Morgan Wright — What the JonBenét Ramsey Crime Scene Actually Says | Part 2
Morgan Wright is the founder and CEO of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases, a nonprofit that works cold cases toward resolution rather than commentary. A former detective who went on to teach interview and interrogation, he now trains a team of volunteer case analysts in structured investigative method. This is the second half of his reconstruction of the JonBenét Ramsey homicide.
Part 1 ended with the intruder hypothesis failing on the physical evidence. Part 2 asks the obvious next question: if nobody came in, what does the scene itself tell you? Wright starts with the forensic claims that have carried the case for years and takes them apart one at a time. The touch DNA recovered from JonBenét's clothing produced a partial profile at ten or eleven markers, where a positive CODIS match requires twenty and a partial requires thirteen. At eleven markers, as he puts it, you are no longer identifying a person.
He then turns to the ransom note. It demanded $118,000, almost exactly John Ramsey's employment bonus. Ramsey stated he read it on the spiral staircase at around 5:45 in the morning without turning on a light. Wright ran the astronomy: the sun was still seventeen degrees below the horizon, a full moon delivers at most 0.3 lux outdoors, window glass removes seventy to ninety percent of that, and reading requires roughly fifty lux. The gap is three orders of magnitude. It is not a claim about what happened, only about what could not have.
The reconstruction rests on two physical details. The blunt force trauma resembled the end of a flashlight, and the room where JonBenét was found required reaching a wooden clasp mounted high on the door. And in the autopsy, the urine had dried on top of her clothing rather than beneath her, with more found on the carpet outside the room. That points to a death face down in a hallway, and a body moved afterward. Wright also explains the legal wall the case runs into, and closes on the fourth category of knowledge — the things that are now permanently unknowable, because the scene was never controlled.
Learn more at https://citizensbehindthebadge.org.
Transcript
She was found with dried urine on the
Speaker:top of her sweats, not on the bottom.
Speaker:She did not die face up.
Speaker:She died face down in the hallway
Speaker:after being hit with a flashlight.
Speaker:That conclusion comes at the end of a long chain.
Speaker:It starts with a ransom note that by
Speaker:Morgan's analysis could not have been read.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So now we've disproved
Speaker:there's an intruder in your theory.
Speaker:I would ask, is there other
Speaker:ways they could have gotten them?
Speaker:Maybe they had a key or maybe
Speaker:they had some other way to get in.
Speaker:Was that looked into?
Speaker:Yeah, they looked at the housekeepers.
Speaker:They looked at the other people who had keys who got in.
Speaker:But see what they did is they anchored in on because that
Speaker:was the broken window was the only way to explain how
Speaker:somebody could have got into the house.
Speaker:And what they were saying is that they were going to take
Speaker:Jambane out that same window.
Speaker:It first of
Speaker:all, how do you know if there really was an intruder?
Speaker:How do you know that was their intent?
Speaker:Why not walk out through a door?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Because they talked about was the alarm on or off.
Speaker:So so many of these things, when you stack inference upon
Speaker:inference upon inference, pretty soon you reach a thing
Speaker:that the only way the example I give is it's like waiting
Speaker:to go on vacation till all the traffic lights turn green.
Speaker:All of those things would have to line up like this for
Speaker:this story to be to pass the initial hypothesis test.
Speaker:And from a first principle
Speaker:standpoint, you have to analyze it.
Speaker:And so, Craig, to your point, I did.
Speaker:I looked at I said, OK, let's go down that path.
Speaker:We're now at a fork in the road.
Speaker:Was there an intruder or wasn't there an intruder?
Speaker:There is nothing I could find that substantiates and
Speaker:supports the evidence of intruder.
Speaker:And there's some reasons why that get into the flashlight
Speaker:where Jambane was found, the
Speaker:position of her body and the autopsy report.
Speaker:So Morgan, a quick question about
Speaker:this now in the window and the intruder
Speaker:issue.
