Melody Stanton and "the scream"

Another board has falsely stated that Melody Stanton changed her story about "the scream" after "Team Ramsey got to her". This is false. Charlie Brennan re-interviewed Mrs. Stanton, and she told him that she believed the scream she heard actually occured two days earlier. No one "got" to her from Team Ramsey.

Another person with knowledge of the entire Stanton situation told me that Mike Kane had a pre-interview with Mrs. Stanton to see if she had anything the grand jury should hear, and determined that she was not needed to testify. She did not testify before the grand jury.

Just my opinion.

I remember she said it might have been a "dream." (Which could explain why she didn't go in front of the GJ) - Not that it was possibly two days earlier.

You mention Charlie Brennan "reinterviewed" her. What was her story in the first interview?

We do know that the Ramsey detectives were out the very next day interviewing neighbors on what they may have seen or heard. Who's to say that they did not interview Melody? They told Barnhill he DIDN'T see JAR.

You know, the autopsy people said she'd been molested a couple of days before her death and that it was healing.

Did Melody Stanton still say it was about 2 AM that she heard the loud, blood-curdling scream? JonBenet had cried at the party, and evidently tried to call 911 but someone took the phone away from her if I remember correctly and invented a cover story which turned out to be not true.

The police came, and Susan Stine went to the door and dismissed them, did not even let them in, as I recall. Said it was all a mistake or an accident.

Who do you think was there, Candy? Someone who called himself Santa Claus besides McSanta? By the time she told her friend Megan and Mrs. K. about it, to impress them, she was in a better mood.

Eagle1 said:

JonBenet had cried at the party, and evidently tried to call 911 but someone took the phone away from her if I remember correctly and invented a cover story which turned out to be not true.

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I don't think that was ever substantiated, Eagle.

IMO

candy said:

Charlie Brennan re-interviewed Mrs. Stanton, and she told him that she believed the scream she heard actually occured two days earlier. No one "got" to her from Team Ramsey.

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The problem is we don't know the time frame on ANY of these interviews. When did the BPD first talk to Melody? When did the Ramsey investigators? When was she re-interviewed by the BPD? And when exactly did Brennan talk to her? How about Frank Coffman and that idiot Shapiro?
Without knowing the time frames it's impossible to tell if Team Ramsey (or anyone else) influenced her account of that night.

What I had heard about it was that MS had reported that she awoke to a scream on the night of the 25th, then woke her husband who heard a metal on concrete sound a few minutes later. Supposedly, at some later point she claimed that she did not hear the scream. But nothing was ever discussed about whether her husband was interviewed and what he said at first or later.

Welcome to Boulder. Scream? What scream? Rape? What rape? Murder? What murder?

candy said:

Another person with knowledge of the entire Stanton situation told me

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Is this 'another person' unbiased of Ramsey guilt or innocence?

and Candy that question goes for you too these days.

Only Melody Stanton is qualified to know and report the entire Stanton situation. What's a pre-interview, it sounds like being sort of a virgin. Are you saying it was off the cuff so there is no record of the transaction?

Yes, she said it was the night of the party, but she didn't check the time when she heard it (!) except that it was after midnight.

Just my opinion.

Team Ramsey had no problem with "the scream", the Ramseys used "the scream" in the Wolf case, and it was cited by Judge Carnes in her opinion. It most likely came from Lou Smit's deposition (which could not be rebutted as it came after ST's depo):

Defendants claim they were not awakened during the night. A neighbor who lived across the street from defendants' home, however, reported that she heard a scream during the early morning of December 26, 1996. Experiments have demonstrated that the vent from the basement may have amplified the scream so that it could have been heard outside of the house, but not three stories up, in defendants' bedroom. (SMF P 148; PSMF P 148.)

Just my opinion.

Just curious if these two were investigated?

Why would they need to be investigated??

Chewy said:

Just curious if these two were investigated?

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You're wondering if the Stantons were investigated? I would hope so, but it doesn't seem too likely...

