The log grabber

"M O N E Y, baby, M O N E Y!"

To quote Lyle Lovett.

 

A while back on Websleuths, there was a discussion about partially wrapped gifts, and gift wrapping paper allegedly found in the wine cellar.

Ramsey warrant dated December 26, 1996:

http://community.bouldernews.com/extra/ramsey/1997/09/29-2.html

This warrant itemises:

Partially wrapped FAO Schwartz (55KKY)
Partially wrapped FAO Schwartz (56KKY)
Partially wrapped FAO Schwartz (57KKY)

A poster wrote that in the bottom left of this picture of the wine-cellar, one can see part of a FAO Schwartz wrapping paper:

http://www.acandyrose.com/149blanket.jpg

Is FAO Schwartz a department store or a gift wrapping service?

 

I guess an American would have to give you the answer to this, rashomon. Can't say I recognize it being in Canada.

 

Not that I could shop there rashomon but I think it's a store.

Little

 

Rashomon, years ago the brilliant Why Nut spotted that paper in the cellar room and compared it with the paper in the Christmas morning pic of JonBenet smiling into the camera while opening gifts. The same wrapping paper can be found in the background of that pic, identifiable as the same paper even with the tiny bit showing in the cellar pic.

It's FAO Schwartz wrapping paper, from the famous New York toy store, if I remember correctly. I'm thinking that's the store in the Tom Hanks movie Big, where the two men dance on the giant piano keyboard...?

 

http://www.acandyrose.com/s-evidence-fao-swartz.htm

<TABLE borderColor=#ff0000 borderColorDark=#ffffff cellPadding=1 width="75%" borderColorLight=#ff0000 border=0><TBODY><TR align=middle><TD bgColor=#000000>Evidence - Partially Wrapped "FAO Swartz"

December 26, 1996 Search Warrant Page 10
Partially wrapped FOA Swartz (55KKY)
Partially wrapped FOA Swartz (56KKY)
Partially wrapped FOA Swartz (57KKY)</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

 

FAO Schwatrz is a famous toy store in New York City. It is a "must-see" tourist attraction for any visitor to the city, whether you have kids not. In the 70s, I used to get my hair cut at the Vidal Sassoon salon right next door, and I used to love to go in and look at the dolls. They had the standards, but they also had dolls from other countries and toys you wouldn't find anywhere else. They have their own special signature gift wrap, like many other shops, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, etc. They would have wrapped anything bought at the store on request. The gifts PR claimed to have bought on her NYC trip were likely wrapped by the store and either shipped to the Rs or she brought them home with her.

 

I believe its a Toy Store

 

Thank you folks for the info re FAO Schwartz.

It would interest me what those partially wrapped items were and if they were all found in the wine cellar.
Or maybe they were partially unwrapped items - did Patsy tear the wrapping paper off to look for something?
For if Patsy bought the gifts at the NY FOA Schwartz toy store and they were wrapped by the store, they would have been competely wrapped and not just 'partially'.
I always thought Patsy's looking for the size 12 Bloomies was the reason why she tore open an already wrapped gift, but the Bloomies would not have been wrapped in paper from the FOA Schwartz toy store.

Did Patsy claim to have used that filthy dark wine cellar room for gift wrapping (did it have a table at all?) or did she just say she stored gifts there?

 

Rash, if FAO Swartz sells wrapping paper, Patsy may have bought some in which to wrap Christmas presents. She didn't necessarily have the gifts wrapped at the store. I guess someone from NYC needs to tell us if FAO Swartz sells wrapping paper in individual rolls.

FAO Swartz is a huge, famous, and somewhat expensive, NYC toy store. Their brand name would be one Patsy would like to bandy about to others, just like the Bloomingdale's brand. It would be considered fun and prestigious to have it known that you bought gifts there if you were from the western part of the US. It would mean you'd had a trip to NYC AND the money to splurge on semi-expensive items.

 

Absolutely correct. FAO Schwartz = expensive. Just like the Bloomies panties. Not that the panty set in and of itself is that costly, but that fact that it was bought at Bloomingdale's indicated that it would cost much more than an identical set bought at K-Mart or JC Penney. And, yes, that kind of thing is what PR was all about.

 

I have often said that those gifts were partially UN-wrapped. It was LE who described them as "partially wrapped" when they made their evidence lists- and probably before the fact that the panty set was known to have been the one bought by PR as a GIFT. PR had said that she wrapped gifts in that filthy room AFTER questioning by LE when it became apparent that LE was suspicious about the size of the panties and asked her who they were intended for as it was obvious they were not JBR's size. LE had likely come to the (correct IMHO) conclusion that whoever redressed the body in those panties HAD to know they were in one of the wrapped gift boxes. No intruder could ever know that. LE knew it, and the Rs knew it too.

 

POLICE FILES - PAGE 85 Patsy is questioned by Detective Tom Trujillo and Detective Steve Thomas

TT:Okay, Um, that cellar door, that peg(at the top of the door), does that have to be down to keep that door closed?`

*snip*

ST: Patsy, when were you last in that cellar basement room prior to Christmas?

PR: Prior to Christmas?

ST "Yes, ma'am."

PR: Well, I was there, I was down there a lot on the 24th wrapping, and I was there on the 25th wrapping.

Steve continues by asking her if she had any duct tape in the home, similar to what was across JonBenét's mouth. Her
answer was NO!

