Wednesday, August 16: Welcome, searchers. There’s been an arrest in this case. Read and discuss the latest.
——————————————————————-
John Ramsey, father of the murdered JonBenet Ramsey, is running for a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives. Is he capitalizing on the publicity of his daughter’s unsolved murder, or does he really relish the thought of being a public servant? Check out his web site. The Republican is sure saying all the right things.
His wife Patsy said, “His heart has been so broken, and now it is mending….He is just passionate about making the rest of his life worth something.”
I see. What about spending his life, the rest of it if necessary, to find his daughter’s killer? He and O.J. Simpson could join in the hunt for the elusive killers who brutally murdered their loved ones. Instead, Simpson’s working on his swing and Ramsey wants to enter the bureaucratic fray of politics. I don’t have children, so I can only speculate. If my child were murdered and the killer were free, I’d spend the rest of my life hunting him/her down. That would be the all-consuming focus and obsession of my life. But again, I’m only speculating.
I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t offer my two cents about JonBenet’s murder. I believe Patsy Ramsey, at the very least, wrote the obviously fake ransom note, and at the most, killed her daughter. In between those two ideas is the possibility that Ramsey himself or his son did it. Somebody in that house killed the child.
What are the odds that an intruder entered a house with people in it to conduct a bizarre sexual ritual with one of its inhabitants, killing her, then looking for pad and pen to write a 3-page ransom note to fool everyone into believing the child had been kidnapped? After she was dead why not just…I don’t know…leave the house?
When I first heard about the murder of that precious child, I felt the same way I did when I heard O.J. Simpson’s wife had been killed. I didn’t know much about him, but my immediate thought was, He can’t be that stupid. He was.
Steve Thomas, a detective who’d been on the Ramsey murder investigation in Boulder, Colorado, wrote an excellent book called JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation. I couldn’t put it down. The blunders committed by the Boulder police are shocking. Thomas became so frustrated by the way the investigation was going that he turned in his badge. I highly recommend the book. I admit that going in, I was biased against the Ramseys. You know how “gut” feelings are, but after reading Thomas’s inside account, I’m more than convinced that either Patsy or John killed their daughter.
Can you imagine a crazed pedophile, who’d crawled through a tiny window in the basement while the family slept, roaming around that big house and writing an eerily polite 3-page ransom note? It defies logic. But then again, many things do.
Here’s my theory. The family had returned home from a Christmas party and was settling down for bed. Six-year-old JonBenet was probably in a cranky mood and didn’t want to go (I’ve got a hundred stories about my 5 year-old niece). The child also had a history of soiling herself, even at her age. John and Burke had gone to bed, and Patsy was probably cranky herself and frustrated by her daughter’s lack of control.
In her frustration, perhaps she hit the child too hard, rendering her unconscious. Maybe she even killed her. At this point she panicked. Scenario #1 — Patsy staged the kidnapping while her family was still asleep, wrapping a rope around the child’s neck and binding her arms to simulate some bizarre ritual. She then came up with the idea of a ransom note to throw off the cops and her husband. When she finally woke her husband, perhaps he suspected right away, sometime later or not at all.
A sub-theory is the possibility that JonBenet was unconcious but alive, and Patsy’s staging of the kidnapping (strangulation) is what actually killed her.
Scenario #2 — When she realized JonBenet was dead, Pasty woke her husband and together they staged the phony kidnapping. Either way, somebody in that house knew something.
Another reason I think she at least wrote the note and knows who killed her child is that at the crack of dawn when police arrived at the house, Patsy was wearing the same clothes she’d worn at the Christmas party the night before, including full make-up and hair. A former beauty queen, she told the police she’d gotten up that morning and put on the dirty clothes from the previous night to begin getting ready for the family’s trip that morning. Come on.
My theory (and Thomas’s) is that she never went to bed. Why? Because she was staging a kidnapping.
Based on the length and characteristics of the note (too long, “feminine” tone) and familiar references (John Ramsey’s “good, Southern common sense”), I think Patsy Ramsey wrote it. Here’s information on analysis of the handwriting, more on the fake note and the full text.
You should also check out the Crime Library, a great site. I found it a few years ago and read just about everything in it. It contains detailed information on high-profile murders and crimes.
John and Patsy Ramsey have not been charged with the murder of their daughter. If they’re innocent, I don’t understand why they aren’t hunting down the killer like a dog. Perhaps they are in their own quiet way. Doubtful, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 17 comments }
If my child were killed, I probably wouldn’t obsess over finding the killer… because I have other people I have duties to (like possible future children as of now, and my husband).
This is not to say I wouldn’t be pestering the police department, or praying for justice, or be totally thirsting for revenge after the fact – (or even considering shooting the villain should I ever actually run into him later). However, obsessively investigating my child’s murder would likely destroy my life and my family’s life.
As for criminals… they do stupid things. Indeed, most of them do really stupid things, which is, unfortunately, generally the way they get caught. (I say unfortunately, because one would wish for more effective police). As Mark Shea likes to say “Sin makes you stupid.”
I’m not saying anyone’s guilty of anything, but he could have some interesting talks with Gary Condit.
La Shawn, Like you I have a strong gut feeling that this was an “inside the family” crime. This is based on my own personal experiences dealing with similar crimes and the way that victims and suspects usually behave.
Adding insult to the Republican injuries, he’s running for office. In my backyard no less. Just goes to show that no party is immune from attracting candidiates of questionable character.
In a weird way, I guess that is a positive that anyone can run and while the party leadership may opt to deny active support, they can’t deny “membership” or a slot as long as the person in question has met all of the requirements.
