January 9, 2025 • 33 mins
A final look at items brought up in the recent Netflix documentary about JonBenet Ramsey and her death. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack talk about the crime scene with Joe breaking down the mistakes that were made and how they have nothing to do with technology. Also, a question that has never been answered regarding the "ransom" note. What type of "kidnapper" kills the person and leaves a "ransom" note? Who would pay a "ransom" for the "safe return" of a loved one when the "loved one" is already dead and in the house?
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.41 Introduction
02:00.28 No excuses for evidence mistakes
04:54.75 Never Ask Father of missing 6-year-old search the house
10:06.27 The physical things seen in strangling
14:34.80 Why leave the body AND ransom note
19:53.52 Why ask for $118,000?
24:28.50 The reason for the ransom note is dead
29:07.64 JonBenet was beaten, skull was fractured
32:10.35 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Bodybuts. But Joseph Scott Morgan, it's really easy, Dave, for
someone like me, after all of these years, you know,
to pick up stones and start throwing them at the
people that worked this case all these many years ago. Okay,
(00:23):
And you know, I think that many times in the
world that we live in, it's so dominated about technology
that we find ourselves in right now, people will default too.
They'll say, well, they didn't have access to the technology
that we have. As far as crime solving goes, technology
has nothing to do with this. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
(00:44):
and this is body back. This is I started working
in forensics back in the eighties, Dave. The same principles
still hold true that held true during that time period.
There's certain things that we do at a base level
(01:05):
where where you have an expectation of security of the
scene because you don't want to lose you don't want
to lose anything that's a scene, and you don't want
to introduce or add something to the scene that should
not have been there.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hey, Joe, I am so thankful that we have the
opportunity to dig into this story one last time. We're
talking about the Jean Bonne Ramsey case. Now, we did
talk about it during the Christmas holiday and the Netflix
documentary and what came out in that, but there were
a couple of things that we missed that I really
wanted to cover. And I'm just so thankful that you
agreed to do this, Joe, because right at the start,
(01:43):
I was really concerned about the scene of the crime
and what was done to it. My first thought was,
why are there people in the house besides the police?
That was just number one right out of the gate
on the earliest coverage of this story, because in everything,
(02:06):
all of us know you need to get everybody out
so you can just we're gonna be able to investigate properly.
Starting at square one, You've got all these people in
the house making food and everything else and wiping up
table calls. I mean, it's ridiculous what happened. And I'm
not even a cop, but the fact that police allowed
that to take place, shame on them, Shame on everybody involved.
(02:28):
That should have never happened, but then it has. And
the first thing you do, because you've got people milling around,
you need to give them something to do. Well, why
don't y'all take a good look around the house. Yeah,
just go looking. And John Ramsey goes straight to a
place you would not normally get to in that house.
You have to go downstairs and through, you know, to
(02:49):
this area they referred to as a wine cellar. But
it wasn't a wine cellar. It was just a you know,
a downstairs area and they and he goes because of
her body, now if you.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Guess, and yeah, we have to keep in mind that
there's like another area adjacent to it that they call,
I think they called the train room. Yeah, and and
and that's where he actually and you know, Dave.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
They I'm so glad you said that, Joe I forgot
about the train room.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, and and that plays into it, you know, which
we'll get to, uh with marks that are found in
her body. But you know that when this they'll passo
former l Passo County investigator that keep in mind this
person is different than the Bolder police department. This individual said, well,
(03:42):
it's a lack of experience on the Bolder police departments,
you know, part because they didn't know how to how
to handle this thing. But you've got this this one
investigator that is handling the case. And she, you know,
she famously went on air and made all of these
assations about the case and went on and on. And
(04:04):
she's in charge at the scene. You were talking about
John Ramsey. She looks at him as if I need
to get this guy out of my hair or whatever reason.
She said this, You and your friend go search the
rest of the house. And you know, for me, when
(04:29):
somebody I hear somebody say that, you know, it's like
that commercial about you know, the little elderly women talk
about where she says, I unfriend you like that, and
they're talking about the Facebook and and the one lady says,
that's not how this works. That's not how any of
this works. And you're absolutely right. You do not ask
(04:53):
the father of a missing six year old while you're
sitting in the house as a police officer, to have
them go search the house. Now that that's not what
you do. If you don't have enough resources, there's other
post certified police officers in this county that you can
(05:13):
reach out to. Hey, we need help, send help now,
and we need to be able to canvass the area.
We need to be able to secure the scene. You're
going to rely on a dad and his friend to
go search the house. And as you mentioned, you know,
when they make their way down into the basement of
(05:34):
this home, this labyrinth that you have to go through,
you know, that's when you know John actually finds Jean
Benet down in that area and by Duby. As a
result of him finding her, what does he do, Well,
(05:54):
it's what you would I think that most reasonable people
would think would a father would do. He picks his
child up, removes her from this scene. Now, if that
had been say a police officer, they may have walked over,
checked for a pulse. They see that she's cyanotic or blue,
(06:18):
she might be cool to the touch. Guess what they're
not going to do with body. This is no longer
a rescue. This is no longer trying to do compressions
on her chest. This is leaving her in place. And
it's at that moment in time, if it had not
already gone off the rails, this is where the whole
(06:40):
thing kind of you know, really begins to take a
turn for the worst possible case scenario here, because now
you've got dad entering into this environment. Maybe in a
reactive moment, he grabs his daughter, his daughter's remains. He
thinks there's a chance that she can be saved, and
of course she's beyond beyond that at this point. Tom.
