Cryptic, nothing! I was giving a fair warning.
Okay, here goes.
There are several parts to this.
1) The DA's office. When this one got dropped on Hunter, he had things pretty good. Status quo for almost thirty years. No one rocks the boat. He spent his time plea-bargaining minor cases. He didn't want this. He was cruising toward an easy retirement. He set up a definition of beyond a reasonable doubt that NO ONE could meet! He gave the Ramseys SO MUCh evidence that the FBI was aghast and said he was a fool. He was BUSINESS partners with them! And he was weak. The police wanted to arrest the Ramseys, let them stew in jail for a while, and see which one cracked first. That is a STANDARD ploy in cases like this. He wouldn't do it. Too bad.
He surrounded himself with people who were more like defense attorneys than prosecutors. Trip DeMuth, before ANY evidence was in, decided that the Ramseys couldn't do it. Why? Because he couldn't do it. That kind of thinking has NO PLACE in LE offices. I can forgive the average person for that kind of naivete, but he should KNOW better! One week before Karr's arrest, he said that just because a ten-month-old was dead with 28 fractures, it doesn't mean murder. I KID YOU NOT! This man openly mocked the police presentation of evidence at the FBI meeting. Trip has a thing about "witch hunts." He said the cops were on a witch hunt agianst the Ramseys, a witch hunt against the mother who beat that 10-month-old to death, and now he's afraid of a witch hunt against the DA. That sounds like a DEFENSE attorney talking, like he just stepped out of a Perry Mason episode.
None of them had any real expertise with Grand Juries.
Have you read this, julianne:
http://www.acandyrose.com/03232001fosterama1.htm
It shows that Hunter was undercutting his own WITNESSES! How much worse can you get?
When Keenan (now Lacy took over), it was worse. She had wanted to go after Santa Bill McReynolds from day one. She was biased in the favor of the Ramseys because of their status. She has so much as said so. Lacy is known as a radical feminist who lets her belief in women's innocence cloud her reason. She demonstrated that in the U of CO case. Duke before Duke! She actually chastised Tom Haney for being too tough on Patsy during the '98 interviews. WHAT?! Number one, Haney was using standard techniques. Two, if you look at the tape, he's being perfectly calm! No threats, no intimidation. He's very calmly giving her a chance to explain the evidence. SHE'S the one cursing and jumping around and acting like she's got a scorpion in her panties! What was LACY watching?!
2) Money. Yeah, I know, "Oh, Dave, that's so cheap," but it's true. if this were a regular, blue-collar family like mine, they would be in prison this very day, right or wrong. This was a weak Da's office. No one really disputes that. They were used to handling indigent non-whites with public defenders, not a former Miss West Virginia whose husband is loaded and whose lawyer owns half the state! Who can hire their own experts! How many of us could do that?
COME ON, HOW MANY!?
That was a big part of it: John was able to hire an army of lawyers and PR people and PIs to keep him out of prison. You don't have to take my word for it. Robert Ressler, profiler extraordinaire, said the same. Heck, John Ramsey admitted that he hired them to keep him out of jail!
When I was a kid, I was taught the Pledge of Allegiance. That part about justice for all should MEAN something. But there's one set of rules for the rich, one for the rest of us.
3) Specifics. When you have a case where there is evidence that points to both people, you as a prosecutor have to decide who did what. You HAVE to. You can't say "one did it, the other helped, you decide." Can't do that. They never could. One of them (Hofstrom I think) said "So what if she wrote the note? Doesn't mean she killed her daughter." Sad as it is to admit, he's RIGHT! It only proves she wrote the note.
4) The idea that a parent could do this rocks the comfort zone for too many people. Who wants to think that the Girl Scout Den Mother is a murderer? That's what did in the Grand Jury. The Grand Jury looked at the autopsy photos, and despite everything we know about murdering parents and despite all the evidence, they decided, based on NOTHING but emotion and naivete, that no parent could do this. You don't have to take my word for that. I can prove they did that.
The pictures were so horrible that the jurors felt it was absolutely inconceivable that any mother on Earth could have been capable of doing such a thing to their own child.
But wait! Here is FBI agent Ron Walker, who was there that morning:
Well, as much as it pains me to say it, yes, I've seen parents who have decapitated their children, I've seen cases where parents have drowned their children in bathtubs, I've seen cases where parents have strangled their children, have placed them in paper bags and smothered them, have strapped them in car seats and driven them into a body of water, any way that you can think of that a person can kill another person, almost all those ways are also ways that parents can kill their children.
Is that good enough for anyone?
An arrest was never a question in this case.
Chief Beckner: "Arrest them."
FBI: "Arrest them."
Dream Team Lawyers: "Arrest them."
And on and on. But the DA wouldn't go for it. Do you like the show "Law & Order?" It my favorite. Those DAs work WITH the cops. "Find out this," or "find out that," or "bring me some evidence of this." None of that here.
Whew!
I said it was long!
