Thread by @BTH_Bill

Ah, hell, while I've got the momentum, thread 2, here we go. You can find the first thread (a summary of Stephen Singular's "Presumed Guilty") here:

https://twitter.com/BTH_Bill/status/1470226699371507716

This thread is about A. James Kolar's book "Foreign Faction."

As info: the author is a longtime veteran of police forces around Colorado (Boulder and Telluride, mostly) who spent 2004 through early 2006 as the D.A.'s lead investigator into the Ramsey killing.

Two things to remember: 1. We are getting a pro-law enforcement perspective from this text, and 2. Despite the pitfalls that might come from such a perspective, the book is extremely detailed.

Singular's book was an aerial view, this one is street view.

I've placed relevant topics into different categories, and I'll present them one by one. It won't be sequential, rather more of a deconstruction. It's probably the closest look any of us will have at what the police have collected and believe about the case.

"Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenet?" Ventus Publishing, 2012.

First things first: the 911 call - here's a transcript of the conversation between Patsy Ramsey and 911 operator Kimberly Archuleta at 5:52am on 12/26/1996:

Note that Patsy mentions "SBTC Victory," which is the very end of the ransom note. She'd later claim she only "glanced at the first few lines" of the note before racing to check JonBenet's room and/or dialing 911.

There was a problem with the end of the 911 call, as well. The dispatcher, Kimberly Archuleta, told her supervisor on 12/28 that the police needed to listen to the "tail end of the call, after Patsy stopped talking..."

Apparently, the call had not disconnected immediately, perhaps the phone was caught on the hook before the button was pressed down to cease transmission.

The tape was sent to specialists in California for processing/enhancement. They were able to clean it up well enough to hear the following conversation:
Male (angry): “We’re not speaking to you!”
Female: “Help me Jesus. Help me Jesus”
Young male: “Well, what did you find?”

Now, we move to the supposed reason for the call - the ransom note. Behold:

So many things to unpack about the note, which is such a bizarre document.
-"small foreign faction"
-"$118,000" - the amount of John Ramsey's year-end bonus at work (Access Graphics, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin

-The word "possession" is misspelled but "attaché" isn't
-The shift from "our/we" to "I/my"
-"use that good southern common sense" - John is from Michigan.

Notice the myriad ways the letter "a" is written throughout the note, and note the overall shakiness of page 1 versus the much steadier penmanship on page 3.

The length of the note was never remarked upon by the family that morning. Also, the phone call for further instructions is supposed to take place between 0800 and 1000. That time came and went without much notice from the Ramseys:

The materials used to write the note (the sharpie and the pad of paper) almost certainly came from inside the home; why would an intruder risk detection by taking the time to write such a lengthy note?

Who would plan such an elaborate kidnapping and fail to bring a note in the 1st place?

Experts were brought in to analyze handwriting of the note - and "while opinions varied as to their certainty, no one could eliminate Patsy Ramsey as a possible author of the ransom note."

Immediately after hanging up with 911, Patsy Ramsey called some close family friends over to the house: the Whites (Fleet and Priscilla), and the Fernies (John and Barbara).

Fleet and Priscilla's daughter, Daphne, was the same age as JonBenet. She had gone "missing" the year prior before being found safely hiding in their home. Fleet appears to have held out hope that JonBenet was still in the house, alive.

Fleet went to the basement, alone, shortly after 630. He noted the train room window was closed, but unlatched, and found a kernel of glass on the floor.

Fleet opened the Wine Cellar (where JonBenet's body was ultimately found), but couldn't find a light switch, so he moved on.

The police failed to secure the house as a crime scene (by letting victims advocates clean up and friends prepare food in the kitchen), but they did notice the Ramseys peculiar behavior throughout that morning:

Again, the 10am deadline had come and gone, and the family hadn't even remarked upon it. A supposedly dangerous "foreign faction" had taken JonBenet...

