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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Dos Equis on February 02, 2009, 05:02:22 PM

Title: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on February 02, 2009, 05:02:22 PM
The search for the "real" killer.   ::)

Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
By ALYSIA PATTERSON
Associated Press Writer

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- The slaying of JonBenet Ramsey will be investigated as a cold case with all evidence and actions taken 12 years ago reviewed anew, the police chief said Monday as the department resumed a probe for which it had long been criticized.

Chief Mark Beckner said new technology gives investigators tools they didn't have a decade ago; the 6-year-old beauty pageant contestant was found bludgeoned and strangled in the basement of her Boulder home in 1996.

Police had transferred the probe to the district attorney's office six years ago amid criticism of how the case was handled.

"We'd love to solve this case for JonBenet so she can rest in peace," Beckner said at a news conference announcing the shift.

Police will handle the investigation as a cold case, "reviewing everything that's been done, the evidence that's been collected, trying to determine where do we go from here," he said.

L. Lin Wood, an attorney for JonBenet's father, John Ramsey, said the decision was a "positive sign in terms of my hope that the Boulder Police Department will take not only a new review in terms of a cold case review, but that it will go in this time with an objective review."

Wood and Ramsey have been critical of previous police efforts, saying they unfairly focused on the family and ignored other evidence.

Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet's mother and John Ramsey's wife, died in 2006 after a long battle with cancer.

Beckner said he and newly elected District Attorney Stan Garnett agreed that police should lead the investigation again. Beckner said he has invited a team of veteran investigators from state and federal agencies to join an advisory task force.

"We're bringing in people on this task force that are going to have a fresh perspective. (They're going to) look at this case, tell us what they think, challenge us, give us ideas."

The group will meet in the next few weeks to review the evidence and identify additional testing that might be done.

Beckner told the Camera newspaper of Boulder the task force will "explore all possible theories about what happened the night JonBenet was killed" and added, "We are open to all possibilities."

At the news conference, Beckner said more than 140 people had already been investigated as potential suspects, but none could be definitively linked to the crime.

Garnett's predecessor, Mary Lacy, last year cleared Jonbenet's family in the slaying, saying male DNA found on the girl's clothing almost certainly came from her killer, and that it didn't match anyone in the family.

Beckner informed John Ramsey of the change in the investigation in a letter, but gave no hint that police would back away from that finding.

"Nor could any objective investigation back away," Wood said. "(The DNA evidence) is compelling if not conclusive."

Lacy did not run for re-election because of term limits. She told the AP that returning the investigation to police was "a great idea."

"I think that time has resolved any issues that might have lingered, but also I think that Mark Beckner has done a very good job," she said.

Lacy said the reason her office took over the case in 2002 was that the Ramsey family had no confidence in the police. "It wasn't that they were incompetent," she said of the officers.

Lacy said she is "absolutely" hopeful the case will one day be resolved.

"I believe the DNA (that cleared the Ramsey family) is the most significant piece of evidence, and hopefully, as with some cold cases, there will eventually be a hit on it," she said.
 
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JONBENET_RAMSEY?SITE=HIHAD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Eyeball Chambers on February 02, 2009, 09:47:01 PM
The search for the "real" killer.   ::)

Why investigate anything, Beach Bum has all the answers.

Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Hereford on February 03, 2009, 08:45:28 AM
Nobody cares anymore. Let it go.
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: SAMSON123 on February 03, 2009, 08:47:15 AM
Who gives a SHIT???..Too many Coloradoans are losing or have lost their homes and jobs to care
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: LurkerNoMore on February 03, 2009, 09:52:57 AM
Nobody cares anymore. Let it go.

Exactly.  The main culprit/suspect already died.
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: mightymouse72 on February 03, 2009, 09:58:26 AM
This is sad.
You people don't care that a little girls murder is unaccounted for. 

No respect for life.
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on February 03, 2009, 10:31:44 AM
A tragedy.  The person most knowledgeable about this girl's death is six feet under. 
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on October 03, 2010, 04:33:03 PM
Police plan new interviews in JonBenet Ramsey case
Published October 02, 2010 | Associated Press

BOULDER, COLO. –  Police investigating the death of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey are conducting a new round of interviews, based on recommendations from an advisory committee.

The committee, which included investigators from several state and federal agencies, met in 2009 after police took the lead in the case back from Boulder County prosecutors.

Members reviewed evidence in the death of 6-year-old JonBenet, whose body was found bludgeoned and strangled in her family's home in Boulder on Dec. 26, 1996. Former District Attorney Mary Lacy said in 2008 that evidence suggests the killer was an unknown stranger, not a family member.

Police Chief Mark Beckner wouldn't reveal details about the continuing investigation or who police want to interview now.

"We continue to work the Ramsey case and have tailored our investigation based on recommendations from our 2009 advisory committee," Beckner told the Camera newspaper. "This has included additional contacts and interviews with those who may have information pertinent to the case."

JonBenet's older brother Burke, who was 9 when JonBenet died, was contacted by police but hasn't been interviewed yet, Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood said.

"I understand that they met with Burke and gave him a card and said, 'If you want to talk to us, here's how you would contact me,'" Wood said. "But the police have not interviewed Burke."

JonBenet Ramsey's mother, Patsy, died of cancer in 2006. Her father, John, made a public plea last December for people to share any suspicions they had around the time JonBenet died.

"Whatever the reason for any type of approach with Burke, it would have nothing to do with the case other than with the reality that John and Burke could help the Boulder police as witnesses in the investigation," Wood said. "For all I know, they have gotten some tip and think Burke could give them some information."

Denver defense attorney and legal analyst Scott Robinson said it would be premature to assume that police have new information.

"But it would be absolutely accurate to say they're not letting this case lie," he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/10/02/police-plan-new-interviews-jonbenet-ramsey-case/
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on October 15, 2010, 11:52:13 AM
Questions for JonBenet's brother -- again?
By Tom Foreman, "AC360°" Correspondent
October 15, 2010

(CNN) -- Police in Boulder, Colorado, want to talk to the older brother of JonBenet Ramsey, the 6-year-old girl slain at home on Christmas night 14 years ago, the Ramsey family's attorney said.

Supporters of the family call it harassment. The brother, Burke Ramsey, has no interest in once again answering questions he has answered for many investigators many times, said the attorney, Lin Wood, of Atlanta, Georgia.

And yet the mere hint of activity in one of the nation's most famous cold cases has headlines swirling.

So, what's the story this time? Burke Ramsey was the 9-year-old brother of JonBenet who, by all accounts, slept soundly in his room that Christmas in 1996 while his sister's skull was fractured and she was strangled elsewhere in the house.

Now, he's 23, and although police investigators aren't talking, the family's lawyer is. Wood said police investigators approached Burke Ramsey on his college campus in the spring, gave him a business card and said that if he wanted to talk about the case, they'd like to hear from him.

Investigators, no doubt, are hoping that locked in Burke's memory is some clue that could crack the case; maybe it's a detail that he was afraid to mention as a child or as a teenager but that he now wants to discuss.

But police will have to keep waiting. Wood says his client has declined their latest request to talk.

Good for him, say some journalists and legal analysts in the Colorado foothills who have long followed the story.

"Burke Ramsey has been completely cleared," said Denver attorney Larry Pozner, who has no direct involvement with the case but has been sharply critical of how authorities have handled it.

"The Boulder police engaged in a crime scene search and preservation that was worse than amateurish. It borders on criminal," Pozner said.

The police have always defended their work on the case, but despite all the scrutiny, all the hours of investigation, nothing came of their efforts.
It's hard to remember now, but the death of JonBenet was little more than a tragic local news story that holiday season until her parents appeared on CNN.

This family photo shows JonBenet with her father, John, mother Patsy, and brother Burke at an earlier Christmas.

John and Patsy Ramsey turned the story into a sensation when Patsy, crying and shaking, told the nation: "There's a killer on the loose. I don't know who it is. I don't know if it's a she or a he, but if I were a resident of Boulder, I would tell my friends to keep your babies close to you. There's someone out there."

The interview unleashed the now famous pageant video, the disquieting cheesecake photos of JonBenet and a national debate: How could a 6-year-old girl be killed in a quiet neighborhood, and no one see or hear a thing?

The early evidence seemed to point toward the parents. There was no sign of forced entry into the Ramsey home, no footprints in the snow surrounding it. The rope used to choke JonBenet was tightened with a paintbrush from her mother's hobby kit.

An alleged ransom note (remember, this was first thought to be a kidnapping) was written on a pad of paper from inside the house, and some investigators thought the handwriting looked like Patsy's. It contained details about the family's past and finances that few outside their close circle could have known. And the body was found in a little-used basement room that police didn't even notice at first.

Investigative reporter Julie Hayden, who tracked the case all those years ago, said people were asking how a stranger could have pulled it off.
"It's sort of like a puzzle," she said. "How do you put all of those pieces together? Was it an intruder? If it wasn't an intruder, how on Earth did this happen? But on the other hand, how could somebody do that to their own child? It's got to be one or the other, you know? Somebody killed JonBenet."

"There's someone out there," Patsy Ramsey told reporters in 1996. She died of cancer 10 years later.

The Ramseys ramped up public suspicion, whether they meant to or not, when they hired lawyers and a publicist. Their relationship with investigators grew noticeably strained.

Each possible break in the case, each supposed suspect over the years, proved worthless or a fraud. Two years ago, the district attorney said that new DNA testing methods had cleared all family members of suspicion.

John Ramsey appeared relieved. "We're certainly grateful for an acknowledgement that we are innocent, this was an intruder, which of course we've always maintained."

Yet here investigators are, once again, knocking on Burke Ramsey's door. Attorney Scott Robinson, who has closely watched the case, said that even if JonBenet's brother knows something, so what?

"Even if Burke were to have some miraculous memory that could lead to the arrest of a suspect, that information would be so dated and so questionable that most criminal defense attorneys would have a heyday with it at trial," Robinson said. "It's very problematic to be using information that would be so stale from an individual who did not remember it before."

The main adult figures in the Ramsey case are almost all gone -- to other jobs; other cities. Some, including Patsy Ramsey, have died.
They leave behind unanswered questions and one terrible fact: A 6-year-old girl was killed, and 14 years later, no one has spent even a day in jail for her murder.

Like many who have followed the Ramsey case from the start, Robinson doubts the killing will ever be solved.

"The colder the case gets, the colder the trail gets."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/10/15/jonbenet.ramsey.investigation/index.html?hpt=T2
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on July 23, 2012, 10:44:25 AM
JonBenet Ramsey detective's new book casts doubt on 'intruder' theory
Published July 20, 2012
FoxNews.com

A new book by a lead investigator in the JonBenet Ramsey murder puts forward a new theory: There was no intruder in the home where a wealthy Colorado couple's six-year-old daughter was found murdered in 1996.

James Kolar's book, "Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet?" takes its name from the ransom note found in the home, which was signed by "a small foreign faction." But he believes the theory that an intruder broke in and wrote the note, which led to the girl's family being cleared, is bogus.

"By the time I parted company with the D.A.'s office, I was convinced that there was no significant possibility that an intruder had been involved in the death of JonBenet."

"By the time I parted company with the D.A.'s office, I was convinced that there was no significant possibility that an intruder had been involved in the death of JonBenet," Kolar writes in his book.

Kolar believes abrasions on the girl may have come from a toy and not a stun gun allegedly wielded by her killer.

Kolar, who had access to 60,000 pages of evidence, including crime-scene video and photos, interviews with individuals related to the case and forensic reports, notes that intact cobwebs stretched over the window through which the intruder allegedly entered.

The little girl was found beaten and strangled with a garrote on Dec. 26, 1996 in the basement of her family home. The bizarre ransom note, which purported to be from a group "that represent[ed] a foreign faction," asked for $118,000 in exchange for the safe return of JonBenet. The note was found hours before a search of the house turned up the dead girl.

Parents John and Patsy Ramsey were suspects for years, but were cleared 12 years later on the strength of newly discovered DNA evidence. Patsy Ramsey died in 2006 of ovarian cancer.

In 2010, investigators reopened the case, but nothing came of the effort. Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett said in 2010 that he personally gets five or more tips each month, according to Fox31.

Kolar dedicated his book to Boulder police, who he believes were made to look like bumbling idiots. He publicly clashed with Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy, who hired him in 2004, but later dismissed him and cleared the Ramseys.

In clearing the Ramseys, Lacy cited a DNA sample of an “unknown” male found in JonBenet’s underwear and on her leggings.

“The match of male DNA on two separate items of clothing worn by the victim at the time of the murder makes it clear to us that an unknown male handled these items,” Lacy wrote.

Click for more at The Daily Beast.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/20/jonbenet-ramsey-detective-new-book-casts-doubt-on-intruder-theory/?intcmp=trending
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on January 28, 2013, 11:17:14 AM
JonBenet Ramsey detective's new book casts doubt on 'intruder' theory
Published July 20, 2012
FoxNews.com

A new book by a lead investigator in the JonBenet Ramsey murder puts forward a new theory: There was no intruder in the home where a wealthy Colorado couple's six-year-old daughter was found murdered in 1996.

James Kolar's book, "Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet?" takes its name from the ransom note found in the home, which was signed by "a small foreign faction." But he believes the theory that an intruder broke in and wrote the note, which led to the girl's family being cleared, is bogus.

"By the time I parted company with the D.A.'s office, I was convinced that there was no significant possibility that an intruder had been involved in the death of JonBenet."

"By the time I parted company with the D.A.'s office, I was convinced that there was no significant possibility that an intruder had been involved in the death of JonBenet," Kolar writes in his book.

Kolar believes abrasions on the girl may have come from a toy and not a stun gun allegedly wielded by her killer.

Kolar, who had access to 60,000 pages of evidence, including crime-scene video and photos, interviews with individuals related to the case and forensic reports, notes that intact cobwebs stretched over the window through which the intruder allegedly entered.

The little girl was found beaten and strangled with a garrote on Dec. 26, 1996 in the basement of her family home. The bizarre ransom note, which purported to be from a group "that represent[ed] a foreign faction," asked for $118,000 in exchange for the safe return of JonBenet. The note was found hours before a search of the house turned up the dead girl.

Parents John and Patsy Ramsey were suspects for years, but were cleared 12 years later on the strength of newly discovered DNA evidence. Patsy Ramsey died in 2006 of ovarian cancer.

In 2010, investigators reopened the case, but nothing came of the effort. Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett said in 2010 that he personally gets five or more tips each month, according to Fox31.

Kolar dedicated his book to Boulder police, who he believes were made to look like bumbling idiots. He publicly clashed with Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy, who hired him in 2004, but later dismissed him and cleared the Ramseys.

In clearing the Ramseys, Lacy cited a DNA sample of an “unknown” male found in JonBenet’s underwear and on her leggings.

“The match of male DNA on two separate items of clothing worn by the victim at the time of the murder makes it clear to us that an unknown male handled these items,” Lacy wrote.

Click for more at The Daily Beast.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/20/jonbenet-ramsey-detective-new-book-casts-doubt-on-intruder-theory/?intcmp=trending

Recently read this.  Great book.  Completely destroys the intruder theory. 
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on January 28, 2013, 11:18:41 AM
What a shame.  This will likely never be solved, because of one of the primary participants (the mom) is dead. 


JonBenet Ramsey's parents reportedly indicted, but DA refused to prosecute
Published January 28, 2013
FoxNews.com

The Colorado grand jury probing the death of JonBenet Ramsey voted to indict the murdered 6-year-old beauty queen’s parents more than a decade ago, although prosecutors reportedly declined to press the case.

The Boulder Daily Camera newspaper reports that the grand jury in 1999 voted to indict both John and Patsy Ramsey on charges of child abuse resulting in death, a Class II felony punishable by up to 48 years in prison.

Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter refused to sign the indictment, believing he could not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, the newspaper reports.

“I and my prosecution task force believe we do not have sufficient evidence to warrant a filing of charges against anyone who has been investigated at this time,” Hunter told reporters on Oct. 13, 1999.

At least one legal expert, however, said state law may have obligated Hunter to at least sign the indictment, even if he elected not to prosecute the case.

"We didn't know who did what," one juror told the newspaper. "But we felt the adults in the house may have done something that they certainly could have prevented, or they could have helped her, and they didn't."

The former child beauty queen was murdered in the family’s Boulder home on Christmas Day in 1996.

Hunter, who left office in 2001 after 28 years as Boulder County's district attorney, declined to discuss the grand jury's actions.

"Colorado statutes, the ethical canons which govern the practice of law, and the Boulder District Court's oaths, instructions and orders in the JonBenet Ramsey grand jury proceedings, are well established and absolutely clear with respect to the various participants' legal obligations, duties and responsibilities, including the inviolate secrecy of the proceedings and the differing burdens of proof applicable to jurors and prosecutors,” Hunter told the newspaper in an email last week. "As the duly elected district attorney at the time and as an officer of the court then and now, I must respectfully decline further comment."

Boulder police Chief Mark Beckner also declined to discuss details of the Ramsey grand jury.

Click for more from the Boulder Daily Camera.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/01/28/jonbenet-ramsey-grand-jury-reportedly-voted-to-indict-parents-but-da-refused-to/
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: LurkerNoMore on January 28, 2013, 11:57:34 AM
I always suspected it was the brother.  Maybe rough housing and pushed her down or choked her after losing his temper over her being the favored one.

One thing for sure, the person(s) responsible for her death were in that house along that night.
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on January 28, 2013, 12:00:07 PM
I always suspected it was the brother.  Maybe rough housing and pushed her down or choked her after losing his temper over her being the favored one.

One thing for sure, the person(s) responsible for her death were in that house along that night.

There is evidence pointing to the brother's possible involvement.  Kolar does a great job laying it out in his book.  And Kolar was hired by the DA to investigate the matter. 
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on October 22, 2013, 09:52:21 AM
JonBenet Ramsey's dad fights possible release of indictment in girl's 1996 death

(http://global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/img/U.S./Jonbenet.jpg)
FILE 1997: John and Patsy Ramsey hold reward poster regarding death of JonBenet. (AP)
Published October 22, 2013
FoxNews.com

FILE 1997: John and Patsy Ramsey hold reward poster regarding death of JonBenet. (AP)
John Ramsey says he's opposed to the possible release of documents in an indictment related to the 1996 killing of his 6-year-old daughter, JonBenet.

The Daily Camera reports Ramsey's attorneys sent a letter Sunday to Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett. It says the release of an indictment that wasn’t prosecuted "only serves to further defame (John Ramsey) and his late wife Patricia."

The attorneys also argue the public won’t be able to evaluate the propriety of the indictment unless the entire grand jury record is unsealed.

The grand jury voted in 1999 to indict the Ramseys, but the parents were never prosecuted.

The Denver Post ran an editorial Monday calling on transparency.

"With the passing years, hopes of solving the case have grown dimmer. But this action could provide insight as to what happened," the editorial said.

A reporter for The Camera and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a lawsuit last month to see the records. The district attorney’s office has agreed to disclose anything a judge deems appropriate.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/22/jonbenet-ramsey-dad-fights-possible-release-indictment-in-16-death/?intcmp=latestnews
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: LurkerNoMore on October 22, 2013, 11:50:46 AM
Sad to say, that despite the evidence and what common sense suggests this is really the text book perfect crime.  How can you not have all the evidence and reach the same conclusion even despite the police fuck ups.
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on October 22, 2013, 12:15:06 PM
Sad to say, that despite the evidence and what common sense suggests this is really the text book perfect crime.  How can you not have all the evidence and reach the same conclusion even despite the police fuck ups.

Not exactly the perfect crime with all the blunders, but definitely perfect in avoiding punishment.  That's what money can do. 
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on October 25, 2013, 09:22:51 AM
Ramsey grand jury indictment accused parents of child abuse resulting in JonBenet's death
Published October 25, 2013
FoxNews.com

DEVELOPING:  Court documents released Friday reveal that a grand jury indictment in 1999 accused John and Patsy Ramsey of child abuse resulting in death and being an accessory to a crime, including murder, in connection to their 6-year-old daughter JonBenét.

The indictments, released on Friday, did not indicate who killed the young beauty queen. The charges didn't directly accuse the Ramseys of killing their daughter, but alleged they permitted JonBenét to be placed in a dangerous situation that led to her death and it accused them of helping the killer, who has never been brought to justice.

The Ramseys were not officially indicted, however, because former District Attorney Alex Hunter refused to sign the documents to prosecute them. In 2008, then-Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy exonerated the girl's parents and immediate family after DNA evidence pointed to an unknown male as JonBenét's killer.

JonBenét's body was found Dec. 26, 1996. She had been strangled and her skull was fractured.

JonBenét Ramsey's mother, Patsy, died of cancer in 2006.

Earlier this week, John Ramsey asked officials to release the entire grand jury record if the unprosecuted indictment was made public. However, the judge said transcripts of grand jury proceedings and evidence presented to it are not considered "official action" under the law governing criminal court records. He also said releasing such information could hurt other grand juries, whose work is secret.

An attorney representing John Ramsey, L. Lin Wood, said he's confident that no evidence in the grand jury case implicated the Ramsey family and the public should be able to see that for themselves.

"Anything less than the release of all of the proceedings is a gross injustice to the Ramsey family," he said.

Former prosecutor and law professor Karen Steinhauser said grand juries sometimes hear evidence that won't be admitted during trial that can form the basis of indictments. But she added that prosecutors must have a good faith belief that they could prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt before pursuing charges.

"I'm not sure that the release of this indictment is going to change the fact that there has not been able to be a prosecution and probably won't be able to be a prosecution," she told The Associated Press.

Some other experts have suggested over the years that investigators botched the case so thoroughly that it might never be solved.

Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner said the case remains open but it's not an active investigation. He predicted the indictment's release wouldn't change anything.

"Given the publicity that's been out there, many people have formed their opinions one way or another," he said.

Hunter did not return phone messages left Thursday by The Associated Press in anticipation of the documents' release. Lacy also did not return a message seeking comment.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/10/25/details-1-indictment-in-jonbenet-ramsey-slaying-to-be-released/
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: 240 is Back on October 25, 2013, 10:05:14 AM
Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter refused to sign the indictment, believing he could not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, the newspaper reports.

Putting career before chasing justice for the poor kid.  Very sad.  Even if you lose the case, at least the nation knows they're guilty.  Imagine if the OJ prosecution said "this case is messy, let's just not indict OJ"....
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on February 26, 2015, 10:27:27 AM
Mark Beckner opens up about JonBenet Ramsey case, then regrets it
Former Boulder chief: 'Misunderstanding and naivete on my part'
By Charlie Brennan
Staff Writer
POSTED:   02/24/2015

Editor's note: The box of excerpts has been changed to remove a question about Burke Ramsey that was not answered by Beckner but rather by a Reddit commenter.

Beckner on Ramsey

Excerpts from former Boulder police Chief Mark Beckner's Q&A on Reddit:

• On initial police handling of the case: "I wish we would have done a much better job of securing and controlling the crime scene on day one. We also should have separated John and Patsy and gotten full statements from them that day. Letting them go was a big mistake, as they soon lawyered up and we did not get to formally interview them again until May of 1997, five months after their daughter was murdered."

• On whether a stun gun was used: "Stun gun — no. The coroner and others who looked at the abrasion did not believe it came from a stun gun. The distance between the two marks did not match the probes of any stun gun we found. Stun guns are loud and hurt like crazy — which would have probably elicited some screaming. That probably would have woke someone up."

• On possible sources of unidentified DNA on JonBenet's clothing: "Manufacturing process is one. Interactions with other people is another. Intentional placement is another. Belongs to an intruder is another. Yes, you can often tell where DNA comes from. In this case, it is small enough that it is difficult to tell. CBI thought it was either sweat or saliva."

• On whether there might have been an intruder the night of the murder: "Most investigators do not believe there was a legitimate point of entry. It is unknown how an intruder may have gotten in. Lou Smit always believed it was the basement window, but we did not agree with him, as the dust and spider web were undisturbed."

• On public interactions between JonBenet's parents: "They rarely interacted and this did not seem normal given the circumstances. Lots of speculation as to why."

• On relations between police and the Boulder District Attorney's office under Alex Hunter: "DA involvement in this case was inappropriate. They interfered in the investigation by being roadblocks to getting things done. They did not want to do a grand jury until forced to. We never allowed the DA to get that involved in a case again. Today, the new DA is great to work with and the police and DA's office work as a team."

Read the full Q&A at bit.ly/1DRQoLS.

Former Boulder police Chief Mark Beckner made his most extensive remarks to date about the JonBenet Ramsey case in a rare online Q&A over the weekend — but he's now expressing misgivings about having done so.

The former chief, 59, and now living in Firestone, said Tuesday he didn't realize his comments during an "Ask Me Almost Anything" session for the Reddit online community would filter out to the public at large.

