Poll: Will this case ever be solved?

Will this case ever be formally solved?

  • Yes - someone will have a eureka moment and spot a smoking gun

    Votes: 7 8.4%
  • Yes - someone will have a moment of conscience and confess all they know

    Votes: 9 10.8%
  • No - 'the rice is cooked' and our grandchildren will be discussing the case

    Votes: 47 56.6%
  • No because it's hard formally to pin a crime on a dead person

    Votes: 20 24.1%

  • Total voters
    83
Not the only fat cat around and we had and we had a group of individuals calling themselves the Rat Pack...

S.B.T.C. Saved By The Cross along with W.W.J.D What Would Jesus Do..

Beheaded sorry anyone that reads the Bible would know about John the Baptist..

And no one can't say the Ramsey's didn't read so any of this RN can come anywhere...

Maybe read what Tadpole posted, that the RN reads like a list.

The RN author's use of English consists of a pattern of simple elementary English words with no narrowing to US-English.

The statement 'southern common sense' and the American movie references have nothing to do with the author's use of English.

The use of movie lines is really a sign of lack of original vernacular capability. An attempt to sound American by borrowing already existing phrases.
 
Maybe read what Tadpole posted, that the RN reads like a list.

The RN author's use of English consists of a pattern of simple elementary English words with no narrowing to US-English.

The statement 'southern common sense' and the American movie references have nothing to do with the author's use of English.

The use of movie lines is really a sign of lack of original vernacular capability. An attempt to sound American by borrowing already existing phrases.


One thing to me the person that author the RN was trying to make it sound like a small forgien faction but in the end the Ramsey's was the one that pointed the fingers at LHP,Fleet White,and Access employee's so they didn't believe an intruder from the get go so why should we...
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_spelling_differences
Compounds and hyphens

British English often prefers hyphenated compounds, such as counter-attack, whereas American English discourages the use of hyphens in compounds where there is no compelling reason, so counterattack is much more common.

Heyya Hotyh?

counter-measures? br?

There seems to be plenty of uk examples of 'countermeasures' unhyphenated. I can't find too many hyphenated.

But counter-attack does show up. Maybe Sophie can tell us about it.
 
Maybe Sophie can tell us about it. - Hotyh

cool.

also pick-up; cdn, br
 
Maybe read what Tadpole posted, that the RN reads like a list.

The RN author's use of English consists of a pattern of simple elementary English words with no narrowing to US-English.

The statement 'southern common sense' and the American movie references have nothing to do with the author's use of English.

The use of movie lines is really a sign of lack of original vernacular capability. An attempt to sound American by borrowing already existing phrases.

Maybe so...But can you say for sure the Ramsey's did not write the RN..You keep telling eveyone they wasn't there that night I know I wasn't...Tom Clancey is a great example of counter-mearsures and tactics from Call of Duty to Splittercell..John Douglas is an other best yet an retired F.B.I telling of his cases..So to make a crime scene to look different from what truly happen was at John Ramsey clasp..
 
Eeek! I've got Piggy-Cold* you know. Will go through HOTYH's bits through the course of today. A couple of initial thoughts, though:

1) British-English is slowly conforming to US English. Your wonderful author Bill Bryson (who is also Chancellor of one of my local universities and much-loved aficionado of one of our prettier local cities) has written on this subject and, if memory serves, discusses it in his book, 'Mother Tongue.'

2) HOTYH says that the grammar is poor yet proceeds to examine the grammar forms to try to prove that the writer wasn't necessarily of American provenance. He surely shouldn't take the absence of a comma here or the exclusion on a hyphen there to prove anything - using his analysis, I mean. In fact, hyphens are a huge bugbear here and you find nerdy societies dedicated to restoring certain rules of grammar (eg. The Apostrophe Protection Society).

3) He quotes the provenance of certain expressions and suggests that they are actually as British as they are American since they have common origins. In fact, he is very easily proven wrong: In the 1700s, we said 'gotten.' Now we don't. You do. You may get the odd person saying 'outsmart' but in fact, we refer generally to brightness, cleverness, being on the ball, rather than to smartness and the expression, 'outsmart' is far from common. 'Out-wit' would be my pick** Similarly, most English writers would use 's' in words like 'criticise' but, in fact, there is an entire school of grammar, the Oxford School, which prefers 'z' and you will get some Oxford graduates still using the 'z.'

4) As far as I am aware, pretty much everyone who examined the note bar HOTYH thought that it was American English. Is he suggesting that , with the benefit of their educations on the subject, they don't know what they are talking about?

5) I was discussing how the letter read to me, a 30-something graduate who, through work, spends at least as much time reading American correspondence as she does English. It reads as US English to me. HOTYH thinks not. Ok. Fair play. His view. How do you other guys*** feel about it?

