours but our 9 year old son would never crack in front of FBI agents with vast experience interviewing witnesses or keystone cops lucking into getting a confession. He'll make sure our house of cards never crumbles! Even if they take him down to BPD or FBI without our knowledge he wont crack under pressure. Burke knows what's best. He'll never risk the billion dollar empire. He's only in fourth grade but he's smart!"
I'm not buying it for a second. If Burke bludgeoned her, John and Patsy aren't letting him out of their sight for one nanosecond much less letting him leave the premises. There can be multiple reasons for wanting him gone and exposing him to the risk of being interrogated within the next six hours without their knowledge....being the killer is not one of them.
I've said this before...John and Patsy cannot predict that early in the morning that everything will be bungled to that extent. You don't send your 9 year old murdering son to someones house where he cant be monitored by you for hours on end.
Burke is/was very dysfunctional. That house was dysfunction junction. Burke isn't the killer. He's a victim of the dysfunction who survived.
I also realize keeping him there opens him up to questioning as well but at least you can control the flow of information if he is in your presence. They didn't give a rat's patootie about Burke that morning because they had no reason to. He wasn't in any danger from kidnappers and he wasn't going to confess to murder because he didn't do it. So get him out of there and get the show on the road.
Great post. You voice many of the concerns I have with BDI. I think if Burke was involved at all, he was whisked to bed by PR/JR thinking JonBenet was just sleeping after he'd struck her. Burke awoke being told his sister had been kidnapped and in his mind the events of the previous night are unrelated.
However, I totally agree with you that the Ramseys had a limited amount of control over the situation and couldn't predict the incompetence that would follow. Doc G's theory that it was John and only John assumes that John thought Patsy wouldn't call 911 immediately upon discovering the note and that the police would rule him out as its author. BDI theory assumes that simply sending Burke out of the house is all they had to do to protect their story. Lest we forget Burke was interviewed TWO times before John and Patsy would finally sit down with police four months later. I am fully in the RDI camp, but I feel the evidence points toward JR and PR covering for some accident touched off by possible abuse. Why else would Patsy lie about the broken window in the basement if only to corroborate John's bogus story?