Mastermind ... or not?

Mastermind. It seems to be a word that is used in true-crime circles to indicate two sets of circumstances. One involves a relationship between individuals wherein the personal dynamics reveal what may well be an exaggerated situation involving styles of personal interaction. The companion of the mastermind is oft termed a puppet and quite obviously the relationship is one of ability to exert control irrespective of native intelligence. The other use of the term mastermind reflects someone of great cunning or skill or intelligence who has applied his skills to a criminal enterprise. Someone who tunnels into a bank or a jewelry store may be termed a mastermind. So too would someone who seems to have simply been clever in some aspect of a crime that achieved notoriety.

With regard to the JonBenet Ramsey case, I've no idea what the situation would be. My initial reaction was that this is a sort of crime that would be the work of a sole practitioner because such perverts do not have any friends available to them to act as accomplices irrespective of any issues involving personal dynamics. I have over time become less sanguine with my belief that all perverts are loners to be found in a dirty raincoat at a nearby park but then I have also become less convinced that the acts of perversion were central to the crime that was committed that night. We often misplace the mental processes of the criminal. We constantly harp about hopheads being addicted to heroin when in reality we know that hopheads are not at all addicted to the heroin they are addicted to the needle. Its simply inconvenient for us to acknowledge that and so we refuse to do so.

In a home invasion in Florida resulting in a triple murder, the home-owners surveillance camera showed the exact sequence of events and showed just where the perpetrators had positioned their feet and their hands, yet the forensic team was unable to lift any footprints or any fingerprints. The perpetrators were later identified and shown to be youthful thugs of no particular intellectual achievement or any other type of achievement in life. This would of course tend to make the absence of forensic evidence not be any indication of the existence of a skilled or intelligent criminal and thus one sense of the word mastermind would be eliminated. In a noted case in the San Diego area one pervert entered his neighbor's home while it was occupied and the occupants were alert and active though not necessarily moving about the home, yet the pervert not only was able to abduct their daughter he was able to do it without leaving any forensic evidence at all. No footprints, no fingerprints, nothing. Once again, this noted case involving an engineer shows that lack of forensic evidence does not render the perpetrator deserving of some sort of mastermind appellation. Oh sure in each of these two cases there can be some aspects that are less than ideal from a forensic viewpoint, but in real life I would imagine many cases are less than ideal. Certainly in the JBR case the forensic team knew what the already existing "party line" of the police department was, so I don't think we should ever be looking for a forensically ideal situation in the real world. Does the absence of forensic clues in the JBR case justify our viewing the intruder as some sort of mastermind or should we simply view him as someone who was reasonably lucky under the circumstances? Perhaps we should also bear in mind that just about anyone can enter a home when the homeowners are so very trusting and so very distant from the point of entry.

He left a ransom note but did not leave his own fingerprints on it. Well, its not very hard to obtain a pair of gloves in Boulder Colorado particularly in late December. Indeed, I would dare say that a person who lacked a pair of gloves in Boulder, Colorado in late December would be likely to come to the attention of passerby and perhaps even the police. And boxes and boxes of "latex" gloves are available in any drug store so its really not a sign of having great smarts if the intruder fails to leave fingerprints on the ransom note. Even if he removed his gloves once inside the home he might well not leave a usable print on the note due to finger secretions, humidity, brief contact with the paper surface or any number of such reasons.

He treked in and around the upstairs bedroom but no one really expects anyone to be leaving big muddy footprints so the absence of such prints does not confer any presumption of his having great smarts and certainly does not justify the use of the term mastermind in its sense of skillfulness. He was sufficiently stealthy but given the acoustics that was not a particularly challenging task and evidences no great skill or level of experience.

Now we can also address the issue of mastermind as a term implying some sort of personal dynamics involving a very controlling person and a more pliant accomplice. It is quite obvious that we can not have two persons of grossly unequal personal interaction until we first have two persons committing the crime. Evidence of two perpetrators is said to be two partial shoeprints, a perceived duality in the text of the ransom note and a perceived duality in the fabrication of the garotte as compared to the fabrication of the ransom note. Since it is concluded by the investigators that the instrument utilized to inflict a final blow was taken away as well as a stun gun, roll of duct tape, cloth, etc. there is some basis for assuming the presence of two perpetrators but no particular necessity for multiple perpetrators.

