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Post by Tom Sorensen on Nov 21, 2022 15:20:13 GMT -5
Chapter 1-6 | Review by "Nancy Drew"
This book was first published March 15th, 2000, according to one source. Authored by John & Patsy Ramsey it says on the cover, but who knows. Patsy Ramsey held a degree in journalism from West Virginia University. The few pages I viewed suck pretty badly considering she allegedly held a B.A. in journalism. However, the lack of style is less relevant since it's the supposed facts and narrative presented in the book that will be scrutinized.
The video below is the first in a series of videos, I believe, from YT channel Nancy Drew (ND). This video deals briefly with the first six chapters and an upcoming video is about Chapter 2. I will leave this first video as is and offer my analysis along with the next video when ND documents various discrepancies he found in relation to the Ramseys' witness statements.
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Post by Tom Sorensen on Nov 24, 2022 13:18:35 GMT -5
Chapter 2 | Review1 by "Nancy Drew" | Plus: BLUNDERS Explained You can view the YT review independently of my comments, but I recommend you watch the review before reading my analysis. This is to give you a feel for why I'm picking on certain details in the book. NC does an excellent job at pointing out how the Ramseys, even years after the incident, never could get their stories straight. My comments to Chapter 2 will be a two part post: In this post I'll point out the most foolish mistakes, or BLUNDERS, and in the upcoming post I'll show details that raises RED FLAGS.
@01:04 BLUNDER #1
Note the word "still". This indicates that her shower had been defunct for some time already, so what ever her daily routine was to get her morning shower, it would have been in place by then. Nothing on this particular day would make "abruptly remembering" the broken shower creditable. There was an abundance of bathrooms on the 2nd floor so she would already have chosen her backup shower, or she would have showered before going to bed on the 25th. Stupid mistake to bolster her narrative with this fake recollection.
@1:18 BLUNDER #2
Then reminiscing her mother's lecture on makeup to add credibility to her makeup routine. Absolute BS. At this time she was close to forty, so this would have been second nature to her; there should be no need to further support that claim. It's obvious what's going on here: Patsy is working her way backward from when she was seen opening the front door dressed in the same clothes she wore on the 25th, wearing makeup. She wants to persuade the reader into believing the narrative she's building. Plus, as she says, make a good impression on Melinda's fiancé. Are smelly armpits and makeup going to cut it?
@1:35 BLUNDER #3
As pointed out by ND, messing with Jonbenet's red dress2 is removed from the narrative. She has likely realized that she must already have spent around 10 minutes from swinging out of bed at say 5:30 a.m., getting dressed, likely brushing her teeth, and putting on makeup until descending the spiral staircase to the kitchen area. Only at most 12 minutes left3 to perform all the hoopla involving the discovery of the ransom note.
@1:40/3:20 BLUNDER #4
Blurred chronology. In the book, she's reached the bottom floor before wondering: "what's this?". In her testimony, she discovers the note on her way down the staircase, obviously, since she would have had to skip4 a run in order not to step on the note and slip. Doing so is very awkward on a spiral staircase. Remarkably, leaving the ransom note as found requires her to also skip a run on her way back up instead of simply picking up the note to show John since she intended to check on Jonbenet anyway. Anyone buying this?
@3:32 BLUNDER (DOUBLE) #5
Introducing the cleaning lady, Linda. If the first that comes to mind is Linda -- and that's what she says right there in the book -- it makes no sense she wouldn't simply have picked up the note to read it -- BOOM. But it gets worse: John Ramsey testified to carrying Jonbenet up the spiral staircase when they returned home the evening of the 25th. There's no way he would have missed that note the way it was laid out, so in order for Linda to have left it there she must have entered the house while the Ramsey's were asleep and sneaked out again after having neatly places the three pages on the staircase, wow!
@4:27 BLUNDER #6
Referring to TV interview5, I would give Patsy credit for introducing this twist to the tale by bringing up John's daughter as the target of the abduction. Patsy also does this in her June 1998 police interview6. Slight problem, though, as she refers to John's daughter Beth, who died in a car crash in 1992!
