December 25, 2024 • 54 mins
The murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey the day after Christmas 1996 shocked the nation. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the investigation that was in trouble from the moment the 911 call was made by Patsy Ramsey. Joe Scott also goes deep explaining the shocking injuries suffered by JonBenet and the very specific knot that was used to strangle the little girl. Part One of Two
Transcript Highlights
00:02.48 Introduction
01:58.70 The JonBenet Ramsey Story
04:41.79 The new Bio on Netflix
10:58.76 B-Roll video had a lot to do with media coverage
15:38.55 Girls on stage performing
19:08.75 Meeting John Ramsey at CrimeCon
24:40.16 The death of Patsy Ramsey
28:33.54 The 911 Call
33:32.76 The evaluation at the scene
38:11.38 Description of head injuries
43:26.73 The strangling and destruction of her skull
47:07.45 Ruining the scene with DNA from guests/friends
53:10.26 Conclusion - Dad recovers her daughter, destroying evidence
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body times, but Joseph's gotten more.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I've spoken extensively about my viewing habits relative to television
and YouTube in particular, because that's really what I watch
most of the time, and it shouldn't. I don't know.
Maybe it does surprise some people when I tell them
that I don't watch true crime programs. It's not something
(00:27):
I said, you know, it's like you you do it
a lot, which I do, and I'm not complaining. I
love all of my colleagues that I work with, and
I love discussing cases in the forensic aspects and those
sorts of things. But if you're going to give me
a choice between watching the history documentary and watching something
(00:53):
having to do with a case, I need My mind
needs a break. It really does. As you work at
you know, you kind of work at this level where
all these new cases are coming in. However, I will say,
we're right at the end of the semester at Jacksonville
State and as you know, and teach forensics. So I
(01:16):
had a bunch of my students that came to me
and said, Professor Morgan, have you watched the new Jean
Benet documentary? And I told them flatly, no, I haven't
and I really have no desire to watch it. Well,
(01:37):
I told that to my wife and she looked at
me and she said, we need to watch it. And
I was like, okay, Well, we lay in our bed
and we've got this gigantic television that is in our
room hanging off the wall, and so I have to
(01:58):
look over my toes to watch TV. And we got
into the first episode, and I'm not going to say
I was riveted or fascinated, but I was at least
mildly intrigued because I really wanted to see this thing
from the perspective of is there a different narrative out there?
(02:18):
Because the Lord knows this tale has been told over
and over and over and over again. And I came
away with kind of a new understanding, and I got
to give props where props are due as kind of
an adjacent here. My interest in this case has ebbed
(02:42):
and flowed over the years. But after I watched the documentary,
I came across an article that was written in Buzzy
and they broke this thing down into the seventeen points.
That of information that came out in the article is
written by from the perspective of the author who thinks
(03:06):
that she didn't that she never knew that were revealed
to her. So I kind of wanted to get with
my buddy Dave and break this down and talk a
little bit about the background of the case and maybe
a different perspective. Either way, we'll walk our way through
(03:27):
it as best we can, because there's a lot to
kind of analyze here. But I've got the best in
the business to help me walk through it, with my
friend Dave Mac. I'm Josephcott Morgan and this is Bodybodies. Dave.
I don't know who watched it first. I know that
(03:48):
you watched it. I watched it. I don't know if
that necessarily matters. But Kim and I, Kim and I
watched it all on once, okay, which is hard for
me to do. It really is. It's like, I hang on,
I need a break. But we sat there and we
watched every episode because it's like when I get breaks
(04:10):
in time, if I don't do something in the immediate,
it ain't gonna get done. And I'm bad to watch
television stuff and never finish it. There's only a few
things that I'll watch all the way. The conclusion as
far as series goes, and it's just, you know, it's
just one of those things that I knew that I
(04:31):
had to sit there and make my way through it,
and some stuff already knew to a great degree. I've
been covering the autopsy report for years and years now.
But what was your kind of your takeaway, if you will,
after you know, your your kind of gut reaction to
it after watching this thing.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
To be very honest, I've avoided a lot of the
coverage just because it has been done so much and
there's been so much written as fact that turned out
to be fiction about the case of John Bene Ramsey
and her murder. And there are parts of this case
that have always bothered me like they have millions of
others that I haven't devoted time to watching anything new.
(05:13):
But for some reason, when this thing popped up on Netflix,
I watched it. I was amazed at a few things
I didn't know. One of the biggest things I found
out was about the actual layout of the house. That
was kind of surprising to me. And we'll get into that,
but just to give you an idea a little review,
(05:36):
you and I just being the age R, we've been
covering this case for a long time. Okay. I actually
found out in talking to some of the people on
our show, on the Nancy Gray Show, some of the
newer employees that are professionals and do a great job,
they don't remember it. They only know it as John
Bana Ramsey, as little girl was killed, and they never
(05:57):
solved it. They don't remember the case like you and
I do. Like many of you listening to this podcast,
you remember how it was covered. Younger people don't.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
That's how we Yeah, and let me tell you this.
This is what's so fascinating about what I said earlier
is the fact that none of my students were born
this case happened, and you just think about that. That's
it's kind of like the well, it's kind of like
if when we were kids, if we in college and
(06:30):
we started asking maybe if we had a professor of
forensics or police science or whatever, we'd say, well, tell
us about the Black Dahlia case. Nobody, you know, I
guess there's still people alive that had an attachment the
Black Dalia case. They'd be ancient by now. You know
(06:50):
what is it about this case that continues to resonate?
And you know that that my college students at Mudel
College have an interest in.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
This is the twenty eight years. We're coming up on
the twenty eight twenty anniversary anniversary.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, the day after Christmas in nineteen ninety six day.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And that's the thing. So December twenty six, nineteen ninety six,
five point fifty two am, Patsy Ramsey calls nine to
one one to report her daughter missing from the home
that they lived in, and there's a ransom note. Ransom notes,
(07:35):
oftentimes do not occur like this. They rarely are very long,
and they most assuredly are not written at the place
of the kidnapping because the individuals committing the kidnapping want
to kidnap the individual and get out of the premises,
(07:56):
so they don't wake anybody else that could stop them.
They don't sit down at the bar and start writing
out a long note and practicing it. So there were
things about this case that immediately drew attention. But again,
you've got a little girl. And I believe one of
the reasons this John b And and Ramsey case got coverage
(08:16):
the way that it did one is that it happened
during what is usually a slow news time between Christmas
and New year's people are at home, they're on vacation,
or they're off for the holidays with extra time, and
so there's not a lot of news breaking. And this did.
And as you had families together for the holidays, they
(08:37):
focused in on this little girl.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Holy they it smokes. I had not thought it. Only
a news guy would come up with that, because for me,
I didn't. I'm just having this moment right now. I know.
I guess other people have thought about it. It's not
something that my brain's not wired like yours is, because
if you but no, what I'm saying, brother, is that
(09:00):
you know what it's like to be at radio station,
television station during the holidays. Everything is kind of it's
kind of put on autopole, it isn't it.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It's a skeletal shift. And when you've got a news
story like this that people come in. This is a
story that got attention because of the videos that existed
of the little girl. If you remember, whenever a story
is told on television, in particular on news, there has
to be what is called b roll, that is footage
(09:31):
of the individual that runs while the newscasters are reporting
what took place. Well, oftentimes you don't have a lot
of video. You have still pictures, you know, especially if children,
you have family pictures and things like that. But in
this particular case, you had the specter of a little
girl who was made up to look like a young woman.
(09:55):
And to be honest with you, in some of the
videos on stage, they were sexual lifes pictures of little girls,
and that was part of the attraction of the case.
It was almost like the freak show, the side show.
Here's that. You know, you have little girls dressing up
and doing routines. You've got the cowgirl, You've got the
(10:16):
dinner party. You've got all these different looks in the hair,
of the makeup and all of that going into it.
And every time they told the story, they had video
to run. They had new video to run of Jean
Benet Ramsey. That's why the case got the attention that
it did, because there was so much video of this
little girl. You're seeing her on stage and then you
(10:37):
find out she was murdered the day after Christmas.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah. Well, first off, I remember because I was working
with them in Atlanta when this went down. Of course,
I'm you know, we've got our own cases that we're
dealing with. Uh, Coloradom might as well have been on
Mars for me, you know, I mean from just a
practitioner standpoint, And you know, I'd had I'd had cases
(11:07):
involving the little kids that had gotten brutally killed over
the years, and I guess when I compare it professionally,
I'm thinking it's a tragedy. I'm sad that it happened.
But the thing that kind of always infuriated me about
the case is that I had had kids that were
(11:30):
killed and never made it through one or two news cycles, right,
And I always and the you know, the cynic in
me always said, well, yeah, the kids that you had
that never made it through one or two news cycles,
they were lower socioeconomic kids. They there was not that
(11:52):
that you know, that whatever that weird area around the
case was, you know, relative to that, there soon forgot.
And you know, there, unless you've got family that just
stays on, stays on it and they're begging, they're pleading,
you know, for help, it's going to disappear, you know,
out of the news cycle. And that didn't happen here.
(12:12):
And then there's that salacious aspect. One more confession I
have to make here is that the first time that
I remember seeing the videography of gen Berenet in life,
at these at these things, the pageant things. I never
seen a thing like in my life. I really I was.
I was shocked. I think a lot of people were,
(12:34):
you know, and it takes quite a bit to shock me,
but I saw it and I was like, dude, this
is this is like bordering on like soft porn, you know,
in a way, and it was I found it. I
hate the word offensive because people use that. It just
(12:55):
it shocked me, I think to a great degree because
I'm just thinking, Okay, You've got a young girl walking
around with all of this makeup on her face and
the hair done up, and she's in a bathing suit
in public amongst all of this, and I had to know,
I had to assume that it wasn't just like fellow
(13:18):
competitors that were in the room. There were going to
be other people and you've literally got all of these
people that are there. I would assume that people could
walk in off the street or you, yeah, donate to something.
