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

Where are you guys getting that about JR calling his lawyers at 2 am? Has that been verified anywhere? I recall rumors about the R's calling lawyers, but to the best of my recollection no one offered up any proof of it.

 

No, there's no proof, Bob, we are just speculating that phone calls were made in the wee hours of 12/26.

Mike Bynum was playing take-out delivery guy on 12/27, if you want to believe him, just happened to be delivering food to the Fernies' house from Pasta Jay's. Come on, do they think we're STUPID?? Right - a high-dollar defense lawyer just running some food over to a friend in some distress. Suuuuuurrrre.....

:floor:

 

I hope John Ramsey gets a male ghostwriter for his next book because the tone of this one is very hello-sailor and unintentionally hilarious.

Well, we know Ramsey didn't write it, but he didn't even read it. Take this passage from p. 128 of the hardcover:

"The linguistics scholar believed in Patsy's innocence, and wrote in a letter personally addressed to Patsy: 'I know that you are innocent, know it, absolutely and unequivocally, I would stake my professional reputation on it, indeed, my faith in humanity. I believe you were an ideal mother, wise, protective, caring and truly devoted.' He described the ransom note and said: 'It appears to have been written by a young adult with an adolescent imagination overheated by true crime literature and Hollywood thrillers.'

The expert was eager and willing to help find the real killer, but his offer of help was rejected by the police."


Everyone in the world except the author of The Other Side of Suffering knows that Don Foster wrote that gushing letter to Patsy and deeply regretted doing so. After being commissioned by the police and examining Patsy's other writings and the books and videos in her home, Foster reversed his opinion. He wrote a report and gave a presentation to...the police and the DA.

 

In TOSOS Ramsey says that he read Psalm 34 to Patsy before she died. Psalm 34 (as well as Psalm 37) is an acrostic psalm, i.e., the first letters of the lines in Hebrew mean some damn thing or other when put together.

According to the New International Version Study Bible--which is the version the Ramseys had--Psalms 34-37 form a group (with the two acrostic psalms as the frame) containing instructions in godliness and warnings concerning the fate of the wicked.

It's significant that John read Patsy Psalm 34 and that 34 to 37 form a group because the Ramsey Bible was open to Psalms 35 and 36 and the acrostic sign-off to the ransom note was constructed from Psalm 35.

Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me.
Take up shield and buckler; arise and come to my aid.
Brandish spear and javelin against those who pursue me.
Say to my soul, "I am your salvation."

Was the intruder a Bible scholar as well as a climber and a pedophile?

 

Don't forget "maid."

 

Ha!

I remembered something about the Ramsey Bible from Schiller's book. Linda Wilcox said that it was kept in the bedroom on the desk and was always closed with a bookmark in it, but that it was often read because it never had any dust on it.

I'm assuming that the part in TOSOS about John reading Psalm 34 to Patsy on her deathbed is true because it's a statement against interest (due to Psalm 34's connection to the ransom note). This psalm's interesting because it says that evildoers will be blotted out of even the memories of those on earth and counsels those who wish to live a long life to avoid telling lies. It ends by saying that their misdeeds are death to the wicked. Nice thing to read to your dying wife. How about "The Lord is my shepherd"?

TOSOS makes clear that John is the one who chose which psalm to read and Patsy, we're told, was crying at the end. No wonder.

 

Excuse my ignorance, Koldkase. I know I'm gittin' on in years, but what are you talking about here? Excuse me for interrupting fr brown!

If it's a long drawn out situation, please forget it! TYIA

 

Now, Elle, you know I'd never post a long, drawn out situation! :nono:

:floor:

I put "maid" because we've been discussing JB's bed being intact, with the sheets and comforter in place, and therefore her usual blanket on the bed, found with her in the cellar room, could only have been removed by an intruder if he made up the bed after taking it off.

He was an OCD child killer.

 

You're kidding.

JR read to Patsy, when she was near death, after her long suffering with cancer, Bible passages basically chastising her for lying? Condemning her for "misdeeds"?

Wow. That must have been torture for her.

Wonder if JR enjoyed it.

That is one scary family.

What do you mean, she was crying "at the end"? Can you be more specific?

