If they HAVE obtained his DNA, then CBI can run the DNA marker tests, and then anyone in LE having authorized access to the information could compare the results to the profile of JonBenet's killer for a match or an exclusion. Oliva's DNA does not have to be in CODIS for CBI to analyze Oliva's DNA and for them or for local LE to compare the results to JonBenet's killer's markers on this.

I and others just keep saying this. Am I wrong? Am I missing something? I just keep repeating this. And then you just keep bringing up the same thing about it. Don't you think they've sampled Oliva's DNA by now? Can they be that incompetent?

>I think his hand writing does match but who am I to say.
>LovelyPigeon put it up a year ago and we all examined it
>and came to the conclusion it was very close.
Yes, and we thank LovelyPigeon for her efforts. However, as she pointed out, it is not just similarities but differences that matter.
Also, several dozen people have lettering habits that are reminiscent of portions of the ransom note.

I tend to place handwriting at the bottom of the list of reliable evidence and would be much more interested in his dna and his alibi than in his penmanship.

Unfortunately, we have no information with regard to his dna or his alibi.

We do have a statement from him that he did not hurt and kill JonBenet, but not even a statement as to whether he 'hurt OR killed JonBenet'.

I think it would be so scandalous for the BPD to have failed to test his dna or to have concealed the results that strongly implicated him, so therefore I conclude that he must in fact be innocent, but I sure wish we had more than supposition to deal with.

Yes, including whoever locked the fatal bomb device on the neck of pizza delivery man Brian Wells last August. I surely would like to see that one solved. And would like to see where the bomb maker learned to print, learned to spell "resturaunt" and "durring." He also made at least one syntax type of glitch. Is English the bomber's native language?

jameson has started a thread elsewhere on the forum about the strange Brian Wells bank holdup/homicide.

I don't think the misspellings were on purpose. The intruder started spelling "denied" as "dinied" and corrected it in the note.

http://www.webbsleuths.com/dcf/jbr_evidence/56.html

"I don't think the misspellings were on purpose."

An analysis that I did several months ago of this type of misspelling plus a listing of all the potential misspellings that were not made in the ransom note (in other words, the available data) strongly support the opposite conclusion, namely that the misspellings were purposefully done.

If there is a list of commonly misspelled words and they appear on the ransom note correctly spelled, one can assume that the actual spelling errors are probably intentional.

I've always felt that anyone who was so careful about noise, footprints, fingerprints, and the like was not going to be suddenly stupid about spelling in his great tome. Even if all those supposed movie quotes came to him on the spur of the moment, he still put effort into that note. Errors are intentional.

For anyone who may have missed them, here are a few links:

For reference, The Ransom Note:

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ransom1.html

TWO GENTLEMEN and ADDITION and SUBTRACTION threads:

http://www.webbsleuths.com/cgi-bin/dcf/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=1618&forum=DCForumID101

http://www.webbsleuths.com/cgi-bin/dcf/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=1628&forum=DCForumID101

http://www.webbsleuths.com/cgi-bin/dcf/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=1637&forum=DCForumID101

These are great threads, classic Webbsleuths at its best IMO.

Errors were not intenional, imo.

It's interesting about the dictionary being open to the page the word incest was on (rumor?). I think the guy was looking up spellings for words he didn't know how to spell but didn't want it to look too perfect so he intentionally misspelled some words.

ST book, HB p263 – page 293 PB

"Then, while reviewing a list of book titles from the Ramsey home at the request of Don Foster, I dug out the Polaroid photographs from the Evidence Room. Using magnifying glasses, evidence tech Pat Peck and I compared the titles on the list with what the pictures showed. Entire shelves of books had been overlooked.

"When we checked the photos from a big manila envelope marked as evidence #85KKY, I almost fell out of my chair, and Peck inhaled in sharp surprise. A PICTURE SHOWED WEBSTER'S NEW COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY ON A COFFEE TABLE IN THE FIRST FLOOR STUDY, THE CORNER OF THE LOWER LEFT-HAND PAGE SHARPLY CREASED AND POINTING LIKE AN ARROW TO THE WORD INCEST. Somebody had apparently been looking for a definition of sexual contact between family members.