SUMMARY:
I find it remarkable that within just half an hour of the Ramsey's narrative there seems to be no end to the number of slip-ups. Remember this is based on their own words! The weirdest thing is that a detective like Lou Smit, who helped exposing their lies while interviewing John Ramsey, later ended up on Team Ramsey to promote the intruder theory. Next post will dive into more details of the nonsense narrative put forward by the Ramseys.
_______________ 2 Her account of messing with that red dress is very elaborate in her 1998 testimony; to be pondered. 3 911 call logged at 5:52 a.m. 4 Her stepping over the note is covered in the testimony but not in the video.
5 To be linked here when I find it... |
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Post by Tom Sorensen on Nov 25, 2022 17:44:46 GMT -5
Chapter 2 | Review1 by "Nancy Drew" | Plus: RED FLAGS Explained The times noted in this post refer to the same Chapter 2 video as the previous post, only these mark issues that indicate lies or deception.
@1:00 RED FLAG #1 In the very first statement of Chapter 2, note the word "realize". It suggests an element of reflection and consequently passing of time. This is odd since there would be no reason to expect anything but darkness on a winter's day at 5:30 in the morning in Boulder2, and there was no time to reflect since they had a plane to catch! It was "still dark" So, what does "still" refer to? It was dark when she went to bed, or she was up all night? Worth looking out for stuff like this because Patsy was all over the place when asked about lights being on or off throughout the house, like red flag #4.
@1:00 RED FLAG #2 ND only reads excerpts from the book to support his argument, which is perfectly fine, but it almost made me overlook a most interesting second statement at the beginning of Chapter 2. In my main Jonbenet thread3, I found it strange that Patsy would not wake the kids if it was a priority for them to get to the airport on time, for once. Well, her top priority when writing the book obviously was to dismantle any idea of not waking the kids to be an anomaly by immediately explaining that the normal case when getting up early would also be not to wake the kids until the last minute and load them into the car. That normal factor, indicating things were not exactly normal. Despite this being the early morning flight routine, Patsy saw the need to address this "non-issue"!
@2:50 - 3:00 RED FLAG #3Chronology, jumping back in time. When recollecting something from actual memory, the chronology of events will flow naturally. From her leaving the bedroom until she, allegedly, almost steps on the ransom note, nothing remarkable happens. There should be no problems making this flow, but she keeps stumbling, interrupting herself. When she descends the spiral staircase and is about to discover the note, she derails and has to jump back to the bathroom and reset. Something is definitely throwing her off; it seems like the verb tense of "come" makes her crash: "I came, I had come back down, I'd come down the back bedroom stairs there...". Is "had come back" a Freudian slip, now her second run down, or does she hope to be at the bottom floor4, as in the book, when she discovers the ransom note but realizes it won't work? @2:50 - 3:00 RED FLAG #4
Excessive details RE laundry area. If it didn't matter in the book, why did she dive into fussing with the red jumpsuit during testimony? Also note the use of "so" to rationalize why the light was on in there. Another unnecessary detail since, evidently, the light was on if she messed with the suit at this early hour. Something is not right here, which has to do with the lights being on or off. Possibly because at daytime this part of the second floor area would receive light from the large window facing north. Was it determined what kind of stains? @4:05 RED FLAG #5
Pushed open the door5 but didn't enter. This is also how it's described in the book, but a peculiar variation of the Peter Hyatt red flag in that Patsy pushed open the door but did not enter the room -- at least John looked under the bed! This is straight up abnormal behavior any way you view this case. @6:00 RED FLAG #6 Do CEOs get on the floor, spreading out documents to be studied? This to me is the most hilarious part of the narrative, but I don't recall seeing anyone objecting. This could well be the most important note he'd ever studied, and he gets ON THE FLOOR in his underwear, without his glasses, to read the instructions? Next to the hallway is his study and the kitchen with its counter and proper seating and lighting, where he can go over the note with Patsy. I strongly suspect this is somehow tied to John Fernie's bizarre testimony where he claims to have spotted the note on the floor from the outside.
