The ransom note

[Curiositie]

IMO Patsy definitely wrote the note. The way she talked in interviews - it just seems like her language.
Whomever wrote it, imo, is not the one that killed her. She may have had a hand in covering it up - but not killed her.

 

[fr brown]

Adequate Sized Attaché?

The number of dollar notes required to fulfil the requirements of the ransom note is 1,900 by my maths.

A typical attaché (according to Quora at least) houses 10,000 notes. The dimensions of a slimline attaché I found on the net i estimate still holds 7,000.

Someone could check my maths. It seems to me evidence that the ‘foreign faction’ hasn’t done this thing before as they are unfamiliar with the capacity of an attaché case. I think you’d struggle to find an ‘inadequate attaché ’....

1900 is what I came up with the other day and 133 cubic inches. Even a small size attaché easily had that cubic capacity, iirc. (I might have used a website called "Briefcase Full of Money" or a similar one for the bill dimensions.)

I think the "adequate size attaché" is a riff on the stipulation in Ruthless People that the notes be delivered in a black American Tourister briefcase model number XXX. The Ramsey ransom note writer seems to have used the ransom demand in Ruthless People as something of a template: "Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter" is probably too close to "If you deviate from our instructions in any way whatsoever, she will be killed" to have happened by chance.

That last part always bothered me. Did Patsy have the RP ransom demand memorized? Did she pop Ruthless People in her VCR because she suddenly needed a ransom note template? Because of its complexity, I've come to conclude that she did prep work on the ransom note. (Probably one of the few things I agree with Lou Smit about.)

 

[fr brown]

Adequate Sized Attaché?

The number of dollar notes required to fulfil the requirements of the ransom note is 1,900 by my maths.

A typical attaché (according to Quora at least) houses 10,000 notes. The dimensions of a slimline attaché I found on the net i estimate still holds 7,000.

Someone could check my maths. It seems to me evidence that the ‘foreign faction’ hasn’t done this thing before as they are unfamiliar with the capacity of an attaché case. I think you’d struggle to find an ‘inadequate attaché ’....

1900 is what I came up with the other day and 133 cubic inches. Even a small size attaché easily had that cubic capacity, iirc. (I might have used a website called "Briefcase Full of Money" or a similar one for the bill dimensions.)

I think the "adequate size attaché" is a riff on the stipulation in Ruthless People that the notes be delivered in a black American Tourister briefcase model number XXX. The Ramsey ransom note writer seems to have used the ransom demand in Ruthless People as something of a template: "Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter" is probably too close to "If you deviate from our instructions in any way whatsoever, she will be killed" to have happened by chance.

That last part always bothered me. Did Patsy have the RP ransom demand memorized? Did she pop Ruthless People in her VCR because she suddenly needed a ransom note template? Because of its complexity, I've come to conclude that she did prep work on the ransom note. (Probably one of the few things I agree with Lou Smit about.)

 

[UKGuy]

1900 is what I came up with the other day and 133 cubic inches. Even a small size attaché easily had that cubic capacity, iirc. (I might have used a website called "Briefcase Full of Money" or a similar one for the bill dimensions.)

I think the "adequate size attaché" is a riff on the stipulation in Ruthless People that the notes be delivered in a black American Tourister briefcase model number XXX. The Ramsey ransom note writer seems to have used the ransom demand in Ruthless People as something of a template: "Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter" is probably too close to "If you deviate from our instructions in any way whatsoever, she will be killed" to have happened by chance.

That last part always bothered me. Did Patsy have the RP ransom demand memorized? Did she pop Ruthless People in her VCR because she suddenly needed a ransom note template? Because of its complexity, I've come to conclude that she did prep work on the ransom note. (Probably one of the few things I agree with Lou Smit about.)

fr brown,
If you believe Patsy prepped for the ransom note then why did she not prep other details related to the basement crime-scene?

"Any deviation" is a standard phrase, e.g. "standard deviation", "Without deviation" as is "immediate execution" i.e. "summary execution", etc. Patsy was a skilled writer and would have no problem running off a fake RN injected with cultural legalisms such as "Any deviation".


"attaché" reflects Patsy's affection for French culture, art, etc. Its difficult to see any intruder requesting an "attaché." If it was that important to the intruder they could bring their own, whereas any the Ramsey's turned up with would be easily identified.

Maybe John intended to use the Samsonite suitcase for this purpose?

Patsy's forensic evidence is all over the wine-cellar and JonBenet, its difficult not to believe she killed JonBenet?

Fibers from her sweater are embedded into the ligature knotting along with strands of JonBenet's hair, that's pretty damning.

.

