I said check it Sam!

I'm sure you recall the dialog from In the Heat of the Night:
Police Chief:"Check both ends of town, check the depot, and check the pool hall. OK?"
Officer Wood: Pool hall closed at one o'clock, Chief.
Police Chief: I said check it, Sam.

Now this is fiction. Its from a screenplay based on a novel by John Ball. Its not from real life. Or is it? After all, Rod Steiger had so much fun on that movie that distinctions between real life and fiction were blurred. Rod Steiger never once broke character on the set or on location. His staying in character is said to have had a pronounced effect on the film crew's pot-smoking and gambling behavior. The producers were happy to reimburse Rod Steiger for the 263 packs of chewing gum he went through during the filming. He stayed in character so well that when the time came to film a scene in which Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger were having a beer in the police chief's home, the entire scene was filmed without any scripted or suggested dialog at all.

So is it really important in a real life investigation to check a pool hall that had already closed? You bet it is. Unfortunately such matters are often not done since the personnel on the scene may not react to the situation quite as well as might later be desired. Yet we expect that the investigation will be thorough, but what exactly is a thorough investigation?

While I was surfing the net I happened to encounter a site that posed a question concerning what was described as a CIA-like atmosphere at the BPD headquarters soon after the murder and made mention of the fact that Access Graphics was a subsidiary of defense-contractor Lockheed Martin.

My immediate reaction to the implied theme of national security relating to the supposed secretive atmosphere at BPD headquarters was quite simple. Who observed this changed atmosphere, how skillful are they as observers, what specific acts did they observe that lead them to this conclusion, just how different was the new atmosphere from the normal close-mouthed attitudes around a police headquarters and how much of the new attitude was related to the police awareness of growing tabloid media interest in their activities. I would ofcourse want comparisons with the secretive atmosphere regarding the JonBenet killing with similar secretive atmospheres at BPD headquarters subsequent to other killings, but then ofcourse it must be remembered that the BPD did not have a history of any other major killings. It should also be remembered that since Linda Arndt is the suspected source of these "cia-like atmosphere" comments, her track record in other areas of police work is really not that impressive.

I was about to embark on a project to thoroughly analyze the nature of the corporate relationship between Lockheed Martin and its subsidiary Access Graphics to demonstrate that the subsidiary was a minute portion of Lockheed Martin's investments and that there was absolutely no national defense issues involved in John Ramsey's business of buying high speed unix boxes, high quality monitors and AutoCad software and selling the packages as customized, turn-key systems to companies that wanted to open the box, plug it in and start drafting.

It struck me as I was about to dredge up oodles of SEC data on corporate subsidiaries and their earnings, that I was about to embark on a fools errand. I was about to prove the obvious: That a Boulder based Value Added Retailer of drafting systems has nothing to do with political intrigue in distant locales. I then thought that I might want to reconsider the project yet again. We blame the BPD in general and Officer French in particular for failing to be thorough enough to unlatch that darned door more promptly. We blame the BPD for never having conducted a full scale and well organized search of the house, particularly its basement. We blame the BPD for not having been thorough enough. Yet there I was, about to take shortcuts and be less than thorough because I feel the conclusion is obvious and I would merely be re-plowing fields that have already been well plowed.

Had John Ramsey thought at the time to allege some sort of "spook status" would the FBI have shown up sooner and in greater numbers? Possibly. Yet I doubt that John Ramsey was capable of such a thought process in his stunned state and I doubt that any FBI influx would really have taken place or been sustained for long. After all, I think the FBI types would, as usual, be primarily concerned with maintaining friendly relations with the local authorities.

So what was my final decision? I opted to forego the detailed, more-scholarly work and just stick with the assumption that those who see any sort of foreign intrigue in the JonBenet Ramsey murder belong in a class with those who see UFOs everywhere. A value-added-retailer in Boulder, Colorado has nothing to do with internecine battles on foreign shores.

We have to allocate our efforts with an awareness of time and resources and with a view to how likely to prove fruitful the task is. Specific suspects have to be given greater interest than vague impressions of the atmosphere at police headquarters. I'm satisfied with my decision to not bother checking the pool hall, but I'm not thrilled with it.