Weapon used on JonBenet's skull: golf club or flashlight?

Discussion in 'Justice for JonBenet Discussion - Public Forum' started by cynic, Aug 20, 2012.

  1. rashomon

    rashomon Member

    The photo which Patsy was shown in the 1998 interview showed a baseball bat:
    In the NE book, (p. 229) it says that fibers fom the basement carpet had been found on the bat.

    And didn't Michael Kane say somewhere that it turned out during the GJ hearing that this bat was Burke's?
     
  2. DeeDee

    DeeDee Member

    Interesting idea- if Patsy was cleaning JB off because she had soiled herself after they got home (or even before they got home- which would have upset Patsy even more), Patsy could have bashed her with the hand-held shower head IF they had one and if it was similar to the one you describe.
     
  3. zoomama

    zoomama Active Member

    Yes, DeeDee that is a lot of ifs I realize. Just even suggesting this as a possible weapon changes my entire scenario of the dynamics for what happened. I'll not get into that. This was just a thought that came to me and I have not given it a whole bunch of time to gel...like where and what and who and when and why.
     
  4. Elle

    Elle Member

    I think it could have happened this way, DeeDee! I still feel Patsy Ramsey was in a rage because of JonBenét having to be cleaned up so often. Linda Hoffman Pugh, the housekeeper stated to the police that Patsy Ramsey had JB's sheets in the dryer many mornings when she turned up for work. How on earth she put this little girl on the stage when she had this toilet problem I'll never understand!(?). Shouting for anyone within hearing distance to come and clean her up at six years of age!(?). What did she do at the pageants?
     
  5. cynic

    cynic Member

    Thank you to everyone for the thanks and also for the input.
    I apologize for not getting back to this thread sooner.
     
  6. cynic

    cynic Member

    You are thinking of Wombat, he is an engineer.
     
  7. cynic

    cynic Member

    Is Spitz full of it?
    I believe I have made my views on Spitz clear in a previous post:
    http://www.forumsforjustice.org/forums/showpost.php?p=189292&postcount=37

    Spitz, without question, knew EXACTLY where the depressed fracture was.
    However, he was not showing the EXACT spot when he posed for the picture with the flashlight because it is inconsistent with both the autopsy description and the autopsy photo.
    It is difficult to tell where specifically Spitz was striking the head with the flashlight but it seems both low and too far forward. While he may have been in the “ballpark,†the purpose of the picture may have been more to illustrate the size of the flashlight and its potential as a weapon than to mark the location of the impact.

    [​IMG]
     
  8. cynic

    cynic Member

    Thanks OTG for the research and input.
    I have come to the conclusion that while we can narrow down the location where the depressed skull fracture occurred, I don’t think we can be specific because the angle and location of the camera taking the picture is unknown and the description in the autopsy report is somewhat ambiguous.
    There were a lot of pictures taken during the autopsy. Undoubtedly there is more than one documenting the injury to the skull. At least one more picture would probably serve to clear things up, but unless Kolar can shed some light on the matter for us it will remain unclear.
    Patricia Dunn took color slides for the coroner’s office, while Detective Trujillo shot photos for the police department. Dunn shot 113 frames, documenting each stage of the procedure. Meyer dictated his observations into a tape recorder.
    Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, Lawrence Schiller, page 40

    In the illustrations below I have outlined the region that I consider to be the most probable in terms of upper and lower limits for the depressed fracture.
    A vertical line extending through the parietal tuberosity (the widest point in the human skull) is considered to be the dividing line between the posterior and anterior parietal region.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    To illustrate why the location and angle of the camera in relation to the “hole†in the skull is important I shot two pictures of an orange from two angles showing that a long fracture line can appear quite short. I shaped the orange to try to replicate the steep slope that is common in the rear portion of a human skull.

    [​IMG]

    Below I have attempted to depict the size and length of the fracture in relation to a skull of the same dimensions that a 6 year old skull would have.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  9. Elle

    Elle Member

    Excellent work, cynic!
     
  10. Elle

    Elle Member

    Holding a golf club in one hand is not as easy as holding a baseball bat and flashlight which can be held in one hand, but which of these items would be on hand at a time like this and "where" exactly was JonBenét struck on the head - upstairs, or in the basement?

    I'm thinking the golf club would have to be held closer to the actual club head with two hands to make the impact of the blow, whereas one hand can hold the bat, torch, or a showerhead.
     
  11. Cherokee

    Cherokee FFJ Senior Member

    Awesome work and illustration, Cynic!

    IMHO, when I look at the skull fracture, I see the results of the downward driving force of a golf club's hard metal heel.
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2012
  12. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    Yes, brilliant, cynic and otg. You both have truly given us a much more accurate idea of the placement of the fractures.

    I guess because of the photo of Dr. Spitz with that Maglite, I always thought the blow came from the right side. In that case, I wondered if the knob end of a baseball bat could have been used. The bats located outside the home were always suspicious to me, but of course that's because they were brought up so many times in LE interviews with the Ramseys and in the various books. We also have crime scene photos of at least one.

    But looking at these diagrams, and considering that the blow came from behind instead, I'm thinking...golf club. Had to be.

    Which would explain why JR wanted his golf clubs in the middle of winter, with his child lying in the morgue, wouldn't it?