From ST's deposition in CW v. Rs:

http://www.webbsleuths.com/cgi-bin/dcf/dcboard.cgi?az=printer_format&om=44&forum=DCForumID107

I'm curious because of some of the things I've read about her statements. Not sure if they are completely true. But she seems to have switched when she heard the scream from that night to two days prior. She also said something weird about not hearing the scream but it just being Jonbenet's "energy" crying out. That's creepy.

Then there was the issue that they are not the immediate neighbors and the houses between didn't hear anything. Her husband also stated he heard scraping sounds. These all seem very strange statements to me because they kind of serve as a quasi alibi, they couldn't have been 'making" the sounds if they were hearing them elsewhere.

Curious

Chewy said:

I'm curious because of some of the things I've read about her statements. Not sure if they are completely true. But she seems to have switched when she heard the scream from that night to two days prior. She also said something weird about not hearing the scream but it just being Jonbenet's "energy" crying out. That's creepy.

Then there was the issue that they are not the immediate neighbors and the houses between didn't hear anything. Her husband also stated he heard scraping sounds. These all seem very strange statements to me because they kind of serve as a quasi alibi, they couldn't have been 'making" the sounds if they were hearing them elsewhere.

Curious

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This is the way I understand it: Mrs Stanton first claimed she heard a child's scream around midnight Christmas night. She claimed she always slept with a window open, even in winter. After hearing what she described as a horrible child's scream, she woke her husband. He had not heard the scream, but he said he heard sounds like "metal scraping concrete" (his words). She claimed she did not call police right then because she thought that any parent would certainly hear a scream like that from their child and she "didn't want to get involved" (her words).Here is where it gets confusing- after her claims were made known when the murder of JB was reported, she then said that it might have been "negative energy" emanating from JB and not an actual scream". Some people think the R's lawyers got to her and caused her to back away from the "scream" claim. The Stanton's were so rattled by all this that they sold their house and moved out of the area. Later, Mrs Stanton again reaffirmed that she had, in fact, heard an actual scream.
Police conducted a "scream test" from the basement of the R home, where there was a vent pipe to the outside. This was in an area near where the paint tote was located. The police found that a scream could indeed be heard from the Stanton's house, which was diagonally across the street from the R home. The scream could also be heard in the parents' 3rd floor bedroom.

On a similar note, the late Joe Barnhill, the neighbor across the street, claimed to have seen JAR walking into the R home earlier that day. He knew the family well, and actually he was the one who was dogsitting the JB's Bichon Jacques while the R were going to be away- he already had the dog at his house before Christmas, so Jacques was not in the R home the night JB was killed. Joe Barnhill also kept JB's new bike at his house until JR came and got it to put under the tree. The Barnhills dogsat frequently. Later (supposedly) after the Rs attorneys talked to him, he also changed his claim and said he "wasn't sure" it was JAR. I don't know why any OTHER college-age young man would be walking into the R house. This was in the daytime while the family was home. JAR's presence at the house has long been denied. Yet, JR obtained lawyers for his first wife in Georgia (JAR's mother) nearly as soon as he got them himself. So that makes 2 neighbors who offered statements about the day/night of the crime and later reversed their claims. I don't know about anyone else, but that makes me suspicious.

Ok so now the "evil Ramseys" fooled the cops, manipulated the DA and now these two entirely different people are also on the Ramsey brainwashed payroll of lockstep evil. Really?



Thanks for the details, I really appreciate them. I'm curious how people chose to interpret Joe Barnhill's statement. Although I can imagine that he thought he saw JAR going into the house. Where was JAR? I thought he was eliminated as a suspect pretty quickly since he wasn't in the state?

You may perceive it as JB protecting his son by providing an attorney, I don't. I see him doing the right thing under the advice of the attorney.

However something very important here that is being ignored is that we have a witness who saw a young man going into the Ramsey home. While it is true he would have recognized JAR it's also true that he may have seen someone who looked similar to JAR and just assumed it was JAR. Since we know it could not be JAR why is everyone ignoring the fact that we have a witness who saw someone going into the Ramsey home? I don't get it?

