We will most likely never know the truth.
Indeed, and I don’t understand folks who are adamant one way or the other. I don’t think it can be credibly denied that the case admits of some odd twists and corners, including with respect to the family’s behavior, and any theory that posits an unrelated intruder is at least as implausible as the murderer being a family member.
As of two years ago they hadannounced further testing of the sample, but I haven’t seen anything of note since. Still, any day now one can expect arrest of a Bushy-Haired Stranger whose DNA matches.
Never heard of the “pineapple theory”, but before we dismiss it entirely, consider that as a reporter I once covered a case where someone was stabbed in a dispute over a Little Debbie snack cake. :eek:
You have my vote. Many an innocent person has been railroaded into prison by district attorneys who are far more concerned with getting convictions than they are with the interest of fairness.
Exactly. Perhaps he only meant to push her, but she fell onto/against something solid enough to crack her skull. Doesn’t make him a psychopath, if it was not his intent to kill her.
Also, Omar Little, O.J. was acquitted because by the end, he was no longer the one on trial. The LAPD was on trial. And as Lucas Jackson points out, the jury would never have delivered a verdict that effectively stated, “We think the LAPD are competent and honest and would never screw over a black man.”
ETA: Paranoid Randroid: damn right!
Ok, but then what? Say that Burke manages to inflict an 8.5" skull fracture on his sister. Instead of getting their still-living daughter medical attention, the Ramsey family:
- Injures her vagina.
- Places blood (but not their blood) in her underwear.
- Assembles a garrote out of household materials.
- Strangles her to death.
- Duct tape her mouth and tie her wrist.
ETA: 5a. Place skin cells (but not their skin) under her fingernails. - Places her body in the basement.
- Uses a hiking boot they don’t own to make a print by the body.
- Place a palm print (but not their palm print) on the wine cellar door.
- Write a ransom note.
- Call the police.
- When the police fail to find the body (one would presume that *the entire idea *of a fake ransom note would be to prevent discovery of the body, no?), finds it themselves and alert the police.
It’s more than a little hard to believe.
I couldn’t help but to laugh at this sentence.
A homicide detective on the case proposed the following advertising slogan: “Little Debbie - the treat worth killing for”.
Sadly, the company didn’t take him up on the idea.
The Little Debbie thing doesn’t surprise me all that much. I’ve heard that finding a motive isn’t emphasized in homicide investigation anymore - people kill each other for nonsensical reasons all the time.
Roy Batty, I agree that anyone outside the family doing this murder is almost unthinkable in terms of circumstance. That said, cites upthread tell of stranger DNA - from one particular stranger, if I recall correctly - found under the victim’s nails and on her underwear. That does seem to foul the family hypothesis.
As I said above, this one should have been easy to solve given the circumstances - to the threshold of consensus if not beyond a reasonable doubt. And yet it wasn’t, and likely never will be now that we’ve 20+ years down the road (absent some “Golden State Killer”-style discovery as **Buck Godot **indicates). It remains the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.
ETA: many on the OJ jury thought that Simpson was probably guilty, but they had enough doubt to vote for acquittal. That’s what I mean by consensus - not necessarily the level of proof associated with conviction.