"I talked to the organizer and my impression was that this was a members-only type group that talked about unsolved mysteries all around the world," Beckner said of the Saturday Q&A, which garnered more than 600 comments.

"In fact, they had to give me a password to get in," he said. "I didn't know it was an open-architecture type thing, or I wouldn't have done it. It was a misunderstanding and naivete on my part.

"I've tried to put the media attention behind me."

Although Beckner said he was not getting much feedback from the piece — as of Tuesday — he now wishes he had not participated in the Reddit forum.

But now with the chat out of the bag, he was asked if there was anything he wished to take back, add to, or clarify.

"I tried to be honest and fair," Beckner said, "and I think the only thing I would emphasize is that the unknown DNA (from JonBenet's clothing) is very important. And I'm not involved any more, but that has got to be the focus of the investigation. In my opinion, at this point, that's your suspect.

"The suspect is the donator of that unknown DNA, and until you can prove otherwise, I think that's the way you've got to look at it."

JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in her parents' basement Dec. 26, 1996, hours after her mother, Patsy Ramsey, had called 911 to report finding a lengthy ransom note demanding the unusual sum of $118,000 for her child's safe return.

The star-crossed investigation was marred by open feuding between the office of then-Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter and the Boulder Police Department. A grand jury heard evidence from September 1998 through October 1999, but was discharged with no action publicly revealed.

In January 2013, the Daily Camera reported that the grand jury had voted to indict both John and Patsy Ramsey in their youngest child's death, but that Hunter had refused to sign the indictments, judging that there was insufficient evidence to prove the charges at trial.

A subsequent lawsuit by a Daily Camera reporter revealed in October 2013 that each parent had been indicted for felony child abuse resulting in death and accessory to the crimes of first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death. Hunter, however, refused to sign the indictments.

JonBenet's parents always proclaimed their innocence in the case. Patsy Ramsey succumbed to cancer in 2006 after a long illness, and John Ramsey no longer lives in Colorado.

In August 2006, then-District Attorney Mary Lacy ordered the arrest in Thailand of American schoolteacher John Mark Karr, who incriminated himself in JonBenet's slaying through a lengthy email correspondence and a series of 11 phone conversations with University of Colorado journalism professor Michael Tracey. Karr was brought back to Boulder to face charges, but then was abruptly cleared and released on the basis of DNA testing.

No one has ever been criminally prosecuted in JonBenet's death, and Lacy publicly exonerated the Ramseys in 2008 based on DNA evidence.

'It's an open homicide investigation'

Current Boulder police Chief Greg Testa on Tuesday said Beckner didn't tell him he was going to discuss the case on Reddit.

"I learned about it by seeing it posted online," Testa said.

"I can't control him. He's not an employee here anymore," Testa added. "I think that most of the information that he discussed was already in the public domain. And I didn't read it line for line, but Mark understands the nature of that investigation, and certainly wouldn't do anything to compromise it."

Beckner stated on Reddit that the case is "not actively being worked, unless some new information would become available."

Testa elaborated, in Tuesday's interview, on the Ramsey case status.

"It's an open homicide investigation. We have detectives in our major crimes unit who are assigned to all of our cold cases, and there are two detectives assigned to that case currently," Testa said.

"The work they're doing is, anytime we get info from the public, tips or leads, that information would be evaluated and assigned to a detective to look into. It's not actively being worked, in terms of new information, but new information that comes in, is looked at. That was really the situation when Beckner was here, too. That hasn't changed."

Beckner may write book — about Ramsey and more

On Reddit, Beckner was more willing to voice opinions on some points than others, and stepped lightly in certain areas.

For example, asked his "opinion" on Patsy Ramsey's frantic early morning call to 911, Becker merely stated, "Sorry, I'm going to pass on this one."

But he had far more to say about Karr's arrest and subsequent release.

"My gut reaction was that Mary Lacy did not know the facts of the case and was making a big mistake," Beckner told the Reddit forum. "His confession, once they shared it with us, did not match the evidence at the scene.

"After she asked for our help in proving he did it, we knew in about 18 hours he was not the guy. We were able to confirm he was not even in Colorado at the time by just doing some routine checking and then obtained photos of him in Georgia at the time. The DNA test, which she thought would prove he did it, proved her wrong."

Beckner also admitted in the forum to initial botching of the crime scene by his department, to the lasting detriment of the case.

And, while noting that the Ramseys' "position" in the community could have influenced its handling, he added, "I think the primary reason was a perfect storm type scenario. It was the Christmas holiday and we were short staffed, we faced a situation as I said earlier that no one in the country had ever seen before or since, and there was confusion at the scene as people were arriving before we had enough personnel on the scene."

Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett on Tuesday said of Beckner's comments: "He's retired, he's a private citizen, he can make his own decisions." He added, "He was a fine police chief, I'll tell you that."

Beckner now said he is teaching several law enforcement classes online through Norwich University in Vermont. He was asked on the forum if he will ever write a book about the Ramsey saga.

"If I write a book, it will not be specifically about the Ramsey case," Beckner said. "Too many on that already. I might write an autobiography covering my entire career, of which the Ramsey case would be a part of."

If Beckner does, he doubts it will have a dramatic concluding courtroom chapter, having told Reddit, "(I)do not believe anyone will ever be convicted in the Ramsey case."

http://www.dailycamera.com/News/ci_27591666/Mark-Beckner-opens-up-about-JonBenet-Ramsey-case-then-regrets-it
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: LurkerNoMore on February 26, 2015, 12:12:53 PM
Two people who know the truth are already dead.  Only the father and son are still alive I believe.
Title: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 19, 2016, 05:35:04 PM
Anyone watch the interview with him?
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 19, 2016, 05:40:34 PM
Saw excerpts.  Awkward. 
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 19, 2016, 05:51:04 PM
Saw excerpts.  Awkward. 

Phil McGraw says he's not autistic, for whatever that's worth.
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 19, 2016, 06:11:24 PM
Phil McGraw says he's not autistic, for whatever that's worth.

I was like . . . who the heck is Phil McGraw?  lol  Had to Google it.  I only know him as Dr. Phil.  Pretty impressive marketing. 
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 19, 2016, 06:20:20 PM
I was like . . . who the heck is Phil McGraw?  lol  Had to Google it.  I only know him as Dr. Phil.  Pretty impressive marketing. 

I'd like to know how he determined with such certainty that Burke isn't autistic.  Because, as terrible as it is, that's probably the one thing that would make the interview seem not-so-bad -- or at least make it understandable.

Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 19, 2016, 06:24:42 PM
I'd like to know how he determined with such certainty that Burke isn't autistic.  Because, as terrible as it is, that's probably the one thing that would make the interview seem not-so-bad -- or at least make it understandable.



He's just a recluse and socially awkward.  Has spent much of his life away from the public.  Works from home. 
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 19, 2016, 06:47:51 PM
He's just a recluse and socially awkward.  Has spent much of his life away from the public.  Works from home. 

Yeah, I was reading that.  It's said he "works remotely" and he's "socially awkward".

I'd like to know exactly what he thought he'd accomplish by doing the interview, then.
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 19, 2016, 06:52:18 PM
Yeah, I was reading that.  It's said he "works remotely" and he's "socially awkward".

I'd like to know exactly what he thought he'd accomplish by doing the interview, then.

Who knows?  He shoulda just kept his mouth shut.  Somebody in that house murdered that kid. 
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 19, 2016, 07:02:26 PM
Who knows?  He shoulda just kept his mouth shut.  Somebody in that house murdered that kid. 

I'll try to find out how the interview came about, because something important can be found in that info imo if it's at all available in true form.

Problem is, all the claims as far as that goes, come from Dr. Phil.  So who knows what's true.  He has his reasons for saying the stuff he does (like "No Burke isn't autistic" and we take his word without anything further).
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 20, 2016, 11:53:24 AM
CBS investigative panel pins JonBenet Ramsey's death on her brother

(http://s22.postimg.org/u618slvsh/2016_09_12_T11_41_20_5_Z_1280x720_today_vid_offsi.jpg)

A team of investigators, who assembled for the two-part CBS docu-series "The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey," believes the beauty queen's brother is responsible for her death in December 1996.

With retired FBI profiler Jim Clemente and criminal behavioral analyst Laura Richards at the helm, the team re-examined evidence from the nearly two-decade-old case that seemed to indicate JonBenét was killed by someone in her immediate family.

The team dissected a lengthy three-page ransom note that they said contained an extremely extraneous amount of words, not common of ransom notes since speed and brevity are usually key. It was also written on stationery and with a pen found in the home.​

(http://s11.postimg.org/eqas7np43/636099566706780756_108637_0170.jpg)

Using sound reduction, Clemente and Richards believed they could identify three voices from the 911 call Patsy made after she thought she'd hung up the phone. The investigators thought they heard John, Patsy and Burke Ramsey, who was 9 at the time and said to be asleep.

"We're not speaking to you," the team believed John said with Patsy possibly saying, "What did you do?" The pair also thought they heard Burke say, "What did you find?"

For the investigation, a life-size replica of the Ramsey house was built. Using the model, they explored the intruder theory which they ultimately felt did not hold up.

They also concluded that the foreign DNA found on JonBenét's clothing, which led people to believe the Ramseys were innocent, could've been transferred in the manufacturing process.

Clemente and Richards also talked to a former member of the Boulder Police Department, Gretchen Smith, who believes that Boulder's former District Attorney, Alex Hunter, didn't want to prosecute the Ramseys because of their clout.

"The parents of the child, they have money," Smith said. "The District Attorney's office and some of administration did not want to hear that an affluent member of the community was guilty of a crime like this ... I don't think they wanted to solve this crime, and if they had to go down a different path that might not have been the truth, I think they were willing to do that."

Clemente and Richards also chatted with Steve Thomas, a former Boulder Police co-lead investigator, who stated in his resignation letter that, "Attempts to gather evidence were met with refusals and instead it was suggested that we ask for permission from the Ramseys before proceeding."

Thomas believes Patsy wrote the ransom note, and said Hunter was extremely uncooperative. Despite a grand jury voting to indict John and Patsy, Hunter said he did not have enough evidence to prosecute the Ramseys. Hunter also did not comply to be interviewed for the docu-series, because he said it would be too difficult to do without getting into grand jury information which he cannot discuss.

So who in the home could've committed the crime? John was the one who found his daughter's body and then moved it upstairs, compromising the crime scene and the forensic evidence. But was he a key component of his daughter's death or the cover-up?

(http://s16.postimg.org/6eazmqxx1/636099568483632146_108506_0555b.jpg)

In a videotaped interview administered by a child interview specialist, Burke was playful and lighthearted though the time stamp indicates it is Jan. 8, approximately two weeks after his sister was killed. He had no concern about his security and told the specialist, "I'm basically just going on with my life."

But does that mean he's a murderer? A family photographer said that Burke had a temper and once hit JonBenét in the face with a golf club. Burke admitted in a subsequent interview that even though he heard his mom going "psycho" he didn't feel the need to get out bed to see what was wrong. Also, the team believed a piece of a toy train track, like the ones found in Burke's room, could've caused an injury on JonBenét's back.

The investigators surmise that JonBenét made her brother mad — perhaps by stealing a piece of pineapple he was snacking on. (A bowl on the kitchen table and the contents of JonBenet's stomach helped lead to that theory.) Then, in retaliation, Burke hit her on the head with a flashlight. Some members of the team did not think he had an intent to kill, but believed John and Patsy had an intent to mislead and cover up.

"I think in the end this was about two parents (who) deeply cared for the daughter they lost," Clemente said, "and wanted to protect the child they had remaining."

On a recent episode of Dr. Phil, Burke said he stayed in his room because he likes to avoid conflict and is "not the worried type." He also said the handwriting on the ransom note was "too sloppy" to be his mother's, who pushed him to take pride in his penmanship.

Burke tells Dr. Phil that it was "probably some pedophile" from a beauty pageant who killed his sister, reports People. (He was seen as "socially awkward" in the first part of the interview.)

However, renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz, a member of the CBS panel on the show, said, “If you really, really use your free time to think about this case, you cannot come to a different conclusion.

“It's the boy who did it."

(Detroit Free Press)
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 20, 2016, 02:34:36 PM
Quote
I'll try to find out how the interview came about, because something important can be found in that info imo if it's at all available in true form.

Problem is, all the claims as far as that goes, come from Dr. Phil.  So who knows what's true.  He has his reasons for saying the stuff he does (like "No Burke isn't autistic" and we take his word without anything further).

Lin Wood has worked for both the Ramseys and the McGraws.

Quote
attorney for Dr. Phil McGraw in connection with false and defamatory articles published by Newsweek, the Daily Beast and the National Enquirer

Quote
lead attorney for John and the late Patsy Ramsey and their son in matters relating to the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder, Colorado

IMO, that's how the interview came into existence.
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 08:25:22 AM
And on it goes.  Lin Wood to Reuters:

Quote
I will be filing a lawsuit on behalf of Burke Ramsey. ‘CBS’ false and unprofessional attacks on this young man are disgusting and revolting.
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 08:49:33 AM
Pretty clear, now, are the reasons for everything happening at this time.  The creation of the CBS show is what sparked it.

Dr. Phil lost all credibility on this one imo (if he had any left).
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 09:29:40 AM
From news.com.au:

Quote
There will be more drama to come, with further documentaries scheduled to run in the lead up to Christmas, including telemovie Who Killed JonBenet? airing in the US in November.
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 21, 2016, 10:35:23 AM
Caught the last hour.  Pretty good.  Burke as the killer makes sense. 
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 10:59:35 AM
Caught the last hour.  Pretty good.  Burke as the killer makes sense. 

Dr. Phil or the CBS show?
Title: Re: Boulder police take back JonBenet investigation
Post by: Dos Equis on September 21, 2016, 11:02:29 AM
http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=616965.0
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 21, 2016, 11:03:05 AM
Dr. Phil or the CBS show?

The CBS show.
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 11:12:20 AM
The CBS show.

Yeah, I'll have to check that out.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 21, 2016, 03:56:10 PM
TV shows explore shocking new theories on JonBenet Ramsey case
By  Carole Glines 
Published September 21, 2016
FoxNews.com

America will never forget how 6-year-old beauty pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her Boulder, Colo., home on Dec. 26, 1996. While the blonde girl's mother Patsy first reported her kidnapped, JonBenet's wealthy father John Ramsey later discovered her body and police determined she'd suffered a blow to the head and had also been strangled with a garrote.

This fall, to mark the unsolved murder's twentieth anniversary, a slew of TV shows have presented their own investigations into the crime, including: "The Killing of JonBenet: The Truth Uncovered" on A&E, "Who Killed JonBenet?" from NBC's "Dateline," "JonBenet: An American Murder Mystery," from Investigation Discovery, and CBS' "The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey." Dr. Phil McGraw also interviewed JonBenet's father and brother for a three-part series.

Here, FOX411 takes a look at some of the TV specials' new theories and revelations:

What did the 911 operator hear? Dispatcher Kimberly Archuleta, who received mother Patsy's frantic 911 call claiming JonBenet was kidnapped, gave her first TV interview to "Dateline." Archuleta remembered that the call was so peculiar that "there was something inside me that said, 'Something’s not right.'" After Patsy thought she had hung up the call, Archuleta could hear what she thought were three voices discussing the situation. Although the Ramseys told police son Burke was asleep in bed throughout their JonBenet ordeal, audio experts believe the third voice on the tape could be the boy.

The brother did it? On the just-aired CBS special, a panel of forensics experts came to the stunning conclusion that JonBenet's brother, Burke Ramsey, killed the little beauty pageant queen. Although Burke was just 9 at the time, investigator James Kolar theorized when JonBenet snagged a piece of pineapple from Burke's nighttime snack, "out of anger, he may have struck her with…[a] flashlight." The team said that Burke had previously hit his sister with a golf club. Also, retired FBI profiler Jim Clemente said Burke acted like an untruthful "smart Alec" during childhood interviews with a detective and psychologist. The boy raised eyebrows by making hammering motions when asked about JonBenet's death, and remarking dispassionately after losing his sister, "I'm just basically just going on with my life." Clemente's opinion is that Burke killed JonBenet and their parents staged the crime scene "to protect the child they had remaining." However, Burke, now 29, told Dr. Phil he didn't kill JonBenet — while creeping out viewers by smiling throughout the interview.

An intruder did it? A&E's documentary implied that an intruder was able to climb in through the Ramsey's open basement window, write a ransom note, and kill JonBenet. Boulder Detective Lou Smit (now deceased) famously illustrated this theory by climbing through the window himself on video. But CBS experts, doing their own test in a recreated version of the Ramsey house, concluded that climbing through the window would have disturbed cobwebs that were clearly seen on the original crime scene video. However, Bob Whitson, a retired Boulder detective, told "Dateline" that a "sexually sadistic person and psychopath" most likely killed Jon Benet.

DNA evidence exonerates parents? Patsy Ramsey (who died in 2006) and husband John always maintained they had nothing to do with JonBenet's death. According to the A&E show, DNA evidence from 2008 proved that the Ramseys couldn't have killed their daughter—a revelation that also caused Boulder authorities to publicly clear them and apologize. Results from a spot of blood found on JonBenét's underwear the night of the murder belonged to an unidentified male, show experts claimed. But famed forensics scientist Dr. Henry Lee came to a different conclusion on CBS' "The Case," saying a female garment worker likely left her DNA there after handling the panties in the manufacturing process. He also found no evidence of sexual assault. Although John Mark Karr confessed to killing JonBenet, he wasn't charged because his DNA didn't match.

Was the D.A. deceptive? It was revealed in 2013 that a Colorado grand jury had actually voted to indict JonBenet's parents in 1999; Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter decided not to charge them. But "The Case" noted that Hunter had chosen his words carefully in a press conference to imply the grand jury had decided differently. Former Boulder police officer Gretchen Smith told CBS she felt that Hunter's office didn't want to solve the case because they "did not want to hear that an affluent member of the community was guilty of a crime like this." Off camera, Hunter told Jim Clemente he couldn't legally ever comment on grand jury proceedings.

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/09/21/tv-shows-explore-shocking-new-theories-on-jonbenet-ramsey-case.html
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 05:25:09 PM
The Grand Jury said this about each parent:

“did unlawfully, knowingly, recklessly and feloniously permit a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the child’s life or health, which resulted in the death of JonBenét Ramsey, a child under the age of sixteen.”

"did unlawfully, knowingly and feloniously render assistance to a person, with intent to hinder, delay and prevent the discovery, detention, apprehension, prosecution, conviction and punishment of such person for the commission of a crime, knowing the person being assisted has committed and was suspected of the crime of murder in the first degree and child abuse resulting in death.”

Doesn't this sort of show that they figure Burke is the killer?  They say "knowing the person has committed" murder, yet no one gets indicted for murder -- which fits in with the fact Burke was 9-yo at the time and in Colorado.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 21, 2016, 05:54:19 PM
The Grand Jury said this about each parent:

“did unlawfully, knowingly, recklessly and feloniously permit a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the child’s life or health, which resulted in the death of JonBenét Ramsey, a child under the age of sixteen.”

"did unlawfully, knowingly and feloniously render assistance to a person, with intent to hinder, delay and prevent the discovery, detention, apprehension, prosecution, conviction and punishment of such person for the commission of a crime, knowing the person being assisted has committed and was suspected of the crime of murder in the first degree and child abuse resulting in death.”

Doesn't this sort of show that they figure Burke is the killer?  They say "knowing the person has committed" murder, yet no one gets indicted for murder -- which fits in with the fact Burke was 9-yo at the time and in Colorado.

Yep.  That makes the most sense.  He was too young to be prosecuted.   

I probably posted about this earlier in the thread, but Foreign Faction is a great book that provides the most comprehensive, accurate analysis of what happened.  The author was on the CBS panel. 
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 06:00:07 PM
Yep.  That makes the most sense.  He was too young to be prosecuted.   

I probably posted about this earlier in the thread, but Foreign Faction is a great book that provides the most comprehensive, accurate analysis of what happened.  The author was on the CBS panel. 

If that's the case, then as a whole, it looks to show an ongoing issue existed with the boy.

Which means the CBS crew really soft-pedaled the matter, I'd say.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 06:01:26 PM
Yeah, but that's really interesting.  I haven't seen any take to say that it's what the GJ meant, but I don't know how else it could be read.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 21, 2016, 06:09:19 PM
If that's the case, then as a whole, it looks to show an ongoing issue existed with the boy.

Which means the CBS crew really soft-pedaled the matter, I'd say.

Nothing soft about that CBS show, which is why the Ramsey lawyer is threatening to sue them.  They all expressly opined that Burke killed her. 

He previously smacked her in the face with a golf club.  He was also talking about her death like he would be talking about what he ate for lunch.  Gave an unsolicited demonstration of how someone could have stabbed her or hit in the hit.  Pretty creepy.   

Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 06:16:40 PM
Nothing soft about that CBS show, which is why the Ramsey lawyer is threatening to sue them.  They all expressly opined that Burke killed her.  

He previously smacked her in the face with a golf club.  He was also talking about her death like he would be talking about what he ate for lunch.  Gave an unsolicited demonstration of how someone could have stabbed her or hit in the hit.  Pretty creepy.    



The golf-club incident was said to have been the result of an accident, during an otherwise harmless practice swing by Burke.  But was there anything else that might be added to show a pattern of some sort, pre-death, that you know of?
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 06:19:41 PM
^ btw, the golf-club claim as being accidental comes from the Ramsey parents, of course.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 21, 2016, 06:33:46 PM
The golf-club incident was said to have been the result of an accident, during an otherwise harmless practice swing by Burke.  But was there anything else that might be added to show a pattern of some sort, pre-death, that you know of?

The parents obviously said it was an accident.  A family friend said it was not.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 06:37:01 PM
Gives a rough idea of the size difference between the two kids.

(http://s11.postimg.org/yn82jmov7/article_0_053523020000044_D_939_233x437.jpg)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 06:40:15 PM
The parents obviously said it was an accident.  A family friend said it was not.

Yes, family friend Judith Phillips (who was not present) associates it with a "bad temper" on Burke's part.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 06:41:35 PM
I'll look further into it as time goes on, but I seem to recall reading that the family had many books on the subject of abnormal behavior in children.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 06:44:32 PM
Quote
Yes, family friend Judith Phillips (who was not present) associates it with a "bad temper" on Burke's part.

Looks as though the woman also goes by Judith Miller.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 21, 2016, 06:56:28 PM
Info on the thing as a whole, published some months back.

(HLN) — It’s easy to feel a little sad for Mark Beckner, the former Boulder, Colorado, police chief and Reddit newbie who did an Ask Me Anything segment this weekend, unaware that his answers were accessible to the entire world.

Beckner was the police chief during the JonBenet Ramsey case. Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet was found murdered in the basement of her home in 1996. The case, full of lurid twists and turns, gripped the nation and made her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, into celebrities as well as persons of interest in the case.

Despite suspicions, the Ramseys were exonerated in 2008 after DNA evidence pointed to an unknown male unrelated to the Ramsey family. Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy even wrote a letter to the family apologizing for any pain caused by a suggestion of involvement in the crime.

To this day it is still unclear who killed the little girl.

On Reddit, Beckner’s responses shed a lot of light on some of the more complex and questionable parts of the case. However, he later told the Boulder-based Daily Camera newspaper that he had misgivings about the online chat, calling it a “misunderstanding and naivete on my part.”

Since Beckner’s comments have been deleted, it’s impossible to link to individual responses, but all of his answers can be found in a cached version of the thread at http://extras.denverpost.com/jonbenetAMA.html.

Though Beckner may regret the AMA, Reddit users were impressed with his candor, and we still learned some really interesting things from his answers:

1. What happened physically to JonBenet

Beckner: “We know from the evidence she was hit in the head very hard with an unknown object, possibly a flashlight or similar type item. The blow knocked her into unconsciousness, which could have led someone to believe she was dead. The strangulation came 45 minutes to two hours after the head strike, based on the swelling on the brain. While the head wound would have eventually killed her, the strangulation actually did kill her. The rest of the scene we believe was staged, including the vaginal trauma, to make it look like a kidnapping/assault gone bad.”

2. His personal theories on who did it

Beckner: “I have avoided saying who I believe is responsible and let the facts speak for themselves. There are several viable theories.”

3. Patsy Ramsey’s infamous handwriting test

Context: The day JonBenet was found dead, her mother Patsy claimed she found a 2.5-page handwritten ransom note in their home, demanding $118,000 for JonBenet’s return. The police later determined the note was written on paper from a notebook in the Ramseys’ house. The Ramseys underwent handwriting analysis to determine whether they could have written the note. John Ramsey’s sample seemed to show he didn’t write it, but Patsy Ramsey’s sample was labeled “inconclusive” and police at the time said they would pursue “unrehearsed” samples to examine. However, in the letter to John Ramsey, District Attorney Mary Lacy mentioned that she did not consider anyone in Ramsey’s immediate family to be under any suspicion in the commission of the crime.

