I didn’t know that the parents were always the first suspects. Also, I may have thought that the quick lawyering up by the parents was suspicious, I can’t remember. Now, however, I have had the experience of being unfairly suspected by police. I now think that anybody lawyering up immediately has had a bad experience with police.
The police would consider it suspicious that you breathe in and out, it’s in their job description.
I think the parents are a little more likely to be suspected than that.
I am basing my opinion on what I thiink would be my own reactions. If my daughter was murdered, and I didn’t do it, I would be blabbing my fool head off telling the cops everything and anything they asked or I could think of, in hopes that something would help them find the killer. I wouldn’t care if it was, or could be made to look, incriminating. I just want them to find whoever did do it.
And OTOH if I were guilty, I would lawyer up and hope to get away with it. So I think the cops are justified in finding it suspicious if the parent of a murdered child lawyers up. It isn’t proof, it shouldn’t be admissible as evidence if someone lawyers up, but it is a reason for the cops to suspect you.
Regards,
Shodan
I agree with what you said. But the police ALREADY suspect you. They might suspect you more if you lawyer up, but they already suspect the parents and anyone else who might have been in the house/at the scene of the crime. The point of hiring a lawyer is so you don’t inadvertently say something that gives them something to grasp onto and use against you.
I realize this is all conjecture, but you seem to think if you blab and tell the police everything that they will think you are innocent and look elsewhere. I would suggest you are just as likely to say something that will make them stop looking at alternative theories. I realize I’m a cynic when it comes to the legal system, but the cops don’t always look for who actually commits a crime, they look for who they can arrest and pin it on. Likewise with prosecutors, who want convictions and sentences, not justice.
Patsy acted oddly in the early TV interviews because she was heavily sedated. I didn’t know this at the time. I read it in a book on the case about ten years after the murder. Anyway, she struck me as something of an hysteric after I saw and read about her well after the murder. While I don’t think it’s an air-tight theory, I would not be surprised to find out that Patsy immediately suspected her son, and wrote the note in order to take suspicion off him. This doesn’t mean I think he did it-- I don’t think he did, and I think whatever the parents (or just Patsy’s) early suspicions may have been, they quickly realized he didn’t do it, but were afraid to confess to the note-- or perhaps Patsy wrote it without her husband’s knowledge.
As far as their getting lawyers, rich people don’t operate the way the rest of us do. If I had a lawyer on retainer, he’d be getting a call any time I was in a little bit of trouble. He’d be getting a call if my dog was missing. He’d be getting a call if I dinged someone in a parking lot. Hell yeah he’d be getting a call if my son was dead. Even if my son died of a disease, he’d probably be getting a call. That’s how the super-rich work. My mother isn’t even really particularly rich, but she lives mainly off of investments, so she is always calling her accountant for advice on things that I wouldn’t think about. When she bought a car, she consulted her accountant first. When she took a trip overseas, she called her accountant first. If she had a lawyer, she’d probably be calling her lawyer about everything. You know, you call your lawyer because you *have *a lawyer, and if the advice is “Get a criminal lawyer,” you do that.
That is a very good and important point. Calling the “family lawyer” would absolutely be the normal and expected thing to do for a family like the Ramseys. Most of us don’t “have a lawyer” and wouldn’t try to find one in such a situation. I still think it would be the wise thing to do, but not the expected thing.
Pure speculation on my part, but I’ve wondered if the parents acted the way they did because they immediately feared a family member was involved, but that once the smoke cleared and they found out that was not the case, they’d already fouled the investigation and there was no going back. The instinct to protect your young is incredibly strong. I can see Patsy writing that crazy ransom note in the heat of the moment because she thought it would divert suspicion away from the sons. The fact that the parents would immediately suspect the sons is curious and makes you wonder what was going on inside that family, but I’m still of the mind that an outsider did the killing, although the parents thought it was the sons at first and that is why they acted the way they did.
I don’t suppose we’ll ever know and that poor innocent child will never get justice.
Certainly true. They are going to suspect me no matter what. That’s perfectly understandable - the father is always a suspect, because the father is (often) guilty.
That’s not quite what I mean. If I blab, they will still suspect me and investigate me, but their investigation of what I blab will quickly reveal nothing suspicious. Because I didn’t do it.
"Do you mind if we look at your computer?
No - here’s the password, feel free to look at my Google searches, none of the folders are password protected. You will notice that I spend a lot of my time on a website called The Straight Dope arguing about politics and making wisecracks.
Can we see your phone?