@7:48 RED FLAG #7 Burke, what are the chances of that happening? Well, that's what you just suggested! Strong BLUNDER candidate...
@11:40 RED FLAG #8 John looks under Jonbenet's bed to make sure she isn't there, but there were two beds in that bedroom -- OOPS! Why doesn't he check her adjoining bathroom? Why doesn't he check if the door to the balcony is locked? And why didn't he check the bedroom immediately when he was initially stopped by Patsy returning to the second floor? His story makes no sense at all. SUMMARY: John Ramsey is so FoS it defies comprehension, he got away with it. I'm leaning toward ND's conclusion in that I tend to believe there are some elements, or fragments, of truth to what Patsy Ramsey has cooked up. I wouldn't put my money on John Ramsey as the killer, though.
_______________ 2 Check for yourselves: LINK 4 Her stepping over the note is covered in the testimony but not in the video. 5 The door thing...this is a Peter Haytt statement analysis specialty: opening of doors when it's evident it had to be opened to enter or exit.
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Post by Tom Sorensen on Dec 7, 2022 4:02:57 GMT -5
Chapter 13 | Review1 by "Nancy Drew" | Plus: Additional Comments
Entry points of findings during review marked below with my comments added.
@0:25 Findings up to and including Chapter 13
No comment. @0:45 The $118,000 ransom
What struck me was the wording: "The [amount] was deferred compensation, so there was no point discussing the matter with her." At first I thought he was trying to label the amount as not being a bonus, technically, to justify not telling Patsy, but in the next paragraph he refers to that amount as a bonus he was awarded. So, was he compensated or was he awarded? Anyway, what stands out to me is "discussing the matter". If he considered it a bonus, what matter was there to discuss with Patsy, and why didn't he simply pop open a bottle of champagne to celebrate the bonus with his wife? What I believe is that Patsy was burning a ton of money on her pageant nonsense and John didn't want Patsy to know about this 118 grand "supplement" that was coming up shortly; it was meant for his hobbies! However, he then immediately sinks his own argument by stating that anyone nosing around their home could have learned about that specific amount from viewing a pay stub. Now, ask yourself who spent most of the time in the house while he was gone? Correct, Patsy! @1:28 Hiring guys like Ex-FBI John Douglas
Brilliant observation by ND. I'll do a separate post on John Douglas and his nutty claims. Ellis Armistead suddenly quit2 Team Ramsey, which prompted L. Linn Wood, Ramsey's attorney, to state this nonsense:
A twist to the 'both ways' argument is that Patsy having her own lawyer could potentially backfire. It allowed her to prepare a counter move in case John decided to dump her to save himself. More on the lawyers in another video3 by ND.
@2:35 More complaints RE Boulder PD
Exactly, this was an exercise in diversion.
@3:30 The notepad
Because Patsy knew the housekeeper had taken pad and pen home with her. To make sure the BP got their attention, and also why the ransom note was "found" on the staircase. Note how John Ramsey uses the word "elevated" to suggest he was believed to be the writer of the note. Having a hard time controlling his huge ego.
@4:10 Patsy during early days of John Ramsey's business
Computer lingo -- good stuff. Patsy, at least initially, was deeply involved with the business, like making deposits at the bank. I just noticed how the amount in the ransom note uses a business format specifying zero cents: $118,000.00 -- BOOM!
@5:30 Lawyer Mike Bynum
Or was he called in by the Fernies? Tight knit group.
@6:24 Alleged 911 call from Burke's school
Right, show us the evidence.
@7:17 In conclusion...
I'm still sure that something went wrong just prior to the 911 call, which torpedoed the plan to dispose of Jonbenet's body. That's why John lawyered up the way he did, expecting Patsy to spill the beans or turn against him. As ND mentioned, not much about Jonbenet in the book, and what a great kid she was, but look who's on the front cover of the book and who's on the back cover! _______________ |
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Post by Tom Sorensen on Feb 15, 2023 12:58:48 GMT -5
Blame Game | Review1 by "Nancy Drew" | Plus: ConfessionThis episode focuses on the Ramseys constant bitching over what the Boulder PD did wrong or didn't do. ND brilliantly points out how their arguments in the book fall apart when one looks at what they in fact did or didn't do themselves to stall the investigation. My comments reference the bullet points in the presentation.