You never know who's going to be in a room.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Like that, Dave, and it's ripe for predators. One thing
that came out of the John Banay Ramsey murder and
investigation was all of a sudden, there was this huge
spotlight on these beauty pageants for children, and while they
did exist, it wasn't something a lot of people knew
(13:53):
about because well, it's expensive. You mentioned the socioeconomic group
of some of the individuals you were talking about that
didn't even make it through two news cycles. Well, imagine here.
Now we've got rich people who are charting up their
own little girls, putting them on stage, and it's expensive
to do. They travel, they do lessons, they have choreographers
(14:14):
and singing teachers and all that. I mean, there is
a whole business built up around this. And I believe
after the death of John Bna Ramsay, after the coverage
of her murder, that the television show Toddlers and Tierras was.
I believe that was born out of that.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
And yeah, it took off like a rocket ship.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Because that show was launched in two thousand and nine.
I looked it up.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah, I'm glad you did, because I got to tell
you I was I a Kim and I in the
wake of all that was Jean Benet because you know,
by the time at that show premiered, and I think
it was like, I don't know, I can't remember what
network it was on. Was it Discovery or something, I
(14:59):
have no idea, but yeah, TLC and you know, and
I was thinking about how obscene, how obscene i'd found
it earlier. And I'm not approved, don't get me wrong,
but we're talking about babies here, yeah, you know, and
the fact that this was going on and that there
(15:19):
was a and you had other things that came came
came down the pike after that.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
You gotta remember, a show becomes a hit when it
has a star, when it has a breakout star, whether
in this case with Honey Boo Boo came out.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
I was about to say the same thing Tyler Santierras.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
She was the star and her mom, you know, they
all made that and got their own show. And going
back to Jehan Bna Ramsay, Now that was our first
peak behind the curtain. I didn't know anything about those
pageants until I knew there were pageants for kids. I did,
you know, at the local level, you'll have them, you know,
(15:57):
at your local gym or whatever where you know, and
the girls go up there. But I didn't know it
was a whole industry built up around.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I mean, you've always had You've always had these pageants
like you know, Miss Little Miss Fourth of July or
anything like that, and little girls kind of parade out
there and that sort of thing, and somebody selected. But no,
this is on a different this is a different level.
You're not I don't know how to describe it, and
I'm probably wrong for even attempting to, but it just
(16:29):
it's like, I don't know, you know, are you Are
you trying to get your kid to get a sponsorship,
you know, to sell items? Is there a way that
you're gonna cycle back into this so that you're making money,
because it goes to this idea that you have to
be really wealthy to do this the extent all of
the lessons. Look, my kids took dance lessons, and just
(16:51):
that in and of itself is very expensive and it's
a commitment. We're not talking about simply dance, Dave. We're
talking about performance. We're talking about vocal lessons. We're talking
about the ability to go out and strut about on stage,
and then a child's ability to You've got some guy
(17:14):
in a tuxedo, which is kind of creepy to me too,
with the you know, the televangelist hair, and he's standing
there in the tuxedo and he's got the microphone and
he's asking these little girls questions, you know, that sort
of thing, and it's it's this huge production. I don't know,
it was just it was very odd to me, the
whole set of circumstances. And so from an investigative perspective,
(17:38):
when this thing, you know, you know, you begin to
peel the onion here, my mind automatically goes to that.
And I think probably a lot of people, I'm sure
a lot of people, because I've talked to other people
in law enforcement investigations who kind of had the same
opinion that I did that who could have been occupying
(18:05):
the spaces in those audiences that would want to harm
a young girl like this? Who is it that's out
there that would have done this, Who would have the
nerve to do it, Who would have been able to
plan something like this? And what even made it even
(18:28):
more chilling, is it in a town like Boulder that's
not a gigantic place, you still had out there somewhere
someone that had the intestinal fortitude to go into a
home and take a little girl out of her bed
(18:51):
than into the basement where she is assaulted and choked
out the cord with a highly complay Not so Dave
(19:15):
as you remember, You and I made the trip up
to Nashville back in May twenty twenty four where we
went to crime con. Oh yeah, and we've been to
a couple of them together. Now, we did Orlando, then
we did We've done Nashville, and David, I had something happen.
(19:36):
Orlando was pretty pretty amazing, you know, because of the
Idaho case and speaking, but you know, I had something
that was equally amazing and it kind of came out
of the blue both of these. While while was a
crime con in Nashville back in May. First off, I
(19:57):
got asked by Ashley Banfield if I would join her
on for an interview. And just so folks understand, when
you're when you're you do things in media, you develop
relationships with certain people, with certain presenters. Uh. I love
that about the British. They use the term presenter with
certain presenters and if you are reliable in what you do,
(20:21):
they'll call you to do other things. And so actually
people reached out to me and asked me if I
would join her, you know, for an interview. And then
as I approached, I looked over and I saw Katherine Ramslin,
who I've known. I've known Katherine for a long time.
We've actually been on panels before at Ducane University where
(20:44):
doctor Cyril Wack was and they wanted me to talk
about serial killers. Well, Catherine, as you can imagine, doesn't
say anything about Idaho. Because Coburger went to school there,
doesn't mean that she, you know, has some kind of
side knowledge, but she wants to stay clear of that,
as I can imagine.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
But just to be very clear on Ramdlin, BTK was
her big thing, but she also was a teacher at
the college where Coburger attended in Pennsylvania, and they do
know one another, which yeah, they do. Why she stays
out of Idaho just.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah, listen, I can't blame her. I wouldn't touch that
with a vaccinated crowbar. If I were her, she'd be
wise to stay away from it. And I think that
she's and she's a pretty bright lady, and she's exercised
that to this point. So it's tough to be in
that position. I can't imagine, because everybody's after for an interview,
so I sat down and we didn't talk about Coberg.
We talked about something else, relative serial Killers with Ashley Banfield.
(21:48):
That same day, I got asked to join a panel
that night, and again I was surprised, Dave, because on
that panel I found myself seated next to John Ramsey.
I've never met the man. I never have. So that
panel was with Court TV. It was myself, Julia Grant,
(22:12):
and Vinnipolitan and here I am. And immediately I sent
you the picture I think I did just a while ago,
and I'm immediately John Ramsey is immediately to my right,
and so and you know, I talked to him directly,
you know, not before the thing, but during the interview process,
(22:35):
and spoke to him and you know, and talked about,
you know, the possibility of DNA playing into the resolution
in his daughter's, uh, his daughter's homicide case. I was
kind of shocked when that happened. I had no idea
that some kind of documentary was going to be coming out.
But you know, just reflectively, you have these little moments
(22:55):
in time that kind of you know, present them. So
health did I tell you, Dave, I don't remember Again
my kind of a weird connection the night that she died,
I was on duty, uh at the m's office as
an investigator, and we started getting phone calls from all
over the country and it was I mean, we had
(23:18):
calls coming in from New York Fox. Obviously CNN, which
was in Atlanta at the time, doesn't exist anymore. And
then local news media they wanted to know information about
her death. And the thing about it is it wasn't
reported because she's a hospice patient. So that's how we
found out that she had passed away.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Okay, so wait a minute, very just if you're in
hospice care, it doesn't get reported like a normal Deathitely.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
The hospice hospice nurse handles everything souper and nuts theready
know that you have terminal diagnosis, so you go under
into hospice care, and so the hospice nurse actually winds
up signing the death certificate, which is kind of interesting
little thing that takes place, and everything is pre prepared,
you know, funeral services and all that stuff, and it's
(24:06):
not even reportable, you know, to to the corner of
the medical examiner and mini jurisdictiones. It certainly wasn't in Atlanta,
So we started getting this scuff. So I've had these
kind of weird, kind of you know, little involvements with
the case. I appeared on a program we'd see in
CNN when Como was still there, and we taped for
(24:31):
an entire day, and that was actually in response to
do you remember the thing that CBS did and they
wound up getting sued.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
For where they pointed finger at the brother.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, they wound up and sued for like seven hundred
million dollars or something, and they had to know that
that was coming. But CNN did a thing. They asked
me to be on a panel with that, and I
was with a guy that's one of the responding officers.
He's retired now, the elderly gentleman, and then to a
writer and a reporter that day, and I remember sitting
(25:07):
there and talking about DNA with Como all those many
years ago, you know, when that case actually happened. They
actually flew me up to New York to take that thing.
So I've had these, you know, these kind of weird
little peripheral things that have gone on. It's not a
case that I have necessarily sought out. As a matter
of fact, it's one of the things that I've kind
of fled from because of I think the biggest thing
(25:36):
for me is knowing what I know of the dead
and how I've always felt that there was a real
disservice on the part of the media about these other
cases that are out there, these people that don't have
these kinds of means and their precious little angel gets killed,
and don't they don't get the same coverage. I always
found that very I think, you know, at one point
(25:58):
in time, I think there's probably more now, but thin
at one point time I've done account. It's like there's
been like twenty six different books at one point time
that we're written about John, but that number is probably
gone up by this point toime. I'm thinking, how much
can you say? You know?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
How much we remember that? There were so many odd
things taking place. You had the wealthy family that seems
to have it all. You know, they have the money,
they have the means, and then they have the sidebar
thing of doing the toddlers and doing the kitty pageant shows,
and I mean that's an odd little thing anyway. And
then of course you have a child that well, okay,
(26:35):
you have the nine to one one called with the
ransom note, Joe, That in and of itself is going
to be an eye catcher because now we have all
of it. You know, how many times do we do
stories where a child is kidnapped or taken and murdered
and we don't have a note, we don't have anything
we have this child was in this place and now
they're not even in the case of oh his name
(26:58):
is Mark Klass Class's dad. You know, when Polly was
stolen out of her bedroom in the middle of the night,
right and there was no ransom note left and uh,
and it got a lot of coverage because nobody believed him,
every thought he was lying. No child gets stolen in
the middle of the night from a slumber party. You know.