This is an envelope of Ramsey photos - marked evidence 85KKY. And in one of those photos - in that envelope of Ramsey photos - is A PHOTO OF this dictionary.

List of evidence 86KKY is Letter to Santa , 88KKY is 7 videotapes, 89KKY is 1 VHS tape, 90KKY is 3 videotapes. The list goes on with KKY collecting film, CD Roms, floppy discs, computer ... KKY is is Kerry Yamaguchi.

We have been led to believe that this photo was a crime scene photo. It is NOT. Crime scene photos are not marked 85KKY. We have been led to believe the dictionary was open on the table the day of the crime. Seems pretty clear to me that the dictionary at the scene of the crime was just a photo that had this "dog-eared" dictionary in it. Not a crime scene photo. Not a dictionary that was open and on the table the DAY the crime scene was processed.

I have read (around the internet) many, many posters who were led to believe (by the way in which Thomas portrays this "evidence") that there was a dictionary sitting on the table, opened to a dog-eared page, with the corner bent in such a way as to be pointing like an arrow to the word "incest". This dictionary was interpreted to have been on the table on the day they processed the crime scene and a crime scene photo was evidence of that fact.

Read more carefully, there is no such evidence at all. Read more carefully, there is no crime scene photo. Read more carefully, it is HIGHLY DOUBTFUL that he and Peck could have ascertained the page was opened to the one bearing the word "incest". I agree, no one would be taking a picture of their dictionary. Steve Thomas fails to tell us what the photo's PRIMARY focus was (maybe John or some other Ramsey family member sitting at the desk), with a view of the table and an open book on it that MIGHT have been a dictionary (isn't Webster's Collegiate red and blue? Maybe it was the color of the book that led him to jump to that conclusion.)

Either Steve Thomas does not need much to set his imagination into motion (overdrive) or he INTENTIONALLY misleads the reader by a careful choice of words implying evidence that, when examined more closely, is in fact NOT evidence of anything. I think he does both.

I don't read ST's book. I did once and that was enough for me to know I didn't want to use it as a reference book.

BUT, if the photo exists, how does anyone know when it was taken and more importantly who did it? If it exists, who knows whether the killer took the photo or not? It is possible that the intruder had been in the house before and photographed the dictionary then. Maybe it was taken the day JB was murdered? Why would the Ramseys own such a photo? Did they ever say the photo belonged to them?

If it doesn't belong to them perhaps it was taken and placed among the family photos to cast suspicion on John Ramsey?

OR ST could have lied and there was no such photo?

Mostly a family photo features people, pets, ... rarely the family dictionary. And even more rarely a closeup of the family dictionary!

Anyone care to think just how many family photo albums you would have to go through before you found a photo of a dictionary? Dogs, cats and goldfish get photographed before dictionaries do. Just about everything would get photographed before a dictionary would.

Hi Justice_Seeker

It wasn't your post that struck the nerve, it was the subject of the dictionary -- the whole misleading presentation of it in ST's book.

Questions for Steve Thomas:

1. If the book was open, how did he know it was a Webster's Collegiate dictionary? If the book was closed, I can see how he would know (by its color).

2. If the book was open, how was he able to read what page it was open to? Surely, as Don has pointed out, the photo was not OF the dictionary. The dictionary was most likely just part of superfluous background in the photo.

3. How does a detective jump to such a conclusion (that the page was opened to the word "incest") when we all know that a dictionary has several words on a page and that if a book is open, TWO pages are there for viewing?

4. And, most importantly of all, why would a detective who has jumped to such a conclusion WRITE about it in a book about an ongoing murder investigation as though the presumed conclusion were correct and undeniable?

Remember, this is the same "detective" who told us:

The date on JBR's tombstone was evidence of the Ramseys' guilt.

Only guilty people need lawyers, and then lawyered himself up for a CIVIL action.

Patsy Ramsey left the house the night of the murder and hid all of the evidence so well it was never found, and did so without leaving any evidence she left the house.

I have never understood why he had any credibility, at least from the time his book was published. The media pretty much gave him a free ride during the media blitz, except for Dan Abrams.

