The JonBenet mystery thread

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

gsdgsd and I were talking about this case. I am going to put a poll up. We'll see how it goes. And then I'll respond to Greg here first chance I get.

[Casual Observer]

Won't vote yet. How do we know it wasn't the father?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Oooooooooooooooooo boy.

He just woke up on Christmas Eve and decided to garrote his daughter? After losing another daughter in, I believe, 1992 from a car crash??

Here's how I see it:

Intruder: best fits most of the facts, and by facts I mean facts established by real cops not the Boulder police department. Not all the facts. But most. Anyone that tells you that all the facts put you on a certain path is selling something.
Patsy Ramsey: The handwriting of the ransom note looks similar to hers. If not for the ransom note I don't think there's much real evidence pointing to her.
Burke Ramsey: I honestly don't know what evidence there is that supports this.

[bryanb]

The intruder theory makes the most sense to me as well. Admittedly, people are terrible and it often is close family members that hurt and kill children. Still, that's not always the case. Nothing from John or Patsy's past suggests they'd kill their daughter, and there was likely a sexual component to the murder based on the crime scene evidence and again there's nothing from their history that suggests John or Patsy were predators. Burke was just a kid at the time...9 years old. If he did do it, one or both of his parents had to have been an accomplice as he definitely didn't write that ransom note. I have my doubts he would have been physically capable of strangling his sister or mentally patient enough to do it, though he could have hit her over the head with something. The idea that Burke is going to attack his sister and then a parent is going to finish the job sounds absolutely absurd to me.

Considering the intruder angle, any number of creeps could have seen JonBenet at one of the child beauty pageants she was entered into (that Patsy was into that scene is the one sketchy thing I know about her, but she was a beauty queen herself and it's hardly uncommon for parents to try to live their glory days again through their children). It could also have been someone who had worked for the family in the past or knew the family socially.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

To me, the garrote is the thing. If someone other than an intruder did it, then I need the garrote explained to me. Either:

- The 9 year old brother (Burke) somehow managed to learn what a garrote is in 1996, before the Hitman games or the internet. A rich kid with a dad that worked all the time and a mom that was who she was does not have From Russia With Love on enough times for the kids in the house to wander by the garrote scene and think, "That's it, that's what I am going to do to my sister."

- If Burke clobbered her -- which is ENTIRELY possible for any other situation but this one: siblings hit each other all the time -- it means that rather than call 911 or rush their daughter to the hospital, the parents decided to construct a garrote and finish their daughter off. Or they did that to the dead body. Come on, come ooooooooooOOOOoooOOon.

But here's the thing. I will never, ever buy that anyone in that family knew what that was BUT ... there's the handwriting.

[Tdarcos]

Won't vote yet. How do we know it wasn't the father?

Because the District Attorney for Boulder, Colorado, some 12 years after the murder, apologized about what happened, that the DNA evidence they have completely exonerates her parents.

Actually, they were indicted for the murder in 1999 but the DA decided not to prosecute, deciding there was a lack of evidence. The results of the grand jury did not come out until 2013 when the Boulder Daily Camera won a court order to have the file released.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I can absolutely understand why a grand jury did what they did. It was just expected that everyone believed the family did it for a very long time. I think that the South Park guys assumed they did it as recent;y as 2001.

[Jizaboz]

I would say her parents definitely contributed to her murder by parading her around like a preschool prostitute.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

The ransom note:

https://oohlo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ransom.jpg

If any of you would like to try an experiment, count the number of times JonBenet is mentioned by name in that ransom note, which is three pages and the longest ransom note in history.

[Jizaboz]

The ransom note:

https://oohlo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/ransom.jpg

If any of you would like to try an experiment, count the number of times JonBenet is mentioned by name in that ransom note, which is three pages and the longest ransom note in history.

Interesting. I’ve either never seen this note before or forgot.

“We represent a foreign nation” from the first and just about all of the text on the 3rd page simply do not align.

Really strange. I would say if this was the mother’s handwriting then that would make sense.. but the vibe I get is it was written by someone who was very familiar with the writing and then made a very good attempt at emulating it for the sake of throwing suspicion on the mother.

This concept reminds me a lot of the “guy delivering pizzas who had a bomb strapped to his neck” story.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Brian_Wells

[Tdarcos]

This joke came from a movie I saw.

What is the most profitable form of writing there is?
Ransom notes.

[gsdgsd]

I can absolutely understand why a grand jury did what they did. It was just expected that everyone believed the family did it for a very long time. I think that the South Park guys assumed they did it as recent;y as 2001.

So (as I said to you) it's been a long time since I've thought much about this case. I recall it going from near-universal "it was an intruder" right after the news came out to near-universal "it was Patsy." There were so many rumors flying around then, and someone would hear from someone that Patsy had some mental condition, and then that would become as good as fact. I've paid minimal attention to the case since leaving Boulder in '99, and at this point I can't remember what was fact and what was something I heard from someone who knew someone.