This guy's obviously did you know? And I always felt
(27:21):
bad for Marc Class because of the way that was covered.
But this case, Joe, this case, the Jean Benet Ramsey
case has not been covered in that way. There have
been certainly people pointing fingers, but you don't hear it.
You don't hear it the way you would think. Look, man,
we've got a six year old stole that is kidnapped
(27:43):
allegedly the night of you know, on December twenty sixth.
The phone call comes in before six am. They're up
and packing to go on a trip. They had a
planned trip to go to visit family up in Michigan.
I believe Michigan and things I learned from watching this
Netflix special that we were talking. But Joe, let's just
start with there were seventeen detailed facts that this reporter
(28:05):
was talking about new things. There are things they were
unaware of about the John beIN a Ramsey case. I
found it fascinating too, And it's the first one talking
about the nine to one one call that Patsy Ramsey
makes about her daughter being kidnapped and the ransom note.
(28:28):
I really have problems with both. I didn't believe her
nine one one call at all. Even now, all these
years later, I listened to it, and I still don't
believe it because it doesn't make sense from what you
and I have based on history, based on the stories
we've covered. It doesn't make sense from this very beginning,
does it to you? Well?
Speaker 2 (28:51):
It is. It is certainly bizarre, I'd have to say.
And I think in addition to that, when police do
arrive out there, it's not from Jump Street and that's
that's where everything, that's where it's at the at that moment, Tom,
(29:13):
you're either gonna meet with success or you're gonna meet
with failure at that point in time, and the police,
to their everlasting discredit, treated they they did the worst
thing that you can possibly do. They treat it like
(29:37):
it is actually a kidnapping or what they believe is
you know, how many how many kidnappings do the Boulder
Police Department handle with notes? Just let that sink in
just for a second. So if somebody is trying to
feeds you information, okay, and you're gullible enough to buy
into that, if you don't have any kind of experience,
(30:00):
if you don't walk in assuming that everybody in the
location is guilty to begin with, you're gonna have a problem.
You're gonna have a problem. And and when they got there.
I love the phraseology here because you know, in the
author's point, she actually alludes to the fact that, and
this was her phraseology that this retired retired police officer stated,
(30:22):
we did a cursory search what you did in the house, Joe, Yeah,
I know if if you're telling me you've got a
six year old that has been kidnapped, dude, it ain't
gonna be a cursory search. I'm flipping beds over, I'm
looking everywhere because if I'm asking, if I'm asking family,
(30:43):
where did you look? You know how? And what what
is this weird house that you live in? It's so
oddly designed with it's got like a butler's entrance and
all a staircase and adjacent staircase. It kind of winds
around in all these funky ways and everything where it
was that you've looked.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
The reason is like that, and the house was added
on to it was built, and then it was added
on too over a period of time, which gave it
a really odd build. But it also gives me something else, Joe,
because of the odd nature of the structure, because of
the staircases going in different areas and rooms not part
of the plan since it was all you would have
(31:23):
to know your way around this house to actually be
able to find where you're going to get the child,
to find your way back out, all the while trying
not to wake everybody up. Kind of important to know
your way around the house, and to be honest with you,
even now after looking at it, looking at diagrams and
everything else that I've seen in the daylight, I still
(31:45):
could not find my way to the the It's flowers
for Algernon Man. I would not beat the mouse on
that maze.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
No, No, there's no way I could not. I could
not make my way through this place, even when I
was in when I had a top mental acuity, when
I was a younger guy, being able to kind of
make my way around, because it is like a maze
in their day. You've got all these odd twisting turns,
(32:12):
You've got points of entrance and exit. And it would
seem as though that whoever was involved in this case,
and I'm talking about the perpetrator, would have to have
a very specific knowledge of how you know, the the
groundwork is kind of laid out here because it's not
something you just kind of blind listen. You know, if
(32:35):
you if you live in a sixties ranch style home,
you know, like many of us do. It doesn't take
a rocket scientist kind of navigate your way through one
of those homes. You know, it's a box, all right,
and you've got a central hallway that other rooms you
know kind of you know, exit off of that ain't
(32:56):
what we're talking about here. We're talking about multiple floors.
You've got multiple ways to access these floors, and then
once you even arrive at the floor, it seems disorienting
in in that environment as well. So yeah, for me,
it was that that's an odd bit of of it's
(33:19):
a it's an odd bit of information coming in. And
then just going back just for a second about this
so called cursory evaluation at the scene. How how how
is it that you know you can justify looking for
a six year old, but yet you're not ripping this
place of shreads to try to see if she could
(33:41):
be anywhere else? Is it simply based upon this note
that has been left that I think was found on
one of the treads of the stair of staircase immediately
adjacent to the kitchen. For me, I want I'm not
going to believe anything my lying eyes, as Nancy says,
my lion eyes are telling me I have to physically
(34:03):
physically explore the space and try to understand it. Because
like it or not, that house, even if it is
a kidnapped location and it's not a homicide David, is
crim scene. This is a crime scene and should be
managed in the same way as if you had a
(34:27):
multiple homicide in there because every bit of particulate evidence
that might be in there. And to further exacerbate the situation,
the family was not removed from the house. Not only
let me double down on that. Not only were they
not removed, they invited friends over. They invited friends over
(34:48):
to this location during his time. And listen, I know
everybody needs support, and I know that everybody. You know
you're grieving and you're worried, and you know there's another
place that that can be done. You need to release
this environment or the police need to take control of
the scene. And one of the first things that you
(35:09):
do this is like crime scene investigation one oh one.
You remove everybody that has nothing to do with this
case out of that environment. You might allow them to
grab a coat, but you go with them as they're
grabbing a coat, give me the keys. You know, because
at this point, the family's not necessarily under suspicion. You
(35:33):
know that this is a central point. They've called it in.
Their child is missing, so you don't necessarily This is
an interesting question, do you need a warrant at this
point in time to search the house? I'm thinking probably not,
because this is why if if this is a kidnapping.
(35:54):
You're not looking at this from the perspective of a
homicide scene. And the one difference now this is this
comes down to child welfare. This is an emergent situation.
You're doing everything you can in order to try to
find this child that might be in this massive home.
(36:14):
And listen, I don't I don't know that everybody out
there fully appreciates how big this thing is and how
complex it is. That she was assaulted. You know, she's
(36:37):
got this rather ghastly injury. You think about the injuries
certainly to to her to her neck. But just so
that if for those that haven't read her her autopsy report,
I'll go ahead and kind of give you the thumbnail.
It's they list this as cranial cerebral rama, which means
(37:01):
that you have the cranium okay, the skull itself, and
then as a result of the cranium being fractured, this
travels through to the brain, the cerebral okay, the cerebraulm.
So it's, uh, this is how it's it's kind of
laid out. Let me lay this out for for all
(37:21):
of our friends. So it's subsection ROM numberal two it's
cranial cerebral injuries. Subsection a scalp contusion, which means there's
an overlying bruise okay, of the scalp, and then b
there's a linear comminuted fracture of the right of the
(37:43):
right side of the skull. See linear pattern contusions of
the right cerebral hemisphere. Okay. So what they're saying is
it's this underlying contusion on the surface the right aspect.
If you'll put your your fingertips go to the top
of your head and move them slowly down directly above
(38:07):
superior to your right ear, that's where this insult is
going to be. So right cerebral hemisphere. She's got a
sub arachnoid and subdural hemorrhage, says subdura. The dura is
the sack that our brain floats around in. And for
those that have never seen a dura, I'll tell you
(38:29):
what it looks like. It looks a lot like a
placenta in my mind. And it's the brain stays contained
within the dura sack and it's it's essentially brain is
bathed in cerebral spinal fluid, okay, and it also acts
as a shock absorber. So if you if you bounce
(38:50):
your head off of something, your brain is not merely
bouncing off of these bony walls of your skull. Okay,
so you've got this zact this fluid filled that your
brain is contained in inside of the hard outer shell
of your of your of your skull. So she's got
a subdural hemorrhage, which means that's beneath the dura and
(39:13):
the brain. And then you have a suberractnoid and the
iractnoid surface is actually the inner surface of your brain.
So this hemorrhage translates, it goes into the brain essentially.
And then she's got small contusions to the tips of
the temporal lobes, which means the temporal the lower you know,
(39:37):
below the top of the head. You know where your
temporal bone is, So there was contusion in there as well, Dave,
So this is this a very nasty injury that she sustained.
It would have been a tremendous amount of force that
she was subjected to with whatever this object is. And
they they never really came up with a solid answer
(39:58):
about what had generally this And yeah, I guess you
could look at it and say that there's a potential
that a mag light and if you're not familiar back
in ninety six, back in ninety six, they had mag lights.
