I can’t really answer this question. I’m not sure whether they were or not. I just think the evidence is plain bad to narrow down any decent theory. There’s a lot of just odd evidence as well as piss-poor handling of it and the investigation by all involved it seems from police on up to DA’s office.
But to attempt to answer individual questions:
What is the evidence that the area around the vagina had been wiped clean? And why wouldn’t the parents do that if they were trying to hide evidence that would implicate them? Or if they didn’t want her found in a fashion that would demean her innocence?
Why would they take her out of the house if it would appear that an intruder would have access to the interior of the house and their daughter? It seems like it would be easier to leave her in the house and make it look like someone came in as opposed to taking the chance of getting caught with their dead daughter away from the house.
If they hadn’t alerted the police when they would reasonably find her “missing,” it wouldn’t look too good for them. They’d have to show that they have no idea where she is, hence calling the police to report her missing. The longer you wait to notify police, the more involved you appear to be.
ETA: Who says Burke tied the knot?
EETA: But even if he did, what kind of “specialized” knot was it and did he ever do anything related to boy scouts or own a book of knots? Or sail or hike or ride horses or anything like that? There’s lots of reasons to know different knots.
I’m going to agree with SEJ here (btw, GO PENS) and as for a cite that the touch DNA is “so sensitive to be useless”. The fact it matches with a separate DNA sample on a separate piece of clothing suggests that it is actually quite useful. The odds of the incidental DNA appearing on two separate pieces of clothing is exceedingly low.
Also, the DNA under the fingernails was degraded to the point of not being useful; however, I am not certain what the big deal about PCR being used to amplify it is. PCR is just a method to produce a large amount of identical sequences to a small sample amount. It doesn’t create new sequences or anything.
The problem with the DNA in the underwear was that it was degraded at the time of the murder. JonBenet frequently got help when using the bathroom and with wiping. The Ramsey’s weren’t real picky as to who helped her. The DNA on the long johns could just as easily be from someone who helped her in the bathroom, we don’t know that it came from the murderer.
Even Mary Lacy herself publicly stated that it could be artifact.
Mary Lacey said there could be “no innocent explanation” for the location of the DNA samples. She has more knowledge and expertise in the case than anybody in this thread, and the current DA’s office has not contradicted her. The Ramseys remain officially cleared and are no longer under investigation.
The DNA in the bloodstains on her underwear was not so degraded that they couldn’t extract a full profile, so it’s an empty point.
I wonder why it is that none of the Ramsey accusers seem willing to address all the evidence for an intruder.
This does not sound right to me. A six-year-old girl needed help in the bathroom and with wiping? In my experience most four-year-old girls are fine with this on their own.
And the Ramseys weren’t that picky who helped her? This also sounds bogus to me. I can’t imagine a parent not limiting such help, if needed, to family and the closest family friends.
QFT. An innocent person can say many things to the police that may harm them at a trial, and you can never say anything to the police that will help you at a trial.
Dio, you seem to be conflating an internet message board with a court of law. For instance, in discussing *our personal opinions *of a case, we could take into account evidence that had been excluded from a trial, say due to the way it was obtained.
There is not always a 1:1 correlation between the way the criminal justice system operates (and should operate, IMO) and the actual truth of what happened in a particular instance. Our system is (at least theoretically) biased to prefer freeing a guilty person over condemning an innocent one, which means that it’s important to understand the distinction between, “*Should *Person X *be convicted of *Crime Y?” and “*Did *Person X *commit *Crime Y?” I’d think you were intelligent enough to appreciate that distinction and subtlety.
Uh, what? Children aren’t tried as adults, usually, but AFAIK they are still tried.
I’m sure the second “DNA” was meant to be “underwear,” but it led to the great mental image of a factory of people, carefully packaging DNA samples to be used in contaminating crime scenes.
That the DNA in her underwear was widely reported. Cell Mark labs did the testing, and there used to be a copy of the lab report online. I’ll see if I can find it, but, seriously, this is an accepted part of the case.
Next two sentences I can clear up in one cite. JonBenet’s grandmother, Nedra told the police:
Perfect Murder Perfect Town Page 254 (paperback)
"During the trip the detectives re-interviewed Nedra Paugh and asked for a third handwriting sample.
By now the officers had learned from several babysitters that JonBenet had regressed in her toilet training during Patsy’s battle with cancer. In this interview, Nedra confirmed to police that at age six, her granddaughter was still in the habit of asking adults to wipe her when she was on the toilet. It didn’t matter where she was or who the adult was-anyone within shouting distance would do.
Some adults, thinking she was old enough to do this herself, stopped answering her calls, and it resulted in soiled underpants. JonBenet’s apparent lack of embarrassment about adults wiping her made the detectives wonder if it had somehow invited activity that led to vaginal penetration.
Did Nedra think JonBenet would have fought an intruder? The detectives asked. “I guarantee you” she replied.
Mary Lacy talked about the DNA when she cleared Karr
Although the case against Karr came apart when it was learned Saturday that his DNA didn’t match, Lacy said Tuesday the crime scene DNA doesn’t necessarily belong to the person who killed JonBenet.
“The DNA could be an artifact,” she said. "It isn’t necessarily the killer’s. There’s a probability that it’s the killer’s. But it could be something else.
