SuperDave said:
"Why did Patsy have the flashlight out in the first place? Do you think she just conveniently picked it up and used it as a weapon?"
Try this: remember, the switch in JB's room only worked the ceiling fan. You have to go over to her dresser to turn on the light. Bringing a flashlight would have just saved time.
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This makes more sense to me....
My youngest son frequently had horrible nightmares. When he was little he would always come to my side of the bed and tap me on the shoulder to awaken me. He would tell me he had a nightmare and I would pull him up into our bed and let him sleep in between my husband and me. After he got older, he would come into our room with blanket and pillow in tow and sleep on the antique 'fainting couch' beside our bed. If it was a particualy bad nightmare, he would want to be as close to me as possible and would sometimes come in our bedroom and fall asleep on the floor on my side of the bed without ever waking me. This made climbing down from our high bed dangerous for me. I had to remember to consciously awaken myself enough to look for him before getting out of bed or I'd step on him.
My son was a considerate child. He always awakened me quietly and gently. Also, I was blessed with an over abundance of strong maternal instinct to, first and foremost, always try to protect my young children from anything that might harm them. I wonder if paternal or maternal instinct went 'haywire' in Boulder during the night or early morning of Dec. 25 or 26.
Our children had a young friend who frequently slept over at our home. He would scream bloody murder in his sleep. He would NEVER awaken and never remember the events the next morning. My husband and I would frequently find ourselves, half asleep, falling all over eachother, racing upstairs to our son's room after being jolted from a deep sleep by one of this child's screams.
I wonder if anyone ever asked PR and JR if JBR had nightmares and how she reacted to them when she had them.
What if JBR was perceived as an intruder? Maybe JBR had a nightmare...and came running 'wide open' into her parents room, seeking "safety from the monsters". PR and JR are the ones who are 'zonked out' and when she bounds upon the bed on top of one of them, they are startled into 'panic mode'. Whichever one JBR is crawling over to get into the middle of the bed thinks they are being attacked by an intruder. One of them grabs the closest weapon, the flashlight off the nightstand beside the bed and swing with deadly force at the "thing" that is on top of one of them.
When one is suddenly awakened and in terror, a fairly common reaction is attack before you are attacked...isn't it? This would be the perfect position for JBR to have been in to have received an accidental blow to the side of the head from a flashlight...(If JBR jumped on PR to crawl over her, I would bet money, PR would have freaked out, suddenly waking JR and he could have reacted in a panic, attacking the 'thing' on top of Patsy.)
If indeed BR had been 'playing doctor' and both R's knew it, they would then have had to also cover that up with the 'sexual staging'. If they hadn't their accident' would have eventually taken on a whole new "look" and any of the three R's would have been highly suspected for murder and molestation.