JonBenet Ramsey - a question for those who follow this story

[Teresa Pitman]

Those of you who feel this was totally out of character for the Ramseys because they were a nice normal family - I have worked in Child Protection in a wealthy community. People would say to us "there's no need for child protection services here." Hah! You would not believe how many lovely, wealthy, "normal" families had some pretty awful secrets: children who were physically abused, children who were sexually abused, children who were exposed to inappropriate things...and yes, once in a long while, children who were murdered. We think we know what child abusers look like and act like, but we really don't.

 

[sunshinehighway]

I saw the first episode of Dr Phil today. So much of it was a recap of the story with excerpts of an interview with John Ramsey. Brooke seemed uncomfortable but then again how many people are comfortable being interviewed on a sensitive topic in what will be viewed by millions.

I watched it too. Yeah he seemed uncomfortable. I attributed the smiling to that. They didn't really get into too much but I thought it was awkward. Some of the questions Dr. Phil seemed out of place considering he was a little boy when this all happened 20 years ago. He probably doesn't really have clear memories of a lot of things or didn't really understand some things at the time. I don't know. It just came off as awkward because you have an adult answering questions about things that happened when he was a kid. The answers to some things sound questionable coming out of a man's mouth but you have to separate it and remember he's speaking about when he was a kid. One example is why he didn't leave his room when his mom came in frantically looking for Jonbenet and later when a police officer came in.
It sounds off for him, as an adult, to say he scared and it was really early (still dark) so he was afraid and just stayed in his room. As an adult it doesn't seem right because how could he not want to find out what was going on. As a kid though, I could see him not wanting to know what's going on because he was afraid.

 

[msjprincess]

I watched it too. Yeah he seemed uncomfortable. I attributed the smiling to that. They didn't really get into too much but I thought it was awkward. Some of the questions Dr. Phil seemed out of place considering he was a little boy when this all happened 20 years ago. He probably doesn't really have clear memories of a lot of things or didn't really understand some things at the time. I don't know. It just came off as awkward because you have an adult answering questions about things that happened when he was a kid. The answers to some things sound questionable coming out of a man's mouth but you have to separate it and remember he's speaking about when he was a kid. One example is why he didn't leave his room when his mom came in frantically looking for Jonbenet and later when a police officer came in.
It sounds off for him, as an adult, to say he scared and it was really early (still dark) so he was afraid and just stayed in his room. As an adult it doesn't seem right because how could he not want to find out what was going on. As a kid though, I could see him not wanting to know what's going on because he was afraid.

I agree. I can totally understand a 9yo being afraid to come out of their room to see what's going on.

 

[EMom]

Those of you who feel this was totally out of character for the Ramseys because they were a nice normal family - I have worked in Child Protection in a wealthy community. People would say to us "there's no need for child protection services here." Hah! You would not believe how many lovely, wealthy, "normal" families had some pretty awful secrets: children who were physically abused, children who were sexually abused, children who were exposed to inappropriate things...and yes, once in a long while, children who were murdered. We think we know what child abusers look like and act like, but we really don't.

I have represented children removed from the home due to abuse or neglect and I do not base my statements about the Ramseys on their wealth or social status. The wealthy can abuse and neglect just as easily as the poor. What I am saying is that there has never been any evidence that this family was anything other than a normal, loving family, albeit a wealthy one in which the mother and daughter had a beauty pageant hobby. And since all evidence shows this family was a normal, loving family, NOTHING suggests any remote reason any member would murder JonBenet period.....let alone in such a brutal and vicious manner. It defies logic. When you couple that with plenty of evidence to suggest an intruder, then murder by intruder is the logical answer.

 

[Snap Crackle Pop]

I mean his answers make sense since when this went down he was a kid, but like his smiling and it was the entire time, and while it could have been uncomfortable he really rubbed me the wrong way. Like the impression I got from him was that he was annoyed that this whole thing was still going on and that people were still trying to figure out what happened to his sister, you would think that he would have been happy people still wanted answers.

 

[EMom]

I mean his answers make sense since when this went down he was a kid, but like his smiling and it was the entire time, and while it could have been uncomfortable he really rubbed me the wrong way. Like the impression I got from him was that he was annoyed that this whole thing was still going on and that people were still trying to figure out what happened to his sister, you would think that he would have been happy people still wanted answers.

His sister was brutally murdered and his family's life was ruined. I have a sneaking suspicion that alone could mess you up, but coupled with being aware since age 9 that lots of people think you killed your sister would probably cinch it. By now, in his shoes, I wouldn't give a damn about what people thought of me.

