Linda Arndt

Discussion in 'Justice for JonBenet Discussion - Public Forum' started by Karen, Mar 30, 2008.

  1. heymom

    heymom Member

    I had forgotten that she later backed off...I wonder if she was threatened or bribed? She seemed so certain in that interview.

    However, her description of Patsy's theatrics was quite sympathetic, wasn't it? Perhaps she was filtering through her own experience and really didn't give Patsy enough credit for being involved in what had happened.

    Well, regardless, we will never know. 16 years later and still no justice.
     
  2. DeeDee

    DeeDee Member

    There are some things to keep in mind about Arndt. She was trained as a rape victim specialist, not a homicide detective. She had a natural inclination to view women as victims and men as aggressors. With that in mind, she did not actually spend a lot of time observing Patsy, who was always in a different room from JR. I feel Arndt just observed JR more closely, and of course thanks to her, he was sent BY her to look around the house. This was an unforgivable breach of protocol in an active crime scene, and even thought at that point it was still considered a kidnapping, Ardnt had already become suspicious of his behavior. When she saw him bring up his daughter's body, his actions signaled guilt. But I don't think she stopped to consider that other people who were in the house that night may have been involved as well- she saw only a male aggressor and two female victims.
    She was not there the whole time, either. She was not there to see Patsy feigning sobs and peeking through her splayed fingers to see if anyone was watching her, the way Officer French did. She was not there to see and hear the FBI make their statement "you're going to be finding her body".
    To Arndt, the suspicion never moved from JR because she never allowed herself to consider that the mother was involved.
     
  3. Learnin

    Learnin Member

    I think you summed that situation up rather well. Yea, I think she was biased toward a male being involved. And of course, even if John had been completely ignorant of his daughter's demise (which I doubt), he had it pretty much figured out when he carried the body up the stairs. In other words, there was no doubt John was thinking (when looking into Arndt's eyes), "you're not wise to this, are you?"
     
  4. heymom

    heymom Member

    All very good points. I hadn't remembered that she was a rape victim specialist. Yes, that could cause bias. In her case, I guess she was biased against John before she even arrived, since she described his greeting at the door as "cordial," but in a way that suggested it was somehow ominous as well.
     
  5. BobC

    BobC Poster of the EON - Fabulous Inimitable Transcript

  6. Elle

    Elle Member

    Thank you so much for posting this interview, Bob. This is the first time I have seen it. As Linda Arndt stated herself; she was a scapegoat from the minute she entered the Ramsey home .She was left with this scene for three hours by herself. The Boulder Police should have been ashamed of themselves. I'm spitting tacks right now! I cannot understand why this hasn't been given more attention by the Media!?

    I don't recall reading anything about this interview with Linda Arndt from reading
    excerpts from Chief Skolar's book(?). Maybe this has still to be discussed! (?).
     
  7. BobC

    BobC Poster of the EON - Fabulous Inimitable Transcript

    C--it got tons of publicity at the time. Linda wanted to go public about what REALLY happened that morning, but was told by the department that it would jeopardize the investigation. She sued saying her 1st Amendment rights were violated--that she should be able to tell her side of the story. She lost.

    Before you get too angry, the truth is the following: LA was seen in the department as a detective who was good with victims of crimes--she knew how to talk to them, calm them, get info from them etc. This kind of talent was valued in Boulder because it is a liberal small town that prefers a "hands off" approach to police work. Tough cops weren't tolerated. Steve Thomas once complained that the Koby's approach to police work was more like "social work" and in a sense he was right. That is what Boulder residents wanted, and that is what they got.

    Now--Linda A had one view of what occurred that morning and it reflected her background in sexual assault cases. She never wavered on that, as she said in the interview, and that bugged a lot of investigators. Most of the evidence had not yet come in so jumping to that conclusion was premature. This played right into the Ramsey's hands. They used Arndt to back up their cry baby assertions that the police made up their minds from minute one that the family, or at least one specific member, killed JBR. This caused enormous damage and the Ramseys played it for all it was worth.

    Don't get me wrong, I believe Arndt when said she she felt on a gut level that it was possible that nobody was going to get out of that house alive. The tension was off the charts. But as Kolar points out in his book, if you are smart enough to read between the lines, that there was more than one explanation for how those sexual injuries got there.

    I am 100% with Kolar and his "unstated" view. I never believed John Ramsey molested JBR. I have my reasons.
     