Next, the Stanton scream is very suspicious to me. If Melodie Stanton said she woke up her husband and they sat up together listening to sounds next door, that's not something you'd get confused about later if your neighbor's kid was killed. So again, if we don't interpret everything as the "Evil Ramseys have power over the world" we could look at this as a red flag. In a normal investigation without Ramsey bias, this discrepancy would put the Stanton's high on my list of suspects.

A. They have the access. As neighbors did they attend the Christmas open house? If so they had access to the home. I'd check out to see if they attended the Christmas party.

B. They said it was Jonbenet. That's weird, even if they changed the story to be two days later the woman said it was Jonbenet. She didn't change it to say it was another person. That's odd. If you weren't sure it happened that night and decided it was two days earlier, why would you still say it was Jonbenet? It could have been anyone.

C. They moved out of the neighborhood after the crime. Now there may be an entirely logical explanation for this, (the media being too much) not wanting to live near a crime scene etc. However in many cases where a criminal was caught later, they left right after the crime.

D. IF, if the crime really was a ransom gone wrong, they may have planned to take Jonbenet to their home. This would make more sense than a kidnapper showing up and trying to smuggle Jonbenet out of the home and into a car without being seen.

It's puzzling to me why they weren't investigated more.


More commentary on the scream can be found here.


[ame="http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=227293"]Who screamed? - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community[/ame]

Oops..went through twice

The "Evil Ramsey" theory relies on the Ramseys having unfettered access to manipulate hundreds of people who are willing to be manipulated towards the goals of the Ramseys. When I see people basing their theories on this line of reasoning I think it is a load of bunk.

I could see them being able to manipulate their lawyers. But several different neighbors? The entire DA office? Please.

When you look at the examples of people trying to blame it on JAR they suggest that three different people lied for JAR.

I find it ridiculous to suggest that a case that got this much exposure wouldn't motivate a person who knew the truth to come forward unless they were guilty of the crime. It hasn't happened.

In this example with the scream there are two things that everyone is just blissfully ignoring.

A. She said she heard the scream and woke up and woke her husband up and they heard more noises.

So how does this translate to a misremembered detail on her part. If her husband corroborated being woken up and hearing more noises in his first statement, there's something really wrong with their statements if they changed them later. This is a memory that includes physical actions and observations as a result of "being woken up."

How do two different people misremember the same thing?


B. Next she states that she thought it was an "energy" emanating from Jonbenet.

This is a really weird statement. Why would she say this?


C. She states that she heard it two nights earlier and yet still ascribes it to Jonbenet.

How does this make any sense. If a normal person heard a scream and then suddenly realized that it wasn't the same night after all, why would they continue to attribute that scream to Jonbenet? Why wouldn't it turn into a "someone."

The entire statement is filled with strange changes. And in many cases of criminal investigation a person who changes their statement is viewed as lying. She's obviously lying about something.

A person who states they heard a scream and woke up their husband is creating an alibi in some small way. If they are in their room in their house hearing the scream, they can't be also at the house causing the scream to happen.

What's strange about the scream is that none of the other neighbors whose house was closer to the Ramsey home heard the scream.

What's also strange is that they were not intensely investigated because of the change in their story.

If the Evil Ramseys were trying to throw blame elsewhere, what incentive would they have to try to get them to change their story?

Chewy said:

Ok so now the "evil Ramseys" fooled the cops, manipulated the DA and now
these two entirely different people are also on the Ramsey brainwashed payroll of lockstep evil. Really?



Thanks for the details, I really appreciate them. I'm curious how people chose to interpret Joe Barnhill's statement. Although I can imagine that he thought he saw JAR going into the house. Where was JAR? I thought he was eliminated as a suspect pretty quickly since he wasn't in the state?

You may perceive it as JB protecting his son by providing an attorney, I don't. I see him doing the right thing under the advice of the attorney.

