As pointed before, people do very stupid things when they do believe that their friends or family are innocent, but they know that the authorities are closing in on evidence that could send their friends or family to jail or to separate them forever.
Still, that “she wrote the letter” remains a speculation, a strong one IMHO but not to point at the killer, but to mislead the authorities away from the family in the mistaken belief that the father was responsible.
:Grumble:
I meant to say in post #80 that you must not know **about **The Star and The Globe. They also thought that they could get around posting “news” with no evidence, they had to settle with the family then.
There is evidence against Burke - his fingerprints on the bowl of pineapple, his lies about how he slept the whole night, his feces on JonBenet’s Christmas present, his testimony about what happened, the tapes from his various interviews with police and psychiatrists (which he must have given permission to use, since he was a minor when they occured.)
You can argue that the evidence is flawed or weak, or that there’s better evidence against someone else, but you can’t say that there’s no evidence against Burke.
The thing is - Burke’s never really been pushed to defend himself publicly about any of it. He’s never been questioned, as an adult, about the discrepancies, for example. He’s never testified under oath. Plus he’s clearly super uncomfortable answering questions on camera. Even if he’s innocent - his nervous smiles and body language make him look guilty as hell.
Can you imagine him on the witness stand? Can you imagine him in front of a jury trying to explain why he doesn’t want to talk about the pineapple? If this goes to trial, can you imagine the defense playing these interviews for a jury of him smiling and relaxed while he talks about his sister’s murder?
And at the end of the day - even if CBS settles - it’s not going to improve his reputation.
As a child, people might have been willing to go easy on him. No one today is going to go easy on him. Even if he’s innocent - especially if he’s innocent - he should shut up and stay out of the public eye.
Have you read his book…or even a synopsis of it? It is about a whole lot of famous murders over a century or two including, yes, including the Lindbergh case. Along with his thoughts on the criminal justice system and how to improve it. James does make the statement that if readers come away with one conclusion from his book, it is the Ramsay’s are innocent (and he initially thought they were guilty).
Would anyone have cared about the Tawana Brawley case if she was white?
Can’t speak for Amateur Barbarian, but I’ve read Douglas’ book (The Cases that Haunt Us). I agree with the characterization of it, that it’s all a very transparent attempt to exonerate the Ramseys. I found his final argument rather unconvincing, to the point that it ended up making me question Douglas’ take on the earlier murders, too.
…you DID say almost everything I said in my post.
“Doubt” is the wrong word to use. “Doubt” assumes a scenario. And you’ve assumed a scenario and then proceeded to “cast doubt” on that scenario. And then proclaimed that the evidence is “nearly worthless.”
But I have no reason to join you in your doubt. Because we can play the same game with any of the thousands of cases in crime labs around the world what are working with unknown DNA. Don’t all of them have “doubt” over how the DNA got to where they ended up? Simply “not knowing” is not a reason to decide that evidence is “nearly worthless.”
Your case for disregarding the DNA evidence seems to be “the guilty party can use it to make himself less guilty.” Evidence isn’t “worthless” just because someone could use it to make a case that they might be “innocent.” Because, who knows: maybe they are actually innocent? But how someone “not involved” with the investigation decides to use the evidence doesn’t change the relative importance of any particular piece of evidence. GIGObuster makes a solid case in this thread as to why the DNA evidence is important and relevant. Everyone else: not so much.
You’re just playing the SDMB pedant role. Of course is could be valuable at some point if a match turns up and they can be placed in the area, but as far as pointing towards a legitimate suspect, it is worthless. If there were a match somewhere in her room, on the flashlight or baseball bat, on the ransom note or the pen that wrote it, then it would be corroborating evidence, but absent any of those or dozens of other things, it actually points away from an intruder.
You’re saying that every piece of hard evidence tied to the murder was swabbed clean, except for the girl’s body. Yeah, right.
And later:
No, not the same garment, and the foreign DNA matched also the one found under her fingernails, more likely as par of her last struggle.
Pedantic, yes but also logical, the reality is that then the DNA of the father or the brother would had been found instead of the unidentified male that was.
…who is playing “the SDMB Pedant Role?” If you are speaking to me I would appreciate it if you could either quote me, or mention me by name, or use some other sort of indication that you were referring to me. Then if you are talking to me I could respond (especially to your outrageous strawman at the end) appropriately.
If you are not speaking to me: please indicate who you were refering too so that they could respond to you appropriately as well.
Please tell me you don’t think Ramsey DNA was not present on Jon Benet’s body. John Ramsey carried the body up the stairs, for God’s sake! The entire house was full of Ramsey DNA, which makes that evidence worthless in the same way. You could clean that house for a month with bleach and you could still not walk through it without picking up “touch” DNA from a Ramsey, most likely all of them.
Uh uh, and the reality is that the samples were sent to the FBI lab, so you still have to explain why then almost none of the Family DNA was found in the samples made at the time of the autopsy.
And still no explanation of the logical implication: The DNA of the family was not there in enough quantities, first coming from the obvious blood spots and then from the more sophisticated samples made.