I long assumed they whored their girl out more literally than simply dressing and posing her in a seductive manner and one time it got out of hand. But I have no evidence and while the existing evidence, like the note, screams “How dumb do you think we are?” there was not enough to convict.
The “exculpatory” DNA in the JBR case was so trivial it could have belonged to the person who packaged the underwear. It does not clear anyone.
I suggest a more careful reading of the entire zombie thread, and all the evidence posted elsewhere, before jumping in.
I don’t think there is any reasonable way to make the evidence fit other than to conclude Burke did it, and the DA had no real enthusiasm for pursuing what was not technically a crime because of his age. Mary Lacy’s pronouncement about the DNA is about as credible as her pronouncement that Karr was the subject of a complex and lengthy investigation and was the likely perp. I’m not sure all her candles burn straight.
But I’m not about to to go over everything all over again. As I recall, my OCD consumed too much time on this last time. Whatever I said before…that’s what happened.
The parents suffered enough in this tragedy trying to scrape together a way for Burke to have a life. We should just let it go.
Probably.
Cognitive dissonance is a funny thing.
I had never paid much attention to this, until last night when I started reading this. Part of the problem with these types of discussions, is that people rarely change their positions. They generally dig in on their original position and hang onto information that solidifies their position and dismiss information that runs contrary to their established point of view.
So as one who didn’t have a dog in the fight, and viewed the data without preconceived notions . . .
If one believes the DNA evidence is accurate, and there is DNA from the same person under her fingernails, on her underwear, in the waistband of her long johns and on a hair, and none of that matches anyone in the family, than attempts to still link her family to the murders seems to be an effort to force one’s pre-conceived notions to fit the facts, vice letting the facts drive ones beliefs. And from someone who came late to the game and is impartial, it seems weak and lame, like we can’t let those rich people get away with this. They could have been selling her out to pedophiles? They could have just gotten that DNA from some random guy at the gym? Really?
I have to admit though that the ransom note asking for $118k does seem odd, but not enough to eclipse the DNA evidence.
Without getting back into the weeds on this, the first sentence is not true. While there is unknown male DNA found that does not match anyone from the family, it is a very poor sample (dead skin cells or the like, but not a good sample like hair or blood or semen.) and can’t be narrowed down any further than male. Considering the girl had just been at a Christmas party with tons of people, it could have come from anywhere.
In my effort to be brief, I left out the key piece of information - the “touch” DNA found later on the body and on the waistband of the panties can’t be identified as belonging to a single person. The sample is not nearly good enough to make that claim and in fact there isn’t any other evidence that would point in that direction.
To me, the idea that the parents were passing their daughter around to be abused by pedophiles is about as plausible as saying she was a victim of Satanic Ritual Abuse.
The putatively exculpatory DNA was present in such minute amounts that it had to be markedly amplified using PCR. Stray skin cells from individuals packaging the clothing could easily be a source. Contrary to media reports, it was not some giant glob of blood or the like.
I don’t know much about the case, but I was struck by how phony the ransom note seemed. The writer describes himself as a representative of a “small foreign faction.” I saw an FBI profiler talking on television, and he pointed out (astutely in my opinion) that actual representatives of small foreign factions simply do not describe themselves like that.
So I think the ransom note was in all likelihood staged. Which means (most likely) that somebody associated with JBR was trying to make the police think it was a stranger attack.
Anyway, Chief Pedant’s hypothesis is probably as good as any.
Apparently, it happens:
I don’t think wealthy people like the Ramseys would let their daughter be abused in return for drugs and/or money.
There’s not a shred of evidence they were anything but good and ordinary decent parents. Sure; Patsy like to indulge her vicarious beauty queen fantasy pleasure in seeing JB on stage in underage beauty contests. I think that’s pretty normal, given the various grade school shows I’ve had to attend raising kids.
Not a chance they would let their kids get abused.
Over the years (as a “Burke did it” theorist), I’ve come to have great sympathy for Patsy. She knew who killed her little girl, and it was her own boy. Now he was all that she had left, and frankly he’d gotten the short end of the stick as the annoying bed-wetter non-star, while JB got the stage. Incredible parenting guilt over that.
That woman suffered, and she couldn’t even take her suffering anywhere.
Indeed, the article on the indictment does point out how the DNA evidence is not easy to dismiss.
Not that I buy the theory, but here’s an interview from 2000 with an author who belives the murder is linked to child pornography.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/singular/index_1.html
The mom totally did it. May have been accidental.
That must have been difficult for you. From your intense personal insights into Patsy’s psyche, motivation and inner most feelings, you clearly knew her well and spent many, many hours with her.
Her guilt of trying to frame a non-family member by putting his blood and DNA samples in her daughter’s underwear and clothing, not to mention the DNA samples under her fingernails that didn’t match anyone in her family must have been nerve wracking as well.
It was good that you were there for her.
I thought PCR is used with all DNA evidence, is this not the case?
It may be, but the problem with the samples from this case is that they were degraded to begin with. You would think that with finding her body so soon after the crime, and it being inside a dwelling as opposed to outdoors, the DNA samples would be fresh.
But these weren’t. They were degraded. CODIS requirements for a DNA match are 13 viable markers. The panty DNA allegedly has 9 good markers and 1 not so good markers. That does not meet the requirements for identification purposes according to FBI guidelines. The fingernail DNA only had 2 or 3 good markers.
The DNA I’m referring to in this post is the panties and fingernail, not the touch DNA. The touch DNA has a host of other problems.
This is not a DNA case. I don’t know who committed this crime, (though I lean strongly in one direction), but the DNA evidence that we know about is useless.
IIUC this is not accurate, the 13 markers in CODIS refer to the recorded markers the database uses, it does not mean that **only **by having 13 markers then a case can be solved, you can have less markers and still the evidence will be useful to identify the more likely suspects. And then one should not ignore that family relationships at the DNA level are more clear and can be used in partial identifications.
My point, (though I didn’t make it clearly) is that the foreign DNA was degraded, yet her DNA was not.