Day 3 SBTC - The 12 Days of JonBenet

[fr brown]

fr brown,
Surely you are aware that JR has adopted a biblical stance, citing references liberally, also consider JR praying, allegedly on his knees, with Lou Smit?

"MIKE KANE: Do you have a favorite passages out of the Bible?

JOHN RAMSEY: Um, hum, I didn't really have a favorite passage. I have been studying Philippian with a friend of mine. There is a passage in there that he said you need to memorize this, and I can't quote it because I haven't memorized it yet, but. I don't -- I couldn't quote you a favorite passage out of the bible, sorry to say but --"

I don't think John got too far with it. It's "Philippians" with an "s."

 

[UKGuy]

"MIKE KANE: Do you have a favorite passages out of the Bible?

JOHN RAMSEY: Um, hum, I didn't really have a favorite passage. I have been studying Philippian with a friend of mine. There is a passage in there that he said you need to memorize this, and I can't quote it because I haven't memorized it yet, but. I don't -- I couldn't quote you a favorite passage out of the bible, sorry to say but --"

I don't think John got too far with it. It's "Philippians" with an "s."

fr brown,
Absolutely that's John to a T, i.e. I haven't memorized it yet John strikes me as a fellow travellor with Machiavelli where he suggests a clever Prince is seen at Church and in the company of churchmen, etc.

.

 

[fr brown]

I think everyone will agree once it's looked at, that "SBTC" comes from the beginning of Psalm 35. Go to post #403 on FFJ's "John Ramsey's New Book - The Other Side of Suffering" thread to see a photo of that page. A note on the facing page is visible. It says that that psalm, Psalm 34, is an acrostic poem in which the verses start with successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Was the choice of Psalm 35 random? I don't think so. I finally got around to reading Patsy's favorite psalm, the one that she credits in DOI with saving her life when she had cancer, Psalm 57. I was astonished at how similar Psalm 35 and Psalm 57 are in the NIV Study Bible. Both talk about people as lions who dig pits and spread nets over them to trap the narrator David, but instead fall into the pits themselves. Psalm 57 contains a cross-reference to the verse in Psalm 35 to which the Bible was open. I think Patsy may have gotten to 35 via her magical finger-stab method.

In the NIV Study Bible, the life-saving line in Psalm 57 reads: "I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings...."

I just noticed that Psalm 36 contains the line: "Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings" and it's visible when the Bible is open as it was that morning.

I occasionally wonder why John in TOSOS says that he read Psalm 34 to Patsy on her deathbed (and why there are several other references to Psalm 34 in that book). It's spectacularly unsuitable to read to a well-loved wife who is dying young. Was it to subtly suggest that 34 was a favorite and the Bible might have been opened there for an intruder to stumble upon? Why not use the other flanking psalm, Psalm 36? That's how I came to read Psalm 36 this morning.

 

[fr brown]

I noticed something else in Psalm 57 in the NIV Study Bible. The line preceding Patsy's life-saving line ("I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed") is cross-referenced to Psalm 34, specifically to 34:22. So if Patsy was consulting her magical verse in Psalm 57 in the second great disaster of her life, she could've gotten to Psalm 34/35 that way.

 

[UKGuy]

I noticed something else in Psalm 57 in the NIV Study Bible. The line preceding Patsy's life-saving line ("I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed") is cross-referenced to Psalm 34, specifically to 34:22. So if Patsy was consulting her magical verse in Psalm 57 in the second great disaster of her life, she could've gotten to Psalm 34/35 that way.

fr brown,

BBM: Yes, that would sense if that's where Patsy's spiritual development had arrived? It might be John is reading this psalm to suggest to Patsy he shares her biblical interpretation?

Also might justify John taking the view that his biblical stance can be temporary, i.e. until disaster has passed.

Patsy likely placed her faith in the bible, whereas I've always assumed John was more pragmatic regarding its content.

.

 

[fr brown]

I noticed something else in Psalm 57 in the NIV Study Bible. The line preceding Patsy's life-saving line ("I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed") is cross-referenced to Psalm 34, specifically to 34:22. So if Patsy was consulting her magical verse in Psalm 57 in the second great disaster of her life, she could've gotten to Psalm 34/35 that way.

