DOUBLE LOOP KNOT: JonBenet was posed

[Seeker]

Seeker, I have to disagree with you here, you can't even see the knot on the neck ligature in either of the 2 photos you have posted links to.

If you go to this photo garrote4 you can actually see the neck ligature knot and it looks very much as though the cord could be pulled through the loop that has been created by the knot. Far be it for me to give a name to the knot but just looking at the image, it is pretty clear to me that this would be so.

It's really hard to tell from pix isn't it? The second one you can see the knot, although not all of it, but at least where it is on her neck. IMO if it were a slipknot then it wouldn't have still been that tight on her neck, hair or no hair caught in it. That's just my opinion based on the photo though.
If it were a true slipknot I wonder why the coroner would have needed to cut it off her neck instead of just loosening it and slipping the entire ligature off over her head...he cut the hair to remove the ligature, but why cut the middle of the cord if it wasn't necessary?
This is a much better photo IMO and seems to show (again only IMHO) that the knot was not a slipknot.

Shoelaces come in a wide variety of widths, lengths, and colors. I'm not saying it is shoelace cord, but it could have been...they are usually flat too.

I also said "when I think of a slipknot" I envision a roper's knot, or shoelaces. They aren't tight until tension is applied, but they also don't need to be completely "untied" to loosen them. They are true "slip" knots. Once the tension is release the knot loosens. The one on her right wrist is hard to say for sure. It could be a slipknot, then again if so why wouldn't JR have just pulled it loose instead of trying to "untie" it? This is a guy with boating experience so he'd know the difference between a slipknot and a double hitch knot, or any other kind of knot. I don't think he was so panicked he wouldn't have instantly known if he could just loosen it by a quick tug at the right spot.

I don't believe JonBenet was hung by her wrists/hands at all. If so, even with the shirtsleave protecting the skin there would still be bruising, or abrasions of some type and I don't believe there was ever any hook found in that room where she could have been hung by her hands/wrists. Also the liver mortis suggests she was not hung, but laying down as it was on her lower back and side of her face and not in her feet.
Just my :twocents:

 

[aussiesheila]

It's really hard to tell from pix isn't it? The second one you can see the knot, although not all of it, but at least where it is on her neck. IMO if it were a slipknot then it wouldn't have still been that tight on her neck, hair or no hair caught in it. That's just my opinion based on the photo though.

Seeker, wrt the ligature around her neck and regardless of what name you give to the knot, just looking at the garotte4 photo, it looks to me as though the part of the cord that is horizontal could be easily pulled from left to right and vv because it is passing through a loop that is part of the knot. I actually got a bit of cord and made a knot just like the one in the photo and I could slide the cord through it to make the 'noose' tighter. Isn't this what the broken stick is for? So that as it is twisted around and around the end of the cord it pulls the 'noose' tighter?

If it were a true slipknot I wonder why the coroner would have needed to cut it off her neck instead of just loosening it and slipping the entire ligature off over her head...he cut the hair to remove the ligature, but why cut the middle of the cord if it wasn't necessary?

Well no, maybe he thought if he did that it would disturb the hair caught the knot, so possibly he saw cutting the cord where he did as the better option as it was less destructive of the evidence.

This is a much better photo IMO and seems to show (again only IMHO) that the knot was not a slipknot.

Shoelaces come in a wide variety of widths, lengths, and colors. I'm not saying it is shoelace cord, but it could have been...they are usually flat too.

I also said "when I think of a slipknot" I envision a roper's knot, or shoelaces. They aren't tight until tension is applied, but they also don't need to be completely "untied" to loosen them. They are true "slip" knots. Once the tension is release the knot loosens. The one on her right wrist is hard to say for sure. It could be a slipknot, then again if so why wouldn't JR have just pulled it loose instead of trying to "untie" it? This is a guy with boating experience so he'd know the difference between a slipknot and a double hitch knot, or any other kind of knot. I don't think he was so panicked he wouldn't have instantly known if he could just loosen it by a quick tug at the right spot.

Well I guess there is no reason to assume the knots on each wrist were all the same, and looking at the photos I don't think they were the same. I think John managed to loosen the left wrist knot which I think was a slipknot and enlarge the loop around her wrist sufficiently to pull the loop over her hand. I think there were two knots at the right wrist binding, on of which was a slipknot which I think the coroner undid completely, leaving just one knot and one loop of the right hand binding as shown in the garotte5 photo.

I don't believe JonBenet was hung by her wrists/hands at all. If so, even with the shirtsleave protecting the skin there would still be bruising, or abrasions of some type and I don't believe there was ever any hook found in that room where she could have been hung by her hands/wrists.

I don't say she was hung by her wrists, I say she was standing on a chair and her arms were stretched straight above her head by the cord attached to a hook being pulled taut. As for no hook being found, no-one looked did they? Perhaps that was something FW made sure was removed from sight when he went down to the basement at 6.15 am. Maybe there wasn't a hook, maybe the cord was hung over one of those pipes that were running along the ceiling.

Also the liver mortis suggests she was not hung, but laying down as it was on her lower back and side of her face and not in her feet.
Just my :twocents:

Yes, that is true. Her arms were stretched up above her head in rigor mortis and the livor mortis was on her back. I have been wondering about that, and I read somewhere that when muscles are tense they go into rigor mortis fairly quickly. I think JonBenet's arm muscles would have been tense with her arms in this postion and rigor mortis could have set in say within half an hour or an hour of her being killed and before she was cut down. Then when she was laid on her back an hour after death there was still time for the livor mortis to set in on her back. But I don't know for sure if this is possible.