  8. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    Very interesting. Good observations, DeeDee. I haven't heard it put this way before, and I think you're spot on.

    We all carry our baggage with us in life, and I think Arndt was holding onto hers tightly in this case.

    The primary training as a victim advocate is this first: Believe the victim.

    So I think you're right about this: Arndt was sympathetic to Patsy immediately.

    I also think Kolar is right: Burke was given a pass so fast because of his age, no one seriously considered his part in this, from the BPD officers and supervisors to the DA. Patsy's ransom note did a good job there, didn't it?

    And this is where I think John gave himself away: John told the story to LE that neither he nor Patsy woke Burke up, asked him if he heard anything, and rushed Burke out the door past the BPD officers, telling them he knew nothing. Kolar questions this with great detail, listing John's change of story over time, as well.

    I think the plan all along was once the body was found, that plane that was ready to fly to Charlevoix was going to be on its way to Atlanta, far from the BPD, far from probing questions, into the bosom of the family and lots of lawyers, where they could protect Burke and themselves from arrest while they sorted it out.

    Arndt was out of her league. I believe seeing that murdered child carried by her father shook her to her core. Those thousand points of light (I think she described it that way to Barbara Walters) she saw are a clue: she truly had a life-changing experience, probably PTSD as a result.

    I've always thought her statement about counting bullets on her belt was an indication of her distress at that moment. What did she think was going to happen? Was she going to shoot everyone in the house? Or did she think John might, so she'd need to shoot him a dozen times? It made no sense to me.

    Thanks for the link, BobC.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2012
  9. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    On the other hand, Kolar wrote that one of the BPD officers who was there until 10 am or so was asked by Patsy to remove his shirt and gun.

    Kolar said the officer thought that was strange, if in fact she believed someone had kidnapped her child and might be watching the house, odd that Patsy wouldn't want a show of force for protection under the circumstances.

    I thought when I read that maybe Patsy was trying to imply or maybe said she didn't want the "kidnappers" to recognize a police officer through the windows, if they were being watched. (Right. Or the crime scene techs fingerprinting the place and gathering evidence, and the numerous other officers coming and going, or the two victim advocates cleaning up behind the CSIs, or the five friends and the pastor she called over....)

    I wonder if Patsy was using that in an attempt to disarm the officer, for fear someone could get shot when JB's body was found, that things might spiral out of control.

    Guilty knowledge: Patsy was afraid of the BPD that morning, not the foreign faction.

    Maybe Arndt's instincts were picking up on this.
     
  10. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    Looking for something else on the forum and found this interesting corroboration of what Kolar wrote in his book about JR's behavior after he "found" the body. It also includes something Arndt is alleged to have said.

    It's like a gossip chain, but I think Kolar's description of this same info backs this up as reliable. From Judith Phillips to us; from a Longmont officer to Judith; from Linda Arndt to the Longmont officer--it still seems to be pretty accurate:

    http://www.forumsforjustice.org/forums/showthread.php?p=139372#post139372

     
  11. zoomama

    zoomama Active Member

    Good reasoning KoldKase. And right along in the same area or paragraph IIRC is that description of Patsy sitting on the footstool or floor and splaying her fingers over her eyes and looking at that same officer. What a drama queen that was! Patsy had no fear of any foreign faction but maybe feared that she might be found out and very soon.
     
  12. Elle

    Elle Member

    I do remember Linda Arndt being friendly with Patsy Ramsey later, Bob, but this was a video I had never seen. I wish we could all have a happier ending with this case, but Chief Skolar seems to be the hero of the moment, so I'll just let him get on with it! [​IMG]
     
  13. Elle

    Elle Member

    I still think Linda Arndt got a raw deal that night DeeDee and was left far too long on her own with too many people. Three hours she herself states in that video just posted by Bob. What puzzles me was her friendship later on with Patsy! (?).

    It's too early for a strong drink![​IMG]
     
  14. Learnin

    Learnin Member

    "I wonder if Patsy was using that in an attempt to disarm the officer, for fear someone could get shot when JB's body was found, that things might spiral out of control."

    I thought along these lines, too. I, also, thought she might have made the remark out of her fondness of image. To have a uniformed police officer walking around with a gun in full view......well, what would our guests think...we're not criminals...and the neighbors...what would they think.... At any rate, she sure wasn't worried about the foreign faction.
     
