Gerald R. McMenamin on Donald Foster pg 84-88

[Holdontoyourhat]

That's why I prefer not to speculate on it. Make no mistake: if I think I can support something, I won't hesitate to say so. If not, I keep my mouth shut. That approach has served me well in life.

Maybe you're missing the point here.

Please go ahead and speculate, because really RDI needs to do more than speculate on it. RDI needs to explain it. Why are PR's exemplars different from the ransom note? They ARE different. Is the difference deliberate? Accidental?

Option 1: Did PR intend to spell specific words correctly with a plan to later misspell them AND misspell specific words with a plan to later spell them correctly?

Option 2: Did PR's spelling ability vary between sittings?

Option 3: ?

IDI, on the other hand, does not need to explain differences between PR's exemplars and the ransom note. Its not an inconsistency in IDI like it is in RDI.

 

[DeeDee249]

Patsy changed her writing style- why couldn't she misspell words at will also? After JB's death, it was noted that Patsy's notes to teachers were no longer handwritten, as they had been previously.

 

[Tadpole12]

Maybe you're missing the point here.

Please go ahead and speculate, because really RDI needs to do more than speculate on it. RDI needs to explain it. Why are PR's exemplars different from the ransom note? They ARE different. Is the difference deliberate? Accidental?

Option 1: Did PR intend to spell specific words correctly with a plan to later misspell them AND misspell specific words with a plan to later spell them correctly?

Option 2: Did PR's spelling ability vary between sittings?

Option 3: ?

IDI, on the other hand, does not need to explain differences between PR's exemplars and the ransom note. Its not an inconsistency in IDI like it is in RDI.

Hey Hotyh.


so .... IDI operates under the assumption that in a given population, 1 of 73 random handwriting samples will score 'can not be eliminated as writer of the rn'?

I've always wondered if that's a reasonable assumption, given the Ramseys suggestion that the similarity to PR exemplars may lie in the fact/ suggestion that PR's christmas letter was used for reference in the attempted forgery.

 

[Holdontoyourhat]

Hey Hotyh.


so .... IDI operates under the assumption that in a given population, 1 of 73 random handwriting samples will score 'can not be eliminated as writer of the rn'?

I've always wondered if that's a reasonable assumption, given the Ramseys suggestion that the similarity to PR exemplars may lie in the fact/ suggestion that PR's christmas letter was used for reference in the attempted forgery.

Just noting that spelling was a factor in the Lindbergh kidnapping case. The Lindbergh ransom note author misspelled the same words in both the ransom note and his exemplars. PR, on the other hand, spelled differently than the RN author on at least four occasions. It is expected that different people would have different spelling ability.

 

[Tadpole12]

Hi ya Hotyh.

Ya I get that. The suggestion that PR would consciously, purposefully manipulate her spelling abilities. PRDI wise, she is capable to do all sorts.

 

[BBB167893]

Maybe you're missing the point here.

Maybe.

Please go ahead and speculate, because really RDI needs to do more than speculate on it. RDI needs to explain it. Why are PR's exemplars different from the ransom note? They ARE different. Is the difference deliberate? Accidental?

You're painting me into a corner, HOTYH.

Option 1: Did PR intend to spell specific words correctly with a plan to later misspell them AND misspell specific words with a plan to later spell them correctly?

Option 2: Did PR's spelling ability vary between sittings?

Option 3: ?

I suppose if I HAD to choose (say, as with a gun to my head), I'd have to go with #2. I mean, who knows what condition she was in at a given moment?

There's something else too. I guess you could put this as #3. Sometimes I wonder if she was getting advice from someone who told her to do it this way. Maybe from JR, maybe from her lawyers. Actually, it might be best if I put my underlying thoughts in a new thread.

IDI, on the other hand, does not need to explain differences between PR's exemplars and the ransom note. Its not an inconsistency in IDI like it is in RDI.

Well, IDI has a slew of its own inconsistencies to deal with.

 

[BBB167893]

so .... IDI operates under the assumption that in a given population, 1 of 73 random handwriting samples will score 'can not be eliminated as writer of the rn'?

Yeah, I wouldn't mind knowing that, myself. Sounds like a very bad assumption to me.

I've always wondered if that's a reasonable assumption, given the Ramseys suggestion that the similarity to PR exemplars may lie in the fact/ suggestion that PR's christmas letter was used for reference in the attempted forgery.

I've not heard this assertion about the christmas letter.

PRDI wise, she is capable to do all sorts.

I'm not sure I appreciate the implication there.

 

[Tadpole12]

Hi SD.


advisement ..... who would be so inhumane as to suggest IMO such fiendish acts.


the staging ..... I just watched PMPT and that visual image portrayed of the crime is so shocking .........
so ya if I choose to beleive that PRDI then what she was capable of ....
is extaordinarily depraved.