 

[disney4us2002]

I have represented children removed from the home due to abuse or neglect and I do not base my statements about the Ramseys on their wealth or social status. The wealthy can abuse and neglect just as easily as the poor. What I am saying is that there has never been any evidence that this family was anything other than a normal, loving family, albeit a wealthy one in which the mother and daughter had a beauty pageant hobby. And since all evidence shows this family was a normal, loving family, NOTHING suggests any remote reason any member would murder JonBenet period.....let alone in such a brutal and vicious manner. It defies logic. When you couple that with plenty of evidence to suggest an intruder, then murder by intruder is the logical answer.

Do you know them personally or have friends in their circle? It seems you have very strong feelings about the family and I just wondered if there was more to your intense defense of them. I'm really not sure I lean one way or another about them or the intruder theory. I also work in child welfare and have done tons of home studies over the years and really felt I "knew" families but there is not a chance I would ever feel I knew any of them well enough to conclude there was 0% chance "something" could happen in any of them under the right circumstances. It seems every time some terrible abuse/murder occurs there are always friends and family members that are shocked and on tv saying they just can't believe so and so could do something so horrible....

Anyway, just my random thoughts.

 

[LisaR]

I just spent an hour of my life watching Dr. Phil. Wow! What a ridiculously sensationalized show. I love the captions underneath advertising the mom who wants to get rid of her knife wielding, twerking 13 y/o! What a joke of a show. I think they said at the beginning that Dr. Phil is the number 1 rated daytime show? That would explain so much about our country.

As for the "riveting" interview that he will drag out over the next three days, I really didn't learn a whole lot. As someone else mentioned, it's hard to expect an adult to explain the actions of their 9 y/o self. He didn't hear anything, he stayed in bed, and he was sent to stay with a friend. What more do we really expect him to reveal: "Oh hey, by the way, I killed her!"

The detective actually planned out how many bullets she had in case she had to take out most of the people in the house? Really??

No clue why Burke or John would agree to go on this show.

 

[sunshinehighway]

I just spent an hour of my life watching Dr. Phil. Wow! What a ridiculously sensationalized show. I love the captions underneath advertising the mom who wants to get rid of her knife wielding, twerking 13 y/o! What a joke of a show. I think they said at the beginning that Dr. Phil is the number 1 rated daytime show? That would explain so much about our country.

As for the "riveting" interview that he will drag out over the next three days, I really didn't learn a whole lot. As someone else mentioned, it's hard to expect an adult to explain the actions of their 9 y/o self. He didn't hear anything, he stayed in bed, and he was sent to stay with a friend. What more do we really expect him to reveal: "Oh hey, by the way, I killed her!"

The detective actually planned out how many bullets she had in case she had to take out most of the people in the house? Really??

No clue why Burke or John would agree to go on this show.

No kidding. I couldn't believe I dvr'd Dr. Phil.
About the detective, yeah she said that. They showed that part of an interview with her on the A&E show. I had the same thoughts about it that John Ramsey had. It was very dramatic and I wasn't really sure why she was thinking she'd have to shoot her way out of the house.
Her saying all of that does seem to bolster the idea that the police made up their minds about the killer being a family member and stick with it. I mean, yeah automatically you first think of the family but with her making that statement in an interview when they'd never been charged (I'm not sure when the interview was) seems to indicate she made up her mind pretty fast and stuck with it.

 

[EMom]

Do you know them personally or have friends in their circle? It seems you have very strong feelings about the family and I just wondered if there was more to your intense defense of them. I'm really not sure I lean one way or another about them or the intruder theory. I also work in child welfare and have done tons of home studies over the years and really felt I "knew" families but there is not a chance I would ever feel I knew any of them well enough to conclude there was 0% chance "something" could happen in any of them under the right circumstances. It seems every time some terrible abuse/murder occurs there are always friends and family members that are shocked and on tv saying they just can't believe so and so could do something so horrible....

Anyway, just my random thoughts.

No, I do no know the family. Even before I became a lawyer, cases like this interested me. After, they did more than interest me.

I will say on a personal note, I once knew a dear friend whose son committed suicide in a very public manner (think lead Yahoo story) and the way I saw the media cover that story changed the way I perceived coverage of any news story. I knew the facts and goodness knows they were bad enough, but the apparently the true facts weren't sensational enough for the press. So the media glammed up the facts, did a lot of harm to innocent people along the way and gave no thought to collateral damage. They really pushed the story being about him killing himself over a girl, when in reality it had nothing to do with that. Never mind that some poor teenage girl had to endure people whispering that SHE was the cause of him killing himself and perhaps she had some undeserved guilt, all because that made for a juicier story. I am all too aware that the press will print stories with little to back it up, but in the Ramsey case, they had a police force feeding them fiction to boot.

