Posted on 01/19/2009 10:53:36 AM PST by nickcarraway
The new district attorney of Boulder County, Colorado, said he plans to take a fresh look at the investigation into the 1996 slaying of JonBenet Ramsey.
The 1996 slaying of JonBenet Ramsey is one of the nation's most famous cold cases.
The DA's office assumed responsibility for the investigation in 2002. But District Attorney Stan Garnett told CNN that he wants to decide during his first 30 days in office whether the case should be returned to Boulder police.
"I'm trying to determine whether it's efficient to have the ongoing investigation handled by my office or somebody else," said Garnett, who was sworn in as district attorney January 13.
The DA's office is relatively small, he said, with 27 lawyers and six investigators handling between 2,000 and 2,500 felony cases a year.
Although the Ramsey case has not generated news since last year, tips and information regularly come in to authorities. Whoever is handling the investigation is charged with checking them out and deciding whether they are worth pursuing, Garnett said.
He said reports that he is considering reopening the case are inaccurate. "It's not closed. It hasn't been solved, and it's been open the whole time."
The case is one of the nation's most famous unsolved murders.
Don't Miss Cold Case: JonBenet Ramsey On December 26, 1996, John Ramsey discovered the body of his 6-year-old daughter, JonBenet, in the basement of the family's Boulder home. The girl had been strangled and beaten. A ransom note was found on the stairs of the home, demanding $118,000.
Early in the case, Boulder police said JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, were under "an umbrella of suspicion" in her death. But they were never formally named as suspects, and a grand jury refused to indict them.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Then why don’t you call them and tell them you know that one of the murderers is dead?
No, I didn’t mean literally. I just meant parading her around as one.
ok - so what you are saying is that the pageant thing attracted the pedophile?
Possibly.
Or - it could have been someone close to the family who would have attacked regardless of the little girl’s activities.
They have news papers in boulder and most of the cops can read. Some even say they have the Internet, but it could be the hand crank type.
Then I’m guessing they must’ve read this article too.
Did you read it?
There was dna from an unkown male.
But you stated the murderer is dead.
The child was not mutilated. She had a skull fracture and was strangled with the garrot. Either the fracture or the strangulation could have caused death.
As for your finding it hard to believe that parents would "mutilate" their children, it happens every day. Somewhere in the world at this very moment, children are being sold into sexual slavery by their parents. Girls are having their external sexual organs brutally removed by their fathers or other male relatives. Plenty of parents do horrible, horrible things to their children.
BTW, strangling a small child with a garrot is a sign of one of two things: Either massive overkill, or a murderer who didn't think he or she had the hand strength to do it without a tool like a garrot.
Given the facts of the case, it is entirely reasonable to be skeptical that the murder was a totally random act committed by a complete stranger to the Ramseys.
Yes, possibly. I am mostly just ranting, if you can’t tell. But, I have an 8 year old daughter, and I would never let her dress up like that in the house, let alone in public.
Please don't change the context and meanings of someone else and then question them about your change. That is a self discussion.
“She had a skull fracture and was strangled with the garrot. Either the fracture or the strangulation could have caused death.”
I personally considerer the garrot to be mutilation.
Especially when you consider the theory that one of the parents accidentally injured her and then garroted her as a “coverup” instead of calling 911.
“As for your finding it hard to believe that parents would “mutilate” their children, it happens every day.”
I understand that - but there has to be proof to back this accusation - yes?
Did the doctors find evidence that Jon Benet had been abused?
Did her brother exhibit signs of abuse?
Or - did the family doctor, family, and friends seem to think they treated their children normally?
Has anyone come forward to support this theory they were secret child-torturers who were selling their daughter’s body?
“BTW, strangling a small child with a garrot is a sign of one of two things: Either massive overkill, or a murderer who didn’t think he or she had the hand strength to do it without a tool like a garrot.”
According to who?
The BTK killer resorted to the garrot beccause he simply enjoyed it.
“Given the facts of the case, it is entirely reasonable to be skeptical that the murder was a totally random act committed by a complete stranger to the Ramseys.”
Given the facts of the case it can also be reasonalbe to be skeptical that the murder was committed by the Ramsey’s or with cooperation from the Ramseys.
“Given the facts of the case” - we don’t really know what happened until we find the owner of that dna.
so have you called them and told them that the murderer or assistant murderer is already dead?
If you know what happened then why is this case still open?
Steve Thomas believes that Patsy Ramsey is responsible for the death of her daughter, JonBenét, Christmas night 1996. As a key member of the team assigned to investigate the murder of the 6-year-old girl, the former detective knows the facts of the case as well as anyone, and the conclusion he draws is convincing and clearly presented. And, as it turns out, his theory about who may be guilty of the crime is just one of the shocking revelations in JonBenét: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation.
