The title says it all, if you deny any of my evidence please provide a link, that way I can counter or admit defeat!
I hope you're a woman of your word.
I'll take a whack at some of them.
1. RDI say the DNA evidence is weak, but it's strong enough to be used to clear people.
To whom are you referring? I'm sure someone else has easier access to it than I do, but ST stated clearly in his deposition that no one was cleared on DNA evidence alone.
But even if it HAD been strong enough to clear people on its own, that's no indication that it's of any value. See, if I come off as frustrated or impatient, it's because there are so many SIMPLE things that IDI just. Does. Not. GET. And this is the big one. They'd have us believe that the DNA being tested at all immediately means that it has value to the case. But I ask you:
what was the alternative? I'll TELL you what the alternative was, not using it in the first place and just letting it sit unattended in some locked vault never to see daylight again. IF the Boulder police HAD done that, then all the IDI assertions about them supposedly ignoring evidence would have been TRUE. If I had been in their position, even if I believed the Ramseys guilty, I STILL would have needed to use everything at my disposal. Orders are, I check it out, so I check it out, if for no other reason than to cover my butt.
The problem here is with how the IDI theory is constructed. Instead of taking an holistic view of the case, which the FBI recommended, the CSI effect (or in this instance, the OJ effect) hit the DA's office (and Lou Smit) with a freakin' VENGEANCE.
And I'll tell you something else, and ST's book will confirm this: even after Bill McReynolds's DNA came back as a non-match, the DA STILL wanted to go after him! And no one was more vocal in their suspicions of him than IDI's hero-with-feet-of-clay-and-brains-to-match, Mary Lacy. I refer you guys to the section dealing with the aftermath of the June 1998 interviews!
2. The ransom note: bpd hired experts that cleared John and said Patsy was a 4.5 on a 1-5 scale, 5 would have eliminated Patsy.
On Larry King Live (4/14/2000), Steve Thomas stated: "
Well, they're saying that she scored a numerical scale of 4 1/2, but that apparently is from their own defense handwriting experts."
He's right. No such scale exists in modern document examination. In the court case,
US v. Thornton, the court stipulated to the use of a NINE-point scale for use in grading handwriting matches. It reads as follows:
"Mr. Hammond based his opinions using a 9-point scale, ranging from: (1)Identification, (2)Highly probable did write, (3)Probably did write, (4)Indications did write, (5)No conclusion, (6)Indications did not write, (7)Probably did not write, (8)Highly probable did not write, and (9)Elimination.......The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) has also promulgated standards for forensic document examiners. The nine-point scale used by Mr. Hammond in this case for expressing his opinions was established under the auspices of the ASTM."
So a 4 on that scale would mean "indications did write." That finding would be consistent with the majority opinion of the BPD's experts, especially Chet Ubowski.
Carol McKinley stated in the Fox News story that Ramseys sued Fox over:
"Many forensic document examiners have given their opinions as to who wrote the note. But the only one to testify before a grand jury in the case was Chet Ubowski, forensic document examiner for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Out of 100 people he analyzed for the Boulder Police Department, he found ONLY ONE person whom he thought may have authored the document, Patsy Ramsey. Investigative sources tell Fox News that the disguised letters and bleeding ink from the felt tipped pen used to write the note kept him from 100 percent ID of Mrs. Ramsey."
Carol McKinley was one of the speakers on our radio show last month, and not only did she confirm this, but she went into greater detail. Ubowski showed her a chart he had made, consisting of two sections: "greater than 50% chance," and "less than 50% chance." There were about 100 names on that chart, and ONE was in the "greater than" category: Patsy Ramsey.
"The police never bothered to ask Ubowski if he had put his entire analysis of the ransom note into his report. Either way, Ubowski was prepared to say, 'Patsy wrote the note.' The CBI saw this as another missed opportunity" (Schiller 1999a:536-537)
Ms. McKinley confirmed THAT, too. The BPD "experted" themselves right out of probable cause.
