JonBenet's Skull Fractures: The Weapon

Discussion in 'Justice for JonBenet Discussion - Public Forum' started by otg, Dec 19, 2012.

  1. Learnin

    Learnin Member

    Good post. If you are correct that only a high energy swing, with some object, caused this head injury, then, I have to rule out John or Patsy as the one inflicting the injury. I simply can't grasp Patsy or John, violently, swinging an object at their daughter's head in that manner. I think this is why ST tried to imagine a scenario where JBR was slung against something when Patsy and JBR were involved in a scuffle...I don't think he could grasp Patsy deliberately swinging an object at JBR knowing that it would most likely be fatal. If Patsy is involved with the head injury, it had to be an accident precipitated by a physical confrontation of sorts.

    I'm still not convinced that a "high-energy transfer" could not occur with a person's head being whipped by slingng that person or that person resisting someone pulling on them and then the grip being lost with the result that the victim falls back with force. The human head is heavy and, with a sudden whipping action, I'm not sure you couldn't punch out a piece of skull if everything was just right.

    But, I'll concede that a bat, golf club, flashlight, etc., is the most likely cause of the skull fracture. This is why I've always thought that BDI is the most likely scenario. But even here, it's going to take an effort for Burke to wield a "high-energy transfer". I'd be more inclined to believe a bat was the object that caused the injury.
     
  2. Elle

    Elle Member


    I would think with this young boy being your son, heymom, it will bring back bad memories for you. Maybe you should just leave the CT scan where it is. Please give it careful thought!
     
  3. heymom

    heymom Member

    Elle, dear, I have the bad memories even without the pictures on that CD! In living color and audio, every single day, and they can be called up quicker than any computer file can! I have had to work to let the memories go, but I can be right back there in a second if I just think about it. It's one of those moments that will never leave me. Still don't know if I can ever forgive myself for letting him get on that skateboard and go down the hill without a helmet...If he had died, I would no longer be here either. I couldn't have lived with the guilt. :no:
     
  4. Elle

    Elle Member

    As a mother who did lose her youngest son heymom, I understand very clearly where you're coming from. The memories never leave us. I agree with you. We just cannot change this scene which keeps playing over and over again in our heart and mind. This was why I was concerned for you . I am so happy you still have your son. Just be careful that's all I'm saying! It's not worth it if it will bring back bad memories for you. It wasn't your fault allowing him to go on the skateboard, but it is very difficult for you to separate yourself from this. I fully understand!

    Wishing you all the best!
     
  5. heymom

    heymom Member

    Thanks, Elle, I knew you would understand, and I am sorry for your loss which was much worse than just our near-miss accident. Over time, the memories do fade somewhat, or maybe the "file" just degrades in clarity. I will think about whether or not looking at the pictures would make them return. You are such a caring person.
     
  6. Elle

    Elle Member

    It really is very considerate of you offering to do this, heymom, but please be prepared, it could bring back the whole incident and you could be hurt all over again. Have you mentioned to your son you were thinking of doing this?
     
  7. Cherokee

    Cherokee FFJ Senior Member

    Learnin, thanks for your comments, especially why ST would have tried to imagine fracture scenario involving Patsy. He knew, as we all do, that Patsy wrote the ransom note, and at the time, he felt she was the best candidate for who could have harmed JonBenet. Further information made available since then has now pointed to Burke being JonBenet's angry assailant.

    I have had difficulty in letting go of the idea JonBenet could have been thrown, or released, with enough force to crack her head, but I cannot deny the physics or medical expertise that tells me otherwise.

    A linear fracture is what would have occurred if JonBenet's head had hit something hard, even a faucet or edge of a toilet seat, etc., because the physical force is NOT enough to cause a comminuted fracture and bone displacement. There is much more excessive force in an intentional attack with a weapon than with the release of force in a fall.

    Our FFJ poster, Heymom, has confirmed that fact with evidence from her son's own head injury, which is a good example of the actual amount of force released when a skull hits a hard surface. Yes, it can crack a person's skull, but it results in a linear fracture because it is due to "low energy" blunt trauma over a wider surface area of the skull, as opposed to a "high energy transfer" that happens when the skull is hit with an object.

    A high-energy transfer, such as a blow from a baseball bat, a golf club, or any other object wielded as a weapon, would cause a depressed skull fracture, in which the bone fragments are driven inward, and the fracture is usually comminuted, just as we see with injury to JonBenet's skull.

    It is interesting to me that this can happen "with or without a breach in the scalp." This is also consistent with what we know of JonBenet's head wound, as we all know there was no visible injury to JonBenet's scalp, even with the excessive amount of force needed to cause the high-energy, comminuted fracture to her skull.
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2013
  8. Elle

    Elle Member

    I thought the same as Steve Thomas. I thought JonBenét was thrown in a rage against the edge of the enamel bath or the rim of the toilet bowl, Cherokee. Now, I'm confused!

    A baseball bat has been mentioned many times. Maybe it was!
     
  9. heymom

    heymom Member

    If I think about that very point, I would consider the side of a baseball bat to be one likely possibility. The reason is that there is no pointed surface to focus the energy in one spot, like a hammer blow would. The center of the force could produce the comminuted fracture, but it wouldn't look like the bat or the end of the bat. Maybe that was the highest point of JonBenet's skull?
     
  10. heymom

    heymom Member

    No, but he wouldn't care, really. He thinks I'm nuts for continuing to care so much about a little girl who's been dead for so long. As far as me sharing his films - he wouldn't mind. If I started talking to him about it, he would not want to discuss it.
     
  11. Elle

    Elle Member


    That's good to know hm! My family can't believe I'm still involved in the JonBenét case, so will you please hurry up and solve it for me!
     
