John Ramsey's New Book - The Other Side of Suffering

Discussion in 'Justice for JonBenet Discussion - Public Forum' started by Tricia, Jan 18, 2012.

  1. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    Many have noted that John used phrases from the ransom note in other contexts. In his '98 interview he used "100 percent" five times, "95 percent" twice, "80 percent," "99.9 percent," "98 percent," "70 percent," and "10 percent." These are not exactly what you find in the ransom note, but it's a lot more "percenting" than most people engage in. In part 2 of an A&E documentary, at 4:35 in, John said "to withhold her body for proper burial was barbaric." In an October 2000 interview he said, "The justice system is a government organization, and hence should be looked at with some degree of skepticism." It's not surprising that many people who think the Ramseys were responsible think that both were involved in writing the note.

    I don't think both of them were. If they had both been involved in the murder they would have greeted the police in their pajamas, clutching teddy bears. That would have been part of the staging. If John took a shower and put on clothes different from the previous evening's, wouldn't Patsy have done the same? She felt the need to explain her lack of showering in DOI. She said that she got up intending to take a shower and then remembered that her shower was "still broken." The floor plan of the house shows three bathrooms on the second floor; wouldn't one of them have a shower? She spent 20-30 minutes putting on her makeup (she tells us) so she had enough time to spend an extra minute to go down one flight of stairs.

    The fact that neither of them looked like they'd just gotten out of bed, belying their alibi, actually argues for an intruder. Except that Patsy wrote the note, a rather long one.

    If both John and Patsy were involved, they would have presented themselves to the police in a way that corroborated their alibi. But evidence shows that Patsy wrote the note so she was the one who was involved.

    Something big was going on in '95 and '96. In September 1995 The New York Times and The Washington Post both published a 35,000 word "manifesto," Industrial Society and its Future, authored by domestic terrorist "group" FC. The publication caused an uproar. This event wouldn't have gone unnoticed by journalism major Patsy. Then in April 1996, FC a.k.a. the Unabomber was arrested because his brother David recognized "cool-headed logicians" in the manifesto as being an expression used by his brother Ted. ("Cool-headed logicians" occurred about 1400 words in.) NYT published more than three dozen articles about the Unabomber and his capture--in April alone. A TV movie, Unabomber: The True Story, aired in September 1996. In it David Kaczynski recognizes the manifesto phrase "you can't eat your cake and have it" as a phrase his brother used, having picked it up from their mother who used it all the time. It might not have happened like that, but if you watched the TV movie, you think it did.

    So Ted Kaczynski's downfall was publishing a long essay which exhibited his pet phrases and literary idiosyncrasies for all to see and someone who knew him well recognized them. Patsy would have known this, but still she wrote a long note packed full of what must be family phrases and insider knowledge. What was the idea? The more she wrote, the more she exposed herself to the fate that befell Ted Kaczynski; someone's going to notice pet expressions and phrases.

    If the idea of a long note was to frame the housekeeper, what happens when the housekeeper turns out to have an alibi? Would the housekeeper know about the Atlanta Fat Cats or John's fetish for things southern. It seems doubtful so why throw all that stuff in? When the housekeeper turns out to have an alibi, the inside information will point back at someone named Ramsey.

    I'm led to believe that Patsy's intent was to fill the ransom note with phrases which would be recognizable as John's. Would that be feasible? I tried to think of signature expressions my own family uses and I can't think of many, though I know we have a lot of them. I can, however, think of many expressions which were used habitually by an uncle I detested growing up. His pontificating was monumentally annoying. Maybe that's the key. ​
     
  2. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    It's interesting that Victory! was on at 3:30am on December 26 according to TV Guide. It was also on at 8:30am on December 25, but not during the hours when some folks claim an intruder was roaming the house while the Ramseys were at the Whites'. (Patsy said they went to the Whites' about 5 or 6pm.)