@01:05 BULLET #1John Ramsey claimed to have searched under Jonbenet's bed...but only there, and not under the second bed in the bedroom...or in the bathroom... or any other bed on the second floor. Neither did Patsy, which raises an even bigger red flag because, according to officer French's report, she found Jonbenet's bed empty prior to finding the ransom note. This is opposite to her later claim of finding the note first. I'll get back to the French report in another post and point out other damming discrepancies in the Ramsey narrative. @01:38 BULLET #2Well, one could argue that once Rick French had arrived and read the ransom note, he should have called in and told no vehicles, marked or unmarked, should be parked in the vicenety of the house. But what about their friends arriving? Again, I'll use the Pilot/CEO argument: there's no way John would not have conveyed the essence of the note during the 911 call or immediately when officer French arrived. As ND says, this "mistake" had no practical implications on the case anyway. @02:20 BULLET #3When moving Jonbenet out of the wine cellar, John Ramsey did exactly the opposite of what he was told to do by Linda Arndt : if he finds anything suspicious or out of the ordinary, don't touch it! Patsy totally misses the mark on this one. @05:55 BULLET #4As mentioned above, officer French picked up some very important details showing how the Ramsey narrative initially relied on the normal-factor until they began tailoring their testimony. We've seen this over and over in the JFK case, where early records expose later records and testimonies to be concocted to support a fake narrative. @07:05 BULLET #5Goes without saying, but why would they do that prior to the body being found? Not sure what point ND is making here.
@07:25 MISSTEPS
Correct, the missteps worked in the Ramseys' favor across the board, further assisted by a rotten DA. @08:30 IN CONCLUSION
Wow, didn't know John failed to disclose that his work bonus essentially matched the ransom!
MY CONFESSIONI bought the paperback edition of The Death of Innocence second-hand, dirt cheap. ND seems to have taken a break from reviewing the book, so I thought this would be the right time to check out how bad it really is. Trust me, it's bad, but at the same time most reveling. Blame it on the police and tabloids if at all possible. Pathetic! After a couple of chapters their agenda becomes very obvious and subsequent chapters then become painfully predictable. The paperback has 400+ pages and I can feel already it'll be a struggle to finish. ________________
1 YT-REVIEW-MISSTEPS
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Post by Tom Sorensen on Jun 17, 2023 2:04:41 GMT -5
Final Conclusions by "Nancy Drew"
This episode concludes "Nancy Drew's" review of The Death of Innocence. I've just indexed the episode and will defer my comments to later posts. @0:30 Intro, the 1999 book announcement. @1:14 Table of contents1.
@2:15 The Murderer... @3:15 Chapter 33 disrespectful? @3:53 The killer out there... @4:25 The DNA, ND's theory. @5:55 Appendix A: A Chronicle of Cooperation. @7:55 Conclusion(s)... @8:40 Positives... @9:05 Negatives... @9:40 Outro.
_______________ 1 Chapter 33, The Murderer, has become chapter 34 in the later pocket book edition as a new chapter 33 has been added (Another Year Gone By...) |
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Post by Tom Sorensen on Oct 7, 2023 2:59:55 GMT -5
Chapter 2 | Broken Shower Revisited
In the Chapter 2 review of Death of Innocence, I pointed out that Patsy Ramsey introduced the broken shower to support her tale of dressing in the same clothes she wore the day before when visiting the Whites. I haven't seen any broken shower mentioned anywhere else by anyone1. If her shower was indeed broken, she had her chance in the Boulder PD interviews (1997 and 1998) to mention this "recollection" if it supported her narrative.
