JR is the strongest suspect. No other theory really makes any sense. PR can be ruled out completely, both as the killer and as a co-conspirator in the cover up. BDI is just complete nonsense.
docG solved it years ago, but we've all been caught up in over-analyzing the case. I've recently seen that his theory makes the most sense.
If both JR/PR were in on it, even if they just worked jointly on the coverup, then the police would not have been called shortly before 6am with the body in the basement.
The staging does not fit with the RN. If there is a RN there should be no body. If they had staged it as an intruder murderer then they'd have left the body out in plain view, and naked - just the way a real intruder would do.
But we have a RN, and a body hidden in the WC, redressed, and wrapped in a blanket. That doesn't make sense.
It would be a lot safer for the Rs if the body were not in the house. Any plausible plan where the Rs acted as co-conspirators would include dumping the body. Yet the 911 call was placed with the body in the house and with staging that didn't fit with the RN.
So, the RN wasn't meant to fool the police at 6am. It was meant to fool PR. It fooled her so well that she didn't read it carefully and went off and made a 911 call.
Over and over the RN warns not to call the police or JB will be killed. I won't bother with quoting the movie lines, but the emphasis of the note is don't call the police if you want your daughter back alive.
Many of us have figured that the original plan was to dump the body. That makes sense. But we figured that the plan was aborted for some reason. We figured what actually happened was plan B. But we failed to realize that the plan to dump the body had not been abandoned. It simply had not been implemented yet. It would have been implemented later, but PR called 911 and screwed-up the plan.
Notice that the note gives JR until the morning of the 27th to come up with the money. Meanwhile, he has the perfect excuse for not calling the police. He can send PR and BR off to stay with friends, and then dump the body. After that he gets the money from the bank, phones in the ransom call, then makes the drop off. He looses $118K, but he can afford it.
PR didn't cooperate in the coverup, because if she did, she'd never have made the 911 call. It would have been easy for them to run the above scenario working together. And it's plain silly to let the police have a chance to find the body in the house. Anywhere but Boulder that would be an automatic arrest.
PR didn't write the note. I don't have time to go into all the details of that right now, but suffice to say that handwriting analysis is not a science. It's a pseudo science. It's opinion masquerading as science. Many "experts" thought JMK wrote the note when they compared his writing, that tells you how useful handwriting analysis is. Take a look at
http://solvingjonbenet.blogspot.com/ and you'll see that JR could easily have been the author.
PR didn't help with the staging. Again, if she had been in on the coverup why not get rid of the body before calling 911. Also her fibers are not inside the size 12 bloomies. Hers are only on the outside of things, and she hugged JB's lifeless body when it was brought upstairs, so we really don't know whether fiber transfer happened downstairs or upstairs.
Sure, her fibers are in the basement too, and she probably lied about wearing the red jacket (or was it a sweater) down there. Or there could have simply been fiber transfer that explains her red fibers in the basement.
I'm going to write up my theory of the case for the members theories thread, but that will have to wait a while, when I'm not as busy. It's not that I can improve on docG's write up, but it might help if there were 2 people writing from the same perspective.
Shake off your conviction that PR wrote the note. She didn't. It makes no sense for her to have called 911 when she did if she was in on it. It's that simple. Spending a couple more years analyzing the word "hence" or pondering why the Paughs bought 3 books as gifts, or trying to decide who also ate pineapple with JB is not going to solve the case. Step back, stop examining the bark on a particular tree, and notice that in front of you is a forest.
The answer is plain as day if you can stop getting lost in the minutiae.
The RN doesn't jibe with a body in the house. The RN was meant to buy time to dispose of the body. PR would know this if she were in on it. The fact that she called 911 shows us she wasn't in on it. The RN is consistent with stalling for time to get rid of the body. That's the whole case in a nutshell.
Oh, and BDI is nonsese because in that scenario no one is going to jail, so there is no need for a coverup. BDIs love the theory because it seems to explain PR/JR pulling in team. But the 911 call with the body in the house makes no sense, so we know PR wasn't part of the team.
We can't say anyone killed JB w/o a conviction. We can say who we think is the strongest suspect. IMO JDI is the strongest case theory.
....Every scenario is possible IN THE MIND of it's creator. Agree? So, let's also agree that everyone is entitled to solve this mystery in the way it fits individual's logic and currently known evidences. Kind of, like every individual can see/describe the painting on the museum wall differently...
