OK, "ransom note as term paper". He did this in the kitchen, where the paper and pens were kept? The kitchen with the window looking out towards the neighbors' house?
I honestly don't know where he composed a copy of it inside the house. Could he have sat on the floor out view of the kitchen window?
I just think that the ransom note could be a ruse and that he may have thought it out beforehand, wrote it down on his own paper, put that paper in his pocket and then copied from it on to a pad of paper in the house. Maybe there was enough moonlight that night coming into the window that he did not need a artifical light source.
All this instead of sitting there in the house trying to think it all up and then write it down.