Premeditated?

I haven't added any new posts to this blog for some time, basically because I felt I'd said all I had to say on this case. However, I've continued to respond to reader's comments all along, and there have been quite a few. Unfortunately the old gadget that once listed recent comments is apparently broken, so I apologize to those interested in keeping up with the comments, because they're hard to find. I just added a search mechanism to the blog, however, so if you sign with your name, rather than "anonymous," you'll hopefully be able to more easily find any comments you've made. And if you have a favorite topic, you can now look it up.

I'm posting again thanks to some comments by someone calling himself "Pete," who kept insisting that the ransom note was too well thought out and too detailed to have been written after the murder. Pete feels sure JonBenet was killed by an intruder, but at the same time it's hard for him to believe the intruder could have composed such a long, complicated note while at the Ramsey home. While Pete is sure John didn't write the note, and of course I'm sure he did, his argument for premeditation is kind of convincing, I must admit. So thank you, Pete. (And I want also to apologize to Pete for sometimes being rude and impatient when responding to his posts, which was uncalled for and unfair.)


If the note was written ahead of time, however, that presents a serious problem for any intruder theory, because it was hand printed on a pad from the Ramsey home. At one point Pete suggested that the intruder must have written it ahead of time and then copied it onto the notepad when he got to the Ramsey home, but that doesn't make much sense to me because I see no reason for him to do that.

Of course, someone close to the Ramseys could have taken the notepad with him, written the note on it, and then returned. Which sounds good at first, until one asks oneself: why? The only reason for doing that would be to make it look as though one of the Ramseys wrote it, but that would work only if the intruder actually forged John or Patsy's hand. But there is no evidence of that, and none of the document examiners on either side of the fence ever suggested the note could be a deliberate forgery. A "ransom" note written by an intruder, or one that looks like it was written by an intruder, could be seen as intruder evidence, so if the intruder were trying to set John or Patsy up, why would he leave a note in his own hand? Well, obviously, he wouldn't. So if the note was written ahead of time, it could not have been written by an intruder.

Which leaves us with the question: if John or Patsy wrote the note, was it written ahead of time? If so, that tells us the murder was premeditated, which casts the case in a somewhat different light. If in fact the murder was premeditated, we can pretty confidently rule out Patsy, because I can see no motive for her wanting to kill the child who was the apple of her eye. The only plausible reason ever given for Patsy as the killer was the possibility of an accident, but if the note was written in advance, the murder was clearly no accident. And since Burke obviously didn't write the note, the only one left is the one I've been focused on all along: John.

In the past, when asked whether I thought John could have premeditated this crime, I responded in the negative, because if premeditation were involved, then I felt sure he wouldn't have hand printed the note, but would have come prepared with something printed or typed. And that still makes the most sense to me. But I'm also impressed by Pete's argument regarding the length and complexity of the note, and the fact that it is written in such a cool, systematic manner, with every i dotted and every t crossed, with all the letters and words so consistently spaced and the left margin followed so carefully.

I'm also bothered by the discovery I made earlier (http://solvingjonbenet.blogspot.com/2012/08/ruled-out-part-3-courier-new.html), that the note looks like it was traced or copied from a computer font:



That sort of preparation also takes time. So now I'm thinking that maybe the crime was premeditated after all. Ideally, of course, it would have been safer to come up with a printed or typed note, but we have to remember that John's plan could easily have included destroying the note before the police had a chance to retrieve it, claiming the kidnappers wanted it returned. So. If for some reason he didn't have access to a handy printer or typewriter when preparing his note, he might have felt confident about hand printing it, since if all went according to plan, the authorities would never have gotten their hands on it anyhow.

John spent several hours of Xmas day at the airport, and that has always struck me as a bit suspicious. That could have been his opportunity. He'd have taken his laptop with him, composed the note using a word processor (but not automatically saving any of it), and copied or traced it onto the note pad. Why he would take a notepad from his house to write his note on is not easy to explain. But in his mind, it might simply have been the handiest source of writing paper available. And if the note had been destroyed at the proper moment, it could never be traced back to his house in any case.

I'm not giving up entirely on the possibility of John writing the note after the murder, because JonBenet was probably killed fairly early in the evening and John would have had several hours to compose, revise and copy it. But I find the possibility of premeditation very interesting, if not completely convincing.