Some of the cross-references for Psalm 57 are at the top of the page instead of lower down near 57, where you'd expect them to be. I think that's why I overlooked them before. (It doesn't help that I need a magnifying glass to read them.)

Ps 34:22 is the last line of Psalm 34: "The Lord redeems his servants; no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him." (I think the cross-reference is to refuge.) The line immediately after 34:22 is the first line of Psalm 35: "Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me," which begins with the C in SBTC.

 

[fr brown]

If you go to post #403 in FFJ's "John Ramsey's New Book - The Other Side of Suffering" thread you can see all the elements together: the cross-referenced verse Ps 34:22 and across from it a note that Psalm 34 is an acrostic psalm in which each verse starts with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet and, of course, SBTC beginning the verses of Psalm 35. It's really a thing of beauty.

The next post (by questfortrue) is a screenshot of the Bible as it was found that morning: a page turned, open to the end of Psalm 35 and all of Psalm 36. The bookmark seems to be carefully laid across the left page. On reflection that seems odd, like attention is being drawn to the Bible. Why do that? Why not grab a handful of pages and turn them? Why not just close the book? If the Bible had been closed, no one would have ever found SBTC. I don't think it's standard practice even now to do electronic searches of all the books in a house where a crime has been committed.

The situation is similar to the open dictionary with the page corner folded to point to the word incest. But I can't see any outstanding significance to the bookmark placement in the Bible. It crosses verses about enemies gloating over the narrator's distress and it may cross a note about people who repaid friendship with malicious slander. All of Psalm 35 is in that vein, though.

There are reasons to think that Patsy was framing John for this crime. For one thing, she is crystal clear in her second interview that John used to sit at that very desk and read that Bible and that she herself never read it. She could have said that both of them read it, or that it was just a wedding present and neither of them read it much. She could have said that the Bible was sometimes left open (thus an intruder could have stumbled across it). Instead she made the point that the Bible was always closed and only one person ever opened it.

By December 1996 everybody was aware that the longer you put pen to paper, they more likely it is that you give yourself away. That's how the Unabomber had gotten caught. So we get a long ransom note that's stuffed with Ramsey inside baseball? That actually fits with the hypothesis that Patsy was framing John.

The ransom note does generally seem to follow the structure of the ransom demand in Ruthless People. Did she queue up that movie and watch the beginning or did she just have the RP ransom demand more or less in memory? Could she foresee that John would say "percent" thirteen times in his second interview and "particularly" fourteen times? Or that he would say "proper burial" in an interview? I can see how people would conclude that John collaborated on the note, but that doesn't fit for other reasons: to wit, the asymmetry of their appearances on the morning of the 26th and the incongruity with their alibi. Also, the ransom note as the product of one person is a work of genius; as a collaboration it's monumental idiocy.

I can see that if someone is always "percenting" and you have other reasons to dislike that person, you would take irritated note of it. (My uncle used to say "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" whenever I or others made even the mildest comment about something in life being not quite right, and he endlessly referred to his "genius" observation that the atom was like a solar system. I don't know how I'd work either of those into a ransom note.) It seems unlikely that John said "proper burial" enough to make Patsy's hackles rise. But maybe he did, or maybe that phrase was in some document in his desk. Dunno.

I guess where I'm going with this is that there might be an element of premeditation to the crime. Though I'm uncomfortable with the idea that Patsy might have been abusing JonBenet, I know that such things are not unknown. If Patsy had reason to believe that John was going to divorce her and marry someone else, that would mean that someone else must be made the prime suspect because Second Mommy will undoubtedly uncover the abuse. And JonBenet was getting to the age where she would know that something was wrong and would be able to articulate it to others.

I don't think that a crime was planned for that night, even if there was prior thought about how to get rid of JonBenet and pin it on John. I think the red turtleneck and the changing story about it, and the urine-soaked sheets speak to a gathering storm culminating in an impulsive event.