I wish I still had one that are massive, and
(40:19):
that the cops stopped carrying them. And do you want
to know why stop cops stopped stopped carrying them? Cops
carried them because you they can be used as a
bludgeoning device and it's very convenient. So if you're having
a fight with a prisoner or suspect, there are There's
(40:40):
one particularly infamous case out of I can't remember the
guy's name, saved my life out of Detroit, and this
guy was literally what we were what we used to
refer to as being brained. He was brained by a
cop with this mag light. And I could get that
guy's name, but there was major lawsuit that resulted from
(41:01):
that case, and that involved a mag light. He's beaten
with a flashlight and it creates a really nasty injury,
and he was beaten multiple times. He had, you know,
his skull or scalp was literally split open in multiple
locations because of the lacerations that you know, and then
he had all these communicating injuries that worked. So you
(41:21):
think about in ninety six, that type of flashlight existed
back then, and apparently the Ramsays had one in their home.
You know what else could generate this kind of this
kind of insult. Well, I guess if you're thinking cylindrical,
the first thing that pops to mind for me could
be like maybe a baseball bat, you know, that would
(41:43):
generate this kind of this kind of energy. The thing
about it is is that with mag lights, dependent upon
how it's utilized. If if you look down the shaft
of an old mag light, it's actually textured. It's got
almost a diamond pattern to it, and when you strike
strike a surface like the skin with a mag light
(42:05):
or anything that's textured, it actually translates that pattern to
the overlying skin. So you would shave the hair, and
you know, we shave the hair and the Morgan. We
take pictures of these things, of these little insults, because
it it physically connects this event, you know, with all
that's left behind.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
With a case like this, I had no idea. I
really didn't. Now I'm trying to for a case that
has gone on for twenty eight years that we still
don't have an answer. We now have the Bolder Police
(42:44):
Department that has been rightly so run over the coals.
They did a horrible job from the very beginning. Everything
about the setup was wrong, the very from the nine
to one one call until today. You know that you
cannot make up for what they did in the first
hours of this case. I don't know how you could
(43:06):
ever get based on what happened with her body, Joe
and the common sense factory. You I learned early on
that you have to take that out that you know,
it's just facts. It's not what you think, it's not
what you think you might have had. You actually have
to have real facts. So I can think all day
long that Patsy Ramsey sat at the kitchen table and
wrote that note and practiced it and wrote it. And
(43:27):
if I can't prove it, I can't bring that up
against her.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
I get that that, you know, that's supposition is not
worth a gunpowder blow to hell unless.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
You Yeah, and now we've got the strangling and we've
got the destruction of her skull to this little six
year old child. Yeah, what about the DNA, Joe, There's
got to be DNA in here that that somehow it
tells us somebody other than the Ramseys had something to
do with this, right.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah, there is foreign DNA and you know they did
do they did swabs. Obviously I'm both well the occupants
of the home. I don't Here's the thing. I don't know.
I really wonder if, first off, okay, here's something I
want to throw out to you. Man. Do they have
the names of everyone that was in that home?
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Wow? Probably?
Speaker 2 (44:17):
I mean that you know you're talking about you know,
we're gonna have cookies Christmas leftover cookie cookies, Christmas cookies
and coffee while we're sitting around. And here's another thing.
Let's just say, and this is one of the biggest
things relative to DNA, and they talk about destruction of DNA.
If you've got a group of people that are hovering about,
(44:41):
you know what people like to do when they get
stressed out, dave I know I do, particularly if I
can't go out and go for a walk. You know
what I'm going to do. I'm gonna eat. I'm gonna
eat and drink coffee. I'm gonna sit around wring my hands,
talk to myself, talk to other people. They went into
(45:03):
that kitchen. What if that note was written in the kitchen,
which some people claim that it was. Well, now you're
introducing you're introducing foreign DNA into this environment, and you
might be eradicating anything else that's there. I want everybody
right now to think about the position you get in
(45:26):
when you write something on a hard surface. Do you stand?
Do you stand? Do you sit upright as you write
and just merely extend your hand and write something down? No,
you don't do that. You know what you do? You lean?
Speaker 1 (45:43):
You lean.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Even the oldest images that we have of scribes. You
think about the monks that are translating the Bible. You
remember those images, those beautiful images that they'll have the
boks and they're sitting there and they're at their table
and they've got their quill and they're writing. They're leaned
over and very poor writing conditions, and they're generating as
beautiful calligraphy. You lean when you write. If you even
(46:06):
go to the bank, our younger listeners are I going
to remember this? You and I. You go to the
central desk there that's got that that attached pen that
never works right, You've got a deposit slip.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Well? You lean your if your right hand generally you'll
lean your left arm on the table, you'll put your
left hand on the surface of what you're writing, secured
in place. Then with your right hand. This is and
of course it would be the reverse of this, but
you're writing like this. There's multiple points of contact along this.
(46:40):
So just for me, thinking about an individual being in
this being in this environment, you know, and you've got
people coming in and they're they're eating Christmas cakes and
cookies and drinking coffee. How many years? How many how
long did they in dwell that space? It was everybody
(47:00):
was everybody's DNA collected that had anything to do with
that environment, I don't know. And then even if you
do collect it, are these and I'm doing air quotes
here friends? Are these true friends that you would have
over I don't know. Maybe you guys all played canasta
once a night, once a week together. I have no idea,
y'all got right? Is there going to be a significant deposition.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
There?
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Jen, I don't know. I'm sorry, we'll say sorry, I
have to play sorry grandkids.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Or the Game of Life at the Game of like,
I hate that game.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Day but anyway, playing it every day?
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Baby? Uh?
Speaker 2 (47:39):
You know, you think about that environment in there, and
what's it? Was it possible that people could have come
in there? Again, this goes back to our earlier comments
about securing the scene, brother securing the scene, which is
a miserable, miserable failure, you know when you think about that.
(48:02):
Here's another thing I really wonder thinking about contact DNA,
and there's other areas I kind of want to explore this,
but I'll see you about contact DNA. Let's say you're
not gloved. You're not gloved, and I don't care if
you're talking about carrying a six year old. These stairs
(48:25):
look really steep to me. Okay, So as you're progressing
down this twisting staircase and all of this sort of thing,
and you're toting the body of a child, you have
to maintain your balance. Are their handrails leading down to
(48:48):
the basement, right, Well, we know that there's doorknobs. Remember
they talked about one door was locked, cops went to it,
it was locked, they didn't try to get into it.
Remember that that was early on this thing. So that
means that there are doorknobs that would have been touched.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Where those doorknobs collected, Where the doors collected I've collected
doors before. Really, Oh yeah, yeah, I've Yeah, I've been
a help with it, you know, I'll help take doors down.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
You've got the entire area from her bedroom to where
her body was found. Yeah, and every possible way to
get there all would have to have been checked, should
have been checked. Four good grief?
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Okay, And I listen, And you can't not you the
universal You cannot make the argument that, well, there's a
different time. No, we didn't know what we know about DNA.
That's a load of crap, you know, I'll tell you
what we did know about. We knew about fingerprints. So
if you if you even at a at a rudimentary level,
(49:56):
if you treated this as if DNA did not exist,
you're looking for Layton prints, which you and I can
both agree on the fact that that was always our
fallback position early on, prior to DNA. We always look
for fingerprints. Who touched those door knobs in that location,
who touched the rails? Were their foreign prints associated with
(50:19):
anybody that could have entered into that environment. I mean,
I think that that's a simple question that should be
asked and certainly should be answered. You know, for me,
at least all the possible points because we think about
points of contact. And one of the best examples I
can give to people relative to looking for latent prints.
(50:42):
And I do this exercise with my students. They feel
so foolish when they do it. I take a little
bit of statistic prodect. But I'll set up a chair
in the in front of the classroom and I'll pick
one student and it has to be a student that
owns a car. Demonstrate to us how you get in
(51:04):
the car, and I'll critique them about how they get
in the car and then what they do when they
get in the car. Or I will also throw out
a scenario. You're getting in your friend's car. What do
you do to get into their car? And you would
not believe how many points of contact there are just
getting into a motor vehicle. That the places you have
(51:25):
to touch, because most of us don't think about that.
If you've got like a low sports car, for instance,
you literally have to swing yourself inside of the car.
People don't think about grabbing the roof or grabbing the
interior handle because most people don't want to just free
fall into a sea, so you brace yourself. Same principle
here if you're carrying an unconscious child or even a
(51:47):
dead child. At this point in time, you're gonna have
to balance yourself regardless of how light this individual might be. Okay,
so just fingerprint evidence, and then of course we can
go to the next level and talk about DNA. Was
what was secured? That's the big That's what this all
comes down to. What was secured at that point. I
(52:09):
don't know who did this, but I know that there
was a catastrophic failure when it comes to security of
the scene.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
We know when you're talking about DNA, Joe, A lot
of us followed the OJ Simpson trial and all of
the testimony about DNA. We learned a lot. I say
we as a people, you know, the population learned a
lot about DNA. We learned a lot about what can
be done with DNA. And in the time after the trial,
(52:39):
it was a regular occurrence on TV shows dealing with
police working detectives about DNA. This happened two years after
all of the DNA stuff became a matter of public
record in the American population. I mean, O. J. Simpson
is a trial ended in ninety five. But the whole
thing here is that regardless of all of that, we
(53:02):
have a child who was taken from her bedroom, was
beaten strangled, and her dead body was left behind. Then
a ransom note that's a short novel is left behind
asking for a very specific amount of money that amounted
to John Ramsey's bonus that year. We have police on
(53:25):
the scene from the nine to one to one call
from Pantsy Ramsey, the mother, and yet nobody bothers to
secure the scene. Nobody stops new people from coming in,
nobody searches the entirety of the house. And then after
hours of being on site, the police person responsible for
(53:48):
the scene says, hey, John, why don't you take a friend,
y'all go look and see what you can find, see
if there's anything missing from this house. And John Ramsey
goes directly to his daughter's body. He then destroys any
evidence that was left behind by picking her up and
carrying her and in front of everybody, laying her down
in the living room. Might think, and he did.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
And when you say destroy, I'm not neither one of
us are actually saying a purpose.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
To destroy it. No, No, it's.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Just the fact that anytime you touch, you touch any
surface on a body like this, you're going to compromise it.
