Newcomers to this blog are advised to begin with the first two posts, Just the Facts, Ma'am and Case Solved, which explain in very general terms why I believe I've solved this case. Some important questions are answered in the following post, Misunderstandings, Misconceptions, Misdirections. After that feel free to browse whatever topics might interest you (see blog archive).

NB: If anyone has trouble posting a comment, email it to doktorgosh (at) live.com, and I'll post it for you.

Notice to readers of my Kindle book: I recently noticed that, on certain devices (though not all), the Table of Contents begins with Chapter One and omits the Introduction and Preface. Since the Introduction is especially important, I urge everyone to make sure to begin reading at the very beginning of the book, not the first chapter in the Table of Contents. Thank you.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

The 911 Call - Part 2

I seem to be repeating myself a lot lately, so please forgive me if once again I insist, in bold: if both John and Patsy Ramsey had been collaborating on a staged kidnapping, the 911 call would not have been made while the body was still in the house.

As I see it, my reasoning (see previous post) is perfectly logical. Yet hardly anyone among those who correctly reject the intruder theory seems ready to accept it. The prevailing idea is that either Patsy or Burke struck and killed JonBenet, in a rage over bedwetting or out of jealousy, or whatever, and that Patsy and John got together to concoct both a pedophile attack and a kidnapping, complete with phoney "ransom" note, in a desperate attempt to cover it up. And ever since I began explaining, on the various Internet forums, how the 911 call was inconsistent with this scenario, I've been met with  a steady stream of very odd alternate explanations for why Patsy and John would agree to call the police before they'd had an opportunity to get the body out of the house.


Here are some, with my responses:
1. The call was made so early because they were scheduled on an early flight to Charevoix that morning, so had no choice but to call 911 as soon as possible.

Response: they could easily have cancelled that flight, either claiming someone was ill, or else explaining that JonBenet had been "kidnapped" and they needed time to collect the ransom and pay it.

2. They must have had a change of heart and decided they didn't want to dump JonBenet's body in some remote place where it wouldn't get a "proper burial."

Response: if they'd changed their minds about dumping the body and decided to call 911 right away, then they would not have mentioned the potentially incriminating "ransom" note at all, but simply reported that their daughter had been assaulted and killed while they were asleep. They would also have removed the body from the windowless basement room, since there would have been no reason for her attacker to hide it.

3. They were in a panic and not thinking straight.

Response: the note was not written by someone who wasn't thinking very carefully about what to say and how to say it. Just about every i is dotted, every t is crossed, the margins are strictly observed, the spacing between words is consistent and the grammar is, for the most part, faultless. Precise instructions are provided, with specific dollar amounts for the ransom and very clear timing information as to when to expect a phone call. Very specific warnings are given, in a consistent, coherent manner. The note is consistent and clearly organized overall, with a beginning, middle and end. While the writer must have been extremely stressed, he or she was clearly in complete control of his or her emotions. If, as so many assume, Patsy wrote this carefully prepared two and a half page note, it's impossible to believe she would have been so out of control as to ruin her own staging by calling the police so soon. And if for some reason she decided to call 911 anyhow, despite all the work she'd put into the note, then she would certainly have had the sense to destroy it before the police arrived.
4. Patsy and John are not professional criminals. They got confused and made mistakes.

Response: Sorry, but John Ramsey was the very successful CEO of a billion dollar business, dealing with major tech companies such as Lockheed and Sun Microsystems. While he may not have had any criminal experience, he certainly would have understood very well that calling the police with a dead body hidden in a tiny, remote, basement room and handing them a "ransom" note written by his wife was not the way to stage an effective kidnapping scenario.

5. Regardless of how nonsensical it might seem to you, their staging certainly worked for them, as they were never even indicted and were ultimately "exonerated" by the DA.

Response: while John's carefully staged kidnapping scenario was certainly undermined by Patsy's 911 call, he got lucky when the handwriting "experts" decided to rule him out, which shifted the focus to Patsy. And since there was no way to make an effective case against her, the case ultimately went nowhere. This, and not the ransom note, or 911 call, was what got him off -- very effectively supplemented by the efforts of his lawyers and media consultants.
 As I wrote recently on the Websleuths forum:
People write about profiling all the time on this forum. Well, what is the profile of a criminal so clever as to pen a ransom note that to this day remains a mystery, yet so stupid as to neglect to change her clothes before calling the police? So stupid, also, as to give a phoney ransom note written in her own hand to the police, so it could be used as evidence against her. So stupid also as to call the police so early, with the body of the victim still in the house, thus negating the whole point of the note.

16 comments:

  1. Excellent. Alas there will always be those who believe if we could only find out what brand of mustard was in the 'fridge .....