 

[BBB167893]

Hi SD.

Yo.

advisement ..... who would be so inhumane as to suggest IMO such fiendish acts.

Whoops. I think you misunderstood. I was referring to someone advising her to spell differently.

the staging ..... I just watched PMPT and that visual image portrayed of the crime is so shocking .........so ya if I choose to believe that PRDI then what she was capable of ....
is extraordinarily depraved.

No worse than what other parents have proved themselves capable of, Tadpole. Don't take my words for that. FBI agent Ron Walker was interviewed about this case. He was asked flat-out if a parent could do the things that were done to JB. His answer was "yes." In fact, let's see what he had to say:

"Well, as much as it pains me to say it, yes, I've seen parents who have decapitated their children, I've seen cases where parents have drowned their children in bathtubs, I've seen cases where parents have strangled their children, have placed them in paper bags and smothered them, have strapped them in car seats and driven them into a body of water, any way that you can think of that a person can kill another person, almost all those ways are also ways that parents can kill their children."

On a personal note, Tadpole, I may not have lived as long as some, but I've witnessed enough failings of human character in my time to know that ANYONE is capable of ANYTHING. It's a painful lesson, and one I had to learn the hard way a few times.

 

[Tadpole12]

Heyya SD,


Well ya SD ... life is brutal

like Andrea Yates ...
mania so extreme that it enabled her to do such a thing.

 

[BBB167893]

Heyya SD,


Well ya SD ... life is brutal

like Andrea Yates ...
mania so extreme that it enabled her to do such a thing.

Very well said.

I'm not out to burden people with my problems. I'm just telling you where I stand.

 

[Sophie]

you're awesome :blowkiss:

Well, thank you but I actually discovered today that my sister hasn't ordered it yet - she still had the bit of paper I gave her in her handbag as of lunch today However, she says she'll get to it this week!

Re Amy, there's apparently a letter at work about it which I'll get to on Tuesday.

 

[voynich]

Re Amy, there's apparently a letter at work about it which I'll get to on Tuesday.

awesome

 

[fr brown]

Re:McMenamin on the Ramsey ransom note. McM specifically states that he chose "stylemarkers" for Patsy and John that differ from the ransom note. For instance, he chooses "FBI" for John, but instead of choosing "F.B.I." for Patsy, McM chooses "SBTC." (The ransom note, of course, has "F.B.I.") Then having deliberately chosen 18 or so stylemarkers that differ from the ransom note style, McM declares that Patsy and the ransom note writer have nothing in common. If this is science, it's the science of how to reach a foregone conclusion.

Re: Don Foster. I read his analysis of "Primary Colors" when it first came out and a few times since. I always think it's brilliant.

But even if you don't think he's brilliant, how does that vitiate his observations? To wit, "SBTC" in the open Ramsey Bible, "and hence" in their 1997 Christmas letter, Patsy's elimination of her manuscript "a" after her lawyers were provided a copy of the ransom note, her habit of signing off with made-up initialisms. These are the observations we know about.

To make my point hyperbolically, would cops throw out a murder weapon because a homeless guy found it in the bushes?

 

[fr brown]

In the Ramsey chapter of his book Forensic Linguistics, McMenamin provides a calculation of probability of joint occurrence. I picked three of the six factors he chose to include--initials with periods, number with decimal and cents, prefix "un" + space--to do my calculation using his method. They all have representatives in Patsy's exemplars: F.B.I., $118,000. and un harmed. (I realize that $118,000. doesn't have cents, but it's probably close enough, his choosing method being so subjective anyway. But I could have used two of the other remaining factors because there are arguably also examples of them in Patsy's exemplars.)

So using McMenamin's numbers, which come from the database he used:

initials with periods: .397
prefix "un" + space: .056
num w decimal + cents: .679

we calculate the joint probability of occurrence, P = .397 x .056 x .679 = .015

That is, the probability of these three variables occurring in one writer is 1.5%.

Courtesy of McM, the likelihood of just these three variables (shared with the RN writer), co-occurring in one writer is 1.5%

 

[fr brown]

....I must admit that I never really saw any motherliness in that note - the 'well-rested' bit I was inclined to attribute to sarcasm or someone feigning sarcasm....

I hadn't thought about "the delivery will be exhausting to I advise you to be rested" thing before. I took a look at the interviews to see if there was anything interesting there. Steve Thomas, I found, sometimes uses the word "exhausted" in connection with his own activities, very awkwardly, and Tom Haney asks Patsy in '98 if she's well rested. Those weren't thrown in by chance.

In '98 John says this:

MIKE KANE: Were you uptight at all, anything like that?

JOHN RAMSEY: Not that I remember. I just remember thinking I want to get a good night's sleep because we are going to get up early in the morning to fly, I just want to be rested.

AND

LOU SMIT: Did she ever go out on her own to go down there and eat pineapple?

