Crime Weekly - S1 Ep8: The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey (Part III)

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

It was December 26th, 1996 in Boulder Colorado. Boulder had seen a great deal of snow fall the previous week, but by the morning of the 26th, only a trace of it remained, just a small dusting that would most likely disappear as the sun rose. In an upper class Boulder neighborhood, the occupants of stately, million dollar homes were still slumbering peacefully, getting in their last moments of sleep before the day after Christmas chaos began, the cleaning up and getting back into the everyday routine.  But inside 749 15th St, the home of the Ramsey family, it was a much different scene. At 5:52 AM, 911 operator Kim Archueletta received a phone call from a frantic mother claiming she had woken up to a ransom note, and her six year old daughter missing from her bed. But JonBenét Ramsey had not been taken, she was not missing from her home, she had been there the whole time, and the events that would follow would lead to one of the most tragic mysteries the true crime world has ever known, a case that has often been referred to as the largest unsolved crime in America. Part three of our deep dive continues with a look at the Boulder PD, and an exploration of potential suspects... Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

Hello, and welcome to Crime Weekly presented by ID. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. On this podcast, we do talk about difficult subjects. We're talking about real crimes and real people. And due to the graphic nature of some of this content, listener discretion is advised. Hey, everybody, welcome back to Crime Weekly. This is going to be part three of the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. And Stephanie, I don't know how you feel about this, but is it safe to say that we feel pretty confident that this is actually going to be part three of four? Is that safe to say? I think so. I mean, we've just found out so much as we've been going along. And even when we're not recording, we're still looking into

things through the week and we find new stuff out and we call each other and we're like, oh, we have to put this in. So I think it's safe to say. And we were talking and Stephanie made a great point. I know a lot of her viewers are listening to this podcast now. I really appreciate it as someone who's joining her little crew that she has here. And she made a great point today and it really resonated with me, which is she doesn't always have a number of how many parts her videos are going to be. She just goes with the research and lets the research and the evidence and the case itself dictate how many parts. And I'd really like to incorporate that here because I think it's genius. But by all means, you guys can weigh in on it. We're learning as we go. I always say it, we're growing, but it does look like this one where we thought it could be just two parts is going to be a full four parts. I have no issue with it.

Clearly, Stephanie doesn't. But again, we want to hear from you guys. I mean, I think we initially thought this was going to be one part. Yeah. No, you're right. It just kind of keeps going. But I feel better at night knowing that when we get off doing this recording, we didn't leave anything out because of time. Yeah. And I think what I said earlier was the case is going to be what it's going to be.

It takes on a life of its own. We're doing this for Jean Benet, right? You know, she doesn't have a voice anymore. Somebody has to give her a voice. Somebody has to look at this very deeply. And many people have, but she deserves, and this case deserves a thorough overview. And whenever I do videos on YouTube, I never know how many parts they're going to be. And I thorough overview. And whenever I do videos on YouTube, I never know how many parts they're going to be. And I'll apologize. I'll be like, guys, I thought this was going to be one part, but I guess it's going to have to be two. And then the next video, I'll come back and say, this is part two. And there may be one part after maybe two. I never know until I'm getting into it. There's just so much about these cases out there and you want to include as much as you can. So you're giving a fair and unbiased kind of review,

but also you're doing it justice for the victim. I couldn't agree more. I'm 100% on board. I'm glad we agree, seeing that we're going to be seeing a lot of each other. Before we dive into today's episode, I know we have a lot to cover. I want to quickly talk about Investigation Discovery's newest podcast coming out. It's called Unraveled Long Island Serial Killer. It follows investigator Billy Jensen and Alexis Linkletter as they investigate the Long Island serial killer Killer. It follows investigator Billy Jensen and Alexis Linkletter as they investigate the Long Island serial killer. So if you're interested and you want to follow Billy and Alexis as they unravel the tangled web of this case of the Long Island serial killer,

you're more than welcome to do so. It's important to know Billy and Alexis are both from Long Island, so that's interesting. And if you don't know the Long Island serial killer case, there were 11 victims in 10 years, and there's countless theories involving what actually happened, including one that includes the police chief as a possible suspect. So that's pretty interesting. So again, if you want to check it out, head on over to your podcast platform and download it. Again, it's called Unraveled Long Island Serial Killer. Before we dive into it, because again, this is part three, hopefully you've already listened to part one and part two.

If you haven't, we strongly recommend that you go back and do so. There's so much to cover in there. We're not going to go over it all right now, but part three, our first three-parter, Stephanie, quick rundown. In episode one or part one, I should say, we talked about the family, the family dynamics, how they came to be a family, how they ended up in Colorado. We also talked about some things that Jean Benet was into, such as beauty pageants following in the footsteps of her mother, Patsy. And then we talked about the day before the murder, the Christmas before the murder, 25th

of December. We talked about the morning of the 26th, how the ransom note was found, how Jean Benet's body was found after that. We did a little discussing of what Linda Arndt, the detective on scene, felt about the Ramseys themselves during this day. And then in the second part, we discussed a lot about the actual evidence found at the scene. We talked about Jean Benet's autopsy, what it could possibly mean, and today we're going to talk about issues with the Boulder Police Department, what they did with the case that may have, I guess, prevented it from being solved. And we're also going to go over the suspects, including the members of the Ramsey family, as well as some people outside of the Ramsey family that are going to support this intruder theory that I think it was Detective Smith ended up being the one to kind of

raise that theory. So we're going to go over pretty much all the possible suspects. And I want to preface this by saying that all of these people have been ruled out by DNA, including all the members of the Ramsey family, including all these other suspects we're going to talk about. So it's kind of interesting because in the end, you could say that the DNA rules everybody out, or you could say that the DNA rules nobody out since it rules everybody out. Does that make sense? No, it definitely makes sense. And I think that's a big reason why we are where we are in this case today. And before we really dive in, even to the DNA and how it's affected this case, there's something we're going to do on this episode that we haven't really done yet.

But when we cover cases that are so prevalent in the true crime world that everyone has an opinion on this case, and it's been covered so many times, everyone, to be fair, feels like in their own right, they're kind of an expert. has an opinion on this case and it's been covered so many times. Everyone, to be fair, feels like in their own right, they're kind of an expert. And rightfully so, when we cover these cases, Stephanie and I are not perfect. We may leave something out that's of importance, or we may state something that's not completely correct or we interpret it incorrectly. And so we want to make sure we get it right. So what I'm going to call this is like a five minute, maybe even shorter, just

a house cleaning because we really went into some details on last week's episode. And I definitely have a couple of things I want to clarify. And I think you do too, right, Stephanie? Yeah, there's a couple of things that I think we wanted to jointly clarify. Absolutely. Absolutely. So again, also, you know, we're reading your comments, we're reading your reviews and we appreciate them. Um, so one of the

things that I saw that I want to dive right into is the, uh, ransom note and more specifically Patsy stationary. Um, I had suggested, I believe it was actually in, uh, part one of this, of the series for this, if you want to call it that for JonBenet, where I had suggested the idea that it was possible the perpetrator may have had access to the house before the incident and had taken the stationary with them to write the note before leaving it. And one of our reviewers, one of our listeners said, you know, I just found that really irresponsible, basically, Derek. That's misinformed because there was indentations in Patsy's stationary that was suggestive

that the perpetrator wrote the note on the stationary while it was still attached. misinformed because there was indentations in Patsy's stationery that was suggestive that the perpetrator wrote the note on the stationery while it was still attached to the remaining part of the notepad. And therefore they couldn't have ripped off a couple of pages and taken them home and wrote it out and then came back. And the way I'll answer that is you're right. You're absolutely right. It would suggest, the indentations would suggest that the notepad itself, the stationery itself, was intact when the offender wrote the note. I'm not saying I believe this, but my argument to that or my counter to that would be, it's still possible the perpetrator took the entire stationery then. I'm not saying I believe that, but that could be the case. But I do want to thank

you for bringing it up because I didn't mention the indentation and it is an important part of the case. So thank you for bringing it up. And I hope that clarifies it for everyone. Well, also one thing about that notepad is there was only one set of fingerprints found on a notepad and they belong to Patsy Ramsey. So that's also something important to kind of talk about because if somebody had taken the notepad out of the house to bring it to their house and then bring it back later, they would have had to have been wearing gloves when they took the notepad out and wearing gloves when they brought it back. So I think that would make it a little bit more difficult

to sort of just go into these people's houses, to sort of go into these people's house wearing gloves and take the notepad. Because even if they had wiped it down, then they would have wiped Patsy's fingerprints off it as well. So that is something to note. It's an important factor. And I'm glad you brought it up. That wasn't even something that was suggested to us or mentioned to us in any of the comments I saw. but that's the point here. I'm not trying to persuade you one way or the other. We're just presenting multiple sides, and you can decide how to interpret the evidence. I would agree with Stephanie that based on those circumstances, the fact that it does appear the stationary notebook was intact when the note was written, it does appear that there's no other fingerprints on the notepad itself. I would say that that's

