The Purpose Of the Ransom Note

Discussion in 'Justice for JonBenet Discussion - Public Forum' started by Learnin, Apr 5, 2010.

  1. Elle

    Elle Member

    From acandyrose:

     
  2. Elle

    Elle Member

    Just copied this to let the posters see the full page 225 - Lawrence Schiller "Perfect Murder Perfect Town"



    <DIR><DIR><DIR><DIR><DIR><DIR><DIR><DIR></DIR></DIR></DIR></DIR></DIR></DIR></DIR></DIR>How grateful I am to Little when she sends me copies. When I print anything there are mistakes in the text. I just don't understand why my HP scanner can copy and make mistakes. (?) Unbelievable! I changed a few errors. Moab explained it to me a long time ago. and Little also confirmed this situation. Glad I don't do this for a living.[​IMG]

    Wasn't my scanner. I printed a copy of this from my scanner and it turned out just fine. It was posting it here which caused the trouble, and this may well be what Moab told me could happen(?). Thanks again Moab for all you do here!
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 15, 2010
  3. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    Thanks Elle and Little. Y'all are always on hand with sources. You two are pure TNT!

    Hofstrom and the Ramsey attorneys objected to processing the ransom note, the most critical connection to the killer, because the Ramseys wanted to have it for their own defense.

    Who believes these are the actions of innocent parents desperate to find the person who murdered their child? Who could still be a very real threat to their remaining family and themselves? Not me.
     
  4. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    Maybe I'm wrong, but when it's a child kidnapping and especially when it's credited to a "small foreign faction" which can be considered possibly taking the child across state lines, the FBI has jurisdiction. It would not have been Eller's place to tell the FBI to step down, as I understand it. They would have had legal authority to take over immediately. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I understand it. Once it was a murder, then that jurisdiction would revert back to Boulder. But with the phones tapped and everyone operating as if it were a kidnapping until John found the body, how can the FBI be dismissed by Eller? That's my point.

    As to Ron Walker, he's the agent who told the BPD after reading the ransom note that morning they'd likely find a body. But until they did, it was still a kidnapping as far as how they were handling it: phone taps, copying the ransom money for delivery, etc.

    Sorry, this just doesn't make sense to me. The BPD may have been shorthanded, but they had several detectives and police officers who were there and then left Arndt. I find that extremely odd. They had somewhere more important to be? Who leaves one detective at a scene with a group of civilians expecting a call from terrorists who have kidnapped a child? If they didn't believe the child was kidnapped but had fallen victim to someone within the home, even worse. Then she is unable to get backup when she saw she needed it? Like nobody in the BPD thought it might be important that she could get in touch quickly? Completely unbelievable to me.

    I"m not buying it.
     
  5. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    Could be, Learnin. But if that's the case, then the sexual assault by paintbrush indicates the perp preferred something other than physical contact with the victim. Was that how the prior vaginal injuries occurred, as well?

    The issue for me is that if the child was being molested in some other manner THAT NIGHT that led to the murder, then there would have been no need to insert the paintbrush. She would already be...oh god, how to put this dreadful sequence..."freshly" molested that night.

    What I wonder is if the person who inserted that paintbrush had any idea that the older vaginal injuries would show up in a post mortem examination of the body. If that person were a lay person, this would require some technical knowledge of forensics, wouldn't it? Or would that person have thought that this paintbrush would cause sufficient injury to cover up what had been done before? Maybe someone was called who could explain it, or what needed to be done? Just brainstorming here.

    Here's the logical sequence I come up with:

    The paintbrush was inserted, then broken to use in the garrote as a handle. It seems if it were broken first, that would be more damaging to the tissues in the vagina than indicated in the autopsy. It also seems counter-intuitive in some way, but that's an opinion based on speculation, that's all.

    Then the broken segment of paintbrush was tied onto the long end of the garrote cord. That cord could have been tied on the neck anywhere, but the location of the knot at the back of the neck indicates to me that the knot was tied from the back. Since she was on her stomach by the paint tray more than likely, indicated by the paint strip on her chin matching paint in the tray or possibly a dried strip dislodged from the paintbrush when it was broken there, as the slivers found near the paint tray indicate, it seems likely the cord was tied on her neck there, from behind. Also a carpet fiber from the basement was found stuck to her chin, if memory serves, more evidence her face was on the carpet.