If we were to conclude that the cord was in fact optimal for its purpose and that the cord was neatly and precisely positioned around the paint handle we would have a matter that appears to contradict the senseless existence of a ransom note, the senseless length of the ransom note and the existence of the absurd text of the note. Such a duality of our perceptions is certainly slim evidence of two perpetrators. However, we can simply say that we are willing to accept this perceived discord as sufficient evidence of the existence of two perpetrators.

Now as to the applicability of mastermind to the two persons: It is possible though certainly unproven that if one person is precise and determined and another person engages in fanciful deluded behavior that the personal dynamics of the relationship might fit our rather loosely defined terms of mastermind and puppet.

Once we approach the end of this line of reasoning however we come to a serious matter. We can assume the existence of two perpetrators and we can assume a variety of things about their styles of interacting with each other, but if we arrive at a determination of one person being a mastermind and the other a compliant puppet then we must certainly conclude that the mastermind has enough on the ball to know that he can not allow the puppet to live. Puppets are by definition expendable. And rather easily expended also. Whoever would perform the actual acts of perversion that deposited the dna must surely be somewhat lacking in intellectual achievements as well as in what might be termed street-smarts, for if they were a scatterbrained puppet they are now certainly a dead scatterbrained puppet.

I can not see a mastermind as exposing himself to the risk of a puppet copping a plea in some other crime or perusing the tabloids and seeing something about a one-million dollar reward. No matter how much a mastermind valued his puppet, the puppet is clearly a liability.

We have all these rules about crime. One ofcourse is that criminals start out in a comfort zone and as much as possible stick to their comfort zone. Quite frankly, I don't know if comfort plays as much of a role as laziness does. Laziness on the part of the criminal as well as laziness on the part of the cops. We may simply catch more criminals since input from neighborhood observers will play a greater role but criminals do tend to be geographically mobile and it seems readily become quite comfortable wherever they happen to find themselves. Spontaneity is often an admirable character trait, even for a criminal. Just as we find it inconvenient to acknowledge that a junkie is more addicted to the needle than the drug, we often find it inconvenient to acknowledge the degree of geographic mobility of the criminal element and their penchant for spontaneous crimes of opportunity.

Recapitulation:
Multiple perpetrators: Possible but not proven. Footprints might be from others and one person could have carried all items that were brought or removed. One can say it is likely that the prints were recent and recent they well might be, but we know of no tests that were conducted and we do know of recent pedestrian traffic in some areas of the basement.

Mastermind-Puppet: Possible but most definitely not proven. A certain duality is acknowledged to exist but could well be an intentional deception for purposes of humor or investigatory confusion. The garotte is functional, the cord is functional, indeed it might be described as optimal. The garotte is simply fashioned but it appears to be carefully fashioned. Whereas the note is absurd in its existence, length and content, the stun gun use is absurdly insufficient (no matter how grateful we may be for that), the molestation is perhaps perfunctory, the bondage is perhaps more akin to decoration than dedication to sadism. Duality may indeed exist in our perception of the crime but this is merely consistent with multiple perpetrators of different personal dynamics and different goals, it is not proof of it.

Dead Puppet: Not proven but so gravely necessary for any mastermind that I fear we can write off any dna-donating puppet that may have existed. If the puppet existed, he served his purpose. After that, no matter how admired he might have been, he was a liability that could not be long indulged.

Mastermind (in the sense of planning a stellar caper): Not proven and in many aspects not likely. There was perhaps not quite a generic ransom note but certainly one that could well have been used or planned to have been used on a different date. There was no great display of planing or familiarity with the family. There was no great forensic skill displayed. Luck may surely have played a role but anyone can wipe away evidence, it does not require great brains to do so. There are no indications of great planning or feats of great daring. Evading capture is not difficult if the forensic team was at best half-hearted and there was an entrenched party-line concerning responsibility for the crime.