(07:01):
But because for whatever reason, this detective directs him to
do this. Yeah, granted he found the body along with
his buddy found the body, but you know, more more
harm was done than certainly good David.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Well, Joe, all I'm thinking, okay, is you sent him
to go look for the child. In his mind's eye,
if there was already a cover up and they had
already staged the body, you know, in the basement to
make it look as if she had been murdered, sending
John Ramsey or anybody else non police oriented to go
down there. All they're thinking is I'm going to go
(07:37):
straight and I'm fixing this because now whatever they had
staged before that had to remain static. Huh. I can
get rid of all the evidence right now. I'm going
to rip off the duct tape. I'm going to undo
this Garrett around her neck. I mean, I'm evidence is
all gone, every bit of it is totally wipe from
the crime scene. Now they have to try to piece
(07:57):
it back together to find out how was she strangled.
We got the rope, well, what was it was nylon.
H there had been.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, it's it's a woven it's a woven nylon rope.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, and it was tied into a knot in a
certain way. But then the gear they was actually a
stick something used from Patsy Ramsey's hobby kit was used
to turn it and it broke.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah. It's a groat. Uh. Yeah, some people say garrot garroat.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And it's used as this this weapon, and it is
a weapon. Groats are known as weapons. That's how they're defined.
Did you know and here's an interesting little aside. Did
you know that the garrotting or groating of individuals for
tom I think it may have been in France. I
can't remember where specifically that this was an execution method.
(08:51):
Do you know that now they used to do it. Yeah,
they would. They would take an individual and you can
see wood carvings of these they're out there, lithiographs or
whatever they're called. I can't remember. Where the individual is
seated in a chair and bounds like their hands are
bound behind them. It's a straight back chair in like
(09:12):
a courtyard where the public education execution would take place,
and they would put a garrot groat around the neck
of the individual and turn it from the back like
this and slowly kill the person. In public views, it's
an agonizing way to die because with every turn of
(09:33):
that thing, you are exerting more and more pressure. You know,
you begin to see the tongue balls, the eyes balls.
They become cyanautic, all these things you know now. Years
ago I worked a series as kind of a I
hate to say this, diminishing diminishing the lives of the
(09:54):
individuals were killed, but it was like a short series
of serial killings. It's like six victims to this guy's count,
and he was killing prostitutes. And he used to corot
after he had drugged him. And he had multiple places
where he would reset the garrot and realign it. And
his was made out of wire, by the way, and
(10:17):
he would take it and he would turn it and
they would get to the point of losing consciousness, he'd
release it and then he'd reinitiate the thing. So make
no mistake when you see, this is not like just
grabbing a cord. Okay, this is not like just grabbing
a cord where you're going to wrap it around so
our piece of rope or a coat hanger or a weapon,
(10:41):
as we say, a weapon of convenience. This is thought out.
This is something that was used in order to to
elicit terror upon the victim. I have no doubt in
my mind this was a sadistic killing. And the thing
that's fascinating about this, Dave, is that you know, John
(11:03):
Ramsay said in his statement that if I remember correctly
and I think not statement, this was in the interview
when he saw this thing, it was tied so tight
he couldn't he couldn't unbind it. And this is what
is referred to as a very complex knot. That's why
(11:24):
that they believed that whoever fixed this thing had experience
with tie knots and complex knots. That's that has always
that's been one of these things that has rung through
And when you see her autopsy pictures, you can see
(11:45):
this this uh, the complexity of this thing, that ligature
(12:05):
that's used in this case, Given the complexity of this knot,
I hope that retrospectively, due care was taken with this thing,
because you know what it can offer up. It can
offer up DNA because for every turn and twist of
that knot, if the individual is not gloved They're touching
(12:28):
multiple surfaces on this thing as it's being constructed, and
the paintbrush stick thing is that goes without saying, obviously,
but just the surfaces of that knot and when you
think about the complexity of it, that would require this
thing to be manipulated to a great degree. So I'm
(12:51):
wondering if due care was taken with that ligature itself.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
When I was hearing them talk about the ligature and
the rot I remember John Wayne Gacy doing the same thing,
using it to turn and torture. You know that that
was the first one I'd actually heard of, and then
seeing this one, and all I could think of is
this is something that required time and preparation. So with
(13:16):
the time of preparation that went into if it was
somebody who just snuck in in the middle of the
night and was able to do this, you realize that
they have to know the building enough to know where
they can access the house in the middle of the night.
They have to be able to find themselves walking around
the house without waking anybody up through this maze of places.
(13:37):
Then they have to be able to get her out
of her bed, take her downstairs, and kill her and
then they've done. They came in, and they've come into
the house and killed her in the middle of the night,
and then bother to leave a ransom note. Why would
they leave a ransom note, Joe, if they've killed her
and left her behind. If you're going to leave a
ransom note, there would have to be the child would
(13:58):
have to be gone for it mean anything. And since
the child is already dead and left behind, why leave her?
Why would anybody leave a ransom note? You have no ransom.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, And you know, the only thing I could really
think a brother was the fact that somebody was trying
to put somebody off scent if you will, yeah, you know,
to try to misdirect you see that, Yeah, well, to
try to yeah, to try to sell people on the
fact that she's elsewhere. But why would you leave the
(14:31):
body behind? That's what I don't I don't I don't
understand that. And you know, two point three relative to
this reporter's assessment, you know, she she had alluded to
the fact that that this detective Bob Whitson, you know,
it said that that he asked for handwriting from both
(14:53):
John and Patsy, and which you know he received back
in uh, you know, from two notebook pads, and you
could see those on the documentary they showed they demonstrated
those pads. I'd never seen those before. So I'm with
her on this, you know, which was you know, keep
(15:14):
keep in mind, this is this is prior to the
days of texting, you know, or prior to the days
of people sitting down. I mean, I still, like, Lord knows,
my precious wife, she she can't live without an actual calendar.
She has physically has a calendar. She writes everything in
each day. And so but you know, that's that's the
way things have, you know, were always done. You had
(15:37):
a notebook that you would write and enter things into,
and so that's where they get that would be referred to. Again,
I think we just mentioned this in one of our
actually one of our recent episodes. But you know, this
is where it plays into getting an exemplar of writing.
