Burke Ramsey... the missing link

Nice to meet you too Heymom. :wave: I'm a semi-oldtimer here, just don't post an awful lot. I appreciate the new group of sensible newbies we have.

 

Yeah, but what about the rest of us??? :wnut: LOL.

See ya around.

Heymom :martini:

 

I work in a rehab hospital (with adults, not kids), but we frequently see the same.
I think that kids often do better than adults because their brains are still growing and are much more 'plastic'.

 

I think so too Sue. Some of the photos were just amazing. One child had actually had his head run over by a tractor. He had multiple lengthy skull fractures and walked into Casualty still awake and talking!

 

waffle pattern

Someone said that probably a maglite wasn't used due to the waffle pattern on the handle that is there so the flashlight can be gripped. The waffle pattern is not very raised but also some maglites have a rubber coating around the handle presumably for the same reason. We had one with a rubber coated handle.
The pattern of the fracture shows that some object caused a rectangular area punched in toward the back of her head. I think the head of the flashlight could cause that area and the handle could cause the rest of the fracture. Almost the whole length of the side of her head was fractured. If she fell backwards or forwards and her head turned to the side, that could have caused a fracture to the side of the head, but even though the events of that night must have been horrific it wasn't the exorcist, and the head will only turn so far to one side or the other, which seems would limit the length of the fracture to her skull.

 

If the head blow came first, why was there bruising on the neck below the cord? Was that staging or was it due to difficulty applying the cord? Or is that evidence of an initial strangulation?

 

If she was dead before the cord was tightened, the marks below the cord are post-mortem bruising:

Post Mortem Bruises
Bruising is essentially a vital phenomenon in which the extravasation of blood into the tissues occurs under the pressure of the circulating blood. After death the rupture of blood vessels as a result of blunt force impact may lead to the extravasation of blood.
For so long as fluid blood is present in the capillaries and veins, any injury that crushes these vessels will allow blood to extravasate into the surrounding tissues. However, the extent of blood spread is limited since the pressure of blood within the vessels is only physical.
In practice it requires considerable violence to produce a bruise post mortem; the bruise is invariably disproportionately small relative to the degree of force used. Such post mortem bruises are most readily produced in areas of hypostasis (post mortem lividity, livor mortis) or where tissues can be forcibly compressed against bone, e.g. over the occiput.

I say that garrote cord forcibly compressed her tissue against bone...

 

I think one of the reasons the skull fracture is so long is where it is. From the pictures on autopsy picture of the skull on this website, it looks like the skull was fractured near the suture. If you look at an illustration of a child's skull, you will see the lines dividing the different parts of the skull, called sutures, where the different bones of the skull grow together.
Until about age 12 years, those sutures are not totally closed in order to accomidate growth of the brain and the bones that make up the skull. Because the sutures are not fused together, that is a weak point of the skull. It looks like the fracture pretty much follows a suture line.

This is a website that has a good illustration of the skull of a child, pointing out the different structures/bones. I'm not sure if the link will open to the home page for the skeleton or to the skull page - if it's the home page, just click on the "skull" link.
The illustration is obviously of the left side of the skull, but JB's skull was fractured on the R side. And, you can also see that the skull in the autopsy picture is not in the position it would be in life, but is put in a way that it will sit on the table for the picture (so you can't really judge how high 'up' on the skull the fracture is).
Comparing the illustration to the photograph, the fracture is a fairly straight line from the bottom of the frontal bone along the parietal bone just above where the temporal bone joins the parietal bone. Where a part of the parietal bone forms a little rectangle shaped area below the joint, the fracture doesn't follow that line, but goes pretty much in a straight line to the occipital bone. The bone fragment is in the posteroparietal (back part of the parietal area), so it's at the side back of the skull.The areas that were fractured on JB's skull are the lateral areas of the parietal and frontal bone. The fracture continues to the occipital bone (at the rear of the head), from lateral to just past midline.

 

uhh...

I know about suture lines,etc. I have worked in surgery since 1982. I was on the neurosurgery team for a while. (I mostly did cases to remove tumors of the brain and spinal cord and saw very little trauma - didn't stay too long because neurosurgeons can be the biggest jerks in the medical business!) I don't claim to be an expert on the mechanics of head injuries and I could certainly be wrong but it is my opinion the head wound was not caused by falling forward or backward. I think it was probably caused by someone hitting her with an object and I also think it was someone much taller than her if she was standing when hit. That is just my opinion but I also know that even some pathologists who have given an opinion don't agree on this.

 

I wasn't in the patient care aspect of things but in the hospitals I worked in, we saw that among surgeons (the most arrogant medical speciality), neurosurgeons were indeed the Prize Winning Olympic-level...er... :booty: Doctors used to be trained that they were on the same plane as God, and then the surgery speciality adds another level above God, and then the neurosurgeons think that they created God. :laffbig: No offense to any neurosurgeons on the forum, mind you...

