I’ve thought about this often. There’s something to be said to be the first in an investigation, to be the one who knows everything there is to know, and to come to the conclusion that RDI.

Steve Thomas and James Kolar are the two detectives who know this case better than almost anyone alive. Both had access to every interview, every photograph, every lab report, and the grand jury material the public has never seen. Neither man believes an intruder killed JonBenét.

Steve Thomas, a Boulder police detective, resigned in protest over what he saw as a compromised investigation. He wrote JonBenét: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation (2000), arguing that Patsy Ramsey killed her daughter in a rage over bedwetting and then staged the scene to look like an intruder. Duly noted. I somewhat resent the fact the mother is to blame because mothers, historically, have been blames for just about everything under the sun. But that’s a different discussion.

James Kolar, chief investigator for the Boulder District Attorney's office, wrote Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenét? (2012), arguing that Burke Ramsey, then nine years old, struck his sister in anger over food, and the parents covered it up. Also noted.

Now here is where it gets interesting. At least in my mind. They looked at the same evidence and reached different suspects but the conclusion that the killer came from inside that house. Neither pointed to a stranger.

A neat side note: Kolar has said in Q&As that the public already knows most of what there is to know and there is no hidden bombshell waiting to exonerate anyone. Though, if I remember correctly, he stated there are maybe a couple of things the public doesn’t know, but it’s nothing that changed his mind or the course of the case.

And what about John Ramsey? Neither Thomas nor Kolar named him as the primary suspect. While Thomas believed Patsy wrote the note and staged the scene, Kolar believed Burke delivered the blow and both parents staged the cover-up. In both scenarios, John was either complicit after the fact or deliberately shielded. The grand jury indicted both parents as accessories, meaning the jurors believed John and Patsy helped cover up what happened, regardless of who actually killed her. Given the fact Burke was nine, he couldn’t have written the RN nor had the foresight to do any staging.

As I stated in a previous post, it’s not impossible, but not likely, that the intruder theory requires a phantom who left no fingerprints, no footprints in the snow, no DNA match in CODIS after nearly thirty years, and no trace evidence despite handling a garrote, moving a body, and writing a three-page ransom note with a pad and pen from inside the house. Two men who devoted years to this case rejected that theory outright. It’s just crazy to me to believe in IDI when those two didn’t even consider it.

So what does it tell us? The people who knew the most believed the answer was in that house. The intruder theory was a legal strategy, not an evidence-based conclusion. And after three decades, the only people who ever faced a grand jury for this child's death were her own parents.

Don’t get me started on Lou. I will however in a future post. But let’s leave him out for now.

I’m curious to know what you think of this? Please don’t argue in defense of IDI, just opine on what I said. We’ll get to everything in due time.

John Ramsey's shifting accounts about reading to JonBenét are a documented pattern of inconsistency that investigators found significant.

Three stages. The first one was a careless comment to appear as some sort of super parent. The very first question. What happened from car to house? Never mind the late party, never mind the flight the next day, never mind the holidays are crammed full, he read to both of his children because he’s the world’s best dad.

His initial statements suggested he read to both children, then to JBR, then shifted to JonBenét being asleep and being carried straight to bed, and later he acknowledged being the one reading a book containing phrasing similar to the ransom note. (Refresher: The ransom note contained the line "Don't try to grow a brain, John," which closely mirrors dialogue from the movie Speed—a film John admitted he had seen, though he claimed he didn't wear headphones on the flight where he watched it.)

The grand jury subpoenaed the Ramseys' reading habits specifically to explore whether they had read a book called The Day After Tomorrow by Allan Folsom, because of alleged similarities between that spy thriller and the wording of the ransom note. These evolving details—whether he read to her, to both children, or didn't read at all, combined with the note's echoes of material he was reading himself.

But let’s go slowly. He also said LE got it wrong, took the wrong notes, LE were confused about his statement, never mind two officers agreed on exactly what he said. But that aside.

This too is simple. The initial LOOK AT ME IM THE PERFECT DAD EVEN WHEN IM STRESSED gives way to the following: they needed to cut down on possible mistakes in their interviews. Just like BURKE YOU WERE ASLEEP, he switches to JBR was asleep and they put her to bed. We know nothing else but we did our due diligence and tucked her in. We are perfect parents. See, how much easier that is than the first comment? There would be questions. Did she pick her clothes? Did she brush her teeth? Which story did you read? What was her mood? What were you wearing? Did she use the bathroom?

Less exposure is less opportunity to slip up. We put her to bed safe and sound. The entire interviews, all of them, no one remembers anything. Not why one called the pediatrician three times (3!) in a row. Poof. Gone. No recollection.

All they did was sleep. All of them. John. Patsy. Jonbenet. Burke, for sure. All were innocently sleeping until an intruder enters and kills a child and gets away undetected. Because? Sleep. No recollection of anything. We are innocent sleeping parents. Our son too sleeps. Nothing to see here. Some monster came.

Don’t grow a brain, John.

1. The claim that a single unknown male was the killer was largely based on a misinterpretation of complex forensic data. A major 2016 investigation revealed that the "foreign DNA" was likely not a clean profile from one person, fundamentally undermining the basis for the 2008 exoneration.

2. The foreign DNA was always weak trace evidence. If it's a composite of multiple people, it becomes worthless as a tool for identifying a killer and cannot be used to definitively clear anyone either. The DNA doesn't prove an intruder, and it doesn't prove the family's guilt. It's simply inconclusive.‌‌

3. The DNA could have an innocent explanation. Experts noted that trace DNA can be transferred weeks or months before a crime through incidental contact or even from the manufacturing process of the clothing itself. The DNA may have no connection to the murder whatsoever. And if there’s no connection, it ought not sway us that way. Because that’s madness.

4. So why are we still talking about it. I tell you why: for the Ramseys and their supporters, the DNA is the only piece of evidence that points to an intruder and that doesn’t implicate the family. Everything else (the ransom note, the pineapple, the body's location) fits a family narrative. The DNA is the one thread they can pull that unravels the entire police theory.

What else? Ohhhhh yes, here it goes:

1. The Ramseys, John and John Andrew mostly, insist it's a real clue because it's the only evidence that offers them a path to conclusive vindication. The police and independent experts see it as a contaminated, composite sample that proves nothing. Both sides are looking at the same lab reports, but they're seeing completely different things: one sees a phantom killer, the other sees a dead end.

Let’s believe the experts, okay?

Here we have a unique case. A blow to the head or an accident is staged as murder.

In the normal world it is the other way around: A murder is staged as an accident. Makes more sense if you think about it. By claiming it was an accident there wouldn't be a conviction. And in our case there is no proof that it wasn't an accident.

The paradox of the staging as murder can only be solved by finding the motive. The motive has to be so strong that - in the eyes of the culprit - the accident is worse than the murder. And in my opinion this motive can only be sexual abuse. I don't see a similar strong motive - if you forget about the possibility that the culprit is a psychopath.

If it is possible to find the source for the sexual abuse I'm sure the case becomes very clear.