 

If this passage is truly an acrostic, then it should be read:

C
T
B
S

not:

S
B
T
C

If Patsy did use this Psalm as inspiration for her invented terrorist organization name, she would have named them CTBS, not SBTC.

Yes, the Ramseys read the Psalms, but that doesn't mean it's where Patsy got the letters for her sign-off. IMO, it's really reaching for a connection, and Patsy would needed to have the Bible right there, thumbing through for acrostics and acronyms and all sorts of word play. By the time Patsy got to the end of the ransom note, she was on a roll and full of emotion, not searching for a way to name her "foreign faction."

If that passage in Psalms were the inspiration for Patsy's terrorist organization, she would have signed the ransom note as CTBS. There was no need to invert the letters upside down.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

 

There's no reason an acrostic can't be read backwards. Just call it a "citsorca." And we know that Patsy liked to add her own twists.

This isn't my analysis, by the way; it's Don Foster's. He said that those letters don't appear in that order anywhere else in that Bible--and the Bible (which was normally closed) was open to Psalm 35. (In the version I looked at Psalm 35 starts on the bottom of the page containing Psalm 34 and its commentary.)

It's a study Bible. Patsy would know they were acrostics because the commentary in her Bible accompanying the text says so and says that Psalm 34-37 form a group framed by the two acrostic psalms. Whoever was looking at those pages in the Bible was thinking about acrostics. If you want to think that's an intruder, be my guest.

You can look at New International Version Study Bible on amazon.

 

Ha ha, I like your idea of a "citsorca"! :floor:

Yeah, I think Don Foster was reaching with this one. I always have. I think it's one of those half-baked coincidences that people see when they are looking for something. It's akin to the psychological description of "magical thinking" where people believe in certain signs and wonders and superstitions because it gives order to their lives.

For a science fair project one year, my daughter did an analysis of maternity ward data to see if it were true that more babies are born when there is a full moon. All of the nurses swore by it and said they were always busier when there was a full moon. However, after going over several years worth of data, the numbers didn't lie. There was NO increase in births during full moons compared to the rest of the month! The reason the nurses seemed to think so was because they had been conditioned to that old wive's tale. They NOTICED busy nights with lots of babies when there was a full moon more than the nights they were busy that DIDN'T have a full moon! They saw what they were looking for and already believed in.

My point is ... we see what we want to see. Foster was looking for something to pin Patsy's "foreign faction" letters to, and he decided it was an upside down formation of letters in a passage in the Bible.

You KNOW I don't believe an intruder was thinking about acrostics, but I don't think Patsy was either. SBTC is an acronym, not an acrostic. An acronym will have period marks between the letters. An acrostic does not. Patsy was raised when it was proper to put periods between the letters of an acronym, so that's what she did at the end of the ransom note. S.B.T.C

Foster got this one wrong. He should learn to tell his acronyms from his acrostics.

 

Well, there's more to the psalm than all the hair-raising stuff. Most of it is addressed to the righteous, but there are a lot of zingers in there for the wicked and I think we all agree which category Patsy fell into. I see it as John's "I know what you did last summer" moment.

"Sure, sweetheart. What would you like me to read?"

"Psalms. Read the Psalms."

I read the Thirty-Fourth Psalm to her and when I'd finished, I saw her lying there with tears swelling from her eyes."


In my Bible the last lines of the psalm read:

"Their own misdeeds are death to the wicked, and those who hate the righteous are brought to ruin.
The Lord ransoms the lives of his servants, and none who seek refuge in him are brought to ruin."

(The Ramsey Bible probably says "redeems" instead of "ransoms.")

 

I forgot to say ...

It destroys the meaning of an acrostic if you reverse the letters, and in essence, Patsy would be reversing Scripture if she wrote SBTC instead of CTBS, and that is anathema and completely forbidden! Patsy was religious enough to know she shouldn't try to rearrange God's Word, especially for her own misleading purposes.

 

I'm not sure you quite get this. The Bible was open to Psalm 35. The commentary accompanying the text of the previous psalm and when I say "accompany" I'm talking adjacent, like on the same page, talks about taking the first letter of each line. The first lines of Psalm 35 start with CTBS and those show up at the end of the ransom note. These Bible acrostics don't seem to be acrostics in the way we think of them anyway. I don't think they spell out Hebrew words.