    I would really love to know if anyone from LE actually looked inside the golf bags in the house. Also, I'd like to know if Pam took a golf bag out of the house, as per JR's instructions, in her "scortched earth" raid on the house--WITH HUNTER'S APPROVAL AND AID.

    Thanks so much, cynic, otg, and everyone who adds to this debate.

    Now, someone please convince me that all the medical experts who consulted on this case had no idea what made that fracture. The autopsy was done the next morning, on the 27th. That's when the fracture was found. Before that, nobody in LE even knew she had been bludgeoned. By that afternoon, LE should have known what to look for in the way of a weapon, right? And that would have been before Pam's raid, right?

    Okay, now I'm trying to remember the timeline of these things.

    At what point did Pam raid the home? I've been thinking it was a few days after the 26th.
     
  13. heymom

    heymom Member

    I think it's in Kolar's book, that Pam did NOT successfully remove the golf bag that John wanted, since it was located in the basement and she did not gain access to that area of the house (surprised that someone actually stood up and said, "NO!" to a Ramsey family member! I know, she's an in-law, but still.). If Pam did not get the golf bag, I'm sure that everything was removed and examined, which means that the paint brush end was NOT there, nor was any of the material used to clean up JonBenet. Also sure that John Ramsey, knowing the weapon used, would have cleaned ALL of the golf clubs that night, so no evidence would have been there. Unless that club found outside, with fibers from the basement, really was the weapon...but LE surely would have been all over that if it were.
     
  14. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    We do have the lists from the warrants of what was collected by the crime scene techs, so I'll look there when I have a chance, to see if the golf bags/clubs were collected.

    I wish I could say "I'm sure" about seemingly logical gathering of evidence in this case, but alas, I lost faith long ago about anything logical or routine being done in this investigation.

    When I see things like what Jayelles did with the Bloomies, what Cherokee and Cina Wong did with their individual ransom note anaylses, what otg and cynic are doing here...throw in wombat's description of the science now available to actually determine the size and velocity of the weapon used in the head blow: I can't figure out how Boulder spent nearly $2 mil on this case and never did any of this.

    They should have had these answers LONG ago.
     
  15. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    I found some interesting illustrations on youtube of various brain injury graphics, animated to some extent, which may help in this discussion.

    Here's a frame I captured from this video showing the brain impacting the skull after the blow:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=AD16-wwt9p0

    JB had some brain injury which I believe a surgical nurse who used to post here told us was like a contrecoup injury, which would have looked something like this, maybe?
     

    Attached Files:

  16. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    This in fact shows what acute subdural hematoma is in very simple terms: great graphic.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=qO16QXMxBLY

    This is a really interesting animated presentation explaining some of the brain injury described by Dr. Meyer in the autopsy report:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7x3j9JuG_o&feature=related

    Here are some screen shots I find extremely interesting from the last video because there is a time progression of this brain injury. I think we can see how JB's brain injury did take some time to build up the blood found at autopsy: though I have to say, this video is confusing, as it appears to entail two different brain injuries, and the number sequencing of the CT scans is out of sequence somehow...I have no idea....
     

    Attached Files:

  17. Cherokee

    Cherokee FFJ Senior Member

    They didn't want the answers long ago or now. That's why Kolar felt he had to write his book. When he tried to give them answers that matched the evidence, Mary Lacy shut him down. Hard. How dare Kolar follow the evidence to a scientific and logical conclusion instead of some airy-fairy, made-up intruder that was concocted to cover for the Ramseys! Why, the very nerve of that man! So Lacy had a fit and Kolar was out of there!

    The truth is not welcome in a well-spun tapestry of lies.
     
  18. Cherokee

    Cherokee FFJ Senior Member

    Yes, JonBenet had a contrecoup brain injury exactly opposite the impact of her skull fracture.

    That, along with all the other evidence, indicates JonBenet was hit from behind as her brain moved inside the braincase away from the force of the blow and then back.

    If JonBenet had been hit from the right side, any contrecoup injury would have been located exactly opposite that blow on the left side of her brain, not the front-left side where the contre-coup bruising was noted.

    Since we know the blow to JonBenet's head came from behind her and not the side, then I believe the bat as the weapon used on JonBenet has been eliminated. IMHO.
     
  19. wombat

    wombat Member

    It occurs to me that we have a "missing link" here - when the blow created the hole in JonBenet's skull, it dislodged a piece of bone. What did that look like? Was it one piece, or a couple pieces, or shattered? That information would be very helpful. The dislodged pieces could still be in evidence, no?

    I think that if the blow came from a flashlight, the dislodged bone would be more likely to be in one piece, because the impact area would be larger and the bone failed around the edges of the impact zone. If golf club, the disloged bone might be more in pieces, since the stress in the middle of the impact would be greater than at the edges. No matter which, looking at that bone under the high-tech microscopes and other equipment we have now could reveal alot.

    I'm just saying this from analyzing structural failures, I'm no forensic scientist!

    Also, kudos to you, Cynic, for this awesome work.
     
  20. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    Reading the autopsy report, it sounds like it was one piece: go to page 7.

    http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/jonbenet_ramsey/jonbenet_ramsey_autopsy.pdf
     
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