Joe Barnhill told to forget what he saw

Have not read the entire thread. As far as I can remember the only comment we have seen or heard is that Barnhill SAW someone who looked like JAR walking up to the house that afternoon no exact time given or even an approximate time, (as I recall, huh?).
I have always had a brain cramp that told me that the Ramseys (JBR,Burke and PR) were home and that John was at the airport. Not much was ever said that I recall about exactly what time JR came home from the airport, or if he drove directly to the White's in his own car, and the rest of the family were already at White's house.

Do I remember that Patsy arrived at the White's to help Priscilla do some pre party prepping, again no specific time was ever given for that as I remember. Nor do the proverbial WE even know if that part of hearsay/flotsam information is even correct either.

So, if the Ramsey investigators were hot on the trail and guestioning a neighbor so close and known to Ramseys (as just across a narrow neighborhood street) from the Ramsey house; and Barnhill information is nearly or exactly correct on 'who' Barnhill saw, or that he saw anyone going up to the Ramsey house at all;

Does this mean that BPD just took the Ramsey investigators word for what they found out?

Or does it mean the BPD never communicated with the Ramsey investigators? 'My guess is this one'.

Or does it mean that BPD NEVER talked to Barnhill?

Much nighttime oil was spent on Yahoo chat with MJenn and Moab in digging the scoop on JAR, by me, and I have the printouts of those chats to prove it.

Honesty is a very good policy, on who did what and when etc. Doppleganger sp? indeed.

Edited to add: New thought on the afternoon JAR look a like - What if Patsy did indeed go to Priscillas house early for party prepping, what if someone came to the house to babysit the children until John came home!

Hmmm, was it JAR or?

I thought Barnhill supposedly gave the original info about having seen JAR to a reporter, not an investigator. Then I read another quote from Barnhill saying he had never told anyone that. It's all so confusing!

My impression is that the BPD were very lax about questioning the neighbors. Weren't they questioned first by reporters or Ramsey investigators? I never could understand that.

Investigations do take time. Ramsey investigators and reporters were there the next day. By the time the BPD got to Barnhill, he changed his story.

However, ST wanted to follow-up JAR's alibi and spoke to Atlanta neighbors to corroborate - he could not speak to Melinda, JAR or (ex-wife, can't remember her name) because they had been lawyered up.

A passage in ST's book states (something like) JR's ex-wife and JAR were standing outside watching Steve walk up to the neighbor's knowing he couldn't say a word to them.

PMPT (?) I believe stated JAR's alibi still left time for the crime...

That afternoon, Patsy states (DOI) that children were coming and going that day. John was at the airport (hmmmm?).

Not sure about a babysitter. Don't remember Patsy saying she was at Priscilla's early to help out.

So, John was at the airport a day early to make sure everything was ready. The plane was scheduled for take-off the next morning - yet, when John asked Archuletta how long before the plane could be ready to leave for Atlanta - the answer was "two hours."

Originally posted by Maxi
I thought Barnhill supposedly gave the original info about having seen JAR to a reporter, not an investigator. Then I read another quote from Barnhill saying he had never told anyone that. It's all so confusing!

My impression is that the BPD were very lax about questioning the neighbors. Weren't they questioned first by reporters or Ramsey investigators? I never could understand that.

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The quote which has Barnhill mentioning John Andrew is not a direct quote from him. It did appear in the Daily Camera of December 28th, in an article titled "No suspects in slaying, Coroner reports Boulder girl was strangled." The author was Elliot Zaret. Perhaps he could be contacted to see what any notes he may have taken reveal about the circumstances under which he spoke to Barnhill.

Many people may have had keys to the house, including caterers, a house cleaner, gardeners and landscapers, said Joe Barnhill, who lives across the street and takes care of JonBenet's dog, Jacque. Barnhill, like other neighbors, didn't remember seeing anything suspicious at the Ramsey house Christmas Day - the day before JonBenet was murdered.

"I didn't see a lot of people over there Christmas Day," said Barnhill, who had hidden until Christmas Eve the bicycle JonBenet's father had bought his daughter. "I didn't see JonBenet with her bike, but I did see (her 10-year-old brother) Burke ride his bike down the lawn there."

Barnhill also said he saw John Ramsey's son from a previous marriage, a student at CU, come to the house.

