JonBenet Ramsey - Do you think her Mother murdered her?

[3princesses4us]

Wow! I don't know what to think. All 5 of those people Goofy wrote about in the Ramsey's book sound guilty to me too! Will we ever know?

 

[paigevz]

It's also a symptom of RAD, reactive attachment disorder

QUOTE]

It can also be, as in the cases of my brother and me, a symptom of a small bladder or a deep sleeper.................................

 

[sha_lyn]

It's also a symptom of RAD, reactive attachment disorder

QUOTE]

It can also be, as in the cases of my brother and me, a symptom of a small bladder or a deep sleeper.................................

It can also be a symptom of food allergies
the combination of symptoms (bed wetting and UTI's) can be from many conditions including urine/bladder reflux

 

[T. Lynn]

Local lore (including an ex BPD cop that I know) believes the BPD knows who did it. But that the evidence was so mangled they can't make any arrests. Hopefully, new evidence will show up one day so that it can be resolved!

Just curious and since you know this ex BPD cop, did you tell you who they think did it?

 

[ChristmasElf]

What would be VERY interesting, is that if John Ramsey were to pass away anytime soon, and the police suddenly decide that the Ramseys did indeed do the crime.

 

[JerseyJanice]

JB's murder was a "perfect crime" meaning that no one person could be linked to whatever evidence remained. That much can not be disputed, since no one was ever arrested for or tried in the crime.

Was it a "perfect crime" by design? The answer to that question is "no way." Whoever did it, did it on the heat of the moment without any "plan" whatsoever.

Whoever did it didn't cover their tracks in any way that makes any sense.

Suppose, for example, that it were an accident that the parents tried to cover up. Why would they have put one of Patsy's paintbrushes in a garrote on a child already dead from a skull injury? Why would they have made all the elaborate knots that were found in the garrote? Or in the rope around the child's hands? Why would they have put duct tape over her mouth? Who else would hear her scream besides her parents or brother?

Why would the perpetrator write a ransom note--practice it even and leave the drafts behind--to make it look like a kidnapping when they knew the child's dead body was in the house?

Nothing about the evidence we know of makes any sense at all.

And that's my point. If the evidence were cut and dried and no plausible explanation could be found for most of it, why didn't a Grand Jury indict someone in that household for the child's murder?

 

[SueM in MN]

* Knowing the house layout so well - many communities require your house plans be filed when a house is built. These are easily accessible public records. If not public record, it would still be fairly easy to get your hands on them... In a subdivision, several different plans are used - again, readily accessible for anyone who wanted to do a little searching to get them.

i can't find a good internet link to the house plan, but the house was a large old house, originally built in the 1920s or 30s. It had been renovated and added onto a number of times since it was built. The basement was kind of a maze of small rooms and many of the rooms in the house had light switches that were not where you expected them to be (like behind a door).

2) JonBenet was found in the wine cellar of a very old Boulder mansion. With all the entertaining done, people knew where the wine cellar was.

If you look at any of the pictures of the "wine cellar", this is not the sort of room where you would bring guests to look at your wine collection or get wine. It was a small, windowless room of an old house, not a pleasant place to be . Also, from the books I have read, the room was not actually useed for storing wine, but just a general storage area.
Some of the books about the Ramsey case have a copy of the house plan - the whole house is sort of like a maze and seeing it, you realize that whoever was responsible for Jonbenet's death and taking her body down to the basement had to be very familiar with the house -especially in the middle of the night without turning on lots of lights.

I did think the parents had something to do with it, at first, but as time went on, TWO grand juries nor any of the multiple prosecutors could prosecute them, I've changed my mind.

I agree the police bungled this from the very beginning...

I think the police bungling things from the beginning was why no one in the family was charged. The grand juries didn't find them innocent, just that they felt there was not enough evidence to go forward....
A much different thing.

For those who think it might have been done by Jonbenet's brother, keep in mind that he was a fairly small 9 year old boy at the time of her death.

Also, the Longmont Daily Times-Call story is pretty much a re-writing of the Atlanta libel suit, which is basically re-stating the information that the Ramsey's lawyers had presented in the libel case (which was Mr. Wolf against the Ramsey family, so of course, they would make him look as guilty as possible). In order to win the libel case, Mr Wolf apparently had to prove that Patsy Ramsey killed her daughter (so that was the basis of his evidence). For the Ramseys to win, all they had to prove was that there was some evidence that pointed away from themselves (not necessarily that it was true or had been thoroughly investigated - just that doubt existed).

Perhaps the biggest downfall of the lawsuit was the claim that Patsy Ramsey killed her daughter and was naming other suspects to shift attention away from her.

That statement meant that to win the lawsuit, Wolf would have to prove that Patsy Ramsey was involved in her daughter’s death.

