As the new "task force" wound up their meetings last Friday designed to advise and assist Boulder's local law enforcement with next steps for solving JonBenet's heinous murder, long time case follower and guest author Fleastiff ponders elements of the crime--
Just what sort of crime are we actually dealing with?
By "Fleastiff"Walk into any coffee shop and utter the name "Jonbenet" and immediately one will hear a wide variety of responses. Everyone knows the name and the case. Everyone seems to know who really did it too. Oh sure, the people who will freely chat with you about the case will often admit to having had a variety of people that they at one time or another were certain to be the culprits. The identity of the culprits may change, but the certainty of guilt rarely seems to waver at all. Yet this post does not relate to the perpetrators at all, nor does it relate to the certainty of guilt that the public seem to have about their various suspects. This post deals with just what sort of crime took place.
Say "Jonbenet" and immediately the listener's response is a visual one. Oh, it might be that the listener instantly replays in the mind one of the video vignettes such as that rendition of Cowboy Sweetheart. Or it might even be that the listener instantly sees one of those memorable photos that are so often flashed on the TV screen showing a well-coiffed, well made up beauty contestant. No one will ever have an immediate visual recollection of the normal little-girl photographs that were in the family photo album. No one will ever immediately envision Jonbenet as having been dressed for school. We all "see" the images that are constantly utilized by the tabloids and that remain on the TV screen as some talking head opines the usual nonsense that is spouted about this case.
The prompt verbal response of those who hear the name Jonbenet will usually involve terms such as: sexualized, over-sexualized, precocious, beauty-pageant, etc. Few who respond to the hearing of her name will ever start off speaking about her having kept a gerbil, engaged in fingerpainting, climbed rocks, played in the yard. None will ever rid themselves of their knee-jerk response to focus their attention on the much-ballyhooed kiddie pageants and the presumed over-sexualization.
Nobody ever seems to focus on the type of crime that was committed. They already know what type of crime took place that night. Now let us consider what is really known about that crime.
Oh sure, one can start with something like Rod Steiger's statement from In The Heat Of The Night: "I got a motive which is money and I got a body which is dead!" And this remains the refuge of those whose limitations make them so frustrated and so very desperate that they do not want to look beyond the clues that are temptingly obvious.
But what crime was planned and what crime actually took place?
Yes, in one corner we do have Lou Smit whose view is that Jonbenet was a pedophile's dream and that therefore some pedophile entered the home, took her to the deepest recesses of the basement and there performed unspeakable acts of perversion, torture and murder. Lou Smit admonishes us not to make the crime more complex than it really is.
In an opposing corner we have the ever-lingering penumbra cast by Steve Thomas and his ilk who obsess about a non-existent rage response to a non-existent bed wetting incident with absolutely none of it supported by forensic evidence or the observations of a whole houseful of people the next morning, many of them trained observers.
Other views include such things as a contemplated kidnapping that somehow unravelled and evolved into rape and murder. Also of course there are those who believe it was quite simply an intentional murder right from the start and that no kidnapping was ever attempted much less contemplated.
Let us take a brief look at some of the supporting evidence for these various crimes that supposedly took place.
Attempted kidnapping: Absurdly verbacious ransom note. Utterly absurd sum demanded as ransom. Not only is there a strangely un-rounded sum demanded but the sum of money is utterly too low for the risks the criminals are taking and certainly too low in relation to the family's wealth. It is sort of like counterfeiting a one-dollar bill. Its just not worth it to even a small time criminal. The note is a meandering James-Bondish type affair that wouldn't fool anyone for long. No "foreign faction" describes itself as small. Revolutionaries always describe themselves as representing the true will of the oppressed people. No politically inspired kidnapping would be for such a small sum and no note would be lacking in the faction's purposes. What political faction would write a ransom note clearly destined for being emblazoned in all media and omit their "Freedom For Fredonia" demands? Why a lengthy note when all that has to be said is 'We got your kid, get oodles and oodles of cash assembled and await our phone call.' Oh sure, the usual tag line could be added "Don't call the cops or the kid gets it". That tag line rarely works anyway, but it could well be included in the note.