    Since I don't believe all this was possible to do to a fighting, terrified child without obvious defensive injuries showing up on her body, and they didn't, I think she was unconscious during these actions.

    Also, the location of the blow to the head is at the very top of the skull, just a little to the right of center, from the picture of the skull cracks. If she were lying on the floor, on her stomach, with someone behind/above her, her body held down by at least one point of counter-resistence to keep it from being pulled up when the garrote was pulled from behind/above her, then how does one person do all that and deliver a blow to the top of the head at the same time?

    I can't figure out how that's possible. I really can't.

    It seems to me she had to be upright when the blow was struck, unless someone was standing over her while she was prone on a surface of some kind, on her stomach, and the swing came from high above. I don't know, though, just working through it in my mind, so it's all speculation on my part. But if she were in her bed, with the headboard near the top of her head, asleep, how would someone get a sufficient swing from that direction? They'd have to stand or kneel on the bed...but the angle still isn't right, is it? Unless she was lying with her head at the bottom of the bed, where her pillow was found, which seems possible, because her blood was found on the pillowcase, remember.

    Dr. Spitz's demonstration might be the best indication we have of how that happened. It has been said he tested the head injury on a child-sized cadaver, but I don't know if that was true or not.

    [​IMG]
     
  6. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    One more thing: I personally think the bruises on the side of the face might have happened when the child was held down to provide counter-force so the garrote could be pulled tight from behind. Maybe something was lying on the floor under her face?
     
  7. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    I'm fairly sure the FBI was dismissed after the homicide was discovered.

    I think the BPD did have other places to be. Didn't somebody go to interview the housekeeper? Somebody else to Ramsey's business? Somebody took the ransom note to police headquarters for processing and brought a copy back.

    Some of the cops, at least, came rushing back once the body was discovered.

    I'll have to read how Thomas describes it. As I remember, he thought it was ill-advised to leave Arndt alone, but not sinister.
     
  8. Elle

    Elle Member

    Glad to be of help, KK. Little does have a lot of good information on hand with having written her book "Journey Beyond Reason" and she is very obliging when it comes to the JonBenét case. I thought you may have written one too. I'm sure you have already written it here on the FFJ forum. Just print all your posts and put them in book form. :)

    Glad to be of help, KK. Little does have a lot of good information on hand with having written her book "Journey Beyond Reason" and she is very obliging when it comes to the JonBenét case. I thought you may have written one too. I'm sure you have already written it here on the FFJ forum. Just print all your posts and put them in book form. :)

    I wonder how many of the White's guests watched the " Nick of Time" movie along with Bill Cox on Christmas night, especially Patsy (?) The same statements were in the JonBenét ransom note(?).
     
  9. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    According to Thomas, once 10am came and no call had been received, the detectives were called back to headquarters for a strategy session.

    Why didn't the law-abiding friends of the Ramseys just do what they were told and stay in one place? Even with all these pillars of the community roaming around like a bunch of four-year-olds, everything might have been more or less OK from a forensic point of view if Arndt hadn't asked Ramsey to search the house. That gave him the opportunity to further contaminate the crime scene. It's hard to see how the bosses downtown could have anticipated Arndt giving that instruction.

    Again according to Thomas, Arndt paged Mason around noon to get more cops to the house, but he didn't answer her pages.
     
  10. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    No, sorry, still not buying it. What if the kidnappers had called at 10:30? Or 11:30? I mean, when kidnappers have a child, you're not going to walk out when the call doesn't come on schedule like it's a business deal aborted.

    At least, that's how I see it.

    Even so, you've got a missing child. How did that change at 10 am? Arndt was alone in the house with a group of 8 or 9 adults who could have been, any one of them, in on this. How could the BPD possibly know what was going to happen with that note and a child missing? What excuse did they have to say, oh, we'll leave Det. Arndt at the house by herself; the call didn't come, so it's all fine now.

