You posted:

Sometimes its just the infliction of pain and humiliation for its own sake and not that the wrongdoer has some present or subsequent sexual gratification.

It is commonly held that an uncontrollable desire to inflict "pain and humiliation for its own sake" IS ultimately sexual in nature, regardless of the rationale employed. On top of that, there is an enormous amount of evidence that suggests that binding, torture, and ligature strangulation of six-year-old females by males is virtually always sexual in nature, as is attested to by perpetrators of this type of crime who have been extensively interviewed in several studies. Either this is a sexual homicide, or it was staged as such.

I don't think your posts are at all objective about this. You seem to so badly want this to be solely revenge against John Ramsey by an out-of-towner that you reject out of hand anything that has a hint of suggestion of any other type of motive, or anything else that you think is incompatible with your theory. This is the same mistake that many BORG theorists make --- "theory influences observation."

The sensible thing to do in view of the vast evidence that this type of crime is virtually always sexual in nature is: Accept that and work with it, while leaving open the possibility that this is incorrect NOT: Reject it while leaving open the possibility that it is correct.

I think he selected a cord that was ideal, fashioned the tools of his trade with care and very much enjoyed inflicting pain. I just don't see this 'jump' to sexual motivation particularly when so little time seems to have been devoted to the overtly sexual aspects of that evening.

When a jailor twirls the keys as he walks away from slamming the cell door shut, he is doing so because it annoys the prisoner and enhances the jailer's pleasure but it is not a sexual pleasure.

In my opinion, you are not adequately informed on this subject. Please obtain a copy of Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives by Robert K. Ressler, Ann W. Burgess, and John E. Douglas and read it. I advise this because of your dismissal of the idea that this was a sexual homicide (or staged as one), which you base on a lack of obvious signs of sexual activity. This is a very fundamental misunderstanding on your part of what it is that is being discussed. Obvious signs of sexual activity are often missing at scenes of sexual homicides. One of the reasons that this book and others like it were written was to inform people who investigate this type of crime as to what the signs are, hence the subtitle "Patterns and Motives." If it was obvious, then it wouldn't have been nearly as necessary to write a book about it. One of the big reasons that BPD failed was that they didn't know what they were looking at.

More excellent posts!

Both types of murders are still classified as sexual homicides, but the motivations are quite different.

Right. As you suggest, it's also possible that a perpetrator falls somewhere in-between, but I agree that it's worthwhile to discuss the extremes. The simplest motive is sadism. I fully agree that this doesn't explain the ransom note, and I think that's a big problem. The more complex motive is anger-retaliation. This could explain the ransom note. As you asked: "Who is the target?"

Look at the big picture: Christmas Night, beautiful little girl, "safe" city, her own home, trappings of sexual homicide including bondage and ligature strangulation. Add to that: the borderline psychotic ransom note, predictably despicable media behavior, dishonest and incompetent cops, political bad blood, the widely reported eccentricities of Boulderites, and you have a horror movie. Assuming that the perpetrator anticipated this at least in part, practically begging for it with the note, who is the target?

I think that's a very good question, and leaping ahead of myself a bit, I would say the secondary targets are society and society's representatives, law enforcement. I absolutely agree with you about the anger-retaliatory category as being more likely than the sadist.

As an aside, I did want to address DonBradley's thought that it could be neither. He could be right. I'm using these two categories out of all of the categories, which I will address in the future, because they seem the most likely.

As John Douglas mentioned in his last radio interview, one of the goals of this offender was to shock and offend. He wanted attention.

Don also mentioned how overly simplistic it may be to try and categorize this offender into one category. I'm not doing this. I am laying the foundation only. I think more sense could be made of this offender and his actions by looking at what probably is both sociopathy and pathological narcissism in his personality. These two personality disorders are often seen together or comorbid.

more later...

I wonder if we make too much or too little of the ransom note? If it was a mere time-utilizing exercize of little more significance to him than a cross word puzzle would have been, then we would have no real hesitation in saying 'sexual homicide'. Upthread the phrase 'trappings' was used in relation to the concept of bondage and humiliation. If the note is also viewed as mere trappings then the crime becomes more of a crime directed at the community in general. Irrespective of its being a 'slow news day' this crime was going to make headlines. I'm sure he knew the BPD was incapable of dealing with it effectively, but I don't think he could have predicted just how badly they would bungle it.

