Bluecrab,
1. The enhanced 911 call revealed the Ramseys were trying to protect Burke, beginning from the opening minutes of the investigation, by distancing him from the murder by saying he was asleep in bed when he was actually downstairs talking to John and Patsy at 5:52 A.M. Each of the three Ramseys lied to the cops in interviews until they were locked into their stories, and then finally told they had been caught on tape in lies.
I won't waste time here reiterating why I am skeptical about the alleged voices on this tape. Suffice it to say I disagree. Part of the purpose of my question was to see whether the lying evidence essentially boils down to whether or not Burke's voice was on this tape, since there's not a particularly good innocent explanation I've seen for why Ramseys should lie about this.
2. John Ramsey said he didn't search the basement prior to Patsy calling 911 at 5:52 A.M. to report JonBenet missing. That is just an incredulous statement by a father to make -- his six-year-old daughter is missing from her bed and he didn't search the basement nor outside. This was finally proven a lie when John mis-spoke about moving the chair from in front of the train room when he snuck downstairs later that morning. Officer Rick French searched the train room at around 6:05 A.M. and there was no chair there; and Fleet White searched the train room at about 6:20 A.M. and there was no chair there. So John had to have been in the train room and moved the chair prior to the 911 call at 5:52 A.M. He lied about not searching the basement.
I concur this is hard to believe, but you're judging his actions on presumption that RN was staging. If you'll accept the premise that it wasn't staging and that he really thought he was dealing with a kidnapping, then he might well have reasoned there was no point in searching the house. Remember also that it wasn't that many minutes before police arrived. He might well have reasoned that he didn't know the "proper" thing to do and that it was best to "go by the book" using whatever steps cops recommended once they arrived.
3. Glen and Susan WHO? John lied in a 1998 civil deposition about Glen and Susan Stine not being close friends, thus obviously trying to distance the Stines from the Ramseys -- including Doug from burke. The Ramseys actually lived at the Stines house for 5 months following the death of JonBenet. And before that the Ramseys and the Stines socialized and took out of town trips together. On the night of the murder the Ramseys had dropped off Christmas presents at the Stines. John lied to cover up the Ramsey/Stine friendship.
This is a good example of where I think John may have well been telling the truth. There are at a least a few people we socialize with who are extremely good friends with my wife (because the women all horseback ride together) but I would not necessarily list as good friends from my perspective since the husbands are interested in activities that I don't care for (e.g., golf) and hence we don't hang out together. So you'd probably get a different answer to that question if you were asking my wife vs. asking me. John doesn't strike me as a hugely gregarious guy: he seems pretty serious. If it turned out he were a loner it wouldn't surprise me. So to me it is EASILY possible that the wives were very good friends via their children but that John viewed living with them in more businesslike rather than friendly terms.
Also, didn't John acknowledge that "this may sound strange, but no" or words to that effect? And didn't he elsewhere absolutely acknowledge that Doug was a very close friend of Burke's (or was that Patsy)? Sorry I don't have all these details in my head and no time to plow through transcripts.
4. The airport time-line doesn't fit. The Ramseys say they set the alarm for 5:30 A.M., but it's a 20-minute drive to the airport and they had to be there by 6:30 A.M. They say the ransom note was found on the stairway at 5:45 A.M., but the children hadn't even been woken by that time. The time-line doesn't make sense, and if it doesn't make sense then it's probably a lie. The Ramseys had obviously gotten up long before 5:30 A.M.
But the parents said that they often took the kids in pajamas on trips of this sort, so the timing doesn't bother me at all. Their bags were already packed and it was just a matter of getting dressed themselves and then within a few minutes of departing gettting the kids out of bed and into the car, even if they were still half-asleep. it merely requires that the Ramseys take only 40 minutes to get themselves ready and their kids out of bed. Given that Patsy had already dressed by 5:45, it is no stretch of the imagination to think that 25 more minutes would not have been enought to eat a quick breakfast and get the pajama'd kids into the car.
Moreover, since they were flying in private plane, there's none of the waiting in line that you and I face, and my guess is there was probably some flexibility about departure time. That is, they may have told the pilot to be ready by 6:30, but if the plane didn't actually leave until 6:35 or even 6:45, no big deal. This was a VACATION.
It would seem straightforward to query the older children and/or the pilot about what the "norm" was for such trips. I presume police did this and since Steve Thomas didn't leak any damaging evidence about these interviews, there is no "there" there IMHO.
5. JonBenet was found murdered wearing size 12-14 underwear. When questioned about it Patsy said JonBenet usually wore size 8 to 10 panties. But a search of the contents of her underwear drawer found only size 4 and size 6 panties, plus a package of 12-14's with one pair missing. Patsy knew better, but apparently lied to make the size 12-14 underwear on JonBenet seem less conspicuous, and help point away from Burke as having dressed JonBenet in the ridiculous oversized underwear after death.