 

[proust20]

As evidenced by her academic record, PR excelled at journalism. However, I do not think that the RN shows that the writer is particularly skilled. The tone is uneven. The misspellings are clumsy and quickly forgotten. There are the notorious shifts of pronouns, not to mention redundancies. Some of the complex sentences have been shown to be like PR's though, as well as some of her use of archaisms. My guess is that JR was coaching and composing orally as PR transcribed it.
If the movies were used as a point of departure, the author should have been aware of what an effectively threatening RN should read like. In studying journalism, PR would have been drilled with the effectiveness of the concise in conveying information.
That the 'practice' note even exists is rather astounding. That it does exist implies that the staging was uncoordinated, which is how I'd characterize the RN in general.

 

[dgfred]

If she excels at journalism... she would not want that to be noticed so much in the RN.

 

[fr brown]

You would probably want to conceal that you're a college-educated American if you're masquerading as a member of a foreign faction. That this is not particularly well done is one of the interesting things about the ransom note.

There is some reason that Patsy met the police unshowered (as she tells us), in makeup and wearing her murder clothes while John was showered and shaved. There was no reason they had to call the police at 5:52 am. They could have called at 6 am, giving her time to remove her makeup and jump in the shower. That this didn't happen shows that they weren't in it together. No doubt Patsy was fussing with her note and lost track of time. Once John's up, it's too late for her to undress and shower.

If the crime had been planned for that night, the note would have been ready to go. It seems that there were nine plus one pages of false starts, indicating it was written on the fly, but it also has elements that suggest it had been given some thought before that evening: the line from Ruthless People, the amount of the ransom demand, the misspellings that refer to John's trouble with double ss's, various "Johnisms" such as and hence, proper burial and the "percenting"; the ironic mention of John's affinity for things southern (surely it's northerners who are known for their common sense, southerners for their charm), the reference to John's Atlanta Fat Cats, the ostentatious use of SBTC from the Bible that Patsy assured the police only John reads--and, of course, the movie references.

Patsy did the crime, staging and the note by herself as noted above, but the note is very complex. I can't for the life of me call to mind anything my family habitually says except that my daughter for years had the annoying habit of saying "Question?" before she would ask a question. It's easy to call to mind things people say that annoy us and Patsy was probably pretty annoyed by John. She no doubt ground her teeth every time he talked in percents. That one would have been easy. But all of it together? That must have taken some study.

So John's being fitted up for this murder, and it's important that he doesn't realize it until it's too late for him to do anything about it. But John's smart and figured out the basics of it that morning.

If Patsy thought that John was about to divorce her, she would know that her physical abuse of JonBenet would come to light. That could result in prison. It would undoubtedly affect a divorce settlement. Patsy would be disgraced and destitute. (There is one other piece of evidence, an odd little bit of staging, that increases the likelihood that this was on Patsy's mind. It's publicly known, but not discussed. I'm not going to discuss it here either.)

 

[fr brown]

I half-listened to Paula Woodward's 1999 interview of Patsy and John. Naturally Patsy got to say that she had been essentially eliminated as the writer of the ransom note.

Patsy did say one odd thing. When asked who she thought the perpetrator was, she said (with her little gee-whiz gestures) that it might have been a "young person who like movies," as if she was talking about someone who sent her a nice box of chocolates on Valentine's Day. John a little later goes into his subhuman "it" thing, really rubbing it in. What a pair.

Later they seem not to be sure about the movie thing. Having said that they think about the case every day, that the ransom note is the important piece of evidence and that they have finding the guilty party as their mission, John says that their "experienced investigators" tell them that there are lines from movies in the ransom note. He seems unsure that this is true. It's just something he's been told. He hasn't explored this himself, it seems. But you would, wouldn't you? You'd have every one of those movies cued up.

 

[UKGuy]

I half-listened to Paula Woodward's 1999 interview of Patsy and John. Naturally Patsy got to say that she had been essentially eliminated as the writer of the ransom note.

Patsy did say one odd thing. When asked who she thought the perpetrator was, she said (with her little gee-whiz gestures) that it might have been a "young person who like movies," as if she was talking about someone who sent her a nice box of chocolates on Valentine's Day. John a little later goes into his subhuman "it" thing, really rubbing it in. What a pair.

Later they seem not to be sure about the movie thing. Having said that they think about the case every day, that the ransom note is the important piece of evidence and that they have finding the guilty party as their mission, John says that their "experienced investigators" tell them that there are lines from movies in the ransom note. He seems unsure that this is true. It's just something he's been told. He hasn't explored this himself, it seems. But you would, wouldn't you? You'd have every one of those movies cued up.

fr brown,
If Patsy was setting John up, how come the Grand Jury leveled the counts at John as they did Patsy?

You reckon Patsy duped the Grand Jury ?

.

 

[icedtea4me]

If she excels at journalism... she would not want that to be noticed so much in the RN.