more in line with the theory that whoever wrote the note, wrote it on scene at the property, still doesn't suggest who wrote it because if they just use the pen or they use gloves while on scene, it still could be anybody. But we're bringing up all angles and it was one more aspect of the ransom note because we're talking about it. I wanted to discuss, but I'm going to let Stephanie go into it because she's the one who brought it up to me and I thought it was really interesting. Oh, so was this other commenter or this commenter that mentioned this thing too about the notepad, were they also the ones that said the notepad or what they thought was a practice note said Mr. and Mrs. R? I don't know if they were the same person. I know someone said it. And I also know that the belief in the John Benet Ramsey,

the Reddit world, the internet, there's a lot of people that believe that there was a practice script or so, if you will, there was an attempt to write the note on a previous piece of paper that was discarded, I believe, right? And there a previous piece of paper that was discarded, I believe, right? And there was a piece of paper that was discarded. But much later, John and Patsy Ramsey wrote their own book about what happened to their daughter. And in this book, and I think in some interviews, they suggested it was this certain man who I'm not going to bring up today. But then this man ended up suing John and Patsy for defamation. And I had access to these court documents for this defamation suit. And in these

court documents, it specifically says that the practice letter had Mr. and Mrs. I written on it. Now, is it an I with like a parallel or a horizontal line? What is it, vertical? No, it would be a vertical line with a perpendicular line coming off of it, right? We're using words we probably shouldn't use. We're going to mess it up. Is it an I like an I could have been part of an R? Or is it an I that looks like a capital I with the lines on top and on the bottom? That's never been made clear.

But if it was an I without the lines on top and on the bottom. That's never been made clear. But if it was an I without the lines on the top of the bottom, it could have been the beginnings of the letter R. We don't know, but it was not Mr. and Mrs. R. It was Mr. and Mrs. I. And I've heard it reported multiple times that it was Mr. and Mrs. R. But if we're to believe these court reports, which are based on the investigatory documents, it was Mr. And Mrs. I. And I thought that was fascinating when she brought that up to me because I was under the impression it was Mr. And Mrs. R. And that to me is, you know, pretty bad. That's not good in regards to, you know, who could have written this note. Were they practicing? But again, here goes Derekrick again playing devil's advocate um if you believe the ramses were involved yeah they could have been practicing it also could have been the offender who's just maybe uh an obsessive compulsive person and didn't like the way they started it and

decided to rewrite it it could be either or it's not highly suggestive of either side but again we want to be accurate we want to be correct and i And I think these are the things we're going to have to do going forward, especially with a case when it's like this, when it's so hard to differentiate fact from opinion. You know, it really is. Sometimes it's been diluted by so many people, so many sources. You know, you think it's factual, but then when you really dig into the details, it's not wrong, but it's not completely right. Yeah, you could read five different things and get five different variations of the event. So it's hard to really find what's the truth. So we're not always going to, we're going to try to report the truth. Something else I wanted to bring up from last episode that I forgot when we were talking about the crime scene evidence, there was animal hair found on John Bonet's body. And this animal hair was apparently tracked back to a beaver. And I found that out in those court, those same court documents as well. Beaver hair found on Jean Benet. And I kind of went down, you know, a rabbit hole with this beaver hair thinking,

how could this beaver hair possibly be found on this little girl? You know, it's Colorado. So obviously there's beavers. There's beavers because there's the Colorado River. There's beavers. They're all over the place. But are they walking around residential neighborhoods? Most likely not. So how did this beaver hair get on Jean Benet? And that's kind of when I started investigating and I actually brought it up to my husband and I was like, it's crazy. There's beaver hair found on her. And he said, probably from gloves or a hat. And I was like, what do you mean gloves or a hat? This isn't the pioneer days. Nobody's making hats out of beaver hair. And he was like, no, they do. They're expensive, but yeah, they're custom made most of the time, but they're still made. So I started looking it up and yes, there are multiple places that sell these kinds of things. And a lot of the times

they are custom because they are expensive. So if there was beaver hair found on her, it could have been left by the intruder who was wearing gloves that were made out of beaver hair. Or maybe he or she had a coat or a hat made out of beaver hair and this beaver hair was left on his or her person and he left it on Jean Benet. I don't know. But I mean, unless this person, I don't know, was making his own beaver garments, assuming that's what the beaver hair came from, it would have been a good deal of money to own one of these garments. Yeah. But didn't you also, by the way, full

disclosure, Stephanie was, she's not, she's underselling it. She was really digging into this whole beaver hair thing, sending me photos late at night. I mean, it was, it was, she was, she was into it, but didn't you also say to me that one of the bigger manufacturers for using beaver hair where I was out of Michigan, was it? Yes. I forget. It was like, I forget what it was that I said, because I, after I told you this and I had all this information, I completely forgot to put it into our notes for this episode. But more of the story was you said, listen, there is also a possibility that this beaver hair belonged to something that JonBenet or Patsy or Jon or Burke owned because they did have a house in Michigan. And supposedly one of the big manufacturers for using beaver hair in their products was out of Michigan, right? Oh, that's what happened. I went into a message board for people who were, I guess, looking for

these kinds of hats and gloves and things. And one of the messages said like, oh, if I want a beaver hat made, like, where should I go? And a lot of people were suggesting this one place that happened to be in Michigan. So, and then I remembered that the Ramseys had a house in Charleville, Michigan that Patsy Ramsey called like the most wonderful place on earth. And I said, well, maybe Patsy owned one of these beaver hats or gloves. I mean, it seems like something you would only own if you had the means to purchase something like that or have something like that made, you know, somebody who's middle class or lower class, isn't going to be like, let me go out and get myself a beaver hat right now. I can't wait to spend $500 on this beaver hat. So that's why I said, unless this perpetrator, if it came

from the perpetrator who did this to Jean Benet, unless he was kind of sitting in his log cabin, clubbing beavers over the head and then hiding them and making hats and gloves and things out of them, he would have had to put out a pretty penny for such a thing. Yeah, exactly. So that was, I thought that was very interesting. Again, that wasn't something that we misspoke on or it was just something we didn't mention. And again, we want to make sure we get it right. We want to make sure we bring up all our stuff. The only other thing that I wanted to cover, which I would consider a mistake, was in the last episode, part two, Stephanie brought up the ligature around JonBenet's neck and some of the abrasions.

And I had said that Lou Smith and the doctor, which you could imply was the doctor who conducted the autopsy report, both believed that the abrasions were suggestive of a struggle, indicating that JonBenet had tried to remove the ligature from her neck as she was being strangled, and therefore she was coherent and awake at that point. That's not accurate. It was actually Lou Smith and U.S. District Court Judge Julia Carnes. Julia Carnes was in charge, or I should say oversaw, a case where an individual, a suspect, sued the Ramseys because they implied he was potentially the person who killed their daughter. And in a 93-page report at the end, it's interesting, Julia Carnes had an opportunity to review all the evidence. And in her report, she concluded that it was more likely than not that an intruder had killed JonBenet,

not the Ramseys themselves. And in regards to what I had mentioned, I want to quote Julia Carnes here so that it's accurate. And exactly what she said was this, and this, you can find it yourself. It's on page 21. It's from 2003 of her looks like page 21 as well. The autopsy report supports the conclusion that she was alive before she was asphyxiated by strangulation and that she fought her attacker in some manner. Again, this is Julia Carnes, the judge overseeing the court case in 2003. So I just want to make that correction. It was Lou Smith and the judge, not Lou Smith and the pathologist. I don't know what the opinion of the pathologist was or if that person gave an opinion at all. Yes. And I'm glad we cleared that up because a medical examiner who's doing an autopsy is not going to typically give his or her guess about why these marks are made. They're just going

to acknowledge the presence of them. Exactly. So again, this is the first, but it won't be the last. And I ultimately want to get it right. We're not hired to solve this case or anything, but we both believe in making sure we're factual and respectful to the family and everyone involved. And we want to report it as it should be reported. And we're going to always do our best in that. And one more thing that I want to talk about, because in the last part, the last episode, we talked about the suitcase that was found in the basement. Not the same room where Jeanne Benet was found because she was found in the wine cellar area, but this was found in the basement, kind of in the playroom area under the window

that Lou Smith believes the intruder entered through. This suitcase had a duvet cover and a pillowcase and a Dr. Seuss book in it. And it turns out, and I just found this out, that there was semen found on this duvet cover and that semen was traced back to John Ramsey's son from his first marriage, John Andrew. Now I say this not because I want you to think that John Andrew was responsible for this because he did have an alibi and that was checked. So he wasn't even in Colorado at the time, but it's just more information about what was found on this blanket in the suitcase and why it may have been there. And Derek, you talked to me a little bit about

why you think this blanket would have had John Andrews semen on it. You want to give the audience a little insight into that? I really don't because I was saying this before. There's no way that I present this and you guys don't interpret it as some way of explaining my own personal experience. So I'm not going to go there. All I'll say, there was a blanket found in the suitcase a duvet cover that had uh Allegedly a teenage boy's uh semen on it. Um, and there I'll just say there is multiple Um innocent explanations for that. I'm not saying that's the case. I'm just saying that it could be explained very Easily, uh if it is in fact innocent, so that's all i'll say about it There's no good way for me to explain this one without getting a ton of comments from you guys and you're all going to be making fun

of me. So I'm not going there. All right. So I'm going to say it. Um, Andrew would have been a teenager at the time that this happened. Um, he, he did stay with his father and his stepmother from time to time. I believe he had his own room at the house. He was a teenage boy. He was probably masturbating quite a bit during this time because that's what teenage boys do. I mean, he could not have been. He could say, no, Stephanie, I only masturbated once a month, but likely that the semen could have been there for weeks or months. It has nothing to do with Jean Benet. Like I said, he wasn't even in Colorado at the time. But I know if we didn't talk about it, people would say, oh, you left this out purposely because you're trying to exonerate the Ramseys or you purposely didn't talk about this. We would never purposely not bring up evidence. We want it all on the table to examine. But we just miss things sometimes.

