1. rashomon

    rashomon Member

    I'm just reading in Steve Thomas' book about the arguments he had with Lou Smit, and I can understand Thomas' comment that if Smit had been twenty years younger, they would have come to blows.
    What made Smit tick? Had the Heather Dawn Church case gone to his head and he automatically believed parents must be innocent?
    For example, when Thomas, Gosage and Smit tried to reenact in the Ramsey home the scene where JB was found, testing the lighting conditions, neither Thomas nor Gosage could make out the white blanket. The cellar was impermeably pitch-dark. Gosage: "I had to step completely into the cellar and look around the corner to my left to see the blanket on the floor."

    But what did did that smug stuffed shirt Lou Smit allege: " I can see in there."
    Gosage and Thomas also pointed out to Smit that even if an acrobatic circus monkey could get through the small basement window, this doesn't mean that an intruder had entered there. Smit was unimpressed.
    That man ruined the whole Ramsey investigation. And of course his intruder 'findings' sat very well with a coward like Alex Hunter, or with silly Trip de Muth who lectured Thomas that "no parent could have committed this crime".
    Incredible but true: Smit even met privately with the Ramseys, prayed with them in his van and later announced that he "would never participate in their indictment or arrest."
    Clearly a case of a prejudiced view. What a poor caricature of an investigator that man was! He should have been thrown out of the Ramsey investigation immediately after uttering such a statement.

    I have a question: what is Lou Smit doing today? Is he still in law enforcement? I can only hope not. All that stun gun nonsense also came from him. And he was too stupid to recognize that the garrote was no 'sophisticated' instrument at all, but the work of a bungling amateur. JB was not garrotted (as Delmar England's very convincing analysis has shown to me beyond any doubt.)
     
    Last edited: Apr 18, 2006
  2. Cherokee

    Cherokee FFJ Senior Member

    I think that's exactly what happened.

    Smit got lucky with the Heather Dawn Church case, and like a one-trick-pony who knows nothing else, he kept trying to make the same scenario fit the Ramsey case. It's obvious Smit is not very smart, or he wouldn't try to fit the facts to his theory as opposed to deriving a theory from the facts.


    I agree. For ANY investigator to say they would never participate in the indictment or arrest of a suspect is more than incompetent law enforcement, it defies reason. Smit was clearly prejudiced against any theory or evidence against the Ramseys because of his "gut feeling" in their favor.

    Many people had a "gut feeling" that Ted Bundy was harmless.

    Feelings can be fooled, facts cannot.
     
  3. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    I think Smit was retired, bored, and when he saw the cameras and action of the JB case, he saw his ticket to becoming a legend in his own mind. He made $60,000 working for the DA. Think of all the face time and infamy he garnered, being on the team Ramsey. He may be a rotten detective, but he's no fool. He saw right away, just like jams, that the place to get attention and payoff was with the intruder theory. Smit's ego took off the minute he realized he could move the spotlight right onto himself if only he took up the "cause" of the alleged Christian Rams.

    Even Hunter got snookered by Smit. Smit broke his contract with the DA PDQ, as Hunter stated in his plea to the court to get the PowerPoint back when Smit stole it after he quit. But Smit had enough on Hunter's "leaks" and dirty dealings to force Hunter to give him anything Smit wanted...and he used it. Once Smit had access to the case files, and then the legal right to take the PowerPoint and use it as propaganda for his own agenda, he had the eyes and ears of all his old LE buds who wanted a piece of the action. They all got to be on TV, compliments of Smit and Tracey, didn't they? How many then rode on Smit's coattails to advertising you can't buy?