 

[Cherry]

I've always thought that S.B.T.C in conjunction with "Victory" is "Saved By The Cross," but the anagram from the Psalms scripture mentioned in Steve Thomas's book, iirc, of the Bible found in the Ramsey home suggests the initials were randomly chosen with purpose. John's Bible was open to Psalms 35, 36. Here's a related discussion link:

NIV Study Bible - listen carefully/SBTC

Saved by e cross is British, isn't it?
Was there anyone British in their immediate circle?

 

[fr brown]

If yo

Saved by e cross is British, isn't it?
Was there anyone British in their immediate circle?

If you set out to look for SBTC in that Bible, you would be looking long and hard in its almost 2000 pages. SBTC doesn't occur, backwards or forwards, as first letters in contiguous verses or first letters in contiguous words anywhere else in that Bible according to Don Foster. I looked in Psalms for another instance, but I ran out of steam about half way through. Foster probably did an electronic search.

Patsy undoubtedly got to Psalm 34/35 there from Psalm 57. That contains her life-saving line (as reported in both DOI and TOSOS) about taking refuge in the shadow of God's wings. The line before that is cross-referenced to Ps 34:22, the last verse of Psalm 34, after which come the four lines beginning CTBS. If she was familar with the phrase "saved by the cross," she would no doubt take the presence of those letters as a sign from God.

If the Bible were already open to Psalm 34/35, and intruder could have grabbed it for his sign-off. Patsy squelched that idea, though, and I don't think John has said it was possible. The Ramsey side just doesn't talk about it. Jameson has said that Steve Thomas is probably lying about the Bible being opened there, which doesn't really help her case. And she doesn't try to explain why John would say in TOSOS that he read the hair-raising Psalm 34 to Patsy on her deathbed and made her cry. I don't think the ghostwriter pulled that anecdote out of thin air.

 

[fr brown]

Saved by e cross is British, isn't it?
Was there anyone British in their immediate circle?

If you set out to look for SBTC in that Bible, you would be looking long and hard in its almost 2000 pages. SBTC doesn't occur, backwards or forwards, as first letters in contiguous verses or first letters in contiguous words anywhere else in that Bible according to Don Foster. I looked in Psalms for another instance, but I ran out of steam about half way through. Foster probably did an electronic search.

Patsy undoubtedly got to Psalm 34/35 from Psalm 57. That psalm contains her life-saving line (as reported in both DOI and TOSOS) about taking refuge in the shadow of God's wings. The line before that is cross-referenced to Ps 34:22, the last verse of Psalm 34, after which come the four lines beginning CTBS. If she was familar with the phrase "saved by the cross," she would, no doubt, take the presence of those letters as a sign from God.

If the Bible were already open to Psalm 34/35, an intruder could have grabbed it for his sign-off. Patsy squelched that idea, though, and I don't think John has ever said it was possible. The Ramsey side just doesn't talk about it. Jameson says that Steve Thomas is probably lying about the Bible being opened there, which doesn't really help her case. And she doesn't try to explain why John would say in TOSOS that he read the hair-raising Psalm 34 to Patsy on her deathbed and made her cry. I don't think the ghostwriter just pulled that anecdote out of thin air.

(Second reply to fix some typos.)

 

[Userid]

If the ransom note was written by the R's (which the majority here believe, including myself), then it's quite possible that the SBTC means absolutely nothing.

PR wanted to frame this a "foreign faction" or some sort of terrorist overseas organization, so it's quite possible she simply picked random letters to better signify that a "group" was responsible. An acronym doesn't need to have any meaning whatsoever; it's sole purpose, in this ransom note, was to portray a group; not a specific group, and moreover, not a specific sentiment.

Not everything in this case was finely thought out.

 

[fr brown]

If the ransom note was written by the R's (which the majority here believe, including myself), then it's quite possible that the SBTC means absolutely nothing.

PR wanted to frame this a "foreign faction" or some sort of terrorist overseas organization, so it's quite possible she simply picked random letters to better signify that a "group" was responsible. An acronym doesn't need to have any meaning whatsoever; it's sole purpose, in this ransom note, was to portray a group; not a specific group, and moreover, not a specific sentiment.

Not everything in this case was finely thought out.

To be clear, I'm not claiming that they mean anything, but they weren't randomly chosen.

