The ransom note

[fr brown]

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.

From my kindle book, A Murder in Boulder:

Perfect Murder, Perfect Town mentions a Tom Clancy book that was in the Ramsey house: Red Storm Rising (1986). Red Storm Rising contains unusual language which also appears in the ransom note: faction, attaché, tactics, monitor, scan and two instances of constant scrutiny. (There are also six mentions of Lockheed.) Many of Tom Clancy’s other novels, and novels of the international-political-technothriller genre generally, contain these and other Ramsey ransom note words.

The Day After Tomorrow, the 1994 novel by Allan Folsom, contains the word faction, four mentions of beheading and even a mention of a garrote (coming shortly after the first mention of beheading), as well as mentions of countermeasures, monitoring, scanning and an admonition to “listen carefully.” When John Ramsey was asked about Folsom’s book in his 1998 interview, he said it “didn’t ring a bell.” When Patsy was asked about The Day After Tomorrow, she said that she “couldn’t remember that.” Then she was asked if she read Tom Clancy. She said no.

And:

Though John is from Michigan, both Ramseys have an interest in Southern culture and hold opinions about what it means to be Southern, something they talk about in both The Death of Innocence and The Other Side of Suffering: In DOI, they say politically correct people in Boulder were different from southerners and not in a good way; John says “we southerners” thought the people in the Boulder mall were bizarre; Also in accordance with custom in the South, a brunch was provided after JonBenét’s funeral which the Whites thought was in terrible taste; And as we all know, no self-respecting southern lady would wear white shoes after Labor Day. In TOSOS, John says that Melinda’s debutante coming-out was an old Southern tradition, and John was at pains to impress his future father-in-law with his adherence to good old Southern customs.

When I realized that the note was full of references to John (his net bonus, the name of his Atlanta Fat Cats club, a joke about his Southern fetish, words from the Tom Clancy books he liked to read, "SBTC" from the open Bible on his desk) it occurred to me that Patsy was framing him. While I do think that a first draft of the note must have been composed beforehand, I think she redrafted it a few times that night.

In 1996 Patsy could have expected some or all of these things to be linked to John. Just using crime scene clues and pre-and post-manifesto communications, investigators figured out a lot about the Unabomber, including that his favorite book would turn out to be The Secret Agent. 1996 was also the year Don Foster unmasked Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors using textual clues.

Even some ransom note elements that you wouldn't expect to be pre-planned might have been consciously added. That poster of An Officer and a Gentleman they had in their basement? As I rewatched the movie recently I saw to my surprise that the heroine worked in an actual brown paper bag manufacturing plant. I discovered that in a deposition John used the word "gentleman" when describing the commanding officer in his own naval officer candidate school.

Finally, the Ramsey crime scene staging echoes the original Presumed Innocent, which starred one of John's favorite actors, Harrison Ford. Rusty Sabich's wife whacks his mistress over the head with a box hatchet, binds her with cords to suggest a sexual strangling by torture, and plants her husband's body fluids and some carpet fibers from their house on the body. Both Ramseys probably saw that movie when it came out. I did. And it was out on VHS in 1996. Perhaps it's not too far-fetched to think this movie might have inspired Patsy's crime scene staging.

 

[gumshoe1]

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.

You view the garroting of a child that was already brain dead as too cruel and unusual. Patsy and/or John did not view it as too cruel and unusual. People are different from each other.