I'd not been aware of this detail before. It's puzzling since if anyone knew the panty size, it should be Patsy. Is it conceivable they packed all the 8-10 for the trip to Charlevoix, leaving only the old smaller sizes to be found by police as they searched the house? Sorry I'm not intimately familiar with timeline of the search etc. But taking her statement at face value, it doesn't make sense that she's trying to misdirect away from Burke. First, in your theory, are you saying parents allowed Burke to do all the final staging? Is HE the one who allegedly wiped her down? It's been a few years since I first read your BDI theory, but I thought the parents did most of the staging (although I realize you have Burke writing RN). Second, even if he was the one to put on panties, then unless Patsy at some juncture UNDRESSED JBR, how would she even KNOW she was wearing size 12-14 in order to lie about this? I haven't gone back to Ramsey transcripts, but just as you state that police "locked in" statements regarding 911 tapes before exposing alleged lies, I can't imagine them giving away the important clue that she was wearing oversized panties in the course of querying Patsy about normal size.
6. All of the Ramseys denied anyone in the family having ever owned Hi-Tec footwear, thus trying to shield a Ramsey as having left the Hi-Tec logo mark next to JonBenet's body in the wine cellar. But Burke finally admitted to the grand jury in 1999 that he had owned Hi-Tec boots. As it turns out, Patsy had bought the Hi-Tec boots for Burke during a visit to Atlanta, and they had a hard to forget compass built into the shoe laces. Those boots were memorable, and the Ramseys obviously lied about ever owning them.
I've never known source for either of these claims. First, who leaked GJ testimony (that's serious business and the whole reason you claim that LE is willing to lie rather than divulge what happened)? I vaguely recall that there may have been confusion between Hi-Tec as a brand name versus "high tech" as a description. I've read elsewhere, but have no direct way of confirming this, that Hi-Tec NEVER manufactured a boot containing a compass in them. If Burke actually had such boots with a compass, is it conceivable he simply viewed them as "high tech"?
And second, who proved the trip to Atlanta was when they were acquired? If I recall correctly, that trip was that very December, so while Patsy may be flaky and not necessarily expected to remember every clothing purchase, it would seem odd that she wouldn't remember this (although if it was in an interview several years later even this is conceivable). If Burke had such boots, what is YOUR explanation for what happened to them? That is, if the parents had known of the footprint, wouldn't it have just been easier to erase the footprint than surreptitiously discard the boots? Likewise, I assume the police would have found the footprint in the initial investigation, meaning they should have searched the house top-to-bottom for that boot, no? And since they interviewed Burke shortly after the death, why would have it only come out in GJ testimony rather than a leaked police report [didn't Bonita have full access to those first Burke interviews?] that he even owned such boots?
Finally, I just don't see motivation here. Why bother lying about a detail the cops might conceivably be able to track down when the alternative is simpler? Yeah, that's Burke's footprint. He lives in the house, for crying out loud! There's no way to date that print to the time of the crime etc.
7. The Ramseys denied ever before seeing the Santa Bear which mysteriously disappeared from JonBenet's bed after it had been captured in a crime scene photo. This launched a nation-wide search for the Santa Bear. But the Santa Bear turned up much later at the Ramsey's house, buried in moving boxes that had been used to move the Ramseys to Atlanta. The Santa Bear had been awarded to JonBenet on December 14, 1996, just 12 days before her death, for winning the Little Miss Christmas Pageant, and both Patsy and John were at the pageant and witnessed the Santa Bear being awarded to JonBenet. The Ramseys obviously tried to create a mystery to divert suspicion away from the house, when there wasn't any real mystery at all. They had lied.
But this "lie" doesn't make logical sense. The whole crime scene was REPLETE with items from the house: the RN, the paintbrush handle, yada, yada, yada. What do they possibly gain by this lie in the context of all that other stuff? I think you are sufficiently empathetic with how extremely distraught parents might think and behave in the aftermath of such a tragedy. If this lie occurred in the context of questioning in the immediate aftermath of the murder, I can understand completely their being WAY too distracted to remember this. After all, the bear was relatively new to the house and not yet a "familiar feature" imprinted in their memories. Likewise, if they weren't queried until years after the fact, then the fact that the bear was won 12 days before murder loses a lot of its significance.
That's enough Ramsey lies for awhile.
To recap, lie #1 is by far the most serious and damning IF it can be proven.
Lie #2 doesn't seem "proven" to me. It is speculative at best.
Lie #3 is a matter of interpretation: I view John as answering honestly from his own perspective about what the Stines meant to HIM;
Lie #4 again is speculative: I think the timeline is perfectly plausible
Lie #5 is puzzling, but a memory lapse or the truth (i.e., 8-10 panties were in the Charlevoix bags so cops never found them) seems more credible than trying to divert attention from Burke
Lie #6 seems like a stretch. Again, a memory lapse seems more plausible than the idea that they knew of the need to cover up a footprint in the basement. If they'd known, they'd have erased the footprint; but without knowing, there's no motivation to lie etc.
Lie #7 is equally lacking in a plausible motivation in the context of everything else and is better explained as stress or memory loss etc.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone queried IN DETAIL about events that happened literally years ago. Sure, you can blame the Ramseys for delaying their police interviews so long, but the notion that we should expect them to be PERFECTLY RELIABLE witnesses under those conditions defies what is reasonable to expect of mere mortals. You may not be aware of just how unreliable testimony is in courtroom testimony:
http://www.sado.org/19cdn12.htm#19cdn12a
These people swear to tell the truth and they certainly are not covering anything up, yet hard evidence uncovered later proves conclusively that their accounts could NOT have been 100% truthful. Why should we hold the Ramseys to a higher standard of performance than this?