 

[Userid]

To be clear, I'm not claiming that they mean anything, but they weren't randomly chosen.

With regard to "SBTC," if the acronym doesn't mean anything (i.e. doesn't stand for anything), then it had to be randomly chosen. I don't know one way or the other, but to completely rule out the possibility (that it was a random series of letters) is impossible. It very well could be; there is nothing to definitively conclude otherwise. I also believe that the absence of a period after the letter C is insignificant. Nothing was intended with that omission.

 

[fr brown]

As others have noted, John used "proper burial" during a post-murder interview.

Today I realized that the phrase also occurs in 1994's Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The pet store owner tells a little girl that she'll give her dead goldfish a proper burial. When the girl leaves, she tosses the goldfish to her cat. I can see this becoming a Ramsey family joke.

 

[dogperson]

If the ransom note was written by the R's (which the majority here believe, including myself), then it's quite possible that the SBTC means absolutely nothing.

PR wanted to frame this a "foreign faction" or some sort of terrorist overseas organization, so it's quite possible she simply picked random letters to better signify that a "group" was responsible. An acronym doesn't need to have any meaning whatsoever; it's sole purpose, in this ransom note, was to portray a group; not a specific group, and moreover, not a specific sentiment.

Not everything in this case was finely thought out.

I agree. I've said before that these might be letters Patsy plucked out of thin air. For some reason she felt compelled to sign the ransom note, as if kidnappers would give a clue to the name of their "foreign faction" by supplying the initials of it. A person who is used to writing personal or business correspondence is used to signing their letters, so it didn't occur to her how foolish it would be for kidnappers to sign a ransom note.

It could mean "Saved By The Cross", it could mean something else, or it could mean nothing.

 

[UKGuy]

If you set out to look for SBTC in that Bible, you would be looking long and hard in its almost 2000 pages. SBTC doesn't occur, backwards or forwards, as first letters in contiguous verses or first letters in contiguous words anywhere else in that Bible according to Don Foster. I looked in Psalms for another instance, but I ran out of steam about half way through. Foster probably did an electronic search.

Patsy undoubtedly got to Psalm 34/35 from Psalm 57. That psalm contains her life-saving line (as reported in both DOI and TOSOS) about taking refuge in the shadow of God's wings. The line before that is cross-referenced to Ps 34:22, the last verse of Psalm 34, after which come the four lines beginning CTBS. If she was familar with the phrase "saved by the cross," she would, no doubt, take the presence of those letters as a sign from God.

If the Bible were already open to Psalm 34/35, an intruder could have grabbed it for his sign-off. Patsy squelched that idea, though, and I don't think John has ever said it was possible. The Ramsey side just doesn't talk about it. Jameson says that Steve Thomas is probably lying about the Bible being opened there, which doesn't really help her case. And she doesn't try to explain why John would say in TOSOS that he read the hair-raising Psalm 34 to Patsy on her deathbed and made her cry. I don't think the ghostwriter just pulled that anecdote out of thin air.

(Second reply to fix some typos.)

fr brown,
It looks to me as if Patsy and John wrote that Ransom Note. No intruder is going to sit in the house to author a note that long, never mind knowing in advance that the tools would be available.

If Patsy wanted the Foreign Faction to represent some kind of fundamentalist christian sect then SBTC might do it?

Otherwise they are likely the intials of some phrase linked to some organization that was in the author's mind as the RN was penned?

Its unlikely there is anything random in the RN as it has been planned, also anything truly random does not come in a recognizable pattern, so we can rule out that it that it was a random series of letters.

Proper Burial is interesting in a religious context, it could mean vertical or horizontal alignment or towards mecca. Each is relevant for different faiths.

.

 

[fr brown]

If you go to post #403 in FFJ's "John Ramsey's New Book - The Other Side of Suffering" thread you can see all the elements together: the cross-referenced verse Ps 34:22 and across from it a note that Psalm 34 is an acrostic psalm in which each verse starts with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet and, of course, SBTC beginning the verses of Psalm 35. It's really a thing of beauty.

