A Blown Gasket........

Just for BobC..........

Contributed by: Bruce Plasket on 6/25/2006


Patsy Ramsey's return to the nation's news pages and airwaves will almost certainly fade again after she is laid to rest Thursday in Marietta, Georgia.

Sadly, the infamy connected to the 49-year-old mother of slain 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey isn't likely to fade that quickly. Patsy Ramsey on Saturday lost her recurring 13-year battle with cancer, nearly 10 years after losing her reputation in a futile battle with inept detectives, gullible reporters, whacked-out internet posters and irresponsible talk show hosts.

The fact that she survived cancer, the murder of her daughter, not-so-subtle police finger-pointing and a reprehensible media assault for nearly a decade is miraculous in itself.

From the beginning Patsy and her husband, John, were victims in the embarrassing media circus that surrounded the Christmas-night, 1996 murder of their daughter. The JonBenet Ramsey case, which dominated the national news in the mid-to-late 90s, was nothing short of an investigative nightmare that only got worse the longer it lasted.

Police themselves charted the case's ill-fated course from the wee-hour minute Boulder detective Linda Arndt responded to the family's Tudor brick home on 15 th Street on a kidnapping call. Arndt, by her own admission, allowed family and friends to trample the house -now a crime scene - and contaminated that scene by placing a blanket on the little girl's body.

The list of subsequent blunders both by Arndt and other officers is lengthy. Then-district attorney Alex Hunter's failure to broker a peace between police whose only focus was on the Ramsey family and the handful of investigators and prosecutors who wanted to explore the possibility of an intruder spelled the end of any realistic shot at ever solving the case.

Hunter - also under public pressure from then-governor Roy Romer to bring "new blood" to the probe, weakly allowed police to run off those on the Ramsey-investigation team who disagreed with them.

The heavily-flawed investigation that has floundered for more than nine years and which has produced no evidence implicating the Ramseys, nonetheless produced the police theory -soon to be a singular belief- that one or both parents had been involved in the murder.

As the world watched Boulder on a daily basis, most of the innuendo pointed toward Patsy, herself a former beauty queen and the Martha Stewart-esque Super Mom of the Chautauqua Park neighborhood.

Talk show hosts from MSNBC's Geraldo Rivera to Denver's own Peter Boyles railed at authorities to arrest the parents. Flamboyant New York lawyer Darnay Hoffman, who had no connection to the case, even filed a suit seeking to force the arrest and prosecution of Patsy Ramsey.

At one point Boyles and his radio station distributed bumper stickers that read "Focus on the Ramsey Family." Boyles' insistence on the Ramseys' guilt lasted through the lengthy grand jury probe, during which he at one point broadcast his radio show from a trailer in the justice-center parking lot.

At the end of the grand jury term, dozens of us who had been covering the case waited outside the building for a press conference announcing the results of the grand jury investigation.

Few of us believed any indictments would be issued, but Boyles was different. At one point he turned to me and said, "The Ramseys have been indicted and arrest warrants are being prepared. A guy from NBC told me."

Seconds later Hunter announced there were no indictments. Boyles' fervent hope for Ramsey indictments had become a reality in his mind, but nowhere else.

Others also joined the mob. Colorado governor Bill Owens jumped on the bandwagon when he publicly admonished the Ramseys, who had moved to Georgia, to return to Colorado and quit hiding behind their lawyers.

Curiously, pundits regularly railed on the Ramseys for hiring lawyers. In the world of the media, their own right to often-irresponsible speech trumped the Ramseys' constitutional right to hire counsel, not to mention the assumption of innocence until guilt is proven. The Ramseys were in a no-win situation. They were accused of murder and later battered for lawyering up after being accused - something people accused of crimes routinely do.

And, while high-profile cases tend to leak like a sieve, the Ramsey case was a flood of Biblical proportions. Beat reporters desperate to feed the nation's biggest story had plenty of confidential police sources who fed them information designed to make the Ramseys look like suspects.