"experts from the CBI presented their evaluations into evidence, including Chet Ubowski. He also told Pete Mang, his boss at the CBI, that his gut told him it was her handwriting" (Schiller 1999a:740)
Gideon Epstein, an examiner with impeccable credentials and enviable experience, who NAMED Patsy Ramsey as the writer, offered an explanation for why none of the examiners would name Patsy Ramsey in court: because the field of document examination is so narrow and depends so greatly on unity to maintain courtroom credibility, that once Howard Rile was hired by the Ramseys and made his finding, (after ONE session, as Cina Wonf was kind enough to point out), nobody wanted to be the one to challenge him in court and lose:
"First of all, I'd like to say that the field of forensic document examination in the United States is a very small profession, as you may well have found out, especially within the ranks of those people who are board-certified and who are the mainstream examiners in this country. Everyone knows everyone else. There are certain document examiners who, because of their exposure in the profession, because of the work that they do, because of the workshops that they may present, are looked upon by other examiners as leaders in their field. A lot of these examiners are in private practice, and they're retained oftentimes by one side or the other. In this particular case I think the fact that Howard Rile and Lloyd Cunningham, who became involved in this case very early on, and who were retained by the Ramsey family, coupled with the fact that Lloyd -- that Howard Rile came out of the Colorado bureau and knew the people in the Colorado bureau, I believe that that connection was very instrumental in the Colorado bureau coming to the conclusion that they did, because Howard Rile had come to the conclusion that he did." (pp. 168-169)
"Lloyd Cunningham works very closely with Howard Rile and they were both on this case, and then it was a matter of chain of events, one document examiner after another refusing to go up against someone who they knew, someone who was large in the profession, for fear that they would be criticized for saying something that another examiner -- it's sort of like an ethics within the medical community, where one doctor protects the other doctor." (pp. 169)
"The fact that I think the whole scenario may have been completely different if Howard Rile had not been one of the first document examiners and who was not in private practice, and if he had not been connected so closely with the Colorado bureau; if it had been a document examiner totally separate and apart; if the document examiner had actually been a document examiner in government service who had nothing to gain by his conclusions, who was on a salary rather than on a large retainer." (pp. 169-170)
"All of these things influence a case, and when it came down to Dusick and it came down to Speckin and it came down to Alford, by that time a number of well-known document examiners had already rendered conclusions, and I feel personally that the other examiners were simply afraid to state what they believed to be the truth, or that they simply didn't devote the necessary time." (pp. 170)
"This is the kind of case that you have to devote a tremendous amount of time and effort to. I've spent a lot of my years working cases where you don't count the hours, you simply count the weeks and you count the months and you devote the time that's necessary. If a document examiner is working this kind of a case and counting the hours, he's going to get to a point where it's going to be too expensive for him to bill, and so he's either not going to do the case in the time that's required or he's going to cut the time short." (pp. 170-171)
"And I just don't believe that some of these people devoted the necessary amount of time to the case to come up with the correct conclusions, and I think they simply went along with what had been previously said because it was the most expedient thing to do."
I should point out that, unfortunately, Mr. Epstein seems to be misinformed on a couple of things, and this may well be one of them. He took the Ramsey lawyers at their word that the BPD-hired experts said what they claimed to have said in the reports that Lou Smit took
illegally from early on in the case. I'm not sure that the actual police-file handwriting reports DO say what they claim. I think they say something different. Because if they really DID come close to eliminating Patsy Ramsey, then WHY was Hal Haddon, the defense attorney, so DEAD-SET on making sure that no one, not even their own litigation lawyer Lin Wood, would ever be able to see them? And we KNOW Haddon didn't want Wood to see them, because Wood admitted (and vlpate posted that someplace) that even AFTER the Grand Jury secrecy law had been voided, he asked Haddon for those reports and was flatly refused.
That's not even COUNTING the experts on our side. And boy, there's some stories!
Also, that's not taking into account what the behavioral analysts said about what KIND of person wrote this note. That's even more interesting. Mikebr provided a link to the analysis Roger DePue did for the DA, but that's only the iceberg's tip.
The FBI, according to Thomas, "believed that the note was written in the house, after the murder, and indicated panic. Ransom notes are normally written prior to the crime, usually proofread, and not written by hand, in order to disguise the authorship." Thomas said the FBI deemed the entire crime "criminally unsophisticated," citing the child being left on the premises, the oddness of the $118,000 demand in relation to the multi-million dollar net worth of the Ramseys, and the concept of a ransom delivery where one would be "scanned for electronic devices." Kidnappers prefer isolated drops for the ransom delivery, not wanting to chance a face-to-face meeting. CASKU profilers also observed that placing JonBenet's body in the basement indicated the involvement of a parent, rather than an intruder. A parent would not want to place the body outside in the frigid night. They pointed out the use of the blanket that was found on her that day. It's been characterized as just having been thrown over her, but in his 1998 interview, John said that whoever did it had taken enough time to carefully tuck her in, like a "papoose."