Here you go. It’s not locked. The last five hundred calls were either work-related, or from my wife. "
And then they checked the GPS location of my phone, and find that I am either at home, at the gym, at work, or at church, and most of the time when I am elsewhere my wife’s phone is in the same location. There is no kiddie porn on my PC or my phone. I have never done any searches on “how to get away with killing someone”.
Have you ever been arrested? No.
Have you ever been accused of anything? No.
Have you ever hit your daughter? No. Have you ever hit your wife? No. Has your daughter ever told anyone she was afraid of you? No. Do you gamble? No. Do you use drugs? No. Have you recently encountered any stressors in your life? No. Are you willing to give us a DNA sample? Sure - my blood type is O positive, if that helps.
Do you have an alibi? I don’t know - what time are we talking about? Maybe I was at work, and I have a dozen witnesses, or at the gym where they know me by name and there is a record of my membership card swipe, or out walking the dog, and the dog poop is in the garbage and you can tell it’s fresh and all the neighbors will tell you “he walks that darn dog every night at the same time”.
Etc. I lead a boringly conventional life, and I can prove it. And the sooner I prove it, the sooner the cops will realize, after thoroughly examining me, that it is probably not me and concentrate on someone else.
I can’t imagine that I could say anything (other than ‘I did it’) that would make them stop looking at anyone else. In addition to me, certainly, but I am much less of a cynic than you say you are. Therefore I find it hard to believe that the cops are going to go to the prosecuting DA and say, “we can’t find any evidence, so let’s charge the father just to get it off our plate”.
If they do arrest me or charge me, then sure, I lawyer up. But I am not poor, not stupid, not easily intimidated, and also eager to get the police looking for whoever really did it. Thus I understand that they want me to tell my story three times - once to get the overview, once to get the details, and once or twice more to see if I contradict myself. And once we reach the point of “I already explained this twice - now go and look for whoever did it, and if you have new questions here is my cell number” I will feel free to go home and comfort my wife.
“Look, we understand. You were just angry, and things got out of hand.”
“No, it didn’t. I didn’t kill her, hit her, or anything like that.”
“Look, you can tell us. It’s going to come out anyway.”
“No, it won’t. I didn’t do it.”
Repeat as necessary. I didn’t do it.
Regards,
Shodan
You sure do seem to have all these answers ready - have you been rehearsing for this?
I don’t have to rehearse anything. I am telling you the truth. What other questions do you have?
Regards,
Shodan
I hear you, and since I’ve never been accused of or been involved in a crime that’s been my mindset.
However, over the holidays I was at a dinner party with my wife’s co-workers and one of their husbands was a Hennepin County (Minneapolis) judge. Since neither of us knew anyone else there and we didn’t feel like talking about the insurance industry I talked his ear off about his profession and career. By the end of the night the biggest piece of advice he could offer is that if you are ever brought in for questioning by the cops, even if you are 100% innocent, lawyer up immediately.
:dubious:
I’m watching you, mister.
lets go over all this again - would you like a cup of water?
The problem is that you have no idea what will seem suspicious to the police.
For example, you claim you have never hit your daughter, but that neighbor up the street that you pissed off last year just told them that you did. The cops aren’t going to tell you that it is Pissy McPissface who tattled, just that “they have an eyewitness that you slapped her hard when she back-talked you.” Do you still deny you hit her? Why are you lying about hitting her? What else are you lying about?
You may be perfectly innocent, but you just made yourself their #1 target, and the more you blab your head off, the greater the chance that they will catch you in other inconsistencies, or what they perceive to be inconsistencies. “I saw him walking that dog every night” is not a substitute for “I saw him at the corner of 6th & Main with the dog at 6:02 that particular evening,” and if the witnesses are not sure exactly what time (or they say it was 6:20 instead of 6:02), your alibi may start looking contrived, particularly if they think they’ve already caught you fibbing.
The more they focus on YOU, the more time and effort they spend trying to ferret out all of the little inconsistencies in your blabbing (because people are inconsistent, even inadvertently), the less likely it is that they’ll find other evidence. Even if the case against you eventually falls apart, the wasted time and missed opportunities may mean they never catch the real bad guy, and you may forever be suspected of having gotten away with murdering your own kid. What do you think the rest of your life is going to be like?
Now if they don’t have all of those inconsistencies to hammer you with (why did you say [twice!] you got to the gym at 5:30, when the card-swipe clearly shows you didn’t swipe in until 5:47?), then maybe one of the officers not interrogating you will find Mrs. Phillips down the block who saw that grandson of Mrs. Jackson’s loitering in the alley.
No, you don’t have any such eyewitness.
Yes, I deny it. I am not lying about anything. I never hit her, and I didn’t kill her.
I am their #1 target already - I am her father, and it is rare that anyone is killed by a stranger.