  12. heymom

    heymom Member

    Ha ha, I'm probably not going to be the one who solves the case, Elle, but I do believe that Chief Kolar has done that. He just can't tell us the details! Frustrating to have gotten this far along and STILL not have all the answers. I think we're on the right track by doing these experiments and studying skull fractures, though.

    Unless one of us could get access to the case files, and go through them the way Chief Kolar did, we are still going to have questions about who did what to JonBenet. The one certainty we have is that Patsy wrote that ransom note, which forever stands as her testimony that there was NO INTRUDER in the house that Christmas night. For me, a lot of troubling questions cleared up when I read Chief Kolar's book, but then a few were left in the fog, still. I can get a general idea of what happened but I do wonder how much of Burke's DNA, fingerprints, etc. were found at the scene of JonBenet's death, and were not mentioned because of his age and the lawyers' interventions. That may be why we looked more at Patsy, and not because his evidence wasn't there. That may be one reason Chief Kolar knows that Burke was to blame.

    Whatever happened that night, the Ramseys protected Burke very well, and none of them ever answered for the death of JonBenet.
     
  13. Elle

    Elle Member


    Yes, we do have a lot to thank Chief Kolar for, heymom, and all the experiments done so far have been really fantastic.

    For sure Patsy wrote the ransom note and went overboard with it. It has to be very difficult for Burke at the age he is now with Chief Kolar's book bringing more attention to the JonBenét case. One has to wonder how he is handling it! (?). Burke is really on his own now with his father having remarried. As you stated, Burke was very well protected that night. It can't be easy for him to lead a normal life. I'm amazed at how he avoids the limelight. I'm sure that fatal Christmas night in 1996 has to come back and haunt him!
     
  14. DeeDee

    DeeDee Member

    On the contrary-I feel BR has done a great job of putting the death of his sister (and any involvement he may have had) right out of his mind. He distanced himself from the very beginning- it is as if his sister never existed. To him, she doesn't. He also (like all liars) will remember events the way he wants to or has been told they happened- not necessarily the way they really happened. It is a very common phenomenon- tell a lie often enough and for long enough and you will come to believe it yourself. JB's killer is known to her family- but I will bet the rent they have convinced themselves they had nothing to do with it.
     
  15. heymom

    heymom Member

    I agree - if Burke felt any responsibility, his parents succeeded in convincing him that his sister's death had nothing to do with anything he did. All the subterfuge they carried out - with the ransom note, the "kidnapping," the intruder stories - Burke probably really believed that whatever happened to JonBenet that night, happened later on and was not caused by him. I sincerely doubt if he even remembers the details now. No, he won't have any conscience-driven confessions, I'm afraid.
     
  16. Elle

    Elle Member

    Burke Ramsey is certainly not in the news or hassled by the Media. Amazing!.
     
  17. BOESP

    BOESP Member

    DeeDee, do you remember the reply John Andrew Ramsey gave when asked what he thought the killer deserved (or words to that effect)? He replied, "Forgiveness."

    When I read that years ago my first thought was how can anyone say that so soon after loosing their baby sister. I still think it is odd unless he did, indeed, know that someone in the family killed JonBenet.
     
  18. heymom

    heymom Member

    John Andrew did indeed say that, and he repeated it when the reporter rephrased the question. Even the most Christian of us would have trouble making that statement right after the murder of a sibling.
     
  19. koldkase

    koldkase FFJ Senior Member

    Oh my, I'm so far behind! Time to play catch-up. :doh:

    Very interesting watermelon experiment!
     
  20. otg

    otg Member

    Part-7: Geometry.

    Okay, I know this is not going to be a very interesting discussion, and I’m not really going to enjoy it any more than anyone else. But I need to get it out of the way so we understand its significance, before I go on to something else. If this doesn’t interest you in the least, feel free to skip on down to the end to see only the Bottom Line as to its importance.

    In previous discussions, we’ve loosely used several terms to describe the depressed fracture that we should understand. The words are rectangle, oval, ovoid, and ellipse.

    I think everyone knows what a rectangle is, so I won’t go into a discussion of that.

    An oval (from Wikipedia) “is a closed curve in a plane which ‘loosely’ resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very specific, but in some areas (projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.) it is given a more precise definition. In common English, the term is used in a broader sense; any shape which reminds one of an egg.†This is all in 2-dimensions. The 3-dimensional version of an oval is called an ovoid. The word ovoidal refers to the characteristic of being an ovoid and is often used as a synonym for "egg shaped".

    An ellipse, OTOH, is a little more difficult to define in simple terms because it is a very specific type of oval. Whereas an oval has a somewhat loose definition, an ellipse is a specific type of oval which is completely symmetrical on either side of its perpendicular axes. The 3-dimensional version of an ellipse is an ellipsoid. An egg is an ovoid, but not an ellipsoid (because the egg is not symmetrical on both sides of its smaller axis). Here is a video showing how to draw a perfect ellipse:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UD8hOs-vaI

    Notice that what makes an ellipse different from a circle is that it has two centers of radii, unlike a circle which has only one. There are also other ways to construct an ellipse:
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Ellipse_construction_-_parallelogram_method.gif
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Ellipse_as_hypotrochoid.gif
    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Archimedes_Trammel.gif

    So understanding all this, you understand the significance of what I mean (and what was pointed out by wengr at WS) when I call attention to the fact that when I made the green shape in this picture, I used a tool which drew an ellipse along the edge of the depressed fracture, and it fit almost perfectly to the general shape of the "hole".


    Bottom Line:

    The depressed fracture in JonBenet’s skull was a perfect ellipse (symmetrical on either side of its axes), and it had to have been made from a cylindrical object striking the spherical shape of the skull.
     
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