Sleuthing Rules From Grade B Movies of the Thirties.

by FleaStiff --

Okay, I admit it. Some of those movies don't even merit a grade of B. Nevertheless, I wish to go back to the days of yesteryear and use the tried and true techniques of Hollywood Hacks (er, uh... Hollywood Scriptwriters) to solve the JonBenet Ramsey case. So return with me to the thrilling days of yesteryear wherein beer and phone calls were each a nickle, cars had running boards and if you wanted a taxi, one was always right there waiting.

Let us enter the world of Film Noir where all dames are gin-soaked temptresses who lead a man to his doom, all nights are dark and rainy, all alleys are dead ends, all cops are crooked and the only true hero is the scriptwriter and his hip flask.

One standard routine comes immediately to my alcohol-sodden brain. (Since I'm the Private Eye in the movie it is acceptable for me to be a drunk. After all, the scriptwriter would much rather be drinking than writing a dumb movie script so he works as much booze into the plot as he can). How about the dumb local cop whose motto "cherchez la femme" proves to be correct but who is himself such a bumbling idiot that he couldn't cherchez for the hat on his head in a sensible manner so he wrongly suspects the innocent young heroine and it is left to she and the young hero to correctly cherchez for the guilty femme and in the process fall in love with each other. Aw, c'mon... you've all seen that movie a dozen times. Or else you've seen dozens like it. You know all the various variants from Hollywood and from real life. Jilted lover seeking revenge, demented weirdo who wants to kill their way into a subsequent marriage, ... you know them all. Hollywood Scriptwriters been doing that stuff for decades. Ain't none of it ever gonna relate to the Ramseys. Man those tabloids searched and searched for dirt on the Ramseys but they couldn't come up with anything. Ain't no way no Hollywood scriptwriter can really come up with any of this frustrated Cougar or Randy Old Goat stuff in any location other than an alcohol sodden brain. Oh, the scriptwriter could easily put it to paper, but it ain't a gonna stand up to the light of day 'cause them cops and them well-heeled tabloid transom-peepers been lookin' for dirt since day one and ain't a been able to find none. Oh, they been able what to come up with rumors of dirt and lots of that highly-profitable innuendo-gold what they loves so much, but they ain't been able to find any real dirt 'cause there simply ain't any there what to find! So there simply is not much use to writing a script that involves some fanciful dirt 'cause the audience simply ain't gonna buy it.

Another standard routine from those Grade B Movies of the thirties: Follow the Money!!

Well, ain't no Hollywood Hack gonna be dumb enough to try to write a silly parody of a ransom note and use some weird amount as a ransom and then make the plot actually be that of a person who seriously is seeking a ransom payoff as a source of income. I mean lets face it, scriptwriters know their craft. No scriptwriter with enough on the ball to tell his typewriter from his pickled liver is gonna try to turn the Ramsey Case into some real kidnapping intent.
And if it is just too dumb for a Hollywood Grade B movie to have a supposedly kidnapped victim dumped in her own home and yet have the parents pay the ransom, then it is surely too dumb for real life. And face it folks, even though we are temporarily back in the world of nickle beers and running boards, 118 grand still ain't that much cabbage when you come right down to it. Oh we can explore this kidnapping stuff if you really want to. Heck, a Hollywood Hack will write anything as long as he don't have to get up before noon to do it.

You can have a script that involves a financial motivation on the killers part but it will have to be a financial motivation for his desire to torture and kill, not a financial motive for some absurd kidnapping that ain't a kidnapping scenario. Now what financial motivation do you want? You can have anything that your heart and my pickled liver can concoct. Prior investor in a prior entity that later became Access Graphics? Going large a bit there I think. That disgruntled investor would be more likely to go after the guy who roped him into the prior entity 'cause thats the guy who cheated him. You want instead some sort of salesman who lost a commission because Access Graphics won the bid somewhere? Its still going to be absurdly remote in time and place and locus of blame. Anyone who would bear such a grudge much less act on such a grudge would never have been a salesman in the first place. Anyone at all who acts on such slight misperceived insults is the type who gets into bar fights all the time. He has too much of a temper to stay quietly inside a home and await the family's return.

So come with us now. Let us enter the world of Film Noir where all dames are gin-soaked temptresses who lead a man to his doom, all nights are dark and rainy, all alleys are dead ends, all cops are crooked and the only true hero is the scriptwriter and his hip flask.

Duality of life is a common theme in Grade B movies. The Society Dame what goes slumming and meets her Mister Right from the Wrong Side of the Tracks or the Brash Young Kid scrubbing pots and pans amidst the Hoity Toity at the Posh Country Club what meets the Beautiful Rich Girl With A Heart of Gold are common examples. Also well know in the world of Film Noir are such characters as the famed Boston Blackie who is as equally respected by the police as he is by every dip, booster and second-story man in town. Can we utilize these common literary devices in our film noir script of the Ramsey Case? Okay, I'll work in to the script some guy who is bright and well-trusted in the world of bankers as well pool hall layabouts with little scratch and even less brains, but what can we come up with that will hold water? You want this "Duality of LIfe" device to come up with some safecracker who can be after the McGuffin that was in the Ramsey home? Now don't get me wrong or nothin', I'm trying to do you a solid. I said I'll write a McGuffin into the script and I'll do it for you! Its just that everybody gonna still know there was no McGuffin in the Ramsey home. None!