Q: “When Patsy wrote out the sample ransom note for handwriting comparison, it is interesting that she wrote “$118,000″ out fully in words (as if trying to be different from the note). Who writes out long numbers in words? Does this seem contrived to you?”

Beckner: “The handwriting experts noted several strange observations.”

4. The uniqueness of the 2.5-page ransom note

Beckner: “The FBI told us they’d never seen a 2.5 page ransom note.”

“No note has ever been written at the scene, and then left at the scene with the dead victim at the scene, other than this case.”

5. Whether the crime scene was mishandled

Context: The investigation was plagued with claims the crime scene at the Ramseys’ house was not preserved properly, and that unauthorized individuals were allowed to move about the crime scene while the investigation was in progress.

Beckner: “Yes, the crime scene was not handled properly and this later affected the investigation. [The Ramseys’] position in the community may have had something to do with decisions made that day, but I think the primary reason was a perfect storm-type scenario. It was the Christmas holiday and we were short staffed, we faced a situation as I said earlier that no one in the country had ever seen before or since, and there was confusion at the scene… As a result, some evidence was compromised.”

“Yes, after that initial day, we felt pressure from the DA’s office not to push too hard on the Ramseys. This was a constant source of frustration and much could be written about this and the reasons for it.”

6. Whether the motive for the killing/assault was purely sexual

Context: A 1999 grand jury report indicated there was reason to believe JonBenet was “sexually assaulted.” Details from an autopsy and comments from some experts, including one cited in a 1997 Vanity Fair article indicated the girl had abnormal genital injuries or conditions that could suggest sexual contact of some sort prior to the day of her death.

Beckner: “It just didn’t seem to fit the totality of the circumstances. Remember, she was hit on the head first, hard enough to render her unconscious. Then there was the staging of a kidnapping. Why do that if the motive is purely sexual?”

7. What he thought about the John Mark Karr confession

Context: John Mark Karr was a father and teacher residing in Thailand who, in 2006, claimed he was sexually involved with JonBenet at the time of her death and that her killing was accidental. However, DNA tests confirmed he was not a match to DNA found in the girl’s underwear, and there was no reason to believe he was anywhere near the scene.

Beckner: “My gut reaction was that [District Attorney] Mary Lacy did not know the facts of the case and was making a big mistake. His confession, once they shared it with us, did not match the evidence at the scene. After she asked for our help in proving he did it, we knew in about 18 hours he was not the guy. We were able to confirm he was not even in Colorado at the time by just doing some routine checking and then obtained photos of him in Georgia at the time. The DNA test, which she thought would prove he did it, proved her wrong.”

8. How the case affected his career

Beckner: “For me, it actually helped propel me to the chief’s position once Tom Koby left. It also gave me some credibility in the community based on a different approach I took with the media. I was more open and forthcoming with the media and I think that helped.”

9. Why people are so fascinated with this case

Beckner: “The media attention and the intrigue of a good murder mystery attracts lots of people. Add a small beauty queen and it only intensifies the interest. If only 1% of the population is crazy, in our country alone that would mean there are about 3,600,000 crazy people out there wanting to give us their wacky ideas.”
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 22, 2016, 04:21:57 PM
JonBenet Ramsey Family Lawyer: Why Burke Ramsey is Suing CBS Over New Murder Claims

On Sunday and Monday, CBS aired a two-part documentary, The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey, re-investigating the unsolved 1996 murder of the child beauty queen. In the program, a team of investigators posited that Ramsey was killed by her brother, Burke, then aged nine. In the wake of this dramatic conclusion, Ramsey family lawyer L. Lin Wood said he is suing CBS on Burke's behalf, arguing that the claims made against Burke are false and defamatory. In an opinion piece submitted to Newsweek, Wood explains why he and Burke are filing a lawsuit and why he feels the documentary was deceptive. CBS's response follows below.

By L. Lin Wood on 9/22/2016

Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace spent their lives pursuing truth. They must be rolling over in their graves today.

This week their former employer, media giant CBS, under the guise of investigative docuseries The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey, perpetrated a fraud on the viewing public for ratings and profit by falsely accusing Burke Ramsey of killing his sister, JonBenet. Burke was nine years old when his sister—his life’s best friend—was brutally tortured and murdered.

CBS represented the docuseries to be a “new” investigation of the death of JonBenet by a “panel of experts.” There was no new investigation. There was no panel of legitimate experts. The so-called “experts” are television personalities who used embellished credentials to essentially serve as actors in a script written years ago by panelist James Kolar in his self-published book. Kolar’s book relied on lies, misrepresentations, distortions, disproven rumors and innuendo, many of which have been in the public domain for years.

As just one example of the fraud by CBS, its panel claimed to have conducted an analysis of the 911 call made by Patsy Ramsey on December 26, 1996, publicizing that it had used “today’s technology” to reveal “a never before heard” conversation. Totally false. The purported analysis of the 911 call was previously described verbatim in Kolar’s 2012 book, in a book published in 2000 by former Boulder police detective Steve Thomas and in a 1997 article published in the Boulder Daily Camera. The product of a new investigation? No. A fraudulent misrepresentation to attract viewers? Absolutely.

The docuseries also claims to have conducted an analysis of 1997 and 1998 video interviews of Burke Ramsey. The portions of Burke’s interview that were highlighted and discussed by the CBS experts were mere repetitions of the uninformed, speculative analysis of the interviews in Kolar’s book.

In rehashing Kolar’s book under the guise of a new investigation to accuse this young man, CBS intentionally ignored the truth and the actual evidence. In May 1999, the Boulder District Attorney’s Office and the Boulder Police Department issued public statements confirming that Burke was not a suspect or even a possible suspect in connection with the investigation of the murder of his sister. This official clearance of Burke was issued because these law enforcement agencies were outraged by sensational headlines published by the tabloid Star Magazine and republished by the New York Post accusing Burke of his sister’s murder. Subsequently, Burke successfully sued both of these media entities for defamation. Truth prevailed.

And for the next 16 years, no member of the mainstream media or even the tabloid media ever again made this outrageous and untrue accusation against this young man—until CBS did so in its fraudulent broadcast this week. Reckless? Yes. Morally reprehensible? Absolutely.

In truth, CBS did not put together this docuseries to commemorate the 20th anniversary of JonBenet’s murder. In fact, CBS put together this show in hopes of emulating the recent successes of competing networks’ “true crime” docuseries. And CBS broadcast the shows during September Sweeps, not in the anniversary month of December. Did the hype of a “new” investigation by a panel of experts who would solve the case work? Yes. CBS far surpassed the ratings for the competing Emmys with a reported audience of 10 million viewers.

Burke Ramsey was not one of the 10 million viewers, but CBS’s false accusation against him will change his life forever. After living the past 20 years under the shadow of his sister’s murder and false accusations against his parents in periodic media frenzies, Burke will now live the remainder of his life with Google searches proclaiming, “CBS Proves Burke Ramsey Killed His Sister JonBenet.” Every professional and personal interaction and relationship Burke has from now until his death will be tainted by this false accusation. A lie for profits. A fraud on the public.

Will Burke Ramsey sue CBS for its false accusations and fraudulent show? Absolutely. His lawsuit will expose the many lies conveyed to the public by CBS. His lawsuit will establish the truth.

Too bad Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace are not alive to serve on the jury in his case.

In response to Wood, CBS issued this statement to Newsweek:

The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey was meticulously and responsibly researched, and its information was responsibly presented. CBS stands by the broadcast in every regard.
Title: Re: Burke Ramsey
Post by: LurkerNoMore on September 22, 2016, 07:02:12 PM
Who knows?  He shoulda just kept his mouth shut.  Somebody in that house murdered that kid. 

Agreed.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 24, 2016, 04:02:23 PM
Former Gov. Owens: CBS Ramsey Series ‘Dispelled Theory Of An Outside Intruder’

DENVER (CBS4) – Former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens has given his take on the unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

He posted the comments on his Facebook page and referred to the CBS docuseries, “The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey.”

He wrote, “I have my own strong views concerning who killed JonBenet” and “CBS is to be commended for stripping away the many myths surrounding this horrible case and presenting factually and unemotionally an unbiased account of this tragedy.”

The show gathered experts to re-examine the evidence in the murder of the six year old beauty pageant queen.

While Governor of Colorado, Bill Owens was outspoken on the case.

He once addressed the unnamed killer directly at a news conference, saying “To the killers of JonBenet Ramsey you only think you have gotten away with murder.”

(http://s13.postimg.org/yks1zy07b/bill_owens1.jpg)
Colorado Governor Bill Owens in 2001

The investigators on the show ruled out one of the two main scenarios. By phone, Owens told CBS 4’s Rick Sallinger:

“You know the show dispelled the theory of an outside intruder using very good analysis.”

The program showed the difficulty of coming in a basement window, that cobwebs would have been disturbed, and the ransom note probably took some 20 minutes to write on a notepad inside the Ramsey home.

“Obviously some crimes are never solved, but in this case I do believe that we now have a better idea of what actually happened that evening,” Owens said.

The CBS program investigators theorized the parents tried to cover up that Burke Ramsey killed JonBenet with a flashlight.

James Kolar, who worked on the case for the Boulder District Attorney and appeared on the CBS show, said on the program “He (Burke) probably would have been upset about her trying to snag a piece of pineapple and struck her with the flashlight.”

Interviewed recently on the Dr. Phil show, Burke denied that and suggested a pedophile may have killed his sister JonBenet.

Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood called the CBS conclusion “outrageous and unconscionable.” He said he planned to file a lawsuit against CBS on behalf of Burke Ramsey.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 24, 2016, 04:15:05 PM
Here's a link to the CBS show.  Haven't yet watched it, but looks to be in two parts linked from same page.  All comments will be appreciated.

http://www.cbs.com/shows/the-case-of-jonbenet-ramsey/video/24057F14-C6CD-B5FC-5F37-36E83AF1D780/the-case-of-jonbenet-ramsey-part-1/
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 26, 2016, 10:51:58 AM
(http://s14.postimg.org/vbna3ws9d/nintchdbpict000269201781_e1474755506372.jpg)

Ramsey Lawyer: Request for Lie Detector Test "Never Going to Happen" and Burke "Doesn't Have Anything to Prove"

He was just nine when his six-year-old sibling JonBenet was discovered strangled to death in the basement of their family home in Boulder, Colorado.

A team of experts – including a British ex-Scotland Yard behavioural analyst – claimed she was accidentally killed by her brother in a squabble over a piece of pineapple.

But his lawyer Lin Wood – who is now suing the American TV channel which made the show – told The Sun On Sunday: “Burke Ramsey doesn’t have anything to prove.

“If the Boulder Police Department called me and said we’d like to talk to Burke and have a lie detector test done, yeah I’m happy to consider it.

“But that’s never going to happen because the Boulder Police and the Boulder District Attorney’s Office have recognised that Burke Ramsey is not even a possible suspect.

“Anyone who thinks there is a basis for Burke Ramsey to take a lie detector test because of an accusation on a TV show is an idiot.”

He added: “In my view the TV show perpetrated a fraud on the viewing public.”

(http://s16.postimg.org/mk4pzpsxx/tumblr_odbbkp_NKy_B1rzmbd8o4_400.gif)

No-one has ever been convicted over the bizarre 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, which has led to years of suspicion falling on her family.

Her mum Patsy – also a former beauty queen who lived with husband John and kids Burke and JonBenet - dialled 911 to report that her daughter had been kidnapped at 5.50am on Boxing Day.

A ransom of $118,000 (£88,500) - close to the value of a bonus that John had received earlier that year – was found in their home telling the family not to contact police.

John arranged to pay the ransom but at 1.05pm that day JonBenet’s body was discovered by her father in a little-used utility room in the family’s basement.

She had her hands tied, duct tape placed on her mouth and a wooden garrotte around her neck.

Her parents remained the prime suspects for over a decade, but were cleared in 2008 following DNA tests - two years after Patsy died of a long battle with ovarian cancer.

In August 2008 former schoolteacher John Mark Karr confessed to JonBenet’s murder, but evidence showed he could not possibly have committed it.

Older brother Burke had been ruled out as a suspect by cops in 1999, but his role was examined in this week’s CBS television documentary The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey.

(http://s21.postimg.org/4cjgqej5z/image.jpg)

Experts including James Kolar, a former chief investigator for the District Attorney in Boulder, ex-Met analyst Laura Richards and former FBI profiler Jim Clemente, concluded that he did it.

They claimed that when JonBenet tried to take some of the fruit snack from her brother, Burke lashed out and forcefully struck his sister with a torch.

The TV sleuths alleged that in the ensuing panic, she was strangled to death.

But Burke’s lawyer blasted the show and said that no new evidence had been analysed by the team.

Mr Wood said: “The police investigated the case in 1999 and said he was not even a possible suspect.

“The only new evidence has been the DNA testing which was done in 2008. There’s no new evidence. What changed between 1999 and now?

“It is unconscionable conduct for CBS to have posed this permanent stain on the young boy’s reputation.”

Last week Burke broke his silence on the killing in an interview with US TV psychologist Phil McGraw.

(http://s15.postimg.org/dkzrt0aqz/burke_ramsey_dr_phil.jpg)

He stuck up for his family, including surviving dad John, 72, and said: “What more evidence do you need that we didn’t do it?

“Look at the evidence or the lack thereof. There have been a few people who have said that it’s not even physically possible for a 9-year-old to do that.”

But the TV investigators, while all agreed there was no premeditation to kill, thought there was a clear intent by the family to mislead the police.They also branded Patsy’s 911 call to the cops “rehearsed” and cast doubt on the validity of the ransom note.

Jim Clemente said: “The Ramsey family did not want law enforcement to resolve this case and that’s why it remains unresolved.”

Burke’s lawyer told how his client would now have to live with the unproven TV claim that he was a killer.

(http://s9.postimg.org/clfrniokf/jonbenet_burke_ramsay_split_tease_today_160909_2.jpg)

Mr Wood said: “Burke did not watch the show – he knew in essence what was going to be said. He has now put this in the hands of his lawyers.

“I think Burke, just as he has done in the past, does the best to go about living his life as normally as he can. If there is any such thing as a normal life for the brother of the deceased.

“This is a 29-year-old young man. He is going to spend the rest of his life with people doing Google searches with headlines that ‘CBS proves Burke Ramsey killed his sister’.

“In desire for ratings a profits, they decided that the sensational story to go with was the story that would accuse Burke Ramsey. And they did it in a fashion which was totally misleading.”

In a statement, CBS defended the JonBenet Ramsey show.

It said: “The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey was meticulously and responsibly researched, and its information was responsibly presented. CBS stands by the broadcast in every regard.”
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on September 26, 2016, 11:12:47 AM
Quote
Yes, family friend Judith Phillips (who was not present) associates it with a "bad temper" on Burke's part.

She's now made herself clear:

Quote
A FAMILY friend with a unique insight into the JonBenet Ramsey case has revealed she often saw flashes of anger from the murdered six-year-old’s brother.

Judith Phillips, 64, told The Sun she believes the theory that Burke is responsible for killing the beauty pageant queen almost 20 years ago.

(http://s9.postimg.org/6dg1baznz/attachment.jpg)
No way, not me. I was asleep!
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on September 26, 2016, 11:23:25 AM
Now watch her get sued.   ::)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 04, 2016, 02:06:48 PM
Shock claim Burke Ramsey killed JonBenet — but with different weapon

A NEW twist in the sensational JonBenet Ramsey murder mystery has blown the 20-year-old case wide open yet again.

In a book published days before a recent documentary pointed the finger at her brother, the authors made the same allegation — with a few vital differences.

Nick van der Leek and Lisa Wilson, authors of current bestseller The Craven Silence, claim the six-year-old pageant queen was killed by nine-year-old Burke, but have an alternative theory about the weapon.

They also have further claims about the possible motive for him to allegedly brutally murder his sister on Christmas Day, and how his terrified parents could have covered up the shocking act at the family home in Boulder, Colorado.

Burke, now 29, has vehemently denied the accusations, and intends to sue CBS over the The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey.

(https://s16.postimg.org/w0zl3ow1h/image.jpg)

THE MOTIVE

Like the documentary’s team of criminal experts, South African Mr Van der Leek and Californian Ms Wilson do not credit the intruder theory.

Ms Wilson believes the evidence points to Burke harbouring “massive jealousy of JonBenet”.

The little girl was the apple of her mother’s eye, and was following in Patsy’s footsteps as a successful beauty queen. In family newsletters sent to friends, Mrs Ramsey devotes few lines to husband John and son Burke and is “effusive” about her youngest.

“JonBenet was really put on a pedestal,” Ms Wilson told news.com.au. “They doted on JonBenet. You can imagine this boy in the background, how is he processing this?”

There had been a number of unpleasant incidents between the siblings. Family friend Judith Phillips claimed Burke had hit his little sister in the face with a golf club about a year before her murder, with Mrs Ramsey telling her “things got out of hand.”

The authors say the Ramseys’ accounts of the event were strangely contradictory, with Mrs Ramsey’s words implying an altercation between the children and Mr Ramsey later suggesting JonBenet came up behind Burke as he swung.

“There’s a glaring disconnect between what John and Patsy are saying,” says Mr Van der Leek.

“We see this over and over,” adds Ms Wilson. “A lot of times they won’t even answer.”

The fact both JonBenet and Burke were regularly wetting the bed at six and nine years old points to “some trauma, some stress, some anxiety” in the house, adds Ms Wilson.

One of the most disturbing elements of the case was Burke reportedly smearing faeces over his sister’s walls, possessions and in her bed, according to a housekeeper.

“There’s a kind of a spitefulness going on there, a very ugly spitefulness,” says Mr Van der Leek. “This beautiful younger sister who’s being treated like a princess. Then you see Burke today ... he’s very uncertain, very insecure.

“She’s gracious, the way she carries herself, she’s got a lot of investment from her mother in terms of everything, dresses and attention, all that kind of thing. Burke — he’ll never be a Miss America.

“That really reached its nexus on Christmas Day.”

(https://s21.postimg.org/60mnofgiv/image.jpg)

THE MURDER

So what do the authors think really happened on Christmas Day, 1996?

“From a child’s perspective, Christmas is everything, it’s the most important day of the year,” says Ms Wilson.

The authors believe everything “bubbled over” after the family returned from a Christmas dinner with friends, perhaps because of tension over presents.

“We know JonBenet got a bicycle,” says Mr Van der Leek. “In the photos of JonBenet on Christmas Day, you can see she’s standing between two bicycles and both are ladies’ bicycles with the low bar ... the other bicycle was for Patsy.”

They believe Burke was furious his younger sister received such a generous gift.

The family testimonies on the issue are strange, too. At the time, Mr Ramsey said Burke was going to get a bicycle the following year. But in his recent interview with Dr Phil, Burke said he also received a bike. “Why is something like that changing?” asks Mr Van der Leek. “There’s a very complex relationship going on between JonBenet and her brother and her parents.”

The authors note that reporters at the time emphasised there was no evidence of a break-in and no one in Boulder should be concerned about a random killer on the loose.

But they don’t buy the CBS documentary’s hypothesis that Burke killed JonBenet with a torch, wiped clean of fingerprints and left in the kitchen.

“I really don’t think the Ramseys would have left it out on the counter had they known Burke just used it on his sister,” says Ms Wilson. “I think that was out for other reasons — they were probably using it for what they were doing down in the basement.”

Instead, they claim baseball fan Burke may have bashed his sister to death with a pair of bats found in the yard far from their usual place on the patio, or with his father’s golf clubs, which were stashed away in a cupboard.

(https://s21.postimg.org/hbmp2xxqv/image.jpg)
Authors pictured

THE COVER-UP

The writers conjure up a picture of a middle-class mansion gripped by fear, with the parents spending the night feverishly devising a plan to protect their only remaining child, the house lights off to avoid attracting suspicion.

They claim the Ramseys flung the bats out into the snowy yard to make it look as though an intruder grabbed them on the way in and then dropped them on their way out.

The writers allege Mrs Ramsey wrote a ransom note and the parents made a garotte from nylon and a paintbrush to tie around their daughter’s neck and make it look as though JonBenet had been strangled.

“The ransom note alone is massive evidence,” says Mr Van der Leek. “It’s pen and ink from the kitchen, Patsy’s pad, the handwriting is tested across 73 different suspects and the only one they can’t exclude is Patsy.”

He claims the “floweriness” and “pageantry” of the three-page letter reflects Mrs Ramsey’s dramatic style seen in her newsletters.

“What’s really interesting about this case is there’s not one piece of evidence that tells the whole story,” says Ms Wilson. “Everything that was there didn’t do what is was supposed to do.

“The ransom note didn’t collect a ransom; the garotte didn't work like a garotte, they didn’t fashion it properly; she was terribly injured, cracked across the head and strangled, yet wrapped nicely in a blanket. Nothing added up.”

(https://s22.postimg.org/58peutidd/image.jpg)

WHAT IS IT ABOUT THIS CASE?

As proven by the popularity of recent documentaries and proliferation of online forums devoted to discussing JonBenet, the world remains gripped by this shocking murder, 20 years on.

This isn’t just ghoulishness, although the case is certainly macabre: there is something about it that compels us to seek out the truth.

“JonBenet is the biggest cold case in America, and it’s something that always bothered me,” says Ms Wilson. “There’s political things that are going on there. I had a desire to first of all find justice for this little girl but I also wanted to get back into the detail. Time and space gives you extra perspective.”

The fact a grand jury voted to indict the Ramseys but Boulder’s then-prosecutor, Alex Hunter, threw out the case is particularly frustrating. In fact, District Attorney Mr Hunter had never prosecuted a single case.

“Everything is settled through negotiation,” says Mr Van der Leek. “It’s a very wealthy individual ... it is a town full of very wealthy people.”

Mr Van der Leek claims the Ramseys’ flight to Atlanta and back in the days after the murder without telling police is suspicious.

He claims the family were doing what they liked, despite such strong demands from the Boulder Police for an interview that they initially refused to release JonBenet’s body for burial until the Ramseys came in for questioning. Their lawyers quickly put a stop to that.

What makes this case so interesting to sleuths like Ms Wilson and Mr Van der Leek is the fact we are still hearing new information and differing accounts.

In recent A&E documentary The Killing of JonBenet: The Truth Uncovered, which supported the intruder theory, we saw psychological reports that mentioned the golf club injuries and then were apparently deliberately redacted by the program.

In Burke’s Dr Phil interview, he mentioned for the first time that he got up and went back downstairs to play with a toy after being put to bed.

The CBS documentary delved into why undigested pineapple was found in JonBenet’s stomach if she really had been fast asleep when they arrived home, as her parents said she was.

“What strikes you going through all the interviews is how inconsistent they are,” says Mr Van der Leek. “This case which should be quite simple becomes complicated. Why is it so difficult to remember a simple thing?

“The fact there’s this muddiness around really simple thing like a bike is just odd. Patsy and John were both involved in putting JonBenet to bed, but they can’t quite agree on who did what.

“JonBenet never went to bed that night, she never went to bed and fell asleep.”
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on October 04, 2016, 02:22:02 PM
^^^ Good read.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 04, 2016, 02:43:59 PM
^^^ Good read.

I agree.  It fits things together in a most believable way.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on October 04, 2016, 02:46:37 PM
I agree.  It fits things together in a most believable way.

Nothing new for the most part, but I agree.  The best book I've read about it is Foreign Faction by James Kolar.  He was on the panel on the recent CBS show.  Completely blows up the intruder theory. 
 
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 04, 2016, 03:03:48 PM
Nothing new for the most part, but I agree.  The best book I've read about it is Foreign Faction by James Kolar.  He was on the panel on the recent CBS show.  Completely blows up the intruder theory. 
 

Yes, just getting into the reasons as being more substantial than a dispute over a piece of pineapple between two rich kids.

And I agree.  Unless info exists which has so-far been hidden, I simply cannot see how someone entered that house at that time.  Seems kind of silly for anyone to continue pushing a theory that uses an intruder, though they're still out there.

But I've seen the autopsy photos, and it really gets me a little bit to add-up how things must have happened.  In a way, I'd almost wish it was an intruder and not a parent that caused the little girl's final state.

From the former Boulder PD boss who investigated, this sort of says it all:

Quote
The strangulation came 45 minutes to two hours after the head strike, based on the swelling on the brain.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on October 04, 2016, 03:45:55 PM
Yes, just getting into the reasons as being more substantial than a dispute over a piece of pineapple between two rich kids.