I am usually very pro prosecution, but I want a solid case. And I prefer to go after the actual killer and not just the one who makes for sizzling headlines. Cases like this disgust me because a child has lost her life, an entire family's life was ruined, and a killer was able to walk away free to commit more crimes. All because of incredibly shoddy police work. There is ample evidence of an intruder. Ample. The police ignored it all. No forensic evidence implicates the family. Nothing in their history would have lead to this. It really is just that simple. But the police had tunnel vision.

Injustice on this level gets my attention.

 

[LisaR]

Dr. Phil is on Colbert.
He keeps saying Burke is the "missing link."
In twenty years there's been one person who was in that house the night JBR was murdered that we've never heard from. He's the missing link. He's the one we need to hear from. The missing link.

Yeah, I can't believe mom and dad didn't sell their 9 y/o son to the media so we could have gotten to the bottom of this sooner. They should have put him on Jerry Springer. He would have provided the missing link in the JBR case and proven who his real parents were at the same time.

 

[NHdisneylover]

I mean his answers make sense since when this went down he was a kid, but like his smiling and it was the entire time, and while it could have been uncomfortable he really rubbed me the wrong way. Like the impression I got from him was that he was annoyed that this whole thing was still going on and that people were still trying to figure out what happened to his sister, you would think that he would have been happy people still wanted answers.

I think this is a backwards attitude---people are not caring about his sister really---they are sensationalizing her story and making money off of her death and the mystery sourrounding it, and turning guessing what happened into a hobby. Really, I think that would be a horrible thing to have the legacy of a lost relative be and I would be annoyed and wish the media and people would drop it unless and unitl some new real evidence came to light, or at least I think I would be.


FWIW: I have not followed the story much in the past decade----hard to escape it entirely as it happened in the town i grew up in and on the day my oldest was born--but rarely does morbid curiosity get the better of me---I opened this thread becuase I thought there had been some break in the case while I was on vacation last week--didn't realize it was just more random speculation based on a TV show bumping their ratings by using this little girl'S death to be sensational even 20 years later--how sad.

 

[Tasha228]

I watched it too. Yeah he seemed uncomfortable. I attributed the smiling to that. They didn't really get into too much but I thought it was awkward. Some of the questions Dr. Phil seemed out of place considering he was a little boy when this all happened 20 years ago. He probably doesn't really have clear memories of a lot of things or didn't really understand some things at the time. I don't know. It just came off as awkward because you have an adult answering questions about things that happened when he was a kid. The answers to some things sound questionable coming out of a man's mouth but you have to separate it and remember he's speaking about when he was a kid. One example is why he didn't leave his room when his mom came in frantically looking for Jonbenet and later when a police officer came in.
It sounds off for him, as an adult, to say he scared and it was really early (still dark) so he was afraid and just stayed in his room. As an adult it doesn't seem right because how could he not want to find out what was going on. As a kid though, I could see him not wanting to know what's going on because he was afraid.

I agree 100%. Unless he really was some psychotic 9 year old that went into a killing rampage on his own sister, I feel so sorry for him! And I think it's great his parents tried to shield him and give him a normal life. Can you imagine spending almost all of your childhood and your entire adulthood not only losing 2 sisters and your mother but never being allowed to do anything without it being scrutinized because perhaps you did something heinous to your own sister? How horrible to not even be able to grieve without being watched to see if you are grieving correctly! And anyone that has siblings knows how deep that bond can be. I wonder what made him even do this interview. Dh and I were watching and I said, "What in the world does Dr. Phil think is going to happen here? Does he think he is going to be the one to save the day and get Burke to suddenly confess? Because it sure seems like he's drilling him." I remember being a kid and I have an 8 yo ds and 11 yo dd. I don't think his answers are all that bizaare for a child that was only 9. And it's been 20 years. Of course he doesn't remember every detail. Geez.

 

[kidshop]

I have only watched the a&e special, and I remembered one more thing....the date of death on the headstone is Dec 25. That was one of the curiosities since they got home around 9pm dec 25. Seems more likely she was killed on the 26 th. has her estimated time of death ever been released?

After watching John I just don't get any sort of creep /evil vibe from him. He seems genuine. Patsy, not so much. Those are just my impressions.

 

[cabanafrau]

No, I do no know the family. Even before I became a lawyer, cases like this interested me. After, they did more than interest me.