    I tell you, I laughed myself silly when I saw the last croc: there was the RST, Ollie's PI group, talking in a conference room about the case like they were in fact the LE group in charge of the case now. It was pure staging worthy of the Rams. All they were doing was setting up a scene in Tracey's self-promotion campaign. They were so incompetent and immoral, not one of them had any scruples about putting innocent men into their UNSUPPORTED AND POSITIVELY STUPID theories, all based upon the rants of a man named Kenady, with his own HISTORY, who is clearly certifiable and who made them all look liike the fools they are. But they chose their "intruder" carefully, didn't they? No law suits from A DEAD MAN. What did they care if there is NOT ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE LINKING HELGOTH TO THE RAMSEYS, much less the murder. No problem when the truth means nothing, a dead child means nothing, all that matters is having YET ANOTHER VICTIM WHO CAN'T DEFEND HIMSELF to parade before the public...while you get your ugly mug on TV. And straight to hell with the family and friends hurt by the unfounded accusations of child murder and the inexcusable airing of the crime scene pic of Helgoth after his suicide.

    You want to talk heartless and evil? They define those words.

    That all their shilling was done to the destruction of a case against a child murderer meant nothing to them.

    That's who Lou Smit is.
     
  4. The Punisher

    The Punisher Member

    Not only should he have been taken off the investigation, his old a** should have been thrown in jail. That's dangerously close to obstruction.
     
  5. RiverRat

    RiverRat FFJ Sr. Member Extraordinaire (Pictured at Lef

    Why am I thinking that Lou has been working on Cold Cases down here in the SunShine State? Ringing a bell? Anybody???

    RR
     
  6. rashomon

    rashomon Member

    From Lou Smit's resignation letter:

    "Instead of letting the case tell them where to go, they have
    elected to follow a theory and let their theory direct them rather than allowing the evidence to direct them."


    Lou Smit gave a perfect description of his own work in the JB case. For that was exactly what he himself did.


    "Good Luck to you and your fine office and may God bless you in the awesome decisions you must soon make.

    Sincerely,
    Detective Lou Smit"


    Fine office - priceless! Now that was a 'fine office' indeed - full of totally incompetent people. No wonder Lou Smit liked it there, because these incompetent people obviously swallowed his inane intruder theory without questioning it.
     
  7. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member


    Wonder who helped Smit write that letter. We know his English skills are on par with his detective skills....

    Hey, last night I attended a lecture by a forensic anthropologist. He talked about a mass grave site he worked. Out of the blue, he answered a question with a reference to none other than...the JonBenet case. Not only that, he lumped the JonBenet case in with the OJ case.

    What he said, approximately, was that they were very careful because they didn't want to end up like "the JonBenet case" or the OJ case. Meaning having the case destroyed by incompetence and carelessness....

    So there you have it. Smit can rest assured his legacy is intact: he'll forever be known as one of the key detectives who was part of "the JonBenet case" that has become the standard for WHAT NOT TO DO in an investigation.
     
  8. RiverRat

    RiverRat FFJ Sr. Member Extraordinaire (Pictured at Lef

    Found it!

    August 14, 2005

    On the trail of Brevard's coldest cases

    'CSI' it's not; closing unsolved cases often frustrating

    BY DAN GARCIA
    FLORIDA TODAY
    Working the scene. Brevard County sheriff's homicide agents Lou Heyn and Gary Harrell check out the area of the killing of Hien Van Tran. Tran's skull, top, was found in October 2003 near Pluckebaum Road in Cocoa. His slaying remains unsolved. Craig Rubadoux, FLORIDA TODAY

    MERRITT ISLAND - When John McRae, convicted twice during his lifetime of killing young boys in Michigan, died in prison on June 28, his death in Michigan reverberated in the homicide bureau of the Brevard County Sheriff's Office.

    Although they had no murder weapon, or even any bodies, the sheriff's so-called "Cold Case" detectives closed the book on three Brevard County youths who disappeared without a trace during the 1970s.

    McRae is presumed to have killed Kip Hess, 12, Charles Collingwood 19, and Keith Fleming, 13. He had befriended two of the youths.

    On television, popular shows such as "Cold Case" or "CSI" neatly wrap up homicide cases with a dazzling array of DNA evidence, surveillance photos, fingerprints, tire tracks, freshly found witnesses and other long-lost evidence that points unerringly to a single suspect.

    But in reality, unsolved -- or cold-case -- homicides are a tough nut to crack.

    The Sheriff's Office has a file of 40 unsolved homicides, the oldest dating to 1967. Melbourne has 13 slayings that lack an arrest, and Palm Bay and Titusville have three cold cases each.

