Chrishope, you said something very important and please allow me to use your logic to convince you otherwise.
Let's say you come home and find your house has been robbed. You called the police. Police asked you if your doors have been closed? You said, I checked ALL doors before I left. They were closed for sure!...(now, let's say that you just remembered of your basement window you left opened before you left). Question: would you mention about your opened basement wondow to police right away or would wait? And if you would 'wait' then for WHAT reason?
Yes, you'd tell the police about the window, but if the cops looked around the house they'd see it anyway. There would be no need to tell them. It would occur -even to BPD- that someone might have come in through an open window.
Now, back to Ramsey. It's very important to remember :
- JR was in the basement and saw this broken window between 9am-11am (after FW);
- from 6:00am till 1:00pm, the police are there to investigate the KIDNAPPING.
WHAT was the reason to NOT tell the police that one of your basement window is broken (regardless, if it was broken by you or not)?
The police have seen the broken window shortly after 6am. French and Riechenbach both look through the house, inside. Riechenbach walks around outside. What need is there to tell the police about a broken window that they have already seen? The police know the window is broken. They also know, after looking for just a few minutes, that the window was not used by an intruder.
Even if JR is pretending that he first knows of the broken window between 9-11 am, he still knows that the police have already seen it. If the police aren't making an issue of it, why bring it up?
It's not clear, to me, whether or not the police talked to JR about the window that morning. I don't recall anything from ST's book about JR being questioned about it by officers on the scene. It seems a natural enough question. Yet, as far as I know, the police didn't ask about it until April '97. By the time JR is first interviewed the police know of the story about forgetting the key and JR breaking in. Did they get the story from FW? Or did they get it from JR that morning? (If JR told the police the same story, that morning, that may account for why he and PR were not arrested)
If JR wants people (FW/LE) to consider that an intruder came in through the window -something blindingly obvious as a possibility, and at the same time completely implausible given the grate, the web, and the condition of the sill, then why not just say "Hey, there's a broken window. Maybe the kindappers came in that way". Why is there a need to "back date" the breaking of the glass? If anyone would be willing to believe the window was an entry point, why not also let them think it was broken the night before, by the intruder?
The reason of course is that it's obvious the window wasn't used as an entry/exit. Why then, is the glass broken? It's the "back dating" that is important.