    Nope, can't see it. Something was not right in that police dept., IMO. Not just incompetence. Even cops who do traffic stops back each other up. It didn't take a law enforcement genius to know that there was some serious issue going on in that house.

    Then Arndt discovered she was so abandoned by her own department, she couldn't get anyone to even answer her calls for help. No, the BPD couldn't have predicted she would make such a blunder, but they could have predicted that something could go very wrong. To leave her there without even a means of calling for backup, at a kidnapping crime scene full of civilians?

    How could anyone in LE ever defend that? What if the kidnappers actually did show up? What if one of those civilians turned out to be involved and pulled a gun or panicked or something? How could the BPD predict that wouldn't happen when a child was missing and a ransom note was all they had to indicate what happened to her?

    Agent Walker already told the BPD they'd find a body. Red flag, anyone?
     
  11. Learnin

    Learnin Member

    I don't know if I'm following you or not, kk. Surely, Thomas, Eller, Trujillo, etc. was not in on a coverup. French, according to Thomas, was suspicioning the parents from the git go. Any coverup, in the BPD, would have been coming from Koby, Mason, no?

    I think leaving Arndt by herself was a mistake but I think, by 10 a.m., the FBI agent, and the few BPD detectives on duty, knew this was not a kidnapping and that a body would be found outside the home. French, the first officer on the scene, after being there only a few minutes before Sgt. Reichenbach arrived, knew something was screwy as hell. when Reichenbach arrived, French met him at the door and said it looks ike a kidnapping but, "something is not right". I WOULD SURE LOVE TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT FRENCH OBSERVED THAT TOLD HIM THIS SCENE WAS A BUNCH OF BALONEY....

    Anyway, because of the screwy ransom note, and the behavior of the parents, I think LE ( with the prodding of the FBI agent) heavily suspicioned the parents were involved. Thus, a regrouping back at headquarters to go over the game plan, etc.

    But, I'm interested in who you think, in the BPD, would have given the order to abandon the crime scene to Arndt and the neighborhood?
     
  12. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    I don't think the lower ranked detectives and police officers would have been "in" on any cover up from the beginning, no. Later, maybe they suspected things. Linda Arndt did sue the BPD, claiming she was used as a scapegoat, so maybe she has some ideas. I believe the reason Thomas quit and wrote his book is because he clearly suspected Team Ramsey was running things from higher up. Thomas seemed to me to believe the case was being obstructed through Hunter as soon as he could get back from his vacation.

    As for who in the BPD might have been actually working to disable the investigation as early as 10 am? I have no specific guess. Who was Eller's boss? Who might have been powerful enough to quietly tell the FBI to step down when it clearly had jurisdiction?

    I don't know. Maybe it's too much of a conspiracy theory. But when you have such an egregious screw up at a crime scene involving a missing child and a ransom note written as a terrorist group after a company owned by a defense contractor like LM...and a DA who inhibited the investigation at every turn for 3 years, from preventing the collection of elementary evidence, to handing the lawyers of the prime suspects the evidence results, to leaking to tabloids, to refusing to call a grand jury until the governor of the state forced him to hire an outside prosecutor to do so, and more, it makes one wonder.

    One thing to consider: if the Ramseys made calls of their own for help in the early morning, the wheels could have been in motion for many hours before 911 was even called. But we'll never know who could have made that call. Ramsey "friend," the Colorado State Attorney General, maybe? Her husband called John several times shortly after the murder "to offer condolences," Thomas wrote. Could Lockheed, which to this day has various plants and operations in Colorado, have called in a few favors PDQ? Did Bynum have that kind of insider power as a lawyer for AG/LM, or did he already have Hadden working before dawn?

    Did it go higher up? Spade did one time imply the blocking of the collection of the phone records went all the way to the White House. He was very vague, of course. We never get sources for the big claims. And we did discuss that LM, being a defense contractor, owned AG so maybe that was the "excuse" used for that, if it were true--which we don't know. But SOMEBODY managed to alter and bury those phone records, didn't they?