I wish I had copied the Irish Times article in which Barnhill denies ever having said he saw JAR that day. It's also the article in which he describes the Ramseys as treating JBR "as if she were Jesus Christ". I thought that was a really odd way to put it. Unfortunately, the Irish Times online archive doesn't go back that far.

Originally posted by Maxi
I wish I had copied the Irish Times article in which Barnhill denies ever having said he saw JAR that day. It's also the article in which he describes the Ramseys as treating JBR "as if she were Jesus Christ". I thought that was a really odd way to put it. Unfortunately, the Irish Times online archive doesn't go back that far.

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I have that very article, July 2, 1997. Should I reprint it here?

I see what you mean about the Jesus quote. As printed:

"It would be heartbreaking if that family was involved. They worshipped her almost as if she were Jesus Christ. The parents are good Christian people. They're members down at St John's Episcopalian Church," Mr Barnhill said, before he excused himself and went back to his mowing.

Edited to add:

But Barnhill makes no mention in the article of not having seen John Andrew that day. I do have a memory of seeing such a thing said, so I shall research further.

Camper, what happened to MJenn?

I thought y'all presented a very interesting and persuasive case on behalf of JAR. Got me off the fence for awhile.

Donut really know, except perhaps like myself she just became totally frustrated with digging up stuff that was significant, and not having avenues to pursue for real justice for JonBenet.

Mary Keenan appears to be happy enough to turn her other cheek and let things slide down the slippery slope into oblivion for JonBenet.

It does appear that way Camper. But I'd like to think she has an ace up her sleeve, but sadly, after all this time, I don't think so. This case needs to go away according to Boulder.

I still have a faint glimmer of hope that Keenan will pull that ace out, too. The glimmer grows dimmer and dimmer. Sigh.

why_nut, I would love to have a copy of that article. I don't know if others here are as interested in it as I am, tho. Could you email me a copy? If the other posters clamor to see it, too, we can post it. I don't think the Irish Times is going to come after us for re-publishing an old article.

Thanks so much.

Maxi, put me on your list of clamorers. I do continue to think that Barnhill was a very important key in this case, and appears to have been discounted and dismissed as a dumb old man, far from it, imop.

As far as the Ramsey pilot, he should have been chomping at the bit and ready for his early morning flight, not as was the case 'not reachable' and 'plane not ready'.

Somewhere I have references to JR's plane and how souped up he had made it. This information is found in DOI, if someone can give a page reference to the souped up braggadocio by John.

Little bells are now going off in my head about JAR's supposed request of the sometime police drug informant in Waterford MI, to have a planned boat accident with JonBenet.

The response by Ramsey attorneys to this allegation, was that JAR was not in MI in the months mentioned for the $10,000 dollar 'hit job'. Only a fool would have thought that JAR could jump clear of the oncoming accident boat. OR perhaps if not a bonified fool, someone on drugs or in an alcohol induced mentality.

If the informant found drug dealers, for the police department, I can see where he would have possibly met a 'JAR' type if not JAR in person, through his 'working' situation.

IF IF Barnhill were actually told to forget his memory, perhaps others were told the same or similar. Little credence was paid to the MI informant, a BPD female detective was told by MI PD that the informant was unreliable in her conversation by phone only.

Anything that I have ever read did not include information about a detective from BPD actually 'going' to MI to investigate. Am I wrong, anyone know of concrete information, about BPD's 'serious' investigation in this matter?

Some time ago, I posted all the reasons that I feel JAR is behind JB's death. It's too long to repeat at this time, but suffice it to say, I still believe that. It all fits in, especially when you consider he might have had an accomplice, somebody like Brad Millard. I believe John and Patsy (and Lucinda) would cover to save JAR from the death penalty.

Now mind you, that doesn't mean that I don't vaccillate between him and John Sr. I GOTTA leave that door open...LOL

Poor Little Miss Colorado

Joe Carroll reports from Boulder, Colorado on a murder investigation so bungled that the killer of JonBenet Ramsey, a six-year-old beauty Queen, may now never be caught

THE dog spotted me as I walked around the garden of the empty mock-Tudor villa in the Boulder City suburb where the six-year-old beauty pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey was found strangled or beaten to death last December 26th.

The French poodle ran yelping across the quiet street, while its owner, an elderly man mowing his lawn, stared at the prowler. It is this kind of inquisitiveness which has roused the people of Boulder to denounce "media vultures". I waited for the tirade.

But instead Joe Barnhill walked over, picked up the dog and said "hello". After I introduced myself he said, "This is Jacques - JonBenet's dog".