And of course that's one of the big problems, compromised evidence,
compromised physical evidence, the inability to suss this thing out
(54:37):
load these many years later, and I can tell you this,
the further down the road that we go, the more
complex this gets. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Bodybounes
Body times, but Joseph's gotten more.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I've spoken extensively about my viewing habits relative to television
and YouTube in particular, because that's really what I watch
most of the time, and it shouldn't. I don't know.
Maybe it does surprise some people when I tell them
that I don't watch true crime programs. It's not something
(00:27):
I said, you know, it's like you you do it
a lot, which I do, and I'm not complaining. I
love all of my colleagues that I work with, and
I love discussing cases in the forensic aspects and those
sorts of things. But if you're going to give me
a choice between watching the history documentary and watching something
(00:53):
having to do with a case, I need My mind
needs a break. It really does. As you work at
you know, you kind of work at this level where
all these new cases are coming in. However, I will say,
we're right at the end of the semester at Jacksonville
State and as you know, and teach forensics. So I
(01:16):
had a bunch of my students that came to me
and said, Professor Morgan, have you watched the new Jean
Benet documentary? And I told them flatly, no, I haven't
and I really have no desire to watch it. Well,
(01:37):
I told that to my wife and she looked at
me and she said, we need to watch it. And
I was like, okay, Well, we lay in our bed
and we've got this gigantic television that is in our
room hanging off the wall, and so I have to
(01:58):
look over my toes to watch TV. And we got
into the first episode, and I'm not going to say
I was riveted or fascinated, but I was at least
mildly intrigued because I really wanted to see this thing
from the perspective of is there a different narrative out there?
(02:18):
Because the Lord knows this tale has been told over
and over and over and over again. And I came
away with kind of a new understanding, and I got
to give props where props are due as kind of
an adjacent here. My interest in this case has ebbed
(02:42):
and flowed over the years. But after I watched the documentary,
I came across an article that was written in Buzzy
and they broke this thing down into the seventeen points.
That of information that came out in the article is
written by from the perspective of the author who thinks
(03:06):
that she didn't that she never knew that were revealed
to her. So I kind of wanted to get with
my buddy Dave and break this down and talk a
little bit about the background of the case and maybe
a different perspective. Either way, we'll walk our way through
(03:27):
it as best we can, because there's a lot to
kind of analyze here. But I've got the best in
the business to help me walk through it, with my
friend Dave Mac. I'm Josephcott Morgan and this is Bodybodies. Dave.
I don't know who watched it first. I know that
(03:48):
you watched it. I watched it. I don't know if
that necessarily matters. But Kim and I, Kim and I
watched it all on once, okay, which is hard for
me to do. It really is. It's like, I hang on,
I need a break. But we sat there and we
watched every episode because it's like when I get breaks
(04:10):
in time, if I don't do something in the immediate,
it ain't gonna get done. And I'm bad to watch
television stuff and never finish it. There's only a few
things that I'll watch all the way. The conclusion as
far as series goes, and it's just, you know, it's
just one of those things that I knew that I
(04:31):
had to sit there and make my way through it,
and some stuff already knew to a great degree. I've
been covering the autopsy report for years and years now.
But what was your kind of your takeaway, if you will,
after you know, your your kind of gut reaction to
it after watching this thing.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
To be very honest, I've avoided a lot of the
coverage just because it has been done so much and
there's been so much written as fact that turned out
to be fiction about the case of John Bene Ramsey
and her murder. And there are parts of this case
that have always bothered me like they have millions of
others that I haven't devoted time to watching anything new.
(05:13):
But for some reason, when this thing popped up on Netflix,
I watched it. I was amazed at a few things
I didn't know. One of the biggest things I found
out was about the actual layout of the house. That
was kind of surprising to me. And we'll get into that,
but just to give you an idea a little review,
(05:36):
you and I just being the age R, we've been
covering this case for a long time. Okay. I actually
found out in talking to some of the people on
our show, on the Nancy Gray Show, some of the
newer employees that are professionals and do a great job,
they don't remember it. They only know it as John
Bana Ramsey, as little girl was killed, and they never
(05:57):
solved it. They don't remember the case like you and
I do. Like many of you listening to this podcast,
you remember how it was covered. Younger people don't.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
That's how we Yeah, and let me tell you this.
This is what's so fascinating about what I said earlier
is the fact that none of my students were born
this case happened, and you just think about that. That's
it's kind of like the well, it's kind of like
if when we were kids, if we in college and
(06:30):
we started asking maybe if we had a professor of
forensics or police science or whatever, we'd say, well, tell
us about the Black Dahlia case. Nobody, you know, I
guess there's still people alive that had an attachment the
Black Dalia case. They'd be ancient by now. You know
(06:50):
what is it about this case that continues to resonate?
And you know that that my college students at Mudel
College have an interest in.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
This is the twenty eight years. We're coming up on
the twenty eight twenty anniversary anniversary.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yeah, the day after Christmas in nineteen ninety six day.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And that's the thing. So December twenty six, nineteen ninety six,
five point fifty two am, Patsy Ramsey calls nine to
one one to report her daughter missing from the home
that they lived in, and there's a ransom note. Ransom notes,
(07:35):
oftentimes do not occur like this. They rarely are very long,
and they most assuredly are not written at the place
of the kidnapping because the individuals committing the kidnapping want
to kidnap the individual and get out of the premises,
(07:56):
so they don't wake anybody else that could stop them.
They don't sit down at the bar and start writing
out a long note and practicing it. So there were
things about this case that immediately drew attention. But again,
you've got a little girl. And I believe one of
the reasons this John b And and Ramsey case got coverage
(08:16):
the way that it did one is that it happened
during what is usually a slow news time between Christmas
and New year's people are at home, they're on vacation,
or they're off for the holidays with extra time, and
so there's not a lot of news breaking. And this did.
And as you had families together for the holidays, they
(08:37):
focused in on this little girl.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Holy they it smokes. I had not thought it. Only
a news guy would come up with that, because for me,
I didn't. I'm just having this moment right now. I know.
I guess other people have thought about it. It's not
something that my brain's not wired like yours is, because
if you but no, what I'm saying, brother, is that
(09:00):
you know what it's like to be at radio station,
television station during the holidays. Everything is kind of it's
kind of put on autopole, it isn't it.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It's a skeletal shift. And when you've got a news
story like this that people come in. This is a
story that got attention because of the videos that existed
of the little girl. If you remember, whenever a story
is told on television, in particular on news, there has
to be what is called b roll, that is footage
(09:31):
of the individual that runs while the newscasters are reporting
what took place. Well, oftentimes you don't have a lot
of video. You have still pictures, you know, especially if children,
you have family pictures and things like that. But in
this particular case, you had the specter of a little
girl who was made up to look like a young woman.
(09:55):
And to be honest with you, in some of the
videos on stage, they were sexual lifes pictures of little girls,
and that was part of the attraction of the case.
It was almost like the freak show, the side show.
Here's that. You know, you have little girls dressing up
and doing routines. You've got the cowgirl, You've got the
(10:16):
dinner party. You've got all these different looks in the hair,
of the makeup and all of that going into it.
And every time they told the story, they had video
to run. They had new video to run of Jean
Benet Ramsey. That's why the case got the attention that
it did, because there was so much video of this
little girl. You're seeing her on stage and then you
(10:37):
find out she was murdered the day after Christmas.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah. Well, first off, I remember because I was working
with them in Atlanta when this went down. Of course,
I'm you know, we've got our own cases that we're
dealing with. Uh, Coloradom might as well have been on
Mars for me, you know, I mean from just a
practitioner standpoint, And you know, I'd had I'd had cases
(11:07):
involving the little kids that had gotten brutally killed over
the years, and I guess when I compare it professionally,
I'm thinking it's a tragedy. I'm sad that it happened.
But the thing that kind of always infuriated me about
the case is that I had had kids that were
(11:30):
killed and never made it through one or two news cycles, right,
And I always and the you know, the cynic in
me always said, well, yeah, the kids that you had
that never made it through one or two news cycles,
they were lower socioeconomic kids. They there was not that
(11:52):
that you know, that whatever that weird area around the
case was, you know, relative to that, there soon forgot.
And you know, there, unless you've got family that just
stays on, stays on it and they're begging, they're pleading,
you know, for help, it's going to disappear, you know,
out of the news cycle. And that didn't happen here.
(12:12):
And then there's that salacious aspect. One more confession I
have to make here is that the first time that
I remember seeing the videography of gen Berenet in life,
at these at these things, the pageant things. I never
seen a thing like in my life. I really I was.
I was shocked. I think a lot of people were,
(12:34):
you know, and it takes quite a bit to shock me,
but I saw it and I was like, dude, this
is this is like bordering on like soft porn, you know,
in a way, and it was I found it. I
hate the word offensive because people use that. It just
(12:55):
it shocked me, I think to a great degree because
I'm just thinking, Okay, You've got a young girl walking
around with all of this makeup on her face and
the hair done up, and she's in a bathing suit
in public amongst all of this, and I had to know,
I had to assume that it wasn't just like fellow
(13:18):
competitors that were in the room. There were going to
be other people and you've literally got all of these
people that are there. I would assume that people could
walk in off the street or you, yeah, donate to something.
You never know who's going to be in a room.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Like that, Dave, and it's ripe for predators. One thing
that came out of the John Banay Ramsey murder and
investigation was all of a sudden, there was this huge
spotlight on these beauty pageants for children, and while they
did exist, it wasn't something a lot of people knew
(13:53):
about because well, it's expensive. You mentioned the socioeconomic group
of some of the individuals you were talking about that
didn't even make it through two news cycles. Well, imagine here.