I think we're a bit too 'normal' to see the vaginal assault as a sex crime considering it wasn't done in the traditional sense. If there had been semen, we probably would see it more as a sex crime. With or without the note, however, this is a text book case of sexual homicide, probably along the lines of the anger-retaliatory type. The sexual assault served the angry retaliatory feelings of the offender rather than sexual gratification. It's possible the crime and the note also served his narcissistic needs by saying essentially, "Look at me." A narcissist doesn't necessarily care if the attention is good or bad as long as he gets some, and the anti-socially disordered doesn't care how far he has to go to get it.

Upthread the phrase 'trappings' was used in relation to the concept of bondage and humiliation. If the note is also viewed as mere trappings then the crime becomes more of a crime directed at the community in general.

This offender just gives me the chills. I'm sure he'd like that. John Douglas made mention that the crime scene was posed. I had a hard time with this because I was thinking of sexual displaying of the body, and this case doesn't fit that criteria. But, he didn't say the body, alone, was posed. He said the crime scene was posed. Why? To shock and offend. To shock and offend who? There are a number of non-exclusive guesses. One or both of the parents. The community and law enforcement. Those who know him whom he perceives would never suspect him of such things.

Of course, I may be wrong. This case could represent the true banality of evil. Some transient kids thinking they could make what seemed a king's ransom at 118 grand or an interrupted sex fiend. It makes one wonder, though, if the palmprint on the cellar door belongs to the offender, why doesn't it match anything in AFIS? You'd think you're run of the mill criminal would have been picked up for something before.

The general thrust of the note is that of a group with some mysterious political/economic viewpoint that have been and are currently watching the Ramseys and have a desire for a monetary ransom but a willingness and ability to kill JonBenet if John Ramsey tries anything at all that might be defined by them as 'trying to grow a brain'. A note filled with power, surveillance, control, threat, and implication of even greater unspoken 'knowledge' (we know you are from the South).

Now as later thought and later investigation is sure to yield a great many 'negatives' we might wonder if the note writer is trying to slip in something significant in that list of negatives. After a more leisurely consideration, anyone is going to come to the conclusion that there is no "small foreign faction". They would also conclude that there are no "two gentlemen watching over her". No real expectation of a ransom of any amount low high weird or normal.
But which element is the one that is being slipped in as misdirection? A business motive is suggested right from the start and therefore all the later negation by the investigators might well steer them away from a business motive or away from a Patsy motive since the very start of the note is the "Mr. Ramsey" and a false start note is left there and sure to be found.

There is no business motive suggested at the start. Implied was an anti-government rationale for demanding cash.

The mention of the business was implied as "I (we) know all about your business." So he probably doesn't. (Obviously simplistically!)

I think it's counterproductive to look for motives and misdirection regarding motives in the note. The reason is that the stated motive is cash with a rationale of anti-government beliefs. Negate that and you're left with too much to deal with. It may be productive to look for relationships and misdirection regarding relationships which is probably what he focused on to misdirect the investigation.

Indirect, displaced anger at someone with JonBenet or the parents being mere substitutes for whom he is really angry at.

Or examples of...

Sadly, a number of serial sexual killers have had no criminal record until they were arrested for multiple murders. No fingerprints, no DNA, nada. A possibility that should always be considered for a sex crime wherein no data matches either other crimes or a known offender is the cunning serial offender.

In the anger-retaliatory model, we can have a ransom note and a sex crime without one cancelling out the other.

Edited to add: I wanted to address the presence and content of the note a little more. If the offender is an angry and retaliatory individual the note could serve the purpose of getting out some of his angst while waiting for the family to get home while at the same time including misleading information and grandstanding his inflated view of himself. We're talking about a complex individual like all people are so we wouldn't necessarily expect him to have one simple reason for much of anything he did.

On the matter of targeting, John Douglas stated the offender probably had something against John Ramsey. This would seem the most likely considering the note was addressed to him. I don't think Douglas would be too opposed to the idea that it could have been toward Patsy or that it was a more generalized motive and the family just ended up being targeted because they were there and were seen.