One would clearly wonder that if a kidnapping had actually been intended, why was it not carried out. Some sort of "frustration" at the contemplated manner of exiting the home? Gee, getting out of the home is even easier than getting into it. If an intruders entry into a home is detected, the police will be enroute and the intruder has some decisions to make at the time of entry. Was he observed? Did anyone passing by think he was a burglar? Did he set off a silent alarm? Someone who leaves the premises can clearly "make tracks" or "get while the getting is good". He need not wait in the area. Why should someone who wants to leave respond to some slight frustration with a time-consuming molestation, garotte-fashioning, strangulation and head-bashing? It takes some measure of courage to enter a house in the dead of night and such people do not easily panic at a slight frustration in their manner of leaving and certainly do not panic to such a degree that the entire nature of their crime takes an extreme and irrevocable shift.
Lou Smit's Pedophile Dream concept may or may not be relevant. I'm told that pedophiles are more prone to dream of ongoing relationships and often seek out a compliant woman who has young kids and lots of unpaid bills and unmet needs. Perhaps some pedophiles also dream of "one night stands" though! Even if a sleuth considers Jonbenet to have been a pedophile's dream, it is logically insufficient to assume that she was therefore killed by a pedophile. Oh it may be possible and it may even be likely, but its not a logical requirement and it is one that is dangerous for a sleuth to make.
Pedophiles are thought to enjoy their perversions. They are not generally thought of has achieving gratification by devoting a great deal of time to concocting a parody of a ransom note. A sleuth might wonder also about the apparent bondage. It appears to be more the loosely-applied trappings of a bondage scenario. The stun gun marks are few and while it may indeed have been fun for the intruder to apply a stun gun to a helpless six year old girl he certainly seems to have gained little from what appears to have been more a brief experiment and constitutes merely the trappings of a torture scenario. The duct tape over the mouth appears to be ineffectual and might also be considered to be mere trappings or some sort of 'set decoration'. With all the time and effort devoted to the decoration of the corpse and crime scene, a sleuth would next wonder about this assumed pedophiles more perverse activities. We of course do not quite know how long he engaged in his various unspeakable acts but there is some evidence to support the contention that with all the time devoted to 'set decoration' very little time and effort was devoted to the perversion. If the sexual activity was a perfunctory minimum, a sleuth might well conclude that the perversion itself constituted 'set decoration' rather than an example of the intruder's perverse desires. If indeed it is true that the perversion was not his primary goal or his primary reward, then one wonders if he is really a pedophile at all.
One recurrent theme in the internet sleuthing world is the oft-repeated challenge "If it were really an intruding pedophile, why have there been no similar crimes committed in the ensuing decade?" The foreign faction has not been heard from, there have been no similar kidnapping attempts, there have been no additional ransom notes from loquacious James Bond Wannabes. Perhaps this was simply a crime wherein the family was targeted and a pedophile is no more real than the foreign faction, the pseudo-bondage or those two gentlemen who were kindly watching over their safe and unharmed kidnap victim while she was lying dead and abandoned in the wine cellar. Oh, the non-existence of the pedophile does not mean that the intruder may not have enjoyed the perverse activities, perhaps even more than he thought he would. It simply means that the pseudo-pedophila joins the list of psuedo-bondage, pseudo-torture and pseudo-factions engaged in pseudo-foreign-intrigue. If the perpetrator was not a pedophile then the fact that some may view Jonbenet as being a pedophile's dream is a mere coincidence of no greater relevance than her also being good at finger painting. If this monstrous act was not committed by a pedophile there is little reason to assume that the perpetrator will eventually show up in some dna test performed on suspects arrested for subsequent sex crimes. Sure, the weekly search of CODIS will continue, but it appears likely to produce only the same results that it has already produced each of the past weeks in which the search has been performed.
By this time the reader might wonder that if it is not to be viewed as some sort of sexually motivated crime, what should it be viewed as? Well, I don't know. Some say a strangulation is a sexually motivated crime. Some see the subjugation as sexually motivated. Face it, some see everything as sexually motivated, but sometimes it seems to really be true that it is indeed possible to have a cigar be just a cigar.
If we hold in abeyance the sexual aspects of the crime, what is the sleuth's next step? Well, the crime certainly devasted the family. While there are those who will obstinately insist that Patsy Ramsey, bored with that night's television offerings, suggested to John Ramsey that they virtually bankrupt themselves so as to enrich lawyers, cause John to lose his job, cause Patsy to lose her medical insurance and become the most hated couple in Tabloid America, most people tend to focus on a more reasonable scenario: an intruder targeted that family, not merely
Jonbenet. If the crime is viewed not as the work of a pedophile with an imaginative flair for dramatic embellishments but as an evil intruder who sought to devestate the family's life forever, then the circle of suspects is greatly enlarged.