So you have a real you have a real time
(15:59):
exis impl are or an example of what an individual's
writing looks like in the course of day to day life. Here,
you're not it's not a dictated exemplar where you ask
someone you dictate to them what is written. You know,
in a ransom note and you dictate to them and say,
(16:21):
write this statement down. This is a real life exemplar
of how they normally write. So the idea is that
you take and compare what you see in the notebook
to what to what you have in this ransom note,
and are there any similarities, you know, relative to this.
(16:45):
But when I've always been fascinated by the fact that
they believe that the notebook that the note was written
in is was property of the of the ramses, and
that it was physically there and it was actually discovered,
I believe you know too, to have probably what's referred
(17:09):
to as kind of a pressure connection where if any
of you, any of you guys you know know this,
if you say, for instance, you've seen it in movies,
it's an old movie trope with somebody will write a
note and they'll rip the sheet out, and then you
can take a pencil, you know, and scratch over the
surface of it, and all of a sudden, hidden writing
writing begins to appear. You can actually see the pressure
(17:33):
through the page. That means that somebody's leaning forward, pressing
down with the writing device, and they create, you know,
these little creases in a note and so that note
would be taken away. And Dave, this note is so
my god, it's so extensive because you know, I don't
(17:53):
know about for you, but you know, you always think
about you know, I have a I will kill everybody here,
provide this money and drop it off at this address.
That's not That's not what we're talking about here. We're
talking about something that's highly complex. You know, they're they're
establishing who we are. We're part of a foreign fact.
(18:15):
Oh my god, foreign faction God in Boulder, Colorado. I'm
not saying that foreigner a university, but I'm just saying,
out of all the people in the world, you know,
you're going to show up and yeah, I mean people
have said that, you know John, you know, John's very
wealthy man. He's involved in software. You know, I'm assuming
that you know, he's come across. But you know, there's
(18:37):
very specific details. I think the thing that really, you know,
caught people's eye. Dave and I guess we're number three
or number four here, you know in this reveal for her,
for this reporter is the one hundred and eighteen thousand
dollars you know why number? Yeah, well that that is
(18:58):
an odd number. Why aren't you going to ask for
a quarter of a million dollars if you're talking about
you're talking about dude, that's a multimillionaire. Yea, all right?
(19:22):
Why one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars? Why why not
a round figure like two hundred thousand, quarter of a
mill Why not five hundred thousand? Why not a million?
You know, if you're going to dude, if you're going
to run the risk, because kidnapping is a federal offense
and you will get life imprisonment for it. If dude,
(19:44):
if you're going to roll the bones here man, go
all in. Why one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars? Specific that? Yeah, exactly,
But who knows that information?
Speaker 2 (19:55):
There's something about the note I want to share with you.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I looked this up at the because I was curious
as to win was Patsy Ramsey born. And the reason
is in the early seventies, Patricia Hurst was kidnapped by
the Symbionese Liberation Army, yes, the SLA, and they kidnapped her,
(20:21):
they held her, and eventually, after long, in a period
of time, she had started to go along with them.
She was on camera robbing a bank has the gun
in her hand, and they said she's full on participating
in the robbery. It was a big deal in the
early seventies, mid seventies. Well for Pats Ramsey being born
in nineteen fifty six, she's going to be eighteen to
(20:42):
twenty years old when the whole Patricia thing's going on,
Patricia Hurst deal. So when I saw the note s
Victory SBTC, SLA Simboni's Liberation Army SBTC, so any in
my brain, I'm thinking, why is she writ OGNI she
But why is the kidnapper specifically writing to John and
(21:05):
not both of them? The Ramseys are a couple, this
is their child. She's singling out of John because in
my mind she's writing, I'm and she's dead and gone now.
And I know that there are people who believe that whatever.
I don't buy the note, Joe, the ransom note is
too long, too specific. One hundred and eighteen thousand dollars
(21:25):
That was his bonus that year, which, my goodness, I've
never seen a bonus tempercent in my life.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
And who has who has specific who has specific knowledge
of how much? Now I got to tell you, John
Ramsey does not strike me as somebody that would go
out to a bar, yeah, and sit there and say, Hey,
everybody drinks on me. I got one hundred and eighteen
(21:54):
thousand dollars bonus this year. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
He seems like the kund he's a business guy. Yeah,
all right, he seems like the kind of person he's
going to know more than he's revealing. And he's certainly
not going to tell you, you know, I mean, you know,
revealing how much money you got for bonuses? Right up
there were revealing your bathroom habits. It's just certain things
(22:18):
that you don't talk about, you know. And who would
have access to that information? Well, obviously those that are
within his very inner circle, and they hadn't been in
Boulder a long long time. Who in their inner circle
of friends would he have felt comfortable enough with with
(22:40):
sharing the fact that he got one hundred and eighteen
thousand dollars bonus. Well you step out of that circle
and you begin to think, well, who who might know
at work? Well, somebody's got to cut the check, right,
So who at work would know that that he got
one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars bonus? And listen there's
(23:02):
jealous people at work. The Lord knows you've encountered them.
I've encountered and they wish you ill will would somebody
be willing to go to that length to do this
kind of horrible thing to this little kid because of
the fact that he got one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars?
Is that that is money the motivation? Because if money
(23:26):
is the motivation, why are you going to leave the
kidnapped subject in the house because there was never any
intention to collect money.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Right because the child is left behind dead. The reason
you would pay the ransom is so your child has
returned to you alive, but you've left the child dead
in the house. There's no reason for you really think
they're going to just run down to the bank and
get one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars out and give
it to you without checking the house, without looking around
(23:58):
the house. But on top of that, Joe, think about this,
who writes down this is actually in a note? A
lot of people don't catch on. Make sure that you
bring an adequate size attache to the bank. When you
get home, you will put the money in a brown
paper bag. Well, what bring it? Who actually thinks like
(24:21):
that to write that down in a note, bank's on
it big enough to put the money in. It's like,
this is so overly specific that you had the time
to write this out. If you're in a hurry. You
came to kidnap a child and you just accidentally killed her.