Now we've got rich people who are charting up their
own little girls, putting them on stage, and it's expensive
to do. They travel, they do lessons, they have choreographers
(14:14):
and singing teachers and all that. I mean, there is
a whole business built up around this. And I believe
after the death of John Bna Ramsay, after the coverage
of her murder, that the television show Toddlers and Tierras was.
I believe that was born out of that.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
And yeah, it took off like a rocket ship.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Because that show was launched in two thousand and nine.
I looked it up.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah, I'm glad you did, because I got to tell
you I was I a Kim and I in the
wake of all that was Jean Benet because you know,
by the time at that show premiered, and I think
it was like, I don't know, I can't remember what
network it was on. Was it Discovery or something, I
(14:59):
have no idea, but yeah, TLC and you know, and
I was thinking about how obscene, how obscene i'd found
it earlier. And I'm not approved, don't get me wrong,
but we're talking about babies here, yeah, you know, and
the fact that this was going on and that there
(15:19):
was a and you had other things that came came
came down the pike after that.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
You gotta remember, a show becomes a hit when it
has a star, when it has a breakout star, whether
in this case with Honey Boo Boo came out.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
I was about to say the same thing Tyler Santierras.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
She was the star and her mom, you know, they
all made that and got their own show. And going
back to Jehan Bna Ramsay, Now that was our first
peak behind the curtain. I didn't know anything about those
pageants until I knew there were pageants for kids. I did,
you know, at the local level, you'll have them, you know,
(15:57):
at your local gym or whatever where you know, and
the girls go up there. But I didn't know it
was a whole industry built up around.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
I mean, you've always had You've always had these pageants
like you know, Miss Little Miss Fourth of July or
anything like that, and little girls kind of parade out
there and that sort of thing, and somebody selected. But no,
this is on a different this is a different level.
You're not I don't know how to describe it, and
I'm probably wrong for even attempting to, but it just
(16:29):
it's like, I don't know, you know, are you Are
you trying to get your kid to get a sponsorship,
you know, to sell items? Is there a way that
you're gonna cycle back into this so that you're making money,
because it goes to this idea that you have to
be really wealthy to do this the extent all of
the lessons. Look, my kids took dance lessons, and just
(16:51):
that in and of itself is very expensive and it's
a commitment. We're not talking about simply dance, Dave. We're
talking about performance. We're talking about vocal lessons. We're talking
about the ability to go out and strut about on stage,
and then a child's ability to You've got some guy
(17:14):
in a tuxedo, which is kind of creepy to me too,
with the you know, the televangelist hair, and he's standing
there in the tuxedo and he's got the microphone and
he's asking these little girls questions, you know, that sort
of thing, and it's it's this huge production. I don't know,
it was just it was very odd to me, the
whole set of circumstances. And so from an investigative perspective,
(17:38):
when this thing, you know, you know, you begin to
peel the onion here, my mind automatically goes to that.
And I think probably a lot of people, I'm sure
a lot of people, because I've talked to other people
in law enforcement investigations who kind of had the same
opinion that I did that who could have been occupying
(18:05):
the spaces in those audiences that would want to harm
a young girl like this? Who is it that's out
there that would have done this, Who would have the
nerve to do it, Who would have been able to
plan something like this? And what even made it even
(18:28):
more chilling, is it in a town like Boulder that's
not a gigantic place, you still had out there somewhere
someone that had the intestinal fortitude to go into a
home and take a little girl out of her bed
(18:51):
than into the basement where she is assaulted and choked
out the cord with a highly complay Not so Dave
(19:15):
as you remember, You and I made the trip up
to Nashville back in May twenty twenty four where we
went to crime con. Oh yeah, and we've been to
a couple of them together. Now, we did Orlando, then
we did We've done Nashville, and David, I had something happen.
(19:36):
Orlando was pretty pretty amazing, you know, because of the
Idaho case and speaking, but you know, I had something
that was equally amazing and it kind of came out
of the blue both of these. While while was a
crime con in Nashville back in May. First off, I
(19:57):
got asked by Ashley Banfield if I would join her
on for an interview. And just so folks understand, when
you're when you're you do things in media, you develop
relationships with certain people, with certain presenters. Uh. I love
that about the British. They use the term presenter with
certain presenters and if you are reliable in what you do,
(20:21):
they'll call you to do other things. And so actually
people reached out to me and asked me if I
would join her, you know, for an interview. And then
as I approached, I looked over and I saw Katherine Ramslin,
who I've known. I've known Katherine for a long time.
We've actually been on panels before at Ducane University where
(20:44):
doctor Cyril Wack was and they wanted me to talk
about serial killers. Well, Catherine, as you can imagine, doesn't
say anything about Idaho. Because Coburger went to school there,
doesn't mean that she, you know, has some kind of
side knowledge, but she wants to stay clear of that,
as I can imagine.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
But just to be very clear on Ramdlin, BTK was
her big thing, but she also was a teacher at
the college where Coburger attended in Pennsylvania, and they do
know one another, which yeah, they do. Why she stays
out of Idaho just.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yeah, listen, I can't blame her. I wouldn't touch that
with a vaccinated crowbar. If I were her, she'd be
wise to stay away from it. And I think that
she's and she's a pretty bright lady, and she's exercised
that to this point. So it's tough to be in
that position. I can't imagine, because everybody's after for an interview,
so I sat down and we didn't talk about Coberg.
We talked about something else, relative serial Killers with Ashley Banfield.
(21:48):
That same day, I got asked to join a panel
that night, and again I was surprised, Dave, because on
that panel I found myself seated next to John Ramsey.
I've never met the man. I never have. So that
panel was with Court TV. It was myself, Julia Grant,
(22:12):
and Vinnipolitan and here I am. And immediately I sent
you the picture I think I did just a while ago,
and I'm immediately John Ramsey is immediately to my right,
and so and you know, I talked to him directly,
you know, not before the thing, but during the interview process,
(22:35):
and spoke to him and you know, and talked about,
you know, the possibility of DNA playing into the resolution
in his daughter's, uh, his daughter's homicide case. I was
kind of shocked when that happened. I had no idea
that some kind of documentary was going to be coming out.
But you know, just reflectively, you have these little moments
(22:55):
in time that kind of you know, present them. So
health did I tell you, Dave, I don't remember Again
my kind of a weird connection the night that she died,
I was on duty, uh at the m's office as
an investigator, and we started getting phone calls from all
over the country and it was I mean, we had
(23:18):
calls coming in from New York Fox. Obviously CNN, which
was in Atlanta at the time, doesn't exist anymore. And
then local news media they wanted to know information about
her death. And the thing about it is it wasn't
reported because she's a hospice patient. So that's how we
found out that she had passed away.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Okay, so wait a minute, very just if you're in
hospice care, it doesn't get reported like a normal Deathitely.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
The hospice hospice nurse handles everything souper and nuts theready
know that you have terminal diagnosis, so you go under
into hospice care, and so the hospice nurse actually winds
up signing the death certificate, which is kind of interesting
little thing that takes place, and everything is pre prepared,
you know, funeral services and all that stuff, and it's
(24:06):
not even reportable, you know, to to the corner of
the medical examiner and mini jurisdictiones. It certainly wasn't in Atlanta,
So we started getting this scuff. So I've had these
kind of weird, kind of you know, little involvements with
the case. I appeared on a program we'd see in
CNN when Como was still there, and we taped for
(24:31):
an entire day, and that was actually in response to
do you remember the thing that CBS did and they
wound up getting sued.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
For where they pointed finger at the brother.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, they wound up and sued for like seven hundred
million dollars or something, and they had to know that
that was coming. But CNN did a thing. They asked
me to be on a panel with that, and I
was with a guy that's one of the responding officers.
He's retired now, the elderly gentleman, and then to a
writer and a reporter that day, and I remember sitting
(25:07):
there and talking about DNA with Como all those many
years ago, you know, when that case actually happened. They
actually flew me up to New York to take that thing.
So I've had these, you know, these kind of weird
little peripheral things that have gone on. It's not a
case that I have necessarily sought out. As a matter
of fact, it's one of the things that I've kind
of fled from because of I think the biggest thing
(25:36):
for me is knowing what I know of the dead
and how I've always felt that there was a real
disservice on the part of the media about these other
cases that are out there, these people that don't have
these kinds of means and their precious little angel gets killed,
and don't they don't get the same coverage. I always
found that very I think, you know, at one point
(25:58):
in time, I think there's probably more now, but thin
at one point time I've done account. It's like there's
been like twenty six different books at one point time
that we're written about John, but that number is probably
gone up by this point toime. I'm thinking, how much
can you say? You know?
Speaker 1 (26:12):
How much we remember that? There were so many odd
things taking place. You had the wealthy family that seems
to have it all. You know, they have the money,
they have the means, and then they have the sidebar
thing of doing the toddlers and doing the kitty pageant shows,
and I mean that's an odd little thing anyway. And
then of course you have a child that well, okay,
(26:35):
you have the nine to one one called with the
ransom note, Joe, That in and of itself is going
to be an eye catcher because now we have all
of it. You know, how many times do we do
stories where a child is kidnapped or taken and murdered
and we don't have a note, we don't have anything
we have this child was in this place and now
they're not even in the case of oh his name
(26:58):
is Mark Klass Class's dad. You know, when Polly was
stolen out of her bedroom in the middle of the night,
right and there was no ransom note left and uh,
and it got a lot of coverage because nobody believed him,
every thought he was lying. No child gets stolen in
the middle of the night from a slumber party. You know.