I picked Burke in the poll - the wording of the '99 proposed grand jury indictment (the Ramseys did "permit a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the child's life or health") suggests not the parents but someone that they protected. Combined with reports of Burke's rage toward her -- reports which may or not be true! ICJ! Give me reading material! -- has made that my personal theory for the past few years. So I'll stick with it.

[gsdgsd]

Flagging this thread/two threads for ICJ:



Have you read either book? THOUGHTS?!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I don't think I have read those!

I have read "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town" which is mostly a by the book chronological record of the news that hit. Popular Crime has a section on the crime which shapes my views and it's also mentioned in "The Cases That Haunt Us," which I also feel has logical arguments laid out.

I keep coming back to the garrote though. I've had one nephew become and then pass Burke's age and I therefore hung around 9 year olds. And I just can't imagine any of them, even the weird kids, imagining or knowing about a garrote. Another nephew is approaching that age. Other weapons, sure. A mace? A hatchet? A throwing star? A set of fine caltrops? Sure. But man, a garrote is cold shit for a kid that age. I don't think I'll ever get past that. You don't just garrote your sister and that's it, you grow up to be The Garrotter and your arch-nemesis is Captain Fat Neck and sidekick Titanium Spine Boy.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I have been thinking about this, and I am on my third glass of scotch and had a Dale's Pale Ale to help the scotch along so let's do this.

Mom and Dad aren't garroting their frigging kid on Christmas eve. Any rich parent and any rich kid, no way. I am 47 years old and I'm still psyched as hell at what I am going to get on Christmas. Christ, I *know* what I am getting; one box is in the mud room waiting for me to open it. I'm not slashing throats on Christmas eve. Nobody is on Christmas eve. RICH PEOPLE AREN'T. They haven't! We'll get to the note in a second, but the Ramseys didn't know what a goddamn garrote is. They didn't watch Speed so many times that they could quote it and put it in a note. John lost a daughter in a car crash from a previous marriage. I had a cat murdered a few years ago and cats aren't children and it got and has gotten bad enough where my wife wants me to see a psychologist. I am obsessed with being kind to our current pets. Of course John didn't then go use a stun gun on his other daughter on Christmas eve and then bash her head in and break her skull on Christmas eve and then take her down to the basement to garrote her on Christmas eve.

Also, the Netflix movie "The Staircase" taught us that if John DID do it, then he would have arranged for JonBenet to die in a car accident like his first deceased daughter did because there is nothing that family guys like more than consistency in their tragedies.

Nine-year olds? It's Christmas time. I dunno if, because of covid, you guys get to hang out with anyone in that age range, but even now with the internet , I defy any person in the US states of America to point to a literal nine-year old and say, yep, this kid knows what a garrote is. You have to know what a garrote is, *and choose that method to execute your sister ON CHRISTMAS EVE* for this to work. Come on, come oooooooooooooooooon, this is 1996, pre-mass-internet. This is pre-mobile phone where the screwed up kid in class can text his favorite garroting images to the other children without adults knowing. No kid that age *now* knows a way to kill someone is by wrapping a wire around their neck and twisting it. Also! It is Christmastime! When I was nine years old all I could think about was getting the Sky Striker or Castle Greyskull or whatever. My little brother who - well, you guys have read his work on this BBS, he certainly has qualities that JonBenet didn't - was still completely incapable of behavior that was going to cause me to somehow spontaneously wrap piano wire around his neck and fuck up getting to play with "Ace" in 8, er 7, er 6, er 5 hours after we went to bed. Other kids have killed people, but no kid in the last 100 years of western civilization has killed a younger kid with piano wire. Adults have! Not children doing it to other children.

Christmas Eve! America has screwed up a lot of things but we have never made a rich kid so MESSED UP that he decides he's going to abandon CHRISTMAS because he needed to get to some violin wire killing. And then throw the duct tape that covered his sister's mouth so far from the house that the cops never found it. Someone explain this to me. One of the Ramseys slowly twists wire around the bashed-in head of their family member and then puts duct tape over the dead girl's mouth and then says, "Ope, gotta get rid of this!" and then just fuckin' yeets the roll of duct tape so far down the street in Boulder that it goes forever unfound. That's more likely than intruder taking it with him? Also, if JonBenet got killed on February 8th or April 12th or December 16th then sure. The brother was just the garroting type in that scenario so on a random day on a boring Tuesday he thought, yep, this is it, Imma do my one and only stun gunning and head crushing and garroting of my life, oh, and I'll never get so much as a speeding ticket for the rest of my life after I do this one crime against my sister on Christmas even instead of just going to sleep as soon as I can so I can get presents.