Now you're leaving her behind. Why are you bothering over
the note. The longer you're there, the more chances you
have to be caught the ransom. The reason for you
(24:43):
getting money is dead. Get out of the house. Now,
why are you leaving a note?
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I don't understand how much space can one hundred and
eighteen thousand dollars take up if you're getting denominations of
one hundred dollars bills. Yeah, I can't imagine it's going
to be. You know, it's not like you're walking, you know,
walking down the street like Scrooge McDuck and you've got
gold coins falling out of your wheelbarrow, your gold wheelbar
It's not like that. It's just the whole thing, you know,
(25:11):
kind of you know, stinks to high heaven. Yeah, but
then you you know, when you consider all of that.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
I will call you between eight am and ten am tomorrow,
the delivery will be exhausting. I advise you to get
rest be rested, John, I mean Joe. Really it says
that in this note the delivery will be exhausting, so
I advise you to be rested. The whole thing just reeks,
(25:48):
and it's so long and so convoluted. This makes no sense.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
And if who has the again I use the term
intestinal fortitude because you have to have nervous Still, let's
just let's just say, all right, for grins and giggles,
that we are a malevolent individual that shows up at
(26:13):
this house, okay, and you have the intestinal fortitude to
take a notepad that allegedly belonged in the house and
sit down where people sit down to consume breakfast. I
guess maybe in that location, and you sit there and
(26:37):
you take the time. You know, do this person show
up with their own pen or do they borrow this
as well? And they sit there and construct this note,
and then we'll take it off, and we're going to
take it and put it here on the tread of
the staircase immediately, you know, on the other side of
the wall here, who has that? That requires nerves of steel?
(27:00):
Because I don't care how big a house is. If
there's something going on within a house at night, I'll
give you for instance, my wife hears everything. I mean
she does. I don't wake up for thunder. You know,
why did you hear that storm last night? Hunt? No,
I didn't. Oh my god, I was up all night.
I started to wake you up. Well why didn't you?
(27:20):
I couldn't. You were asleep. I can get you wake up.
You know, you know what I'm saying. You know, I
guess you know. You could say, well, yeah, they're isolated
in the house. They're bettering the master is upstairs. They're
not going to hear this. But it would take nerves
of still to sit down there and write this note
and then deposit this thing on the staircase, which for
(27:44):
me is is quite quite interesting and just you know,
maybe we've beat this dead horse. I don't know, but
it's just the fact that the length of the thing
and the specificity of it, and then this kind of
drawn out narrative you know, that runs through it, identifying.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Your southern good sense.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Come on, I know, I mean, what does that even mean?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Why does somebody put that in there?
Speaker 1 (28:11):
I know it's it's it's bizarre. I mean, now, I
guess you could say they are aware that he has
recently relocated to Colorado, and they're they're trying to hone
in on that specific detail of his life. Maybe it's
an indication that they know about him, they know where
(28:34):
he comes from. Okay, maybe it's alluding to that. I
have no idea, but for me, uh, this individual that
wrote this first off had to have nerves of steel,
and then secondly, they also have to have pretty substantial
constitution as well, because they're going to go downstairs assuming
that the same person that wrote the note had something
(28:56):
to do with Jean Benet's death, which, of course I
believe that you're going to torture and yes, I will
use that term torture and murder by not only strangling, uh,
this child, but beating her to the point where her
(29:20):
skull fractures. Dave, and that's another point that that the
author of this article from Busfeed, you know, made a
point of that, you know, uh, that it was at
that point in time that they they realized because you know,
for the longest time they had just said that she
had been strangled. No one ever said anything about this insult.
(29:42):
The show, Yeah, that she had sustained well, yeah, I knew.
Well it was famously it was famously brought about in
that the infamous CBS show, you know, because they did
these demonstrations doctor Werner Spitz, who and we we remember
we actually did a memoriam of episode of Bodybacks when,
(30:08):
you know, because Verner Spitz died, him and him and
Cyril died pretty close to one another, and I talked
about it. Verner Spitz is he's one of the godfathers.
He preceded doctor Weck. He's even in an older generation.
(30:28):
And you know, he wrote the definitive text on on forensics,
on forensic pathology, and you know, they talked about the
utilization of potentially I think that their conclusion was a
flashlight or a cylindrical like object in order to generate
this kind of And what was really ghastly about that
show is that they were attempting to say that jam
(30:51):
Manet's brother had something to do with this. And I
think probably the most the most repugnant part of that
program was the fact that they brought in a nine
year old child, I know, to do the demonstration where
they had a mocked up skull and they and you
(31:13):
can go on line and see it, and it was
it was really in poor taste. As far as I'm concerned,
this is nothing I would ever want to involve myself in.
Where you know this, You've got this little boy, an actor,
I guess, that's raining down blows on this facsimile of
a skull that actually is in jail so that it
(31:34):
mimics tissue, and he's driving this thing down onto you know,
onto the the you know, the pretend body here.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
It seems like something you would see on hard copy
in the late eighties, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, yeah, it was in really poor taste, very poor taste.