And I agree.  Unless info exists which has so-far been hidden, I simply cannot see how someone entered that house at that time.  Seems kind of silly for anyone to continue pushing a theory that uses an intruder, though they're still out there.

But I've seen the autopsy photos, and it really gets me a little bit to add-up how things must have happened.  In a way, I'd almost wish it was an intruder and not a parent that caused the little girl's final state.

From the former Boulder PD boss who investigated, this sort of says it all:


Yep that time of strangulation is definitely a problem for the intruder theory. 

Only documented case in American history where an alleged kidnapper broke into a house, used pen and paper from the house, writes a three page ransom note, then leaves the body behind. 

Also, the amount of the ransom was the same as John Ramsey's bonus.   
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 04, 2016, 04:08:48 PM
This one is just too much IMO.

(https://s16.postimg.org/mk4pzpsxx/tumblr_odbbkp_NKy_B1rzmbd8o4_400.gif)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 04, 2016, 04:11:21 PM
Lin Wood knows, too, he needs to be damn careful about what he does.  He's not stupid and no doubt he knows what's up.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 06, 2016, 04:16:42 PM
JonBenét Ramsey's brother sues investigator who said he killed his sister for $150 million

Burke Ramsey is suing Dr. Werner Spitz, one of the investigators from CBS's recent JonBenét Ramsey documentary special, for defamation.

According to court papers obtained by Business Insider, Burke is suing Spitz for stating that Burke killed his younger sister, JonBenét, during a radio interview with CBS Detroit — not for his participation in the televised CBS special.

In the complaint — filed in the third circuit court for the County of Wayne, Michigan, on Thursday — Spitz is accused of being a "publicity seeker," who on the 20th anniversary of JonBenét's murder has "once again interjected himself into a high-profile case to make unsupported, false, and sensational statements and accusations."

It details that during the radio interview, Spitz "claims Burke, age nine at the time of his sister's death, bludgeoned her to death. Defendant Spitz made this accusation without ever examining JonBenét's body, without viewing the crime scene, and without consulting with the pathologist who performed the autopsy on JonBenét."

The complaint calls for a jury trial and requests no less than $150 million in damages, a retraction, and no further defamatory accusations against Burke.

A representative for Spitz said he had no comment on the lawsuit.

Last month, Burke's attorney said he would be suing CBS over the findings in its special, "The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey." The special's investigators landed on the theory that nine-year-old Burke Ramsey allegedly killed his younger sister by accident in a fit of anger. According to their theory, his parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, then allegedly created the scenario of an intruder who killed their daughter in order to protect their son.

Burke's attorney, L. Lin Wood, told Business Insider in an email that the "CBS complaint will be filed at end of October to allow statutory time for correction to expire."

In response to the proposed suit, a network representative previously told Business Insider, " CBS stands by the broadcast and will do so in court."
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on October 06, 2016, 04:57:09 PM
JonBenét Ramsey's brother sues investigator who said he killed his sister for $150 million

Burke Ramsey is suing Dr. Werner Spitz, one of the investigators from CBS's recent JonBenét Ramsey documentary special, for defamation.

According to court papers obtained by Business Insider, Burke is suing Spitz for stating that Burke killed his younger sister, JonBenét, during a radio interview with CBS Detroit — not for his participation in the televised CBS special.

In the complaint — filed in the third circuit court for the County of Wayne, Michigan, on Thursday — Spitz is accused of being a "publicity seeker," who on the 20th anniversary of JonBenét's murder has "once again interjected himself into a high-profile case to make unsupported, false, and sensational statements and accusations."

It details that during the radio interview, Spitz "claims Burke, age nine at the time of his sister's death, bludgeoned her to death. Defendant Spitz made this accusation without ever examining JonBenét's body, without viewing the crime scene, and without consulting with the pathologist who performed the autopsy on JonBenét."

The complaint calls for a jury trial and requests no less than $150 million in damages, a retraction, and no further defamatory accusations against Burke.

A representative for Spitz said he had no comment on the lawsuit.

Last month, Burke's attorney said he would be suing CBS over the findings in its special, "The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey." The special's investigators landed on the theory that nine-year-old Burke Ramsey allegedly killed his younger sister by accident in a fit of anger. According to their theory, his parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, then allegedly created the scenario of an intruder who killed their daughter in order to protect their son.

Burke's attorney, L. Lin Wood, told Business Insider in an email that the "CBS complaint will be filed at end of October to allow statutory time for correction to expire."

In response to the proposed suit, a network representative previously told Business Insider, " CBS stands by the broadcast and will do so in court."

Very interested to see how these play out.  The prior lawsuits came before we knew about the grand jury indictment and before that intruder theory was soundly debunked (although I never believed it and think Steve Thomas? nailed it early on his book).
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 06, 2016, 05:55:16 PM
Very interested to see how these play out.  The prior lawsuits came before we knew about the grand jury indictment and before that intruder theory was soundly debunked (although I never believed it and think Steve Thomas? nailed it early on his book).

Yes, I agree.  It is interesting, and in a twisted way sorta funny (only because Lin Wood being so uptight and Burke being such a flipping fruitcake).
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 07, 2016, 11:19:13 AM
Covers last article, plus more information done in way (for whatever reason) that's at least partially helpful to Burke.

'JonBenet Ramsey' Latest News & Updates: Brother Burke Ramsey Sues CBS Pathologist? Is He Guilty?

A defamation lawsuit has been filed by Burke, eldest the brother of JonBenet Ramsey, against Dr. Werner Spitz. The pathologist accused Burke of killing JonBenet Ramsey.

Just last month, CBS released "The Case of JonBenet Ramsey."  Dr. Spitz was one of the featued investigators.

E! News reports that the 29-year-old brother of JonBenet sued the doctor as results of his investigation point out to Burke as the primary suspect. Burke Ramsey fas filed a $150 million case against Spitz in the third circuit court of Michigan.

According to the court papers obtained by the publication, Spitz's stint in a radio interview with CBS is what pushed the brother of JonBenet Ramsey to file the case. During the interview, Burke was reportedly accused of causing the blow to the head of JonBenet Ramsey without even without examining the body.

Dr. Spitz was not in the JonBenet Ramsey crime scene. Dr. Spitz also reportedly did not speak with the pathologist who handled the corpse of JonBenet Ramsey.

JonBenet's parents, Patsy and John Ramsey, were the initial primary suspects when the crime happened 20 years ago in Boulder, Colo. But, it is only until now that the case has been reopened that Burke's dragged into the primary list of suspects.

According to the new theory that "The Case of JonBenet Ramsey" has discovered, Burke may have killed JonBenet and their parents had to cover up his wrongdoing. This makes the Ramsey couple an accessory to the crime, if the accusation is proven.

A defamation lawsuit has been filed by Burke, eldest the brother of JonBenet Ramsey, against Dr. Werner Spitz. The pathologist accused Burke of killing JonBenet Ramsey.

Just last month, CBS released "The Case of JonBenet Ramsey."  Dr. Spitz was one of the featued investigators.

E! News reports that the 29-year-old brother of JonBenet sued the doctor as results of his investigation point out to Burke as the primary suspect. Burke Ramsey fas filed a $150 million case against Spitz in the third circuit court of Michigan.

According to the court papers obtained by the publication, Spitz's stint in a radio interview with CBS is what pushed the brother of JonBenet Ramsey to file the case. During the interview, Burke was reportedly accused of causing the blow to the head of JonBenet Ramsey without even without examining the body.

Dr. Spitz was not in the JonBenet Ramsey crime scene. Dr. Spitz also reportedly did not speak with the pathologist who handled the corpse of JonBenet Ramsey.

JonBenet's parents, Patsy and John Ramsey, were the initial primary suspects when the crime happened 20 years ago in Boulder, Colo. But, it is only until now that the case has been reopened that Burke's dragged into the primary list of suspects.

According to the new theory that "The Case of JonBenet Ramsey" has discovered, Burke may have killed JonBenet and their parents had to cover up his wrongdoing. This makes the Ramsey couple an accessory to the crime, if the accusation is proven.

Aside from the parents of JonBenet Ramsey and brother Burke, her elder half-brother, John Andrew Ramsey, was speculated to be one of the killers. However, no official records enlisted him to be a part of the roster.

In a previous report by Parent Herald, a suitcase was found in the crime scene belonging to JonBenet's half-brother. The suitcase contained a semen-encrusted blanket and a Dr. Seuss book. At the time, John Andrew was 30 years old, without a child and could be too old to read Dr. Seuss.

It was also reported that Burke Ramsey used to be very relaxed and seemed to be too careless when he was interviewed during the 90s investigation. He was then nine years old. Burke also creeped out viewers after he was seen constantly and weirdly smiling as he accounts the death of JonBenet Ramsey to Dr. Phil.

JonBenet Ramsey was killed on December 26, 1996 and was found to have blows in her head. Autopsy report also revealed that JonBenet Ramsey might have possibly been sexually assaulted as her genital's opening is twice larger than that of a normal six-year-old.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 07, 2016, 11:24:07 AM
Rest in Peace, JonBenet

(https://s11.postimg.org/u5pfllxc3/suspect_arrested_in_jonbenet_ramsey_case.jpg)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 07, 2016, 06:23:21 PM
(https://s9.postimg.org/uo6tnkven/1_93e49607fe.jpg)

(https://s22.postimg.org/yv7gtqp75/2_6ae6e7a65a.jpg)

(https://s17.postimg.org/964yw08u7/3_536cb2461a.jpg)

(https://s16.postimg.org/6cjexdw2t/4_4262100cb5.jpg)

More: https://www.scribd.com/document/326738754/Burke-Ramsey-v-Werner-Spitz#fullscreen&from_embed
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on October 07, 2016, 06:59:08 PM
(https://s9.postimg.org/uo6tnkven/1_93e49607fe.jpg)

(https://s22.postimg.org/yv7gtqp75/2_6ae6e7a65a.jpg)

(https://s17.postimg.org/964yw08u7/3_536cb2461a.jpg)

(https://s16.postimg.org/6cjexdw2t/4_4262100cb5.jpg)

More: https://www.scribd.com/document/326738754/Burke-Ramsey-v-Werner-Spitz#fullscreen&from_embed

Well they really painted Sptiz as a dishonest quack.  Will be interesting to see what happens when they question Burke in this case.   
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 07, 2016, 07:19:32 PM
Well they really painted Sptiz as a dishonest quack.  Will be interesting to see what happens when they question Burke in this case.   

After all this time, and things are finally hitting the road.  And I agree, shouldn't be many dull moments.

But it's sort of interesting that Lin Wood's dad killed his mom when Wood was a teenager, and LW was the one who found her beaten to death.  That's a little background story, or at least as the story goes.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 11, 2016, 08:57:45 AM
Lin Wood demands a retraction from CBS and Critical Content, before he picks a fight:

(https://s15.postimg.org/q4zq9oo57/1_70b22a7790.jpg)

(https://s18.postimg.org/444wv4h6x/2_a18e1d8a11.jpg)

(https://s21.postimg.org/jqctt3k4n/3_d78e59a907.jpg)

(https://s12.postimg.org/ptjlpmijh/4_e33ad0a829.jpg)

More: https://www.scribd.com/document/327041580/Lin-Wood-Retraction-Demand-to-CBS-and-Critical-Content-Re-Burke-Ramsey#from_embed
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 11, 2016, 09:00:19 AM
From Q and A with Lin Wood:

There are many observers out there who would dispute your use of the word "exonerated" when it comes to what the district attorney's office said about John and Patsy Ramsey. Tell me why "exonerated" is the right word from your perspective.

LW: Don't make it my word. Go back to what the district attorney's office said. They said going forward, the Ramseys would be treated as victims, because that's what they are. That's their role in this case. An apology was issued to the family for the years of accusations and media coverage they'd had to endure. That 2008 statement by Mary Lacy cannot be reasonably interpreted as anything other than a public and official exoneration.

Now, can people disagree with Mary Lacy? Yes, provided those people are basing their disagreement of an informed review of the accurate evidence.

I'm not a criminal lawyer, though between the Ramsey case and the Jewell case, I sometimes feel as if I was a quasi-criminal lawyer. But what I've learned, which I think is consistent with common sense — and I think most people who rushed to accuse the Ramseys in this case literally checked common sense at the door — but what I can say is that we know as a matter of fact under the actual evidence that DNA, likely saliva, not touch DNA, was found in the blood spot in the crotch of JonBenét's underwear. And that DNA was found under her fingernails. We know that DNA was not Ramsey [DNA]. The police department knew that within a couple weeks of the murder, but didn't bother to report it to the district attorney's office for months. But we know that the markers were sufficient in the underwear to be certified for the CODIS database. And while the fingernail DNA didn't have enough markers for the database, the markers that were discovered were consistent with the DNA found in her underwear.

Then, along in 2008, with the new technology of touch DNA, it was found that there was DNA found on both sides of the waistband of her pajama bottoms. That DNA is tested and guess what: It matches the DNA found in her underwear, which was consistent with the DNA found under her fingernails. No legitimate law enforcement individual would ever look for an innocent explanation of foreign DNA found on the body of a murder victim. The fact that the Boulder Police Department attempted to try to justify the DNA somehow being there from the manufacturing process in Asia is laughable. It defies any legitimate use of DNA evidence connected with a crime.

So what do you have? You have evidence that does not support a charge against the family. You have DNA evidence found in three areas on the body of the victim that matches. You find the person's DNA, you match the DNA to an individual. One and one equals two. You're going to solve this murder. This is a DNA case, and only those people who have a longstanding conviction that the Ramseys were involved, only those people obsessed with Ramsey guilt, will try to explain away the clear, hard evidence that exonerates the family.

Unfortunately, many of the opinions that were shaped in this case were shaped early. And then it becomes what's called confirmation bias, where you view everything through the prism of what belief you had previously formed. The public was deceived in this case, intentionally by the Boulder Police Department leaking false and accusatory information to the media about this family. We know that as a matter of sworn testimony.

So do I understand that there are people who want to twist Mary Lacy's public exoneration into something other than what it clearly was? Yes. Do I understand that people want to continue to defy the evidence and make some accusation against the Ramseys? I understand that, too, because the false information leaked by the police was so overwhelmingly against this family that there were conclusions drawn by the public that are very, very difficult to change. I'm sure there are still people who continue to believe that Richard Jewell bombed the Olympics even though Eric Rudolph pled guilty to the crime. That's what happens, because the whisper of innocence never overcomes the shout of guilt.

I understand it. But when it comes to someone with credibility in the media making the accusation, I'm going to deal with it. And I'm going to teach them a legal lesson they will not forget.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 11, 2016, 09:11:11 AM
Interesting.  More from Lin Wood.

There's been speculation that your comments about a planned lawsuit wouldn't result in an actual filing because of concern that the discovery process would result in the release of material the Ramsey family wouldn't be comfortable putting out in public. Was that ever a consideration?

LW: The idea that there would be any hesitation in suing over this case because of fear of the discovery process is utter nonsense. I have already filed and successfully pursued three cases on behalf of Burke Ramsey, all those years ago. I have also filed defendant cases for John and Patsy Ramsey. They have been deposed. There is absolutely no concern whatsoever in engaging fully in the discovery process.

Discovery in this case is going to support my client's position. Because his position is based on fact and evidence. On the other hand, discovery is going to expose Dr. Spitz in his case and CBS in its case. It's going to expose the utter lack of evidentiary foundation for the accusations against Burke Ramsey. And it's going to, I believe, prove by clear and convincing evidence that this accusation was manufactured in order to produce big ratings during September sweeps and get the CBS docuseries off to a good start with an intent to avoid CBS's internal standards. That's because they did not allow this broadcast to be produced by 48 Hours. 48 Hours is the arm of CBS that produces true-crime programs in what might be generally described as the entertainment area. 48 Hours has done at least three shows on the JonBenét Ramsey case. They were, in fact, supposed to produce the twentieth-anniversary segment. But it was pulled by CBS Entertainment to give the show to Critical Content. And in so doing, it allowed the show to be produced outside CBS's internal standards. They were allowed to have greater freedom to make this false accusation against Burke, which no other show has made against this young man.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 11, 2016, 09:21:28 AM
Lin Wood clarifies the timing of events, etc.  Can't wait to see how brutal the fight.

So the only reason you went forward with the current lawsuit against Dr. Spitz but didn't file concurrently against CBS is because of the California law requiring what is essentially a waiting period?

LW: Correct. Michigan law only provides that you must allow a reasonable time period, which has been defined as being as short as five-plus days. So a retraction demand was sent to Werner Spitz. His lawyer did write me and told me that he had no interest in retracting, so we went ahead and prepared the lawsuit against him — and we did not have the time constraints we have in California. That explains why Spitz was filed first. It doesn't mean to give him any greater role in the defamation. But what Spitz did do — Spitz gave an interview to CBS Detroit and explicitly made the accusations, directly as a statement of fact, that Burke killed JonBenét. That's a separate accusation beyond his role in the CBS docuseries. So I was able, under law, to get that lawsuit filed, but I would have sued him separately for that interview anyway. He'll also be a party to the CBS case for defamation arising out of the docuseries itself.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 11, 2016, 09:56:30 AM
Lin Wood refers to James Kolar, and to Dr. Phil:  

Why have you decided to file suit in this case, particularly given that over the course of twenty years, lots of people have made wild accusations against members of the Ramsey family?

LW: Since 1999 and 2000, when I successfully sued Star magazine, the New York Post and Court TV for falsely accusing Burke Ramsey of the death of JonBenét, no member of the mainstream media or even the tabloid media has dared to make that accusation against this young man again. He was officially and publicly cleared — being described as not being a suspect or a possible suspect by the Boulder Police Department in May of 1998 and the Boulder District Attorney's Office in May of 1999. And there has been no evidence developed in the case since then other than DNA evidence developed in 2008 that was used by then-district attorney Mary Lacy to exonerate the entire family. Burke had already been exonerated. So other than, as you say, wild accusations that have floated around in the Internet world over the last twenty years, no credible attack has ever been made against Burke Ramsey since the foolishness in 1999 and 2000.

Jim Kolar's book was published a few years ago. It was self-published. It had no credibility. No mainstream publisher would touch it. I know for a fact that Jim Kolar approached a number of members of the mainstream media in New York seeking interviews to publicize the book, and they refused to interview him. They refused any attempt to give publicity or credibility to his book, Foreign Faction. And that book is the cornerstone of the CBS docuseries that was recently broadcast. So while Jim Kolar was not worth a lawsuit a few years ago, because I did not feel he had any credibility and I did not want to give him the appearance of credibility that would publicize his book by filing a lawsuit against him, obviously things have changed now, because CBS used this book as part of its script for the docuseries.

You've probably seen me quoted as saying this series was a fraud. There was no new investigation by a new team of experts. This was a scripted show, primarily off of Jim Kolar's book.

(https://s14.postimg.org/jtaq16rxt/james_kolar_file_photo.jpg)
Author, James Kolar

Did you know in advance of the CBS docuseries' airing that this was going to be a theme? And did you reach out in any way to producers to try to present a different point of view or to let them know that litigation would be forthcoming if they followed that particular route?

LW: The answer is yes to both questions. I had received information in the early part of the summer that CBS intended to air a docuseries based on true crime, clearly trying to build on the success about the true-crime series about O.J. Simpson and the program The Making of a Murderer. And I understood they were going to be relying on Jim Kolar's theories. So I was relatively confident they were going to make the mistake of using Burke Ramsey. And I did reach out to CBS before the broadcast, and I did inform them that if they did in fact make those accusations against Burke, a lawsuit would be filed. Which should come as no surprise to them.

I had agreed for Burke to be interviewed by Dr. Phil McGraw. And that was because I understood the accusations were likely going to be made, and I felt like it had reached the point where Burke, who has been silent for the last twenty years and has not given any interviews, should exercise what the law refers to as his right of reasonable response. I had also hoped that good judgment would prevail and CBS might even at the last minute reconsider the error of its ways when Burke gave the interview, which also discussed a lot of evidence in the case. I hoped that CBS might reconsider and not make the accusations against Burke.

(https://s11.postimg.org/csrqbnadf/cbs_burke_ramsey.jpg)
Dr. Phil with Burke Ramsey
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on October 11, 2016, 12:08:42 PM
After all this time, and things are finally hitting the road.  And I agree, shouldn't be many dull moments.

But it's sort of interesting that Lin Wood's dad killed his mom when Wood was a teenager, and LW was the one who found her beaten to death.  That's a little background story, or at least as the story goes.

 :o
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 11, 2016, 02:47:01 PM
:o

Yes.  Makes me wonder what's going through his mind with all this.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on October 27, 2016, 04:46:50 PM
Sneak Peek: Who killed JonBenet? New TV special profiles Patsy Ramsey
By  Carole Glines 
Published October 27, 2016
FoxNews.com

The mysterious unsolved death of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey in her Boulder, Colo., home has never lost its power to fascinate the public. And many believe that JonBenet's mother, Patsy Ramsey, might have killed the little beauty pageant queen.

Now, after numerous TV specials have already aired to mark the twentieth anniversary of JonBenet's murder on Dec. 26, 1996, Lifetime has produced its own two-hour documentary focusing on Patsy.

Brother of JonBenet Ramsey breaks his silence 20 years after beauty queen's murder

"JonBenet's Mother: Victim or Killer?" airing Nov. 5 on Lifetime follows the network's TV movie "Who Killed JonBenet?" In the second of the two JonBenet specials, viewers will see new interviews with investigators, journalists who followed the case, and friends of Patsy who weigh in on her life before and after her daughter's shocking death.
 
During the show, the talking heads attempt to answer an impossible question: Who was Patsy Ramsey-- a tragic victim or cold-blooded killer?

"Her life was a stage and everything that Patsy did was with purpose," her friend Marcia Shurley says of the wife and mom who died of cancer in June 2006 after almost a decade under suspicion.

TV shows explore shocking new theories on JonBenet Ramsey case

The shocking case gripped the nation right after Christmas 1996. Patsy had made a 911 call to report her daughter kidnapped. After police arrived, Patsy and her wealthy husband John showed them a ransom note they said had been left on their stairs of their home.

Later, John discovered their daughter's body in the wine cellar. Investigators determined JonBenet had suffered a blow to the head and had also been strangled with a garrote.

Quickly, the Ramseys, and especially Patsy, came under the scrutiny of the Boulder police department.

The Lifetime special notes that the public looked askance at Patsy, a former Miss West Virginia, partly because she put her tiny blonde daughter in child beauty pageants.

Video of JonBenet prancing around in teased hair, heavy makeup, and outrageous, some said sexualized, costumes, horrified many, but for the new documentary, Patsy's friend and beauty pageant chaperone Betty Smith tells Lifetime it was an "absolutely normal" look.

And friend Shurley insists, "I would never, in a million years, say that Patsy was a stage mom. She exposed her daughter to it and her daughter really picked up on it and loved it and wanted to do it."

But Patsy's longtime pal Linda McLean confides on the show that her heart sank when she saw the Ramseys' notorious New Year's day, 1997, CNN interview, in which the frenzied mother implied an intruder had killed JonBenet.

Patsy dramatically cried, "I would tell my friends to keep--keep your babies close to you. There's someone out there."

McLean, who maintains Patsy was innocent of any involvement in the crime, didn't like the vibe of the CNN appearance.

Others wonder if Patsy had rehearsed the appearance, as she had acted out dramatic scenes years before in the talent portion of her own beauty pageant competitions.

During the Lifetime show, viewers will see investigators and journalists explore the police theory that Patsy had struck her daughter with a blunt object out of frustration over JonBenet's bed wetting.

The combative mother is also shown in a controversial police interview in which she snaps at a detective who confronts her about the bed wetting theory, "You're going down the wrong path, buddy....Quit screwing around asking me about things that are ridiculous and find the person that did this!"

Although the idea of Patsy being a stage mom who snapped is persuasive to some, other show experts raise the intruder killer theory, especially due to a 2008 test that showed foreign DNA on JonBenet's long johns. It didn't match anyone in the Ramsey family.

There's much more on "JonBenet's Mother: Victim or Killer?" It airs Nov. 5 on Lifetime.

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/10/27/sneak-peek-who-killed-jonbenet-new-tv-special-profiles-patsy-ramsey.html
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 28, 2016, 02:08:06 PM
October 28, 2016 (NYP)

DNA evidence in the killing of JonBenét Ramsey does not support a former prosecutor’s decision to clear the girl’s relatives in her death, according to an explosive new report revealing new information to the public for the first time in the 1996 killing.

A joint report by the Boulder Daily Camera and 9NEWS analyzed exclusively obtained lab test results and reports in the homicide that remains Colorado’s most closely followed unsolved murder two decades after the 6-year-old beauty queen was found dead in the basement of her family’s home.