Along its ill-advised course, law enforcement couldn't have found a more willing partner than the media. To reporters, the involvement of upstanding, wealthy, church-going Republicans in such a hideous crime was the news-equivalent of winning the lottery. They and their editors shuddered at the prospect that the suspect would be some random, unknown lowlife.

If Patsy Ramsey were to be prosecuted for her daughter's mother, the trial would rival that of O.J. Simpson. To put it bluntly, the media wanted the Ramseys to be guilty. Even if only unwittingly, reporters and talk show hosts were helping the police in their anti-Ramsey campaign. Incompetence and gullibility, however, do not excuse their conduct or account for the damage it inflicted on a family already victimized by cancer and murder.

The media, of course, doesn't write about itself, even if it is part of the story. The media's role was a central part of the story, but went unreported. The public wasn't told how the news was being shaped by police using gullible reporters.

Police were leaking lots of information against the Ramseys, but not actual evidence. They didn't have any damning evidence to leak. In fact, the evidence in the case did -and still does - point far away from the Ramseys. The police knew that back then, but apparently didn't leak any exculpatory information to the media.

Reporters, meanwhile, fed exclusively from the police spoon - never questioned their information or independently looked outside the news parameters they had allowed the police to dictate. Again, having the Ramseys as the prime suspects was a great story.

It would be years before the public would have any notion of the volume of evidence that, in the mind of any objective person, removed any doubt about the innocence of the Ramseys.

Three years ago a federal judge, in a lengthy ruling that threw out a libel suit filed against the Ramseys by former reporter Chris Wolf, exposed for the first time that there was, in her words, "virtually no evidence" against the Ramseys. U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes, in that same ruling, pointed out that all the credible evidence in the case pointed strongly toward an intruder and exonerated the Ramseys virtually beyond doubt.

That evidence, which had gone nearly unreported by the hundreds of reporters who spent thousands of hours covering the story, revealed that:

*DNA samples taken from under JonBenet's fingernails and from her underwear didn't match anyone in the Ramsey family.

*The duct-tape used to gag JonBenet did not belong to the Ramseys. Neither did a baseball bat found outside the house and which contained fibers from the Ramsey-home carpet.

*Animal hairs found on the little girl's body and the duct tape didn't belong to any animals owned by the Ramseys.

*A basement window appeared to have entered by an intruder.

That compelling evidence never swayed those hell-bent on prosecuting Patsy Ramsey. Chief among them was Boulder detective Steve Thomas, who resigned in frustration and later wrote a book directly accusing Patsy of accidentally killing her daughter in a rage caused by JonBenet wetting the bed. He theorized that Patsy covered up the death with a lengthy, phony ransom note and a staged sex assault.

Thomas, who had never investigated a homicide prior to JonBenet's murder, openly accused Patsy during a face-to-face meeting on the Larry King show. The Ramseys later sued Thomas and his publishers, who paid an undisclosed out-of-court settlement as Thomas faded back into obscurity. In her ruling in the Wolf case, Judge Carnes wrote that Thomas based his theory solely on the fact that the Ramseys were home on Christmas night and failed to offer any evidence of Patsy's involvement .

Carnes' ruling should have triggered massive media back-tracking and should have produced exposes about how Patsy had been falsely accused.

So far it has not.

And it probably won't.

Most of those who made handsome livings by falsely accusing Patsy Ramsey in print and on the airwaves -and there were many - are still around. Millions of people still depend on them for the truth every day, both in Colorado and across the nation.

Freedom of speech, one of the great principles upon which our nation is built, protects them from accountability, but not from moral responsibility for the damage they caused.

The media "experts" who dictate public opinion owe the Ramseys an apology. So do those police officers who fingered them to the exclusion of all others for reasons still unknown.

The media didn't give Patsy Ramsey cancer, but it certainly helped make her last decade on earth a living hell by pandering to the whims of a misguided, inept police investigation.