She should have been challenged right there and then about how on earth she managed to wrap gifts in such a cluttered room. This was ridiculous, She should have been challenged about this.

 

Elle, you're absolutely right that Patsy should have been challenged on lots of things in her interviews with LE, from Thomas to the '98 interviews, to the the 2000 interviews in Atlanta and the deposition in the Wolf suit.

But Thomas had a ticking clock over his head: the Ramseys agreed to be questioned for 2 hours each. Period. How can any investigator get the answers he needs in such a murder case, in that amount of time? No way, and that's what the Ramseys intended, IMO. After the two hours each were up, they left and weren't seen for interviews by LE again until more than a year later, when they were threatened with a grand jury subpoena if they didn't give the DA those interviews, if memory serves. Then they were soft-pitched by Smit and Haney, who walked on eggshells and helped the Ramseys along by providing them with answers many times and interrupting so often, good questions weren't even answered! arrrggghhh :steamed:

Oh well, it's all water under the bridge. We know Patsy wasn't wrapping presents in that nasty cellar room. She had no table and the floor was filthy. Just another Patsy lie that didn't get challenged because the Ramseys were too clever to ever get challenged on their lies.

 

You know so much about this case KK. I did not realize that there was no table for her to wrap presents down there. It is truly incredible what they have gotten away with in this case and then had the audacity to go on tv. That is what is incredible to me. One would think with such a heinous crime and the subsequent defiling of this child that they would want to shrink away out of the limelight. But they wrote a book instead.

Do you have a take on why they acted that way. Why they did not just let it go?

 

To answer that is easy This is Patsy style all the way.

 

Also, from the very first moments after the 911 call, their aim was to portray themselves as VICTIMS. One of the first arrivals at the R home that morning was their pastor and a few "VICTIM's advocates". Their book adds to that image.

 

Yes, it was all about "the lifestyle" of the Ramseys, but it was more than that. The "spin cycle" the Ramseys started the day after the funeral by appearing on CNN was for the benefit of potential jurors, IMO. Early on, neither they nor their lawyers could have known they'd get such a free ride from the DA without any interference from the BPD. If not for Thomas, there is so much we wouldn't have known about how quickly Hunter began his obstruction of the investigation. But the publicity surrounding the murder must have given them all pause. Who knew a DA could do the things Hunter did? Not me. There was no guarantee that the larger investigation, including the CBI and the FBI, wouldn't uncover pesky evidence that would have been irrefutable? Until all the evidence had been processed, until little "loose ends" like the phone records had been "taken care of", there was a danger that some tab might get some evidence sold to them that would have blown it all up in their faces, so things were still dicey for them. Remember the PI and his wife, who were prosecuted for obtaining so many phone records, etc? They were doing that for a tab, after all. It wasn't a done deal until the grand jury farce was staged, allowing Hunter to declare no indictments in Fall of 1999.

By the time the grand jury had been diverted by Hunter and Smit, the Ramseys had substantial public damage to their reputations, as well. I believe they couldn't bear for people to know the truth, so they went on their publicity campaign with their book, IMO. Remember, John had a J O B when this happened, making quite a bit of money. He lost that job, it was once reported, when he refused to take a polygraph for his company. That was in a legit news story, not a tab, and I read it long ago. It's no longer online, though, and back in those days, I didn't copy anything because like so many others, I thought the case would be "solved". Never dreamed all this time later, those important details would be lost forever.

Anyhow...you can look at crime scene pics of the cellar room and see there was no table in there. It was pretty small, had mostly household repair/maintenance stuff in it, like window screens and paint cans, etc. The Ramseys also claimed they kept their Christmas decorations in there. Patsy put Christmas trees all around the house one Christmas, so it might have been crowded with those before and after Christmas, as well. I wonder if housekeeper LHP ever commented on that. I wonder if LHP was ever asked about Patsy wrapping presents in that room. She should have been. But there it is again. If much of your investigative time is spent running down bogus "leads" looking for an intruder the lawyers and Smit in the DA's Office believe committed this crime, guess it's hard to stay focused on the prime suspects.

The longer we look at the facts of this case, the clearer it becomes to me that the fix was in before the 911 call was ever made.

 

I don't know if y'all have seen this. I only found it for the first time last week and was surprised I'd never read it before. Of course, leave it to Why Nut to document it for us. I believe it reveals Patsy's "pageant" frame of mind from her youth. It was a long fall from that "Pageant Queen/CEO's wife" pedestal after the murder.

I hope Why Nut won't mind if I post it here from his/her case blog. There are some other good articles from Patsy's pageant days posted there, as well, if you want to have a read, not to mention many Ramsey interviews on TV:

http://whynut.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2007-03-16T12:02:00-04:00

Unfortunately, this was NOT the "grand performance" of Patsy's life. That dubious distinction went to the cover up of the murder of JonBenet, IMO.

 

Here is John's version of the present wrapping going on around Christmas, from the 1998 interview:

http://www.jonbenetindexguide.com/1998BPD-John-Interview-Complete.htm

Notice how John steered the interview questions AWAY from the opened, wrapped gifts to a BOX OF CIGARS? Why? Because John had placed the box of cigars on a paint can at some point long before the murder and they were upside down on the floor? John tries to make something out of it, but he could easily have knocked the cigars on the floor when he found JonBenet, so it's hardly evidence to nail an intruder. But John GOES THERE--AWAY FROM THE GIFTS.

Well, as usual, the Ramsey luck held out and "inaudible" is the answer we needed.