I think I can say with a little more confidence that whatever he did, it was all about himself. His feelings, his wants, and his desires.

Which brings me around to the Narcissistic Personality Disorder or NPD. My guess is the catalyst of the crime was what is called a narcissistic injury. In pathological narcissism, the individual creates a false self and presents this self to himself and others as his real self. In this creation, he is a superior being and the rest of us poor slobs are objects to serve his inflated view of himself. He brooks no criticism and no candid dialogue. He is highly sensitive to anything that could be construed as criticism, and if he sees it, it can set off a narcissistic rage way beyond what most of us would deem normal. They are conniving, and everything they do is to bring attention to themselves. Someone with NPD, alone, would not be physically assaultive, but when comorbid with Anti-social Personality Disorder, you have the makings of an individual who can be extremely dangerous if they want to be.

I think Douglas must have used the term in a more expansive manner and meant it to include just about any "decoration" of the crime scene. I probably should find a better term than decoration but what I mean is anything that a "set dresser" would do in the movies or an 'interior decorator' would be hired to do. This use of the term Posing would therefore include anything done at the scene, not just to the corpse and not just something that is intended to be not only sexual but also grossly shocking. It would include positioning the corpse and any clothing on the corpse but it would also include the use of the ransom note, its contents and its placement. Perhaps 'set dressing' is a good notion to borrow from the movies. And the ransom note should be viewed by us to be just as much a 'prop' as the paint brush and cord are.

I don't know if the 'missing piece' of the paint brush was taken as a trophy or simpy was a small fragment that due to the ineptitude of the BPD went missing, perhaps via someone's shoe sole. I also don't know if the paintbrush represented an item that was carefully sought out or merely was found to be close at hand when some sort of implement was needed. True it is Patsy's artbrush, though I don't believe she had painted too recently. Wouldn't there have been a host of similar and perhaps 'better' articles that could have been easily selected.

If the perpetrator intended to 'create a masterpiece' and thus addressed his actions not only to the Ramseys but also to the BPD, the FBI, the media and the world in general, the question remains as to whether this was a random selection of a victim.

Even if there was some animosity or grudge of some sort, there could well be a major motive involving some sort of 'crime of the century' intent irrespective of any revenge or sexual feelings (or both).

The trouble that I have is the usual: just how many enemies would someone like Patsy Ramsey have ever made in her life?

While that is an interesting suggestion, I think that there are many problems with it.

Sadists seem to have a need to directly experience signs of pain, not imagine it indirectly. There are cases where perpetrators killed one family member after another and have, as you are probably aware, killed the mother last. My impression is that this type of indirect torture merely enhances the simultaneous direct torture of the children and is not actually a substitute for it.

Also, homosexual offenders offend against people of the same sex rather than others. I would think that Burke, for example, would more likely be the victim in your scenario (but that John would have been physically present or in the next room and would have also been tortured).

Also, JonBenét and John were not close; JonBenét and Patsy were. It doesn't make sense to me to torture JonBenét to get at John. There was no guarantee that John would have been terribly hurt by the loss, so it would not have been worth the risk. I think that this is a huge flaw in any revenge-against-John (and only John) theory. Not liking John is one thing; motive enough to risk punishment is another.

I agree that the 'ultimate target is John Ramsey' has considerable problems. Why not kill John Ramsey if there is such hatred? And there is some attractiveness to the theory of 'ultimate target is Patsy Ramsey'. The Foyer Dinner Party did not have John Ramsey getting additional food, it was Patsy Ramsey and there was a 'nutcase type' there who may have taken offense.

Suppose, however, that this was not an infant. Not many of us like to hear infants squeal. There are those, however, who seem to enjoy watching slightly older children suffer.

Regarding "awful doubts": What we often hear from parents whose children were missing for a considerable time is that the worst part was "not knowing." So if the motive was revenge (and only revenge) against John and/or Patsy, I don't understand why JonBenét wasn't taken. This is another problem with the (pure) revenge motive, although it could partly be answered by positing that the perpetrator was an idiot in addition to being a scumbag.

LOL. I see too many problems with the pure revenge motive.

