Hi there, Roy,
Thank you once again for your thoughtful and sensitive post. Believe me, I do understand where you are coming from.
WRT ST, I've mentioned on here before that my mother and sisters think there's a new circle of hell waiting for the BPD, with ST marked out for particular attention. My mother can, and does, cite example after example of what she perceives as his misogyny and she thinks that, in his haste to demonstrate how New Age the BPD had become, he was incredibly mean about some people (eg. Kris Gibson's nickname, 'Granola,' has been preserved for posterity despite her having a pretty insignificant role in the case). Similarly, my sister is a rape counsellor and took real exception to his description of a rape in Boulder and in fact stopped reading his book once she got to that passage. I forget what the problem was and I certainly don't know that I agreed with her. However, I do realise that ST wasn't perfect and I think he made some mistakes in the Ramsey case (getting involved with Shapiro for one).
However, when we are talking about what he did to the Ramseys, it's easy to forget what they did to him. For example, DoI was a sustained attack on him and it was published before his book. They try to convey the idea that he was a young idiot who hadn't a clue what he was doing; they refer to him as 'sick' for a particular line of investigation despite the fact that this line was necessary in a crime with a sexual component; they quote John Douglas as thinking that he and Gosage were like red-necked small town cops who resented intrusion from the outside expert; they objected to questions about their private lives; they suggest that it was he alone who thought they were guilty despite the fact that there were plenty of experts who agreed with him and in fact informed his opinion; they mock his thinking that Patsy was flirting with him during the interview (which Patsy proceeded to do during the LKL interview) and; they hint at mental illness in their discussion of his exit from the BPD. The list is endless. Note that this attack was before ST had done much other than resign.
Other things had happened to ST, too, things which can't be pinned on Team Ramsey, but which I'm sure made him think that there were sinister forces at work - the mutilated cat, for example.
The Ramseys were part of a whole phalanx of critics who suggested that money was his main motivation in writing the book. Firstly, were he an especially greedy person, he'd never have gone to work in the public sector. Secondly - and this is bafflingly often overlooked - had money been the prime motivation, he would have agreed to talk to the Globe and the whole blackmailing incident which persuaded him to write the book would never have happened. Finally, given what the Ramsey case had taught him about institutions, writing a book was a more effective way to expose Boulder than complaining to, say, the Governor. In fairness, there may also have been a bit of hubris in there, too, and the thought of a few dollars when he had just quit the only job he was trained for may well have been a consideration. But, hey, no one's claiming he's perfect.
You talk of how little he had to go on but he sat watching Patsy during a 4.5 hour police interview. Another thing that is often overlooked about ST is that he was judged sufficiently adept at interpreting body language and interviewing suspects that he actually taught police academy classes on the subject. He had seen all the evidence, being case curator and affiant. Of course, he may have been wrong aboutPatsy, but he certainly didn't reach his conclusion lightly or frivilously.
The big thing, though, is: what if they did do it and put him through 6 years of hell just for the sake of appearances? I keep giving these local examples for which I apologise - I'm sure there are better American examples of which I'm just not aware. Anyway, I don't know how popular an author Jeffrey Archer is in the US but one of the papers carried a story about his going with a prostitute. At the time, he was very senior in the Conservative Party and a great favourite of Margaret Thatcher. He sued the paper for defamation and won, the prostitute who had been dragged into the whole saga against her will being vilified by the judge who essentially called her a
who no man would go with if he was married to the 'fragrant' Mary Archer. A few years later, it was proven that Archer and various associates had lied and that he had in fact been with the prostitute. He went to prison for perjury but not before the prostitute who had been so vilified died so she never saw her name cleared. What if ST lost his home and savings and they did it? Your argument cuts both ways.
Certainly, ideally a public servant wouldn't divulge case information but frankly, by the time he started, pretty much everyone else had been at it for several months. Two wrongs don't make a right, of course, but he probably felt that, if he couldn't beat them, he might as well join them. There is at least one poster on the Internet with FBI connections who knew that they were desperate to recruit him but that they couldn't once he had broken confidentiality on a case - to that extent, you could say he's taken his punishment for any indiscretion.