Forensic experts who examined those DNA tests disputed former District Attorney Mary Lacy’s conclusion that a DNA profile found in one location on the girl’s underpants and two spots on her long johns necessarily belonged to the killer, which Lacy asserted when clearing the girl’s family of suspicion in 2008.

But the evidence, experts told the Boulder Daily Camera and 9NEWS, revealed that the DNA samples recovered from the long johns came from at least two people in addition to JonBenét. That’s something Lacy’s office was told, according to documents obtained by the news organizations, but a fact that Lacy did not mention when clearing the Ramseys.

The existence of a third person’s genetic markers has never previously been publicly revealed, according to the report, which also raised the possibility that the original DNA sample recovered from JonBenét’s underwear could be a composite and not from a single individual.

“It’s a rather obvious point, but I mean, if you’re looking for someone that doesn’t exist, because actually it’s several people, it’s a problem,” Troy Eid, a former US attorney for Colorado, told reporters Charlie Brennan of the Daily Camera and Kevin Vaughan of 9NEWS.

Furthermore, two of the three samples that prompted Lacy to declare that no one in the Ramsey family could be JonBenét’s killer actually appear to include genetic material from at least three people: JonBenét, the person whose DNA profile originally was located in her underwear during testing beginning in the late 1990s, and at least one additional “as-yet-unidentified person or persons,” the report found.

“Consequently, its meaning is far from clear,” according to the report.

The experts contacted by the news organizations also found that the DNA profile referred to as Unknown Male 1, which was identified during testing on JonBenét’s panties, may not be the DNA of a single person, but instead a composite of genetic materials from several people, thus making it potentially “worthless” as evidence.

And the presence of that DNA on JonBenét’s undergarments, whether from one or multiple people, may be entirely innocent, the experts concluded, saying they could have been the result of inconsequential contact with other people or transferred from another piece of clothing.

“If true, it would contradict the assertions that DNA will be key to finding JonBenét’s killer,” according to the report.

William Thompson, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, said it’s “certainly possible” that an intruder killed JonBenét, but he doesn’t think DNA evidence proves it.

The findings, according to the report, do not implicate or exonerate the Ramseys. An attorney for the family, Lin Wood, said he had “absolute and total” confidence in Lacy’s integrity. Lin did not review the documents or the analysis by the experts consulted by the Camera and 9NEWS.

“I have absolute and total confidence in the integrity of former District Attorney Mary Lacy, and I am also aware of internet comments by former Boulder police Chief Mark Beckner where he, within the last several months, affirmed that the Ramsey case was a DNA case.

“So I know what Chief Beckner has said publicly in recent months, I know what … former District Attorney Mary Lacy has said, and until someone impugns her integrity, or contradicts former Chief Beckner’s statement, I continue to believe, as I have said before, that this is a DNA case and that the best chance for solving the case will be a hit and match on the DNA in the future. I hope that day comes.”

The conclusions reached by the experts in the exclusive report could “dramatically impact” the direction of investigators trying to solve the case, it claims. Boulder County District Attorney Stanley Garnett, who succeeded Lacy, said he was puzzled when Lacy decided to publicly exonerate the Ramseys.

“Our job is not to issue random exonerations of people in cases, and it’s very confusing when that happens,” Garnett said.

The investigation into JonBenét’s death remains a Boulder Police Department case, as Garnett passed it back to detectives in the department when he became district attorney in 2009. Boulder Police Chief Greg Testa declined to comment on the DNA evidence, according to the report, but announced in September that more than 200 DNA samples had been submitted for analysis in the case.

Eid, the former US attorney for Colorado, said he hopes the report’s findings will spur new action in the case, which has not seen new DNA testing since 2008.

“And there ought to be a process to re-evaluate this in light of what you have brought forward. That’s my view,” Eid said. “And you shouldn’t feel locked in because some person who is no longer an elected official made a decision and said something. How many people have said things about this case that turned out to not be very relevant, or very accurate?”

Meanwhile, John Ramsey, the girl’s father, declined a request for an interview, writing in an email that “we have said all that can be said” about the case. JonBenét’s mother, Patsy Ramsey, died at 49 from ovarian cancer in 2006.

JonBenét’s older brother, Burke Ramsey, now 29, filed a defamation lawsuit earlier this month against a forensic pathologist who said that Burke killed JonBenét when he was 9 years old. He’s seeking at least $150 million in damages, according to the Associated Press.

Lacy, the former district attorney, did not respond to repeated requests for comment, including messages sent by email, US mail and some left at her home.

Former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens said Lacy’s exoneration of the Ramseys made little sense to him eight years ago and is even more concerning now.

“She knew, based on your investigation, that this DNA wasn’t necessarily from one person and that it, in fact, was potentially accumulated DNA,” Owens told the Daily Camera and 9NEWS. “She knew it at the time, and why she used this evidence to clear the Ramsey family … is something I can’t explain. And she should explain.”
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 28, 2016, 03:12:42 PM
ABC News:

Ex-DA Opens Up About Why She Cleared the Ramsey Family of JonBenet's Murder
October 28, 2016

Mary Lacy was one of a team of four investigators with the Boulder County District Attorney's Office who walked through the home of JonBenet Ramsey just days after the 6-year-old beauty contestant was discovered dead in the house's basement in Boulder, Colorado, on Dec. 26, 1996.

Just around the corner from JonBenet's room on the second floor, Lacy noticed an indentation in the carpet, she told ABC News, and chills ran down her spine. "It was a butt print. We all saw it. The entire area was undisturbed except for that place in the rug," Lacy, who was then the chief deputy DA heading up the Sexual Assault Unit under Boulder County DA Alex Hunter, said. "Whoever did this sat outside of her room and waited until everyone was asleep to kill her."

That day, Lacy said, she started developing a theory that she believes to this day.

The morning after Christmas in 1996, JonBenet was reported missing by her parents after they said a ransom note was found in their home. Her body bound and her mouth covered with duct tape, JonBenet was later discovered in the basement. An autopsy concluded that the cause of death was asphyxiation due to strangulation. The coroner's report stated that a blunt object had hit her so hard, there was an 8-inch fracture to her tiny skull. The report also showed some damage to JonBenet's hymen, indicating possible sexual assault.

John and Patsy Ramsey, as well as JonBenet's brother, Burke Ramsey, were the only other people known to be in the house at the time of the slaying, and for years after her death, they were each trailed by a cloud of suspicion. John and Patsy Ramsey were at one point considered persons of interest in the case by authorities.

But in 2008, Lacy -- who by then had been named Boulder County DA and taken over the investigation -- surprised even some of the most seasoned of her fellow prosecutors by exonerating the family.

Now, for the first time in eight years, the former prosecutor is speaking out to ABC News about her decision to clear the Ramsey family as her exoneration letter has now come under scrutiny following a new report in the Boulder Daily Camera published Thursday.

(https://s9.postimg.org/q3yu9acgf/AP_Jon_Patsy_Ramsey_hb_161027_4x3_992.jpg)

'Trying to Prevent a Horrible Travesty of Justice'

Former Adams County DA Bob Grant, one of a number of consultants on the case brought in early on by the Boulder County DA at the time, Hunter, told ABC News he was confounded by Lacy's 2008 decision. "This is craziness," he said. "This is not what prosecutors do. If prosecutors are going to exonerate someone they do it by charging someone else."

But Lacy didn't charge anyone else in the murder. Instead, armed with newly discovered DNA evidence found on JonBenet's long johns that Lacy said she believes belongs to JonBenet's unknown murderer, she sent the Ramseys a letter of apology. It read, in part, "to the extent that we may have contributed in any way to the public perception that you might have been involved in this crime, I am deeply sorry." The letter made international news.

The DNA evidence was discovered after Lacy sent the long johns to Bode Cellmark Forensics to be tested for touch DNA. She had attended a seminar in the summer of 2007 that explained the relatively new process. She felt it could advance the seemingly stalled case, she said.

Some Boulder Police Department detectives who had long worked on the investigation and still considered the Ramseys persons of interests were furious.

"Here’s what I was doing with the exoneration letter," Lacy explained. "I was trying to prevent a horrible travesty of justice. I was scared to death that despite the fact that there was no evidence, no psychopathy and no motive, the case was a train going down the track and the Ramseys were tied to that track."

In the 2008 letter, Lacy hung her hat on newly discovered touch DNA found on JonBenet's long johns, which she said was found to belong to an unknown male. Lacy argued that this unknown male DNA matched DNA found in two spots of blood in the crotch of JonBenet's panties. The unknown male DNA, reasoned Lacy, was the smoking gun that pointed to JonBenet's killer and that killer was not anyone in her family. Family members and 200 other potential suspects were excluded from the unknown male DNA found on the panties and long johns, she said.

Lacy's theory? When the Ramseys left to have Christmas night dinner with friends, they left the front door unlocked, and a male intruder simply walked inside and waited for hours for the family to come home. During that time, Lacy believes, he wrote the rambling two-and-a-half page ransom note.

That note referenced several lines from movies. "The Boulder police should have checked all of the video stores to see who was renting those movies and they never did," said Lacy.

However, the Boulder Daily Camera's investigation published Thursday found the DNA results in the Bode report are not necessarily as clear cut as Lacy concluded they were. According to the Daily Camera, they showed the Bode report to independent experts who say that the DNA samples from both the underwear and long johns may be composite samples from multiple people: JonBenet, an unknown male and, in one sample, a third unidentified person. To the extent composites were used in the search to identify the killer, the investigation states that the DNA profile "may be worthless as evidence." According to the paper, the possible presence of a third individual's DNA on the long johns has never been publicly revealed.

The experts also stated that the presence of the DNA on JonBenet's undergarments could have an innocent explanation because the "profiles were developed from minute samples that could have been the result of inconsequential contact with other people or transferred from another piece of clothing."

According to the paper, these opinions "cut both ways" on the competing theories of the case. They neither disprove the intruder theory nor "implicate or exonerate anyone in the family."

When asked about the impending Daily Camera report ahead of its publication Thursday, Lacy said she has taken criticism for her decision to write the exoneration letter in the past. "I've withstood worse than this," she said. "And it's nothing compared to what the Ramsey family has gone through targeted as suspects in their own daughter's murder." Lacy has not responded to ABC News' request for comment since the Daily Camera report was published.

Is JonBenet's Murder a DNA Case or Not?

There have been conflicting views over whether the mystery of JonBenet's murder can be solved by DNA alone.

Former Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner, who headed up the department from 1998 to 2014, said in an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit last year that the investigation considered the DNA important, but that there was other crucial evidence in the case that couldn't be ignored.

"Mary Lacy, the DA who said the DNA exonerated them, made up her mind years before that a mother could not do that to a child, thus the family was innocent," Beckner wrote.

Stan Garnett, the current Boulder County DA, told ABC News that no case is ever solely reliant on DNA. "DNA is a part of the case," he said. "But you have to account for everything else. There were problems with crime scene, you have the ransom note ... you have debates about the cause of death -- to solve this case we have to account for all of that."

But forensic pathologist Lawrence Kobilinsky with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who has not worked on the case but who reviewed a summary of the Bode report put together by Boulder County investigator Andy Horita prior to the publication of the Daily Camera report, told ABC News that ignoring the unknown male DNA would be a huge mistake. "This is definitely a DNA case," he said. Kobilinsky said the markers found on the long johns are not enough of a profile to "match" those found in the panties, as Lacy wrote in her letter exonerating the Ramseys, but he would describe the markers from both the long johns and the panties as being "consistent" and noted that the DNA does belong to an unknown male. "Lacy did the right thing [in clearing the Ramsey family]," he said.

When questioned about hanging her hat on the DNA in her exoneration letter, Lacy said that she only did that because the DNA was "something tangible people could understand." The truth is, she said, she cleared the Ramseys not just based on the DNA, but also from looking at the totality of the evidence.

"There was no motive [for the parents], and no psychopathy," Lacy said. She added that she is one of only two people who have read the entire transcripts of Patsy Ramsey's psychiatric interviews, in which Lacy said she saw no indication of jealousy toward JonBenet or any violent tendencies. In 2006 when Patsy Ramsey was dying of cancer and even on her deathbed, Lacy said the distraught mother was trying to solve the death of her daughter.

Lacy, who was the Boulder County DA from 2001 until 2009, said the Boulder police investigation had ignored important evidence that pointed away from the Ramseys and instead focused on them while "trying to get the death penalty."

"They were running around the country looking for something negative on that family," Lacy said. But the Ramseys, she said, were clean.

The case is currently cold, but Boulder police say they are continuing to investigate any lead that comes in. It's recently attracted new attention this fall as the 20th anniversary of JonBenet's death approaches, and police have received hundreds of new tips.

(https://s18.postimg.org/wexljae1l/GTY_Mary_Lavy_hb_161027_4x3_992.jpg)
Mary Lacy

A Lacy 'Apology Tour'

People who worked with Lacy remember her bringing John Ramsey into the Boulder County prosecutor's office around the time she exonerated the family. "She wanted us all to shake hands with him. We didn't know what to say ... it was like an apology tour," said one of Lacy's former DA investigators, Gordon Coombes.

Coombes, who worked in the Boulder prosecutor's office from 2008 to 2011, said he feels Lacy got too close to the family and lost her objectivity. "It was understood that if you didn't fall in line with the intruder theory, you were out," he said.

Another investigator who worked under Lacy, Ruth Aten-Shearwood, who is now a social worker in England, said that apart from a tight network of advisers, Lacy did not allow other investigators to work on the Ramsey case. Aten-Shearwood said she found out about the exoneration letter from watching the news. Said Aten-Shearwood, "I had to pick my jaw up off the floor."

Garnett, the current Boulder County DA, is running unopposed for his third term. Of Lacy's exoneration letter, he said, "This letter is not legally binding. It's a good-faith opinion and has no legal importance but the opinion of the person who had the job before I did, whom I respect."  

When asked about the Ramseys, he said, "They, like everyone else, are presumed innocent. There's not enough admissible evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to charge anyone with this crime."

The Ramseys have always maintained their innocence. Burke Ramsey, now 29, recently filed a $150 million defamation suit against a forensic pathologist who claimed he was involved in the murder on CBS’ "The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey." Burke's attorney, Lin Wood, told ABC News that Burke was falsely accused of being responsible for the death of his sister.

Wood told ABC News he has tremendous respect for Lacy and the work she did during her time as DA. "This was a one-side, unfounded and brutal attack on Lacy who served well the citizens of Boulder for eight years," he said of the Daily Camera report.

Later, he added that he is encouraged that the DNA is being called into question because "now maybe all of those other suspects who were excluded will have to be reinvestigated."

Lacy told ABC News she stands by her decision to exonerate the Ramseys, insisting that "if the evidence had been there [to prosecute them], I'd have gone for it."

She added that she remembers the day she personally handed the exoneration letter to John Ramsey and asked him, "That's good news, right?"

Lacy said: "He just looked up and replied, 'Why? I still don't know who killed JonBenet.'"
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 29, 2016, 08:15:21 PM
Some signs in this one point to someone 'secretly' going to bat -- Homerun style -- for John  Ramsey.  His business dealings with Access Graphics should be looked at.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on November 16, 2016, 08:25:22 AM
More on the DNA

DU Professor Studies JonBenet Ramsey's DNA Tests

DNA tests are focus of new investigative report by Colorado media

This December marks the 20th anniversary of the death of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, a child beauty pageant queen found strangled in her family's Boulder, Colo., home on Christmas Day. The resulting investigation was national news for years, as suspicion initially focused on the child’s parents and brother and later shifted to an unknown male. Although Ramsey’s murder remains unsolved, new DNA analysis could reveal previously undiscovered genetic clues. Phil Danielson, a University of Denver forensic genetics and biology professor, is one of three forensic experts who recently examined the results of Ramsey’s DNA tests, exclusively acquired by 9News and the Boulder Daily Camera. The examination of the tests disputes former Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy’s decision to exonerate Ramsey’s family from all connection with the young girl’s death.The DU Newsroom spoke with Danielson about some of the latest developments.

Q: What new information do we now have regarding the JonBenet Ramsey case? 

A: We now know that the results of the DNA testing conducted by Bode Technology were much more complex and nuanced than Mary Lacy had led the public to believe in her letter “exonerating” the Ramsey family on July 9, 2008. Based on an analysis of the actual DNA test results, we know that the scientific data did not support her broad conclusions that DNA not attributable to JonBenet necessarily came from the perpetrator of the crime, could not be accounted for by innocent explanations unrelated to criminal activity, or could not have come (at least in part) from one or more members of the Ramsey family.

Q: What does this mean for the case?

A: The DNA profile that has long been referred to as "Unknown Male No. 1" has been used to search the U.S. national DNA database of DNA from other crimes and from convicted offenders. It may have also been pivotal in excluding other potential suspects in the case. Moving forward, it would be prudent for investigators to view the DNA evidence in this case as less definitive than they may have originally thought.

Q: Is there new DNA testing that can be done?

A: Yes, there is a male-specific DNA test called a Y-STR (Y-chromosome Short Tandem Repeat) test that can be used to selectively detect and profile only the male DNA from JonBenet’s clothing. This test has the potential to demonstrate whether the DNA on JonBenet’s clothing came from one or multiple males. It is also possible to use this test to determine whether or not any male DNA on JonBenet’s long underwear could have come from male members of the Ramsey family. At a minimum, it would be prudent to see this test performed on JonBenet's clothing where DNA — other than JonBenet’s — has been detected.

Q: Would new tests be able to identify a suspect who has never been considered or was possibly cleared?

A: There are some potential mathematical approaches that might be used to develop profiles from the existing DNA data that could be used with the National Database for new leads. Although Y-STR profiles are not searchable through the National DNA Database at the current time, this does not mean that Y-STR testing would be uninformative. On the contrary, the availability of a Y-STR profile would help to reduce some of the uncertainty currently associated with the evidence in this case. A Y-STR profile could be used to more reliably exclude potential male suspects. Now, the ball is in the court of the current Boulder DA who has the responsibility for reviewing these new findings from the 9News and the Boulder Daily Camera investigation and then deciding how best to move forward in with this case.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 03, 2016, 05:04:06 PM
(https://s13.postimg.org/qj08okbon/image.jpg)

JonBenet Ramsey Investigator: My Theory Burke Did It Is Just That ... Theory

The famed investigator who strongly suggested JonBenet Ramsey was killed by her older brother ... insists he has every right to say so thanks to the Constitution.

Dr. Werner Spitz filed a response Friday to Burke Ramsey's defamation suit, saying the First Amendment allows him to hypothesize who her killer might have been ... because he's not claiming it's FACT, just his theory.

In the docs, obtained by TMZ, Spitz says defamation claims must be based on a "provably false statement of fact," and insists his statements are not. He even points out the radio show that aired his "opinion" noted Spitz's theory hadn't been proven in court.

As we reported ... Burke Ramsey sued Dr. Spitz for $150 million after openly suggesting Burke killed JonBenet. He made very similar remarks during a CBS special about the unsolved case.

Spitz is asking a judge to dismiss the case.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 05, 2016, 01:55:28 PM
^ Statement from Ramsey ppl about Response:

“The motion to dismiss by Defendant Spitz is a standard media defense tactic. A correct interpretation of First Amendment law requires a denial of the motion. The United States Supreme Court has made it very clear that the First Amendment does not provide blanket protection to all statements characterized as opinion,” the statement read.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 16, 2016, 07:21:09 PM
Grand Juror Who Saw Original Evidence in JonBenet Ramsey Case Speaks Out

(ABC) To this day, the mysterious 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey remains unsolved.

The 6-year-old beauty queen, who lived in Boulder, Colorado, with her parents and brother, was found dead in the family home’s basement on the day after Christmas in 1996. JonBenet had been strangled and hit on the head with enormous force, according to Boulder, Colorado, authorities.

Her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, vehemently denied that they or their son Burke had anything to do with JonBenet’s death.

Many in the Boulder Police Department believed they had enough evidence for the district attorney to charge JonBenet’s parents with her murder.

In late 1998, then-Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter presented the case to a grand jury of eight women and four men. The grand jurors are among the very few people who have seen all the evidence prosecutors presented in the case against John and Patsy Ramsey.

 Grand jury proceedings in Colorado are secret, and the penalties for revealing testimony or evidence can be severe, including jail time.

Despite that threat, one member of the jury agreed to talk to ABC News’ “20/20.” Given the possible repercussions, “20/20” agreed to withhold his name.

The juror said he knew “very little” about the murder of JonBenet before he saw evidence in the case.

“I saw that there was a little girl dressed up with, in my opinion, a sexual persona, and it disgusted me. And I turned off the TV,” the juror told “20/20.”

Over the course of more than a year, the juror said he and the other grand jurors grappled with testimony from dozens of witnesses and even took a field trip to the Ramsey home, where they went down into the basement to see the crime scene with their own eyes.

“In the basement where she was found, it was actually kind of an obscure layout,” the juror said. “You come down the stairwell and you had to go into another room to find a door that was closed. It was a very eerie feeling. It was like, ‘Somebody had been killed here.’”

The juror said he believes that there was enough evidence to indict John and Patsy Ramsey for a crime, but he doesn’t think they would have been convicted.

“There is no way that I would have been able to say, ‘Beyond a reasonable doubt, this is the person,’” the juror said. “And if you are the district attorney, if you know that going in, it’s a waste of taxpayer dollars to do it.”

Still, he says the grand jury did recommend charges against John and Patsy Ramsey, indicating the jurors believed they placed JonBenet in a situation resulting in her death.

But, in an astonishing turn of events, the prosecutor nullified the findings of his own grand jury, saying he and his prosecution task force believed they did not have sufficient evidence to warrant the filing of charges against anyone who had been investigated at that time.

Much later, in 2008, then-Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy wrote a letter saying she was clearing the Ramseys of any involvement in JonBenet’s death. Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in 2006.

The investigation into JonBenet’s death is still considered open and active.

abc
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 16, 2016, 07:23:28 PM
^ the reporting on the video that accompanied that, is just dumb.  Clueless.  It's from ABC.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 16, 2016, 07:44:18 PM
The guy says he "strongly suspects" (similar) he knows who did it.  That's what they mean in the story.

Crucial JonBenet Ramsey ransom note was ‘written by her MOTHER’, expert claims…as video emerges of beauty queen singing Christmas songs three days before her murder

Ransom note found next to the body of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was almost certainly written by her mum, a handwriting expert has claimed.

It came as chilling footage emerged of the six-year-old happily singing Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree in front of a crowd just four days before she was found murdered in her family’s basement on Boxing Day 1996.

A member of a grand jury – which looked into whether to indict JonBenet’s parents over her death – has also revealed he has secret evidence about who really killed her.

Detectives plan to conduct new tests on man’s DNA found on the six-year-old beauty queen’s underwear – the owner of which could never be identified.

Nobody has ever been convicted of killing child beauty queen JonBenet, and speculation over the case has peaked on the 20th anniversary of her murder.

More: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2417438/handwriting-expert-claims-jonbenet-ramsey-ransom-note-written-by-mum/
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 16, 2016, 07:59:40 PM
Uh, yeah.  The whole thing is as "unusual" as it gets.  Someone took the heat off John Ramsey without managing to put it on someone else.

JonBenét Ramsey Case: DA Says Former Prosecutor Erred with Letter Exonerating Parents and Brother

The current prosecutor in the JonBenét Ramsey murder case tells PEOPLE that as the 20th anniversary of her death approaches, he has not wavered from his belief that his predecessor was wrong to publicly clear from suspicion parents John and Patsy Ramsey as well as brother Burke.

“John, Burke, the Ramsey family are totally covered by the presumption of innocence and are entitled to that,” Boulder, Colorado, District Attorney Stan Garnett tells PEOPLE. “If we ever change our opinion about that with regard to the Ramseys or anyone else, we will file charges and say what we have to say about the case in open court.”

But “to issue an exoneration is, I think, misleading,” he says.

(As the anniversary approaches, People Magazine Investigates takes a fresh look at the infamous cold case in an episode entitled “JonBenét: The Untold Truth,” which airs Monday night at 10 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery.)

As he has stated previously, Garnett says then Boulder DA Mary Lacy jumped the gun on July 9, 2008, when, on the basis of DNA analysis from the crime scene, she issued a letter to John Ramsey stating “we do not consider your immediate family including you, your wife, Patsy, and your son Burke to be under any suspicion in the commission of this crime.”

The 6-year-old JonBenét’s body was found December 26, 1996, in the basement of the Ramsey family’s Boulder home, beaten and strangled with a garrote tied around her neck and duct tape covering her mouth. An investigation that has considered more than 140 suspects including family members has failed to bring criminal charges.

