Was JonBenet really beaten ?

It.

 

He absolutely knew. He put her there. She wasn't garroted in the wineceller, but just outside. The Rs put the body in the wineceller, which was the most distant room in the house, so she WOULDN'T be found. What they THOUGHT would happen was this: They call 911 with the kidnapping report. LE arrives, they show them the note. They NEVER expected that LE would stick around, they expected them to leave and try to "find" their daughter. In the meantime, what the R REALLY planned to do was to wait a few hours, bring her body up from the basement, and call LE to say that her kidnappers had killed her because they called police and dropped her body off (in the yard, on the porch, whatever). When it became apparent LE had no intention of leaving the Rs house that day, JR became impatient (he was clearly pacing and exhibiting behavior NOT associated with the panic and fear that the parents of a REAL kidnapping victim would) and he went to "find" her himself. They had to abandon their original plan to bring her up later - and this also explains why they were so quick to send BR away that morning- there was no way they could bring her upstairs with him home too.

 

I think it's possible that John and Patsy initially considered removing the body from the house, but that they changed their minds for any of a variety of reasons:

They might be seen leaving the house or returning.

The motor of their vehicle would be warm when LE arrived.

Although there was only a trace amount of snow, they may have been afraid of leaving tracks in the driveway.

They couldn't bury the body because the ground was frozen.

They couldn't bear to dump the body, especially since animals might get to it.

I can't picture the Rs phoning friends if the Rs were planning to bring the body upstairs later. Would the Rs have expected their friends to stop by for just a little while and then leave? I don't think so. Nor do I think the Rs assumed that LE would leave in a timely fashion, either.

I think the Rs were counting on someone - either a cop or a friend - to find JonBenet's body. When no one did, John took it upon himself to "find" it.

 

Actually, I don't think they thought their friends would stay all day. After all, these people had kids, families at home. They couldn't stay there indefinitely. At some point they'd be expected to leave.
I just don't think the Rs expected LE to stick around either.
I know it's an unwieldy thought. But JR "finding" JBR and LE finding her have the same conclusion- a child found dead in her own home. And that is suspicious, no matter who found her.

 

You make some excellent points, DeeDee. If not to find the body, do you think the Rs called their friends in hopes they'd mess up the crime scene?

I've always thought the Rs seriously considered removing the body from the house but changed their minds for some reason. I think the ransom note was written while they were still considering removing the body. When they decided not to, they still needed some kind of evidence to convince LE an intruder did it, so the note remained important. No note = no "evidence" of an intruder.

 

Was the scene re-staged?

I think it is also possible that the Ramseys initially wanted to get rid of the body without writing a ransom note, i. e. they may have wanted to create a scenario "JonBenet was snatched and abducted from her bed by a sexual predator", and later would be found away from her home "sexually assaulted and cruelly strangled to death".
They inflict the genital wound, tie the cord around the neck, loop the rest of the cord around the broken paintbrush handle ... but then they do not dare to remove the body from the home after all because fear of being seen overtakes them.
What to do now? They have to explain the dead body in the home which is why they abandon the sexual predator scenario and restage the scene toward a 'kidapping for ransom', the ransom note doing the 'explaining'. Underwear is put on the body, and a piece of duct tape put on the mouth. Then the note is concocted.
The restaging of the scene would also explain the two diverging staging elements of the crime scene: sexual predator scene vs. kidnapping for ransom.

 

That is also a good possibility. There had to be a plan- whether they followed it in the end or not. Maybe a combination of what we suggested.
I could also have been something a simple as the fact that they ran out of DARKNESS. It got too light out as morning approached and they were afraid to take a chance they'd been seen removing her. (was that suitcase going to be used? There WAS one of JBR's hairs in it- and the blanket could have been used to wrap her)- Later when she was covered with her OWN blanket- was it because the JAR's semen was noticed? It was found on that blanket in the suitcase.)
Here's an interesting thought. If JAR's blanket had been used in any part of the crime or staging- it would surely have led LE to look a bit more closely at him. Adds an interesting spin. Too bad LE didn't look more closely at that blanket and suitcase.

 

JonBenet's hair found in the suitcase?

One of JonBenet's hairs was found in the suitcase? Is this info in one of the books about the case?

 

I would be interested in this too rashomon. That's not anything that I seem to remember either. (mentalpause and all that LOL)

Little

 

I don't remember this from anything I have read. Not to say it didn't happen, but I sure don't remember, and I haven't been doing this for as long as some of you here, so if I forget, I haven't got an excuse!

I thought the suitcase contained only the blanked with JAR's bodily fluid, and a children's book. If a hair from JonBenet's head was in there, wouldn't that have been extremely important evidence??

 

All my info came from either acandyrose or one of the books on the case. It was probably either ST's book or PMPT. If I find it I'll post it. I don't recall that it was made a big deal of. I'd also be suspicious of the children's book found there too, along with that blanket of JAR's. Oddly, no one seemed to think anything strange about one of JBR's books being found in a suitcase with a semen-stained blanket belonging to JAR. The hair notwithstanding, I got a distinctly creepy feeling when I first heard about the blanket and book.

 

Rashie, I have heard this before too...but cannot remember where I read or heard it from. This was the reason that some people speculated that she may have been placed in the suitcase at first. (I personally don't believe that she would have fit in a suitcase...she wasn't a baby..unless she was put in there, and then they realized that she wasn't going to fit.and took her out).