If you read the Ramseys' book (The Death of Innocence), they make all of the same claims/accusations in it as the article does. They leave out things though - like the facts that there is no evidence that Chris Wolf or Michael Helgoth were ever in their house (when the killer would have had to be pretty familiar with the house to even find the girl's bedroom). They also don't mention that Chris Wolf was interviewed a number of times by the police and willingly gave DNA, saliva and other samples (actually more co-operative than the Ramseys were). Another thing the Ramseys didn't mention was that Bill McReynolds (the Santa Claus) had been investigated by the police from almost the first day and was ruled out by the police. One of the rreasons was that he had had open heart surgery a few months before and was too frail to have carried Jonbenet's body down 2 stories from her bedroom to the basement (besides that there was no evidence he had ever seen their basement before.)

If you want to read something interesting, read the Ramsey's book and, as you are reading it, and use Perfect Murder, Perfect Town by Lawrence Shiller to look up the people they say the police never investigated. It's quite interesting to see just what was in the public record about those people.

 

[Cyndirella]

I have read several books on the case, including the one by the Ramseys and another by an ex BPD detective who was convinced Patsy did it. I don't think the parents had anything to do with it. There are several things that point to an intruder, one being unindentified male DNA in her underwear.

One theory is that an intruder entered the home while the family was gone to their friends' home for a Christmas party. The intent was to kidnap, not kill, JonBenet. The person had time to familiarize himself (or herself) with the layout of the home and to write the ransom note, then hid in the basement until the family returned home and got settled in bed. Then the intruder snuck up to JonBenet's room, leaving the ransom note on the way, and got her out of bed and took her to the basement. There has been speculation that a stun gun was used on her. Once in the basement, something went wrong with the plan - maybe JonBenet started making noises or fighting? - and it turned into a murder.

Unfortunately the BPD made such a mess of the crime scene and evidence we will probably never know who did it.

 

[juligrl]

No, but I think the family has a pretty good idea who did, but we'll never know.

 

[SueM in MN]

One theory is that an intruder entered the home while the family was gone to their friends' home for a Christmas party. The intent was to kidnap, not kill, JonBenet. The person had time to familiarize himself (or herself) with the layout of the home and to write the ransom note, then hid in the basement until the family returned home and got settled in bed. Then the intruder snuck up to JonBenet's room, leaving the ransom note on the way, and got her out of bed and took her to the basement. There has been speculation that a stun gun was used on her. Once in the basement, something went wrong with the plan - maybe JonBenet started making noises or fighting? - and it turned into a murder.

Unfortunately the BPD made such a mess of the crime scene and evidence we will probably never know who did it.

The one big hole in that theory is why would any intruder take her to the basement?
If the plan was to kidnap her, why take her to a part of the house where there were not doors to go outside? (passing several doors on the way down?)

 

[Honu]

The one big hole in that theory is why would any intruder take her to the basement?
If the plan was to kidnap her, why take her to a part of the house where there were not doors to go outside? (passing several doors on the way down?)

Say you're kidnapping a child and you need to get out, but you know the house has a burglar alarm. Your choices are -

1) A broken basement window, the one you most likely came in through and no alarm sounded.

or

2) A main floor door or window that will/could set off the alarm.

Which do you choose?

 

[PixieDust32]

I don't think she did.

But something weird happened there, I watched several shows about it in court tv, where for some reason everybody that was investigating the case was taken from it.

 

[Mimi Q]

No, I don't think Patsy Ramsey murdered her daughter.

 

[SueM in MN]

Say you're kidnapping a child and you need to get out, but you know the house has a burglar alarm. Your choices are -

1) A broken basement window, the one you most likely came in through and no alarm sounded.

or

2) A main floor door or window that will/could set off the alarm.

Which do you choose?

But, if you came in thru that window, you already know how tight and difficult it was to get in.
Getting out with a child - even if (according to the Ramseys) the child was stun gunned before carrying her down the stairs - would be much harder. If she was unconscious (for whatever reason), that would mean carrying a 45 pound, 47 inch tall child with as much muscle tone as a rag doll downstairs from her room, across half the downstairs to get to the basement. Then going down another set of stairs and negotiating thru a cluttered basement. All in the dark, without waking anyone.
(Here's a link to the Denver Post's graphic of the house plan).

Then, you would have to figure out how to get the unconscious child out the window and follow her out.
If you figured that you could not kidnap her and needed to hide her in the house, that would mean going thru 2 doors (you have to pass thru the boiler room to get to the wine cellar) into rooms with no exit.

If you had snuck in the house before and looked around for several hours, you would have had time to study the alarm system. You would probably know by looking at it that it was not alarmed (at least according to what the Ramseys have said in police interviews, it wasn't that night). And, if you didn't know, you would have had enough time to see which windows/door were not alarmed at all so that you would not need to climb thru the window.