Garnett says he has “a lot of respect” for Lacy, the prior DA. But he adds, “I didn’t feel the exoneration was warranted based on the state of the evidence and the complexity of the case. And I also thought it was a very unusual thing to do in a case where there had never been any charges filed."

“When any district attorney goes around and starts issuing exonerations based on a particular piece of evidence, that can be very misleading to the public about the nature of the case,” he says.

Recalling the infamously “compromised” crime scene that has created a challenge for all subsequent investigators, Garnett says, “The state of the evidence is not one where you could really say anything definitively.”

(People Magazine)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 20, 2016, 04:14:49 PM
OK, so now we're talking.

(https://s28.postimg.org/fuptkf4jx/art_stan.jpg)

Prosecutor says he knows who killed JonBenet Ramsey

The prosecutor who took on the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation, after detectives made a string of errors, claims to know who killed the child beauty queen two decades ago.

Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett last week announced DNA evidence would be retested in the investigation of the unsolved 1996 slaying.

He told news.com.au the investigation was plagued with errors from the beginning and DNA testing contributed to the problems.

“If we can ever file a case in open court, I’ll tell the world,” Mr Garnett said. However, in the interview he refused to reveal who he thought was responsible.

He added that cracking the case depended on “what the evidence turns into”.

The DNA would be tested with new techniques but in order to put anyone behind bars Mr Garnett needed “several different pieces of evidence to come together”.

JonBenet’s bludgeoned and strangled body was found by her father in the basement of their home in Boulder, Colorado on Boxing Day, 1996.

(Yahoo News Australia)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 20, 2016, 04:42:05 PM
Mary Lacy's idea is that someone simply walked up the path to enter the house through an unlocked front door.  That person then hid inside the dwelling and waited to commit the crime.  It had been snowing, but with the path it wouldn't be as certain to see signs of trespass compared to new-fallen snow on the yard.  That explains that, according to Mary Lacy.

The claim (after the fact) is that the Ramseys sometimes left the door unlocked.  This goes against a claim JR made during the initial investigation, to say that he'd personally checked locks.

As to the alarm system: John Ramsey (after the fact) tells a story of when JonBenet was a toddler, and she climbed onto a chair and set off the alarm by using the wallbox.  The Ramseys claimed it was "so loud" they couldn't hear themselves communicating with the security company (who monitored the alarm) so they decided to leave it in a disabled state.

This would mean that the Ramseys decided to leave their front door unlocked and their alarm disabled.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 28, 2016, 01:13:17 PM
Burke Ramsey files $750M suit against CBS, experts in JonBenet special

KUSA - Burke Ramsey filed a $750 million lawsuit Wednesday against CBS, a production company and seven consultants over a TV special that aired in September, accusing him of killing his younger sister, JonBenet Ramsey, in Boulder in 1996.

The show in question, The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey, aired Sept. 18 and 19.

On Wednesday 9 Wants to Know obtained a copy of the suit, which was filed in Michigan.

It names CBS Corp., Critical Content LLC and consultants Jim Clemente, Laura Richards, Jim Kolar, James Fitzgerald, Stanley Burke, Werner Spitz and Henry Lee.

The suit seeks $250 million in compensatory damages and $500 million in punitive damages.

According to a copy of the suit, Burke Ramsey filed it to “redress the permanent damage to his reputation resulting from Defendants’ false accusation that he killed his sister, JonBenét Ramsey.”

It is the second defamation filed by Burke Ramsey since the broadcast of the CBS special, The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey. Investigators involved in that show suggested that Burke had killed JonBenet by hitting her in the head with a flashlight.

On Oct. 6, JonBenet’s brother sued Dr. Werner Spitz, one of those experts involved in the CBS special, for defamation. That suit, also filed in Michigan, seeks $150 million in damages.

That suit was based in part on comments Spitz made during an interview with CBS Detroit on Sept. 19 suggesting that Burke Ramsey killed his younger sister.

According to the suit, during the interview Spitz said, “If you really, really use your free time to think about this case, you cannot come to a different conclusion.”

It also attributed other statements to him – “It’s the boy who did it, whether he was jealous, or mentally unfit or something,” and, “I don’t know the why, I’m not a psychiatrist, but what I am sure about is what I know about him, that is what happened here.”

The suit labeled Spitz “a publicity seeker with a history of interjecting himself in high profile cases in an effort to make money, exaggerate his resume and claim a level of expertise that he does not possess or deserve.”

The suit noted that in addition to the murder of JonBenet, Burke Ramsey had endured the deaths of his older sister, Beth, in a car crash in 1991 and his mother to cancer in 2006.

“Burke’s life has also for the past 20 years been lived under the cloud of years of false accusations against his parents and periodic media frenzies,” the suit alleges. “Now Defendant Spitz has attacked and permanently harmed the reputation of 29-year-old Burke Ramsey by describing him as a killer since age 9.”

Spitz’s attorneys have asserted that his statements were his opinion and protected by the First Amendment. They have filed a motion to have the suit dismissed.

(9news)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 28, 2016, 01:26:39 PM
More:

Exclusive: Burke Ramsey Files $750 Million Defamation Lawsuit Against CBS For ‘Perpetrating Fraud’ on Public

Burke Ramsey, the brother of JonBenet Ramsey, has filed a $750 million defamation lawsuit against CBS for a special, The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey, that the network aired earlier this year to investigate the murder of the young beauty queen on the 20th Anniversary of her death. The lawsuit, filed by Ramsey’s longtime attorney Lin Wood and an attorney in Michigan, accuses CBS of intentionally ignoring mountains of evidence, including police and District Attorney statements which exonerated the Ramsey family, and instead falsely pointing the finger at Burke, who was 9 at the time, as the one who murdered his sister.  The lawsuit also names several of the experts featured in the two part documentary series, including Jim Clemente, Laura Richards, James Kolar James R Fitzgerald, Stanley Burke, Werner Spitzer, Henry Lee, and Critical Content, the outside production company that helped to produce the documentary.

“CBS perpetrated a fraud upon the public—instead of being a documentary based on a new investigation by a so-called team of experts, The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey was a fictional crime show based primarily on a preconceived storyline scripted in a self-published and commercially unsuccessful book, Foreign Faction, written by Defendant James Kolar (“Kolar”) and published in 2012,” the 108 page lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit claims that while promoting the docuseries that aired in the fall, the experts concluded they may have solved who murdered JonBenet. Six-year-old JonBenet was found in the wine cellar of the Ramsey’s Boulder, Colorado home on Christmas in 1996. She was found strangled with her wrists tied above her head and a garrote embedded in her neck. The CBS Special provided theories as to how Burke may have killed the young girl, including implying that Burke may have been heard on the 911 call made by the Ramseys, that Patsy Ramsey wrote the ransom note, and that JonBenet could have been hit over the head by Burke with a flashlight, according to the court filing. Burke says all of the allegations are completely false.  In the lawsuit, he also takes issue with how CBS staged a demonstration of a young boy bludgeoning a pig skin “clad with a blonde wig to create the image of Burke killing his sister,” calling it a “disgusting staged demonstration intended to plant in the viewers’ minds the powerful and incriminating image of Burke killing his sister.”

(https://s24.postimg.org/4qzs1cmyd/Burke_Ramsey_e1474395841364.jpg)

The lawsuit said that the Boulder PD and the Boulder District Attorney’s office have publicly exonerated Burke before, during, and after the grand jury investigation, and that those facts were not highlighted in the series.  As evidence, they point to a statement from the former Boulder Police Department chief, in which he said that Burke was not involved in the killing.   The lawsuit states:

Quote
On July 9, 2008, former Boulder DA Lacy relied on newly discovered DNA evidence to exonerate the Ramsey Family (including Burke) in an open letter released to the public. DA Lacy declared that:

[N]ew scientific evidence convinces us that it is appropriate, given the circumstances of this case, to state that we do not consider your immediate family including you, your wife, Patsy, and your son, Burke, to be under any suspicion in the commission of this crime.

The court documents point out that none of the six experts concluded that Patsy wrote the ransom note.  While they could not rule her out with 100% certainty, the handwriting experts contend the chances of her writing the note were “very low.”

The lawsuit says that as a result of CBS’ defamatory statements against Burke, he has suffered damage and harm including economic damages, damage to his reputation, and mental anguish. The lawsuit requests compensatory damages in the amount of $250 million, and punitive damages in the amount of $500 million.  CBS has previously declined to comment on any pending litigation, but we’ve reached out to them again, and will update this article if we get any further statements from them.

(lawnewz)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on December 28, 2016, 07:34:21 PM
Chutzpah. 
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 29, 2016, 08:49:00 AM
Chutzpah. 

Hope he hasn't already run out of $$ from the Jewell party!   :-X :-X :-X
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on January 01, 2017, 05:59:18 PM
Lol

Lawyer in JonBenet Ramsey Libel Case Calls Out CBS for FAKE NEWS

The Atlanta libel attorney representing the surviving brother of slain beauty pageant princess JonBenet Ramsey in a $750 million defamation suit against CBS says the network's retrospective on JonBenet's still-unsolved slaying has earned it a new reputation—as a generator of fake news.

"CBS put its entire brand and reputation out there saying they were conducting a new reinvestigation from scratch with seven world-renowned experts," said Atlanta attorney Lin Wood, who on Wednesday filed suit on behalf of JonBenet's surviving older brother, Burke Ramsey, against the network, a Hollywood production company, and seven self-styled experts who revisited the case for CBS. But Wood contends the four-hour retrospective, broadcast last September in advance of the 20th anniversary of JonBenet's death, was, instead, "a shame and a fraud on the viewer" and that the investigators were "acting" in accordance with a script based on a self-published book by a former police officer who once worked for the Boulder, Colorado, district attorney years after JonBenet was killed.

James Kolar, now chief marshal in Telluride, Colorado, advanced a theory that Burke Ramsey had killed his sister. Wood says the theory was long ago publicly discredited by three different prosecutors who investigated JonBenet's murder, by Boulder police officers who investigated the case, by a federal judge in Atlanta, by the Colorado grand jury that investigated JonBenet's death, and by DNA evidence uncovered by the Boulder DA in 2008 that Wood said pointed to an unidentified intruder and exonerated members of the Ramsey family of any culpability in the girl's death.

(https://s28.postimg.org/u1dkcr2pp/L_Lin_Wood_Article_201612290814.jpg)
L. Wood

"It was a fake, phony story," Wood said of the CBS production, which starred Kolar as one of the "world-renowned investigators" who reopened the case. "There was no investigation. It was never done."

Wood has reason to know. He has represented the Ramsey family since 1999 when John and Patsy Ramsey hired him to represent their son—who was nine when JonBenet was killed—against allegations in the national tabloids that he had murdered his little sister.

In those cases, Wood sued The Star and its corporate parent, American Media Inc.; the Globe and its parent companies, Globe International Inc. and Globe Communications Corp.; and the New York Post for libel after the publications ran stories claiming Burke Ramsey had killed his sister. Wood also sued Court TV and corporate owner AOL Time Warner after Court TV conducted mock trials of possible suspects in JonBenet's death, including Burke Ramsey, and asked its audience to vote on whether the defendants in those trials were guilty. Court TV, he said, "had no legitimate basis to put Burke Ramsey on trial on TV; he was never even considered a suspect."

Wood said all of the suits settled confidentially. "Collectively, the media entities that accused Burke Ramsey in 1998 and 1999 paid a significant price for doing so," he said.

Wood also successfully defended the Ramseys against libel claims brought against them by Robert Christian Wolf, a Boulder freelance journalist, after the Ramseys wrote in their own book that Wolf had at one time been investigated as a possible suspect in JonBenet's death. In 2003, then-U.S. District Judge Julie Carnes, now a judge on the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, dismissed the libel claim, but not before she meticulously reviewed the evidence in the murder case and concluded, in a 93-page dismissal order, that there was "abundant evidence" to believe that an unknown intruder had entered the Ramsey home and killed JonBenet.

Since then, Wood said no other tabloid or mainstream media outlet has identified Burke Ramsey as a suspect in his little sister's slaying—until CBS aired "The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey."

Wood said CBS' experts ignored evidence that did not comport with their theory that Burke Ramsey was the killer as well as statements by those closest to the case that repeatedly exonerated him.

On Wednesday, a CBS spokesman said the network would have no comment on the litigation. The Daily Report has called and emailed Kolar for comment but has not yet received a reply. Wood claims that Kolar's self-published book mirrors many of the discredited allegations contained in the tabloid articles that led to the defamation lawsuits on Burke Ramsey's behalf.

(daily report online)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on January 04, 2017, 02:40:25 PM
Netflix Buys Rights: ‘Casting JonBenet’

(Variety) Netflix has acquired worldwide rights to Kitty Green’s documentary “Casting JonBenet,” which will have its world premiere later this month in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.

Netflix noted that the Sundance premiere will be the first time a non-fiction work from the company will compete at the festival. The film will launch on Netflix and in limited theatrical release in the spring of 2017.

“Casting JonBenet” is an exploration of the still-unsolved death of six-year-old American beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey in 1996 in Colorado. Over 15 months, the filmmakers traveled to the Ramseys’ Colorado hometown to elicit responses and reflections from the local community. The film examines how this crime and its resulting mythologies have shaped the attitudes and behavior of successive generations of parents and children.

(Variety)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on January 04, 2017, 02:47:09 PM
(https://s28.postimg.org/jmam267st/a2c26b1d_95ab_420d_8d8b_145daa92199f.jpg)

Forensic Nightmare: The Perils of Touch DNA

By Michelle Malkin

(Town Hall) Have you heard of "touch DNA?"

This mundane, yet menacing phenomenon exposes the double-edged sword of forensic science. With just an innocent handshake, an indirect transfer of epithelial cells, you could find yourself suspected of heinous crimes, charged with rape or convicted of murder.

This year, I'll be using my syndicated column and new investigative show on CRTV.com to shed light on the use and abuse of touch DNA in the criminal justice system. Detection methods involving tinier and tinier DNA samples have advanced rapidly during the last three decades.

But the mere presence of DNA does not prove a crime happened. It does not tell you how or when the material got to its discovered location. Contrary to Hollywood crime show oversimplifications, DNA is not a synonym for "guilty."

You may be familiar with a few high-profile cases where touch DNA led investigators astray. Trace amounts of DNA on a knife and bra clasp in 2007 were key to American student Amanda Knox's prosecution and conviction on charges of murdering her roommate in Italy. But when American forensic expert Dr. Greg Hampikian and others exposed contamination, interpretation and replicability/reliability problems with the DNA evidence, the Italian Supreme Court threw out the convictions eight years after the killing.

At the annual American Academy of Forensic Sciences conference last February, experts spotlighted the case of a homeless man charged with murdering a Silicon Valley mogul at his mansion -- despite the accused being hospitalized, nearly comatose and under 24/7 medical supervision the night the crime occurred in 2012. As Scientific American reported, the defendant's DNA had been transferred inadvertently by paramedics who had touched and treated him three hours before arriving at the businessman's home. The EMTs used the same oxygen monitor on both men's fingers, unknowingly transferring skin cell DNA from the homeless man to the multimillionaire he had never met.

The case provided a definitive example of "a DNA transfer implicating an innocent person," the journal noted, and illustrated "a growing opinion that the criminal justice system's reliance on DNA evidence, often treated as infallible, actually carries significant risks."

Secondary transfer and contamination problems with touch DNA were most famously revealed by the "Phantom of Heilbronn," a case involving skin cell DNA from a "mystery" female serial killer and thief in Germany -- which police years later acknowledged most likely belonged to a lab or factory worker who had handled cotton swabs used by investigators across Europe.

Touch DNA is also central to the murder case of Colorado toddler JonBenet Ramsey. Thanks to joint reporting by Denver's 9News and the Boulder Daily Camera, current Boulder County district attorney Stan Garnett announced three weeks ago that he is reopening the DNA portion of the investigation initially conducted by his predecessor, Mary Lacy. In 2008, she concluded in a letter exonerating the Ramsey family that an unknown male's DNA on JonBenet's underwear must belong to the killer because no innocent explanation existed for its presence.

A growing body of peer-reviewed scientific literature says otherwise. Unfortunately, many state crime labs and police departments haven't caught up.

More: http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2017/01/04/forensic-nightmare-the-perils-of-touch-dna-n2266884
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on January 04, 2017, 03:16:08 PM
(https://s28.postimg.org/jmam267st/a2c26b1d_95ab_420d_8d8b_145daa92199f.jpg)

Forensic Nightmare: The Perils of Touch DNA

By Michelle Malkin

(Town Hall) Have you heard of "touch DNA?"

This mundane, yet menacing phenomenon exposes the double-edged sword of forensic science. With just an innocent handshake, an indirect transfer of epithelial cells, you could find yourself suspected of heinous crimes, charged with rape or convicted of murder.

This year, I'll be using my syndicated column and new investigative show on CRTV.com to shed light on the use and abuse of touch DNA in the criminal justice system. Detection methods involving tinier and tinier DNA samples have advanced rapidly during the last three decades.

But the mere presence of DNA does not prove a crime happened. It does not tell you how or when the material got to its discovered location. Contrary to Hollywood crime show oversimplifications, DNA is not a synonym for "guilty."

You may be familiar with a few high-profile cases where touch DNA led investigators astray. Trace amounts of DNA on a knife and bra clasp in 2007 were key to American student Amanda Knox's prosecution and conviction on charges of murdering her roommate in Italy. But when American forensic expert Dr. Greg Hampikian and others exposed contamination, interpretation and replicability/reliability problems with the DNA evidence, the Italian Supreme Court threw out the convictions eight years after the killing.

At the annual American Academy of Forensic Sciences conference last February, experts spotlighted the case of a homeless man charged with murdering a Silicon Valley mogul at his mansion -- despite the accused being hospitalized, nearly comatose and under 24/7 medical supervision the night the crime occurred in 2012. As Scientific American reported, the defendant's DNA had been transferred inadvertently by paramedics who had touched and treated him three hours before arriving at the businessman's home. The EMTs used the same oxygen monitor on both men's fingers, unknowingly transferring skin cell DNA from the homeless man to the multimillionaire he had never met.

The case provided a definitive example of "a DNA transfer implicating an innocent person," the journal noted, and illustrated "a growing opinion that the criminal justice system's reliance on DNA evidence, often treated as infallible, actually carries significant risks."

Secondary transfer and contamination problems with touch DNA were most famously revealed by the "Phantom of Heilbronn," a case involving skin cell DNA from a "mystery" female serial killer and thief in Germany -- which police years later acknowledged most likely belonged to a lab or factory worker who had handled cotton swabs used by investigators across Europe.

Touch DNA is also central to the murder case of Colorado toddler JonBenet Ramsey. Thanks to joint reporting by Denver's 9News and the Boulder Daily Camera, current Boulder County district attorney Stan Garnett announced three weeks ago that he is reopening the DNA portion of the investigation initially conducted by his predecessor, Mary Lacy. In 2008, she concluded in a letter exonerating the Ramsey family that an unknown male's DNA on JonBenet's underwear must belong to the killer because no innocent explanation existed for its presence.

A growing body of peer-reviewed scientific literature says otherwise. Unfortunately, many state crime labs and police departments haven't caught up.

More: http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2017/01/04/forensic-nightmare-the-perils-of-touch-dna-n2266884


Good article.  What they did to the homeless guy is pretty scary. 

The "touch DNA" in the Ramsey case does nothing to dispel the evidence showing someone inside the home killed that girl. 
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on January 04, 2017, 04:31:54 PM
Good article.  What they did to the homeless guy is pretty scary.

Very scary, I agree.  With circumstances, timeline, or anything at all being just slightly different... he could have been driven into the ground.  Even if the pieces were ever to be picked-up: who knows how long he'd be down.  Or if he'd have survived to see such a day.

Quote
The "touch DNA" in the Ramsey case does nothing to dispel the evidence showing someone inside the home killed that girl.  

I'll tell ya.

And Mary Lacy's idea that someone walked up the path to enter an unlocked front door, says (to me) that she knows the window-entry idea can't hold up.  Because, according to The Denver Post, crime-scene photos "clearly" show that a path existed on "dry" pavement which would've allowed someone to make it to the area of the basement windows without leaving prints.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 11, 2017, 04:43:47 PM
CBS seeks dismissal of $750M defamation suit brought by Burke Ramsey

Charlie Brennan - BDC - 10 March 2017

(Boulder Daily Camera ) Boulder, CO. - A lawyer for defendants in a $750 million defamation lawsuit filed by Burke Ramsey, the brother of murder victim JonBenet Ramsey, filed a response Thursday asking that his action be dismissed outright.

Burke Ramsey on Dec. 28 sued CBS for its production “The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey,” a four-hour “docu-series,” as the network described it, that was produced for CBS by Los Angeles-based Critical Content.

The series offered a theory that JonBenet, discovered murdered in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder the afternoon of Dec. 26, 1996, might have been killed by Burke, who was then 9.

“Plaintiff’s rambling, 108-page, 726-paragraph complaint comes down to this: he alleges that Defendants accused him of kill(ing) his sister, JonBenet Ramsey,” the new motion states.

“That statement was never made in the series. To the contrary, the only even arguably similar observation contained in the entire series is one made by investigator James Kolar” that Burke Ramsey, out of anger, “may have struck” JonBenet with a flashlight, the filing states.

And the first page of the filing features a screen grab of a disclaimer that appeared at the conclusion of each segments of the series. It stated, in part, “The opinions and conclusions of the investigators who appear on this program about how it may have occurred represent just some of a number of possible scenarios.

“John Ramsey and Burke Ramsey have denied any involvement in the crime, including in recent televised interviews. We encourage viewers to reach their own conclusions.”

The girl’s parents have consistently denied any family member’s involvement in the slaying, which Thursday’s motion calls “one of the most famous unsolved crimes in American history.”

Burke Ramsey spoke in September for the first time publicly about the case in a multi-part interview on the “Dr. Phil” show, insisting that he had no role in his 6-year-old sister’s death.

Burke Ramsey, now 30 and a resident of Charlevoix, Mich., had targeted in his suit the CBS Corporation and Critical Content, along with show participants Kolar, Jim Clemente, Laura Richards, James Fitzgerald, Stanley Burke, Henry Lee and Werner Spitz.

The suit is filed in the Circuit Court for Wayne County, Mich.

(Boulder Daily Camera)

 

Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 20, 2017, 03:16:00 PM
JonBenét Ramsey Murder Claim Suit: Burke's Lawyer Rips CBS's Call to Dismiss

By Michael Roberts, for Westword
March 20, 2017

(Westword) CBS has formally asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of Burke Ramsey over a 2016 docuseries in which a team of analysts concluded that he'd murdered his sister, JonBenét Ramsey, in their Boulder home on Christmas Day 1996. In response, Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood summarily rejects the arguments made by CBS and Dr. Werner Spitz, a participant in the docuseries being sued separately for comments he made last September during a WWJ-AM/CBS Detroit interview publicizing the program.

"CBS and the other docuseries’ defendants have recently moved to dismiss Burke’s complaint on essentially the same basis that Dr. Spitz did previously, contending that their accusation against Burke is protected opinion when taken in context," notes the Atlanta-based Wood, corresponding via e-mail. "In both instances, the defense asserts, as it must, that no reasonable mind could have taken the accusation to be one of fact rather than a mere subjective opinion or hypothesis."

Wood feels otherwise.

"CBS — one of the most well-known news outlets in the world — put up seven 'experts' in a four-hour 'documentary' and marketed their 'true-crime' series as giving one 'complete theory' that 'solved' the case, all the while representing the series as a documentary," he maintains.

Specifically, Spitz and the other panelists on the program, titled The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey, concluded that Burke killed his sister with a blow to the head. The following image from the docuseries captures a reenactment; Spitz is seen at left.

(https://s22.postimg.org/40n6cwvtd/dr_werner_spitz_two_youtube.jpg)

In Wood's view, "It is difficult to understand how, in that context, the accusation against Burke could have been intended and received as anything but a factual accusation. And that is clearly what the viewer expected — a truthful and factual 'documentary' providing insight into this case."

Instead, as the lawsuit alleges, "CBS and the others consciously portrayed false, skewed and misrepresentative facts and recreations throughout the broadcast that stole from the viewers their ability to evaluate the murder of JonBenét Ramsey and CBS’s accusation against Burke," Wood allows. "For this reason, and the issue of objective fact or subjective opinion aside, I do not believe the First Amendment protects statements that are based on a false disclosed basis or an undisclosed and incomplete basis."

Wood also provides an update on the Spitz suit, which was filed in Michigan.