I had just been looking at the little girl's swing and yellow slide beside the patio of the $ 1 million mansion, and now I was petting the dog she used to play with. But she was lying in a grave in far-off Atlanta, Georgia, where she had been born. And after six months of police investigations and the frenzied attention of the world's media, her murderer is still at large.

Mr Barnhill, a US Navy veteran, last saw JonBenet, a winner of the Little Miss Colorado child beauty pageant, alive at her Christmas party three days before her murder. "She was just playing around having fun. She had lots of classmates at the party and they and the grown-ups all got gifts. Patsy, her mother, was so well organised."

Still holding the poodle, Mr Barnhill, who is 76, talked about the shock of the brutal murder. "It's such a nice, quiet neighbourhood. We can't believe anything like this could happen here.

Could he ever imagine that someone in the family could be responsible? "I would find it absolutely impossible to believe the family could be involved. And even if it turned out to be true I could hardly believe it.

"It would be heartbreaking if that family was involved. They worshipped her almost as if she were Jesus Christ. The parents are good Christian people. They're members down at St John's Episcopalian Church," Mr Barnhill said, before he excused himself and went back to his mowing.

The Ramseys will never again be neighbours of Joe Barnhill. The 15-room mansion near the beautiful Chatauqua Park overlooked by the Flatiron peaks is for sale. Patsy is living in their holiday home 1,000 miles away at Charlevoix on Lake Michigan.

Her father, John Ramsey, is continuing to run the S1 billion Access Graphics computer company on Boulder's fashionable Pearl Street, but he will commute from Atlanta, where the Ramseys came from five years ago and where the new family home will be.

But will the Ramseys ever enjoy their new home? The District Attorney in Boulder, Alex Hunter, publicly identified the Ramseys last April as the "obvious" focus of the murder investigation.

The sleazier tabloids have openly accused the Ramseys of involvement in their daughter's murder, but without any hard evidence beyond the undoubted difficulty of explaining how an Outsider could have broken into the Ramsey home, beaten and Strangled JonBenet, taken her body to the cellar and written a two-and-a-half-page ransom note, and then disappeared without anyone in the house seeing or hearing anything.

Patsy Ramsey has now given five different samples of her hand-writing to the police to see if she wrote the ransom note. John Ramsey has given three samples and has been cleared of writing the note, according to police sources.

It seems incredible that the Ramseys only agreed to be formally interviewed by the police four months after the murder, although they had submitted samples of blood and hair three days after the body was found.

The day after their separate interviews with the police on April 30th, the two Ramseys called a press conference to declare their innocence again. In an extensive CNN interview the day after JonBenet was buried on January 1st, Patsy Ramsey declared: "There is a killer on the loose". John Ramsey said that the idea that he or other members of his family could have committed the crime was "nauseating beyond belief".

YET, in such murders, family members are always seen as suspects until they can be definitely eliminated. The Boulder police spokeswoman, Leslie Aarhon, told The Irish Times that "with the exception of the older children (JonBenet's step-brother and stepsister), the police have not ruled anyone in or anyone out." The step-children, John Andrew and Melinda, have been ruled out as they were not in Boulder on the night of the murder.

The Ramseys quickly built up a formidable defence team which includes John Douglas, a former FBI behavioural expert who was the inspiration for the detective in the movie Silence Of The Lambs, and Patrick Korten, a former spokesman for the department of Justice who handled such incidents as the Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985.

In contrast, the Boulder police and prosecutors have been feuding internally to the stage where the police are said to be refusing to turn over the latest DNA evidence to the district Attorney. The police chief, Tom Koby, has had a vote of no confidence passed in him by his force. The head of the investigation, John Eller, is looking for a new post in Florida.

Two of the police officers involved in the early stages of the case have been removed from it. The local media, such as the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, have shown that the inexperienced Boulder police made such elementary blunders in the early stages that the murder may never be solved.

On the day after Christmas, Patsy Ramsey got up to make coffee around 5.30 a.m. and found a ransom note on a back staircase saying JonBenet had been kidnapped and demanding $ 118,000 in ransom or she would be beheaded. Mrs Ramsey made an emergency call to the police, but the first detective only arrived at 8.10 a.m., after friends and a clergyman had come to console the family.