6) He misses the point in picking up expressions like 'Victory!' as being uncommon. They are uncommon everywhere bar secret revolutionary societies in bad films. The writer was trying to mimic what he or she thought would be in a ransom letter.

7) The writer was deliberately trying to sound foreign, as indicated by the risibly misspelt words at the beginning of the letter.

8) More later.


* Got piggy-cold but the oinkment is working. Ho ho ho!

** I love the quote about refusing to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

*** An example of American idiom being used by a Brit. 'You lot' would be far more common.
 
One thing to me the person that author the RN was trying to make it sound like a small forgien faction but in the end the Ramsey's was the one that pointed the fingers at LHP,Fleet White,and Access employee's so they didn't believe an intruder from the get go so why should we...



:clap:


That is exactly the point, Ravyn. HOTYH discusses at length LE's failure to look at the SFF angle but the Ramseys themselves looked at every angle BUT the SFF angle. Off-hand, I can't think of an attempt they made to identify a foreigner with a grudge.
 
Talking of hyphens, examples of Patsy's hyphens before the murder:


http://blabbieville.tripod.com/1995xmasnewsletter.txt



Another thing that is not British English is the 'F.B.I.' thing. You almost never see that now: we'd pretty much always write 'FBI' as in 'Department of Work and Pensions - DWP' or 'Financial Services Authority - FSA' or 'Foreign and Commonwealth Office -FCO' or 'Her Majesty's Prison (eg. Strangeways) - HMP Strangeways.'

Would writing F.B.I. be that common in US English?
 
Talking of hyphens, examples of Patsy's hyphens before the murder:


http://blabbieville.tripod.com/1995xmasnewsletter.txt



Another thing that is not British English is the 'F.B.I.' thing. You almost never see that now: we'd pretty much always write 'FBI' as in 'Department of Work and Pensions - DWP' or 'Financial Services Authority - FSA' or 'Foreign and Commonwealth Office -FCO' or 'Her Majesty's Prison (eg. Strangeways) - HMP Strangeways.'

Would writing F.B.I. be that common in US English?

British-English calls those 'hard stops,' right? They avoid the periods. I'll buy that. The RN author did not use British-English. Although the RN author used some formal writing techniques, including avoiding contractions. Pickup with the hyphen isn't correct in US-English, and 'At this time' should've had a comma in US-English. Many of the words in the note are superfluous in US-English. The note could've been shortened by half and carried the same content.

Lets not forget that the writing was sloppy, at least two words misspelled, and no college-level words. Also remember that the PR-RN author matchup did not go very well at BPD.

I think if you reread some of my posts, you'd find that my point has to do more with a stripped-down English. I don't think its as easy as you say to pin down the RN author as using US-English, because there's nothing but very simple short sentences of very common grammer school English words without any street talk. Almost a base English from which a region can't be extracted. The lines from movies should be a clue that whoever wrote the note needed to borrow some material from the vernacular to hide the ESL.
 
When I took the rn back to its bare bones by eliminating all the redundancy and 'unnecessary' detail, the rn read as a list.

For my money, the redundancy and unnecessary detail are key to finding out who wrote it. Indeed, there was someone (name escapes me at the moment) who was known for being "over-the-top."
 
Talking of hyphens, examples of Patsy's hyphens before the murder:


http://blabbieville.tripod.com/1995xmasnewsletter.txt

Huzzah!

Another thing that is not British English is the 'F.B.I.' thing. You almost never see that now: we'd pretty much always write 'FBI' as in 'Department of Work and Pensions - DWP' or 'Financial Services Authority - FSA' or 'Foreign and Commonwealth Office -FCO' or 'Her Majesty's Prison (eg. Strangeways) - HMP Strangeways.'

Would writing F.B.I. be that common in US English?

At one time, it was. But it's become increasingly rare. It's almost always spelled without the periods now. Indeed, a lot of analysts have said that the writer was most likely someone who would have been of school age when it was still common to teach acronym spellings with periods. Someone who, in 1996, would have been around the 35-50 y/o age range.

Sound like anybody we know?
 
:clap:


That is exactly the point, Ravyn. HOTYH discusses at length LE's failure to look at the SFF angle but the Ramseys themselves looked at every angle BUT the SFF angle. Off-hand, I can't think of an attempt they made to identify a foreigner with a grudge.

I'm not going to single out LE. RDI and IDI alike haven't even looked at the prima facie angle. And, there's evidence to support prima facie.

  • DNA doesn't match tested family, friends, neighbors, or anybody already in CODIS. Hmm guess the circle widens.
  • Handwriting has peculiar squared off features that come and go, possibly attributed to ESL's first language residual appearing intermittently.
  • Victory!, 'fat cat', and 'not the country that it serves' have a subtle but distinct common thread in socialism.
  • There are no linguistic traits that could narrow the English to US-English.
 
Huzzah!