During the brief media frenzy in the summer of 2006, former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt was interviewed several times over a period of days. During an interview with cable news outlet MSNBC, Van Zandt said that he and several other profilers had studied the note and concluded that the writer was either a woman or a "very genteel male." He listed ten points of interest. Here are a few of them:
1 - Claiming to be part of a terrorist organization is a common ruse in ransom notes. Van Zandt says he sees 'no linguistic evidence' to imply a foreign connection.
5 - Despite threats of violence throughout the note, Van Zandt says, it has a 'softness' suggesting its author was a woman or perhaps a 'genteel man.'
That's not even HALF of it!
5. The wiped down flashlight, why would Ramseys do that?
Why WOULDN'T they?
7. Lou Smit, the man was a genius in his field, 200 for 200!
You certainly wouldn't know it, given his conduct in this case! I'm not being a wise-*advertiser censored*, either. I'm quite serious. From the questionable evidence he gave more weight than was warranted, to the evidence he whipped up out of thin air to the evidence he flat-out refused to hear and/or made excuses for AFTER saying that he'd hear ANYTHING out, his conduct was nothing short of shameful. That's not even COUNTING his flagrant acts of bias toward the Ramseys, his STEALING evidence and then blackmailing the DA into letting him keep it, and a few other things I can't even remember just now.
Junebug, you say that this man decided your position. Well, he decided MINE, too! It's largely because of him that I switched from IDI to RDI (there were other reasons, but that was a big one).
What bothers me the MOST is that this man should have known better. Unlike most police today, Lou Smit was from an era when all of this forensic technology did not EXIST, and when the best (and sometimes only) things a cop had going for him were his hunches and his willingness to wear out some shoeleather. He should have known that no amount of technology will ever take the place of old-fashioned legwork. The BPD knew that. I'm damned if I can explain why HE forgot it!
BPD, inexperienced when it came to murders.
Maybe so, but they knew enough to WORK with people who had the greatest experience with murders, as opposed to people like LS, who thought he knew it all and didn't bother. They ALSO knew that cases like this are not solved on forensic evidence; they're SOLVED by arresting the participants and letting them sit in separate jail cells until one of them cracks, which is exactly what they WANTED to do to the Ramseys and what Lou Smit himself (perhaps unwisely) said he would have done if he had been there on the first day!
8. The suit case under the window with glass on it, the scuff mark on the wall, the packing peanut and other debris that had gathered under the window sill some how made it to the basement.
Fleet White said that he MOVED that suitcase under the window that morning when he was rooting around in the basement. As for the rest, that's just plain pitiful.
9. Judge and DA saying it appears that a intruder was responsible.
A judge who was uninformed to a scandalous degree and could only rule on the evidence put before her (much of which was false anyway). And as for the DA you speak of,
how much time do you have, Junebug? That article by Jeff Shapiro was only the appetizer. There are plenty of other people who worked with her who could tell you about how she let her radical feminist beliefs cloud her judgment about Patsy Ramsey, up to and including chastising a damn good cop (every bit as good as Lou Smit, by Lou's own admission) for being too tough on Patsy during her interview (prompting him to snarl, "who the hell does she think SHE is?").
10. John and Patsy Ramsey: clearly loved that little girl
A LOT of parents who killed their children loved them, Junebug. That means nothing. There's a very good article from slate.com about mothers who kill. I'll see if I can dig it up for you.
and you will never convince me they would ever hurt her, or allow anyone to hurt her
Then what's the POINT, huh?! That's not evidence; that's the wishful thinking that dominates far too much of what I see around here. To this day, I'm amazed at how much IDIs NEED the Ramseys to be innocent, but
I'm not the LEAST bit mystified as to WHY.
They hired their own investigators until they went broke, some chose to stay on the case pro bono.
We've been over that. And as for them being "broke,"
don't you believe it! Are you kidding me? I could live for a YEAR on what Patsy spent on make-up! To say nothing of what John's political campaign or his recent wedding must have cost!
Is ANYONE OUT THERE LISTENING!?!? Or am I just talking to myself?!
There are those in the IDI camp, who I will not name--
YET--who seem to think that they have a stranglehold on truth and who view RDIs as lunatics who only exist to provide them with amusement when they deign us worthy to speak to, similar to the old Bedlam inmates that English toffs used to pay to gawk at. Well, speaking purely for myself, I'm NOT stupid, I'm NOT ignorant and I HAVEN'T lost my mind, at least not yet.