    Anyhow...just speculation. I'm probably being silly. I didn't used to care much for conspiracy theories except in the movies until this case. I just can't explain all the amazing "luck" the Ramseys had any other way. I have never heard of anyone having a murder victim found in their home and the phone records were blocked from being collected with a subpoena IMMEDIATELY. Even with a confession the crime has to be investigated, as the DA has to still make the charges and back them up in court. So this is going to boggle my mind the rest of my life.

    Did I mention (about a thousand times) that LE and TEAM RAMSEY should have been ALL OVER THOSE RECORDS as a possible intruder paper trail? How many crimes have had phone records break the case? This is hardly ground-breaking investigative technique, is it? Team Ramsey should have gone straight for those records as a possible connection to the intruder, since Patsy's story about that lost cell phone left a VERY LOOSE END that could have led to "the killer." I mean, they were constantly begging for ANY CLUE, weren't they? Except that OBVIOUS ones: that ONE LINK could have been right there in those phone records, which SURELY they'd be THRILLED to help LE find that intruder by providing the records SINCE THE PHONE WAS LOST? They DID call and have the cell phone service cut off for that phone WHEN THEY LOST IT...right? So what did they have to hide?.... Pffft! :rolleyes:
     
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2010
  13. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    What good does it do to be in the house when the phone call comes? They need to know where the phone call is coming from and go there.

    Kidnappers are not going to come back to the house. Did they leave a Day Planner there or something?

    I fail to follow your reasoning here.
     
  14. Elle

    Elle Member

    The end results are the Ramseys got away with it, and you can all talk 'til the cows come home about the 911 call, the contamination party by the Ramsey friends, Burke's voice on the 911 call etc. etc. etc. We're all still sitting in the first square of the game called "WHODUNNIT" [​IMG] ...although we all feel we know the Ramseys were involved.

    Having said the above, I feel Patsy is already paying for her crime, so I'm slipping off my soapbox and thank y'all for still trying so hard to find out more about this tragic case.
     
  15. Learnin

    Learnin Member


    I'm not much in blaming every bad thing that happens on conspiracy theories, either, kk, but, like you, I believe conspiracy was involved in this cover up. The only question is how high up did it go.

    I tend to believe it wasn't any where in the BPD but we had Koby at the helm and he wasn't about to make too many waves...."can't we all get along here?" I believe the DA's office had the right person to push around in the BPD. I really believe Koby thought his detectives were on the right path but didn't want to cause too many waves.

    I tend to believe that, if the Rams were actually the ones who actually struck the blow, the explanation given their legal expert was embarassing accident, unfortunate sibling fight, etc. and the decision was made to not bring bad light upon this successful family who donates a lot of money to the political machine.

    Now, if it was business related, then, the possibility of a larger cover up becomes more possible.
     
  16. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    Well, I've explained it as best as I can. That's all I can do. These are just my ponderings and opinions, thoughts based on what I have seen and read on this case, nothing more. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
     
  17. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    I guess all we're doing is trying to come to terms with the corruption at this point. I've long accepted that the killer of JonBenet, the molester, and those involved in the cover up, one and all, got that "VICTORY!"

    Whatever other forces might come to bear, it's certainly not in our hands. But I would point to the terrible fate of Alex Hunter and say to those who have worked to promote deceit and obstruction of justice for a murdered child, Beware.
     
  18. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    I still believe that the case files, the forensic evidence, and all that we haven't seen, tells the tale of what happened to JonBenet that night and probably who did what. We'll never see it, though. Remember the case of the Black Dahlia? The corruption in the police dept. then will forever blacken the truth in her murder. That's probably how this case will go, as well, IMO. Evidence will disappear, if it hasn't already. Decades later, the powers that be will still be hiding the killer's identity in order to keep their own secrets.
     
  19. Little

    Little Member

    I agree KK. It's not that we see a conspiracy eveywhere we look, it's just that the evidence and known facts in this case (JonBenet's) points to the very center of the case and those who occupy & occupied that space. It's not difficult to believe that there were those who didn't even realize the part they played in the cover up until it was too late. What seemed like an innocent request may not have been so innocent.
     
  20. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    Thanks. I'll check out her posts.

    I wonder if she says anything about "deviation of my instructions"? That strikes me as the oddest thing about the ransom note.
     
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