    Most homicides in Brevard are quickly solved -- of 46 homicides in 2003 and 2004 in municipal and county jurisdictions, only two remain unsolved. The Sheriff's Office lists just four unsolved homicides since 1995.

    But as the years go by, the unsolved homicides accumulate, and most of them lack a fingerprint, a DNA link, a traceable weapon or witnesses who can provide crucial testimony.

    The Sheriff Office's oldest case -- the 1967 fatal beating of a man at a Cocoa "Lovers' Lane"-- occurred in an era when DNA and other technology were not among the common tools of law enforcement.

    Looking for clues

    In Titusville, police are still wondering who abducted and killed 5-year-old Amanda Griffin, who disappeared from the front yard of her home in August 1984. She was found dead in an auto junkyard three days later, but there were no fingerprints, witnesses or DNA evidence.

    Earlier this month, nationally known homicide investigator Lou Smit, a Colorado detective who investigated the JonBenet Ramsey case, began looking into the Griffin case at the behest of his nephew, Titusville police Officer Warren Van Vuren.

    "We want the public to know that we're doing everything possible to solve these cold cases," Van Vuren said. "Because Lou Smit has investigated more than 300 homicides, he can provide us with new angles to look at the case from, and hopefully it will lead us somewhere."

    In another case, veteran sheriff's Agent Gary Harrell and his partner, Detective Lou Heyn, were driving back to Florida from Tennessee five years ago with a man they suspected in a slaying but on whom they could only pin weapons charges.

    During the drive, suspect James Drysdale, 67, turned the conversation to religion. He confessed to shooting James McCutcheon, a 60-year-old Mims orange grower, in 1994.

    "When you're in rural Tennessee, it's a boring drive," Harrell recalls. "Drysdale started telling me I was going to hell because I was a Sunday worshipper, and he was a Saturday worshiper. He said his was the true Sabbath.

    "We got to laughing, and I said, 'I'm not the one with a skeleton in my closet.' That led to a discussion in which he confessed to murder."

    Getting to trial

    However, in dozens of other homicide cases, suspects are walking around free, serving time in prison for other crimes or dead. Detectives often believe they know who some killers are -- based on circumstantial evidence or witnesses' uncorroborated statements -- but the cases aren't strong enough for the state attorney to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

    "Deep down inside, most people want to tell you the truth," Heyn said. "If it's somebody's first time, it's easier to crack them because there's a basic need in all of us to be truthful.

    "With hard-core guys, egos come into play. You stroke them, you find out what makes them tick, and you use that."

    Besides a frustrating lack of evidence in most cold cases, detectives face other challenges: Lawyers who accuse them of rushing to judgment, prosecutors who won't file charges because the cases need work, and families of the victims who wonder if they will ever find peace.

    In the 1993 rape-slaying of Joan Dunbar in Indian Harbour Beach, Melbourne attorney Kepler Funk claims detectives filed murder charges against 23-year-old Jason Tucker out of pressure to solve cold cases.

    The 50-year-old Dunbar was found fatally beaten in an apartment complex sauna. The case remained unsolved until 1999, when Tucker was arrested on an unrelated charge and his fingerprints matched those taken from Dunbar's apartment.

    Tucker's saliva sample matched DNA from semen found at the crime scene, but Funk says the sex was consensual. Last week, Tucker's trial was postponed until Monday after a problem with jurors.

    "They're calling this case closed for statistical and political purposes, but closing cases doesn't always equate with the truth," Funk said.

    He added: "Just ask Wilton Dedge," referring to the Brevard man exonerated of rape charges after serving 22 years in prison.

    Finding peace

    For Nancy Couillard of Pompano Beach, closure is something she has waited for desperately since the Christmas Eve 2000 discovery of her slain 18-year-old daughter, Kathy Couillard, in Cocoa.

    Her body was found covered with pine needles near the Brevard County Agricultural Center. The man who found her claimed to be collecting beer cans, which seemed unusual for Christmas Eve. He became a suspect but died of liver disease before detectives could determine whether he was involved.

