Just picture the cops reading the note and setting things up for the phone call (which would only take a few minutes).
But in concentrating on the phone call to come, they did a half-a** search of the house.....and let it go and waited and waited.
I would guess that Karr could have left Jonbenet in any number of places in the house and they wouldn't have found her.
They weren't looking for HER. They were looking for a disturbance of the Ramsey household.....signs of robbery etc.. Frankly, they wouldn't recognize a "disturbance" unless it was obvious. It's not THEIR house.
A room by room walk-through of the house by a cop with one of the parents would likely have changed the time of finding the child.
We depend on law enforcement to do a lot, not to become emotionally involved. That's asking a real lot when it involves a kid. They may have been just overly compassionate towards the Ramseys at first. Good people are like that.
Such a terrible sad case...like so many others.
Good grief - of course they went through the house - upon arrival around 6AM.