And this wasn't actually easy to find. So there's that. Yeah. And my opinion on it, and again, it's based on the amount of scrutiny that was put over this case. I'm sure investigators confirmed and vetted the alibi that John Andrew was not in Colorado at the time the incident occurred. And therefore, it's physically impossible that he could have been involved in any way, shape, or form with this John Bonet's murder. So I would tend to believe that this semen found

on the blanket, you would think that'd be a really compelling thing you would have heard about, right? And I think the reason you haven't is because it's explained away pretty easily for the reasons you just mentioned as far as using common sense and also the fact that he had an airtight alibi as far as his physical presence and where he was at that time. So we're going to get into the aftermath of this case, the aftermath of Jeanne Benet being found, the aftermath of her autopsy. And this is, you know, an opinion of mine, but it seemed like John and Patsy Ramsey kind of knew from the start that they would be considered main suspects. And it's often been reported that they weren't super cooperative with the police, the Boulder police. And when I say they weren't cooperative, they were cooperative in some ways.

They gave their fingerprints, they gave their DNA, things like that. But after that initial day, the 26th, they did not have an actual police interview with the Boulder police. They didn't go to the station. They didn't sit down. They didn't talk to the Boulder police and have interviews done separately. So after December 26th, John and Patsy Ramsey did not really speak to the police at all. And everyone found this very suspicious. And I don't think that the Boulder police tried to hide this from the media and the general public. Jeanne Benet had been found dead in her own home. Throughout the night, no one had heard anything in the house, allegedly. And according to the initial police investigation, there were no signs of forced entry into the room. Well, I mean, that's how it was reported, at least,

that no one had heard anything and there was no evidence of forced entry. But as we already talked about a little bit, there was evidence that someone from outside the house may have been inside the house. There was evidence that the from outside the house may have been inside the house. There was evidence that the house wasn't secured and locked up tight, and someone could have very easily gotten inside that night or any other night for that matter. Additionally, there was a report from a neighbor that lived across the street, and this neighbor said they heard a scream in the very early morning hours of the 26th. And later an experiment was done that showed due to the vent that led from the basement to the outside, someone could have

screamed in the basement of the Ramsey house. And that scream could have been heard outside, but not several floors up in the house where the family was sleeping. Right from the start, the Boulder police truly believed that someone in that house had killed Jean Benet, or at least, you know, some of the Boulder police, I would say. I don't want to give a general statement and say every single Boulder police detective thought the Ramseys were guilty, but a lot of the people who had been involved in the initial investigation, they thought that someone in the house had done it and the others had possibly helped them cover up. They felt that the ransom note was an element of staging the scene, and the Ramseys' unwillingness to cooperate initially made it look almost as if they didn't want to help solve the

mystery of what had happened to their daughter. So we're going right to January 1st, and I want to talk about the interview that John and Patsy did with CNN on January 1st, 1997, not even a week after Jean Benet's death, this interview did them no favors in the court of public opinion. At one point, they are asked, quote, are you absolutely convinced your daughter was kidnapped by some outsiders outside your family or circle of friends, end quote. And I don't know if you saw this interview, Derek, but after this question is asked, Patsy begins to shake her head back and forth the way you might shake your head if you were saying no you know the opposite of nodding and then John responds yes and and then she kind of starts sort of like nodding and agreeing with him now it's brought up in this interview that the Boulder

police had publicly stated a few days prior that there was no killer on the loose and that the city was perfectly safe and Patsy responds there is a killer on the loose saying, quote, I don't know who it is, if it's a he or a she, but if I were a resident of Boulder, I would tell my friends to keep your babies close to you. There's someone out there, end quote, which I found to be an odd thing to say since, you know, she was a resident of Boulder and she could have told her friends this exact thing. So she kind of said, if I was a resident, I would tell my friends. A lot of people who saw this interview came away feeling that the whole thing was too controlled, too rehearsed. And since Patsy was known to be a pageant queen, maybe she'd called on some of her old skills to put on a dramatic performance.

Do you have anything to add? Yeah, no, there's a lot to unpack there. You just said a bunch. First off, just some points that I was making as you were speaking. First thing, the scream. That was a really interesting scenario that came up with that. Again, like you said, there was a neighbor who allegedly heard, to be more specific, a child scream. And they didn't know how, if JonBenet had screamed, this neighbor 150 feet away in a different home would hear it, but the Ramseys wouldn't have. And it was interesting how it was laid out in the ID doc, and stop me if I'm wrong, Stephanie, but you basically have the basement, then you have the main floor, right? Then you have the second floor, which would be where Burke and JonBenet's bedrooms were. And then on the third floor is where Jon and Patsy's bedroom was

located. It was the whole master suite on that third level. And the way Lou Smith did it was basically he recreated the experiment. And what he found was that there was a vent, like you said, located in there that only directed outside and they recreated the scream. And what he found was that there was a vent, like you said, located in there that only directed outside and they recreated the scream and you could hear it from the neighbor's house, but you could not hear it from Patsy or John's bedroom. So again, people were like, oh, there's no way they wouldn't have heard it. They did it. They recreated it and they were able to prove that they wouldn't have heard it. So that was one point I found interesting. There was also something else I saw. Again, it was in a documentary. I haven't seen anything written in the documents, but it was elaborated as far as the scream. They said that

not only was it a child scream that stopped abruptly, but then a few seconds later, you could hear metal clanking. And the reason why that would be significant, we covered this in part two, there was like a grate over the cellar window, over the basement window. So Lou Smith hypothesized that the metal clanking was in fact the perpetrator shutting the gate, the grate behind him as he or she was fleeing the area. How do I feel about that personally? I don't know if this person would take time to shut the grate because they didn't take time to shut the basement window. I also don't think they would allow the grate to clank off the ground and make a noise if they were trying to escape undetected. So I don't know how I feel about it, but I wanted to bring it up. And then something you said as far as, and you qualified the Boulder police speculating, some of them at least believing

that the Ramseys were involved. I think it's, I think it's, you have to say that, you know, some people say, oh, well, you don't know how they felt. Well, no, we, we kind of do just by their actions. And that's what Lee and by their words, You just said it. Only a few days later, I believe it was, the Boulder police came out and said, there's no killer on the loose. Well, what are they not saying? They're saying, listen, we believe that the people who did this or the person who did this is not on the loose. We believe it's someone who we know where they are and we know what they're capable of. What does that infer to a reasonable person? It's pretty obvious. They're basically saying without saying it, they think the Ramseys were somehow involved or this was an accident. They're

not saying they're killers, but they're saying, we don't believe that an intruder came from the outside, killed this little girl and left. And therefore, if you take out that entire theory, what are you left with? So I don't think it's a stretch for you to say that, Stephanie. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, if you think about it, if the police believed it had been an intruder, then they would have said that. They would have said, yeah, there may be somebody on the loose. You may be in danger. Like, keep a lookout.