Also,,,in my suggestion above, there is no mention of the killer "hating" John or even wanting to retaliate against him. Just that he might get his thrills in a unique way,,,in a way that lives on and on,,,maybe while rereading the ransom note and also imagining the torment John is going through. John was as close to JonBenet as most fathers are to their daughters and I think it is totally absurd to think that he might not have been too emotional at losing her.

Of course, MOST of us believe and understand that a father losing a child will suffer, but sociopaths do not understand this in the same way that the rest of us do, and they don't think like the rest of us do.

The hypothesis is that the perpetrator is willing to kill an innocent little girl to hurt the father. Such a person cannot really have a lot of empathy for others, can he --- brutally killing a comletely innocent six-year-old child for his own selfish reasons? Such a person would probably not be satisfied with anything other than direct suffering because that is all he himself can relate to, having little or no empathy for others.

So whereas you cannot see how anyone would think that a father would not be affected by the loss of a child, I cannot imagine how someone who is willing to kill an innocent child would be satisfied with anything less than directly hurting the father if hurting the father is his true intent. On occasion, Don and perhaps some others have described how the perpetrator would "enjoy" imagining John's pain. But that is precisely what this type of perpetrator (as I see him) cannot do.

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Regarding serial killers: We cannot disprove a serial killing, only prove one. Furthermore, we can only talk about the methods and characteristics of serial killers that have been caught, or at the very least cases wherein crimes have been linked. That's all John Douglas or anyone else can talk about, unfortunately. Some investigators don't like assuming a serial killer until there is definite proof (avoid panic). On the other hand, this type of crime (sexual homicide) is often committed more than once by offenders, so I think that the possibility should be left open.

Okay. Lets list the things that show a certain 'empathy':
We are generally agreed that the cords reflect merely the trappings of bondage, so this loose binding stuff is all for its effect on others. It can't be for its effect on himself because it is non-functioning.

The various elements in the note are intended to induce fear and are there solely for the impact on the reader.

If this is some barely-functioning brute who deals only with direct suffering and would not have the emotional ability to imagine someone else's pain, who helped him with all those big words in the ransom note? Why is it signed 'SBTC' instead of with an 'X'?

If it was just a sex-crime involving JonBenet, why a note at all to anyone if he doesn't understand that if you talk about beheading someone's kid, you sort of upset them.

I also understand destroying possessions is a common form of abuse amongst sociopaths and narcissists.

I agree with you that a person who lacks empathy considers people as objects and probably believes the rest of us think that way, too. I've heard it said, in divorce situations for instance, that boys should be with their father and girls should be with their mother. I've seen many families where the raising of the girls is generally to the mother and the boys are more the father's responsibility in terms of guidance. Many men want their first born to be a boy. There are enough societal messages along this line to believe the offender could believe John would value his son more than his daughter even if it isn't true.

I wanted to get back to the 'trappings' issue. Even if the sexual attack was a typical anger-retaliatory type and committed simply in the performance of an ongoing physical assault, what is to be made of those wrist bindings? They seemed to serve no other purpose than 'trappings.' Using Patsy's paintbrush handle to form a garotte, or forming a garotte at all, was not necessary to kill JonBenét. It seems like the offender is trying to leave a message in the crime.

Lol, Don. I brought up the wrist cords as 'trappings' before I read your post:)

edited for grammar and clarification. Sorry I keep doing that.

1) The fact that a perpetrator doesn't have empathy doesn't mean that he doesn't understand intellectually what empathy is. This addresses Don's concerns. More below.

2) If a person has the direct target and an indirect target available, I would think that choice of the direct target would be more likely. Far be it from me to claim that this is certain; it's just simple probability and common sense in accomplishing a mission.

3) If the perpetrator is very familiar with the direct target, there may very well be direct evidence of concern for certain possessions, even for a nonempathetic perpetrator. This would explain why some nonempathetic perpetrators destroy possessions.

Prior to the murder, there was not very much evidence for those who knew John, especially through his business, of as much concern for JonBenét as was amply demonstrated by Patsy to anyone who knew her. For someone who knew neither John nor Patsy, there was no direct evidence of concern. In fact, many people still claim no concern.