The next post (by questfortrue) is a screenshot of the Bible as it was found that morning: a page turned, open to the end of Psalm 35 and all of Psalm 36. The bookmark seems to be carefully laid across the left page. On reflection that seems odd, like attention is being drawn to the Bible. Why do that? Why not grab a handful of pages and turn them? Why not just close the book? If the Bible had been closed, no one would have ever found SBTC. I don't think it's standard practice even now to do electronic searches of all the books in a house where a crime has been committed.

The situation is similar to the open dictionary with the page corner folded to point to the word incest....

There are reasons to think that Patsy was framing John for this crime. For one thing, she is crystal clear in her second interview that John used to sit at that very desk and read that Bible and that she herself never read it. She could have said that both of them read it, or that it was just a wedding present and neither of them read it much. She could have said that the Bible was sometimes left open (thus an intruder could have stumbled across it). Instead she made the point that the Bible was always closed and only one person ever opened it.

By December 1996 everybody was aware that the longer you put pen to paper, they more likely it is that you give yourself away. That's how the Unabomber had gotten caught. So we get a long ransom note that's stuffed with Ramsey inside baseball? That actually fits with the hypothesis that Patsy was framing John.

The ransom note does generally seem to follow the structure of the ransom demand in Ruthless People. Did she queue up that movie and watch the beginning or did she just have the RP ransom demand more or less in memory? Could she foresee that John would say "percent" thirteen times in his second interview and "particularly" fourteen times? Or that he would say "proper burial" in an interview? I can see how people would conclude that John collaborated on the note, but that doesn't fit for other reasons: to wit, the asymmetry of their appearances on the morning of the 26th and the incongruity with their alibi. Also, the ransom note as the product of one person is a work of genius; as a collaboration it's monumental idiocy....

I watched A Perfect Crime on Netflix yesterday. There was a lot about the German Red Army Faction. I'd forgotten about those guys. They killed quite a few politicians and businessmen. Via Google I found out that Tom Clancy's The Sum of all Fears (1991) mentions the Red Army Faction frequently (as well as plain old "faction). It also contains two instances of "electronic devices," and a few "tactics" and "countermeasures." It even makes a reference to beheading. (To be fair, every book of this genre and period that I searched used some of those words too.)

So did the Ramseys have any Clancy books in their house? Perfect Murder, Perfect Town mentions that they had Red Storm Rising. RSR, though, doesn't seem to have the giant dollop of ransom note words that TSoAF does.

Patsy studied up for her ransom note.

 

[fr brown]

The clues in the JonBenet case have one layer of concealment: you turn a page (SBTC in Psalm 35); you open a drawer (~$118,000 on John's pay stub); you follow the folded corner of a page ("incest" in the dictionary); you recognize a Dirty Harry paraphrase and a line from Speed. You recognize a particular line from the ransom demand in Ruthless People...wait, what? These clues--or most of them--were meant to be found without too much work.

I'd put the Tom Clancy homages in the same category. I see casual references to Tom Clancy in various posts about the JonBenet case. A book chapter purported to be by Linda Hoffman Pugh contains the phrase "all of those Tom Clancy novels were suddenly flashing through your mind." It doesn't matter if it's really by her or not. The point is that people have recognized Tom Clancy signature words and the ransom note writer anticipated that some of the detectives would.

So trying to link "SBTC" with Southern Bell Telephone Company or the Santa Barbara Tennis Club is fruitless because it's not going to be that obscure. ("SBTC" comes from Psalm 35 of the NIV Study Bible ostentatiously open and bookmarked on John's desk. Whether or not the letters had a special significance for the RN writer, I don't know. The Bible came first.) By the same token, $118,000 is going to be linked to the pay stub occupying the same desk (I think) as the Bible. Patsy may have liked Psalm 118, but there's nothing that stands out about it. The Bible was not open there. And, of course, in my view, it's important that the salient linkage would ultimately be to John because Patsy planned it that way.

If I were going to read Tom Clancy, I'd probably spring for The Sum of All Fears because it has a kick-*advertiser censored* title. I bet John picked it up in an airport somewhere.

 

[Nc49er]

Victory!
Second Billion To Come

 

[TeaTime]

JR owned a company in Atlanta - Southern Business Technology Corporation.