    The same channel showed the Victory Christian Center Christmas Special at 6:30pm on Christmas day, and it's possible that there were advertisements for Victory! on during the early evening which an intruder might have seen. Or maybe he was just leafing through TV Guide, bored out of his mind.
     
    cottonstar likes this.
  3. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    This is a photo of Psalm 34 and the beginning of Psalm 35 in the NIV Study Bible (1984/1985). The note about Psalm 34 being an acrostic psalm, one of only seven out of 150 psalms, is in the middle of the left-hand page. SBTC can be seen at the top of the right-hand page. Psalm 35 has very similar imagery to Patsy's special, life-saving psalm, Psalm 57. (I've talked about this at some length in previous posts on this thread.) Psalm 57 in this Bible contains a cross-reference to Psalm 35. On December 26, the Bible was found opened to the next page, the one with the cross-referenced verse, 35:17.

    In TOSOS, John tells us he read Psalm 34 to Patsy when she was dying (and made her cry).


    Psalm-34-acrostic.jpg
     
  4. questfortrue

    questfortrue Member

    Just for some visual clarification:
    The Bible referenced in the ’98 exchange between Patsy and LE (Haney) was photographed and enhanced by Whynut and Cherokee. This Bible appeared on JR’s desk in the downstairs room referred to as JR’s Study/Den.

    biblephotofromBPD.JPG

    A photo taken later (*perhaps after PP had done her 'evidence gathering' :eek: on Saturday Dec. 28th) shows the Study/Den in more detail and one can note the gold frame photo on the desk. Another clue as to the room referenced is the shape of it – a half hexagon. Next photo has a better resolution to show the desk.

    JRDen3.jpg

    It’s been suggested by some posters that the RN was written in this room because the blinds could block out light. Of course, the writing pads and sharpie were also nearby.

    *JR's Bible is listed as one of the items the Rs asked PP to retrieve from the home.
     
  5. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    There are two studies in the house, one on the first floor and one on the third. I don't think a first floor study would have a view of the Flatirons. (I didn't realize this until I looked at Kolar's book where the third floor alcove is labeled as a study on the architect's drawing.)

    "Although some of the house was a frilly showplace, the alcove containing John Ramsey's study was strictly masculine. Dark walls, dark patterned drapes, furniture of heavy wood. Arched bay windows framed a classic view of the Flatiron Mountains....A brass-hinged cigar humidor sat near the small sculpture of a sturdy lion...." JonBenet

    I believe at least one of the housekeepers said that the Bible would sometimes be moved to the Ramsey bed. (I'll check that.) That suggests that the Bible lived on the third floor. The Bible is big and heavy; I don't think you'd be carting it between floors on a regular basis.
     
  6. questfortrue

    questfortrue Member

    Yes, I’m aware there is a view of the Flatirons from the 3rd Floor. And I also know that JR had a desk on the third floor with a window which faced the Flatirons. My reference of photos was simply to comment about the only photo I’ve seen of what looks to be JR’s desk and a Bible. That it was his desk was confirmed by later photos from the 2016 flurry of media programs.

    According to a thread in which posters enhanced photos, the desk had a Bible, and I assume it was JR’s Bible. But, for sure, if there are additional photos of either Patsy’s or JR’s desks in the 3rd floor Master Suite, I haven’t seen them. There are many photos we haven’t seen. So, for that reason, if Haney and Patsy are discussing some other photo I’m not aware of it. Here’s the thread where what is considered to be a Bible is located. http://www.forumsforjustice.org/forums/showthread.php?8555-Need-help-graphics-or-photoshop/page4 - Post #48

    In that same thread some posters wondered if it was a photo of a dictionary. Group consensus (and mine) was that it was a Bible. Also, ST said that the dictionary was found on a coffee table in the den, not on a desk. ST also reinforces the acrostic clue you’ve mentioned: "A New International Version Study Bible was photographed on the desk of John Ramsey, open to the pages of Psalms 35 and 36. There was no way to know it at the time, but those verses were to play a critical role in the unfolding case. Beside the Bible was a greeting card JonBenét had made for her father, on which she had printed, "The best gift I can give is me."

    To be clear I’m not challenging that Patsy wrote this RN. I’m simply providing a photograph of JR’s desk and his Bible.
     