One would think that, but she would've had no control over her subconscious mind's need to communicate what went down that night.

 

[icedtea4me]

You would probably want to conceal that you're a college-educated American if you're masquerading as a member of a foreign faction. That this is not particularly well done is one of the interesting things about the ransom note.<snip>

We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction (or, as I see it, factim) = Patsy + at least one other individual represent, or speak for, this small, foreign faction.

 

[icedtea4me]

I think it's sad that no one has thought about Patsy's deeply personal experience regarding survival and percentages.

 

[fr brown]

In 1998 after Lou Smit primes the pump once, John starts expressing things in terms of percentages, and does it twelve times during his interview. It's like he can't stop.

Trip DeMuth tries doing the same thing with Patsy, but she doesn't bite.

 

[proust20]

I did not mean to suggest that PR was penning an article worth of a Pulitzer Prize. My point was that author of the RN does not stay in character. He/she forgets who it is that is supposed to be writing it. If the author was trying to avoid revealing their level of education, it was a big fail. As a result, it is a messy attempt at deception. Perhaps, this is because the RN crosses over from a journalistic approach to a fictional one.

 

[fr brown]

Hi folks, I’m a long time lurker and I felt compelled to make a comment on this thread so I made an account. In reading analysis of the RN I saw a lot of speculation about the use of the unusual and redundant phrase ‘and hence’, which was also used later by the family in a church notice.

I just felt like sharing that this is a lyric in the very popular Mary poppins song ‘spoonful of sugar’-

And hence (And hence),
They find (They find)
Their task is not a grind.

It’s even repeated by Mary poppins’ reflection in the mirror, so the listener hears it twice.

I don’t think this is probably going to cause anyone to have a huge revelation about anything, it’s just something I thought of straight away and didn’t see anyone mention in the past- pardon if it’s pointless or was already discussed.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Mary Poppins was on tv Christmas night at 8:35pm. Nick of Time was on from 9:30pm to 11, I think, so the Ramseys wouldn't have watched it at the Whites'.

I just noticed that about NoT this morning. I have two TV Guides for that week from two regions of the country. Both show NoT on Cinemax at 9:30pm.

 

[fr brown]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Mary Poppins was on tv Christmas night at 8:35pm. Nick of Time was on from 9:30pm to 11, I think, so the Ramseys wouldn't have watched it at the Whites'.

I just noticed that about NoT this morning. I have two TV Guides for that week from two regions of the country. Both show NoT on Cinemax at 9:30pm.

The TV Guides I have are from two different regions, but the regions might both be in the eastern time zone. I don't know what this means for Cinemax programs. Would they be on earlier further west? Don't know.

 

[gumshoe1]

The ransom note really screws with everything, because when I examine what happened to JonBenét I don't believe it was done by any of the three suspects. She was strangled with a garrote so tight that the wire was almost invisible. That wasn't staging. No way did Burke bash her over the head and the parents decide "quick let's brutally garrote her still-warm body and stick a paintbrush up her foo-foo!". They could've pretended she fell down the stairs or slipped in the bath if that's really what happened.

Whoever garroted JonBenét did it for sadosexual reasons. Unless Burke was something out of The Omen (and there's no reason to believe that), it couldn't have been him. That leaves John or Patsy, and they don't seem to fit the profile either. Problem is that the ransom note stinks of Patsy, and why would you fake a ransom note if you were innocent? My only theory is that Patsy assumed that Burke had done it, as they couldn't see any evidence of an intruder, they panicked and tried to cover it up.

What kind of intruder is going to hang around drafting long-winded ransom notes? I guess if it was someone with some kind of developmental disorder, who had to have known details about John and his bonus. Someone who had been to the house before, a baby-sitter? Relative or family friend?

I think this case is unsolvable. The murder screams intruder but the ransom note screams inside-job.

The theory that an intruder killed JonBenet, and Patsy and/or John assumed Burke did it and staged a cover up is insanely farfetched. People who believe ekardh's theory think that "whoever garroted JonBenet did it for sadosexual reasons". No no no. You cannot know that. You think that no parent would garrote their own daughter because you would not garrote your own daughter in such a situation. This is a non sequitur. People are different from each other. From Patsy and/or John's perspective, JonBenet was already dead. So Patsy and/or John didn't think that they could cause JonBenet to suffer any more by garroting JonBenet. Parents routinely have their deceased children's bodies completely destroyed by burning their bodies to ashes in cremation. Why? Because the parents know that their deceasead sons and daughters are already dead, and burning their bodies won't cause any further suffering.

The fact that JonBenet was garroted is not evidence that IDI.