... yet the Ramseys allowed Burke to leave their care. Patsy didn't want a unformed, armed officer in the house. Bizarre.

At around 1pm, the lead detective at the scene, Linda Arndt, suggested Fleet White and John Ramsey ought to do a "top-down" search of the home. The two made for the basement, and John discovered JonBenet's body.

A macabre scene: Fleet, shouting for an ambulance. John, carrying his daughters lifeless body, stiff from rigor mortis, up the stairs. JonBenet placed on a rug in front of the Christmas tree. Patsy collapsing on her body.

About 40 minutes after the body had been found, John Ramsey was overheard making plans to take his private plane to Atlanta that afternoon or evening. He was told he couldn't, because, y'know... his daughter had been murdered? And maybe he should help the investigation?

We'll get back to the matter of Ramsey family red flags in a moment, but first, some notes about the state of JonBenet's body when it was found.

CW: It's despicable what happened to this poor girl. I'll try not to dwell on the awful details, but I'll lay out the facts. Skip the next 6, 7 tweets if you don't want to know.

JonBenet was struck over the head with a blunt object, which likely rendered her unconscious. She was then stranged with a garrote.

There was a vaginal wound at time of death caused by insertion of a foreign object. However, further examination showed that JonBenet had been sexually assaulted PRIOR to the day of her death.

JonBenet had been taken to the doctor 33 times (!) in the 3 years preceding her death. On December 17th, Patsy had called the doctor's office regarding JonBenet 3 times. The exact reasons for those calls is a mystery. O

There was DNA from a (still unidentified) man on her underwear, and other unidentified DNA on her clothing, but none of the DNA were particularly strong samples

"Intruder theorists" such as former Boulder detective Lou Smit, who was utterly convinced of the Ramsey's innocence, held that marks on her back and face were created by a stun gun. But they probably weren't:

Kolar and another detective, Harry Stephens, came up with a new theory on the marks: a set of toy train tracks, such as the ones Burke had in his room as well as the basement of the home, matched the wounds:

The evidence points to the involvement of "organized" and "unorganized" elements. This interpretation casts the involvement of a lone intruder/sexual predator in doubt:

The duct tape over JonBenet's mouth, and the cord used to strangle her were not found in the home after the body was found. But the note was almost certainly written in the home.

The way she was murdered was cold, psychotic and heartless. The staging of her body was more caring - she was wrapped in a blanket, with her favorite pink nightgown.

The tape was almost certainly applied to her mouth postmortem. The wrist bindings were so loose they were usless; they served no functional purpose, they were just for show.

Who could've done this?

Between 12/26/96 and 4/30/97, the day the Ramseys were finally interviewed by police, investigators had interviewed 400 other people and collected:
-63 handwriting samples
-64 sets of fingerprints
-45 DNA samples
-50 hair samples
-1 polygraph test from a potential suspect

A rundown of some of the red flags when it comes to the Ramseys' involvement in (perhaps) the killing and (almost certainly) the cover-up of JonBenet's murder...

There are several topics where Patsy's story changed between 12/26 and the 4/30 interview. What was JonBenet wearing? Did she check her bedroom before or after finding the note?

John didn't change details, but he definitely added some new ones, which raised suspicion:

In order to get the Ramseys to come in for the interview, the D.A.'s office had agreed to permit an "island of privacy" regarding certain medical records and provided their legal counsel copies of the police reports (a highly unusual arrangement).

In the January 1st interview on CNN, John Ramsey had said he was "not angry" about JonBenet's death, but wanted to know "why" she had "died":

John Ramsey had adult children from a previous marriage; on the night of the 26th, he told his daughter's fiancé that he'd found JonBenet at "11 am." But he didn't officially "discover" her until 1pm. Why the discrepancy?

The Ramseys, according to their story, never woke Burke to see if he knew where his sister might be. Isn't that odd?