"We had a hearing...in Detroit on the defense’s motion to dismiss the case," he notes. "Interestingly, despite the defense having provided to the court a DVD of CBS’ documentary and stating it was 'central' to their opinion defense, Dr. Spitz never provided to the court a copy of his WWJ radio interview wherein he made the statements complained of in the lawsuit. When the court requested a copy at the hearing, it appeared to my team that his lawyers were reluctant to provide it to the court."

Nonetheless, Wood goes on, "that radio broadcast will be provided to the court and to me....  So we will know more about the context in which Dr. Spitz uttered his accusations against this young man in short order."

Meanwhile, Wood stresses, he's determined to press forward with both court actions — and he's confident the dismissal calls won't prevail.

"As paradoxical as it may seem in light of the many exonerations of Burke by several public officials, Burke will continue his quest to prove his innocence in a court of law," he writes. "We do not expect the court to deny him that opportunity by ruling that these accusations are protected speech." (Westword)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 27, 2017, 03:46:52 PM
A bit more detail, a little more info.

JonBenet Ramsey's brother sues Dr. Werner Spitz; case to be heard in Michigan court

Defamation lawsuit filed over what Spitz said in CBS documentary

DETROIT(WDIV) - JonBenet Ramsey's brother, Burke Ramsey, is suing Dr. Werner Spitz for what he said in a CBS documentary about who killed the 6-year-old girl back in 1996.

Burke Ramsey's defamation lawsuit against the esteemed pathologist seeks $150 million. The case goes before a judge in Wayne County on Wednesday. The judge will have to decide if this will go to trial.

"It's nonsensical. It's outrageous. It will not stand," said L. Linn Wood, attorney for Burke Ramsey.

(https://s28.postimg.org/3m73omz9p/ramsey2_638.jpg)
Burke Ramsey

During part of the documentary, Spitz accuses Burke Ramsey of JonBenet's murder, saying, "You cannot come to a different conclusion. It's the boy who did it. Whether he was jealous or mentally unfit or something ... I don't know the why."

Burke Ramsey's attorney said Spitz is unqualified to make such claims.

"He never examined the child. He's never spoken to the forensic pathologist. He's never been to the crime scene. He's never firsthand examined a single piece of actual evidence. And yet he goes out and says, 'Oh it was the flashlight in the hands of the son in the kitchen. It's like he's playing the game of Clue," said Wood.

Burke Ramsey was 9 years old at the time of JonBenet's murder. He's about 30 now. While police never identified a murder weapon, Spitz claimed the weight and shape of a flashlight found on the Ramsey family's kitchen counter was consistent with the skull injury which killed the young beauty queen.

The day after the documentary first aired, Burke Ramsey's attorney demanded a retraction. Spitz refused.

The lawsuit claims Spitz's theory has deeply harmed Burke Ramsey.

"I have no fear of Burke Ramsey clearing his name against the false accusations of Werner Spitz in a court of law," said Wood.

Burke Ramsey also field a lawsuit against CBS for $750 million. CBS said they stand by what was said and the broadcast. The media company will defend it in a court of law if necessary.

In court documents, Spitz's attorneys said he should be covered by the First Amendment regardless of what he said.

(WDIV)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on March 27, 2017, 03:52:02 PM
This could get interesting. . . .
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: LurkerNoMore on March 28, 2017, 09:02:20 AM
This could get interesting. . . .

I think the true killer has already died.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 28, 2017, 09:24:56 AM
I think the true killer has already died.

Do you believe that person caused the head injury?
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 28, 2017, 05:47:59 PM
This could get interesting. . . .

Fair source of info including many photos: https://shakedowntitle.com/cases/jonbenet/
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 11, 2017, 12:31:53 AM
John Ramsey Looks To Score

(Denver Post) The father of JonBenet Ramsey has filed a lawsuit against CBS and the people involved with a two-part special about Ramsey’s murder on the 20-year anniversary of her death.

Court records show that John Ramsey filed a lawsuit in the state of Michigan’s 3rd Circuit Court against CBS Corporation and Critical Content LLC, which produced a “docu-series” called “The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey.”

The suit also names Stanley Burke, Jim Clemente, James Fitzgerald, James Kolar, Henry Lee, Laura Richards and Werner Spitz, all of whom were featured on the program.

Burke Ramsey has filed his own defemation lawsuit against CBS, Criticsl Content, and Burke, Clememte, Fitzgerald, Kolar, Lee, Richards and Spitz.  A ruling on a defense motion to dismiss is pending.

(Denver Post)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on October 17, 2017, 11:59:10 AM
QnA - Lin Wood, Re: John Ramsey and CBS, Westword

Westword: Why did John Ramsey file suit even though a previous complaint had already been made by Burke Ramsey?

Lin Wood: The lawsuits previously filed on behalf of Burke Ramsey sought redress for the false and defamatory accusations made against him by defendants. Those lawsuits did not address the false and defamatory attacks made against John and the damages he has suffered as a result of the CBS documentary.

What are the central claims in the John Ramsey lawsuit?

The CBS documentary directly accuses John of a criminal coverup of the crime CBS asserts was committed by Burke. Elements of the claimed coverup include John lying to law enforcement, staging the crime scene and contributing to the death of JonBenét by being involved in her strangulation with a garrote.

Why was this move taken so many months after the original filing of the Burke Ramsey lawsuit?

There is no significance to be attached to the timing of the filing beyond the desire on John’s part that his son’s lawsuit be filed first. John’s complaint was filed well within the one-year limitation period applicable to defamation cases in Michigan.

Do the claims in the John Ramsey suit differ from those put forward in the Burke Ramsey lawsuit, and if so, how?

The claims made by John are consistent with, arise from and are clearly related to the accusations made by the CBS documentary against Burke — that Burke killed his sister, John knew that Burke had done so and John voluntarily engaged in a coverup of his son’s crime with Burke’s knowledge.

What are the damages incurred by John Ramsey that are claimed in his lawsuit?

The accusations against John constitute libel per se and therefore, the law presumes damages to his reputation. The monetary amount to be awarded for the damage to John’s reputation will be determined by the enlightened conscience of fair and impartial jurors. John’s complaint also seeks an award of punitive damages to punish CBS for its egregious wrongdoing and deter it from repeating such misconduct in the future against other individuals. Any determination of a punitive award will require a review by the juror of CBS’s revenues and net profits in recent years.

We are waiting for rulings from the trial court in both the Spitz lawsuit and the CBS lawsuit on defendants’ motions to dismiss. The motions have been fully briefed, and oral argument has taken place. I believe those motions will be denied based on clear legal precedent applicable to the facts of the cases, and when the motions are denied, full factual discovery in the case will commence as part of preparing the cases for trial.

Are these lawsuits intended as something of a warning shot against other news and entertainment organizations that may be thinking about producing similar programming in the future?

No — these lawsuits are primarily intended to recover monetary damages for the defamation committed by defendants. However, it is certainly my hope for the family that news and entertainment organizations will recognize that Burke and John will not allow publication of these false and defamatory accusations to occur without aggressively pursuing legal remedies. If a media organization carefully examines the facts, I do not think any sensible or credible news or entertainment organization will repeat these false and defamatory accusations against Burke and John in the future. Efforts by the media to profit from publishing false and sensational accusations against the Ramsey family should have ended many years ago.

(Westword, Scribd)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on November 17, 2017, 03:24:11 PM
This was written by a guest on ShakeDownTitle.  Not trying to back it up in any way, atm, but see it as a good read for this thread.

Quote

Quote
The battered justice system had creaked and shuddered, but it had worked!  We had not been indicted! People would have to finally see the jury’s decision as our vindication.”

– John Ramsey, Death of Innocence, 2000

That wasn’t the jury’s decision.  More importantly, John Ramsey knew that wasn’t their decision when he and Patsy co-wrote their book the following year.  That’s fraud.  Rather than saying we weren’t formally indicted by the DA, which is factually true, he chose to manipulate the narrative and instead say the jury – a group of their peers – vindicated them.  They did not.

One would think, now that the grand jury indictments are public knowledge after Judge Robert Lowenbach unsealed them in 2013, that John would be a little humbler with his responses regarding the jury’s vote.

When asked by CNN in September 2016 how he felt about being labeled an accessory to Murder via the indictments, his response:

Quote
“Really?  I didn’t know that. I don’t even know what that means, frankly.”

– John Ramsey

Frankly, nobody’s buying it anymore.


More: https://shakedowntitle.com/2017/10/19/how-john-ramsey-continues-to-perpetrate-a-fraud-upon-the-public/
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 29, 2017, 05:32:42 PM
(https://s13.postimg.org/syic2sv4n/20171223_24_DCARAMw_1.jpg)
A dusting of snow is present on Saturday as another Christmas season arrives without a solution to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, who was found dead in the basement of the family's home in Boulder's University Hill neighborhood Dec. 26, 1996. Surviving family members no longer reside in Colorado. (Cliff Grassmick / Staff Photographer)

Police continue evidence testing at Colorado Bureau of Investigation

By Charlie Brennan
Staff Writer

(Boulder Daily Camera) One year ago, it was nearly impossible to avoid the name or the haunting imagery of the tragic figure of Boulder's JonBenet Ramsey.

Through the fall of 2016, special productions filled the cable and broadcast networks' telecasts with the smiling and angelic face of the 6-year-old girl found murdered in her parents' basement the day after Christmas 20 years earlier.

Investigators associated with the case over the years were joined by sleuths of every stripe who, prompted by the mere flip of the calendar and a convenient round-numbered anniversary, pontificated anew about who might have delivered the blow that fractured the child's skull, buried a ligature deep in her neck and penned a bizarre 2 ½ -page ransom note demanding the unusual sum of $118,000 for her safe return.

Now, with Boulder celebrating the holiday season and the mystery seemingly no closer to a resolution now that it has reached full maturity at 21 years, there is silence.

In fact, all the frenzy surrounding the Ramsey case one year ago did not end simply with media and consultants' coffers just a bit fatter from viewers, clicks and advertisers brought briefly into the fold.

A joint investigation by the Daily Camera and 9News published Oct. 27, 2016, revealed for the first time that, according to several independent experts, DNA evidence that had been cited by then-District Attorney Mary Lacy as a basis to clear Ramsey family members in 2008 did not, in fact, support such a decision.

The experts interviewed by the two news organizations, who examined the same data on which Lacy based her decision, disputed her assertion that the DNA found in one location on JonBenet's underwear and two spots on her long johns were necessarily that of the child's killer. In fact, they said it indicated the genetic presence of two people in addition to the girl, something that documents showed Lacy was told at the time, but made no mention of in her exoneration of the Ramseys.

Also, those experts theorized that the original DNA sample recovered from JonBenet's underwear, which was entered into the FBI's Combined DNA Index System in December 2003 and used since that time for comparison to other DNA samples submitted in the case, may actually be a composite: not that of a single individual.

'Continuing to work with the CBI'

In the wake of the Daily Camera/9News investigation, Boulder police Chief Greg Testa and Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett announced, separately but on the same day, that their offices would pursue new DNA testing in the star-crossed homicide.

On Dec. 14 of last year, the Boulder Police Department issued a news release, stating, "With the emergence of new DNA testing technology, the Boulder Police Department is working with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to determine if this new testing technology could further this investigation."

And in an interview that same day, Testa said, "We did meet with CBI and the district attorney's office, and we had a general discussion about evidence in the Ramsey case, including new technology and DNA testing. And we are going to take a look at the new technology, and see how they may help us with this investigation."

A release issued by Garnett's office at the same time stated that with new testing capabilities in play, "CBI will conduct some further testing of the DNA evidence in the Ramsey case," along with other unspecified cold cases.

Garnett's statement carried this qualifier: "What I am confident about is that the Ramsey case is more than a DNA case, and to ever have a prosecutable case, we have to have several different pieces of evidence come together."

Now, with another Christmas looming, Testa declined to discuss the state of the case, deferring to department spokeswoman Laurie Ogden for comment.

"We are continuing to work with the CBI on evidence testing and we continue to maintain our position of not discussing evidence, or the outcome of testing or processing of evidence, in this case," Ogden said.

Garnett said he has not wavered from his assertion of one year ago that the Ramsey puzzle is "more than a DNA case."

"One of the first things I did when I became district attorney is I gave the Ramsey case back to the police, because I have confidence in their ability to handle the investigation," he said.

"That's where the investigation remains, and I have no doubt that they will update me on any developments that are significant. In the meantime, my staff and I have plenty of active cases that require our full attention."

Defamation cases still pending

While a prosecution of the girl's killer may be no closer, that doesn't mean there's no activity on the case in the courts.

Just two days after the 20th anniversary of the discovery of JonBenet's body by her father, John Ramsey, in the family's basement, her older brother, Burke Ramsey, filed a $750 million defamation lawsuit in Michigan's 3rd Circuit Court against CBS over a two-part series it aired in September 2016. The program, a four-hour "docu-series," as it was described by the network, advanced a theory that JonBenet might have been killed by Burke Ramsey, now 30.

Nine years old at the time his younger sister was killed, Burke Ramsey had previously filed a separate $150 million lawsuit, also in Michigan, against Dr. Werner Spitz, a pathologist who participated in the CBS program, produced by Los Angeles-based Critical Content — which was also named as a co-defendant in both lawsuits.

Motions by CBS to dismiss those lawsuits were argued earlier this year. Rulings on those motions are still pending.

Additionally, John Ramsey filed a defamation lawsuit against CBS Corporation and Critical Content for the same series in October. A defendants' motion to have that lawsuit tossed out was filed earlier this month. It will likely be argued sometime in the spring.

Patsy Ramsey lost a protracted battle with cancer in June 2006. Both of JonBenet's parents consistently denied any involvement in their youngest child's death.

A grand jury heard evidence in the case for 13 months starting in September 1998 before returning indictments against both parents in October 1999 for child abuse resulting in death and accessory to the crimes of first-degree murder and child abuse resulting in death.

Then-District Attorney Alex Hunter, believing there was not adequate evidence to secure a conviction, declined to sign, prosecute — or even announce — the indictments, which remained secret until a Daily Camera reporter successfully sued for their unsealing in October 2013.

Garnett was asked if he believes the Ramsey case will ever see a courtroom prosecution.

"I have no comment on that," he said

(BOULDER Daily Camera)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 29, 2017, 05:44:11 PM
A little blast from the past:

https://shakedowntitle.com/2016/09/21/lin-woods-twitter-meltdown/

(https://s13.postimg.org/uu54dzetz/image.png)

(https://s13.postimg.org/82w1rrwfb/image.png)

(https://s13.postimg.org/sn0vqehd3/image.png)

(https://s13.postimg.org/96g63stxz/image.png)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on December 29, 2017, 06:12:35 PM
Lol, that's why he mostly sticks to retweeting the thoughtlessness from Ari Fleischer and Gary Condit these days.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: AbrahamG on December 29, 2017, 07:20:58 PM
Bet she would have been a sweet piece of ass by now.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: mazrim on December 30, 2017, 11:14:25 AM
Bet she would have been a sweet piece of ass by now.
Sorry, bud, not even a decomposing corpse is going to put up with your advances.

Sicko.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Notomorrow on January 06, 2018, 12:58:00 PM
Amazing how gullable people are...when sales are low tabloids look through high selling go to stories like JonBenet and OJ as they'll always get certain sales during slow news times

This is only unsolved in the media...cops and investigators in the know know Patsy Ramsey was responsible..she even mildly confessed when she said The killer wrote the note as she wrote the note...legally they say she couldn't be eliminated as the writer...but she wrote it

She was becoming abusive to JonBenet, especially over bedwetting..hit her that night and little girl accidentally hit her head...probably toilet bowl or bathtub...may or may not have killed her but the massive gash ensures Patsy Ramsey would be up on major abuse charges...ruined family...she panicked...as can be seen in the note...stayed up crafting story and note...even wrote practice note then threw it out...investigators found practice note..note written on stationary and pen already in house...no intruder wouldn't even bring note with them but take time to find paper and pad in house? No intruder...

Actually has happened before like the Joel Steinberg/Hedda Nussbaum case

Abuse went far enough that parents knew if they took child in it would be abuse charges...so panicked

Happens....just not on this media scale but investigators saw exactly what happened..Patsy Ramsey took it to her grave.

Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on January 06, 2018, 07:05:55 PM
Amazing how gullable people are...when sales are low tabloids look through high selling go to stories like JonBenet and OJ as they'll always get certain sales during slow news times

This is only unsolved in the media...cops and investigators in the know know Patsy Ramsey was responsible..she even mildly confessed when she said The killer wrote the note as she wrote the note...legally they say she couldn't be eliminated as the writer...but she wrote it

She was becoming abusive to JonBenet, especially over bedwetting..hit her that night and little girl accidentally hit her head...probably toilet bowl or bathtub...may or may not have killed her but the massive gash ensures Patsy Ramsey would be up on major abuse charges...ruined family...she panicked...as can be seen in the note...stayed up crafting story and note...even wrote practice note then threw it out...investigators found practice note..note written on stationary and pen already in house...no intruder wouldn't even bring note with them but take time to find paper and pad in house? No intruder...

Actually has happened before like the Joel Steinberg/Hedda Nussbaum case

Abuse went far enough that parents knew if they took child in it would be abuse charges...so panicked

Happens....just not on this media scale but investigators saw exactly what happened..Patsy Ramsey took it to her grave.



How do you explain, say, Burke's statement to describe his mother as racing through rooms asking where her "baby" could be?
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on January 07, 2018, 01:31:16 AM
Burke is moving forward, btw.  It wasn't dismissed.  He'll go on with it, and it will make for interesting movement.  CBS says they're up for the fight, and yes they're ready to show some shit.

Lmao, wouldn't it be funny if the Ramseys' attempts to profit off the Exoneration bullshit, which is bad enough on its own, becomes the thing to ultimately lead to their downfall?
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on January 08, 2018, 09:03:11 AM
Bet she would have been a sweet piece of ass by now.

Sorry, bud, not even a decomposing corpse is going to put up with your advances.

Sicko.

Right?  Fantasizing about what a murdered 6 year old would look like in a sexual way.  AbrahamG you are one twisted mofo.  
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on January 08, 2018, 09:44:13 PM
Rest in peace, JonBenet.

Burke Ramsey to Fight CBS

(Law and Crime) Burke Ramsey, who sued CBS and others for running a documentary implicating him in his sister JonBenét’s death, won a meaningful victory in court Friday. Court records obtained by Law&Crime show that Judge David A. Groner denied the network’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. A review hearing is scheduled for January 18, and a settlement conference for March 8.

The defendants filed their motion to dismiss in March. They claimed, among other things, that the experts in the series never outright accused Ramsey of murder, though one investigator made an “arguably similar observation” that Burke may have hit JonBenét out of anger. According to the Friday ruling from Judge David Groner, however, the defendants failed to show that this complaint lacks grounding. From the ruling obtained by Law&Crime:

Quote
This Court finds that the statements at issue and the docu-series as a whole could reasonably be understood as stating actual facts about Plaintiff. This Court does not find that the “disclaimer” at the beginning and at the end of the program negate the docu-series potentially defamatory meaning.

Ramsey’s attorney L. Lin Wood applauded the decision, and said the court correctly reviewed the defense’s argument that they were just conveying an opinion.

“This ruling paves the way for Burke Ramsey to expose that the CBS ‘docu-series’ was a fraud on the viewing public,” he wrote in an email statement to Law&Crime. “The ruling was well-written and correctly analyzed First Amendment law on the defense of opinion. This ruling was a huge win for Burke.”

Experts on the show, including former FBI Agent Jim Clemente and investigator James A. Kolar, are co-defendants. When Law&Crime reached out for comment, CBS said Friday’s ruling was no big deal.

“This very preliminary procedural ruling was issued prior to any evidence being presented. It is based solely on the plaintiff’s complaint,” said an emailed statement. “Should the case move forward, we look forward to defending it on its merits.”

Ramsey filed suit December 2016 in the 3rd Judicial Circuit of Michigan over the CBS special The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey.

“CBS perpetrated a fraud upon the public—instead of being a documentary based on a new investigation by a so-called team of experts, The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey was a fictional crime show based primarily on a preconceived storyline scripted in a self-published and commercially unsuccessful book, Foreign Faction, written by Defendant James Kolar (“Kolar”) and published in 2012,” said the complaint.

JonBenet’s 1996 murder remains unsolved.

(lawandcrime) .com
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on January 09, 2018, 05:58:15 PM
More information, as it rolls and trolls down to the ground then back around.

JonBenét Family Lawyer Says Lawsuit Rulings "Pave the Way for Justice"


Michael Roberts | January 9, 2018 | Westword - - In October 2016, Burke Ramsey, older brother of JonBenét Ramsey, who was murdered in Boulder on Christmas Day of 1996, filed a $150 million lawsuit against Dr. Werner Spitz, a Michigan-based forensic pathologist who theorized on the CBS program The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey that Burke had killed JonBenét with a blow to the head. A separate $750 million lawsuit against CBS followed, and while Spitz and the network asked that the cases be tossed, Michigan Judge David Groner has now allowed each to move forward in what Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood sees as a much larger victory than representatives for CBS are willing to acknowledge.

"CBS’ public relations efforts to downplay the significance of the ruling are borderline laughable," maintains Wood, corresponding via email.

"The heart and soul of the defense strategy was clearly aimed at having these cases thrown out based on a finding that the comments were protected opinion," Wood adds. "If successful, that strategy would have prevented Burke from conducting discovery. Now the case will focus on the facts. The same facts and truth that exonerated Burke twenty years ago will exonerate him in this case. The facts surrounding the history, development and production of this fraudulent 'documentary-series' will be a stinging indictment of CBS."

In addition, Wood feels that Groner's finding is good news in regard to the future of yet another lawsuit against CBS, this one a $350 million demand filed by Burke's father, John Ramsey, in October 2017.

"There is a pending motion to dismiss in John’s case against CBS based essentially on the same grounds as the motions filed in Burke’s cases," Wood points out. "So the rulings by Judge Groner are predictive that the motion in John’s case will also be denied."

Beyond CBS, the defendants named in the John Ramsey suit are Critical Content, the company that produced the docuseries, as well as Spitz, Jim Clemente, Laura Richards, Stanley Burke, James Fitzgerald, Henry Lee and James Kolar, who served as so-called investigators on the program. Kolar also wrote Foreign Faction, a book about the JonBenét slaying that the suit portrays as the blueprint for the show.

"CBS perpetrated a fraud upon the public," a passage from the complaint reads. "Instead of being a documentary based on a new and legitimate investigation by a team of qualified and unbiased experts, The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey was a fictional crime show based primarily on a preconceived storyline scripted in the self-published and commercially unsuccessful book Foreign Faction, written by Defendant James Kolar and self-published in 2012."

Another section maintains that "Defendants’ accusation that John covered-up that Burke killed JonBenét was not based on a complete investigation revealing truthful facts, new witnesses, new evidence or new theories. Instead, Defendants consciously built their Documentary on an illegitimate and unfounded investigation, false and omitted facts, old witnesses, old evidence and old theories."

Similar claims appear in the Burke Ramsey lawsuits, and Wood isn't surprised that they survived double-headed dismissal motions.

"I have always believed that Burke has a very strong case against CBS and Spitz," he allows. "I am confident that with each deposition taken, his case will only grow stronger. What went on behind the scenes of this 'docu-series' will be fascinating to learn and damning of CBS when exposed to the public. This was a reckless grab by CBS for money and ratings at the expense of the reputation of an innocent young man."

Groner's opinion increases the odds that CBS and Spitz will settle with Burke (and John) rather than take part in a trial that would presumably reveal the behind-the-scenes sausage-making involved in The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey and offer further insight into a tragic mystery that's remained fascinating to a significant portion of the public for more than two decades.

Wood, for his part, sees the latest development as "a flashing warning signal to other members of the media who seek to profit by relying on 'opinions' of guilt to create sensational story lines in unsolved cases of public interest."

In his view, "It is not the role of the media to determine guilt or innocence. It is the role of the media to discover and convey facts to the public. CBS knowingly crossed the line with Burke and it will ultimately pay a very heavy price for doing so. The rulings pave the way for justice for Burke and John and for accountability on the part of CBS for its intentional wrongdoing."
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on January 09, 2018, 06:43:23 PM
More information, as it rolls and trolls down to the ground then back around.

JonBenét Family Lawyer Says Lawsuit Rulings "Pave the Way for Justice"


Michael Roberts | January 9, 2018 | Westword - - In October 2016, Burke Ramsey, older brother of JonBenét Ramsey, who was murdered in Boulder on Christmas Day of 1996, filed a $150 million lawsuit against Dr. Werner Spitz, a Michigan-based forensic pathologist who theorized on the CBS program The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey that Burke had killed JonBenét with a blow to the head. A separate $750 million lawsuit against CBS followed, and while Spitz and the network asked that the cases be tossed, Michigan Judge David Groner has now allowed each to move forward in what Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood sees as a much larger victory than representatives for CBS are willing to acknowledge.