But they reassured Boulder, don't worry, guys. Nothing's going on. Nothing to see here. And I think that spoke volumes. Yeah. And I will say this, not substantiated, but allegedly, according to John Ramsey, from the interview with ID, he said right out that they had learned that a few of the patrolmen, as soon as they found John Bonnet's body, they looked at each other and were like, oh,

these people killed their kid. They jumped to that conclusion. Now that's allegedly, and that's out of John Ramsey's mouth. So you have to take it with some skepticism because again, some people believe he was involved. So it would, there would be a reason, an incentive for him to say that. But again, if you take that out of the equation, as you mentioned, repeating it, the police themselves came out publicly and said, there's no killer on the loose. There's really only a couple of ways to take that. And you have books written by former Boulder police detectives who are on the case that suggest much of the same. So it's not a huge leap. You know, it's not a big allegedly to say that the many in the Boulder police department felt that the Ramseys were involved with this. And I want to mention, you know, they did, the Ramseys did

eventually end up sitting down and having an interview with the police. On December 28th, they provided DNA samples as well as handwriting samples. On December 29th, the Ramseys hopped a private plane and they left Colorado. They flew to Atlanta where they buried Jean Benet because that's where they had lived previous to living in Colorado. And when they returned on January 3rd, the police obviously did want to question them at that point. But John and Patricia Ramsey had some terms and conditions under which these interviews would happen. They wanted to be questioned together. They wanted to be questioned at a lawyer's office. They didn't want to be questioned at the police station. And they also stipulated that the interview would last no longer than two hours. As a prior police officer, Derek,

I'm sure you've questioned suspects before. Why would these conditions that John and Patsy put forth make an investigation difficult? Well, the main reason would be at this point, as we just alluded to, these investigators believe that the Ramseys may have been involved. So the last thing they would want to do is first be limited to how long they could question a potential suspect and or witness, but more importantly, divulge any pertinent information that they've developed in the investigation and give it to someone who is a potential suspect and can use that to, again, alter the investigation or avoid detection. So yeah, they were not going to release any of the details that hadn't been released publicly.

So that's a non-starter. If anybody came in voluntarily and said, hey, the only way I'll do it, whether I thought they were innocent or guilty, if they asked to have my murder book, so to speak, or my evidence that I had laid out in my reports beforehand or even after, I would tell them, yeah, no, don't even bother coming in. And the fact that they wanted to be interviewed together, not separately, to me, that's also an on-starter because when you have two people who could potentially have been involved with a crime, and this is even throwing away any possible evidence that they are, but they were in the house. They were the family members of this child. And in cases where a child is murdered, it is very often somebody who knows that child. A stranger murder is much less common

when a child's involved than you might think, than the news makes it appear. Often the family is involved. So right away, the police are going to want to question them separately to make sure that their stories match up, but they didn't want to be questioned separately, which would be suspicious, I think, to anyone, especially a police officer. And you bring up something that we haven't mentioned yet, but it's important to say, yes, they want to be questioned together at a later time. Cannot happen for the reasons you just laid out. But let's even dial back to the morning of the disappearance and then eventually the discovery that she had been murdered. Patsy Ramsey and John Ramsey were initially questioned, as you said, on scene

by detectives together. They were in the same house, in the same room, talking to investigators. And even if they were in different rooms, they could hear each other speaking to detectives. You don't do that. You don't do that for the reasons you just laid out at a later date. You don't want to give them an opportunity to essentially compare notes about their alibis if they're lying at the same time. So them even being questioned the day of JonBenet's body being discovered was a mistake. When we're talking about mishaps, they should have been separated. They should have been interviewed, even if it was an informal interview in different parts of the house. So they couldn't compare notes. They couldn't corroborate

each other's story. And they couldn't make sure they were on the same page if you are to believe that they were being deceptive and lying to police. And I mean that initial day, this is the day that your daughter's body has been discovered. You're obviously going to be completely upset. And I forget if it was Linda Arndt or another police officer who tried to talk to Patsy, but they basically said she was just far too upset to get much out of her. So that whole initial interview that day with John and Patsy, whatever preliminary interview or whatever you want to call it, it was pretty much a wash. You're not going to get much from these people on the day within the few hours after they discovered their daughter's dead.

And the only other thing I want to put out there, because it's important to give both perspectives, is John Ramsey has emphatically disputed the notion that he and his wife were uncooperative throughout this duration. Again, this is his opinion. He said it again in the ID documentary that, listen, we made ourselves available. We gave hair from our heads, body hair, pubic hair. We gave handwriting samples. We offered to come in and speak with them on numerous occasions. I even wrote a letter to investigators telling them I wanted to get this underway. I wanted to get it over. And in his opinion, they were the ones that were unresponsive. So again, you go with wherever you want, but there's two sides to the story.

And we don't really know exactly what the situation was, but there's two sides to the story. And we don't really know exactly what the situation was, but that's how they've been presented in the public. One side is Patsy and, and John were not cooperative. John has said in multiple public interviews. Yes, we were. Okay. Yeah. I hear what you're, what you're saying. And I think, you know, depending on what you consider to be cooperative, they were cooperative. Like you said, they gave DNA, they gave handwriting samples, but then they left town. And it's a fact that they were not officially interviewed by the police until what, six months after, what did you say, June of 1997? It was actually June of 1998. June of 1998. Correct. So almost six months after the fact. And whether this was the Boulder police holding up that interview or the Ramseys holding up that interview or the Boulder police saying, we don't agree to interview you under the circumstances you are demanding to be interviewed under and both parties kind of being at a stalemate, regardless, what is not disputed is that their first official interview with the Boulder police wasn't until many months later.

Yeah, I agree. That's that's the you know, there's the video documentation to prove it. And that's pretty uncommon. Yeah, you would you would think it would go a lot sooner. I mean, I guess I'm going to continue my defense attorney hat here. But my my argument would be that from the jump from December 26th, the Ramseys could feel that they were the number one suspects. They could feel it and they didn't want to give any statement that could be used against them later because of pressure or because of not being prepared. I'm not saying I

agree with it. I'm just saying the argument could be made that John and Patsy are watching the news and shortly after their daughter's killed, the police are coming out and saying, there's no intruder on the loose. And as we've said numerous times, John was not stupid and neither was Patsy. And even if they were, I still think you could read between the lines there of what the police were saying. And that might've ticked them off and said, listen, if they're innocent, imagine watching that. If you're truly innocent and knowing your daughter was just brutally murdered, that the police are out there saying there's no one on the loose when you know that there

is. And they're implying that you're the killers. I don't know if I'd want to speak to them either, to be fair. Absolutely. Not even pissed off, but scared. You might be thinking, I know I didn't do this, but they think I did, and I'm not going to give them any more rope to hang me with. Yeah, exactly. So I see both sides to it. I'm fortunate and you're fortunate that we've never been in this position that the Ramseys were in. And if they are guilty in some way, shape,

or form, then it would make sense why they wouldn't want to talk. And if they're innocent, it also would make sense based on how the police reacted and how they were given public statements that they never should have made. Yeah. And I believe there was also something when they were interviewed those months later, they wanted copies or transcripts of their initial interview, like the police report from their talking to the police on December 26th. And they wanted to see those before sitting down and talking to police in June of 98. And I believe they were actually given those. But once again, if you're an innocent person, if you're a smart man and woman who have made your lives and you're pretty much millionaires now, you got to be pretty industrious to do that.

You're going to take every precaution. You're going to hire lawyers. You're going to want to make sure that you don't trip yourself up based on the fact that it's six months later and you don't have an exact memory of what happened on the morning of December 26th. Yep. And kudos to the police if they actually gave them that because I wouldn't have. That's what you use, right? You want to see if after a time later, your story is the same. Because if it's the truth, even if you can't remember what you said, you should just tell the truth as you know it. And it should basically line up. There may be a couple of details that are a little different, but the overview, the major components should be the

exact same if you're only telling the truth. Now, if you're manufacturing a story and you don't remember what you said in the initial interview because you were just kind of pulling it out of your, you know what, as you go, then yeah, you're bound to get yourself caught up and jammed up in a second interview where you contradict your own statement. So if Boulder PD actually did give him their initial interviews, okay. I think it was last episode or the one before, one of the JonBenet Ramsey episodes that we did, you said, it's okay to say in an interview, I don't remember, or I don't know. It's better than saying something and making a false statement, but it's six months later, many months later.

And how often are they going to get away with saying, I don't know, I recall before that looks suspicious. So I'm sure their lawyer went in and told the police, like, listen, it's been half a year. You know, they're not going to have a perfect memory. So I think it would actually benefit everybody to jog their memory of that morning. Yeah, I don't agree. I can't, I don't have an excuse for them on this one, but you know, yeah, it's, it yeah, I get it. I don't agree with it. And it's very few theories that actually name John Ramsey as a potential suspect. Usually he's in the role of helping to cover this up. But the two members of the Ramsey family that get talked about the most when any of these questions are brought up, like who killed John Bonnet Ramsey, are her mother Patsy and her brother

Burke. Now one of the original working theories of the Boulder Police Department was that Patsy had accidentally killed her daughter and then basically staged a scene to cover it up. It has become well known in years since that Jean Benet was having an issue with wetting the bed. It had become almost a nightly occurrence and Patsy wasn't too happy about it. And I have some experience with this as a parent. I completely get the frustration, but usually, and I've seen this bedwetting thing be related back to multiple different things like, oh, she was being sexually abused. Children who are being sexually abused wet the bed all the time. She was stressed out. Children who are stressed out and are living in bad home lives wet the bed all the time. In fact, the most common reason for a child,

especially of Jean Benet's age, to wet the bed is because of constipation. And I found this out myself when going to the pediatrician. So it has to do with, you know, it has to do with a bunch of like physiological things, but this is the most common reason why children of that age wet the bed. It has nothing to do with psychological issues or developmental issues. It's very easily explained and very easily fixed. But apparently Patsy didn't like this and police believed that on Christmas night, Jean Benet could have had another accident and Patsy didn't like this, and police believed that on Christmas night, Jean Benet could have had another accident, and Patsy, exhausted after a long day, at her wit's end with the constant bedwetting, flew into a rage and either struck her daughter with something on the head or hit Jean Benet's head on something hard, like a bathtub, much harder than she obviously would have intended to.