By 2000, when their book came out, who would be able to prove or disprove that her shower was broken? I strongly suspect that's why this detail is nowhere else to be found. However, while sifting through the Boulder PD interviews, I noticed other details that suggest my suspicion of Patsy faking it is justified. In her 1997 interview2, Patsy is asked to tell how she spent December 25th and mentions something that seemed of no interest at the time. I'll quote two passages below. Due to their tight schedule, Patsy likely didn't have time for a hairdresser's appointment and decided to do a quick fix to blend the roots in. She wanted to make a good impression on Melinda's new boyfriend, right? Also, she didn't shower in the morning because the kids wanted to open their presents. Even when doing a touch-up job, you want to get the residual color off the skin and out of the hair. There's no way Patsy didn't shower before dressing and leaving for the Whites. So, where did she shower if her shower on the third floor was broken, and what are the odds she wouldn't remember?
Specifically, on the morning of the 26th, this is what Patsy said during the two interviews. OK, so two principles in statement analysis say that order matters and whatever is negated has an elevated importance. When Patsy is asked to explain in detail what she did after getting out of bed, in both interviews, she's headed for her bathroom to not take a shower! Pause for a second and think about why not showering was the first thing that came to her mind.
I'll betcha that her first real thought was to take a piss! But seriously, this is no coincidence. She needs to establish this before going into any detail about getting dressed in the same clothes as the night before. At the time of the interviews, it was an established fact that the clothes she was seen wearing on the morning of the 26th were the same as those she wore on the evening of the 25th. Now she needs a plausible explanation.
To me, the way her mind works is that dressing in yesterday's clothes makes perfect sense if she didn't shower, whereas taking a shower would imply putting on fresh clothes. Note "just" in both interviews. She got away with it in her 1997 interview; however, the following year, she instantly messed up by admitting to not knowing what she did in the bathroom! When subsequently confronted with her weird dressing habits, things quickly went south. I'll leave the 1998 interview for now, as this post is about the alleged broken shower. If Patsy colored her hair on the 25th and her 3rd floor shower was still broken, there's no way she wouldn't have already picked an alternate shower on the second floor. This backs up my initial analysis, and her abnormal emphasis on not showering—in both interviews—shows how she's anticipating her "clothing situation" on the 26th to be scrutinized. Even if her shower were in fact broken, it would have been a non-issue; she would have showered on the 2nd floor3. Patsy was lying her eyes out all along, and the broken shower introduced in the book was a half-assed attempt at making her illogical narrative more creditable. The whole purpose of setting the alarm clock at 5:30 a.m. was not to run out of time, as they usually did when leaving for Charlevoix. The shower tale is all BS.
_______________ 1 It actually was, by John Ramsey, in his 1998 police interview. I'll deal with this in an upcoming post.
2 Interviews can be found on ACandyRose website in the Case Materials section: LINK 3 In my initial assessment, I claimed that Patsy had an abundance of bathrooms available on the 2nd floor. To be fair, she "only" had two: a tub/shower combination in the bathroom off of John Andrew's bedroom (her former chemo recovery room) and the tub/shower combo in the bathroom next to the playroom, opposite of Melinda's bedroom, which was the less inviting of the two, especially if they had Burke's friends using the playroom. Patsy was already busy packing suitcases in John Andrew's bedroom, so the adjoining bathroom would have been where she showered and dressed. She would have laid her clothes out for the 26th in John Andrew's bedroom. |
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Post by Tom Sorensen on Nov 5, 2023 14:35:06 GMT -5
Chapter 2 | Broken Shower Fixed! Well, in the previous post, I stated that I had not seen any mention of a broken shower apart from the one mentioned by Patsy in Death of Innocence, which was true at the time. While researching another aspect of the case, I realized that the very topic of Patsy's broken shower was brought up in John Ramsey's 1998 BPD interview. John actually volunteered this information while being asked about various people who might have been in the house doing repair work, etc. During this interview, there was an exchange where Patsy supposedly agreed to have housekeeper Linda Hoffman's husband, Mervin Pugh, come over to fix stuff, including tiles for the shower. This arrangement is confirmed in a later exchange, both quoted below: First, based on John volunteering this information, I'll consider it a