  7. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    My comments were in response to your saying that the writing pads and sharpies were nearby. They were on the first floor. From things I've read, I think the Bible was on the third floor. That's all.

    It does look like Bible cross-references running down the middle of the page. As you indicate, the Bible was open to the end of Psalm 35 (and all of Psalm 36). In my NIV Study Bible, the verses take up about four-fifths of the left hand page so that seems to comport with the photo. I'd like to be able to see some white space around a Psalm 36 in the rightmost column of the left hand page, but the screenshot really isn't good enough to see that. I think you're right that it's the NIV Study Bible.
     
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2018
  8. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    So in Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, Linda Wilcox is quoted about that Bible: "Then the detectives asked me about the Bible on John's desk in the bedroom. The cover was embossed JOHN AND PATSY RAMSEY. Sometimes it was by the bed. It was always being read. I know because I never had to dust it. I told the police that I never saw it open; it always had a bookmark in it."

    This supports the Bible being found on the desk in the study adjoining the bedroom on the third floor. It was something Wilcox had recently been asked about so she's probably right about how the detectives characterized it.

    In Schiller's book, the 3rd floor study is labeled "dressing." That puzzled me until I saw that alcove labeled "study" in Kolar's book.
     
  9. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    Some of the cross-references for Psalm 57 are up at the top of the page instead of near Psalm 57 where you'd expect them to be. I think that's why I overlooked them before. The line 57:1 (with superscripted n) just above Patsy's so-important line about taking refuge in the shadow of God's wings is cross-referenced to
    Ps 34:22, which is the last line of Psalm 34--and that's the line before the first line of Psalm 35, which is the line starting with Contend. That, of course, is the word containing the C in SBTC.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2019
  10. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    Here's a photo of Psalm 57 in the 1984/85 NIV Study Bible which includes the cross-reference to the last line in Psalm 34, 34:22, in the top middle of the page.

    Psalm-57-half-page.jpg
     
  11. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    Looking at this photograph, with the bookmark carefully placed, it seems to me that the open Bible was intended to be seen as significant. In '98 Patsy is asked at length about the Bible: whose is it, who reads it, where was it kept, was it ever left open? But Patsy never asks why they're asking all these questions about the Bible. Have they found something in it?

    She does know there's something important in it though:


    "PATSY RAMSEY: I have always thought that perhaps while we were gone, that the person or persons came into the house and were there when we got back.

    TOM HANEY: What makes you think that?

    PATSY RAMSEY: Because we were gone several hours, and they could have had their way with the house. Have known where flashlights were, where pads of paper were, where bibles were, where Christmas cards were, where -- you know. If we are gone three or four hours. No one knows for sure."


    Elsewhere in the interview she says that it's John's Bible, he kept it closed and only he reads it.
     
  12. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    I watched Netflix's A Perfect Crime, a series about the assassination of Detlev Rohwedder and the possible involvement of the German Red Army Faction, a group which targeted law enforcement, politicians and businessmen from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s. Faction got my attention. The RAF was indeed both small and foreign. Googling established that the 1991 Tom Clancy book, The Sum of All Fears, was actually about the Red Army Faction. More googling established that others had noticed some Clancyesque language in the ransom note. Perfect Murder, Perfect Town claimed that Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising (1987) was on a Ramsey bookshelf and a chapter of a book purporting to be by LHP made a reference to all the Tom Clancy novels which must have been flashing through Patsy's mind. (I didn't find evidence that Patsy enjoyed this kind of book.)

    I searched for "faction," "countermeasure," "electronic device" and "behead" in both TSoAF and RSR. TS0AF had many more of those words, and often more instances of the words, than RSR. In The Sum of All Fears there are: faction (8), countermeasure (4), tactics (a lot), electronic device (6), behead (1), FBI (a lot!), kidnap (4), percent (a lot), one scrutiny, a smattering of victory, a Bible, a reference to strangling, a reference to a battered suitcase containing one hundred thousand dollars and oddly, $91,545.00. (I hate it when authors sprinkle random highly specific numbers in books. The hero didn't have a couple of quarters rattling around in his pocket?)