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  2. I agree with you and don't think Patsy did it; but one question comes to my mind about her-- why would she call 9-1-1 so early after reading that note if she believed it were real? To call 9-1-1 from the house like that right away and have cop cars pulling into the driveway when your child's life was threatened if you did it?

    I've wondered about that.

    Also, who the heck stops to fashions a garrotte in the middle of a spontaneous or accidental murder? Seems it fits better with pre-meditation. What makes a non-killer who either accidentally hit the kid in the head and felt they had to finish the job, or who decided in the middle of a routine molestation of a child who threatened to tell, would stop and make a garrotte?

    Always found that strange.

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    1. The impression I have from the recording of Patsy's call is that she was totally hysterical, not thinking clearly, and certainly not in the mood to study the note, analyze it and take rational action to deal with it. My guess is she must have skimmed the whole thing very quickly, got the message that her daughter had been kidnapped, and decided to call for help, as a basically instinctive response. The 911 call is not only a report of a kidnapping, but a desperate cry for help.

      As far as the garotte is concerned, I totally agree. It's way too extreme and bizarre to be explained as staging to cover up an accident. So is the vaginal penetration. It's really hard for me to understand the thought process of someone like Steve Thomas, and his many disciples, who managed to convince themselves that both of these atrocities were nothing more than staging. Also, I wonder how many housewives would have any idea of how to tie a slip knot, much less strangle their own daughter with it.

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    2. "Touch DNA" - Wow, imagine that.

      Prosecutors cleared the family of JonBenet Ramsey of all suspicion relating to her 1996 death using "touch DNA" technology. And it's only a matter of time before the real criminals are brought to justice.

      Watch video => http://youtu.be/jvMcfMHsJY4

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    3. For my thoughts on the "touch DNA," see the following post: http://solvingjonbenet.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-touch-dna.html

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  3. Ask Pastor Bob Enyart of Denver Bible Church, he knows. He wrote all about the Clues That Break the Case on his conspiracy website, ShadowGov.com. In great detail, Pastor Bob SHOUTS who is guilty of murdering JonBenet...The answer is there in the ransom note, you just have to know the riddles he writes and how to read in-between the lines! - Bob Enyart has the keys to the puzzle - Just ask him, he is "DEAD SERIOUS " about his brilliant plan to stop those dangerous child-killers in America. BE PREPARED!

    As expert Detective Lou Smit said: "The person I see doing this is a very vicious, brutal criminal, perhaps a sadistic pedophile."

    Read "Document Dump" Ransom Note to Past Bob Enyart, the CONVICTED CHILD-ABUSER
    http://worstgenerationseed.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-document-dump-ransom-note-to.html

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  4. Just to comment on your #3, most everything you say doesn't require "careful thinking". Grammar, spelling, punctuation, margins, indentions, spacing... These are all things that would come completely naturally to someone educated in letter writing. It wouldn't be something you would have to think about at all.

    I know you completely reject Patsy as the author of the RN, but to me this is one of the indications that she did write it. I doubt she would be educated enough on handwriting and statement analysis to think to NOT indent her paragraphs, or to leave less space between her words than she normally would. The average person would just be trying to make the writing not look like their own. That is very hard to do. Have you ever tried it? With a letter so long it is inevitable that something of yourself is going to slip in, regardless of how hard you try to not let that happen.

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    1. #3 was a response to the thought that the Ramseys must have been in a panic and not thinking straight. But the note itself shows no such signs of panic or garbled thinking. That's the point I was making. Not that the note would have been difficult to write, but that it shows no sign of panic or garbled thinking. If Patsy was able to control her emotions and her thought process sufficiently to write such a note, then it's hard to see why she would have been in such a confused state of mind later that morning, deciding to report a kidnapping knowing full well that the body was still in the house.

      As far as "something of herself" slipping in, sorry but I don't see that. The phrase "southern common sense" is clearly not the result of a slip, but put in there deliberately, probably as an expression of derision on the part of someone with a grudge against the family. Aside from that one phrase, I see nothing of Patsy whatsoever anywhere in that note. And as we now know, it was in all likelihood John who used "and hence," not Patsy.

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  5. What I don't understand is why John would allow her to make the phone call in the first place as they were both in the room when she called. The only thing I can think of is that she got to phone before he could stop her.

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    1. Here's how she tells it in the A&E documentary:

      Patsy - "I said, 'I'm going to call the police and he said OK. And I think he ran to check on Burke. And I ran downstairs and, you know, dialed 911."

      Burke was upstairs. So if John were checking on Burke, he'd have gone upstairs. She said she ran downstairs. According to this version of what happened, they were NOT in the same room together when she made the call, so he could not have stopped her.