I can't you know, I can't imagine, you know, being
a parent and watching this thing and know what's what
they're they're angling toward towards this idea that the nine
year old brother did this, and of course they you know,
(32:08):
CBS wound up paying the piper for that, and you know,
I often thought, I often thought that this is just
my musing here. I really thought that maybe CBS was
going all in on this idea that the family had
something to do with this, and so they thought, yeah,
(32:28):
we're going to run the risk of getting sued if
they sue us, we're not going to settle, which they
wound up doing. We're not going to settle, and we're
going to wind up having depositions. And that's really the
way I had looked at this early on. Of course,
they wound up wound up settling, you know, this particular case,
and it was just the number was eye popping, you know,
(32:53):
just absolutely eye popping. And I don't know what they
eventually settled for. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this his
body bags,
Bodybuts. But Joseph Scott Morgan, it's really easy, Dave, for
someone like me, after all of these years, you know,
to pick up stones and start throwing them at the
people that worked this case all these many years ago. Okay,
(00:23):
And you know, I think that many times in the
world that we live in, it's so dominated about technology
that we find ourselves in right now, people will default too.
They'll say, well, they didn't have access to the technology
that we have. As far as crime solving goes, technology
has nothing to do with this. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
(00:44):
and this is body back. This is I started working
in forensics back in the eighties, Dave. The same principles
still hold true that held true during that time period.
There's certain things that we do at a base level
(01:05):
where where you have an expectation of security of the
scene because you don't want to lose you don't want
to lose anything that's a scene, and you don't want
to introduce or add something to the scene that should
not have been there.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hey, Joe, I am so thankful that we have the
opportunity to dig into this story one last time. We're
talking about the Jean Bonne Ramsey case. Now, we did
talk about it during the Christmas holiday and the Netflix
documentary and what came out in that, but there were
a couple of things that we missed that I really
wanted to cover. And I'm just so thankful that you
agreed to do this, Joe, because right at the start,
(01:43):
I was really concerned about the scene of the crime
and what was done to it. My first thought was,
why are there people in the house besides the police?
That was just number one right out of the gate
on the earliest coverage of this story, because in everything,
(02:06):
all of us know you need to get everybody out
so you can just we're gonna be able to investigate properly.
Starting at square one, You've got all these people in
the house making food and everything else and wiping up
table calls. I mean, it's ridiculous what happened. And I'm
not even a cop, but the fact that police allowed
that to take place, shame on them, Shame on everybody involved.
(02:28):
That should have never happened, but then it has. And
the first thing you do, because you've got people milling around,
you need to give them something to do. Well, why
don't y'all take a good look around the house. Yeah,
just go looking. And John Ramsey goes straight to a
place you would not normally get to in that house.
You have to go downstairs and through, you know, to
(02:49):
this area they referred to as a wine cellar. But
it wasn't a wine cellar. It was just a you know,
a downstairs area and they and he goes because of
her body, now if you.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Guess, and yeah, we have to keep in mind that
there's like another area adjacent to it that they call,
I think they called the train room. Yeah, and and
and that's where he actually and you know, Dave.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
They I'm so glad you said that, Joe I forgot
about the train room.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, and and that plays into it, you know, which
we'll get to, uh with marks that are found in
her body. But you know that when this they'll passo
former l Passo County investigator that keep in mind this
person is different than the Bolder police department. This individual said, well,
(03:42):
it's a lack of experience on the Bolder police departments,
you know, part because they didn't know how to how
to handle this thing. But you've got this this one
investigator that is handling the case. And she, you know,
she famously went on air and made all of these
assations about the case and went on and on. And
(04:04):
she's in charge at the scene. You were talking about
John Ramsey. She looks at him as if I need
to get this guy out of my hair or whatever reason.
She said this, You and your friend go search the
rest of the house. And you know, for me, when
(04:29):
somebody I hear somebody say that, you know, it's like
that commercial about you know, the little elderly women talk
about where she says, I unfriend you like that, and
they're talking about the Facebook and and the one lady says,
that's not how this works. That's not how any of
this works. And you're absolutely right. You do not ask
(04:53):
the father of a missing six year old while you're
sitting in the house as a police officer, to have
them go search the house. Now that that's not what
you do. If you don't have enough resources, there's other
post certified police officers in this county that you can
(05:13):
reach out to. Hey, we need help, send help now,
and we need to be able to canvass the area.
We need to be able to secure the scene. You're
going to rely on a dad and his friend to
go search the house. And as you mentioned, you know,
when they make their way down into the basement of
(05:34):
this home, this labyrinth that you have to go through,
you know, that's when you know John actually finds Jean
Benet down in that area and by Duby. As a
result of him finding her, what does he do, Well,
(05:54):
it's what you would I think that most reasonable people
would think would a father would do. He picks his
child up, removes her from this scene. Now, if that
had been say a police officer, they may have walked over,
checked for a pulse. They see that she's cyanotic or blue,
(06:18):
she might be cool to the touch. Guess what they're
not going to do with body. This is no longer
a rescue. This is no longer trying to do compressions
on her chest. This is leaving her in place. And
it's at that moment in time, if it had not
already gone off the rails, this is where the whole
(06:40):
thing kind of you know, really begins to take a
turn for the worst possible case scenario here, because now
you've got dad entering into this environment. Maybe in a
reactive moment, he grabs his daughter, his daughter's remains. He
thinks there's a chance that she can be saved, and
of course she's beyond beyond that at this point. Tom.
(07:01):
But because for whatever reason, this detective directs him to
do this. Yeah, granted he found the body along with
his buddy found the body, but you know, more more
harm was done than certainly good David.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Well, Joe, all I'm thinking, okay, is you sent him
to go look for the child. In his mind's eye,
if there was already a cover up and they had
already staged the body, you know, in the basement to
make it look as if she had been murdered, sending
John Ramsey or anybody else non police oriented to go
down there. All they're thinking is I'm going to go
(07:37):
straight and I'm fixing this because now whatever they had
staged before that had to remain static. Huh. I can
get rid of all the evidence right now. I'm going
to rip off the duct tape. I'm going to undo
this Garrett around her neck. I mean, I'm evidence is
all gone, every bit of it is totally wipe from
the crime scene. Now they have to try to piece
(07:57):
it back together to find out how was she strangled.