Now if this was an attack (retaliation-anger) on a larger body, he could not have attacked the larger body itself. He was forced to attack some symbol of it, something that represented or was an example of it. Given that he could intellectually understand what empathy is (once again assuming little to none possessed), he could have certainly calculated Christmas, innocent little girl, sexual homicide, "safe" neighborhood, nearly psychotic note and concluded that this may draw attention.

Where he lacks empathy, he can still calculate if he has no choice but to do that in order to enhance his chances for success. I realize that this is very cold, very alien to most of us, but there are a number of aspects to this crime that lead me to conclude that he thinks at least somewhat probabilistically --- considers odds for and against and acts accordingly --- with no empathy towards anyone.

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Minor note: Both the wrist bindings and the BLACK duct tape are suggestive of sexual bondage. It's possible that they are both part of the message that OEJ suggested.

"In addition, Humbert again pushes his notion of a determined fate from which we cannot deviate. Often, people who believe in fate do so at the expense of morality; if we do not have free will, then we can not be held responsible for our actions, and no morality can be attached to them. Humbert's insistence that fate governs our actions frees him from the immorality of his various actions."

We may never know what set this offender off, but I suspect it had more to do with his own life than it had to do with the Ramseys. At this moment, there are people stalking other people they do not know because their victim came to their attention in a chance encounter. Stalkers do this for a variety of reasons...sex, love, violence, power and notoriety. Generally, people think this only happens to celebrities, but it doesn't. It can happen to you and me. Their thinking may be delusional but they are otherwise not psychotic.

I think I can say with some degree of certainty what the crime meant to the offender. It was an accomplishment. For the pathological narcissist, the planning and committing of this crime was a mirror reflecting back to him his greatness. The narcissist, with his grandiose sense of self feels entitled to associate or match wits only with those who he perceives are worthy of him, and I think we can see his competitive nature in the content of his note. (As an aside, you can hardly get a narcissist to shut up, and hence, the length of that note.) The narcissistically disordered individual is not only competitive, he is deeply, pathologically envious.

More later...

>the planning of this crime was a mirror reflecting his greatness.
Yes. He feels he is worthy of the publicity which he views as praise.

>I think we can see his competitive nature in the content of his note
You've lost me there. What reflects a 'competitive nature'? Particularly if he is so enamored of action movies, he might well be considered someone who passively sits and watches movies.

>The narcissistically disordered individual is not only competitive,
>he is deeply, pathologically envious.
Envious of other's material posessions? Their achievments that show him up as lacking? Might a certain envy of others make him hypersensitive and react as if he were threatened? So a "Hey, Mac,,,,what time do you have" is viewed as not only an intrusion by someone of unworthy intellect but is a threat to his watch, hissolitude, etc.?

Fire of my loins! Why must we limit it to the 'top suspects'?

Note: my comments about excessive sesitivity to perceived threats related to his employment status. If he is so bad as to be unable to hold a job then how does he survive in a world of books and movies?
If he is not so hypersensitive, then was his selection of a target directed at someone specific or the result of a finger in the phone book?

We may never know what set this offender off, but I suspect it had more to do with his own life than it had to do with the Ramseys.

There is an entire chapter in the book cited above (Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Movtive) which deals with motivation: Chapter 6, A Movitational Model. This may or may not apply to this case, but the model summary has some interesting statements to ponder:

Model Summary

When adolescent and adult criminals are studied in terms of the contribution of past events to their criminality, the emphasis in earlier studies has been on the event itself, rather than on the subject's response and reaction to the event. Our motivational model suggests that unaddressed traumatic and early damaging experiences to the murderers as children set into motion certain thinking patterns. Although there may be initial attempts to work through the troublesome effects of the experience, these attempts become patterns for limiting choices. In addition, a structure of thinking begins to emerge that motivates and sustains deviant behavior through developmental and interpersonal failure and through the alliance of distorted perceptions. Of particular importance is the activation of aggression and its link to sexual expression. The lack of attachment to others gives a randomness to the sexual crimes; however, scrutiny of the thinking patterns of the offenders indicates that there is planning in these crimes, whether the men rely on chance encounters with any victim or whether they plan to snare victims. Although the crimes themselves are premeditated, the choice of victim is generally impersonal and a result of chance selection. If lacking in evidence of sexual assault, the crimes appear random and motiveless; the killer's internal fantasy motivating his actions remains unknown.