Now, after this happened, she realized what she'd done, and she staged the rest of the scene to make it look as if, you know, some sexual deviant had come into the house and killed Jean Benet. Now, this is a pretty shocking theory, all things considered, because as we know, or as we speculate, the blow to the head was not what killed Jeanne Benet. Although I'm sure if left untreated, it certainly could have. So that brings us into a whole dark, dark place where Patsy would have done this to her daughter. And then when Jeanne Benet was still alive, Patsy would have fashioned this garret and actually choked her own daughter to death and staged a crime scene where she took this wooden handle of the garret and sexually abused her daughter with it, essentially. And whatever I think about this woman, I don't know

her. I have, of course, my own personal preferences of not putting my kids into pageants. But I don't think that, I just, I don't know. I don't think that she would do something like that, knowing that JonBenet was still alive. Now, could JonBenet have been knocked out and then Patsy didn't know she was alive? I suppose, but you would still hopefully check for a heartbeat, check for, you know, to see if your daughter was still breathing before going through with this. What's your opinion on this? First off, I watched the video, the police interview with Patsy Ramsey in 1998, and they specifically asked her about this. She got very upset. They posed it as, what if this was an accident?

What if it didn't mean to happen? What if she had wet the bed? And Patsy was very defensive, understandably so. And some even interpreted as her coming off as looking emotional, right? Like, oh, here's a sign that she can't control her temper. But I agree with you. I agree with you. Was this brought up to her in her police interview? Yeah. Yeah. And what did she, she responded emotionally?

Yeah. She was like, they were like, what would you say? Don't quote me on this. But they were like, what would you say if we said that this was an accident and that you got upset with her kind of slam on the table at one point a little bit, a couple seconds later, like, what are we doing here? You know what I mean? Like, and again, I thought that was completely normal reaction, as you just said. And, you know, I feel like this, this is a police tactic, you know, like, like Chris Watts, you know, what, what if it was Shanann that, that killed your daughters and then you flew into a rage, understandably, you know, well, what if, you know, this was an accident, you didn't mean to hurt your daughter. Like it's a tactic I think, right. That's kind of used to hopefully get a confession out of people because it's easier to, to get a confession or elicit a confession from your suspect than to have to gather evidence and go to a trial.

Well, and at that point they're there voluntarily. So you got to understand that if you piss them off too much, they can get up and walk out at any point so you also don't want to be too aggressive and uh offend them to the point where they're like up this questioning's over and then the lieutenant's looking at you as the detective going what the hell are you doing to the actual theory itself and we're not doctors we're not psychiatrists but i agree with you wholeheartedly. If this was an accident, first off, I would like to think that if it was me, I'd try to put myself in the shoes of an offender or just a parent in this situation where if my daughter fell and hit her head or even if I pushed her, would I say, okay, I'm going to go to jail for this. I need to create a scene where I'm going to create a, like do all this extra stuff, this excessive stuff. I'm going to write a ransom note. I'm going to make it seem like there's going to be a kidnapping, but then I'm going to actually put her in the basement. And I'm not going to repeat what we talked about in last episode,

but do all these unnecessary things to my daughter's body just to sell the lie that this was something other than an accident in a bathroom over bedwetting. If you really wanted to lie, you could simply say, she must've fell in the tub by herself, even if you pushed her. Simple as that. She fell in the tub. I wasn't paying attention. She's deceased. I feel horrible about it. Just leave out the fact that you pushed her. And there you go. Simple excuse. And I'm not trying to minimize the situation, but it could be that simple. There's no need for everything that we've learned about what happened to JonBenet to cover up if this was the situation. So I'm 100% on board with you. It just doesn't hold water to me.

And I mean, I remember reading something. It was a pediatric urologist who gave her opinion. Everybody gives their opinion and they say things so offhandedly almost. And this pediatric urologist said, if this was the case, if this theory was true, she wouldn't be shocked because bedwetting is the leading cause of child abuse. And it's simply because parents don't really understand why it's happening, especially when it's an older child. And they just assume that the child's being lazy and not getting up at night to go to the bathroom. And yeah, absolutely.

But to fly into a rage like that and then to say, let me stage the scene so drastically, I could even see tying her up, putting her in the basement, but the rest of it, the garrotte, the sexual abuse, no, I don't see it. I don't see it. I'm sorry. And I'm of one of the camps where it's like, it possibly could have been somebody in the house, but to me, that's going too far. And in crime scene photos, we can see Jean Benet's bedroom and bed and her bedding doesn't appear to have urine stains on them. And there's no sign that the bedding was ever changed, which kind of counters the theory that she'd wet the bed that night unless the sheets had been changed. I mean, I think in the crime scene photos, the bed's unmade. So once

again, this would be a whole new level of 4D chess, like thinking 10 steps ahead, like let me change the sheets, get rid of these old urine stain sheets. Let me remake the bed with new sheets and then make it look like somebody had been sleeping in the bed. And then there was fibers and things found in the bed from the rope and stuff like that, you know, stuff that you would have to literally plant there. And I just don't think that Patsy Ramsey was this criminal mastermind Moriarty sort of like figure that people are giving her credit for being. And listen, really simple. If you're going to go to the extent of changing the sheets, why wouldn't you just change her pants, her long johns? They were in her underwear. They were covered in urine. If you're trying to cover it up and you went to the extent of changing the wet bed,

I would like to assume you would also change her clothes, at least her bottoms, so that that wouldn't even be a possible motive for investigators. But they didn't. JonBenet was covered in urine, which completely contradicts the idea that Patsy or anybody else was trying to cover up what actually happened, which was that she wet her pants. Well, some people actually point to the fact that she had urine on her pants and say, well, she did wet the bed. No, there was also urine found in the wine cellar where she was murdered. And as we know, it's very common at the time of death for you to empty your bladder. It's your body, you're not controlling your body any longer. So I think that was just a,

an unfortunate, you know, side effect of, of her dying. I agree. I hate to even talk about this. Why I'm kind of starting a little bit. Cause it puts you back in the mindset of what was going on in those final moments. I hate it. I absolutely hate it, but yes, you're right. Another reason that police kind of suspected this was when the police got there on the morning of the 26th, Patsy was fully dressed. She had her makeup on, stuff like that. And this led detectives to believe that she hadn't woken up and redressed and applied her makeup that morning. She'd never gone to sleep.

And she actually said in her police interview, she got up. I think she said her husband, John, got in the shower. And while he was in the shower, she redressed in the same clothes that she'd worn the night before, the black velvet pants, the red sweater. And I remember in one documentary, I can't remember which one it is. It wasn't the CBS one. I watched on Hulu, I think. But one of the people who are talking about it, they're like, this was a woman who had money. Why would she wear the same clothes twice? And I laughed out loud because I thought it was so ridiculous. Like, I mean, she's not the Kardashians, you know, she's, yeah, she's got money, but you know, they were leaving early that morning to get on a plane and fly out. Um, the clothes were right there, it's very possible that she just put

on the same clothes that she wore from the last night, the night before. What seems more improbable to me is the makeup application. Because personally for me, makeup doesn't touch my face until I've had coffee. And she's saying that she got dressed and put her makeup on before she even went downstairs. For me, I'll get up. Maybe I'll get dressed. I'll go downstairs, you know, make the coffee, whatever. And then at some point before I leave, I'll put makeup on. But it's coffee first.

But I don't know what Patsy's, you know, ritual was in the morning. Maybe she was somebody who put on a full beat before she, you know, even started her day. That's very possible. But they pointed to this as proof or evidence or at least something that pointed to the fact that she had not gone to sleep the night before. So she was busy murdering her daughter and covering up a crime scene all night. And that's why she was still dressed in the same clothes from the night before and she was wearing makeup. And let's just address that. I mean, it's a very plausible theory. It really is. I mean, if you're in the camp of law enforcement where they're like, listen, we think whatever happened to JonBenet happened before anybody went to sleep.