We got the rope, well, what was it was nylon.
H there had been.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, it's it's a woven it's a woven nylon rope.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yeah, and it was tied into a knot in a
certain way. But then the gear they was actually a
stick something used from Patsy Ramsey's hobby kit was used
to turn it and it broke.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah. It's a groat. Uh. Yeah, some people say garrot garroat.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
And it's used as this this weapon, and it is
a weapon. Groats are known as weapons. That's how they're defined.
Did you know and here's an interesting little aside. Did
you know that the garrotting or groating of individuals for
tom I think it may have been in France. I
can't remember where specifically that this was an execution method.
(08:51):
Do you know that now they used to do it. Yeah,
they would. They would take an individual and you can
see wood carvings of these they're out there, lithiographs or
whatever they're called. I can't remember. Where the individual is
seated in a chair and bounds like their hands are
bound behind them. It's a straight back chair in like
(09:12):
a courtyard where the public education execution would take place,
and they would put a garrot groat around the neck
of the individual and turn it from the back like
this and slowly kill the person. In public views, it's
an agonizing way to die because with every turn of
(09:33):
that thing, you are exerting more and more pressure. You know,
you begin to see the tongue balls, the eyes balls.
They become cyanautic, all these things you know now. Years
ago I worked a series as kind of a I
hate to say this, diminishing diminishing the lives of the
(09:54):
individuals were killed, but it was like a short series
of serial killings. It's like six victims to this guy's count,
and he was killing prostitutes. And he used to corot
after he had drugged him. And he had multiple places
where he would reset the garrot and realign it. And
his was made out of wire, by the way, and
(10:17):
he would take it and he would turn it and
they would get to the point of losing consciousness, he'd
release it and then he'd reinitiate the thing. So make
no mistake when you see, this is not like just
grabbing a cord. Okay, this is not like just grabbing
a cord where you're going to wrap it around so
our piece of rope or a coat hanger or a weapon,
(10:41):
as we say, a weapon of convenience. This is thought out.
This is something that was used in order to to
elicit terror upon the victim. I have no doubt in
my mind this was a sadistic killing. And the thing
that's fascinating about this, Dave, is that you know, John
(11:03):
Ramsay said in his statement that if I remember correctly
and I think not statement, this was in the interview
when he saw this thing, it was tied so tight
he couldn't he couldn't unbind it. And this is what
is referred to as a very complex knot. That's why
(11:24):
that they believed that whoever fixed this thing had experience
with tie knots and complex knots. That's that has always
that's been one of these things that has rung through
And when you see her autopsy pictures, you can see
(11:45):
this this uh, the complexity of this thing, that ligature
(12:05):
that's used in this case, Given the complexity of this knot,
I hope that retrospectively, due care was taken with this thing,
because you know what it can offer up. It can
offer up DNA because for every turn and twist of
that knot, if the individual is not gloved They're touching
(12:28):
multiple surfaces on this thing as it's being constructed, and
the paintbrush stick thing is that goes without saying, obviously,
but just the surfaces of that knot and when you
think about the complexity of it, that would require this
thing to be manipulated to a great degree. So I'm
(12:51):
wondering if due care was taken with that ligature itself.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
When I was hearing them talk about the ligature and
the rot I remember John Wayne Gacy doing the same thing,
using it to turn and torture. You know that that
was the first one I'd actually heard of, and then
seeing this one, and all I could think of is
this is something that required time and preparation. So with
(13:16):
the time of preparation that went into if it was
somebody who just snuck in in the middle of the
night and was able to do this, you realize that
they have to know the building enough to know where
they can access the house in the middle of the night.
They have to be able to find themselves walking around
the house without waking anybody up through this maze of places.
(13:37):
Then they have to be able to get her out
of her bed, take her downstairs, and kill her and
then they've done. They came in, and they've come into
the house and killed her in the middle of the night,
and then bother to leave a ransom note. Why would
they leave a ransom note, Joe, if they've killed her
and left her behind. If you're going to leave a
ransom note, there would have to be the child would
(13:58):
have to be gone for it mean anything. And since
the child is already dead and left behind, why leave her?
Why would anybody leave a ransom note? You have no ransom.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Yeah, And you know, the only thing I could really
think a brother was the fact that somebody was trying
to put somebody off scent if you will, yeah, you know,
to try to misdirect you see that, Yeah, well, to
try to yeah, to try to sell people on the
fact that she's elsewhere. But why would you leave the
(14:31):
body behind? That's what I don't I don't I don't
understand that. And you know, two point three relative to
this reporter's assessment, you know, she she had alluded to
the fact that that this detective Bob Whitson, you know,
it said that that he asked for handwriting from both
(14:53):
John and Patsy, and which you know he received back
in uh, you know, from two notebook pads, and you
could see those on the documentary they showed they demonstrated
those pads. I'd never seen those before. So I'm with
her on this, you know, which was you know, keep
(15:14):
keep in mind, this is this is prior to the
days of texting, you know, or prior to the days
of people sitting down. I mean, I still, like, Lord knows,
my precious wife, she she can't live without an actual calendar.
She has physically has a calendar. She writes everything in
each day. And so but you know, that's that's the
way things have, you know, were always done. You had
(15:37):
a notebook that you would write and enter things into,
and so that's where they get that would be referred to. Again,
I think we just mentioned this in one of our
actually one of our recent episodes. But you know, this
is where it plays into getting an exemplar of writing.
So you have a real you have a real time
(15:59):
exis impl are or an example of what an individual's
writing looks like in the course of day to day life. Here,
you're not it's not a dictated exemplar where you ask
someone you dictate to them what is written. You know,
in a ransom note and you dictate to them and say,
(16:21):
write this statement down. This is a real life exemplar
of how they normally write. So the idea is that
you take and compare what you see in the notebook
to what to what you have in this ransom note,
and are there any similarities, you know, relative to this.