JOHN RAMSEY: I don't recall that she ever did. I don't know. I don't think so. Not that I remember, ever, at night. She was getting to the point where she was -- she used to be not afraid of the dark or anything at all and then she was getting kind of -- she was growing up a little bit and getting afraid of the dark and, you know, just kind of normal things that -- that people start to think about. But she wouldn't have been -- I mean, we were out solidly asleep, we were all tired. Christmas is a big day, it's exhausting. I know she was, had to be exhausted.


I can imagine that if Patsy, who had packed for "four people to go two places," had to hear about other people being exhausted and needing to be rested, that that might stick in her craw....

 

[fr brown]

As I understand the exemplar-obtaining procedure, Arndt would have first dictated the ransom note to Patsy who would write it down. No hints about spelling or punctuation would have been given. After that, Patsy would use the copy she had just made to generate further copies.

Patsy apparently had two exemplar sessions, one in January and one in February. After the January session, her lawyers were given a copy of the ransom note. (I don't know if the ransom note was dictated in the second session or not. Patsy probably had it pretty well memorized by then.)

The sentence "Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as Police, F.B.I., etc., will result in your daughter being beheaded." has some complicated punctuation there in the middle. Patsy's first exemplar in January, done from dictation, gets it all exactly "right" although she doesn't capitalize police. (She does capitalize police her third time through, but by then she's removing the periods from F.B.I.)

Following McMenamin's chart:

RN: situation, such as Police, F.B.I., etc.,

January session:
Patsy 1: situation, such as police, F.B.I., etc.,
Patsy 2: situation, such as police, F.B.I., etc.,
Patsy 3: situation, such as Police, FBI, etc.,

(Patsy's lawyers are given a photocopy of the ransom note after the January session.)

February session:
Patsy 4: situation such as police, FBI, etcetera
Patsy 5: situation such as police, FBI, etcetera,

You can see that after Patsy's given a photocopy of the ransom note and been coached by her lawyers, she's putting as much daylight between her writing style and the ransom note's as she can. (She can't plausibly leave out all the commas.) Why is she suddenly writing out et cetera? It's not natural to her and she knows it's not what's in the ransom note. That shows consciousness of guilt.

She also eliminates her manuscript a's in the February session, and the exclamation points she had been putting in (correctly) even though all parties to the process must be well aware that she's had many good long looks at the note.

(McMenamin's word-processed charts aren't always accurate. His errors seem to break Patsy's way. We can see from a photograph that she wrote "un harmed" on her second pass in February. He says that at her first pass in February she writes "10 a.m." From a photograph we can see she actually has written "10 A.m.")

 

[fr brown]

These are the stylemarkers/style markers/style-markers McMenamin assigns to Patsy Ramsey. They have been chosen to contrast with the ransom note writer's style. McMenamin acknowledges that he doesn't take into account attempts at disguise.
But if Patsy is the ransom note writer, she will be disguising when she writes the ransom note and also trying to disguise her exemplars, right?

PR 01 Correct spelling of "business"
PR 02 Correct spelling of "possession"
PR 03 Misspelling of "advise" as "advize"
PR 04 Lack of correction in spelling "denied"
PR 05 Misspelled "burial" as "buriel" (I get a good chuckle out of that.)
PR 06 Misspelling and correction of "advise" as "advize" with an additional correction
PR 07 Misspelling of "scrutiny" as "scruitiny" in passes 1 and 2 (after which she spells it right)
PR 08 Use of capital "S" in "Southern"
PR 09 Presence of periods in "am"
PR 10 Periods (instead of "!") after "Victory" (But Patsy actually put the ! in on her first pass, the one from dictation.)
PR 11 No periods used in "SBTC"
PR 12 "Unharmed" is one word (Ahem, excuse me. In pass 5 she writes "un harmed.")
PR 13 Using the correct article in "an earlier"
PR 14 "Pick up" has no hyphen
PR 15 Writes "counter measures" (But she writes "countermeasures" in her individual word exemplars)
PR 16 Use of single word for "outsmart"
PR 17 Use of single word for "underestimate"
PR 18A $118,000. has no trailing zeroes
PR 18B $100,000. has no trailing zeroes
PR 18C Wrote "100 dollar" without "$"
PR 18D Wrote "$18,000." with no trailing zeroes in pass 3
PR 18E Use of word "dollar" without "$"

"Lack of correction in spelling 'denied'" is a very odd choice. Like the ransom note writer would habitually write over the first two letters of "denied"? (Actually, it looks like the RN writer might have started to write "ri" and then changed it to "denied.")

And non-hyphenation of "pick up"? The more or less random nature of hyphenation and word-joining in English has long been noted by linguists. Sometimes I do the same word/same part of speech differently in the same paragraph (though I do try to go back and standardize). McMenamin himself uses two versions of "style marker" in his book!