This guy's obviously did you know? And I always felt
(27:21):
bad for Marc Class because of the way that was covered.
But this case, Joe, this case, the Jean Benet Ramsey
case has not been covered in that way. There have
been certainly people pointing fingers, but you don't hear it.
You don't hear it the way you would think. Look, man,
we've got a six year old stole that is kidnapped
(27:43):
allegedly the night of you know, on December twenty sixth.
The phone call comes in before six am. They're up
and packing to go on a trip. They had a
planned trip to go to visit family up in Michigan.
I believe Michigan and things I learned from watching this
Netflix special that we were talking. But Joe, let's just
start with there were seventeen detailed facts that this reporter
(28:05):
was talking about new things. There are things they were
unaware of about the John beIN a Ramsey case. I
found it fascinating too, And it's the first one talking
about the nine to one one call that Patsy Ramsey
makes about her daughter being kidnapped and the ransom note.
(28:28):
I really have problems with both. I didn't believe her
nine one one call at all. Even now, all these
years later, I listened to it, and I still don't
believe it because it doesn't make sense from what you
and I have based on history, based on the stories
we've covered. It doesn't make sense from this very beginning,
does it to you? Well?
Speaker 2 (28:51):
It is. It is certainly bizarre, I'd have to say.
And I think in addition to that, when police do
arrive out there, it's not from Jump Street and that's
that's where everything, that's where it's at the at that moment, Tom,
(29:13):
you're either gonna meet with success or you're gonna meet
with failure at that point in time, and the police,
to their everlasting discredit, treated they they did the worst
thing that you can possibly do. They treat it like
(29:37):
it is actually a kidnapping or what they believe is
you know, how many how many kidnappings do the Boulder
Police Department handle with notes? Just let that sink in
just for a second. So if somebody is trying to
feeds you information, okay, and you're gullible enough to buy
into that, if you don't have any kind of experience,
(30:00):
if you don't walk in assuming that everybody in the
location is guilty to begin with, you're gonna have a problem.
You're gonna have a problem. And and when they got there.
I love the phraseology here because you know, in the
author's point, she actually alludes to the fact that, and
this was her phraseology that this retired retired police officer stated,
(30:22):
we did a cursory search what you did in the house, Joe, Yeah,
I know if if you're telling me you've got a
six year old that has been kidnapped, dude, it ain't
gonna be a cursory search. I'm flipping beds over, I'm
looking everywhere because if I'm asking, if I'm asking family,
(30:43):
where did you look? You know how? And what what
is this weird house that you live in? It's so
oddly designed with it's got like a butler's entrance and
all a staircase and adjacent staircase. It kind of winds
around in all these funky ways and everything where it
was that you've looked.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
The reason is like that, and the house was added
on to it was built, and then it was added
on too over a period of time, which gave it
a really odd build. But it also gives me something else, Joe,
because of the odd nature of the structure, because of
the staircases going in different areas and rooms not part
of the plan since it was all you would have
(31:23):
to know your way around this house to actually be
able to find where you're going to get the child,
to find your way back out, all the while trying
not to wake everybody up. Kind of important to know
your way around the house, and to be honest with you,
even now after looking at it, looking at diagrams and
everything else that I've seen in the daylight, I still
(31:45):
could not find my way to the the It's flowers
for Algernon Man. I would not beat the mouse on
that maze.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
No, No, there's no way I could not. I could
not make my way through this place, even when I
was in when I had a top mental acuity, when
I was a younger guy, being able to kind of
make my way around, because it is like a maze
in their day. You've got all these odd twisting turns,
(32:12):
You've got points of entrance and exit. And it would
seem as though that whoever was involved in this case,
and I'm talking about the perpetrator, would have to have
a very specific knowledge of how you know, the the
groundwork is kind of laid out here because it's not
something you just kind of blind listen. You know, if
(32:35):
you if you live in a sixties ranch style home,
you know, like many of us do. It doesn't take
a rocket scientist kind of navigate your way through one
of those homes. You know, it's a box, all right,
and you've got a central hallway that other rooms you
know kind of you know, exit off of that ain't
(32:56):
what we're talking about here. We're talking about multiple floors.
You've got multiple ways to access these floors, and then
once you even arrive at the floor, it seems disorienting
in in that environment as well. So yeah, for me,
it was that that's an odd bit of of it's
(33:19):
a it's an odd bit of information coming in. And
then just going back just for a second about this
so called cursory evaluation at the scene. How how how
is it that you know you can justify looking for
a six year old, but yet you're not ripping this
place of shreads to try to see if she could
(33:41):
be anywhere else? Is it simply based upon this note
that has been left that I think was found on
one of the treads of the stair of staircase immediately
adjacent to the kitchen. For me, I want I'm not
going to believe anything my lying eyes, as Nancy says,
my lion eyes are telling me I have to physically
(34:03):
physically explore the space and try to understand it. Because
like it or not, that house, even if it is
a kidnapped location and it's not a homicide David, is
crim scene. This is a crime scene and should be
managed in the same way as if you had a
(34:27):
multiple homicide in there because every bit of particulate evidence
that might be in there. And to further exacerbate the situation,
the family was not removed from the house. Not only
let me double down on that. Not only were they
not removed, they invited friends over. They invited friends over
(34:48):
to this location during his time. And listen, I know
everybody needs support, and I know that everybody. You know
you're grieving and you're worried, and you know there's another
place that that can be done. You need to release
this environment or the police need to take control of
the scene. And one of the first things that you
(35:09):
do this is like crime scene investigation one oh one.
You remove everybody that has nothing to do with this
case out of that environment. You might allow them to
grab a coat, but you go with them as they're
grabbing a coat, give me the keys. You know, because
at this point, the family's not necessarily under suspicion. You
(35:33):
know that this is a central point. They've called it in.
Their child is missing, so you don't necessarily This is
an interesting question, do you need a warrant at this
point in time to search the house? I'm thinking probably not,
because this is why if if this is a kidnapping.
(35:54):
You're not looking at this from the perspective of a
homicide scene. And the one difference now this is this
comes down to child welfare. This is an emergent situation.
You're doing everything you can in order to try to
find this child that might be in this massive home.
(36:14):
And listen, I don't I don't know that everybody out
there fully appreciates how big this thing is and how
complex it is. That she was assaulted. You know, she's
(36:37):
got this rather ghastly injury. You think about the injuries
certainly to to her to her neck. But just so
that if for those that haven't read her her autopsy report,
I'll go ahead and kind of give you the thumbnail.
It's they list this as cranial cerebral rama, which means
(37:01):
that you have the cranium okay, the skull itself, and
then as a result of the cranium being fractured, this
travels through to the brain, the cerebral okay, the cerebraulm.
So it's, uh, this is how it's it's kind of
laid out. Let me lay this out for for all
(37:21):
of our friends. So it's subsection ROM numberal two it's
cranial cerebral injuries. Subsection a scalp contusion, which means there's
an overlying bruise okay, of the scalp, and then b
there's a linear comminuted fracture of the right of the
(37:43):
right side of the skull. See linear pattern contusions of
the right cerebral hemisphere. Okay. So what they're saying is
it's this underlying contusion on the surface the right aspect.
If you'll put your your fingertips go to the top
of your head and move them slowly down directly above
(38:07):
superior to your right ear, that's where this insult is
going to be. So right cerebral hemisphere. She's got a
sub arachnoid and subdural hemorrhage, says subdura. The dura is
the sack that our brain floats around in. And for
those that have never seen a dura, I'll tell you
(38:29):
what it looks like. It looks a lot like a
placenta in my mind. And it's the brain stays contained
within the dura sack and it's it's essentially brain is
bathed in cerebral spinal fluid, okay, and it also acts
as a shock absorber. So if you if you bounce
(38:50):
your head off of something, your brain is not merely
bouncing off of these bony walls of your skull. Okay,
so you've got this zact this fluid filled that your
brain is contained in inside of the hard outer shell
of your of your of your skull. So she's got
a subdural hemorrhage, which means that's beneath the dura and
(39:13):
the brain. And then you have a suberractnoid and the
iractnoid surface is actually the inner surface of your brain.
So this hemorrhage translates, it goes into the brain essentially.
And then she's got small contusions to the tips of
the temporal lobes, which means the temporal the lower you know,
(39:37):
below the top of the head. You know where your
temporal bone is, So there was contusion in there as well, Dave,
So this is this a very nasty injury that she sustained.
It would have been a tremendous amount of force that
she was subjected to with whatever this object is. And
they they never really came up with a solid answer
(39:58):
about what had generally this And yeah, I guess you
could look at it and say that there's a potential
that a mag light and if you're not familiar back
in ninety six, back in ninety six, they had mag lights.
I wish I still had one that are massive, and
(40:19):
that the cops stopped carrying them. And do you want
to know why stop cops stopped stopped carrying them? Cops
carried them because you they can be used as a
bludgeoning device and it's very convenient. So if you're having
a fight with a prisoner or suspect, there are There's
(40:40):
one particularly infamous case out of I can't remember the
guy's name, saved my life out of Detroit, and this
guy was literally what we were what we used to
refer to as being brained. He was brained by a
cop with this mag light. And I could get that
guy's name, but there was major lawsuit that resulted from
(41:01):
that case, and that involved a mag light. He's beaten
with a flashlight and it creates a really nasty injury,
and he was beaten multiple times. He had, you know,
his skull or scalp was literally split open in multiple
locations because of the lacerations that you know, and then
he had all these communicating injuries that worked. So you
(41:21):
think about in ninety six, that type of flashlight existed
back then, and apparently the Ramsays had one in their home.