Speaker:What was the lead investigators position on all that?
Speaker:Do you know?
Speaker:I think they got taken down the rabbit hole of the
Speaker:intruder, but in none of the reports.
Speaker:Do they show that they went back and recreated this to
Speaker:show that somebody could have got in through the window,
Speaker:left the cobweb intact and
Speaker:not dragged any debris through?
Speaker:So I think what they did is they they
Speaker:again, this goes back to assumptions, right?
Speaker:The assumption is there was there was an intruder.
Speaker:What they were trying to prove is that somebody in the
Speaker:house did it as opposed to disproving
Speaker:the fact that there was no intruder.
Speaker:Once you do that, I don't have to
Speaker:prove anything inside the house.
Speaker:And then it leads into why were John and Patsy Ramsey
Speaker:indicted both on two counts?
Speaker:Gotcha.
Speaker:So that's a nice thing.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Why did Steve Thomas, the lead investigator, resign?
Speaker:What was his big concern?
Speaker:And that was that was I want to follow up with it.
Speaker:It was it was the influence the Ramses were having.
Speaker:And it's over the case and then stonewalling and the way
Speaker:he was treated by, as he said, treated by the department.
Speaker:I
Speaker:don't want to read into what he
Speaker:thought or what was in his mind.
Speaker:I just look at it and I go.
Speaker:When you tell the story, you
Speaker:tell it in a way that favors you.
Speaker:We all do.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:So I just I just leave it at that.
Speaker:His story, his book was about
Speaker:something that favored him about what he did.
Speaker:But I will tell you, if I go back to the beginning,
Speaker:the biggest defining moment of this
Speaker:entire case was control of the crime scene.
Speaker:Period.
Speaker:Full stop.
Speaker:Get everybody out of you have a kidnapping.
Speaker:Everybody out of the house.
Speaker:We don't know what evidence is in there.
Speaker:And then this is the way I test people so.
Speaker:We can get into the house one of two ways.
Speaker:Either consent or a search warrant.
Speaker:If if if if I'm truly the victim, whatever I'll sign any
Speaker:document you need, whatever you need,
Speaker:you get vans out there, you get everybody.
Speaker:They allowed them to be in the house.
Speaker:They allowed them to wander around.
Speaker:John Ramsey disappeared for about 45 minutes.
Speaker:And so there are some issues about
Speaker:control, control of the crime scene.
Speaker:If you had done that from the beginning, that would have
Speaker:that would have made this case in the first 48 hours.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:What was JonBenét sexually assaulted?
Speaker:Do we know that?
Speaker:That's a complicated issue.
Speaker:Um, I looked at the reports of Dr.
Speaker:Cyril Wecht and some other people who looked at this.
Speaker:The question was, was there evidence of sexual assault?
Speaker:Some people say yes.
Speaker:Um, the question is, did it occur at that time?
Speaker:Uh, the autopsy report does show some things about
Speaker:abrasions and places that wouldn't
Speaker:expect abrasions to be in a crime victim.
Speaker:So, um,
Speaker:one of the things I learned though,
Speaker:to Craig is I got to stay in my lane.
Speaker:Um, and so I look at that and
Speaker:I go, they say, well, was she,
Speaker:personally, I can't tell you if she was or wasn't.
Speaker:Um, that's where you have to get back into the history
Speaker:between her and Burke and the
Speaker:issues with Burke prior to that.
Speaker:But that's when I, when I go through this case, I'm very
Speaker:careful because those can become rabbit
Speaker:holes and those can become distractions.
Speaker:My whole purpose was let's talk about the case.
Speaker:And in really my case is it's,
Speaker:it's binary intruder, no intruder.
Speaker:And if it's no intruder, it means somebody inside the
Speaker:house, regardless of the history JonBenét had with
Speaker:Burke, regardless of the
Speaker:history, Burke had with his parents.