So the clothes that Jon and Patsy were wearing when they got home that evening, something went down and they took four or five hours to create this whole narrative, to create the ransom note, to do what they did to JonBenet. And in the process, they never even changed their clothes. They never even took off their makeup for the evening. Patsy never took off her makeup. And so when we're seeing them at eight o'clock in the morning, whatever time the police arrived, what time was it they arrived exactly? 5.52 to 911 call. I know Linda Arndt arrived around eight, correct? I think the first officer was on scene shortly after six because he got there right after Fleet and Priscilla White. Right. So I agree with you. I don't put makeup on in the morning,

but I would think you would come downstairs, especially if you don't have plans, get your coffee, whatever you're going to do, and then maybe get dressed for the day, take a shower, put some makeup on. But I would agree that that seems, for the most part, doesn't mean she's not a little different in that sense. But I think that is peculiar behavior that she would be getting makeup on at 5.30 in the morning before coming downstairs. This can be easily explained, right? She can be thinking to herself, okay, we've got an early flight to take. Personally, I also don't wear makeup when I go on a plane because who cares? But that's me. She was an ex-beauty queen. She cared a very great deal

about her appearance. I think this is the kind of person who doesn't leave the house if she doesn't have makeup on, right? Because she might see somebody at the grocery store or something like that. I am not that person. And she could be thinking, we've got an early flight. Once the kids get up and I have to get them breakfast and get them dressed, there's not going to be any time for me to go and apply my makeup. So I want to do it now while the house is quiet before anybody's woken up, pull my makeup on quick. Cause I know once the house wakes up, it's going to be crazier. There could be a lot of explanations for this. Personally, I would get the coffee started before putting on my makeup, at least get it started and then go do the makeup.

But, you know, there was also like probably 50 flights of stairs for her to take from the upstairs to the downstairs. And I just spent a hike. So she just does all her upstairs stuff first and then goes downstairs. Yeah. And I don't want to spend too much time on it because it's one piece of a bigger puzzle, but it doesn't, it doesn't make sense to me because if that's the case, you know you got an early flight, you're getting up, then I'm probably putting on the clothes that I'm going to wear

on the flight as well. And so you're going to put the same clothes on that you wore the night before, but then you're going to put a fresh face on and then later have to take those clothes off over your fresh makeup to put the clothes on to go on a plane. So if you're getting ready early because you know you got an early flight, wouldn't you put the clothes that you were going to wear for the day on first before doing your makeup? Maybe, am I wrong in saying that? Well, maybe she felt those clothes were comfortable. Maybe she wore them all day the day before and she was like, these are really comfortable. I'm just going to

wear them on the flight tomorrow. These nice stretchy velvet pants and this cozy, you know, red Christmas sweater. Maybe she saw herself in the mirror when she's getting ready the day before and she was like, I look hot in this. I'm going to wear this again tomorrow. You know, who knows? It's, it's possible to wear those clothes on the plane. Maybe again, we're not saying that the clothes or the makeup are the, the, the smoking gun here, but as you know, you can see how Boulder PD took this, took the ransom note, took everything else in consideration. And in totality said that this, this, this isn't adding up. It wasn't one specific thing. It was a combination of things that are just odd irregularities

that don't make sense to them from a commonsensical perspective where they're like, listen, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. And that's, I think that's kind of how they interpreted this case. Yeah. Like I said, they certainly found it to be suspicious or at least irregular. And one thing is not always going to lead a police officer or detective to be like, bingo, I've cracked it. You know, it's going to be a compilation of many things. And one of those many things was, was her behavior, her behavior in the 911 call when she, you know, disconnected before, you know, the 911 operator was even done with her. I believe her name was Kim Archuleta. You know, she kind of hung up on Kim Archuleta and many people said, well, why would you hang up on your lifeline? That's one thing. But also the fact that she hung up with 911 and then called all her friends over.

And both you and I, to me, this is the most suspicious thing about her behavior that morning. You and I both don't understand why she would have done that. No, I don't. And I was thinking about this after we talked about it in the last episode. If I'm Patsy Ramsey and I'm John Ramsey, I don't know, this is more of a psychological thing. I would love to talk to a forensic psychologist about this. And I have a few we could actually consult on this. But if I know what had happened the night before and I know what I just did to my daughter's body, and I know that my plan is to find the body or make sure the detectives see that we found her in front of them.

Would I really want all my friends and family there to see that as well, knowing what I'm going to do in a few hours? I don't know. I don't know if I want the psychologically, I don't know if I'd want an audience there when I know what's waiting for us in the basement that I'm going to eventually, I'm doing quotations here, uncover if they're guilty. What do you think? Maybe it's not an audience they wanted, but witnesses. Yeah. I thought about that too. It just seems like overkill. The best witnesses would be there would be the police. You want them on your side. True. But if you're assuming that the police are immediately going to find you suspicious, which is exactly what happened, you're going to want

a whole plethora of other people there who are going to support your, you know, the chain of events. Like, oh, yes, it was completely random that he found her. And they were so upset. They were grief stricken. Patsy threw herself on the body and asked, you know, Jesus to raise Jean Benet from the dead as he had raised Lazarus from the dead. And it was absolutely heartbreaking. You know, you might want that, especially if these people are going to, you know, eventually repeat what happened. Because once again, we know that people like this are often tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. So I can't imagine why you would want them there at all, but I don't have friends. So we don't know what Patsy's relationship was like with John Ramsey. If you hear Linda Arndt tell it, they weren't super close because she said they

didn't comfort each other at all that morning of the 26th, right? John was in one room opening his mail. Patsy was with her friends and the pastor being propped up, being supported. And maybe that's what she knew she needed and she knew she wasn't going to get it from him. Maybe he was just this very clinical, like matter of fact kind of person and she knew she would need moral support and it wasn't gonna come from John. It's possible.

So crazy, this case, man. And again, depending on where you're coming from, I said it a million times in this case so far already, but depending on what school you're in, you could take this information and interpret it one of two ways. This is a sign of guilt, or this is completely innocent on their part where they didn't know what was about to happen. And they were just as surprised as Linda Arndt was when they found her body. I mean, it all depends on where you fall. Yeah. And I mean, the ransom note is also something that people often point to when talking about Patsy being responsible for this.

And a bunch of handwriting analysis were brought in to compare Patsy's handwriting with the ransom note. I mean, at this point, and some of them were brought in by the Boulder PD, some were brought in by the DA's office, some were brought in, I believe, by the private investigator that the Ramseys hired. Some were brought in who just kind of put themselves on the case and decided to analyze it separately. So a bunch of people have looked at this. And I feel like the majority of them say, this is not Patsy's handwriting. But there's two significant ones I want to talk about who say it was. One is Sina Wong. She was actually in that documentary that I was talking about. I think it was on Hulu. I can't remember what it was called, but she was adamant in this documentary. Patsy

Ramsey wrote this ransom letter. But there's something to understand about Sina Wong is, you know, she claims 10 years of experience in the field, but she had never taken a certification exam at the time that, you know, she claimed this. She'd never completed an accreditation course and document examination. She'd never been an apprentice to an ABFDE certified document examiner. She never worked in a crime lab. So although, you know, she said she's got 10 years of experience, technically, she's not going to be considered in a court of law as a credible sort of, what do they call them, witness or expert? An expert witness. Gideon Epstein. So Gideon Epstein is a forensic document examiner. He actually served as the past president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners. It sounds very important. He was a registered member of ABFDE. He's authored several authoritative texts in the

field. He had a Bachelor of Sciences from the University of Nebraska, a Master's of Forensic Science from the Antioch School of Law. He successfully completed a two-year resident training program in the Forensic Science of Question Document Examination at the U.S. Army Crime Lab in Fort Gordon, Georgia, and he trained with the Post Office Identification Lab. He taught forensic document examination at George Washington Graduate School of Forensic Sciences, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, and in programs that were offered to the United States Army Criminal Investigator. So, I mean, he's got the experience, right? And he also claimed that he believed Patsy wrote this letter. Now, other side of that coin, right? So you got one certified expert who says it's Patsy, but then you have six other experts who say it's not. And those experts were hired by Boulder PD and the DA's office. And if

you're to believe the Boulder PD had it out for the Ramseys, they wouldn't want this to happen, but they did. They had six experts come in. So in this particular case, because who are we to judge their level of expertise, even with the first expert, who are we to judge based on their education, how much they did? These could be just fancy titles that they've given themselves in their resume. The bottom line is you have eight individuals who've examined the ransom note that have been actually attached to this case. And out of those eight, six of them said it's not her. So as an investigator, I got to go with the odds. Now, if you want to build a certain case, I guess you could be selective and pick the person you want. But I'm going six out of eight

as far as where I'm leaning. For sure. And what's important to note is Gideon Epstein did not have the original ransom note when he did this comparison, right? So he didn't have the actual document. So there can be a myriad number of issues with this if it's photocopied, especially, you know, because there could be lines in there that aren't even part of the note that are just from like maybe the photocopy machine. It could completely throw it off. And I believe that he didn't have Patsy Ramsey's initial handwriting samples that she gave the police. So I'm not sure what he used. I think I can find it out actually, but tell me what you think about that. Yeah. You just kind of, not intentionally, but you're just kind of minimizing Gideon's analysis as you should, as you should. I mean, that's, you're not doing it

intentionally. That's the facts. And so again, instead of six out of eight, if you're taking, now we're looking at like, you know, six and six and a half out of eight, because, you know, Gideon didn't really have access to the stuff he probably needed. And I don't know a lot about handwriting analysis from, you know, from a detail perspective, but I'm sure the pressure in which they push on the writing instrument is easier to tell from the experts in the majority in that case because it's overwhelming the majority it's not like it's you know what could be an odd number because of them but it wasn't you know seven to eight it was six to eight that's still pretty damn near close to almost perfect and so yeah these experts had access to the original ransom note as well as at these original handwriting samples so it wouldn't be anything against you know mr epstein

like oh he did this purposely, but with what, with the stuff he had, it was the best analysis he could have given. And it may not be a hundred percent accurate. And as far as the ransom note, I think it's, we can segue into the next theory because we've kind of talked to where we feel about, you know, Patsy, but you bring up the ransom note and there's so much to this ransom note. There's so many layers to it, so many aspects of it, But this ransom note still kind of plays into our next theory, right? mainly explored during the CBS docuseries, The Case of Jean-Bernie Ramsey. They pretty much said, and they brought a lot of experts, and experts that I really

respect in the field. What was his name? The psychologist? He's got a German name. Werner Spitz. They brought in Werner Spitz and Dr. Henry Lee. These people that I've always followed and looked up to.