Former Boulder Detective Makes His Case In Book
... A Case He Couldn't Make In A Courtroom: That Patsy Was To Blame
by Charlie Brennan

April 2000

Nobody else is saying it, so it appears this falls to me:

Steve Thomas is the little kid who, protesting a call by the ump, takes his bat and ball and quits, bringing the game to an end for everyone.

Thomas is the former Boulder police detective who resigned in protest over the handling of the JonBenet Ramsey murder, and is now telling all in his book published Tuesday, April 11, by St. Martin's Press, "JonBenet -- Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation." It is co-authored by veteran Boulder County non-fiction writer Don Davis.

If there was any question as to whether this case might someday be prosecuted, that question has been answered. It won't. Thomas empties his three years of bitter frustration onto the pages of a book that, while compelling reading for any Ramseyphile, could also serve as exhibits A-through-Z for defense attorneys, should this beleaguered case ever limp battered and bloodied into a courtroom.

We pause for this disclosure: I am far from a disinterested observer in this matter. I worked for 16 months in collaboration with Lawrence Schiller on another Ramsey book, "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town," published in February 1999.

It was, I feel, the definitive book on the Christmas night 1996 murder of Boulder's six-year-old child beauty queen -- until now. A significant number of law enforcement personnel cooperated with Schiller and myself by sharing details they felt could be divulged without compromising the investigation or precluding a future prosecution.

Certainly, we didn't cast all players in an entirely positive light. We exposed bizarre subplots to the drama -- police and prosecutors dallying with a tabloid reporter to advance their own personal vendettas, for example -- that left many shaking their heads in disbelief. The tales of extreme dysfunction between and among some officials involved in this case are already widely chronicled.

Thomas now picks the scabs and the blood is flowing anew.

He holds nothing back in his quiver, blasting District Attorney Alex Hunter ("a Teflon politician who was always one step removed from any carnage left behind by his office"), both the Boulder police chiefs he served under (mocking former Chief Tom Koby's affection for "bluesky psychobabble"), and even dumps on many peers in the detective bureau. The infallible and unforgiving Thomas is not the kind of person you want to unwittingly cut off in traffic.

In an interview with the Denver Post, Thomas declined to say whether the book was based on his own notes or case files. I can answer that one. It's clearly based on case files, some of which he obviously must have carted home sometime before or after noisily throwing down his badge on Aug. 6, 1998.

Readers can see that for themselves as early as page 14, where Thomas and Davis reprint a verbatim transcript of Patsy Ramsey's call to 911. It's all there, down to the last "(inaudible)." As a student of the case who was outside the Ramseys' home to see JonBenet wheeled away past the twinkling white Christmas lights in a body bag, I know this transcript has previously appeared nowhere else. It's not part of any file that is open to the public.

Thomas not only violates the spirit of the oath he took as a law enforcement officer. He also tramples two citizens' rights to a presumption of innocence.

His book makes the case Thomas couldn't make in a courtroom. He flatly declares Patsy committed the murder in a fit of rage over bed-wetting, and that her husband joined the next morning in a cover-up. Thomas isn't alone in embracing such a theory. But this is the first time a central figure in the investigation has dared say so for the record.

In writing "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town," Schiller and I certainly had our own theories, but we spared readers our conjecture. Instead, we clearly laid out the reasons that many believe the Ramseys are guilty, and the reasons that others consider them innocent. We invited readers to draw their own conclusions.

Call me old-fashioned, but for a former detective to unilaterally issue his own indictment through a publisher and not a courtroom, in a case still under investigation, is flat wrong.

Thomas had no experience as a homicide investigator prior to arriving on this stage. He couldn't put together a case that would stand up in a courtroom. Not to be denied, he's doing so in a book. Here, he's unbound by such distractions as the rules that govern evidence.

It should be noted that Thomas walked away from law enforcement one month before a grand jury was even convened in this matter. That panel worked for 13 months after he was gone and still couldn't come up with grounds to indict John and Patsy Ramsey or anyone else.

If I can be forgiven another baseball analogy, it's as if Steve Thomas is the would-be slugger who whiffs in every at-bat during the big game -- then smacks it over the wall off a batting tee in front of the vacant seats after the crowd's gone home.