fact that Patsy's shower actually was broken at some time prior to Christmas of 1996. Second, the problem with Patsy's story is that the shower was fixed during Thanksgiving of 1996, which means that Patsy's shower had been functioning for a month while she claims it was still broken -- BOOM! Until now, I couldn't quite understand why Patsy would risk completely inventing the broken shower to support her story. As it turned out, the shower had been broken, so even though she's telling a ball-faced lie, it is anchored in an actual incident. It tells you how cunning Patsy is, but also that she's not a real mastermind when it comes to stitching together her narrative. What this example does confirm is that Patsy's is a notorious liar; she's prepared to make up stuff to suit her needs even at the risk of being caught. But there's more to be learned from this "incident", apart from Patsy being exposed: > John has checked out when it comes to the Boulder residence. > Consequently, Patsy is organizing repair work in and around the house. > The broken basement window would already have been fixed. John doesn't give a flying f--k about the Boulder house; it's all about his business empire and sail boat. From a practical point of view, it makes sense that Patsy, being a stay-at-home mom, is supervising what's going on, but John referring to what was happening as "hearsay" makes me wonder if this was in preparation of plausible denial 1. The to-do list made out for the Pughs in November would evidently have included the broken basement window. If Merv could do tile work, he could replace a broken window pane. It makes no sense that the window was not fixed by Christmas 1996, and it makes the whole Ramsey break-in narrative even more ridiculous. Still, John must have noticed this "memory lapse" while reading Chapter 2, so why didn't he intervene? It's details like this that add to my suspicion that Patsy and John were never on the same page when it came to managing the coverup. The way the book is laid out, alternating between the "recollections" of John and Patsy, is a recipe for plausible denial. It wouldn't surprise me if that was suggested by their lawyers. Patsy even claimed 2 she didn't proofread the parts John wrote! They never could get aligned on the crucial half hour between 5:30 am to 6:00 am on the 26th. Only two people in the house being able to interact (Burke sleeping, Jonbenet dead) can't get their narratives in sync. Why? Enough said about the shower (maybe); in the next posts, I'll keep picking at Patsy's "recollections" during the first page of Chapter 2 in Death of Innocence. _______________ 1 Wouldn't an engineering dude like John have discussed a shower repair that must meet certain building codes?
2 I covered this in the Wolf vs. Ramsey deposition thread about Patsy lying: LINK |
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Post by Tom Sorensen on Nov 9, 2023 3:19:56 GMT -5
Chapter 2 | Thanksgiving Arrangement
In my previous post, I quoted John Ramsey on the broken shower in Patsy's bathroom. This was John's 1998 police interview. Nothing in Patsy's 1998 is said about the broken shower or any repair work associated with her shower. However, in her 1997 interview, there is a lengthy exchange concerning her arrangements with the Pughs: Right, so Patsy seems to reason the way I do: If Mervin was there anyway, it makes sense he would have fixed that window, or at least made a mental note of whether it was broken or not. My problem with her testimony is that the most annoying thing to be fixed was her shower, and she does not mention that at all. Why would John mention her shower, but she doesn't?
Also, the Pughs were coming to the house while the Ramsys were away, so does it make sense that Patsy would not have mentioned this to John before leaving? Does it make sense she wouldn't have asked John if he knew of stuff to be fixed while Mervin was there? Does it even make sense that Patsy hadn't noticed herself or was told by Burke or John that the window was broken?
Here's my problem with Patsy's statement: of the two items that should be on top of her list to do, finishing her shower and fixing the basement window, the shower is not mentioned, and the window may have been done. What should have been most vivid in her recollection came last, bundled as "odd jobs." Wouldn’t Patsy have gone over the list again with Linda before paying her?
Patsy's use of words, like "definitely", tells me that she wants to make sure Mervin is placed in the house with Linda, which he likely was. When it comes to the basement window, all she has to offer is "vaguely remember", which doesn't result in any recollection but is twisted into an argument about what might have happened.
It's obvious where Patsy is headed with her statement: The Pughs had definate knowledge of the wine cellar; put them at the top of your list of suspects! It shouldn't come as a surprise since she immediately pointed her finger at Linda Hoffman when the police arrived on December 26th. In fact, she wasn't able to contribute much else that day!