  15. DeeDee

    DeeDee Member

    Of course we all know JR couldn't have had a business trip planned, because he had a vacation planned- first to Charlevoix and then on a Disney Cruise. But I agree that he may have said that, already planning to divert that flight to Atlanta. The fact that he said it as soon as he "found" his dead little girl speaks volumes about his priorities. Get the hell outta Dodge ASAP. Leave the dead kid under the Christmas Tree. Ain't gonna bring her back- so might as well save ourselves.
     
  16. Learnin

    Learnin Member

    I don't want to derail a thread but I also don't want to start a new thread so while wer're on the topic of JR, here goes.

    Last night I was thinking in bed as I was drifting off to sleep. I'm sure this has been discussed at some point but I'd like to hear some thoughts so I don't think I'm off base here. I read that JR almost cracked when his daughter was killed in the car accident. I'm wondering why he didn't crack when losing his second daughter????

    I look at my own life as a person who has had children. Would I be more tore up over the death of my adult child than I would my six year old? Now I get that, as humans, we have favorites but why wasn't this cute six year old not the apple of her daddy's eye especially after losing his older daughter?

    Again, I know, as humans, we have favorites and we might grieve over one more than another but how was JR able to move on so easily especially if he thought his little six year old might have undergone some torture? Remember, the result of the autopsy (and thus the head blow) couldn't have been known by the parents...unless.... So, here's a man that, if he wasn't involved somehow, lost his six year old to a sadistic torturer and he's ready to fly to Atlanta....the same man who wailed and grieved over another daughter who died instantly in a car wreck? You would at least have thought, if he wasn't trying to save his arse or the arse of another, he would've at least not wanted to leave his little girl's body so quickly....
     
  17. Cherokee

    Cherokee FFJ Senior Member

    Learnin, you're not the only one who has had that same thought.

    I was going back through some old threads when we did the revamp of FFJ a couple of months ago, and I read again about how torn up John was over Beth dying in the car accident, and I thought, how could he be so stone-faced the day he brought up his daughter from the basement and immediately after (like the CNN broadcast a week later). No tears, no crying out, no lip-quivering even.

    Like Alex Hunter said, John was "the Iceman." But why was he that way for JonBenet and not Beth? I promise, if I had carried up my six-year-old daughter from the basement, dead in my arms, I'd have made Patsy's drama queen scene look like child's play! I'd have been wailing and crying, and then I'd have wanted to murder the SOB who had done that to my daughter! I'd have been out for blood! And I'd have been camped out at the police station every day, trying to do what I could to help them find the person who took my precious daughter away from me!!!

    I DAMN SURE WOULDN'T HAVE LEFT MY CHILD'S BROKEN BODY LYING UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE WHILE I TRIED TO ESCAPE ACROSS THE COUNTRY!

    Another thing that struck me about John's enormous grief over Beth was that Patsy claimed she would hear him crying in the bathroom, but she would just lie there and not do anything. If my husband was crying and grief-stricken, I would get up and try to speak some comfort to him. If he wanted to be alone, I'd understand and leave, but I would at least have offered to let him know I cared, and he wasn't alone with his sorrow. I've always thought it was odd Patsy just laid there, and it seemed to show a dysfuctional part of their relationship - that it wasn't very deep or shared. For me, it shows how separate their lives really were.
     
  18. Cherokee

    Cherokee FFJ Senior Member

    Yep, how could John have had a meeting in Atlanta when they were supposed to be in Charlevoix that day and then go on a Disney Cruise?

    I believe John said it because we have testimony from another officer who told John he couldn't fly to Atlanta immediately. John was looking for any excuse to get out of that house and out of Boulder before the cops, or anyone else, got wise.
     
  19. Karen

    Karen Member

    I believe it's because he knew Jonbenet died at the hands of someone else he loved. It was much more of a puzzle of why and that may have filled some part of emotion that would have normally been pure grief. Also, he had to go into "family protection" mode. So he had other things on his mind. He had none of that with Beths death. It was all just grief.

    And don't forget, he knew early on about Jonbenet being dead so he had hours and hours to work through that but having to be on alert to protect his famliy from the police probably took over. Since she was already dead he needed to help who was left and that "take care of business" attitude probably kicked in.

    We don't know how he grieved in private later.
     
  20. BobC

    BobC Poster of the EON - Fabulous Inimitable Transcript

    But...but Cherokee, John had a meeting!
     
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