The key question in the JBR case for me is "Who was Patsy Ramsey"?
One major difficulty is that, since the Ramseys have successfully evaded justice, no professional psychological evaluation has ever been done on them.
So when trying to analyze her, we'll largely have to rely on our own psychological knowledge, our own experience.
At an autopsy, the first step is always to view the body from the outside, and I'll try to approach the person Patsy that way too as a first step:
Patsy "seen from the outside" seems to have been a woman upon whom the Goddess Fortuna had showered a cornucopia of precious gifts:
Not only was Patsy beautiful, she was also intelligent and had a university degree. She did not come from a broken home, but from a close-knit middle class family.
She struck it rich in her marriage, her doting and generous multimillionaire husband denying her nothing, enabling her to indulge in lavish decorating sprees in her splendid homes.
She had two healthy, beautiful and intelligent children, a boy and a girl.
What more could Patsy Ramsey wish for in her life ? She "had it all", so to speak.
And even when a dark shadow - cancer - showed up in her paradise, Patsy again was among the fortunate ones in the end. For she could pay for the best medical treatment available, and finallly beat ovarian cancer, one of the most aggressive and rapidly fatal cances which exist. Again she was lucky.
But what lay behind that glamorous surface? What do we really know about this woman's inner life?
The picture which poster Cookie (who is great photographer) put in the "New Globe is out" thread on FFJ(#138 post) is very interesting:
http://www.forumsforjustice.org/forums/sho...ge=12&pp=12
Cookie is actually Judith Phillips, a friend of Patsy's whose comments on the family are also in Schiller's book PMPT.
She seems to have known Patsy pretty well.
That picture sent chills down my spine. Nedra looks like a 'battleax' type of woman and I ask myself what kind of mother she was to her daughters. Probably not the warm and giving type, more a very demanding type.
It is also immensely interesting what Judith Phillips said about Patsy's mother Nedra: (PMPT, pb., p. 249):
"Well, Judith, we're just getting Jon Benet into a few pageants ."
"Why would you do something like that?"
"You know, she's not too young to get started."
"And what if JonBenet isn't willing" I asked. "What if she says, I'm not going to do it? How would you respond to that"
"Oh Judith, we would never consider her saying no. We would tell JonBenet, "You must do it. You will be Miss Pageant."
It was sort of eerie. A litte scary. The inevitability of it - from grandmother to mother and now to daughter.
Eerie indeed. How many "choices" did a mother like Nedra leave to her daughter Patsy? What could Patsy decide for herself?
What seems to be completely missing in Patsy's life was a 'phase of rebellion' which so many young people go through. Where they question their parents' values, where they try to find out who they are and what they really want for themselves, but in Patsy's case, nothing of the kind happened.
Patsy seems to have wanted what Nedra wanted, and took over right where Nedra left off: Patsy was a Miss West Virginia, and JonBenet was destined to climb the next step: Miss America.
Was Patsy Ramsey a dutiful daughter almost "too good to be true"? Was she so trained and conditioned to be constantly put on display that in the process she lost contact to her inner self?
From one of UKGuy's posts on another thread:
I haven't looked it up yet, but it sure sounds interesting.
One major difficulty is that, since the Ramseys have successfully evaded justice, no professional psychological evaluation has ever been done on them.
So when trying to analyze her, we'll largely have to rely on our own psychological knowledge, our own experience.
At an autopsy, the first step is always to view the body from the outside, and I'll try to approach the person Patsy that way too as a first step:
Patsy "seen from the outside" seems to have been a woman upon whom the Goddess Fortuna had showered a cornucopia of precious gifts:
Not only was Patsy beautiful, she was also intelligent and had a university degree. She did not come from a broken home, but from a close-knit middle class family.
She struck it rich in her marriage, her doting and generous multimillionaire husband denying her nothing, enabling her to indulge in lavish decorating sprees in her splendid homes.
She had two healthy, beautiful and intelligent children, a boy and a girl.
What more could Patsy Ramsey wish for in her life ? She "had it all", so to speak.
And even when a dark shadow - cancer - showed up in her paradise, Patsy again was among the fortunate ones in the end. For she could pay for the best medical treatment available, and finallly beat ovarian cancer, one of the most aggressive and rapidly fatal cances which exist. Again she was lucky.
But what lay behind that glamorous surface? What do we really know about this woman's inner life?
The picture which poster Cookie (who is great photographer) put in the "New Globe is out" thread on FFJ(#138 post) is very interesting:
http://www.forumsforjustice.org/forums/sho...ge=12&pp=12
Cookie is actually Judith Phillips, a friend of Patsy's whose comments on the family are also in Schiller's book PMPT.
She seems to have known Patsy pretty well.
That picture sent chills down my spine. Nedra looks like a 'battleax' type of woman and I ask myself what kind of mother she was to her daughters. Probably not the warm and giving type, more a very demanding type.
It is also immensely interesting what Judith Phillips said about Patsy's mother Nedra: (PMPT, pb., p. 249):
"Well, Judith, we're just getting Jon Benet into a few pageants ."
"Why would you do something like that?"
"You know, she's not too young to get started."
"And what if JonBenet isn't willing" I asked. "What if she says, I'm not going to do it? How would you respond to that"
"Oh Judith, we would never consider her saying no. We would tell JonBenet, "You must do it. You will be Miss Pageant."
It was sort of eerie. A litte scary. The inevitability of it - from grandmother to mother and now to daughter.
Eerie indeed. How many "choices" did a mother like Nedra leave to her daughter Patsy? What could Patsy decide for herself?
What seems to be completely missing in Patsy's life was a 'phase of rebellion' which so many young people go through. Where they question their parents' values, where they try to find out who they are and what they really want for themselves, but in Patsy's case, nothing of the kind happened.
Patsy seems to have wanted what Nedra wanted, and took over right where Nedra left off: Patsy was a Miss West Virginia, and JonBenet was destined to climb the next step: Miss America.
Was Patsy Ramsey a dutiful daughter almost "too good to be true"? Was she so trained and conditioned to be constantly put on display that in the process she lost contact to her inner self?
From one of UKGuy's posts on another thread:
I haven't looked it up yet, but it sure sounds interesting.