Foster uses a computer to help him look for patterns. If he says "SBTC," backwards or forwards, doesn't occur anywhere else in that Bible, I believe him. It's not a matter of noticing.

Have you read Psalm 35? It's all about escaping pursuers and being protected from the people who are going to try to kill you.

 

Uh, I have no argument to counter this. She killed someone she was obliged to protect, a helpless little girl, for no reason, but you're saying she wouldn't write letters backwards from an English translation of the Bible because that would be sacrilegious.

 

I don't believe Patsy killed JonBenet, and I especially don't believe she killed her daughter "for no reason."

I do believe Patsy wrote the ransom note to protect someone she loved who accidentally killed his sister.

 

Yes, I've read Psalms 35. Many times. And that's another reason I think Foster's theory is wrong. People who read the Bible a lot will find patterns everywhere. Patsy had more than ONE favorite passage. Patsy could have taken ANY letters from ANY passage to make the name of her "foreign faction." If that passage meant so much to Patsy, why DIDN'T she make the name "CTBS"? That would make a lot more sense.

If Patsy was making her acronym based on an acrostic from just one Psalm (that meant so much to her), why the heck didn't she used CTBS instead of SBTC? It makes no sense to reverse the order of the letters if Patsy were truly using those letters as a message to herself or God or whoever.

Here's the thing. A computer can find all kinds of letters and patterns and it doesn't mean a thing. I have read books on several different analyzations of the the Bible, Shakespeare, and other works of literature. You can make them mean anything you want.

People supposedly discovers codes in the Bible that tell about the coming apocalypse. Remember the old guy from last year who just KNEW the world was going to end on May 22nd because he'd discovered patterns of numbers in the Bible? Hmmm. Guess he was wrong.

Same thing with other Bible codes. I once read a very illuminating expose' of Bible codes by an author who ran certain verses through his computer using RANDOM choice. By the time he got through, he had several sentences worth of balderdash, but you could string the words together to make sentences if you tried hard enough and wanted to engender a certain outcome. You see what you want to see. It was brilliant.

It's the same thing with Foster. He ran his computer and couldn't find SBTC, so he settled for CTBS. If his computer had found TBCS, he'd have latched on to THAT!

Do we really know if the Ramsey Bible was really open to that passage, or is that just Don Foster's word for it? How do we know it wasn't John reading that passage instead of Patsy?

For the record, I'm not saying there is no way Patsy didn't use that Scripture for the name of her "foreign faction," but I DO think it's not a given. I have a problem with someone like Foster claiming it is definitely where Patsy got her S.B.T.C. because we honestly don't know how she came up with that acronym.

IMHO, because Patsy was trying to think of how terrorist organizations name themselves, she came up with a cross between the SDS, the PLO and other shadowy terrorist names she'd heard of in the news. Patsy thought her "foreign faction" needed to SOUND like those organizations, so that's why she used an acronym and not full words. SBTC had very little to do with the Psalms and very much to do with Patsy's effort to compose what she thought was a realistic ransom note.

I believe if Patsy WAS thinking in religious tones by the end of the ransom note, her fundamentalist beliefs and indoctrination would have led her to use the common

Saved
By
The
Cross

which would have made more sense and meant more to Patsy than a backwards acrostic taken from English letters that were substituted for the original Hebrew alphabet and words.

 

Off topic, but what a great science fair project!!! :clap:

 

Brilliant

I agree one hundred percent with you, Cherokee. We see what we want to see.

In the case of trying to figure out SBTC we could all literally come up with just about anything and never know who stumbled on the "right" answer. I remember there was talk of Patsy looking at some picture and taking SBTC from "Subic Bay Training Center" OK....could be. Saved By The Cross? Yep, that would be consistent with Patsy's religious beliefs....and on it goes.

It could also be the first letters of her favorite childhood friends from elementary school. The last letters of JonBenet's favorite foods. The first letters of names they'd considered for JonBenet. A special message for her child who'd just been murdered (Sweet Baby Treasured Precious). Hey, she could've looked around the room and randomly chosen letters from whatever written material was in close proximity.

In all probability, Patsy died with the very idiosyncratic secret of what those letters meant to her. All else is nothing more than conjecture.