 

[beachblanket]

WIth all due respect, none of the "it was a crazed pedophile intruder" theories here address the weaknesses of that theory I pointed out earlier, specially:

- why would said "intruder" leave a ransom note -- one that conveniently mentioned a ransom figure that just happened to be the same as John Ramsey's 1996 bonus, and written on paper from the parents bedroom --and then kill/leave the supposed "kidnap victim" in the house?

You leave a ransom note as an explanation (or cover) for someone disappearing, and presumably want to avoid leaving a blatant evidence trail (e.g., asking for the exact amount of someone's recent bonus) showing you have current, intimate knowledge of the victim's family.

In addition, announcing that you are "kidnapping" someone while leaving their body behind for their family to discover makes no sense whatsoever, and I'm still waiting for anyone supporting the "intruder" theory to address that issue.

- If indeed there was an "intruder" who grabbed the child planning to take her out of the house before something when "wrong"...why -- after murdering her did the "intruder" -- who presumably at that point would want to be getting out of the house/murder scene ASAP -- go to all the time and effort to dress and arrange the murder scene so carefully? Specifically,

- Laying the body out and covering it with a blanket
- removing the cord that tied her hands
- removing a garrote from her neck that was so tightly wound that the autopsy photos (which are unfortunately readily available online) show a deep, deep red furrow all the way around her neck?
- leaving the murder weapon (potentally holding evidence) at the crime scene?

In addition, the "stun gun marks" theory some have refrerred to was rebutted years ago. Dr. Werner Spitz, a nationally known pathologist (who has worked on major cases including the assassination of J.F. Kennedy) and an expert on weapon impacts examined those marks. To quote him directly:

"They don't look like stun gun marks at all. A stun gun injury is an electrical burn, it's a burn essentially. And these aren't burns."

Nope - the "intruder" theory just doesn't hold up.

 

[Robinrs]

What would be VERY interesting, is that if John Ramsey were to pass away anytime soon, and the police suddenly decide that the Ramseys did indeed do the crime.

I really don't think the police could punish them the way the afterlife would IF that were true....

I watched the show on CourtTV last night, VERY interesting. I have to agree with Cyndirella's idea that the intruder was there during the party and the fact that that was not mentioned confused me. Why wasn't it even considered when they went thru how LONG they had to be there.

I consider myself a lie detector (have RARELY been wrong) and the interrogations of the Ramseys last night left me with no doubt that they were not involved. AND BEFORE the show I thought they WERE!

I now understand why they were never charged.

 

[sha_lyn]

Laying the body out and covering it with a blanket
- removing the cord that tied her hands
- removing a garrote from her neck that was so tightly wound that the autopsy photos (which are unfortunately readily available online) show a deep, deep red furrow all the way around her neck?

Most "experts" say that such actions are usually a sign that the killer was very close to /loved the victim.

 

[pirateofthecarolinas]

I do not think that John or Patsy Ramsey had anything to do with JonBenet's death.

Didn't the Ramsey's open their home for a charity (Holiday Tour of Homes) one year. A lot of people go through those fund raiser Open Houses.

Lori

 

[beachblanket]

Most "experts" say that such actions are usually a sign that the killer was very close to /loved the victim.

Bingo.

And another point about all the "it must have been an intruder" posts: most seem to base that entire argument on the fact the Ramesys had previously had "a lot of people in their house."

Fine, but that doesn't explain how the supposed "intruder" conveniently happened to ask for a ransom in an amount that was exactly what John Ramseys' 1996 bonus was (which was not published or public info).

Oh, I know the "rebuttal" -- "well, it was someone close to the Ramseys who would have known, yeah, that's the ticket." Well, hello --- the investigators dug into that almost a decade ago -- dug very, very deeply -- and no, none of the small universe of co-workers of John ever became suspects.

Also, did it have ever pass through the minds of the "it was an intruder" crowd that the supposed "closed crazed pedophile co-worker or friend of the family" might be smart enough not to draw attention to themselves by asking for a ransom that showed intimate knowledge of the family? DUH UH...

Also, why was the handwriting on the ransom note so close to that of Patsy? To the point where handwriting experts stated that after comparing the writing on the note to that of 73 suspects, Patsy Ramsey was the only one who could not be excluded as its author.

In fact, the ransom note handwriting tangent gets even better. Steve Thomas, one of the former lead detectives in the Ramsey case, has accused Patsy Ramsey of actually changing her handwriting after the murder, in an attempt to "cover her tracks." To quote Thomas on the specifics:

"In the ransom note, lowercase manuscript almost exclusively used, I think, 98 percent of the time. What was telling was that after the Ramseys were given a copy of the ransom note, the lowercase manuscript almost disappeared entirely from Patsy's post-homicide writing. Writing samples from Ramseys' personal letters and notes she wrote before the killing contain 732 manuscript a's that look like the lowercase typewritten a. She switched to a cursive a after the murder."

 

[Blondie]

It's been interesting to read everyone's theories and opinions.

I came across this on the 'net and thought I'd share it with you all to see what you think. Click for the link.