He heard the house creaking during the night

BR’s bedroom

And again, "On Tuesday, June 9, as agreed, Pete Hofstrom and Dan Schuler traveled to Atlanta to interview Burke Ramsey. In preparation, they consulted the FBI and the Boulder detectives and reviewed the videotape of Burkes' January 8, 1997, interview. The interviews were to be conducted at a local district attorney’s office and videotaped. On three consecutive days June 10, 11 and 12 for two hours each day JonBenet’s brother would be questioned by Schuler, a police officer with a gift for talking to kids, a cop who didn’t like guns and never carried one."

And finally, "When Schuler asked Burke if his mother and father had prepared him for the conversation, he said no. Gently Schuler explored whether Burke thought his sister had sometimes been a bad girl and gotten mad at people. They discussed which people she got mad at and whether she had been mean and nasty to those people. Schuler asked Burke if his mother and father ever got really mad at his sister. Burke said he didn't think so. Schuler's most important questions, never asked directly, was whether JonBenet had ever done something to bring about her death. Again Burke answered no. Had she fallen and hit her head? He didn't remember her doing that. The most delicate part of the interview was getting Burke to answer questions without revealing what the police knew. First, he was asked if he ate any pineapple and when he went to bed. He didn't remember [editor’s note: probable deception; he must have remembered this, it was the last time he saw JBR alive]. What did he and his father talk about when they played with his Christmas gift that night? Just that it was time for bed. Then Schuler asked what happened after Burke went to bed. Did he have any dreams? Did he hear anything in his sleep? Burke said he had heard voices, in the distance [our emphasis]. Maybe it was a dream, maybe not. It was so long ago he said. Without mentioning the 911 tape, Schuler asked Burke when he got up that morning and how he awakened. He did not want the Ramsey's to learn what the police knew. The plan was to confront them about the tape during their own interviews, which would probably take place later in the month. Burke said he remembered waking up and hearing a loud conversation from down the hall or on the front stairs. Maybe his mother had come into his room, but he was sure he stayed in his bed and pretended to sleep. He was concerned while he pretended, he said. Burke told Schuler he was awake when his mother made the phone call. His parents might have thought he was asleep but he wasn't he said. When he was asked if he spoke to his parents that morning before being awaken at seven to be taken to the Whites' house, he said no. He said he had stayed in his room the whole time. The 911 tape seemed to say otherwise. Had Burke been coached, or had his thinking changed independently since his January 1997 interview? The detectives wondered."

Ultimately JR made a statement making it unclear whether or not BR had simply led him to believe he was asleep or whether JR knew he was not asleep. On April 3, 2001 JR acknowledged that BR had been awake before the 911 call but that JR and PR thought he was asleep.

Returning to the list, three inconsistencies corroborate the view that the PR/JR statements are most likely not oversights or ignorance due to shock, stress or anything else. But let us tighten this up a bit. The PR/JR statements are interesting in that they agree one with the other. In other words, one would not expect agreement in the case of ignorance or oversight, but we could certainly imagine agreement in deception. And that is what we see. We see two people lying the same way. We are aware, of course, of the numerous purported inconsistencies that speak to state of mind and other issues (wearing same outfit as day before, 911 call, etc.). But we have dismissed them here for the purposes of a best-fit analysis. Ergo, JR and PR were most likely applying deception regarding the matter of being up during the night.

The assailant likely had no sexual interest in the victim and clearly had the agenda of doing a real bang up job killing all hell out of that child. The word “accident” has no place here. Lizzie Borden squared comes to mind. This suggests a psychological profile in which the assailant has no empathy for their victim. We can also state it likely that the victim knew her assailant since the strangulation occurred from behind the victim (this is common in such cases).

As a result of this apparent credibility problem and public perceptions not favorable to the Ramseys, or as a result of the lack of results in finding the person or persons the Ramseys believed responsible for their daughter’s murder, whichever spin you choose to believe, the Ramseys secured the services of a detective of almost heroic stature, responsible for solving cases no one else could and having some 30 years experience in homicides. This was an in-the-flesh Sherlock Holmes, by any account. Indeed, his past successes indicate the work of a detective who thought out of the box and would readily apply brute force intellectual strategies whenever needed, such as mass mailing police departments around the country in search of fingerprint matches. This legend was Lou Smit, an éclat of detective work preceding him and a man called out of retirement more than once and finally by the Ramseys themselves.  On the other hand, this all indicated that Smit was also a prudent and clever man. Many questioned whether he was drinking the Ramsey Kool-Aid for the fame it brought him or if he was applying that same objective logic he had always seemed to apply before. Was his objectivity compromised? Obviously, this speaks to state of mind so we dismiss that charge for the purposes of a best-fit.

An overhead view of the paint tray as found, giving a better view of the contents

What is likely the greatest issue for the credibility of the Ramseys has to do with some curious interviews in which they took part and in which it is clear that a prevenient event precluding presumed causality presaged malfeasance. This, in turn, proves beyond little doubt that the crime was pre-meditated by someone with access to the house before 25 December, 1996. What do we mean by all that? Let us make the point with an example. Suppose I find a picture you took showing a particular and unique way in which you placed a notepad unique to its position on the morning of the murder, like, placing it on the last couple of steps on the spiral staircase next to two blank sheets from that notepad, all laid out left to right, essentially identical to the way the ransom note was found. And suppose that the notepad is the same one from which the ransom note was written. We have an obvious problem with the causality of these events. It demonstrates foreknowledge of the positioning of the ransom note itself. The more general statement to which the example conforms is exactly what is being discussed in the interviews that follow; that is,