(16:45):
But when I've always been fascinated by the fact that
they believe that the notebook that the note was written
in is was property of the of the ramses, and
that it was physically there and it was actually discovered,
I believe you know too, to have probably what's referred
(17:09):
to as kind of a pressure connection where if any
of you, any of you guys you know know this,
if you say, for instance, you've seen it in movies,
it's an old movie trope with somebody will write a
note and they'll rip the sheet out, and then you
can take a pencil, you know, and scratch over the
surface of it, and all of a sudden, hidden writing
writing begins to appear. You can actually see the pressure
(17:33):
through the page. That means that somebody's leaning forward, pressing
down with the writing device, and they create, you know,
these little creases in a note and so that note
would be taken away. And Dave, this note is so
my god, it's so extensive because you know, I don't
(17:53):
know about for you, but you know, you always think
about you know, I have a I will kill everybody here,
provide this money and drop it off at this address.
That's not That's not what we're talking about here. We're
talking about something that's highly complex. You know, they're they're
establishing who we are. We're part of a foreign fact.
(18:15):
Oh my god, foreign faction God in Boulder, Colorado. I'm
not saying that foreigner a university, but I'm just saying,
out of all the people in the world, you know,
you're going to show up and yeah, I mean people
have said that, you know John, you know, John's very
wealthy man. He's involved in software. You know, I'm assuming
that you know, he's come across. But you know, there's
(18:37):
very specific details. I think the thing that really, you know,
caught people's eye. Dave and I guess we're number three
or number four here, you know in this reveal for her,
for this reporter is the one hundred and eighteen thousand
dollars you know why number? Yeah, well that that is
(18:58):
an odd number. Why aren't you going to ask for
a quarter of a million dollars if you're talking about
you're talking about dude, that's a multimillionaire. Yea, all right?
(19:22):
Why one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars? Why why not
a round figure like two hundred thousand, quarter of a
mill Why not five hundred thousand? Why not a million?
You know, if you're going to dude, if you're going
to run the risk, because kidnapping is a federal offense
and you will get life imprisonment for it. If dude,
(19:44):
if you're going to roll the bones here man, go
all in. Why one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars? Specific that? Yeah, exactly,
But who knows that information?
Speaker 2 (19:55):
There's something about the note I want to share with you.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I looked this up at the because I was curious
as to win was Patsy Ramsey born. And the reason
is in the early seventies, Patricia Hurst was kidnapped by
the Symbionese Liberation Army, yes, the SLA, and they kidnapped her,
(20:21):
they held her, and eventually, after long, in a period
of time, she had started to go along with them.
She was on camera robbing a bank has the gun
in her hand, and they said she's full on participating
in the robbery. It was a big deal in the
early seventies, mid seventies. Well for Pats Ramsey being born
in nineteen fifty six, she's going to be eighteen to
(20:42):
twenty years old when the whole Patricia thing's going on,
Patricia Hurst deal. So when I saw the note s
Victory SBTC, SLA Simboni's Liberation Army SBTC, so any in
my brain, I'm thinking, why is she writ OGNI she
But why is the kidnapper specifically writing to John and
(21:05):
not both of them? The Ramseys are a couple, this
is their child. She's singling out of John because in
my mind she's writing, I'm and she's dead and gone now.
And I know that there are people who believe that whatever.
I don't buy the note, Joe, the ransom note is
too long, too specific. One hundred and eighteen thousand dollars
(21:25):
That was his bonus that year, which, my goodness, I've
never seen a bonus tempercent in my life.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
And who has who has specific who has specific knowledge
of how much? Now I got to tell you, John
Ramsey does not strike me as somebody that would go
out to a bar, yeah, and sit there and say, Hey,
everybody drinks on me. I got one hundred and eighteen
(21:54):
thousand dollars bonus this year. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
He seems like the kund he's a business guy. Yeah,
all right, he seems like the kind of person he's
going to know more than he's revealing. And he's certainly
not going to tell you, you know, I mean, you know,
revealing how much money you got for bonuses? Right up
there were revealing your bathroom habits. It's just certain things
(22:18):
that you don't talk about, you know. And who would
have access to that information? Well, obviously those that are
within his very inner circle, and they hadn't been in
Boulder a long long time. Who in their inner circle
of friends would he have felt comfortable enough with with
(22:40):
sharing the fact that he got one hundred and eighteen
thousand dollars bonus. Well you step out of that circle
and you begin to think, well, who who might know
at work? Well, somebody's got to cut the check, right,
So who at work would know that that he got
one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars bonus? And listen there's
(23:02):
jealous people at work. The Lord knows you've encountered them.
I've encountered and they wish you ill will would somebody
be willing to go to that length to do this
kind of horrible thing to this little kid because of
the fact that he got one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars?
Is that that is money the motivation? Because if money
(23:26):
is the motivation, why are you going to leave the
kidnapped subject in the house because there was never any
intention to collect money.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Right because the child is left behind dead. The reason
you would pay the ransom is so your child has
returned to you alive, but you've left the child dead
in the house. There's no reason for you really think
they're going to just run down to the bank and
get one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars out and give
it to you without checking the house, without looking around
(23:58):
the house. But on top of that, Joe, think about this,
who writes down this is actually in a note? A
lot of people don't catch on. Make sure that you
bring an adequate size attache to the bank. When you
get home, you will put the money in a brown
paper bag. Well, what bring it? Who actually thinks like
(24:21):
that to write that down in a note, bank's on
it big enough to put the money in. It's like,
this is so overly specific that you had the time
to write this out. If you're in a hurry. You
came to kidnap a child and you just accidentally killed her.
