what are the most important unanswered questions?

[Lebowski]

(other than actual solutions to the case, like who actually did it, when, where, and why)

the questions i find myself thinking about most:

why did JR and PR stand by each other? never accused each other, never divorced, no signs of private tensions AFAIK, nothing. despite (IMO) very high odds RDI. ... the fact constrains RDI scenarios, IMO.

how complete was the snow coverage around the house at 6 AM? has the potential to rule out any exit route for an intruder. officers' photos of the exterior from around 8 AM should give a pretty good idea, if they are sufficiently thorough. and depending on the quality, they might even allow posterity to find any footprints officers might have missed -- or rule them out after a sufficient amount of squinting through a magnifying glass. AFAIK, these photos have not all been released, nor are they publicly available with traceable provenance.

what was it about the look JR and LA shared that apparently convinced her he was the killer? (she never quite said it, but she heavily implied it.) the look had a strong impression on her, and her conclusion would obviously be a big deal if true. yet AFAIK she never describes or characterizes the look he gave her. what was so significant about it? AIUI, here's the order of events: she tells him JBR is dead, he lets out a moan, she says to go back to the den -- to patsy --, they stand up, and that's when the nonverbal exchange happens. was he oddly unemotional for a moment? was he watching LA's face / reading her instead of apparently thinking about the awful news he just got and how he was going to tell his wife? something incongruent with the situation, like that? did he remind her of people who later turned out to be guilty?

 

[887sMtreme]

(other than actual solutions to the case, like who actually did it, when, where, and why)

the questions i find myself thinking about most:

why did JR and PR stand by each other? never accused each other, never divorced, no signs of private tensions AFAIK, nothing. despite (IMO) very high odds RDI. ... the fact constrains RDI scenarios, IMO.

how complete was the snow coverage around the house at 6 AM? has the potential to rule out any exit route for an intruder. officers' photos of the exterior from around 8 AM should give a pretty good idea, if they are sufficiently thorough. and depending on the quality, they might even allow posterity to find any footprints officers might have missed -- or rule them out after a sufficient amount of squinting through a magnifying glass. AFAIK, these photos have not all been released, nor are they publicly available with traceable provenance.

what was it about the look JR and LA shared that apparently convinced her he was the killer? (she never quite said it, but she heavily implied it.) the look had a strong impression on her, and her conclusion would obviously be a big deal if true. yet AFAIK she never describes or characterizes the look he gave her. what was so significant about it? AIUI, here's the order of events: she tells him JBR is dead, he lets out a moan, she says to go back to the den -- to patsy --, they stand up, and that's when the nonverbal exchange happens. was he oddly unemotional for a moment? was he watching LA's face / reading her instead of apparently thinking about the awful news he just got and how he was going to tell his wife? something incongruent with the situation, like that? did he remind her of people who later turned out to be guilty?

Remember, Arndt’s professional background included investigating sex crimes, including incest. She was no fainting flower when it came to encounters with perversion. It’s possible she saw something familiar in his affect that had the heavy impact she described.

 

[Lebowski]

sure. i just wish she had elaborated.

 

[887sMtreme]

sure. i just wish she had elaborated.

As do we all!

 

[Lebowski]

this is pure imagineering here, but the two possibilities that are coming to mind are:

1) he was studying LA's face, as if trying to gauge what she was thinking, instead of (as one would expect in that moment) processing devastating news and preparing to break it to his wife.

2) he made a little bit of a smirk or disdainful face in response to her saying "go to patsy", as if to say "pfft, you don't get it". something that would be consciously revealing to LA in the moment, but which would be deniable later.

 

[ispywithmylittleeye]

this is pure imagineering here, but the two possibilities that are coming to mind are:

1) he was studying LA's face, as if trying to gauge what she was thinking, instead of (as one would expect in that moment) processing devastating news and preparing to break it to his wife.

2) he made a little bit of a smirk or disdainful face in response to her saying "go to patsy", as if to say "pfft, you don't get it". something that would be consciously revealing to LA in the moment, but which would be deniable later.

Or guilty knowledge. He asked her if JB was dead after he carried her stiff decomposing body up a flight of stairs. Thats an eye roller for sure. No medical degree necessary once a body has been deceased for 10-12 hours. I dont think she could know if it was guilt or guilty involvement she was witnessing but after the ridiculous " is she gone" question, she must have known something was definitely not adding up. I absolutely do not dismiss her gut feeling. She's been mocked for her interview but she had a dead child before her. I have no doubt that this was extremely traumatic for all LE present.

 

[Lebowski]

JR could conceivably have been in denial, even if it had been obvious while he carried her that her arms were stiff, lips were blue, and there was already an odor of decay (per LA). it had only been something like half a minute.

i don't dismiss her gut feeling either. i still treat it with caution, because of the subjectivity and ambiguity of such a thing. but i'm no longer dismissive of it, after reading her full notes, and getting the sense she's a very careful and reliable observer. i just (sorry to repeat myself) wish she'd say more about what she saw in his face in that moment.

 

[Meara]

JR’s asking Linda Arndt whether JBR was dead has always been a huge red flag to me. Her body was cold, clearly in rigor mortis, lips blue, and already giving off the odor of decay. There was no way he hadn’t noticed; he had had to carry it upstairs holding it in front of him like a mannequin. Denial still seems an implausible explanation to me. My best guess is that he’d rehearsed the discovery scene mentally, imagining that JBR’s body would be found early on and by police, looking pretty much as he had last seen her, and he would ask, understandably, “Is she dead?” He hadn’t rehearsed “finding” the body himself, wasn’t at all prepared for its cadaverous state and, under the stress, spoke the line he’d rehearsed instead of speaking naturally. Linda Arndt would have known at once how bizarre the question was, and it would have contributed to the instinctive fear of him she felt when she was looking him in the eye up close. Just my conjecture.

 

[Lebowski]

fair enough

people can give their own most important unanswered questions, not just me. should have made that explicit in the original post.