PS. Also curious is the threat to behead Jon-benet if the parents should go to the FBI. If the author was indeed the mother, that’s one sick woman.
Thinking back to 1996, I don’t recall “beheadings” being in the general conciousness as a “top-ten” form of execution. In otherwords, had it been used in Family Feud, survey’s response would have been a big red X.
Sorry folks – I have to disagree.
If you look at the way the media handled this, you may come to a different conclusion about the Ramseys. There is one instance where a reporter even asked the cops if there was any help they could give to “nail these creeps”, meaning the Ramseys. The cops screwed the pooch on this – they had a very inexperienced forensics team, and very inexperienced investigators. And this commentary comes to you from a cop’s son.
I speak from a bit of experience. My sister-in-law was accused of shaking her baby based on scant evidence by an emergency room doctor with 3 years of experience. (He fell off his changing table – my brother-in-law was home, and watched my sister-in-law re-enter the room after the boom). The media hyped it, and the cops rode it, for all it was worth. Those charges were eventually thrown out due to lack of evidence. The prosecutors and media would never admit they were wrong, although 3 different pediatric neurologists (including one of the best in my state) argued that the exact symptoms were not consistent with shaken-baby syndrome.
My point is, it’s not that difficult to hang someone for a crime they didn’t commit in this country. I especially don’t trust it in highly emotional, media sensationalized cases such as the Ramsey case. I agree that this is the best justice system on the planet, but it still has political leanings (especially a prosecutor or DA), so I will still be skeptical.
And regardless of whether it was an “inside” job or not, I don’t believe John or Patsy are guilty of anything. So why shouldn’t he run for office?
TV (Harry)
Such a sad case. I have to agree, in their position, I would not be able to move forward with life until my daughter’s murder was solved.
Harry – I sympathize with you for what you’re family went through, but there are many unanswered questions in this case. For example, the fact that a woman like Patsy wants us to believe that it’s no big thing to put on soiled clothing from the night before reeks of amazement. That alone doesn’t prove she committed murder, of course, but it’s part of a pattern of suspicious behavior.
And you’re right. Ramsey has not been charged and he is free to run for office. Note that I didn’t say he shouldn’t.
The ‘Thunderdome’ candidate…
4 people in the house… 0 others entered… only 3 leave alive…
Mathmatically somebody in the house had to…
Inspector, I sympathize with your experience.
I am well aware of the tendency for DAs to run away with dragging innoent families thru the mill, stubbornly holding to weak evidence. To wit, the number of daycare owners railroaded on overly fantasist sex abuse conspiracies, encouraged by none other than Reno. Equally frustrating is when DAs refuse to drop a case, even after a jury of peers have spoken.
Yes, the investigation was botched, but all the same, this particualr case reeks.
What I was bemoaning is that sometimes it seems that the best “candidate” that parties come up with are those with questionable backgrounds.
Harry,
Having been an actual cop for 19 years,(6 as a detective specializing in family violence and sex crimes) is where I am coming from with my opinion. I agree that there were a tremendous number of screw-ups by the police in the JonBenet case. That is why there are no arrests. There are a large number of things about the case which just weren’t properly followed up on.
Do I know that either one, or both of the parents were involved? No. Were they tried and convicted in the press without solid evidence? Yes. In spite of that, I still have that nagging feeling.
John Ramsey is putting himself in the spotlight and subject to having all this stuff opened up again though, by virtue of running for office.
Oh, and I’m sorry about your sister-in-law, and I’m glad it all turned out OK in the end. Sometimes these things happen, and it’s hard to have to go through it. The real problem is when the media becomes involved. More investigations are screwed up due to media involvement than you can imagine. Not to say that the media is not important, its just that many times I wished they would let us do our job first, THEN report on the investigation.
Like with Abu Ghraib, Montie?
I also think that someone in the family was involved in Jon Benet’s murder. They circled the wagon’s a little too quickly.
The evidence of wrong-doing may not be enough for a conviction, but it is certainly enough to disqualify the man for political office. I hope he doesn’t get elected, or it will be a blight on Republicans the way Ted Kennedy is a blight on Democrats.
There’s another theory that fits the evidence well and doesn’t make the mother into a monster. Simply imagine a little girl pressured into growing up too fast and left alone for hours on Christmas Eve. Young children rarely try to kill themselves, but this was no typical little girl.
Then imagine the parents finding her body and a mother a bit too obsessed about publicity that would brand her a terrible mother. Anything would seem better. That explains the bizarre note in her handwriting, a kidnapped child who never left the home, and the odd way of dying, garroted by a cord. The neck injuries would cover a little girl’s crude attempt to hang herself almost perfectly.
But given how the local police bungled their investigation–all too common with VIPs–we may never know what actually happened.
–Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
Reckon that explains the soiled clothing?
When I look at my kids, I find it hard to imagine that even my 8-year old would even be capable of conceiving death by hanging. But then again, how “sophisticated” can a child become when pushed into a sick parody of sexulized adulthood.
I guess I am thankful that my wife and I are determined to let our kids enjoy their childhood for as long as they can before the ugly real world intrudes, even if it means they can’t do some of the things that their friends and “everyone else” is doing. Sigh…
I like this site. Always the most updated polling info.
http://www.coldheartedtruth.com/
Just one comment. The idea that Patricia Ramsay wrote the ransom note came from Donald Foster, the self-styled literary detective who claimed to have found a new Shakespeare poem. Virtually everything he has claimed has turned out to be wrong or a lucky guess based on someone else’s findings. His behaviour on the Ramsay case was utterly despicable. I blogged on him a while ago here.
Comments on this entry are closed.