No longer do we look at weirdo loners from the immediate neighborhood or transients with prior sexual offenses on their record. Now we look for someone who had a grudge against the Ramsey family and simply chose a cruel way to impose a horrible burden on them.
When the BPD were rather sensibly asking questions about what perverts do you know, the Ramseys quite sensibly replied that they surely didn't know any. When John Ramsey was asked by the BPD if he had any enemies his response was that although there might be a few minor disputes involving business transactions he would not classify anyone as an enemy and that if anyone developed any animosity towards him he was the type who would most likely buy the guy a drink and have a talk with him. Given this situation one wonders if such a demented enemy can really exist. How can feelings be so intense on the part of the evil intruder and yet so utterly non-suspected on the part of the Ramseys.
Many people are killed for reasons that shock the conscience of the public. Some people are killed because as witnesses to a crime they can be a risk to some defendant. Often people are killed because they might become a threat even though the chances are slight. One woman chose to end the boyfriend aspects of her relationship with a guy but continue the sexual aspects of the relationship. This arrangement proceeded quite happily for each of them for several months but upon hearing from a mutual friend a mere rumor that the woman was pregnant by that
former-boyfriend-now-just-sex-partner, the young man involved decided to kill the woman so as to protect his relationship with a then current girlfriend whom he saw each weekend. The young man knew that there was only a chance, not a certainty, that the rumor would reach his current girlfriend. The young man knew that the rumor might not be true and that the current girlfriend might not even object. All these mere possibilities made no difference to him. There was a slight threat to his current pleasures so he took the former girlfriend out on his yacht and dumped her overboard while bound, gagged and weighted-down with rocks. It might interest the reader to know that when thrown overboard she was alive and fully aware of what was happening to her. So if someone who is wealthy enough to own a luxury yacht can drown a former girlfriend solely because of some rather remote possibilities, one wonders if Jonbenet might have been killed simply because of a very tenuous connection between the evil killer and Jonbenet's parents.
What incident might have taken place that some nutcase blew all out of proportion but which made no impression upon the Ramseys? Well, the Ramseys allowed a church single's group to hold a Christsmas dinner at their home and the group rather underestimated the amount of food that would be needed, so Patsy went out and bought trays of Chinese food to make the buffet more plentiful. Was such an act of kindness considered a slap in the face? Remember: times have changed. It used to be that a young lady should refuse an overly expensive gift from a man but nowadays it seems that many more men would take violent offense at the gift being rejected than would expect something in return for it. Actions can be misperceived, particularly if the values of different cultures are involved. Church groups are often magnets for those who are somewhat lacking in the social graces. Perhaps we should remember George Bernard Shaw: "would have killed her for a hat-pin, let alone a hat".
What other incidents could create a hatred of the Ramseys so intense that it would lead to a child's murder? Well, prior to the Beattles great commercial success, a drummer who had gone through lean times with them was replaced. Did something similar happen with one of the geographically remote predecessor entities that later became the Billion Dollars (in sales) Access Graphics? Was a disgruntled employee reacting in an overly severe manner to some sort of sale that took place or failed to take place. Access Graphics was a Value Added Retailer. It simply took existing hardware and existing software and coupled the two together with some programming embellishments that made everything work seemlessly. Since the main program was AutoCad which grossly diminished the need for draftsmen, did some now-redundant draftsman over react to the situation? Did someone who lost out on a sales commission feel slighted by Access Graphics?
Access Graphics was linked to a shopping mall. Zoning or leasing disputes might have lead to bitter feelings and while I think the chairman of the zoning appeals board might be a more sensible target, a demented killer might well feel otherwise and seek vengance with the president of a prime commercial tenant.
In short, there are any number of possible scenarios in which a non-pedophile could have targeted the Ramsey family and there are a number of indications that in this crime pedophilia played the role of a red-herring.
Labels: fleastiff, JonBenet Ramsey
"...In Forensics Under Fire, Jim Fisher makes a compelling case that problems in the practice of forensic science allow offenders to escape justice and can also lead to the imprisonment of innocent people. Bringing together examples from a host of high-profile criminal cases and familiar figures, such as the JonBenet Ramsey case and Dr. Henry Lee who presented physical evidence in the O. J. Simpson trial, along with many lesser known but fascinating stories, Fisher presents daunting evidence that forensic science has a long way to go before it lives up to its potential and the public's expectations. "