However something very important here that is being ignored is that we have a witness who saw a young man going into the Ramsey home. While it is true he would have recognized JAR it's also true that he may have seen someone who looked similar to JAR and just assumed it was JAR. Since we know it could not be JAR why is everyone ignoring the fact that we have a witness who saw someone going into the Ramsey home? I don't get it?

Next, the Stanton scream is very suspicious to me. If Melodie Stanton said she woke up her husband and they sat up together listening to sounds next door, that's not something you'd get confused about later if your neighbor's kid was killed. So again, if we don't interpret everything as the "Evil Ramseys have power over the world" we could look at this as a red flag. In a normal investigation without Ramsey bias, this discrepancy would put the Stanton's high on my list of suspects.

A. They have the access. As neighbors did they attend the Christmas open house? If so they had access to the home. I'd check out to see if they attended the Christmas party.

B. They said it was Jonbenet. That's weird, even if they changed the story to be two days later the woman said it was Jonbenet. She didn't change it to say it was another person. That's odd. If you weren't sure it happened that night and decided it was two days earlier, why would you still say it was Jonbenet? It could have been anyone.

C. They moved out of the neighborhood after the crime. Now there may be an entirely logical explanation for this, (the media being too much) not wanting to live near a crime scene etc. However in many cases where a criminal was caught later, they left right after the crime.

D. IF, if the crime really was a ransom gone wrong, they may have planned to take Jonbenet to their home. This would make more sense than a kidnapper showing up and trying to smuggle Jonbenet out of the home and into a car without being seen.

It's puzzling to me why they weren't investigated more.


More commentary on the scream can be found here.


Who screamed? - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community

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BBM

In quite a few of the books, and articles, there are discussions about the lawyering up aspect of this case. Aside from the should they, shouldn't they have hired lawyers b/c they're innocent debate, there is actually a much more critical issue at stake. I know Kolar goes into it. This article addresses it as well, and I think sums the issue up very well.
http://www.tommillerlaw.com/Chapter...ution-of-Justice-by-Thomas-C-Doc-Miller.shtml

The politics of delay
Ellis Armstead, by his constant presence and interference was a huge source of frustration for Boulder Police detectives trying to put their case together against John and Patsy. When police detectives arrived to interview a relevant witness, they often found that Armstead had already been there to take a statement that would favor the defense. This strategy gave the Ramseys several important advantages.

When a police investigator takes a statement, the information becomes discoverable to defense attorneys only after charges are filed. However, statements taken by the defense before charges are filed don't get into the hands of the prosecution unless the information is favorable to the defendant. The defense investigator getting a jump on the police has an opportunity to lead the witness to make the "right" kind of statement. In the Ramsey case, leaks from Hunter's office reached Haddon's law firm, and thus provided Armstead with the knowledge as to whom the police next planned to interview. By getting to the witness first, Armstead could influence not only what the witness said, but what that witness would recall in any subsequent police interview.

Ellis Armstead himself acknowledged his professional, rather than moral commitment, to John and Patsy once he resigned. "It was not like I was naive. It wouldn't have changed how I did anything. It really didn't matter to me whether they did it or didn't do it."[31] In Armstead's own words, he exposes an utter absence of moral character, the sickness and greed within the American criminal justice system.

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So to your point, yes, there is most definitely a means for the "evil Ramsey's" to sway, and/or influence witnesses. Armstead's admission at the end clearly illustrates that in this country, getting to the truth isn't necessarily the end game.

The endnote citation for that quote comes from this article, "Charlie Brennan, "When the System Falls Short", The Rocky Mountain News, December 18, 2001"

It's not that I think it's impossible for them to have influenced some people, it's the large number of different people this theory relies on them manipulating. Their lawyers, the entire DA office, the Stantons, Joe Burnhill, Burke and their other two kids, three of JARs friends, Lou Smit, members of the police department and on and on.....

Apparently the only one they weren't able to brainwash was Kolar.


It's ridiculous after a while.


For me I'd like to know why two different witnesses who changed corroborating stories were not intensely investigated.

That's a huge red flag in a criminal investigation.


How do two different people misremember the same wrong story???