The product of Thomas and Davis' labors is, no question, essential reading for anyone with an interest in the child murder heard 'round the world. This is the first book published to date from a key participant in the investigation. Its pages carry the ringside sense of intimacy.

But by doing it this way, at this time, Thomas does a disservice to the couple he accuses, to the officers he leaves behind, and most of all, to the memory of a little girl whose murder is now far less likely to be avenged.

There is this irony. Thomas believes Patsy Ramsey struck her daughter in a rage -- then, mistakenly believing JonBenet already dead, applied a garrote to disguise the crime as something else. In taking that second, bizarre step, Thomas believes, Patsy Ramsey then actually killed JonBenet for real.

The ex-detective may well have done the same, misreading this case as over -- then making darn sure that it is.

I wouldn't care so much if Thomas just released the truth - the whole truth and nothing but..... but that isn't what happened. He left out things and twisted others - - and the book was not facts, it was theory.

Brennan and Schiller did the best they couldback then - - I wonder what they might do now - - we have so much more to work with.

Remember his California friend had tapes from Oliva - - listening to those tapes reminded me of the song Aqualung.

If the killer wanted to hurt John Ramsey, why go for the little girl? Why not his wife or son? Why not go after some of hismoney for real?

The killer did sexually assault JonBenét. Hemight have done it to add insultto injury, but most people in LE think if THAT was the motive for the sexual assault, the body would have been left with the genitals exposed.

I think it is safe to say we really should be looking for a man who is a pedophile at heart.

(Bumping a few threads to continue a few discussions - - unfortunately some of these threads were archived and can't be brought back - - feelfree to restart.)

Unless he learned to write letters like the ransom note, his handwriting sure looks similar. Being supposedly a paranoid schizo, and interested in the case--who knows? I can't explain why the DNA didn't match (if it was compared)....except he had an accomplice....or a lot of people write d's and a's like in the ransom note. He had buddies---on at least one occasion he drew attention to himself and a guy with the last name of "Savage."

Then there's Michael's interview about the phone call where Oliva said he hurt a child----'course that might be due to mental illness or substance abuse.

Some have used the term 'experimenting' in connection with a rather inexperienced neighborhood kid of some sort, yet many have felt that the sexual activity was sufficient to be viewed as a sex crime rather than some mere "added touch" just to inflame the parents rage.

I've sometimes wondered if the intruder did not have conflicted emotions about his desires and his enjoyment. If he would prefer an adult female but was for some reason 'limited' by a lack of social skills, he might have felt a conflict over what he was doing. Conversely, he may have found himself penning the note but feeling far more anticipation about the sexual aspects of what he intended than he ever felt he would feel. He may have liked it far more than he wanted to admit to himself and therefore re-positioned her panties.

Does anyone have details on just what and where Gary Oliva did with that seven year old girl that got him a stint in an Oregon Asylum of some sort.

One reason Gary Oliva was often booked under false names is that he not only knew all these homeless people but he gave their correct birthdays to the police when he was questioned.

If you have a statewide database in your state, look up the registered sex offenders in your neighborhood. You'll be surprised if you haven't already done this. Now suppose a six-year-old girl was murdered in your neighborhood. What is the likelihood that one of these registered sex offenders did it? In my neighborhood, it appears that many registered sex offenders offended against teenage girls while they themselves were relatively young. If such a crime occurred in my neighborhood, I would certainly want these offenders to be thoroughly checked out, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if none of them did it, including ones that had offended against younger children, if any. It's more likely that it's someone close to the family, especially for the very youngest victims. Only if that person close to the family also lived in the neighborhood (e.g. same house) and was a registered sex offender would I expect there to be a very good chance of a match.

But by all means these people should be checked out. It may be that they have offended again in some other case, and this may come out if they think they are being investigated for a homicide that they didn't commit and want to be cooperative. The whole point of having these lists is to easily locate these convicted offenders. If they aren't going to be used, we shouldn't maintain them.

I like the distinction between 'obvious' suspect and 'good' suspect.
Thats an important distinction to make.

Ofcourse, the BPD never did check up on local parolees during the early weeks of the case! I don't know if they ever did.

That is the link to the transcript