Patsy also didn't come running when Fleet White came charging up the stairs calling for an ambulance. Wouldn't someone assume she'd been found alive upon hearing a request for an ambulance? Did Patsy already know she was dead?

During fingerprinting and hair collection (for crime scene processing purposes) on the night of JonBenet's death, Patsy had blurted out, "I didn't kill my baby."

Despite everything you've just read... and despite knowing what the grand jury had recommended in 1999... in 2008, Alex Hunter's successor as D.A., Mary Lacy, authored an official letter "clearing" the Ramseys in the case.

When the author of this book presented his theory of the case, and his desires for continued lines of inquiry, to his boss, D.A. Lacy, she responded that she didn't want to do anything to jeopardize her relationship with the Ramsey family.

Burke was more or less inaccessible to investigators, early on:

Kolar definitely seems to believe Burke knows more than he is saying, and notes his various contradictions and what Kolar interprets as callousness:

Kolar stops short of declaring that he believes Burke killed JonBenet. But he offers strong hints that the "Burke theory" is the one that resonates most with him:

And with that, I'll shift into my critique of Kolar. It's an excellent book and it is well-put-together, a terrific glimpse into the police perspective of the case.

However... I disagree with Kolar's analysis of Burke's involvement. He breaks down Burke's mannerisms and statements as if Burke was an adult in 1996/1997. He wasn't. He was 9 years old.

So, yeah, if he seemed more interested in flying to Michigan so he could help build a fire ( a fun activity for a 9 yo boy) than the status of his sister's murder investigation, well, that seems more like a child being a child than evidence he's an emotionally stunted sociopath.

I do agree that learning more about what Burke felt and experienced growing up in that house might help provide some more clues about what happened. It's obvious he was awake in the morning, and that his parents lied about it. His voice was on the 911 call.

But the main reason I do not believe Burke did it: if he had, and the parents schemed up that ridiculous ransom note/scenario as an elaborate cover-up, why would they let him out of their sight within two and a half hours after the 911 call?

If my 9 year old had a secret of that magnitude, and I'd just staged that whole shitshow because of it, I wouldn't let him out of my sight.

Sidebar: based on the processing of the home as a crime scene, it's clear that Burke had some scatological issues. That *can* be a sign of severe stress or abuse. Was Burke a victim of some of the same stuff as JonBenet?

The parents also had Burke stay with family in Georgia for long stretches of the following spring to attend school while they traveled to Boulder to deal with the investigation/legal issues.

That's an awful lot of time for a kid with a secret to spill the beans to outsiders. Just my two cents.

Wanted to point to two final resources, both brought to my attention by @pastichepsyop. 1: analyzing the ransom note as a set of instructions/plan that the Ramseys had made for themselves:

https://twitter.com/pastichepsyop/status/1467902734602964993?t=jBkjEhsQJo420R2H8kJE7A&s=19

2: the ransom note's similarities to "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," a play that Patsy had performed numerous times in her own pageant days:

https://twitter.com/pastichepsyop/status/1467906620424294410?t=BNCeYrdZyB8lHpEv4TzWAw&s=19

FINALLY: my two cents, and maybe I'm wrong: I think she was killed outside the home, i think she was brought home dead, I think the parents became convinced that a cover-up was more prudent than conventional "justice," so that's what they did.

I believe the grand jury probably heard the most comprehensive set of evidence that anyone's ever heard about this case, and they recommended charges:

https://twitter.com/BTH_Bill/status/1470236433709338626?t=JbfyhZlXD5Z1rRsygzbcqg&s=19

Why the District Attorney's office was so chummy with the Ramseys, declined to charge them, and is so eager to make the case go quiet is highly, highly suspect, and likely connects to a community of interest at a higher/elite level pushing for a cover-up.

Three different D.A.'s have had this thing in their hands: all were afraid to touch it.

Either way, the person or people who killed the girl escaped justice. And that's a goddamn shame.

And with that, I'll conclude. Thanks for reading. Buy these books! They're excellent.