 

[fridaybaker]

Thinking about why an awkward adequate (with or without ly) would be in the ransom note, I wondered whether adequate was a favorite word of either of the Ramseys. John seems to like it; in 1998 he says that child Patsy had been disciplined by verbal rebuke but "it was very adequate." (Clunk!) In Death of Innocence there are five instances of adequate: one is in the ransom note; three are in John's voice; one I didn't find. In The Other Side of Suffering, there's an adequately explain and a fuel supply that's barely adequate. It's a fairly common word, I realize, but I haven't seen an instance of Patsy using it...except in the ransom note.

I don't, though, think the ransom note was dictated by John. I think if they'd both been involved that night, they'd both look like they'd just gotten up. Neither of them did. John was showered and shaved. Patsy was made-up and dressed. She, no doubt tweaking and recopying her ransom note, had run out of time, perhaps because John got up before his 5:30 alarm went off.

Why did Patsy burn through nine pieces of paper making a ransom note stuffed with Ramsey inside baseball? I think it was a clever attempt to frame John. He wouldn't perceive that he says, percent, and hence and adequate a lot. He didn't know that SBTC came from the conspicuously open Bible on his desk. But Patsy did. When she's being quizzed about that Bible during her interview, she never asks why all the questions, but she makes sure to say that it was always closed and that only John read it. On the first floor, an open dictionary had a corner folded up pointing to the word incest.

I do think this was too much to put together on the fly. I (reluctantly) suspect that this was an idea she'd been flirting with for some time. Spring 1996 had seen the Unabomber caught because of the unique word usage in his long manifesto. The story of his arrest was a huge deal. If Patsy was expecting to be replaced by another woman, her rough treatment of JonBenet would become known. That would be unacceptable for several reasons. Someone else would need to take the blame, uncontradicted by JonBenet.

Interesting points in this old post, Fr. Brown.

Also, I think the word "adequate" really wouldn't be used much in the majority of households. It does seem like something peculiar to John and/or he and Patsy.

The whole RN, though, seems ridiculous to me, and something I can't imagine anyone coming up with other than PR. It does seem an awful lot like she's pointing the finger at her husband, or, perhaps is trying first to point to IDI, but if that failed, the backup would be JR.

 

[ekardh]

The theory that an intruder killed JonBenet, and Patsy and/or John assumed Burke did it and staged a cover up is insanely farfetched. People who believe ekardh's theory think that "whoever garroted JonBenet did it for sadosexual reasons". No no no. You cannot know that. You think that no parent would garrote their own daughter because you would not garrote your own daughter in such a situation. This is a non sequitur. People are different from each other. From Patsy and/or John's perspective, JonBenet was already dead. So Patsy and/or John didn't think that they could cause JonBenet to suffer any more by garroting JonBenet. Parents routinely have their deceased children's bodies completely destroyed by burning their bodies to ashes in cremation. Why? Because the parents know that their deceasead sons and daughters are already dead, and burning their bodies won't cause any further suffering.

The fact that JonBenet was garroted is not evidence that IDI.

Someone cremating or dismembering their child's body to dispose of the evidence isn't quite the same as garroting them to stage a murder. Although such a thing is unfathomable, I understand it to be entering a dissociative state for their own self-preservation. Not quite so in this scenario. If we believe the Ramseys were wholly responsible for staging JonBenet's murder, the garroting is just too cruel and unusual. Not practical. JonBenet was bound, gagged and we have a ransom note. That ticks the boxes for a kidnapping, phony or otherwise. Then.... garroted? I think it was a deliberate act of sexual violence.

 

[CloudedTruth]

Someone cremating or dismembering their child's body to dispose of the evidence isn't quite the same as garroting them to stage a murder. Although such a thing is unfathomable, I understand it to be entering a dissociative state for their own self-preservation. Not quite so in this scenario. If we believe the Ramseys were wholly responsible for staging JonBenet's murder, the garroting is just too cruel and unusual. Not practical. JonBenet was bound, gagged and we have a ransom note. That ticks the boxes for a kidnapping, phony or otherwise. Then.... garroted? I think it was a deliberate act of sexual violence.

What stands out to me though, is that she was not bound and gagged as one would expect if it were a true kidnapping. The ligatures around her wrists were very loosely tied and over her t-shirt sleeves. The coroner noted in the autopsy report that he was able to put his fingers underneath the ligatures and they were easily removed. JR also was able to slip one of the ligatures off himself. And the length of the cord between her wrists was 15 1/2 inches, her wrists were not bound together. There is also evidence to suggest that the duct tape on JB's mouth was placed after death. The tape was not very adherent, and there was no skin damage found, which indicates that it wasn't effectively used to keep her mouth shut while she was alive. Being so loosely tied, the wrist ligatures also seemingly had no real purpose that one would expect to see in a kidnapping......to subdue or control the victim.

IMO this points to staging. It is also my opinion that the use of the garotte was used specifically to imply that this was a sex crime committed by someone with that proclivity.