Now you're leaving her behind. Why are you bothering over
the note. The longer you're there, the more chances you
have to be caught the ransom. The reason for you
(24:43):
getting money is dead. Get out of the house. Now,
why are you leaving a note?
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I don't understand how much space can one hundred and
eighteen thousand dollars take up if you're getting denominations of
one hundred dollars bills. Yeah, I can't imagine it's going
to be. You know, it's not like you're walking, you know,
walking down the street like Scrooge McDuck and you've got
gold coins falling out of your wheelbarrow, your gold wheelbar
It's not like that. It's just the whole thing, you know,
(25:11):
kind of you know, stinks to high heaven. Yeah, but
then you you know, when you consider all of that.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
I will call you between eight am and ten am tomorrow,
the delivery will be exhausting. I advise you to get
rest be rested, John, I mean Joe. Really it says
that in this note the delivery will be exhausting, so
I advise you to be rested. The whole thing just reeks,
(25:48):
and it's so long and so convoluted. This makes no sense.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
And if who has the again I use the term
intestinal fortitude because you have to have nervous Still, let's
just let's just say, all right, for grins and giggles,
that we are a malevolent individual that shows up at
(26:13):
this house, okay, and you have the intestinal fortitude to
take a notepad that allegedly belonged in the house and
sit down where people sit down to consume breakfast. I
guess maybe in that location, and you sit there and
(26:37):
you take the time. You know, do this person show
up with their own pen or do they borrow this
as well? And they sit there and construct this note,
and then we'll take it off, and we're going to
take it and put it here on the tread of
the staircase immediately, you know, on the other side of
the wall here, who has that? That requires nerves of steel?
(27:00):
Because I don't care how big a house is. If
there's something going on within a house at night, I'll
give you for instance, my wife hears everything. I mean
she does. I don't wake up for thunder. You know,
why did you hear that storm last night? Hunt? No,
I didn't. Oh my god, I was up all night.
I started to wake you up. Well why didn't you?
(27:20):
I couldn't. You were asleep. I can get you wake up.
You know, you know what I'm saying. You know, I
guess you know. You could say, well, yeah, they're isolated
in the house. They're bettering the master is upstairs. They're
not going to hear this. But it would take nerves
of still to sit down there and write this note
and then deposit this thing on the staircase, which for
(27:44):
me is is quite quite interesting and just you know,
maybe we've beat this dead horse. I don't know, but
it's just the fact that the length of the thing
and the specificity of it, and then this kind of
drawn out narrative you know, that runs through it, identifying.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Your southern good sense.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Come on, I know, I mean, what does that even mean?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Why does somebody put that in there?
Speaker 1 (28:11):
I know it's it's it's bizarre. I mean, now, I
guess you could say they are aware that he has
recently relocated to Colorado, and they're they're trying to hone
in on that specific detail of his life. Maybe it's
an indication that they know about him, they know where
(28:34):
he comes from. Okay, maybe it's alluding to that. I
have no idea, but for me, uh, this individual that
wrote this first off had to have nerves of steel,
and then secondly, they also have to have pretty substantial
constitution as well, because they're going to go downstairs assuming
that the same person that wrote the note had something
(28:56):
to do with Jean Benet's death, which, of course I
believe that you're going to torture and yes, I will
use that term torture and murder by not only strangling, uh,
this child, but beating her to the point where her
(29:20):
skull fractures. Dave, and that's another point that that the
author of this article from Busfeed, you know, made a
point of that, you know, uh, that it was at
that point in time that they they realized because you know,
for the longest time they had just said that she
had been strangled. No one ever said anything about this insult.
(29:42):
The show, Yeah, that she had sustained well, yeah, I knew.
Well it was famously it was famously brought about in
that the infamous CBS show, you know, because they did
these demonstrations doctor Werner Spitz, who and we we remember
we actually did a memoriam of episode of Bodybacks when,
(30:08):
you know, because Verner Spitz died, him and him and
Cyril died pretty close to one another, and I talked
about it. Verner Spitz is he's one of the godfathers.
He preceded doctor Weck. He's even in an older generation.
(30:28):
And you know, he wrote the definitive text on on forensics,
on forensic pathology, and you know, they talked about the
utilization of potentially I think that their conclusion was a
flashlight or a cylindrical like object in order to generate
this kind of And what was really ghastly about that
show is that they were attempting to say that jam
(30:51):
Manet's brother had something to do with this. And I
think probably the most the most repugnant part of that
program was the fact that they brought in a nine
year old child, I know, to do the demonstration where
they had a mocked up skull and they and you
(31:13):
can go on line and see it, and it was
it was really in poor taste. As far as I'm concerned,
this is nothing I would ever want to involve myself in.
Where you know this, You've got this little boy, an actor,
I guess, that's raining down blows on this facsimile of
a skull that actually is in jail so that it
(31:34):
mimics tissue, and he's driving this thing down onto you know,
onto the the you know, the pretend body here.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
It seems like something you would see on hard copy
in the late eighties, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah, yeah, it was in really poor taste, very poor taste.
I can't you know, I can't imagine, you know, being
a parent and watching this thing and know what's what
they're they're angling toward towards this idea that the nine
year old brother did this, and of course they you know,
(32:08):
CBS wound up paying the piper for that, and you know,
I often thought, I often thought that this is just
my musing here. I really thought that maybe CBS was
going all in on this idea that the family had
something to do with this, and so they thought, yeah,
(32:28):
we're going to run the risk of getting sued if
they sue us, we're not going to settle, which they
wound up doing. We're not going to settle, and we're
going to wind up having depositions. And that's really the
way I had looked at this early on. Of course,
they wound up wound up settling, you know, this particular case,
and it was just the number was eye popping, you know,
(32:53):
just absolutely eye popping. And I don't know what they
eventually settled for. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this his
body bags,
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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