    To be fair, the books of other authors in that genre and time period have some of the same words, and beyond a couple of Robert Ludlums and one Frederick Forsyth, I didn't search them. But I'm betting that there was a copy of The Sum of All Fears in the Ramsey house. None of the crime scene clues were intended to be obscure, and in my view they were all intended to point to John. Patsy would have assumed that some of the mostly male detectives would recognize the language.
     
  13. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    If Patsy anticipated that law enforcement would recognize Tom Clancy references in the ransom note, did she also anticipate that they would recognize paraphrased lines from 1986's Ruthless People ransom demand? That seems unlikely. I saw Ruthless People when it came out, but the wording of the ransom demand is not what I remember. Perhaps John Ramsey was a well-known Bette Midler fan, but my thinking now is that one particular movie line manipulation is important: "If you deviate from our instructions in any way whatsoever, she will be killed" becomes "[a]ny deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter." As far as I can tell, nobody in history has ever used "deviation of" in this context before. So why is it there? On the theory that most things in the ransom note are put there to point to John as author, should we expect to find a bookshelf with a statistics book containing the phrase "deviation of"? (Having a book on statistics isn't unusual, of course: I have a couple myself.) "Deviation of" also occurs when describing frequency variation above and below a center radio frequency--at least that's what a dictionary of technical terms for aerospace use tells me. (I don't have one of those in the house, but John Ramsey, a pilot and employee of Lockheed Martin, might.)

    The way the NIV Study Bible was laid out on John's 3rd floor desk begged law enforcement to notice it. But did John have a particular connection to Psalm 35? I don't have any reason to think so. Patsy must have anticipated that law enforcement would discover SBTC at the beginning of Psalm 35 of that Bible. (The broad hint on the facing page about the special significance of the beginning letters of psalm verses just lays it on with a trowel.) Patsy probably wondered why it took so long! She then completed the skewering of John by telling law enforcement that John was the only one who read that Bible. Along with everything else, she might have thought that would be enough.

    She does something similar with the flashlight. It's discovered standing up ostentatiously in the kitchen (if memory serves) wiped inside and out, according to Steve Thomas. Why not just put it back in the drawer? Because it was meant to be found, connected with the crime, and Patsy is going to say that John is the only one who touches it. John looks in the car and under the car with it, the way men do.

    This suggests some premeditation and unusual thinking. It's probably not a coincidence that in January '97 or thereabouts Patsy started seeing a psychiatrist who served as a mitigation expert on a notorious Colorado murder case. Ramsey investigator Ellis Armistead worked on that same case. Defense attorneys, we know, often give their clients private polygraphs. (For instance, OJ Simpson took a private polygraph and failed, allegedly.) If Patsy took a private polygraph and failed, it would be necessary to have a Plan B.
     
  14. fr brown

    fr brown Member

    In JonBenet Steve Thomas says that in the process of reviewing a list of books in the Ramsey house, he came across a crime scene photo of a dictionary in the first floor study, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. The lower left-hand page corner was creased and "pointing like an arrow to the word incest." Some shade has been thrown at this idea because in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, published in 1991, the word incest is at the top left of the right-hand page and so what Steve Thomas relates would be an impossibility (or at least an absurdity). But these are two different dictionaries. I decided to assume that Steve Thomas got the title right. And it occurred to me that the dictionary might not have been a recent edition. Maybe it was a dictionary that was actually used in school, which for John would be the 60s.

    I would have used a searchable copy of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, any edition with the correct title, but no soap. So I bought a used copy of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1961), and turned to the page with incest. It's the last entry in the right column of the left-hand page (p. 420) so what Steve Thomas describes would be very possible in this edition.

    I imagine that the crime scene dictionary was found open, thus warranting a crime scene photo, but Thomas doesn't say one way or the other. So in a prominent location, a possibly old dictionary, possibly conspicuously open and bookmarked to an inflammatory accusation. That's staging (and framing).
     
    icedtea4me likes this.
  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
    Dismiss Notice