From the outset, it was a textbook example of how not to run an investigation: JonBenét’s body was moved from where it was discovered before clues could be gathered, evidence was mishandled or removed altogether, the coroner failed to conduct routine procedures to determine time of death, and the crime scene was not sufficiently sealed off for hours after Patsy Ramsey’s 911 call first summoned the police. In all, the initial response was inept, and it served to undermine the entire investigation; the utter lack of cooperation with the police on the part of John and Patsy Ramsey then compounded the difficulties. Within hours of the murder, the Ramseys had their own team of high-priced lawyers, who effectively insulated them from any direct contact with detectives. Nearly four months passed before police were able to question the parents at length, and only then on the condition that the Ramseys be given full access to police reports and evidence prior to the meeting. In essence, they behaved like suspects, and when Thomas and other detectives tried to determine the Ramseys’ guilt or innocence, they were stymied every step of the way by Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter and those under his direction.
The hostile relationship between the police and the D.A.’s office slowed the investigation to a crawl, and, in Thomas’s eyes, proved the principal reason an arrest was never made. Despite copious evidence against them and glaring inconsistencies in their testimonies, particularly Patsy’s, the Ramseys were not even officially listed as prime suspects until March 1998 because the D.A. would not permit it. All the while, Thomas alleges, Hunter was leaking sensitive information to tabloid journalists and allowing the Ramseys’ lawyers to dictate the direction and scope of the investigation. Thomas eventually resigned from the police department after exposing the D.A.’s mismanagement of the case, and a grand jury was called. But the grand jury investigation was ultimately undermined by the D.A.’s refusal to hear the testimony of several detectives closest to the case.
Somewhere in the midst of the politics, the legal wrangling, and the in-fighting between the D.A. and the police department, the central focus of this case was lost: justice for an innocent 6-year-old girl. Steve Thomas has returned that fact to the fore in this important book. —Shawn Carkonen —This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
“From my investigation of the Ramsey murder, Steve Thomas was the lead detective on the case from the beginning and may know what happened better than anyone.” —Lawrence Schiller, New York Times bestselling author of Perfect Murder, Perfect Town
It's a far cry from dressing your kid up in pageant clothes to a horrific act of violence.
The Ramseys had NO history of violence in their past. Far from it. They were considered by friends and long time friends as very gentle people.
My theory is this: a pediophile broke into the house earlier in the evening while the family was out. while he waited he wrote the ransom note. Hid when the family came home. waited till they were asleep and then snagged jon bonet.
Now, because it showed in autopsy that she ate pineapple before she died and the parents swear they never gave her any, I think jon bonet either KNEW the perp(which would also explain the 118K ransom) or he was dressed as santa claus...this would be why jon bonet never put up a fuss.
I don’t think he inteded to kill her but she must have given him trouble and he killed her, then escaped. He’d have to be pretty damned experienced to leave behind little to no DNA.
Steve Thomas may be correct - or he may not.
Or - he may have an agenda too -seemingly like most of the characters in this sad story.
It all comes down to that dna.
Whose dna is it?
Can Thomas answer that?
Read the book.
“The true name of John Ramsey’s former mistress has not been used in the book. The name Jodi Robers is a pseudonym.”
Thanks for the link.
It doesn’t do much to persuade me one way or the other.
Again, it all comes down to the dna evidence - which we do not know who that person is.
Find the owner if the dna - and that will shed light on the Ramsey’s involvement of non-involvement.
Whatever your personal viewpoint, the fact remains that garroting is not mutilation, which is defined as "to cut up or alter radically; to cut off or permanently destroy an essential part."
I understand that - but there has to be proof to back this accusation - yes? Did the doctors find evidence that Jon Benet had been abused?
Which "accusation?" Mutilation or abuse? You've said you don't believe parents would mutilate their child. That's what I've rebutted. Everything else you've thrown in is not something I've even discussed.
The BTK killer resorted to the garrot beccause he simply enjoyed it.
The BTK killer did not murder very young children. How else can garroting a child Jon Benet's age be described except as a sign of massive overkill? Or as a sign that the murderer didn't think he or she had the hand strength to strangle the child without a tool? In fact, it's massive overkill no matter what else can be said of this murder.
Given the facts of the case it can also be reasonable to be skeptical that the murder was committed by the Ramsey’s or with cooperation from the Ramseys.
If the Ramseys are, indeed, innocent of this crime, the murder could have been (and likely was) committed by someone who knew them. A little reading comprehension goes a long way. I said, "Given the facts of the case, it is entirely reasonable to be skeptical that the murder was a totally random act committed by a complete stranger to the Ramseys." Nothing in that statement accuses the Ramseys in any way.
“The BTK killer did not murder very young children”
Wrong. One of his first victims was the eight-year-old daughter of the Oteros, young Josie. He took her down to the basement, sexually assaulted her, then strung her up on a basement pipe to strangle to death.
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