More at Link
Burke owned a pair of Hi-Tek boots. This came out in the Aug 2000 police interview with Patsy. Link
I don’t believe a stun gun was used. As far as I know, there’s no proof that one was. There’s theory, but no proof.
The missing paintbrush handle, if there was one, could have easily been taken out of the house by the parents.
John broke the window. If you’re talking about the leaves and whatnot, that was also in the train room. The Ramsey’s house was just not that clean. In fact, it was pretty messy, especially in the basement.
We covered the DNA.
The nut hair? Seriously? Ok.
It was reported in 2002 on several tv news broadcasts and newspapers that the ancillary hair was sourced to Patsy. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. But that hair could just as easily come from secondary transfer.
…
Believe it or not, I’m not convinced the Ramsey’s did it. I will admit that based on what evidence we know about, it seems likely that they did, or knew who did and are covering. The problem for me is coming up with an intruder theory that fits all the evidence. In all these years, I’ve never been able to come up with one, nor have I heard one that makes sense from anyone else.
I’ve been meaning to ask, do you really think a kid of what, nine-years, could keep quiet about it? Especially during the many, many times he must have been questioned?
And do you think Burke tied the specialized knot on the garrote? Clearly not. So, presumably one of the parents, then. They would have had to put it on JonBenet post mortem (having found her dead from Burke fracturing her skull). But in that case, there would be very different tissue changes on her neck compared to those that would have been expected had it been tightened before her death.
Let me just weasel away and say I don’t find it interesting enough to try this case by interpreting media comments and interpretations.
Things like deciding there was “specialized knot used in BSM” are interpretations which I have no mechanism of dissecting to a rigor required to form an opinion.
I have seen many many careless and hasty interpretations and opinions by the media that are just plain stupid; it’s one of the things that made this case so interesting. At the time I became interested in it for awhile (enough, for instance, to review the autopsy photographs and so on), but frankly I’m not interested in debating every fine point here because it’s all second and third hand information that’s been processed through so many filters.
I am deeply suspicious of the way the Ramseys lawyered up. None of the explanations pass a basic smell test. Sure, rich people get lawyers if they think they might be wrongly suspected. But when their baby is newly dead, they demand the frigging police find the killer, leave no stone unturned and they fight to have the best investigators in the world uncover every detail. The Ramseys would not even talk to the police independently. This tiny thing is critical, for if they were interviewed separately and immediately, we would know if they were innocent or covering something up. It would be easy for separate interviews to poke holes in their story if there were holes to be poked. Obviously the advice from their lawyer was to not allow that. I’m a rich guy, and I don’t believe for one moment that we somehow have this gut reaction to follow legal advice blindly if we think our daughter was just murdered by an intruder. Their lack of cooperation in that and many subsequent areas was atrocious.
Patsy’s behaviour was beyond suspicious, including her dress, the note, the ransom amount and the handwriting.
As to Burke: it’s my personal belief that a handful of people, including his counsellors, are aware of his participation (assuming I am right) but that because he was so underage the counselling has been that it’s not his fault and that it remains a long-surpressed memory. It will not surprise me if it comes out at some point, but perhaps not. I recall one outside expert opinion that “perhaps it was just an accident.” To what could that possibly be referring other than a conclusion that Burke killed her? Any other means of her death would be a homicide, though not so for an underage sibling.
I do not think Burke fractured her skull deliberately. I think he strangled her and dragged her to the basement and her skull fractured when he plopped her down because at his age she was relatively heavy for him to lug around. That is why she has such an odd combination of death by garrotte and blunt skull injury.
There are dozens and dozens of other issues, and I guess I’m content with being considered a conclusion-jumping nutcase with a nutty theory. My opinion is irrelevant, I realize.
If you want to hold to a different theory, I won’t belabor mine.
Sigh…this is where my OCD gets sucked back in against my better judgment.
The Stun Gun assertion is one of those silly theories that gets started and takes on a life of its own until you get questions like “Where did Burke get the stun gun, and where did it go?” as if a failure to rebut that is a failure to prove the Ramseys were involved.
The marks at autopsy are not even remotely adequate for an assertion that a stun gun was involved at all. Take any marks on any body and come up with any crackpot theory you want about what “must have” caused those marks and have fun with it.
The JonBenet case is an excellent example of the obvious (family involvement) being completely obfuscated by pursuit of the remotely possible (“Well then, explain this and this and THIS and how about THIS…”) ad nauseum. And many of those red herrings rapidly rise to the level of “fact” in the minds of those who Want to Believe. The stun gun is one of the most egregious examples.
While I’m fascinated by the psychology which drives people to believe things, it becomes way too tedious to argue every single point.
Just have fun with your core belief here, DtC. No one will be able to talk you out of it.
Here’s a good idea: I think I’ll just sneak into a house and stun gun a 6 year old, hoping she doesn’t start screaming instead of just grabbing her mouth and head and smothering her to death. Okay…then… <backs away from trying to dissuade the other person>
Wasn’t the grand jury’s decision before the DNA evidence from an unknown male came out?
The DA made the right decision. The Ramseys wouldn’t have been convicted then, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be convicted now. I’m still fairly convinced they didn’t do it (I say fairly because there’s always a chance, but the evidence I’ve seen says otherwise).