I will say on a personal note, I once knew a dear friend whose son committed suicide in a very public manner (think lead Yahoo story) and the way I saw the media cover that story changed the way I perceived coverage of any news story. I knew the facts and goodness knows they were bad enough, but the apparently the true facts weren't sensational enough for the press. So the media glammed up the facts, did a lot of harm to innocent people along the way and gave no thought to collateral damage. They really pushed the story being about him killing himself over a girl, when in reality it had nothing to do with that. Never mind that some poor teenage girl had to endure people whispering that SHE was the cause of him killing himself and perhaps she had some undeserved guilt, all because that made for a juicier story. I am all too aware that the press will print stories with little to back it up, but in the Ramsey case, they had a police force feeding them fiction to boot.

I am usually very pro prosecution, but I want a solid case. And I prefer to go after the actual killer and not just the one who makes for sizzling headlines. Cases like this disgust me because a child has lost her life, an entire family's life was ruined, and a killer was able to walk away free to commit more crimes. All because of incredibly shoddy police work. There is ample evidence of an intruder. Ample. The police ignored it all. No forensic evidence implicates the family. Nothing in their history would have lead to this. It really is just that simple. But the police had tunnel vision.

Injustice on this level gets my attention.

I have no idea how this little girl was murdered or why. It's a shame the person responsible hasn't been brought to justice. What I find supremely disturbing is the thought that it is incredibly possible that a family was victimized in an inhumane way by the murder of their daughter/sister, in the sanctuary of their own home and then continuously attacked for 20 years now by the press and a lot of public speculation that they are responsible. They've never even had a trial but have been punished anyway, as if speculation and assumptions -- mostly from people who have never even seen any genuine evidence, should be the standard by which it's okay to destroy their lives.

 

[NHdisneylover]

I have no idea how this little girl was murdered or why. It's a shame the person responsible hasn't been brought to justice. What I find supremely disturbing is the thought that it is incredibly possible that a family was victimized in an inhumane way by the murder of their daughter/sister, in the sanctuary of their own home and then continuously attacked for 20 years now by the press and a lot of public speculation that they are responsible. They've never even had a trial but have been punished anyway, as if speculation and assumptions -- mostly from people who have never even seen any genuine evidence, should be the standard by which it's okay to destroy their lives.

This. So very much this.

 

[Tasha228]

I have no idea how this little girl was murdered or why. It's a shame the person responsible hasn't been brought to justice. What I find supremely disturbing is the thought that it is incredibly possible that a family was victimized in an inhumane way by the murder of their daughter/sister, in the sanctuary of their own home and then continuously attacked for 20 years now by the press and a lot of public speculation that they are responsible. They've never even had a trial but have been punished anyway, as if speculation and assumptions -- mostly from people who have never even seen any genuine evidence, should be the standard by which it's okay to destroy their lives.

Exactly! All I keep thinking is every day they are forced to relive her death over and over and over again. Losing a child is horrible enough but this would seem like sheer torture to me. I think they were much more civil than I would be in their shoes by this point.

 

[pryncess527]

Those of you who feel this was totally out of character for the Ramseys because they were a nice normal family - I have worked in Child Protection in a wealthy community. People would say to us "there's no need for child protection services here." Hah! You would not believe how many lovely, wealthy, "normal" families had some pretty awful secrets: children who were physically abused, children who were sexually abused, children who were exposed to inappropriate things...and yes, once in a long while, children who were murdered. We think we know what child abusers look like and act like, but we really don't.

Actually, I don't think i have seen a single person suggest this was out of character because they were a nice normal family. I've never seen anyone use the word "normal" to describe them, and I certainly don't think their wealth means they are above this.

I think that despite the fact that there are many odd things about this family, there is just no evidence to merit the kind of speculation they've been subjected to.

 

[cabanafrau]

Actually, I don't think i have seen a single person suggest this was out of character because they were a nice normal family. I've never seen anyone use the word "normal" to describe them, and I certainly don't think their wealth means they are above this.

I think that despite the fact that there are many odd things about this family, there is just no evidence to merit the kind of speculation they've been subjected to.

I can tell you I would have a hard time judging how normal or odd this family is. I've only seen them through a media lens at a time when they were either guilty and desperately hiding a secret or hideously traumatized and grieving. Both of those ideas make me think that "normal" would have changed for this family forever and I'll never be able to judge what the family Jon Benet knew and lived with was like.

 

[pryncess527]

I can tell you I would have a hard time judging how normal or odd this family is. I've only seen them through a media lens at a time when they were either guilty and desperately hiding a secret or hideously traumatized and grieving. Both of those ideas make me think that "normal" would have changed for this family forever and I'll never be able to judge what the family Jon Benet knew and lived with was like.

True. I just meant I have not seen anyone suggest that the Ramsey's could not have done this because they were normal. Seems like the opposite is far more common.