If PR wrote the RN, how or why did JR consent or allow it to ever be seen?
He seems too intelligent to allow such an obviously fake note to be the foundation of the kidnap staging.
While the note was a big risk, time pressure left few options. But you've got me questioning.....
I think Patsy wrote the note and have accepted the view that it was her exaggerated idea of what a ransom note should be. Instead of three sentences it was three pages. It was needlessly dramatic and descriptive, verging on personal bullying towards the end. JonBenet was dead, and they were going to have to call the police. And then what? Maybe the long descriptions of what John was supposed to do and not do was a way of filling in the blank on the other side of that phone call, of gaining some sense of control.
But was it really just typical OTT Patsy? I’m now rethinking that view. Patsy and John liked movies, had a collection of DVDs and posters, and a retractable movie screen installed in their bedroom The RN incorporated lines from various films. Patsy was a writer. She had worked in public relations and was alert to language and presentation. She knew perfectly well what a real ransom note was like! So why have we accepted this idea that Patsy didn't realize she'd penned a highly questionable fake? And once we remove the idea we have to ask why, in the midst of her awful situation, did she spend considerable time and effort to write the “War and Peace” version when a terse one would have been more realistic and far less taxing?
If Patsy had written a typical ransom note, what would have been different? No memorable story of the three pages spread across the stair step. Minimal deflection of suspicion and no suggestions of possible suspects. When the call didn’t happen, all suspicion would have fallen directly on John and Patsy. More police officers would have been sent in, the house would have been thoroughly searched and JBR’s body found. The discovery scene would have been preserved. Concealed evidence might have been found. John and Patsy would have been questioned right away, separately, or taken into custody if they refused to talk before hiring a lawyer. In short, the whole course of things would have been different. I believe Patsy wrote the long RN not just to invent a kidnapper but, in a sense, to conjure him up; to give him a voice, a motive, feelings, actions, variations, a presence that made him seem real - real enough, at any rate, to skew the investigation.
I don’t think the shifts in the RN from "we" to "I", from "Mr. Ramsey" to "John", and from formality to mocking familiarity were either planned or done by mistake. Patsy was an actor and she was improvising a monologue on paper just as she had once done aloud; and I do think there was unconscious purpose at work in it, as there is in all creativity. Did it create scattershot clues meant to point in contradictory directions? That was certainly the effect. Police couldn't zero in on or rule out any one person or group. Was the kidnapper/then killer someone who matched the aloofness of the opening sentences or the taunting vibe of the closing ones? Someone who wanted to strike at John's company or at John personally? Someone educated enough to write "attache'" with the accent or someone who couldn't spell "business" and "possession"? Someone blunt enough to threaten beheading or sneaky enough to misspell words on purpose? Someone bold enough to fake a kidnapping and murder JBR while the family slept or someone too indifferent to demand more than $118,000 from a multimillionaire (money that would have to be divided among the perps, don’t forget. If there were three of them, they wouldn’t even get $40,000 apiece.)? In addition to conjuring a kidnapper with the ransom note, Patsy at some level also meant to hand police a puzzle that couldn’t be solved.
Thanks for getting me thinking about this. I’m also rethinking whether the RN was written to fool John, but that’s for a separate post. God knows this one's long enough.