      In their book, the two of them were together in the same room when she made that call. So one of these two versions of what happened is incorrect. Since there was no intruder and since Patsy would not have made the call if she were involved in staging a phony kidnapping, we have no choice but to conclude that the "official" version presented in their book is a lie. And the only reason for an innocent Patsy to have lied is that she was being manipulated by John and his legal team, because telling the truth (that John was against making that call) would have made John look suspicious.

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  6. Ah, that makes more sense. You make a pretty compelling argument for JR being guilty. I think people tended to be naturally biased against PR because she put her daughter in those horrible pageants. And of course the handwriting evidence, which seems quite flimsy when you realize it's not that exact.
    Tara

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    1. Response: if they'd changed their minds about dumping the body and decided to call 911 right away, then they would not have mentioned the potentially incriminating "ransom" note at all, but simply reported that their daughter had been assaulted and killed while they were asleep. They would also have removed the body from the windowless basement room, since there would have been no reason for her attacker to hide it.

      and if it happened that way John would have been arrested, tried, convicted, and fried when the sex assault was discovered at autopsy. it turns out that the note was his saving grace.

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    2. No, not at all. First of all, she would not have been hidden but left out in the open, since a pedophile attacker would have had no reason to hide the body. Secondly, instead of writing the note, they could have taken the time to complete the window staging. John could have climbed through the window himself, displacing the grate, etc.

      While the police would certainly have been suspicious, there would have been no evidence directly linking either of the Ramseys to the assault, and since they were regarded as model citizens, with no motive to kill their own child, and since JonBenet had been exposed so many times to public view, thus tempting a pedophile, they might easily have gotten off.

      A hand-written note, however, supplies the authorities with evidence that CAN be traced to one, or both, of them. And if the plan was to have the body discovered in the house, in the presence of the police, then the kidnap staging written into the note becomes very suspicious, since there was no kidnapping.

      The ONLY thing that saved John was the very strange decision to rule him out as writer of the note, which I find to be very suspicious. I don't care how many "experts" signed off on that decision, it makes no sense and could have had no scientific basis. Once the "experts" declared to the world that John could NOT have written that note, then suddenly it works FOR him -- and throws the investigation into chaos. If John had NOT been ruled out, then it would have been easy for the authorities to see the note for what it obviously was: staging. And since John was the most likely to have sexually assaulted his daughter, he might well have been charged with murder one.

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  7. So, what's your take on the "extra" bit on the 911 call? If you listen carefully, there's a muffled conversation in the background at the end. There's been a few theories about it, but to me it sounds like someone (probably Patsy) saying "what did you do?" over and again.

    Some Aerospace tech guys came up with a different story though:

    "Patsy apparently had trouble hanging up the telephone, and before it rested on the cradle she was heard to moan, "Help me, Jesus, Help me, Jesus." Her husband was heard to bark, "We're not talking to you." And in the background was a young-sounding voice: "What did you find?" It was JonBenet's brother, Burke."

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  8. Just going through all your blog posts years later and they are great, I think you make a very compelling case. The main thing that bugs me which someone touched on above is if JR's whole plan hinges on the ransom note (and you've convinced me that is the only logical explanation of this bizarre note), which he clearly spent a lot of time crafting to give him time to depose of the body, the most important aspect is not to call the police. I think after all that planning it seems unlikely that he wouldn't make absolutely certain PR did not call the police. Why would he leave her alone to find the note and immediately call the police, it seems like it would be his absolute priority in this whole crime to monitor her and make sure this did not happen. I don't think it discounts your theory, but it definitely doesn't make sense.

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  9. I want to say that your deduction makes perfect sense of the facts known from this case.

    I don't have much to attribute to your deductions and I know I'm late to the party, but it came to my mind: with PR and JR working together in the cover up of their daughter's death, why would they have to write a ransom note at all? They could have easily said that there was a note but the kidnappers wanted it back, or it got lost, analogous to what you assumed about JR's plans for the note. Just like the assumption that either PR accidentally killed her daugther which makes the vaginal mutilation somewhat incoherent; or that JR and BR covered up for BR which also doesn't explain the signs of prior sexual abuse, it seems unnecessary, incriminating and contradictory for that version of the events. It really is very strong evidence for only one parent being the perpetrator, and that parent would not have wanted to call police that early...

    Another thing that occurred to me: that RN also is a weird way of glorifying JR. Chauvinistic by completely dismissing PR, yes, and look at HOW he's addressed: in a kind of respectful way: "we [do] respect you", even concerned for his wellbeing "be rested", and then all this over-the-top backstory of a small faction that nevertheless has the means to surveil not only him but the "authorities", too. Couldn't be your run-of-the-mill kidnapper for him? Had to be at least hollywood level...

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