What I noted: Deviant thinking patterns established early; aggression and sex are confused; interpersonal failure; distorted perceptions; crimes appear to be random, but are planned; impersonal choice of victim; actual motivation for a particular case unknown, being internal fantasy. Although a general model, it may apply to this case.

I almost hope that the general model does not apply to this case since the part about 'impersonal choice of victim' and 'unknown motivation' would make solving this more difficult.

Interpersonal failure is highly probable. This guy has been blaming others for his misfortunes for along time.

Planning a crime and random (or casual) selection of a victim are not mutually exclusive. I just hope its some long simmering grudge because that atleast has more liklihood of eventual discovery. So far I just don't see either of the Ramseys as collecting lengthy enemy-lists and so perhaps a casually selected victim is what happened.

There has been a lot of talk on this forum about the Naropa Institute,,,therefore, I found this of particular interest:

"Dr. Peter Grossenbacher is a professor of psychology at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado and a board member of the American Synesthesia Association."

One thing I am struggling with is the idea that an offender would commit a crime like it was some kind of bizzare game of clue. I know of no precedence for this.

Don, my take on the offender writing, "It is up to you now, John" and his assertion that he has electronic equipment that detects monitoring devices along with his "Victory" statement shows him to be pitting his intellect against John and all other authority. That is why I think he has a competitive nature. He's giving the impression that he can outsmart everybody.

Which leads me to the sub-classifications of the narcissistic personality disorder. There is the somatic N who is obsessed with his body, and the cerebral N who is most interested in intellect. Assuming the Ramsey offender has this disorder, I think he is the cerebral type.

Don, you asked if a stranger approaching our guy for the time could annoy him because a subhuman encroached on his space and his watch, and I would say, most definitely. He could, on the other hand, be so overly friendly as to almost give his watch away. It depends on what he wants to see in 'the mirror.' A disordered person of this type can be one of those who seem like the nicest person you ever met to outsiders while wreaking pain and despair to his intimates. This person doesn't care if he is seeing adoration or terror as long as it reflects back to him his greatness.

On the subject of envy, he is envious of everything and everyone. Someone is having a happy life, he wants to destroy it.

Thanks for all your posts and sharing your thinking on this subject --- to Don and Evening2 as well. I wish law enforcement and the media had done more along these lines rather than pursuing the Ramseys. I think it would have become much clearer what this crime is *probably* (but not necessarily) all about much sooner if they had done so.

Regarding the game of Clue: The best example that I can think of is Zodiac. Although Graysmith spends a lot of time on someone whom DNA tests show was probably not Zodiac, the book Zodiac Unmasked has a lot of details about Zodiac's ciphers and melodrama in case you're interested in just how weird a perpetrator can be.

I agree with you on competitiveness; I saw the same thing, a challenging nature. It may turn out that he's a wimp, but he doesn't see himself that way. I also agree about the envy part. I suspect that if John Ramsey was still a struggling software distributor with Patsy still helping with paperwork and cleaning their own three-bedroom home with no time or money for pageants, this may very well have happened to someone else.

Estimates of whether or not the name is in the files should be based on conditional probability, which you seem to be neglecting in your latest post.

1) I think you are considering the Ramsey family without a homicide having been committed rather than the Ramsey family with a homicide having been committed: With no homicide, the odds do seem against them knowing a person such as this perpetrator, given that there simply aren't many such killers. But with #2 below, the chances are that the perpetrator was known to JonBenét (therefore probably the parents), so the name probably is in the files --- more likely yes than no.

2) The FBI homicide statistical database says that Including parents, victims of homicide aged five through seven were killed by an offender known to them by 8:1; excluding the parents, 4:1; excluding ALL family, 2.7:1 ("approximately 3:1"). For sexually related homicides of females aged five through seven, including ALL family knowns: 2:1; excluding ALL family knowns: 1.6:1. (My own report on the theories forum.)

It doesn't change the number, but it does change the estimate of the probability.