Yeah. You have Jim Clemente, Laura Richards, Jim Fitzgerald. You know, I'm friends with some of these people, you know, like I've colleagues and friends with them. And I'm with you. I respect a lot of the work they've done for sure. So it was a it was a stunning cast of experts and professionals in the field. And they did, you know, different tests and things. And they basically said that they believed that Burke Ramsey could have done this. And desperate to hold on to their one remaining child, Patsy and John covered it up. Now, the bowl of pineapple is the key here. It's theorized that Burke was eating the pineapple after Jean Benet

had been put to bed. His fingerprints were found on the bowl after all. And then maybe Patsy and John went to bed. Burke's nine. He's old enough to stay up by himself. I sometimes just allow Aiden, you know, especially on weekends, if he doesn't have school the next day, like I'm going to bed, I'm tired. But you know, when you've worn yourself out, you can go to bed. He could have been up by himself eating this pineapple. Jean Benet woke up. She got out of bed, went down to the kitchen where she saw her brother eating one of her favorite snacks. And in a playful way that annoying little sisters have, she ran by and grabbed a piece out with her fingers, explaining the fact that her fingerprints weren't on the bowl. And this caused Burke to get very upset,

to lash out and hit her on the head. Now there was a large flashlight found on the bowl. And this caused Burke to get very upset, to lash out and hit her on the head. Now there was a large flashlight found on the kitchen counter, one of those heavy duty ones, mag lights. And during the series, forensic pathologist Warner Spitz performed an experiment where he struck the head of a child-sized mannequin with a similar flashlight. And he concluded that a flashlight like the one that was found in the Ramsey home could have been the source of John Bonnet's head wound. Now the flashlight in the house that was found in the Ramsey's home on the counter, not only do they have no idea where it came from, or they claim that they have no idea where it came from, it didn't belong to them,

but it was clean as a whistle. No fingerprints, no DNA, nothing, which in itself I think is odd. But on top of the fact that it has nothing on it and the Ramseys have no idea where it came from, that's a little crazy. And then there was also a drinking glass on the counter near the pineapple that had Burke's fingerprints on it as well. But I think I talked about this a little bit in the past episode. It didn't appear that anyone had drunk out of this glass since there was no DNA found on the rim. So this is all just very strange. He got a glass of water, he got some pineapple and milk, he settled down, and then JonBenet came in and pissed him off. That's what they're theorizing. Yeah, I agree. And before I even elaborate on what you just said, just a

disclaimer, guys, we're not oblivious. We know that the CBS documentary was tied up in some legal issues. There was a settlement that we're not privy to. But again, this is a theory that was put in by the show. This is not a theory that neither Stephanie or I are speculating and believe. We're just putting it out there because it was seen by millions of people. And it'd be foolish for us to sit here and say that this probably didn't sway some people's opinions on this case and specifically Burke. So we want to discuss it. But again, keep in mind that this is not a theory being presented by us. We understand that it's been highly disputed by Burke, who gave his interview after the series to

Dr. Phil and disputed it. And I want to mention that even before they sued CBS, because when I say they, I mean like Burke and his legal team, even before he sued CBS, he sued Warner Spitz specifically. There was a $150 million defamation suit filed against Spitz. And initially, I believe Burke just asked for a retraction and Warner Spitz was like, no. And then he got sued. So, I mean, it's interesting because it seems like Spitz really believed what his conclusion was to the point where he was going to risk being sued for a lot of money to stick to his guns and not give a retraction to his theory. So again, Burke Ramsey is innocent of any crime in this case. And as we said in episode two, they've come out and said recently in the last few years that they're all innocent, that

they in no way, shape or form were involved in the death or alleged kidnapping of JonBenet. So that said, to everything you just laid out, I'm not going to elaborate too much on it. I thought the theory at the time when I watched the special was very compelling, the way they laid it out. They recreated the whole house to reenact how someone would go in and out of the basement window. So they really did do their due diligence on it. I know that they spent a lot of time out in Colorado working this case for months, a lot longer than just for filming the episode. So they did a lot of work and they brought forward a very interesting theory about what had happened that evening. And again, there's a lot of people that believe it. It's not just these individuals who worked this case for the CBS special. And I can see why, because when you take into consideration all the elements

of this particular theory and you consider it with what we know we have for factual evidence, like the mag flashlight that no one really knows where it came from, things like that, the milk and pineapple on the counter. Nobody really knows where it came from, things like that. The, the milk and pineapple on the, on the counter. That really, nobody really knows where it came from apparently. Yeah, it, it, it does, it does seem to line up, but then there are things, there are things about this case that don't line up with this theory. Well, first I want to talk about one more thing that, that does line up with the theory. Go for it. So remember that John and Patsy said Burke was

asleep during this whole thing. Burke was asleep when she found the ransom note. Burke was asleep when the 911 call was made. Burke was asleep pretty much until they woke him up. And then they got him out of that house with a quickness, right? When the police showed up, Burke was not there. And the police got there pretty early. So they sent Burke off with, and I don't know, maybe he was there when the first police officer got there. But by the time like the majority of the police got there, he was gone. They'd sent him off with a friend of the family. But when he was interviewed as a child, I believe it was by a police psychologist.

They asked him, you know, were you asleep? And John Ramsey's been heard multiple times in interviews saying Burke was fast asleep because that's the first thing we did when we checked the kids' bedrooms. We checked to see if Jean Benet was there. She wasn't. We checked on Burke and he was asleep. Now Burke says in this interview, I was like laying in bed with my eyes open, like, you know, so I was thinking of what might've happened. And then the psychologist says, did you hear your mom and dad talking? And Burke responded, I just heard mom like going psycho. And then the police said, did you go down to see what was going on? And Burke said, no, I just stayed in bed. So it's, there's some, I guess, question on whether or not Burke

was asleep when this happened. I mean, I can't imagine that if it was me, I would have been screaming like a banshee, just like he said, you know, Patsy was going psycho. Do you think he could have slept through that? He's telling the police psychologist or the police officer. I don't remember which one it was, but he's telling them like I was asleep. I was laying in bed with my eyes open. I was thinking, what could have happened? I heard my mom going psycho.

He says he didn't get up to go see what was happening, but he was awake. Yeah. And the house is big, so I guess it's possible if he's a heavy sleeper. But this is also where that 911 call that we discussed at length came in in our last episode where if you're to believe the audio experts, the recordings, the CBS episode, there are many people that believe in that last six seconds, you hear a little boy and it's believed that that boy may have been Burke. And if that's true, well then clearly the Ramseys, Patsy and John are lying. And then the question becomes, why are they lying? And that's where this all ties in. That's how the CBS special laid it all out. They kind of built a timeline of how these events would have occurred, why they would have

occurred, and how ultimately resulted in where we are now and how we're discussing it. But I will say this, and I will never truly know what happens more than likely happened that night. But I will say this again with this theory, the same as the Patsy Ramsey theory in the, you know, with the urination, if we're to believe this theory, okay, then we have to believe that after this occurred, you know, whether Burke killed JonBenet intentionally or accidentally, We also have to believe that at that moment, JonBenet's father and mother wrote a ransom note. No problem. That's not that difficult to do, right? But then one of those two individuals brought their daughter down to a basement and proceeded to sexually assault her, strangle her, tie her up, tape her mouth, do all these other things to build this narrative. Because I personally don't believe Burke Ramsey could have done those things. I don't think he

could build the garage. I don't think he would do all these other things. I don't even know if he could carry her down there, honestly. He was a very small boy from the video that I saw of him. So if you're going to believe the Burke theory, you also have to believe that John and Patsy were capable of doing this. And to our first episode, they were not perfect people. Nobody is, but are they capable of this? That's the question you really got to ask yourself. Yeah. And, and, you know, there's going to be people out there who say, well, there's plenty of incidences of small children who, you know, kill other children or yeah, you, but you'd have to be a straight up psychopath to do this, right? A straight up psychopath or sociopath. You just have to be clearly disturbed.