Heymom

 

heymom

lol - you got that right

 

sue

It looks to me like the skull is laying on its side in that picture and we are actually viewing the top of the skull from the side. If so, the fracture is too high on the head to follow the suture line.

edited to add:
The suture lines can't be seen in the picture because the periosteum hasn't deen stripped from the bone.

 

Sorry to have lectured you, but I don't know what people's backround is and you obviously have more backround in the head/brain than I do.

I know the autopsy picture isn't stripped down to the bone; it would have been much easier to follow/compare the text of the autopsy with the picture if it was.
I was going by general shape (or what it looked like to me, because I have to say it more looked like what you think). But it sounds more lateral to me in the text of the autopsy report and the list of II. Craniocerebral injuries on the first page of the report says:
B. Linear, comminuted fracture of right side of skull
Also the bolded areas in this part I copied from the exam of the brain and skull sound more lateral (but some parts sound more like it's the top):
Skull and Brain: Upon reflection of the scalp there is found
to be an extensive area of scalp hemorrhage along the right
temporoparietal area extending from the orbital ridge,
posteriorly all the way to the occipital area. This
encompasses an area measuring approximately 7x4 inches. This
grossly appears to be fresh hemorrhage with no evidence of
organization. At the superior extension of the is area of
hemorrhage is a linear to comminuted skull fracture which
extends from the right occipital to posteroparietal area
forward tot he right frontal area across the parietal skull.
In the posteroparietal area of this fracture is a roughly
rectangular shaped displaced fragment of skull measuring one
and three-quarters by one-half inch. The hemorrhage and the
fracture extend posteriorly just past the midline of the
occipital area of the skull. This fracture measures
approximately 8.5 inches in length. On removal of the skull
cap there is found to be a thin film of subdural hemorrhage
measuring approximately 7-8 cc over the surface of the right
cerebral hemisphere and extending to the base of the cerebral
hemisphere. The 1450 gm grain has a normal overall
architecture. Mild narrowing of the sulci and flattening of
the gyri are seen. No inflammation is identified. There is a
thin film of subarachnoid hemorrhage overlying the entire
right cerebral hemisphere. On the right cerebral hemisphere
underlying the previously mentioned linear skull fracture is
an extensive linear area of purple contusion extending from
the right frontal area, posteriorly along the lateral aspect
of the parietal region and into the occipital area.
I was reading it to mean that the fracture was closer to temporal part of the parietal bone.

 

yes

From the description it does sound like the fracture is on the side rather than closer to the top of her head but the picture suggests something different. What we need is another view of the skull to get a better idea of the position of the fracture.
Initially I thought the fracture started at the orbital rim and commented here on that, but had to edit because that is actually refering to the hemmorhage.

 

Besides a better picture, I think the autopsy report is very confusing as to location. That would probably have been cleared up if there ever was a trial because the pathologist would probably have some visuals with him to actually show where the fracture was. Even with a picture of a skull up while reading the report, it's sort of hard to follow what is written; it almost seems contradictory at times because it's hard to tell when he is talking about the hemorrhage or the fracture or the brain contusion. With better pictures, it probably makes sense.

 

Originally posted by Kangatruth:

Here's an article written about Burke about two years after JonBenet died:

http://www.joshua-7.com/jonbenet/11_10_98.htm

Developments the week of November 10, 1998:

(Second article):

National Enquirer - Burke Today: A troubled schoolkid living with his anger
~~


transcription compliments of Watching you

Band practice at the exclusive Lovett School in Atlanta came to a sudden halt recently when an 11-year-old trombone player threw a fit.

The youngster was Burke Ramsey.

Sadly the murder of his sister, JonBenét seems to have turned him into an angry and sometimes strange boy.

"Burke tossed his instrument to the floor with a thud and screamed that he hated the trombone and didn't want to play it anymore," said a source.

"All the kids in the band got real quiet and some of them were frightened.

"Burke kept screaming an practice was canceled while teachers quieted him down. Burke is now playing saxophone."

On another occasion, Burke was on an amusement park outing when he got freaked out by a girl who looked like JonBenét, said the source.

"He went white and turned away from her. He kept yelling he didn't want to go on a ride with HER!"

One of Burke's homeroom classmates told the source: "He talks to himself in the corner a lot. Everybody thinks he's talking to his sister."

Don Gentile

 

If any of this is true, I would love to know what he was saying

 

Same here, Barbara.

I was just reading some of the old "He did it" vs "He did not!" posts at Websleuths about Burke. We really had it going on, didn't we? (I was Ivy there.)