You know what else could generate this kind of this
kind of insult. Well, I guess if you're thinking cylindrical,
the first thing that pops to mind for me could
be like maybe a baseball bat, you know, that would
(41:43):
generate this kind of this kind of energy. The thing
about it is is that with mag lights, dependent upon
how it's utilized. If if you look down the shaft
of an old mag light, it's actually textured. It's got
almost a diamond pattern to it, and when you strike
strike a surface like the skin with a mag light
(42:05):
or anything that's textured, it actually translates that pattern to
the overlying skin. So you would shave the hair, and
you know, we shave the hair and the Morgan. We
take pictures of these things, of these little insults, because
it it physically connects this event, you know, with all
that's left behind.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
With a case like this, I had no idea. I
really didn't. Now I'm trying to for a case that
has gone on for twenty eight years that we still
don't have an answer. We now have the Bolder Police
(42:44):
Department that has been rightly so run over the coals.
They did a horrible job from the very beginning. Everything
about the setup was wrong, the very from the nine
to one one call until today. You know that you
cannot make up for what they did in the first
hours of this case. I don't know how you could
(43:06):
ever get based on what happened with her body, Joe
and the common sense factory. You I learned early on
that you have to take that out that you know,
it's just facts. It's not what you think, it's not
what you think you might have had. You actually have
to have real facts. So I can think all day
long that Patsy Ramsey sat at the kitchen table and
wrote that note and practiced it and wrote it. And
(43:27):
if I can't prove it, I can't bring that up
against her.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
I get that that, you know, that's supposition is not
worth a gunpowder blow to hell unless.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
You Yeah, and now we've got the strangling and we've
got the destruction of her skull to this little six
year old child. Yeah, what about the DNA, Joe, There's
got to be DNA in here that that somehow it
tells us somebody other than the Ramseys had something to
do with this, right.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah, there is foreign DNA and you know they did
do they did swabs. Obviously I'm both well the occupants
of the home. I don't Here's the thing. I don't know.
I really wonder if, first off, okay, here's something I
want to throw out to you. Man. Do they have
the names of everyone that was in that home?
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Wow? Probably?
Speaker 2 (44:17):
I mean that you know you're talking about you know,
we're gonna have cookies Christmas leftover cookie cookies, Christmas cookies
and coffee while we're sitting around. And here's another thing.
Let's just say, and this is one of the biggest
things relative to DNA, and they talk about destruction of DNA.
If you've got a group of people that are hovering about,
(44:41):
you know what people like to do when they get
stressed out, dave I know I do, particularly if I
can't go out and go for a walk. You know
what I'm going to do. I'm gonna eat. I'm gonna
eat and drink coffee. I'm gonna sit around wring my hands,
talk to myself, talk to other people. They went into
(45:03):
that kitchen. What if that note was written in the kitchen,
which some people claim that it was. Well, now you're
introducing you're introducing foreign DNA into this environment, and you
might be eradicating anything else that's there. I want everybody
right now to think about the position you get in
(45:26):
when you write something on a hard surface. Do you stand?
Do you stand? Do you sit upright as you write
and just merely extend your hand and write something down? No,
you don't do that. You know what you do? You lean?
Speaker 1 (45:43):
You lean.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Even the oldest images that we have of scribes. You
think about the monks that are translating the Bible. You
remember those images, those beautiful images that they'll have the
boks and they're sitting there and they're at their table
and they've got their quill and they're writing. They're leaned
over and very poor writing conditions, and they're generating as
beautiful calligraphy. You lean when you write. If you even
(46:06):
go to the bank, our younger listeners are I going
to remember this? You and I. You go to the
central desk there that's got that that attached pen that
never works right, You've got a deposit slip.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Well? You lean your if your right hand generally you'll
lean your left arm on the table, you'll put your
left hand on the surface of what you're writing, secured
in place. Then with your right hand. This is and
of course it would be the reverse of this, but
you're writing like this. There's multiple points of contact along this.
(46:40):
So just for me, thinking about an individual being in
this being in this environment, you know, and you've got
people coming in and they're they're eating Christmas cakes and
cookies and drinking coffee. How many years? How many how
long did they in dwell that space? It was everybody
(47:00):
was everybody's DNA collected that had anything to do with
that environment, I don't know. And then even if you
do collect it, are these and I'm doing air quotes
here friends? Are these true friends that you would have
over I don't know. Maybe you guys all played canasta
once a night, once a week together. I have no idea,
y'all got right? Is there going to be a significant deposition.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
There?
Speaker 2 (47:26):
Jen, I don't know. I'm sorry, we'll say sorry, I
have to play sorry grandkids.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
Or the Game of Life at the Game of like,
I hate that game.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
Day but anyway, playing it every day?
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Baby? Uh?
Speaker 2 (47:39):
You know, you think about that environment in there, and
what's it? Was it possible that people could have come
in there? Again, this goes back to our earlier comments
about securing the scene, brother securing the scene, which is
a miserable, miserable failure, you know when you think about that.
(48:02):
Here's another thing I really wonder thinking about contact DNA,
and there's other areas I kind of want to explore this,
but I'll see you about contact DNA. Let's say you're
not gloved. You're not gloved, and I don't care if
you're talking about carrying a six year old. These stairs
(48:25):
look really steep to me. Okay, So as you're progressing
down this twisting staircase and all of this sort of thing,
and you're toting the body of a child, you have
to maintain your balance. Are their handrails leading down to
(48:48):
the basement, right, Well, we know that there's doorknobs. Remember
they talked about one door was locked, cops went to it,
it was locked, they didn't try to get into it.
Remember that that was early on this thing. So that
means that there are doorknobs that would have been touched.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Where those doorknobs collected, Where the doors collected I've collected
doors before. Really, Oh yeah, yeah, I've Yeah, I've been
a help with it, you know, I'll help take doors down.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
You've got the entire area from her bedroom to where
her body was found. Yeah, and every possible way to
get there all would have to have been checked, should
have been checked. Four good grief?
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Okay, And I listen, And you can't not you the
universal You cannot make the argument that, well, there's a
different time. No, we didn't know what we know about DNA.
That's a load of crap, you know, I'll tell you
what we did know about. We knew about fingerprints. So
if you if you even at a at a rudimentary level,
(49:56):
if you treated this as if DNA did not exist,
you're looking for Layton prints, which you and I can
both agree on the fact that that was always our
fallback position early on, prior to DNA. We always look
for fingerprints. Who touched those door knobs in that location,
who touched the rails? Were their foreign prints associated with
(50:19):
anybody that could have entered into that environment. I mean,
I think that that's a simple question that should be
asked and certainly should be answered. You know, for me,
at least all the possible points because we think about
points of contact. And one of the best examples I
can give to people relative to looking for latent prints.
(50:42):
And I do this exercise with my students. They feel
so foolish when they do it. I take a little
bit of statistic prodect. But I'll set up a chair
in the in front of the classroom and I'll pick
one student and it has to be a student that
owns a car. Demonstrate to us how you get in
(51:04):
the car, and I'll critique them about how they get
in the car and then what they do when they
get in the car. Or I will also throw out
a scenario. You're getting in your friend's car. What do
you do to get into their car? And you would
not believe how many points of contact there are just
getting into a motor vehicle. That the places you have
(51:25):
to touch, because most of us don't think about that.
If you've got like a low sports car, for instance,
you literally have to swing yourself inside of the car.
People don't think about grabbing the roof or grabbing the
interior handle because most people don't want to just free
fall into a sea, so you brace yourself. Same principle
here if you're carrying an unconscious child or even a
(51:47):
dead child. At this point in time, you're gonna have
to balance yourself regardless of how light this individual might be. Okay,
so just fingerprint evidence, and then of course we can
go to the next level and talk about DNA. Was
what was secured? That's the big That's what this all
comes down to. What was secured at that point. I
(52:09):
don't know who did this, but I know that there
was a catastrophic failure when it comes to security of
the scene.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
We know when you're talking about DNA, Joe, A lot
of us followed the OJ Simpson trial and all of
the testimony about DNA. We learned a lot. I say
we as a people, you know, the population learned a
lot about DNA. We learned a lot about what can
be done with DNA. And in the time after the trial,
(52:39):
it was a regular occurrence on TV shows dealing with
police working detectives about DNA. This happened two years after
all of the DNA stuff became a matter of public
record in the American population. I mean, O. J. Simpson
is a trial ended in ninety five. But the whole
thing here is that regardless of all of that, we
(53:02):
have a child who was taken from her bedroom, was
beaten strangled, and her dead body was left behind. Then
a ransom note that's a short novel is left behind
asking for a very specific amount of money that amounted
to John Ramsey's bonus that year. We have police on
(53:25):
the scene from the nine to one to one call
from Pantsy Ramsey, the mother, and yet nobody bothers to
secure the scene. Nobody stops new people from coming in,
nobody searches the entirety of the house. And then after
hours of being on site, the police person responsible for
(53:48):
the scene says, hey, John, why don't you take a friend,
y'all go look and see what you can find, see
if there's anything missing from this house. And John Ramsey
goes directly to his daughter's body. He then destroys any
evidence that was left behind by picking her up and
carrying her and in front of everybody, laying her down
in the living room. Might think, and he did.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
And when you say destroy, I'm not neither one of
us are actually saying a purpose.
Speaker 1 (54:15):
To destroy it. No, No, it's.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Just the fact that anytime you touch, you touch any
surface on a body like this, you're going to compromise it.
And of course that's one of the big problems, compromised evidence,
compromised physical evidence, the inability to suss this thing out
(54:37):
load these many years later, and I can tell you this,
the further down the road that we go, the more
complex this gets. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Bodybounes
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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