Salon | Newsreal: Free the Boulder Two!

T A B L E+T A L K
What is it about men that makes them so much more violent than women? Join the "Men and Violence: Nature or Nurture" thread in Science and Health.

D A I L Y+Q U O T E
Tori Spelling's little rascals

R E C E N T L Y
Armchair warriors for Zion?
By Jonathan Broder
From the comfort of their homes, wealthy U.S. Jews are helping to destroy the Middle East peace process
(10/16/97)
The next Vietnam war?
By Thi Lam
A peasant revolt threatens the communist regime
(10/15/97)
Spaced out
By David Beers
It's time to grow up and ground the astronauts
(10/14/97)
Exile on dirt road
By Lyn Duff
The U.S. is deporting young drug offenders to "homelands" they have never seen
(10/13/97)
Dragonslayer
By Jonathan Broder
Why Ralph Nader is gunning for Bill Gates
(10/10/97)
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Newsreal Archives
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[The parents of JonBenet ramsey]
FREE the Boulder Two!
Why John and Patsy Ramsey are getting a bum rap.

BY MARK HUNTER | i always wanted to be unique, and now I've made it: I'm the only person in America -- apart from the two accused -- who thinks that John and Patsy Ramsey are being publicly destroyed for a crime they didn't commit.
Perhaps I'm merely ignorant. I don't have access to the police files on the case -- just the copious "evidence" that's been leaked steadily to the National Enquirer, the Globe, Newsweek and Vanity Fair by the Boulder, Colo., cops. Problem is, what they've got, more than 10 months after the slaying, isn't anywhere close to an indictment. So they've done the next best thing: smeared the Ramseys up and down, with the aid of the press, hoping to make their prime suspects crack. It's the same tactic the FBI used against Richard Jewell in the Atlanta Olympics bombing case. And, as with the Jewell case, the cops may be flat out wrong.
Let's look at the case, which rests entirely on circumstantial, often unspeakably tendentious, evidence that the cops have fed to the press.
1. The Ramseys did not act normally after JonBenet's death.
As Vanity Fair recounts it, as John Ramsey laid his daughter's body on the floor after discovering it in his cellar, "he started to moan, while peering around to see who was looking at him." Hmmm. Suspicious. Left unspecified is what constitutes normal behavior when your child has been murdered in your home. Vanity Fair goes to great lengths to portray John Ramsey as a man lacking the ability to express emotions, and it might very well be normal for such a man to moan and look around for help at such a moment.
It might also be normal for this man, in particular, to feel overwhelmed by sick destiny, inasmuch as his wife had been stricken with breast cancer and he had already lived through the death of another child. -- reported by the Globe with the following headline: "DADDY ABUSED JONBENET'S SISTER!: Ramsey girl was killed before she could tell." Actually, the sister died in a car crash, and there is so far no proof that Ramsey "abused" her, however that word is meant.
2. John Ramsey found the body without even looking for it.
According to Vanity Fair, John Ramsey, after being told by a Boulder cop to search for the missing JonBenet, "bolted from the kitchen and headed down to the basement. Fleet White [Ramsey's former friend] told us that Ramsey went directly to a small broken window on the north side of the house and paused ... John said, 'Yeah, I broke it last summer.'" From this, an investigator talking to Vanity Fair concludes, Ramsey "wanted Fleet to see the window to set up an intruder theory, but no one but a small child or a midget could have crawled through that space. While Fleet is looking at the window, John disappears down the hall directly to the little room where the body is."
Of course, there are other uses for a broken window other than crawling through it. Like reaching through the hole in the glass from the outside and opening the lock. But why did Ramsey go directly to that little room? Perhaps because he had a dreadful intuition of what he might find there, or because of some small sign that only a man who lived in that house would notice.

N E X T+P A G E+| Didn't they protest too much?

T A B L E+T A L K What is it about men that makes them so much more violent than women? Join the "Men and Violence: Nature or Nurture" thread in Science and Health. D A I L Y+Q U O T E Tori Spelling's little rascals R E C E N T L Y Armchair warriors for Zion? By Jonathan Broder From the comfort of their homes, wealthy U.S. Jews are helping to destroy the Middle East peace process (10/16/97) The next Vietnam war? By Thi Lam A peasant revolt threatens the communist regime (10/15/97) Spaced out By David Beers It's time to grow up and ground the astronauts (10/14/97) Exile on dirt road By Lyn Duff The U.S. is deporting young drug offenders to "homelands" they have never seen (10/13/97) Dragonslayer By Jonathan Broder Why Ralph Nader is gunning for Bill Gates (10/10/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		FREE the Boulder Two! Why John and Patsy Ramsey are getting a bum rap. BY MARK HUNTER \| i always wanted to be unique, and now I've made it: I'm the only person in America -- apart from the two accused -- who thinks that John and Patsy Ramsey are being publicly destroyed for a crime they didn't commit. Perhaps I'm merely ignorant. I don't have access to the police files on the case -- just the copious "evidence" that's been leaked steadily to the National Enquirer, the Globe, Newsweek and Vanity Fair by the Boulder, Colo., cops. Problem is, what they've got, more than 10 months after the slaying, isn't anywhere close to an indictment. So they've done the next best thing: smeared the Ramseys up and down, with the aid of the press, hoping to make their prime suspects crack. It's the same tactic the FBI used against Richard Jewell in the Atlanta Olympics bombing case. And, as with the Jewell case, the cops may be flat out wrong. Let's look at the case, which rests entirely on circumstantial, often unspeakably tendentious, evidence that the cops have fed to the press. 1. The Ramseys did not act normally after JonBenet's death. As Vanity Fair recounts it, as John Ramsey laid his daughter's body on the floor after discovering it in his cellar, "he started to moan, while peering around to see who was looking at him." Hmmm. Suspicious. Left unspecified is what constitutes normal behavior when your child has been murdered in your home. Vanity Fair goes to great lengths to portray John Ramsey as a man lacking the ability to express emotions, and it might very well be normal for such a man to moan and look around for help at such a moment. It might also be normal for this man, in particular, to feel overwhelmed by sick destiny, inasmuch as his wife had been stricken with breast cancer and he had already lived through the death of another child. -- reported by the Globe with the following headline: "DADDY ABUSED JONBENET'S SISTER!: Ramsey girl was killed before she could tell." Actually, the sister died in a car crash, and there is so far no proof that Ramsey "abused" her, however that word is meant. 2. John Ramsey found the body without even looking for it. According to Vanity Fair, John Ramsey, after being told by a Boulder cop to search for the missing JonBenet, "bolted from the kitchen and headed down to the basement. Fleet White [Ramsey's former friend] told us that Ramsey went directly to a small broken window on the north side of the house and paused ... John said, 'Yeah, I broke it last summer.'" From this, an investigator talking to Vanity Fair concludes, Ramsey "wanted Fleet to see the window to set up an intruder theory, but no one but a small child or a midget could have crawled through that space. While Fleet is looking at the window, John disappears down the hall directly to the little room where the body is." Of course, there are other uses for a broken window other than crawling through it. Like reaching through the hole in the glass from the outside and opening the lock. But why did Ramsey go directly to that little room? Perhaps because he had a dreadful intuition of what he might find there, or because of some small sign that only a man who lived in that house would notice. N E X T+P A G E+\| Didn't they protest too much?