The ransom note, which I do not believe Patsy wrote, talks about JOHN. JonBenet is never mentioned by name. Talks about that "good Southern common sense" of his. Hmmm. He was originally from the south! The note mentions the rounded value of the bonus, which was on a pay stub laying around that an intruder in the house could have seen. (I don't get paper pay stubs but I did get a dividend check from Microsoft that I deposited today. Because I know how terrible web apps are, I am going to keep that until months after it hits my account. I work in web apps and most people that work in web apps are bad enough to where I am keeping the paper. And everyone kept their paper pay stubs around in 1996.) Man, hating a guy but knowing where he was raised and then knowing how much that guy got as a bonus?

Sounds like someone he worked with.

I ask anyone who thinks the Ramseys did it to go to glassdoor.com. After dealing with their sign-up bull shit (man... web apps) pick a random company. I'll make it easy and say, pick a random company in Colorado. People are chill in Colorado! And that is where the murder took place. Any company size, but let's say that there has to be .... 15 reviews for the company on the site. After finding a suitable company, now look at the reviews and play a game with me, play "identify the goddamn psychopath."

You will do it easily! Any company in the CHILLEST OF STATES has at least one one-star review where it seems like Chris fucking Watts wrote the review.

I just ran that thought experiment. "Zoom" was the first company to come up. Here's the lowest-rated review.

Dec 17, 2021 - Anonymous Employee in San Jose, CA

You are building one of the most popular video conference software since covid 19. Or perhaps I am wrong, you are enhancing minor features and minor bug fixes.

Cons

Toxic engineering culture, need to work with the original engineering team in China pretty much every night to be on track. You don't have permission to merge the code, your peers in China can merge the code. You are just a robot to build minor features and fix bugs. Engineering managers only care about themselves, when there is a probably, it is the engineers' responsibility, not theirs. Engineers needs to communicate with PM's and designers, managers just sit and watch. If you can't speak Chinese, you gonna have a hard time working as an engineer with the China team, Chinese all over the zoom chats, prepare your Google Translate.

So that's a bad review and the guy is a little hung up on people from China. Not a big deal right? Weird but who cares? Well, the CEO of Zoom at the moment is ASIAN. One randomly-picked one-star review that a guy was bold enough to add to the internet and he's got some weird problem with Chinese people working for an Asian boss. It is important to me that you all know that the Zoom thing was literally the first thing glassdoor came up with when I did it and I did not spend time picking the perfect review. This guy hates his boss! Or his boss's boss's boss's boss! HE WROTE IT EIGHT DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS! Man, I sure hope the CEO of Zoom locks his fucking doors. Days before Christmas and this guy *hates Zoom so much* that he took time out of his day to write all that. In public.

So this is why it was, in my opinion, someone that John Ramsey once worked with.

If I was on this case and I saw that note and we discard all the dumb shit the author came up with (foreign faction, "I advise you to be rested", an "adequate-sized attache case", SBTC and other dumb nonsense) what we have here is an angry ex-coworker. Any job. Probably not even Access Graphics! Maybe the the Boulder cops and Lou Smit looked at everyone... *everyone* Ramsey ever worked with and their significant others and discounted them. Maybe they did that, but I doubt it. Smit died, so he ain't doing it now. That is where I would start at this point. The murderer didn't want to get caught and wanted to put nonsense in there to cause chaos, but also wanted to put just enough in there so that *he* knew in *his* mind that he stuck it to John. Not enough to get caught, but enough where if we ever found the murderer, we could work backwards and the note would make more sense.

To me, is a case of someone who felt wronged at work due to what, in their mind, this SOB manager or co-worker of theirs did. I think it was someone in their late-20s who is arrogant as hell and wasn't in a good spot where the outrage from the past had passed and they could let stuff go. No, this intruder was consumed by it and thought that John was a jerk and OOOO I am going to kill his daughter and OOO I am going to do it on Christmas because fuck him and OOOO if I can make it look like his wife did it I will and OOOO I am going to put in the exact bonus amount as a "fuck you" because there will be people that don't know that I saw the pay stub and they will just assume they used their own rounded bonus amount.

...

... Or Burke thought he could get his sister's presents too and had a time machine where he saw a Youtube channel dedicated to the "Hitman" video games. Either/or.

[Casual Observer]

I had to kill my wifes rabbit last weekend. The poor thing couldn't even stand up anymore and the humane society is closed on the weekend. I'm not paying $300+ for an emergency vet for a goddamn rabbit so I had to do it myself. Thank god no more damn pet rabbit.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

The Boulder, CO police are on their way to put a giant handcuff around Patsy's tombstone for it.

[AArdvark]

Her brother killed her and the parents covered it up by making it look like an intruder did it

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Her brother killed her and the parents covered it up by making it look like an intruder did it

Which one of them put the wire around her neck and twisted it?

[AArdvark]

She was already dead at that point so I'm going with the mother, who never loved her anyway.

You know i make this up as i go, right?