And there's no evidence that Burke Ramsey was that kind of person. Um, and besides that, if he did kill her, I can't imagine that it would be intentional. And this whole theory hinges on the fact that his parents helped him cover it up, that they were just like, oh, my God, we've lost one of our children. And now we have to do whatever it takes to hold on to our last remaining child. But you have to understand he's nine years old. It's not like he's going to go to prison for for life. You know, he's not even I don't even think he would go to juvenile detention. They'd probably just have him see a mental health professional. He's not going to be lost to them. He's not gone. Now, would this follow him forever? Yes,

if it was made public. He's a juvenile, so his record would be sealed. It's not as if that would be available when he was an adult. It wouldn't be something that potential employers would see if they were going to hire him. But his reputation, yes, I think it would follow him, especially with this being a big case. That could have been an issue for the Ramseys. They were people that seemed like they cared a lot about their appearance or their reputation. So I think maybe they thought his life's going to be over, not like he's going to be behind bars forever, but he's never going to be able to shake this. Yeah. They did appear to be people who cared

about their reputation, but from what I've seen and from what their friends and colleagues have said, they also appeared to be people that cared about their kids. And again, I just keep coming back to it. I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but whether it was an accident or intentional by Burke, I could see a world where you make a wrong decision. You're like, we have to cover this up. We have to make it look like a kidnapping go wrong to protect Burke. But I would assume, and again, it's assumption. That's not always a good thing. I would assume you would set it up in a way where it's as least disrespectful to your daughter as possible. I don't see a world where a father who didn't intend for this to happen, right? He didn't know his son was going to accidentally or intentionally do this, would be able to

mentally do what whoever killed JonBenet did. And I'm talking specifically about the paintbrush and the fact that there were fragments of that paintbrush found in her vaginal canal. I just can't see a world where in that moment, you think that's necessary to protect your son. It doesn't make sense. And the only other thing I want to say about it, as far as the Burke idea that is, again, compelling, the theory, is the marks that we talked about in episode two, the little marks on the neck, the two dots, and also on her back. You want to explain that as well? I know we've talked about it numerous times, but what the CBS documentary alleged that those marks represented. So these marks on her back have really never been explained away. They've been

attempted to be explained away by the CBS documentary and by Lou Smith. For the record, Lou Smith, who was the detective from Colorado Springs that was brought in three months after the case started, he believed in the intruder theory. He's always pushed for that. And he claims these marks were made by a stun gun, which I get. But that stun gun theory has been disputed. I believe it was actually a stun gun, a taser representative said that he was contacted by an investigator early on in the case, and he provided Smith with the same model to conduct his experiments. And this man, whose name was Stephen Tuttle, he said, I'm bewildered. I don't know what to think about the theory. It defies the logic of what the weapon does. Tuttle conceded that two marks are close to the width of the contacts of

an air taser, but said that's where the similarities end. He went on to say, quote, we have never seen those types of marks when you touch somebody with a stun gun. We are talking hundreds of people that have been touched with these devices. I can't replicate those marks. Tuttle also said it's uncommon for the stun gun to leave only two marks on the skin because the body moves away from the stun gun, causing multiple erratic marks. And he said, how can you keep this thing perfectly still, not once, but twice on a squirming child? It doesn't make any sense. I hope that doesn't throw water on somebody's investigation. So Nebraska Dr. Robert Stratbucker, who has also conducted several experiments on stun guns and is considered a courtroom expert, said he takes

considerable issue with Smith's stun gun theory. Stratbucker said, quote, it's pure nonsense that the stun gun would leave a blue mark in between red marks on the skin, as Smith claimed. He said, quote, I have not seen ever, ever any blue marks, and I don't know what the cause of any blue mark could be, end quote. So pretty much Smith said this is a stun gun and this is what made those marks. But the CBS documentary said these marks could have potentially been made by train tracks. And in the playroom next to the wine cellar, there was a train set, you know, like one you would put together and you could have like a little electric train go on it. One of Burke's toys.

And when they compared the marks to the ends of the train tracks, so if you took the tracks apart and you just have singular pieces, those pieces have marks on them on either side, like kind of little prods. And those prods or the protruding pieces of the train tracks, they seem to match exactly with the marks on Jeanne Benet's body. Those two separate marks that nobody can really explain where they came from. So what do you think about that? Yeah. And essentially Burke used those train tracks to poke her multiple times to see if she was in fact dead or not or incapacitated. Yeah, that's what they allege. Again, it's interesting for us because we're coming at this where we're absorbing all this information from Lou Smith and the investigators of the CBS documentary and then the court documents.

And we're trying to develop an opinion on it. And it's such a different perspective. And at the end of the day, again, it's what you want to believe. And it's more about the people. Does the theory work based on what they've laid out? Yes, it does. You can even take it a step further there and say, you know, the maglite, they did some recreation with a, with a, with a skull where the maglite beings, you know, struck off a human skull of JonBenet size and

stature would create a similar, uh, a fracture in the skull that, that she had. Yeah, they took it a step further. So again, if you watch the documentary, they do a good job of laying out their professional opinions on what happened that evening. But again, I always have to revert back to this because it's important. Ultimately, Burke and John Ramsey, they sued CBS and they settled. So there could be a reason. That doesn't mean that the investigators in the CBS documentary were wrong. It just means that ultimately there was a settlement and that was made by the network. But we have a responsibility to point out that Burke has never been charged with a crime by anybody. And he's a free and innocent man at this point. So even though it's a compelling theory, that's all it is, is a theory at this point.

And I think something else that's important is that the fact that the flashlight was completely clean. Now, you could say that makes him look guilty because somebody cleaned the flashlight. Why else would it have no fingerprints on it? But I mean, this is a flashlight. It's got grooves and all sorts of things. So if you hit somebody on the head that hard, don't you think something would be left behind? Some trace of blood.

I mean, the Ramseys aren't, you know, like crime scene cleaners. They aren't in there with like Q-tips and, you know, little swabs and stuff, digging out every little, you know, groove in the flashlight. Don't you think something would have been found from striking somebody on the head that hard? But you talk about the intruder theory, like, you know, if you're to say, oh, that, that could have been the flashlight of an intruder, maybe they cleaned it off. Well, if they decided to, if they had the wherewithal to clean it off, why wouldn't they just take it with them? I personally don't think that flashlight was,

was what caused her injury. That's my personal opinion. You don't think that you think it's something else that they've either, they just haven't put two and two together or it was never found. The item that caused it has been disposed of. Yeah. I'm sure that if she was hit over the head with something by an intruder or even someone in the family, I don't think they just left it sitting there. You're better off to get rid of it and drive it somewhere and throw it into a lake or the Colorado River, which is huge, rather than hope that you cleaned it well enough to just

keep on your kitchen counter knowing that police are going to come through and a forensic team is going to come through. Yeah. No, I think to put a bow on it, because we could spend another hour just on this theory, are there very interesting points that align with the evidence of the case that we know of, the way it's presented? Yes. Is it overwhelming to the point where you look at the evidence and you look at the theory and go, oh my God, how is this person not in prison right now? To me, no. To me, no. I think there's other cases. I did the OJ Simpson case a few years ago. I investigated that. And to me, it's very obvious what happened in that case.

This does not feel the same to me personally as an investigator. I didn't leave my research from this case saying, why am I even covering this right now? Why are we even talking about theories? It's so obvious. There's too many red herrings for them to just be red herrings. Yeah. And your OJ Simpson is my Casey Anthony. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And mine as well. I feel we're on the same page as far as Casey Anthony. So yeah, it's just this one has too many things. And maybe it's because of what we discussed at the beginning of this episode, just the police practices that were put in place initially were not well done. And because of that, there's a lot of question marks over this case. Okay.

As suspected, it looks like we've been recording for about an hour and a half. So we are going to have to kind of stop here just so we don't overwhelm you guys all at once, give you a little break to digest the information. And we'll be back next week with the fourth and final part, hopefully, of JonBenet Ramsey. Yeah, I agree. I think it's a good spot to button it up because we've covered a lot and it's going to kind of segue into next week where we start to talk about potential suspects and theories. And that in and of itself probably deserves its own episode. So unfortunately, I agree. It's good to stop it here and you and I can kind of cross-reference notes and make sure we covered everything and come back

next week with everything ready to go for the finale. Again, TBD, we don't know if that's actually going to be the case, but that's what we plan. We hope so. And also, I just want to remind everybody to follow us on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, because we are open to taking case requests. So if there's lesser known cases you want us to cover, if there's well-known cases you want us to cover, we want to hear from you because we want to deliver you the content that you want. And we have been getting some of those guys. I've responded to some of you. If we don't always respond, it doesn't mean we're not seeing it. It just means we're going to write it down and keep going because we are getting a lot of messages. But yeah, I echo what Stephanie has just said.

So we'll see you next week. See you guys later. Crime Weekly presented by ID is a co-production by Audioboom and Main Event Media.