I can use that Duality of Life guy to find a good second story man for you but its only in movie scripts that a cab driver turns out to be a stunning broad what can follow that car and lose the cops as well as lend you her spare gat and give you her phone number too boot! In real life the cab driver is barely able to speak English and barely able to drive his broken down wreck. So if I write into the script some second story man, that's fine, but I ain't a gonna be able to make it sound believeable that any self respecting second story man is a gonna want to leave no lengthy calling card at a crime scene. Heck, any self-respecting burglar knows you gotta be ready to grab up your tools and make it "Feet, Do Your Stuff" rather than leave no calling card, even a short one! This Boston-Blackie guy who is well known and respected in the world of the law abiding as well as the world of career criminals simply can not come up with anyone who operates in a style similar to the Intruder-Done-It guy. No one whose livlihood is derived from their criminal activities is ever going to be making money from antics such as leaving lengthy notes or strewing corpses about the scene. If your livlihood is derived from crime you take risks and things can go wrong, but you have to know your craft and trust to your luck. You don't go doing foolish stuff like leaving lengthy notes lying around the place and you don't ruin your chances of collecting a ransom by killing the kid prematurely much less leaving the corpse lying around.

So using standard literary devices in a world full of gin-soaked dames and cigar-puffing, double-crossing cops we still don't got nothing that makes the Ramsey case plausible. The trouble is that in real life we know the Ramsey Case has happened. So if its not plausible is it that our views of it are skewed? Are we too besotted with known crimes that we are missing new trends in crime? Home invasions are common now though no one can tell us precisely how common. It ofcourse makes sense. Insular immigrant communities often distrust banks, some businessmen don't like to leave a paper trail for the IRS to follow, cops don't patrol private homes, so home invasions make sense to a criminal, though usually they are noisy invasions used to intimidate the occupants. Is some new kind of crime evolving. A safe environment for the criminal but not much in the way of gain for him? Heck, I can work something like that into the script but it sure ain't gonna fly. The subsequent decade brought no such similar crimes and the whole world knows that.

In this script I don't know whether to make the guy a pervert or a prude whats clever! Methinks the note is tangible but its contents are largely notional. I think the molestation may be tangible but may have been largely notional also. The bondage stuff appears to be mainly the trappings of bondage and no matter what timeline I can develop in the script its sure gonna be rather brief bondage. So if I come up with a cast of characters who commit crimes for a living, they sure are gonna be disappointed when the Ramsey home yields no great haul of cash, not much bondage and not even much in the way of perverted sex. Ah, whats the scriptwriter's solution? Well, a scriptwriter can always come up with yet another character to toss into the mix. We come up with an omniscient viewpoint, perhaps a mastermind, sort of a Doctor Fu Manchu or Doctor Caligari. That way, I can script in anything you like. Some jerk who really does like to tie up little girls or some demented pervert who likes to do more than watch them being bound and gagged. Heck, I can even throw in someone who gets his jollies in double-quick time, but it sure is gonna be hard to script a scenario where all those character traits appear in one person. And its also hard to script in some scenario wherein two or three separate individuals go through all this risk and rigamarole for just a few moments of their interesting little hobbies.

So if we want to keep this a Grade B movie and not go any lower, I just don't see how I can script in all these different characters. We have to unite the different character traits in one individual. A composite character. Yet how does a good scriptwriter work in a composite character and why? If the separate traits are really and truly unlikely to be co-existing in one individual then the sleuth should be aware that some of these traits then have to be spurious. Maybe the molestation was truly a goal, certainly the murder was. The ransom note and all that stuff serves some multiple purposes of pychological benefit to the perpetrator and distraction for the investigators. Yet, I keep thinking the sleuths are looking in the wrong direction.
The script, so far, is very bare. We know there was a murder. Usually that means that was the goal. Surely there are no circumstances indicating anything other than a prolonged ordeal of intentionally inflicted pain. I say prolonged from the point of view of a terrified six year old girl. I don't say prolonged as meaning prolonged from the point of view of the killer.

Script? It says "The End". Thats what it was for JonBenet. But what about for us? It was the beginning for us. Just as the parents awoke to a nightmare, so too did we. Patsy Ramsey's nightmare began with the first few lines of a lengthy note penetrating a sleepy brain. Our collective nightmare began with the news reports of the event and the responses of the various public officials involved. Here any Hollywood Hack can write the script as far as the actions go. Its writing that script as far as the motivations go that causes us trouble. We use the standard literary conventions and we just can't up with anything that is believeable. I just don't know how to develop a theme about an enemy of the Ramseys who exists but is so far off their radar as to be undiscoverable. I can script in some Mr. Slowburn who spends decades plotting his revenge, but its kind of hard to create a character who has a slow burning fuse towards the Ramseys but who functions in life in other respects.

So if some Grade B Hollywood Hack just can't come up with anything at all, perhaps we truly have to start thinking the unthinkable. A monstrous crime that cuts to the quick and riles our core values but truly is non-directional. Oh sure the note uses "John" and "Ramsey" but doesn't use "Jonbenet" or "Access Graphics". So maybe, just maybe the darn phonebook was the primary source of information available to the killer. We think of the crime as "targeted" but perhaps it truly was just an "open the phone book and jab your finger on the page" type crime? Can such evil be random and yet the killer be satiated by his deeds and not continue on to other victims? I don't know, but if we really can't come up with an enemy for an affable sales-oriented but honorable businessman maybe he really doesn't have one?

Maybe we really should start looking at this as just a senseless stupid act similar to keying a car or breaking into a house to wreck it. It gains the actor a little bit of enjoyment and it deprives the crime victim of a whole heck of alot. Such crimes would be the work of a teenage male and we might all agree on a teenage male as perpetrator but for the fact that the James Bondish note sounds a bit as if an older person penned it. The one thing is that if a drunk script writer can't come up with a reasonable criminal then perhaps a reasonable criminal doesn't exist. A lucky criminal may exist. He lucked into far more publicity than he had ever dreamed about by achieving a Crime of the Century when all he had hoped for was Crime of the Decade, but he may have had no more motive than that occasioned by some trivial event which caused the Ramseys to come to his attention.