JonBenet Parents Cleared Of Murder.

[Saddle Bronc 124]

IMO, a case that's been unsolved over twice the length of the victim's lifetime should go to the "unsolvable--closed" archives.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I watched a news report last night about this. Supposedly, the Prosecutor was using a new method, called 'touch DNA' which could find DNA from someone who merely touched the victim or their clothes. This was the first time it's been used. Mr. Ramsey was looking gleeful and saying he's glad that now his family's name is cleared, however (this is a biggie), the police never brought any charges against anyone in the family, even his now deceased wife. I thought it was then odd, for the Prosecutor to publicly apologize to the family - what were they apologizing for? For ever suspecting them? That's ridiculous - suspicions and accusations are two very different things.

......

Here's an interesting take on the case for anyone interested...

JonBenet's Mother Was Killer, Detective Says

By MICHAEL JANOFSK, NYT

A former Boulder, Colo., police detective who spent almost two years investigating the killing of JonBenet Ramsey says in a new book that he and other investigators concluded that the 6-year-old girl had been killed by her mother, Patsy Ramsey.

The detective, Steve Thomas, who resigned from the police department in mid-1998, writes that he concluded that Mrs. Ramsey strangled her daughter in a panic on Christmas night 1996 after accidentally causing a serious wound to the little girl's head. He also contends that the girl's father, John Ramsey, after realizing what had happened, ''chose to protect his wife'' rather than help the authorities determine what had happened.

By outlining his theory in ''JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation'' (St. Martin's Press), which is scheduled to be released to the public on Tuesday, Mr. Thomas has become the first person with direct knowledge of the investigation to publicly accuse Mrs. Ramsey of killing her daughter. He also says he concluded that Mr. Ramsey played no role in the girl's death.

The accusations against Mrs. Ramsey were disputed by her lawyer, L. Lin Wood, who called them ''fiction and utter nonsense,'' and other Boulder officials are believed to have views that differ from Mr. Thomas's.

Mr. Wood said in an interview that Mr. Thomas's theory ''is refuted in its entirety by medical evidence.''

Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey deny they were involved in the killing. In their own book, ''Death of Innocence'' (Thomas Nelson), which was released last month, they argue that JonBenet was killed by an intruder, a theory that some detectives favor. Mr. Thomas concedes in his book that one veteran homicide detective who worked on the case, Lou Smit, believes that the evidence suggests someone broke into the Ramseys' home in Boulder, strangled JonBenet ''in some sort of autoerotic fantasy'' and hid her body in the basement where Mr. Ramsey discovered it the next morning.

Guided by a police axiom that ''murders are usually what they seem,'' Mr. Thomas counters, ''the simplest explanation for what has gone into the books as one of the most perplexing and notorious murders of the decade is also the truth.''

Mr. Thomas's book is unlikely to spur any new police action. His theory of the crime, as well as Mr. Smit's, have been vetted by investigators and Alex Hunter, the Boulder district attorney. The conflicting views, which mirror conflicting evidence, were largely the reason Mr. Hunter dismissed a grand jury last October that heard evidence in the case for 13 months without indicting anyone. As Mr. Thomas admits in his book, Mr. Hunter and others did not feel confident that all the evidence pointed in one direction.

Mr. Hunter declined to discuss any specific points raised by Mr. Thomas, but said in an interview, ''It is improper in my judgment for a cop to be talking about confidential information in an ongoing case.''

Despite the lack of any indictments, the authorities in Boulder said they were keeping the Ramseys ''under the umbrella of suspicion,'' as Mark Beckner, Boulder police chief, told reporters after the grand jury was dismissed. But nobody in the case before Mr. Thomas had revealed how detectives believed one sequence of events might point to Mrs. Ramsey as the killer.

By Mr. Thomas's analysis, Mrs. Ramsey had grown frazzled by Christmas night 1996 because of ''an approaching 40th birthday, the busy holiday season, an exhausting Christmas Day and an argument with JonBenet'' over a bed-wetting incident that led to ''some sort of explosive encounter in the child's bathroom'' that resulted in a mortal head wound.

Mr. Thomas says he concluded that while JonBenet's head was probably injured by accident, Mrs. Ramsey, rather than summon help, panicked after her daughter fell unconscious. That, he says, led her to write a note suggesting that JonBenet had been kidnapped, after which she ''faced the major problem of what to do with the body.''

It was at that point, Mr. Thomas concludes, that the accident turned to murder. He says that on the way to placing her in a remote room of the basement, Mrs. Ramsey realized JonBenet was still alive. ''Only feet away was her paint tote,'' he writes. ''She grabbed a paintbrush and broke it to fashion the garrote with some cord. Then she looped the cord around the girl's neck.'' To make it look like a kidnapping, he says, Mrs. Ramsey tied the girl's wrists and taped over her mouth.

Mr. Smit, a former Colorado Springs detective who worked on hundreds of homicide cases before joining the Ramsey case at Mr. Hunter's invitation in 1997, has often said that he believes the parents are innocent. He contends that JonBenet was a victim of a pedophile who molested her, used a stun gun to disable her and, after JonBenet began screaming, killed her with a blow to the head, possibly with a flashlight. Mr. Smit, who resigned from the case after a year, has also said that medical evidence supports his theory more than Mr. Thomas's.

But Mr. Thomas, certain of his interpretation of the evidence, still regards Mr. Smit as a friend but ultimately dismisses him in the book ''as a major problem'' whose views went a long way toward what the author contends was deferential treatment of the Ramseys by prosecutors in the district attorney's office. That stance, more than anything, Mr. Thomas writes, led to his resignation from the police force.

Mr. Wood said that Mr. Thomas's accusations could expose him to a lawsuit, a view echoed by Hal Haddon, a lawyer who represents Mr. Ramsey. Mr. Wood also said it was inconceivable that either of the Ramseys could have killed their daughter, or if one had, that the other could have covered it up.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...mp;pagewanted=2

Edited July 10, 2008 by Jabberwocky

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Well the whole "where there's smoke, there's fire" does a lot of damage to people in cases like this. People are judged in the public eye and connections are made that aren't supported by law - someone being arrested is often enough for someone to condemn them and wish them to be hung up by the nads. We've seen it on here a few times.