While the police began investigating what they believed was a kidnapping, John Ramsey searched the house a second time with a friend in the afternoon. They found the body of JonBenet in a basement that had been used to hide the Christmas presents, eight hours after the note was found.

She had been gagged with duct tape and the garrotte used to strangle her was still around her neck. She also had severe head injuries.

He removed the tape and carried the body upstairs, where it was covered as it lay on the floor awaiting removal that evening by the coroner's staff.

The woman detective assigned to the case has since been accused by the media of "bonding" with the grieving family instead of treating them as possible suspects.

As criticism of the police's over-respectful treatment of the rich and influential family grew, other "facts" were leaked to the media which were seen as damaging for the Ramseys.

Thus, there were no signs of a break-in or the alarm system being set off; there were no footprints outside the house where there was a light fall of snow; some traces of semen were found on the girl's body; the windowless basement was a hidden room which an outsider would not have known about.

Now, six months later, these details are said by Newsweek - which originally reported them - to be "wrong". The melting of the snow would explain the absence of footprints; the Ramseys often did not bother to set the alarm; no semen was found on the body; the so-called hidden basement was a common storage room.

The results of DNA tests which could have linked the Ramseys to the killing now seem to be inconclusive.

THERE still remains the ransom note. The investigators said last January that it appeared to have been written on paper torn from a pad inside the house. Later they found what seemed to be a first draft, also inside the house.

Although the full text of the note has not been released by the police, the odd figure of $ 118,000 corresponds to the company bonus that John Ramsey received the previous year. This has prompted the theory that the murderer might be a disgruntled employee.

There is a bizarre reference to the kidnapping being carried out by "a small foreign faction" which respects Ramsey's business "but not the country it serves". The company which Ramsey founded has since been taken over by the huge Lockheed Martin aerospace and weapons systems corporation.

Former FBI kidnap specialists now in private consultancies have scoffed at the obviously "bogus" character of the note and say the police should have immediately seen through it and ordered a body search in the house before the friends and neighbours milling around destroyed possible incriminating evidence.


The trail has now grown cold, after six months. "All the public indicators point towards the conclusion that it won't be solved," Christopher Mueller, a University of Colorado law professor said last week. "The only conceivable answer for why we don't have an arrest is that they don't have a case, and if they don't have a case after the DNA has come in, then it doesn't look hopeful."

Thanks, why_nutt for the article. Really brings up some memories. My heart goes out to the old Barnhills, who in some strange way, I think were used by Patsy and John.

Too bad Jacques wasn't at home that night. I think he'd have barked enough to at least draw neighbor's attention. More than that, I'm sorry JB isn't here to play with her beloved Jacques. Snif.

Thank you so much. I wonder if the sometime police informant is still living, Mary Keenan should look him up. See if he recognizes a picture of JAR.

JAR appears to have done a Houdini disappearance, both in DOI and in the after years.

Then we have the disgarding of the souped up plane to JR's pilot at a bargain price. Subtle friendly thing, or payoff, for a midnight flight to somewhere.

I agree Camper

Thanks, why_nutt. That's the article I was thinking of. What a weird thing to say, "worshipped her as if she were Jesus Christ".

I'll have to keep trying to remember where I read Barnhill's denial that he told anyone he saw JAR that day. I'm sure it was in print, and I don't think it was in one of the Colorado papers.

Thanks, Why_Nut.

My other computer had the whole JAR theory outlined on it. Didn't download it - thought, I let go of the "old."

It is the semen on the blanket in the suitcase that, I think, is the smoking gun. If it is the same blanket fibers found on JonBenet, then the semen on the blanket can't be overlooked.

I know of no questioning by the BPD re: the semen, blanket, etc. Except that they all belonged to JAR (including the Dr. Suess book).

Go further to the "forgiveness" statement; Brad volunteering he had slept in JonBenet's bed; Burke saying "he has a secret," and other suspicious elements.

JAR was cleared as a negotiation tool so the Ramseys would consent to an "interview."

Thor, I have a hard time believing anything that Rita has to say about anything. After making excuse after excuse as to why the book hasn't been published, even going so far as having Rose post (on numerous occassions) that it was at the publishers and on it's way to the printers, I just can't believe anything she or Rose writes anymore.

Wasn't it last year around this same time that Rose swore that the book was going to be out "the end of January, begining of February" and then we could all eat crow? Well she's the one who is eating crow. Her and Rita cooked this scheme up for some reason and have continued to drag it out for over, what is it now, a year or 2?