For Patsy Ramsey, who fought cancer for 13 years and public scorn for the last 10, any apology is already too late.

 

Ahhh, if only she hadn't wrote that epic ransom note they might have been able to muddy the water for some people.... those who want to believe it's not possible for parents to sexualize, molest and kill their children.


Is this the same plasket who brought us NK as mystery woman...? You know the one who accused the Whites (who never had a dead daughter tucked away in their basement) of horrific generational sex crimes against children with nary a bit of evidence. Preach on brother!


The Ramseys and their ilk have run over so many people with their bus that they have long lost any moral ground they think they have.

 

Dear Real World....

This "reporter" should have just nailed this to a tree.

Inept detectives, gullible reporters, whacked-out internet posters and irresponsible talk show hosts.........Well, well, well, that certainly covers Lou Smit, Mary Suma and BJ Plasket.

"The media "experts" who dictate public opinion owe the Ramseys an apology. So do those police officers who fingered them to the exclusion of all others for reasons still unknown." THIS - coming from the Flake that terrorized the Fleet White family with his Flake and The Fake. :burnedup:

I can only pray that mame and Nancy are still are major part of his personal life and that the ACLU is #1 on his Speed-Dial. :flipper:

:sadie: :lick: :wind: :sucks: :mame: :wave:
RR

 

omigosh

what an idiot!

 

I think Plaskett is yet another example of Boulder mentality. I've never seen so many mentally disabled freaks in one place as there are in Boulder. Plaskett keeps on perpetrating the same old lies.

Oh well, what else would one have expected from an honored friend of Suma's?

 

Rr

You forgot the Barf Alert that should precede any article by Blow Job Plasket.

 

I'm sooooooo sorry, Lurker, I just assumed that we all had our gag reflex instilled for life when dealing with the man that worked the Biggest Internet Scam since jameson.

:sick:
RR

 

"They didn't have any damning evidence to leak."

And:

"The heavily-flawed investigation that has floundered for more than nine years and which has produced no evidence implicating the Ramseys"

That's crap, brother! Just let me know what you want, and I'll make sure to get it to you. Can you dig it?

Can you DIG it?

CAN YOU DIG IT?!

 

Oh, for chrissakes.

I think we need a NEW PETITION.

I'll sign this one FIRST.

PETITION: TO RENAME BOULDER.

NEW NAME:

HYPOCRITES, COLORADO

 

This is all so...sudden! I just don't know what ... to say!

It must be hard for this "reporter" to see things clearly when its head has been relegated to the status of "foreign body in ano".

 

One too many dates with Mary Jane.

 

Mary Jane, like that is my favorite name.

 

Heh....

'ere....is who I'd LOVE to read a response from about Patsy's death.

 

"Judge Carnes wrote that Thomas based his theory solely on the fact that the Ramseys were home on Christmas night and failed to offer any evidence of Patsy's involvement."

Well, then! Must be a freakin' mind-reader! She must have read something other than the book!

 

Corrupt Judge?

I have to wonder what Judge Carnes's payoff was.

Remembe Lou Smit's DeLorean?

 

I never said corruption, just arrogant presumption.

 

Swamp Swipe!

Right outta her mouth..........AND this time I believe her. :curtsey:

Mame
unregistered user
07-01-06, 01:59 PM (EST)

4. "RE: BJ is great!"
In response to message #3

:wind:
RR!

 

Oh GOD I forgot all about Lee Hill. How dare you thrust him back into my memory on this fine morning?!!

 

It's called Reality, Bob.......and I posted it days ago with no response until now, so I'm assuming that no one knows if the Fugitive is still on the run or not.

I hate to give you know who anymore air time - especially while she is currently over at the Swamp rambling on about plaskett's cocaine issues - but :mame: is probably the only person that knows where Lee Hill is now.

:sadie:
RR

 

oh God. Someone should show her what that hole is for.

Oh wait--lots of people already have. She must be a slow learner.