At one time, it was. But it's become increasingly rare. It's almost always spelled without the periods now. Indeed, a lot of analysts have said that the writer was most likely someone who would have been of school age when it was still common to teach acronym spellings with periods. Someone who, in 1996, would have been around the 35-50 y/o age range.

Sound like anybody we know?



lol. TY, Dave: you are very clever. Well, smart :)
 
I'm not going to single out LE. RDI and IDI alike haven't even looked at the prima facie angle. And, there's evidence to support prima facie.

  • DNA doesn't match tested family, friends, neighbors, or anybody already in CODIS. Hmm guess the circle widens.
  • Handwriting has peculiar squared off features that come and go, possibly attributed to ESL's first language residual appearing intermittently.
  • Victory!, 'fat cat', and 'not the country that it serves' have a subtle but distinct common thread in socialism.
  • There are no linguistic traits that could narrow the English to US-English.


Thing is, HOTYH, I'm working hard to take this all on board since I know you are no eejit on this case but:


1) There is a massive issue with the DNA's integrity, though, and other countries have DNA databases and information-sharing relationships with the US. There's such an organisation as Interpol, too.

2) The squared off features could also be someone using the 'wrong' hand.

3) Or a common thread in materialism. Remember the Ramsey suggestions that the Whites were jealous of them, JAR'S comments to police that someone who resented 'rich bas...ds' had probably committed the crime and the DoI comments about the people who had mocked the Boulder house's gaudiness, Patsy's fibs about where she had acquired her furniture. The 'fat cats' comment could as easily come from someone who assumed that everyone was jealous of wealth or who assumed that wealth was important to everyone. Also, there *was* some local dislike of the Ramsey glitz which would bear investigating - look at the little girl in PMPT who told the teacher that no one would have mourned her since she wasn't as pretty or rich as JBR. Against this backdrop, I honestly don't see why you would be that wedded to the SFF idea.

4) I beg to differ on the point of US English. I admit that I am no guru on linguistics and my thorough affection for, and thorough steeping in Americana probably distorts my judgment on this point, but, to me, it has US English written all over it. Just looking at the letter now, 'law enforcement' jumps out at me. I refer to LE on here since it's the received expression, but an English writer would just say 'police.'
 
British-English calls those 'hard stops,' right? They avoid the periods. I'll buy that. The RN author did not use British-English. Although the RN author used some formal writing techniques, including avoiding contractions. Pickup with the hyphen isn't correct in US-English, and 'At this time' should've had a comma in US-English. Many of the words in the note are superfluous in US-English. The note could've been shortened by half and carried the same content.

Lets not forget that the writing was sloppy, at least two words misspelled, and no college-level words. Also remember that the PR-RN author matchup did not go very well at BPD.

I think if you reread some of my posts, you'd find that my point has to do more with a stripped-down English. I don't think its as easy as you say to pin down the RN author as using US-English, because there's nothing but very simple short sentences of very common grammer school English words without any street talk. Almost a base English from which a region can't be extracted. The lines from movies should be a clue that whoever wrote the note needed to borrow some material from the vernacular to hide the ESL.


OK, HOTYH, I can take that all on board but I do think there are USisms outside the movie stuff - as I mention on previous post, the reference to 'Law Enforcement.' The police here don't enforce the law, they keep the Queen's peace :)

Levity aside, though, one thing I have to grant you is that non-native Anglophones can pick up a mix of US and British English.

The length of the letter could speak to staging, copycats of Loeb and Leopold, filling (as I have seen you refer to it) - that is one thing that I think points to no culture in particular.
 
Where I live, there are tens of thousands of ESL - speakers. NONE were taught British-English.

Patsy wrote the note.
 
3) Or a common thread in materialism. Remember the Ramsey suggestions that the Whites were jealous of them, JAR'S comments to police that someone who resented 'rich bas...ds' had probably committed the crime and the DoI comments about the people who had mocked the Boulder house's gaudiness, Patsy's fibs about where she had acquired her furniture. The 'fat cats' comment could as easily come from someone who assumed that everyone was jealous of wealth or who assumed that wealth was important to everyone. Also, there *was* some local dislike of the Ramsey glitz which would bear investigating - look at the little girl in PMPT who told the teacher that no one would have mourned her since she wasn't as pretty or rich as JBR. Against this backdrop, I honestly don't see why you would be that wedded to the SFF idea.

No, materialism isn't it.

The closing salutation Victory! has already been described by FBI profiler as a revolutionary term 'harking back to foreign powers'. Has nothing to do with materialism or jealousy. Has to do with socialist revolutionary. Victory! is an important expression in the ransom note.

Dont forget the 'group of individuals' expression. That is right out of a treatise on socialism. It wouldn't surprise me if the RN author is also a theoretician of socialism.

"The main thrust of capitalism is that resources are owned by an individual or a group of individuals."

"And under socialism, no individual or group of individuals may own the means whereby other men work and live."
 

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