In summary, it's safe to conclude that the Pughs were at the Ramseys during Thanksgiving, and they had access to the so-called wine cellar. John's mention of Patsy's shower, likely accidental, nonetheless sinks her narrative. In fact, it makes it even less plausible that she didn't have a plan B in place for showering—a total bust. Regarding the basement window, we see Patsy tiptoeing around a possible fix using squishy language. She's likely aware that John is neck deep in his broken/open window discovery (also involving Fleet White) and reserves her right to plausible denial.
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Post by Tom Sorensen on Nov 14, 2023 13:39:00 GMT -5
Chapter 2 | Thanksgiving Keeps Giving!
In this post, I'll drift into dealing with the much-debated basement window, which has also become tied to the Patsy/Pugh arrangement. John Ramsey's 1997 interview also mentions Thanksgiving.
So John starts out with a straight answer, 'No', then corrects himself. So let's analyze what a 'No' implies: if no reason exists, the window was fixed and John Ramsey broke into his own house again, or somebody else did. Or somebody staged a brake-in. Obviously, none of those options appealed to John! This is a John Ramsey classic where he comes up with an answer, then realizes it doesn't work and starts waffling. Note how he places the responsibility for fixing the window on Patsy, but why would she ask Mervin to fix it if John never told her it was broken, which leads to the next question: is it even plausible that John didn't tell Patsy about the incident? If he can quote Patsy saying she did think Mervin was asked to fix the window, they must have discussed the issue, and it seems strange Patsy would not commit to asking the Pughs in her 1997 statement. It looks to me like there's a rift between John and Patsy on a number of issues. John has committed himself to the lost key narrative and pushes Patsy in front of him. My current take on the broken window is, based on the crime scene video, that the basement window was broken quite a while back. The grate was not out the night of December 25/26. The amount of debris at the bottom window well indicates the Pughs were not in the well cleaning the windows 1; it would have been a nobrainer to tidy up the well while they were at it. John Ramsey came up with his BS story about the lost keys because he was messing with the window the morning of the 26th. He knew he likely had left trace evidence and needed a plausible explanation for this when he later launched the suggestion that an intruder came through the window. The police would collect evidence that implicated John, but he would have the perfect excuse for that evidence being there because he broke the window himself and entered the basement.
In DoI (p. 20), John states, "That entry place needs to be looked at, I tell myself." Consequently, the reason for entering the basement was to find a possible point of entry, the basement window, so it defies any logic that he would not inform Officer French about his intention as French had already been in the basement (and so had Fleet White!). After having found the window open, he also does not inform French (or Detective Arndt) about this possible way in for an intruder.
Looking for an entry place in the basement also doesn't make sense based on Rick French's report, because Patsy Ramsey quickly named Linda Hoffman as a possible suspect for several reasons, and she was known to have a key. The Death of Innocence was published in 2000, so John Ramsey had several years to come up with a plausible explanation for his actions but miserably failed.
I consider the braking of the basement window a red herring, but John Ramsey saw an opportunity to nudge the BPD in the direction of an intruder, and he saw a way out if trace evidence tied him to the window and/or window well. Some theories suggest that Jonbenet was initially placed in the window well; this is based on the foam packing beans found in the boiler room, which are identical to those scattered in the window well. But I digress; my point was to show that John Ramsey once told the truth when he mentioned the broken shower. The purpose was to place Mervin Pugh in the house, but unfortunately, this allowed Patsy to shoot down her own fake story. In addition, we got to uncover more layers to the Ramsey fake narrative, as John didn't prevent Patsy from exposing herself, and Patsy sent a message to John telling him to deal with the broken basement window himself. __________
1 As I'm reviewing the footage, I notice what looks like an air duct below the basement ceiling in front of the row of windows, partially obstructing the view to the upper row of panes. This might explain why Officer French didn't notice the upper left broken pane in the middle window. The latches on all windows were in the closed position, and that satisfied him that nobody had come through the basement. Link to footage: LINK |
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