    "It just destroyed me inside," Couillard said. "I went through hell, I couldn't stop crying. I can't believe that nobody saw anything."

    Couillard said she takes comfort in Harrell's assurance that he will never forget the 18-year-old victim and will return to her file often -- even though investigators say the only suspect in Couillard's slaying died without confessing to the crime.

    While slayings such as Couillard's can eat at detectives as well as the survivors, the case of James McCutcheon, the slain orange grove owner, represents a rare feat in which Harrell elicited a soul-cleansing mea culpa from the killer, and even got him to lead detectives to the long-buried body.

    Harrell says of his trade: "It's not all adversarial, like 'I gotcha, so give up!' We're selling prison, so we have to be pretty good salesmen."

    In the McCutcheon case, Harrell's salesmanship not only gained Drysdale's confession but for two years afterward, Harrell received Christmas cards sent by Drysdale from prison.

    Contact Garcia at 242-3669 or at dgarcia@flatoday.net

    http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pb.../508140322/1006
     
  9. Watching You

    Watching You Superior Bee Admin

    I think the whole damn lot of the former DA and assistant DA's should have been indicted for obstruction of justice, right along with Lou Smit and Mary Lacy. In all my life, I have never seen anything like the way they got in bed with defense attorneys and the main suspects, providing them with materials they had no right to have until, and unless, their clients were arrested and discovery was ordered by a judge; perpetrating lies through the media, denegrating detectives who worked the case, hiring an idiot like Lou Smit to muck up the case even more and allowing him to take work product that belonged to the DA's office and broadcast it on national TV as gospel truth.

    I despise these vipers for what they are - incompetent cutthroats who cared more about their own publicity than they did a dead six year old girl. And, that includes anyone who has sold information that didn't belong to her in order to profit from this case.
     
  10. Aurora

    Aurora Member

    Oh now...come on you guys.... after all Lou Smit made John Ramsey SWEAR TO GOD that he did not do that crime. His word was good enough!!! *LOL*
     
  11. The Punisher

    The Punisher Member

    "Good enough."

    You mean like Michael promising to renounce Satan? I think we all know what I'm talking about.

    Gimme an O! Gimme a B! Gimme an S! (blah-blah) What's it spell?

    OBSTRUCTION!
     
  12. rashomon

    rashomon Member

    ITA with every word you have written, WY. The corruption in the JB case is beyond description. Im halfway through Steve Thomas' book, and every few pages I go "NO! I don't believe it! This can't be that the DA's office people did that!" It must have been hell for Thomas having to work in that swamp.

    I have a question: is any of those lousy types still in office?
     
  13. Little

    Little Member

    Well, there are still some familiar names around rashomon, although some of JonBenet's best justice seekers were forced out of the picture. Thomas would be the #1 on that list I would think.

    There's a saying "you just can't fight city hall", which might apply to this case as "you just can't fight the Boulder DA".

    Little
     
  14. rashomon

    rashomon Member

    I visit true crime writer Ann Rule's guestbook now and then, and somehow we got to talk about the JB case there. One poster told me how can I say Smit ruined the Ramsey investigation - Smit is one of the most highly respected investigators in Colorado, etc.
    I was surprised that quite a few people out there (those who don't post on true crime forums and therefore haven't thoroughly studied the case) still seem to think the Ramseys are innocent. I remember there have also been biased TV 'documentaries' pointing to their 'innocence', and these one-sided documentaries seem to influence people very much.
    There also appears to be a feeling among some people like "let this little girl rest in peace, the family has suffered so much already and poor Patsy's cancer has returned." Comments like that make me want to go through the roof!
    "The damage has already been done, so one does not have to investigate a murder further?" Is that the message? The members of the Justice system don't have to do their duty anymore because they won't solve the case anyway? Incredible. While I can understand that the guilty Ramseys would want to have it that way, I can't understand people out there having the same attitude. This just shows that the Ramseys' PR over all the years has obviously worked. Patsy is more pitied for her cancer having returned than her little girl is pitied whose killer has not been brought to justice.