My one doubt has always been that we never hear anything from 'Sick Puppy' and ofcourse the slightest communication would let the Ramseys totally off the hook so he has a motive to keep silent.

I just wonder if having really put on over on the BPD and all those profilers, coroners, etc, he would like to continue to kill but enjoys his initial success too much to do it. Or is it that he did indeed target the Ramseys and not mainly "the homicide experts" and therefore is silently satisfied with his accomplishments.

Regarding your question as to whether the Ramsey killer is still active or not: I have asked myself the same question, and I assume others have, too. Now that the DNA is entered into the national database, and assuming it's the DNA of at least one participant if not the killer, then it's far, far better to never commit another crime no matter how trivial. If DNA from any other crime scene is entered into the database, the evidence can immediately be pooled. Depending on the nature of the evidence, it could potentially greatly enhance the chances of being caught.

As an example: Suppose that a similar crime was committed against the Smiths in Minneapolis, and the DNA profile is the same. One of the very first questions would be: Did the Ramseys know anyone in Boulder that the Smiths knew in Minneapolis? Were any neighbors of the Ramseys in Boulder also neighbors of the Smiths in Minneapolis? Which people on the suspect list have relatives in Minneapolis? Answers to questions like this can dramatically narrow down the number of people to run through DNA testing. Dramatically narrowing down the suspect list with a high level of confidence is exactly what is needed in the Ramsey case.

Whoever contributed the DNA and/or other culpable parties connected with the contributor in any way need to worry about the contributor spitting on the sidewalk now, because something like that could cause this case to be solved in a flash.

I wanted to come back to this because even though I earlier paraphrased John Douglas' statements about this crime not being staged, I'm still uncertain of his meaning about the crime scene being posed. In the context of this crime, posing could be very much like staging with just a slight difference.

It is possible the offender is the type called a misopede, a child-hater, who wants to kill children. The very little information I could find on this phenomena is that they sometimes use elaborate kidnapping ploys attempting to cover up the true motive for the crime. Kenneth Lanning stated this type of offender is the most likely to commit suicide after the commission of the crime. Although, Michael Helgoth's DNA isn't known to match, John Douglas was very interested in Helgoth as a suspect.

Is it a ploy he uses for his own psyche: "I'm not really a pedophile, it was a kidnapping that was intended and well, 'it just happened therefore I'm not a misopede and don't have to feel any shame'."

Is is a toy with which he plays with the psyche of the parents or the cops or both?

"Is is a toy with which he plays with the psyche of the parents or the cops or both?"

Maybe it is a toy with which he plays with the psyche of himself,,,like Nabokov's HH.

>Is it a ploy he uses for his own psyche: "I'm not really a
>pedophile, it was a kidnapping that was intended and well,
>'it just happened therefore I'm not a misopede and don't
>have to feel any shame'."

I haven't been able to find much about it, Don, but my assumption is that shame would play a part and would be the most effective if the child had actually been removed from the house.

According to what little I've read, the shame appears to be a cause for the suicide irrespective of the success or failure of the plan. Although, to me, it looks most likely that the murder was planned to happen in the home, there is the possibility he just couldn't get her out.

'She got all whiney'... LOL.

The first subcategory <of personal cause homicide> listed in the Bureau manual is erotomania-motivated killing, wherein murder springs from the killer's fixation with his victim. <2>

I would have thought that erotomania would be classified as a sexual homicide; perhaps it can be but often is not? This would go back to ideas like some creep watching her at pageants and becoming fixated on her above others. In that case, there may be more than just shame involved here. This type of killer would want to do everything possible to help people forget his obsession including his presence at pageants, his fixed gaze, his attempts to approach her or talk to her, etc. It may also explain the blanket covering her. He probably would not be a serial killer, but I really don't know anything about this type of killer except that it seems as though there could be overlap with sexual killers.

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References:

<1> John Douglas, Ann Burgess, Allen Burgess, Robert Ressler, Crime Classification Manual: A Standard System for Investigating and Classifying Violent Crimes, 1992, Lexington Books. Cited in "Preface" at

http://www.sagepub.com/Preface_3614.pdf

<2> http://www.crimezzz.net/serialkiller_insight/motives.htm