"CBS’ public relations efforts to downplay the significance of the ruling are borderline laughable," maintains Wood, corresponding via email.

"The heart and soul of the defense strategy was clearly aimed at having these cases thrown out based on a finding that the comments were protected opinion," Wood adds. "If successful, that strategy would have prevented Burke from conducting discovery. Now the case will focus on the facts. The same facts and truth that exonerated Burke twenty years ago will exonerate him in this case. The facts surrounding the history, development and production of this fraudulent 'documentary-series' will be a stinging indictment of CBS."

In addition, Wood feels that Groner's finding is good news in regard to the future of yet another lawsuit against CBS, this one a $350 million demand filed by Burke's father, John Ramsey, in October 2017.

"There is a pending motion to dismiss in John’s case against CBS based essentially on the same grounds as the motions filed in Burke’s cases," Wood points out. "So the rulings by Judge Groner are predictive that the motion in John’s case will also be denied."

Beyond CBS, the defendants named in the John Ramsey suit are Critical Content, the company that produced the docuseries, as well as Spitz, Jim Clemente, Laura Richards, Stanley Burke, James Fitzgerald, Henry Lee and James Kolar, who served as so-called investigators on the program. Kolar also wrote Foreign Faction, a book about the JonBenét slaying that the suit portrays as the blueprint for the show.

"CBS perpetrated a fraud upon the public," a passage from the complaint reads. "Instead of being a documentary based on a new and legitimate investigation by a team of qualified and unbiased experts, The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey was a fictional crime show based primarily on a preconceived storyline scripted in the self-published and commercially unsuccessful book Foreign Faction, written by Defendant James Kolar and self-published in 2012."

Another section maintains that "Defendants’ accusation that John covered-up that Burke killed JonBenét was not based on a complete investigation revealing truthful facts, new witnesses, new evidence or new theories. Instead, Defendants consciously built their Documentary on an illegitimate and unfounded investigation, false and omitted facts, old witnesses, old evidence and old theories."

Similar claims appear in the Burke Ramsey lawsuits, and Wood isn't surprised that they survived double-headed dismissal motions.

"I have always believed that Burke has a very strong case against CBS and Spitz," he allows. "I am confident that with each deposition taken, his case will only grow stronger. What went on behind the scenes of this 'docu-series' will be fascinating to learn and damning of CBS when exposed to the public. This was a reckless grab by CBS for money and ratings at the expense of the reputation of an innocent young man."

Groner's opinion increases the odds that CBS and Spitz will settle with Burke (and John) rather than take part in a trial that would presumably reveal the behind-the-scenes sausage-making involved in The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey and offer further insight into a tragic mystery that's remained fascinating to a significant portion of the public for more than two decades.

Wood, for his part, sees the latest development as "a flashing warning signal to other members of the media who seek to profit by relying on 'opinions' of guilt to create sensational story lines in unsolved cases of public interest."

In his view, "It is not the role of the media to determine guilt or innocence. It is the role of the media to discover and convey facts to the public. CBS knowingly crossed the line with Burke and it will ultimately pay a very heavy price for doing so. The rulings pave the way for justice for Burke and John and for accountability on the part of CBS for its intentional wrongdoing."

Careful what you wish for. 
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on January 09, 2018, 10:19:56 PM
Careful what you wish for. 

The guy who enters those for Westword is someone L Wood is willing to personally communicate with at any time, so the guy doesn't want to lose that valuable contact by making him angry.  That's why he writes them one-sided.  Considering the pattern, even, he may have an arrangement.

But we'll see how good the CBS Schmoe-Patrol can roll, since they claim to be prepared to defend and not run.  They'll need to invest a few bucks to do it, if so, considering the alternative.  No problem for them to spend as much money as necessary, if they really mean what they say.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on February 07, 2018, 08:39:13 PM
Uhh, um, ooh, wow!  Let's see.... No.  Not unless some wildly important info exists in obscurity, which could only point to a coverup.  At the very least, covering against a level of incompetency not seen since the Three Stooges did that wiring job at the snobby rich lady's mansion. 

Plenty of WTF moments in this case, though, which may never be answered.  Looks like a coverup already, as is, to protect (at least) John Ramsey.  So anything goes.

(https://s18.postimg.org/eszwe8ieh/jonbenet-ramsey-potential-new-murder-suspect-pp.jpg)

Break In The Case? Potential New JonBenét Suspect Stonewalls Cops Over Her Murder!

A stunning array of new evidence has led investigators to a fresh suspect in the killing of JonBenét Ramsey — and in a bombshell world exclusive interview the man’s ex-wife told RadarOnline.com she cannot account for his whereabouts on the night the 6-year-old beauty queen was murdered!

Speaking for the first time, Heather Kubes told Radar she can’t give Keith Schwinaman “a 100 percent alibi” for the fateful night of Dec. 25 and the wee hours of Dec. 26.

“It wasn’t unusual for him to disappear for a few hours and have no explanation for it,” she revealed. “I have no idea what he was capable of. I think anything is possible.”

What’s more, the stunning development comes as a top law enforcement official who worked on the case demanded Schwinaman face fresh DNA tests.

“If you look at JonBenét’s murder and Schwinaman’s crimes for just the methods of operation, a lot of similarities fit,” said retired Boulder, Colo., police detective Bob Whitson. “But what we didn’t have was any physical evidence against him.”

However, Radar has uncovered in a shocking twist how Schwinaman will never be forced to submit evidence because of a plea deal he struck involving three sex crimes with eerie similarities to Ramsey’s murder.

Ramsey was found murdered on the morning of Dec. 26, 1996, in the basement of her Boulder home.

Her father, John, discovered her lifeless body. She had been strangled with a handmade garrote fashioned from a nylon rope and a paintbrush handle. Her head was bashed in and she may have been sexually assaulted. The only real clues were a rambling ransom note and a broken basement window.

There was no sign of a break-in, leading investigators to believe the killer or killers knew the layout of the Ramseys’ home.

No one has ever been charged with the crime.

But just a year before Ramsey grisly murder, Schwinaman pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault on a child, and was hit with a four-year deferred sentence.

Kubes added yet another explosive detail that could identify her ex as JonBenét’s killer.

During their marriage, Kubes said Schwinaman often wore a cross necklace of hers. But sometime between 1996 and 1998, the necklace disappeared — and when Ramsey’s body was found, she was wearing a similar gold cross around her neck.

In a 2003 plea deal, Schwinaman agreed to serve a 32-year prison sentence for sex acts he committed against three women between 1993 and 1996.

He remains incarcerated at the Crowley County Correctional Facility in Colorado.

Tellingly, his M.O. in all three assaults had uncanny similarities to Ramsey’s murder.

He tied up two of his victims with nylon rope and taped his other victim’s hands behind her back. In one case, Schwinaman broke through a window before attacking his victim.

Authorities tested Schwinaman’s DNA while investigating another case, but it did not match the DNA found on Ramsey.

But Whitson pointed out Schwinaman, now 52, “always wore gloves” while committing his crimes.

Despite the evidence pointing to Schwinaman as Ramsey’s killer, it’s unlikely he’ll ever be charged with her murder — because of the 2003 plea deal.

“He was told that no homicides would be included in the deal, but if he didn’t confess to everything and they found out about it later, he could be charged,” Whitson told Radar.

But in an outrageous twist, Schwinaman’s lawyer later struck an oral agreement with a deputy district attorney that promised authorities would not “pursue other cases” against the pervert, said Whitson.

Despite that, Whitson said Schwinaman’s DNA should be tested once more against the DNA found on Ramsey because it’s been found that DNA “could come from various sources.”

Authorities do plan to retest DNA in the case, a source confirmed.

But Whitson pointed out, “Without at least one piece of physical evidence linking Schwinaman to her murder, the bottom line is we still don’t know.”

(Radar Online)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on February 08, 2018, 08:35:56 PM
Will spare us from the insult of nonsense, but the past week has seen multiple "reports" to "inform" us that So-and-So "may be responsible" (your choice -- pick a past suspect now deceased or in prison for murder).  The ex-wife will tell you about it, you see.

Cheap work, IMO, and very tacky.  CBS may look to turn it into a weapon, even, it's just so terribly unbelievable.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 05, 2018, 08:56:33 PM
Another blast from the past.

EX-FRIENDS OF RAMSEYS URGE ACTION

New York Times News Service (Aug 21, 1998) - Three former friends of John and Patsy Ramsey, parents of the slain JonBenet, have asked for a special prosecutor to take over the stalled 20-month-old investigation into the death of the 6-year-old Colorado beauty princess.

The three former friends, all Boulder residents, have broken off ties with the Ramseys, who have moved to Atlanta. In two separate letters, the former friends accused Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter of unwarranted delays and of overly accommodating the Ramseys.Hunter ``has provided evidence to Ramsey defense attorneys at their request' but denied other witnesses' requests for transcripts of their own statements, wrote Fleet and Priscilla White, a couple who had the Ramseys to dinner on Dec. 25, 1996, a few hours before JonBenet was found dead. The Whites also said Hunter has alienated police detectives and key witnesses. In a brief interview, White, an oil and gas entrepreneur, described himself as ``a frustrated witness in a horrible murder case.' He was in the Ramseys' basement when John Ramsey discovered JonBenet's battered body. In their 15-page letter, the Whites alleged that ``Hunter and those advising him have no intention of seeking indictment from a grand jury.'

They added, ``We must be mindful, however, of the first cause of the investigation's failure - the refusal of John and Patsy Ramsey to cooperate fully and genuinely with those officials.'

Emboldened by this letter, Judith Phillips, a photographer who had taken pictures of the Ramsey family, wrote an open letter Thursday calling for a special prosecutor and charging that Hunter was ``willing to obstruct the justice he swore to uphold.'

(NYTNS - 1998)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 05, 2018, 09:12:04 PM
Another another blast from the past.

Man Sues Over JonBenet Murder Claim

Ramsey family friend targets anonymous online accuser in court

(TheSmokingGun - NOVEMBER 9 2006)--A friend of JonBenet Ramsey's father has filed a lawsuit against an anonymous web surfer who has posted online messages claiming that the man killed the six-year-old beauty queen as well as another person. In a lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Rod Westmoreland, 54, alleges that someone using the handle 'undrtheradar' has authored posts this year on two message boards that claim he murdered JonBenet in December 1996 and killed a pizza delivery man in a bizarre August 2003 bombing incident. Westmoreland, a Merrill Lynch senior vice president who is only identified by his initials in the complaint, is a friend of John Ramsey, JonBenet's father. On the morning the girl was found missing from her room and a kidnap note was discovered in the family's Colorado home, John Ramsey called Westmoreland for help in gathering ransom money. In his complaint, a copy of which you'll find below, Westmoreland contends that he has been maligned by posts on message boards hosted by Topix.net and the Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community. He intends to learn the real identity of 'undrtheradar' via discovery in the case, which was filed by attorney Lin Wood, who has previously represented John Ramsey and his late wife Patsy in several libel actions.

(TheSmokingGun)

Document:  http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/man-sues-over-jonbenet-murder-claim
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 05, 2018, 09:47:08 PM
:D Here's part of a post from someone who is almost certainly the person in question, as s/he claims:

Quote
John Ramsey tells the police that he thinks of Rod Westmoreland when he reads the ransom note.

I also think of Rod Westmoreland when I read the ransom note and he attempted to sue me for my thoughts.

In Rod Westmoreland's lawsuit against me he claims.........

"Plaintiff has suffered public hatred, comtempt and ridicule"

"As a direct and proximate result of the false accusations maliciously published by the Defendant, Plaintiff has suffered special damages in that he has suffered permanent impairment to his abilities to obtain or maintain gainful employment".

But when you do a simple google search of Rod Westmoreland''s name you find this.........

2010 Top Advisor Rankings: Georgia

Ranked #1: Rod Westmoreland, Merrill Lynch

Rod Westmoreland goes on to state this in his lawsuit......

"Plaintiff did not write the ransom note"

"Plaintiff did not murder Jonbenet Ramsey"

Then oddly he says this..........

"Plaintiff has filed a motion to proceed anonymously"

So in other words, Rod Westmoreland wants to sue me to prove to the world that he "did not write the ransom note" and that he "did not kill Jonbenet", but he has just one simple request, that the world not know who he is! It took an investigation from the media to reveal that Rod Westmoreland was the Plaintiff.

He also states this in his lawsuit..........

"Plaintiff is not a public figure for purposes of this action"

And is contradicted by the fact that he is named by John Ramsey as a possible author of the ransom note and by all of the other facts in this case. He is not only a "public figure", he is one of the "main figures".

Finally, Rod Westmoreland goes on to say this in his lawsuit against me.........

"At the time of their posting, Defendant knew that the false accusations about Plaintiff were unverified and unsubstantiated"

It is a fact that almost 14 years after the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey, Rod Westmoreland the person who was in the middle of everything, still to this day has never spoken publicly about this case and the role that he played in it. He has never publicly told his side of the story except for his denials through his lawyers in his lawsuit. With that said, how can Rod Westmoreland say that the "Defendant knew that the false accusations about Plaintiff were unverified and unsubstantiated"? No one will ever know if these accusations are false until Mr. Rod Westmoreland finally speaks. It's way past due!

I have done my civic duty to get him to speak it is time for others to take it upon themselves to try to get him to speak. Who will be the first to do it?

The moral of this story is you have a guy in Rod Westmoreland that was in the middle of everything before, during and after the crime who wants to remain silent, who does not want to be considered a "public figure", who wants to remain anonymous, and if you accuse him of committing this crime, he will sue you, atleast for 30 days and anonymously of course because he knows he really doesn't want to sue.

(Above is content from poster "sunshine" on Topix)
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: LurkerNoMore on March 06, 2018, 08:32:05 AM
This is generally a foregone conclusion of where the guilt lies.  Just like in OJ's case.   Nearly everyone believes they know who the killer(s) are, but despite all the time and evidence (or lack of), there has been no arrest or solving this case.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 07, 2018, 07:10:37 PM
Despite "something" very strange in the background of this story, which I've become convinced exists as an obstructive force: the one "how" that remains unmatched says that Burke caused the head injury.

The rest follows very naturally, minus the sheer horror of having to realize it.  The certain "something" is closely related to that (in more ways than one) imo.

But the offset nature of the crimes (with Burke injuring her, effectively ending her, but not killing her) goes to what LNM says.  Plus the shameless wealth-worship by Boulder PD, combined with something possibly even more sinister at the DA's exclusive coffee klatsch, and here we are.  This is what we're left with.

Among the endless avenues of wrong, let's hope CBS is quietly figuring out Mary Lacy's inner-workings.  Find out what makes Mary-Mary do her crazy stuff, such as to create a written "exoneration" on a case that's a million miles from closed -- with the subjects of her letter being, still, the only connection to anything.  Looks as though she was racing against time, knowing the DNA would someday be worthless toward a theory already desperate for life.

Love to see who's batting for Ramsey, because this shit's off the hook.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 08, 2018, 09:49:47 PM
(https://s28.postimg.org/fuptkf4jx/art_stan.jpg)

Stan Garnett, Boulder County DA who once talked about "telling the world" the identity of the guilty in "open court", is leaving the position after receiving a "too good to pass up" offer from his former workplace.  (Hope it's not an offer he can't refuse, as they say.)

But Garnett, the guy who once said that, now says "Ta Ta, Suckers!" as he protects his butt from being hit by the door.  

BTW, he now says the JBR case likely won't be resolved -- ever.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 08, 2018, 09:53:49 PM
AFAIK Hunter backed Lacy and Lacy backed this guy.  So no need for a shock.  We should have figured he'd bitch out.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 26, 2018, 05:04:40 PM
For someone who complains about fake news, as L. Lin Wood does so regularly, he holds interest in plenty of it.  Only when his money's at stake, though.  Otherwise, believe him, he's just as angry about it as the rest of us.  Why, he'll open fire on a TV before ever considering to change the channel.  That's how angry. 

At the moment, however, we have "new evidence" (a few words by an ex-wife, possibly drunk at the time) which "suggests" (the ex-wife's words led someone into suggesting something) there may have been TWO individuals involved in the crime.  Now you can be doubly doubtful that anyone but an intruder killed JonBenet.  You can view it as John Ramsey being twice as innocent, even.

But if you're into something else, then maybe you ought to know the individual who killed in the Black Dahlia case from the 1940s (his first murder, at the age of 13) was also responsible for JonBenet's death 50 years later.  A couple of guys who "studied" the matter will tell you it's true.

See?  All better.  Lots of intruders out there.  Everything pointing to John Ramsey as being involved, shall be treated as complete and utter ridiculousness.  Don't you forget it.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 26, 2018, 05:20:05 PM
^ Not to mention other "sudden and urgent" stories using phrases such as "BOMBSHELL NEW EVIDENCE!" in every other sentence, including one carrying a headline on Google News saying "Suspect's Body to be Exhumed!" -- when no such thing is true.  In that one, an unnamed "investigator" (meaning anyone who looks at even one word about it) said he thought it should be done, given the more recent DNA information.  But the deceased person was a possible suspect at one time, who'd already given DNA.  And the information mentioned by the investigator as being cause to exhume, only refers to passing DNA which could've come from anyone, anywhere, and totally unrelated to guilt.

But the headline remains very noticeable and prominent, so I suppose that's how the ballgame is to be played.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on March 26, 2018, 06:43:03 PM
Link?  What are you talking about?
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 27, 2018, 12:24:25 PM
Link?  What are you talking about?

Right here:

Will spare us from the insult of nonsense, but the past week has seen multiple "reports" to "inform" us that So-and-So "may be responsible" (your choice -- pick a past suspect now deceased or in prison for murder).  The ex-wife will tell you about it, you see.

Cheap work, IMO, and very tacky.  CBS may look to turn it into a weapon, even, it's just so terribly unbelievable.

Looking through information on JBR, and it's what a person will find.  It (as a "BOMBSHELL!" report) amounts to locating an ex-wife of someone who was once a possible suspect, then getting her to express anger in a way to reveal her "suspicion" about him: which, in reality, is that she thinks he's a jerk who deserves to have every crime in history pinned on him.

It's without substance and irresponsible to report.  Someone with interest in John Ramsey is behind it, and it amounts to nothing more than buying print to sway opinion.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on March 27, 2018, 01:29:47 PM
Right here:

Looking through information on JBR, and it's what a person will find.  It (as a "BOMBSHELL!" report) amounts to locating an ex-wife of someone who was once a possible suspect, then getting her to express anger in a way to reveal her "suspicion" about him: which, in reality, is that she thinks he's a jerk who deserves to have every crime in history pinned on him.

It's without substance and irresponsible to report.  Someone with interest in John Ramsey is behind it, and it amounts to nothing more than buying print to sway opinion.

Is this something Ramsey or his lawyer put out there or just something from a tabloid?
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 27, 2018, 01:46:41 PM
Is this something Ramsey or his lawyer put out there or just something from a tabloid?

I believe it's sort of a one-for-all type thing, with (of course) John Ramsey being the stake in it and then Burke by extension, with Wood serving as the alpha of the group.  Something very strong has run interference throughout the whole time, though, and I'd sure love to know what that is.  And why.

But the right money can buy "news" stories, for sure, and with Google operating as it does the information will spread at their discretion.  They decide what'll be pounded into our brain and what'll be kept from our reach.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 27, 2018, 02:18:35 PM
Werner Spitz may have been too daring with what he said, imo, by including the words "it's the boy who did it" in his statements.  A little surprising, being that Spitz is actually in his nineties and has been around the block a few times (still busy as a bee to this day).  And even though he was doing a radio interview and probably didn't have anyone there to check him, it seems (just maybe) he'd know better than to be quite so blunt.  That he'd know how to say what he wants without giving anyone a free shot at him.

The TV special is another story, of course, because neither the production company nor CBS want to allow something willy-nilly to be pinned on them, and they involve certain individuals to try to make sure that doesn't happen.  There, the statement about Burke possibly hitting JB out of anger, might be the weak link.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on March 27, 2018, 02:33:33 PM
I haven't watched that CBS special, still, even though the link is posted in this thread.  But TMK Spitz didn't use or repeat those words in that show, and it could be that he was checked.  The CC and CBS people weren't unaware of the fact that Wood lurked in the background, looking for a kill, and that he'd go for their throats at the slightest chance.  By allowing, say, Spitz to use words which attract trouble, then keeping it in after the final cut, to me would say they're planning an ambush.

In any case, they'd better fight and not bitch out.  Put John Ramsey in his place for a change.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on April 10, 2018, 12:38:21 PM
A "handwriting expert" has been found to say that a past suspect (now deceased, and not inconveniently so) is/was a match for writing the note.  Maybe this is the big turning point, finally.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on April 10, 2018, 01:33:47 PM
A "handwriting expert" has been found to say that a past suspect (now deceased, and not inconveniently so) is/was a match for writing the note.  Maybe this is the big turning point, finally.

That isn't new. 
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on April 10, 2018, 08:15:44 PM
That isn't new. 

Someone had better tell Google news feed, then.  It's listed as being from a few days ago.

If the one you're thinking about involves Glenn Meyer, then this is an "updated" version of it.  The "investigators" who wanted his body exhumed, though, are now being called "fans" (lol).   The "new evidence" is that someone says his handwriting could match the note.

Another headline is born.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on April 10, 2018, 08:59:41 PM
Someone had better tell Google news feed, then.  It's listed as being from a few days ago.

If the one you're thinking about involves Glenn Meyer, then this is an "updated" version of it.  The "investigators" who wanted his body exhumed, though, are now being called "fans" (lol).   The "new evidence" is that someone says his handwriting could match the note.

Another headline is born.

Ok.  Your post was too cryptic.  I thought you were talking about the hand writing expert who said Patsy Ramsey (now deceased) was the author of the ransom note. 
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on April 11, 2018, 06:04:23 PM
Ok.  Your post was too cryptic.  I thought you were talking about the hand writing expert who said Patsy Ramsey (now deceased) was the author of the ransom note. 

Yes, it deserves an eyeroll for sarcasm.  Should have added one.

Obviously, the first question asks how the person (Meyer) would've/could've come about the knowledge to include certain information written in the note.  Failing to have an answer for that, though, may be why the "news story" must point out that the amount noted wasn't exactly the same as J. Ramsey's bonus.  It was slightly more.  Alrighty.

Pretty sure the CBI (Colorado) has said it appears to be the work of Mrs. Ramsey.  Yes.  It remains consistent with everything else about it, too, which says quite a lot.

These stories, with headlines like "Case Closed?" are just so irresponsibly done.  But to make a case about false accusations by making false accusations, lol, is even worse than that.
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on July 01, 2018, 08:55:54 PM
New round of tests have been completed by CBI (Bureau of Investigation, Colorado).
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Las Vegas on July 02, 2018, 07:27:19 PM
This is what CBI may threaten:

(https://s15.postimg.cc/8vi0io6ob/1-c2fa11797b.jpg)

(https://s15.postimg.cc/y2swiihdn/2-6050751a45.jpg)

(https://s15.postimg.cc/be3pj1fgb/3-149e7381b2.jpg)

Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on January 10, 2019, 05:13:21 PM
Brother of JonBenet Ramsey reaches settlement with CBS
By The Associated PressBOULDER, Colo. — Jan 5, 2019

A $750 million defamation lawsuit filed against CBS by the brother of JonBenet Ramsey has been settled.

The Daily Camera reports court records show that a Michigan Circuit Court judge on Wednesday dismissed the lawsuit filed by Burke Ramsey in December 2016.

The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.

The lawsuit said that Burke Ramsey's reputation was ruined after a television series suggested he killed his 6-year-old sister more than two decades ago.

A spokesperson for producers of the TV program said in a statement that "an amicable resolution of their differences" has been reached.

An attorney for CBS declined to comment.

The beauty pageant star was found dead in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Colorado, in December 1996. A prosecutor cleared her parents and brother.

https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-container/Entertainment/wireStory/brother-jonbenet-ramsey-reaches-settlement-cbs-60169849
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Agnostic007 on January 11, 2019, 08:45:21 PM
To this day.. a bizarre chain of events
Title: Re: JonBent and Burke Ramsey
Post by: Dos Equis on December 29, 2023, 12:33:28 PM
This is like the OJ search for the real killer.  In my opinion, the person who killed that little girl was in the house. 

JonBenet Ramsey case 'ready for' DNA testing when 'validated technology' becomes available: police
John Ramsey told Fox News Digital that he thinks 'there's still hope for some movement'
By Audrey Conklin Fox News
Published December 29, 2023
https://www.foxnews.com/us/jonbenet-ramsey-case-ready-dna-testing-validated-technology-becomes-available-police