    Today, Ann Rule in her web log also made an interesting comment about John Douglas:
    "John Douglas was HIRED by the Ramseys themselves to investigate JB's murder for a rumored $20,000. I never believed his assessment again after that."
     
  15. rashomon

    rashomon Member

    Easywriter, I have just finished reading your May 20, 2003 letter to Mary Keenan.
    Awesome and totaly impressive! You tore Lou Smit apart that nothing is left of that phony and the figments of his imagination, and rightly so!
    I almost fell out of my chair when reading that Smit only went by John Ramsey's word: "I swear to God that I didn't do it!"
    Oh me, oh my - which suspect would ever admit that they did it? But in the world according to Lou Smit, just let the suspect swear by God and take him at his word. INCREDIBLE!!! I suppose not even the most poorly directed police movie would have such a scene in its screenplay because this would be too idiotic for anyone to believe it. Smit asking John Ramsey such a question and blindly believing him borders on the comical and is just another illustrative example that truth is stranger than fiction!

    Easywriter, did you receive a reply from Mary Keenan? I know that if I had been a DA, I'd have invited you on the spot to cooperate with the DA's office, grateful to receive such invaluable help. But as we all know, things were a little different in Boulder, to put it mildly.
    In your closing line you wrote that in case you got no reply from her, you
    would initiate plan B. What exactly did you mean by plan B?
     
  16. The Punisher

    The Punisher Member

    "Comments like that make me want to go through the roof!"

    You and me both!
     
  17. EasyWriter

    EasyWriter FFJ Senior Member

     
  18. rashomon

    rashomon Member

    That's exactly the reason why these talk-show appearances are often so disappointing. The hosts hardly ever will ask hardball questions for fear of their guests becoming peeved. Another illustrative example is Larry King, on whose show family killer Jeffrey MacDonald appears now and then, recently accompanied by his new wife, whom King allowed to squeeze his hand.
    I can't watch Larry King here in Germany, but I have read the transcripts which are online on the forum I'm posting on. Larry only asks softball questions, and that spineless jellyfish even carried it to the point of wishing the convicted triple murderer Jeffrey MacDonald "Good luck, Jeff!" Makes me want to reach for a barf bag!

    EW, I think you have hit on a pivotal point here: people in general don't want their egos challenged, let alone lawyers or people in law enforcement if an outsider offers his insight into a case. Which is also why I think Mary Keenan didn't reply to your letter. "I am the DA, and who am I to let a layperson solve the case for me?" Maybe that's what went on in her head.
    But what Keenan & Co refuse to see is that so-called 'laypersons' are often far more unbiased than they themselves are, because their actions won't put their career plans at risk (Steve Thomas' book is a fount of info on how LE people consciously chose not to dig deeper into the case for fear of their career being damaged, e. g. Mark Beckner, to cite just one example).
    And I'm convinced that Steve Thomas totally agreed with your assessment of the case. Too bad his lawyers stood between him and you.
    I'm fairly new to the case, which is why I ask: did the Ramseys (or Patsy) sue Steve because he had told Patsy she "was good for it"?

    Don't ever give up, Delmar. I still believe that one day the truth about what happened to JonBenet will become known to the public.
     
  19. EasyWriter

    EasyWriter FFJ Senior Member

    Give up? Are you kidding? :) I have my heaviest artillery yet
    waiting in the staging area. It will be moved up to the firing
    line in a few days. :)

    Sorry, but circumstances dictate that I not expand at this time.
    Eventually, you shall know regardless of the results.
     
  20. rashomon

    rashomon Member

    Good to know that you are not a person easily frustrated, EasyWriter! :)
    Can't wait for that fire to start!
    Has there a new lead investigator been appointed to the Ramsey case? If yes, hopefully it is not anyone from Boulder but from the FBI.
    But I'm not familiar with the American justice system enough - would it be possible for FBI people to do this? For there is often the distiction made between 'State' crimes and 'Federa'l crimes.

    A poster at Websleuths wants to read your letter to Mary Keenan. Could you give me a link to it? Another poster asked where exactly Smit let John swear to God he didn't do it. Is there a link to that interview too? Thanks in advance for your help!
     
    Last edited: May 6, 2006
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