I haven’t been fibbing about anything. I did not kill my daughter. I know exactly how long I walked the dog, because I listen to audiobooks on YouTube on my phone, and I know exactly how far into the audiobook I was when I started the walk, because I write down the timestamp on the piece of paper next to my bed, in case I lose the book mark. Look at my phone, and see that the audiobook is marked WATCHED, and it left off at exactly the point I wrote down. Notice all the other times where I wrote down where I started and ended. Notice that the writing is old and done at different times.
I know I was at the corner of 6th and Main because it is a mile and a half from my house, and I walked for a total of an hour and 8 minutes. My dog pooped on that corner - see the smear in the grass where I couldn’t get every last trace when I picked it up? See the fresh dog poop in the trash? Want to do a DNA match on it with my dog?
They are already going to focus on me. Either I blab and they waste time investigating my story and find nothing, or I lawyer up and they waste time investigating me and still find nothing.
They are going to waste time investigating me no matter if I talk or not, and unless they catch the real perpetrater, I am always going to be suspected. I suspect the Ramseys even now. I would rather give them all the information I have, so they can quickly clear me and go on, or else investigate whatever other leads I can give (she had an argument with someone where she works, or this is her boyfriend’s name, or the next door neighbor gives me a creepy vibe, or whatever) at the same time as they investigate me.
I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t ask the neighbors about me whether I lawyer up, or not.
I didn’t know you were in Minnesnowta.
And WADR to you and to the judge, I suspect very few of those brought in for questioning by the Minneapolis police are white, upper-middle-class, and 100% innocent. And I’m guessing that relatively few of the cases where a family member of a murder victim is brought in for questioning because the police couldn’t find anybody else to question. IYSWIM.
Regards,
Shodan
Oh yes we do. (Pissy McPissface, also white, upper-middle-class, respectable-appearing, with no known motive to lie, gave a sworn statement that he, personally, has seen you hit your own child in anger, with real venom.) Your attempts to deny the existence of this eyewitness are further proof that you are a liar, untrustworthy, and attempting to conceal the truth.
Why do you persist in your lies, when we already have an eyewitness who will testify otherwise?
Absolutely none of which proves whether you were at 6th/Main at 6:02 or 6:20. 6:02 is a good alibi; 6:20 gave you time to slug your kid, accidentally kill her, and stuff her body somewhere out of sight, then race over to have your dog poop in somebody else’s yard. None of the neighbors can say for sure within twenty minutes on that particular night, and your repeated denials and obvious inconsistencies are vivid and repeated proof that nothing you say can be taken as truth.
The three or four detectives who are interrogating you, listening to these repeated denials and obvious inconsistencies, would in your absence be out talking to other people. Maybe instead of talking to Mrs. Phillips for two minutes, they give her an hour, and in those last few minutes she remembers the creep in the alley.
And Shodan, think about all of the people out there who don’t have your calm demeanor, quiet confidence, ironclad alibis and second-certain sense of time. What if it’s a man who was alone at his house and watched TV all evening, and perhaps had a few drinks and went to bed. You are mistakenly imposing your exact circumstances on everyone else out there who can get railroaded by the “justice” system.
There’s also no accounting for coincidences that are innocent but appear incriminating.
They search through your history and find you were looking for string 2 months prior. You needed it for some art project or what have you. Huh, now they are wondering how long you’ve been thinking about killing her.
Or you say something completely inadvertently or something that makes sense to you but comes across as confusing to others.
As for the Santa Claus guy that is being mentioned. I read a book about the case years ago and he seemed to ping my radar a bit. Hasn’t he died since the murder?
Maybe it was a Terminator because she was somehow going to be important to John Connor and the resistance.
No, you don’t have any eyewitnesses. I never hit my daughter, and I didn’t kill her.
I haven’t lied about anything.
I didn’t kill my daughter, and I haven’t lied about anything.
If they are any good, they are out trying to find out what I was doing, since I would be (understandably) the chief suspect. I give them a verifiable alibi, and they go out and verify it (to whatever extent they can), and find out I am innocent. Then they go out and look for the one who really did it. Me giving them something to work with speeds up the process, or at least speeds up the process of clearing me, which runs parallel with the process of finding the actual killer.
I am almost certainly not going to be calm or confident. And I am going to make the usual number of mistakes in my recounting of my actions at the time of the crime.
But I didn’t do it. And I will tell the cops everything I can, so that they can decide that I didn’t do it, and go out and find who did. I am not going to change my story to fit anything. If I make a mistake of fifteen minutes, or whatever, tough. I didn’t do it. I am not going to be defensive or pretend that I shouldn’t be suspected. I didn’t do it.
Regards,
Shodan