Speaker:Uh, and, but those, those are some of the allegations, if
Speaker:I'm being legally correct, those are some of the
Speaker:allegations that were raised.
Speaker:Craig is that there were Burke may have, uh, engaged in
Speaker:inappropriate behavior with JonBenét.
Speaker:I guess what I was getting at is if there was semen found
Speaker:on her clothes or her body, um, that DNA, uh, would be
Speaker:seemingly very easy to figure out who it came from.
Speaker:Uh, I would think with today's
Speaker:DNA forensic science, uh, abilities.
Speaker:As long as the contributor is in CODIS, the combined DNA
Speaker:index system, if they're not in there, then you have a
Speaker:profile sitting there, but it's interesting.
Speaker:You brought up because during
Speaker:the reconstruction, they also, Dr.
Speaker:Henry Lee has since passed
Speaker:away, but at the time he was alive.
Speaker:So they talked about the fact that on JonBenét's
Speaker:underwear, they found, oh, we found touch DNA.
Speaker:I thought Dr.
Speaker:Henry Lee just totally put that argument to bed.
Speaker:He got a brand new pair of underwear out of a store
Speaker:inside the sealed wrapper had
Speaker:never been touched and they tested it.
Speaker:They found 25 different samples
Speaker:of touch DNA on the underwear.
Speaker:And wasn't it true, uh, Morgan, that the, the Ramses were
Speaker:eventually exonerated in 2008
Speaker:or some something like that.
Speaker:And that was the reason because that touch DNA was found
Speaker:and they said, well, it can't be them.
Speaker:There isn't a finding of exoneration, but it's
Speaker:inconsistent with the indictment and it's
Speaker:inconsistent with the physical evidence.
Speaker:And that's, um, that was the,
Speaker:uh, district attorney at the time.
Speaker:And I just spaced out her name.
Speaker:Um, but they tried to say, look, we have this, they tried
Speaker:to get a DNA sample into CODIS, so in CODIS, uh, for
Speaker:again, for you crime scene geeks out there.
Speaker:To, to create a positive match in CODIS, you have to have
Speaker:20 short tandem repeat markers,
Speaker:20 STRs that's to get a full match.
Speaker:You have to have a minimum of 13 to get a partial match.
Speaker:The best they could come up with was about 10 or 11, not
Speaker:anything that was even remotely.
Speaker:And the difference between that, between 13 and 12 and
Speaker:11, it's, it's, it geometrically,
Speaker:uh, increases the size and scope.
Speaker:It's not like two plus two equals four.
Speaker:It's four times four times four times four.
Speaker:You get a geometric progression, not an arithmetic
Speaker:progression of the number of
Speaker:available people who could become the profile.
Speaker:So when you have a match, we're talking about odds that
Speaker:are in the billions, you know, one in 25 billion, right?
Speaker:But when you're at 11, you're talking about, um, you
Speaker:know, it could be one in three, you know, one in three
Speaker:people would have the same profile at 11 markers as
Speaker:opposed to 13, as opposed to, um,
Speaker:you know, what, what are the odds?
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So, uh, it's the, the, the math
Speaker:doesn't work in something like that.
Speaker:And again, this is just me personally saying it was a
Speaker:short sighted thing because it was
Speaker:not supported by the physical evidence.
Speaker:It was not supported by what I'm showing you right now.
Speaker:And it definitely was not
Speaker:supported by the crime scene evidence.
Speaker:Um, so I, I, I can't talk for her about why she did that.
Speaker:Um, again, when you're elected and you're in a political
Speaker:position, some decisions are political.
Speaker:Morgan, let's go back to the ransom note.
Speaker:I mean, this is frankly, unbelievable.
Speaker:I mean, you've got a ransom note that Patsy finds on the,
Speaker:I think on the steps of the stairs and, uh, you've
Speaker:indicated earlier that it probably took, you know, 45
Speaker:minutes or more to write a
Speaker:two and a half page ransom note.
Speaker:Somebody broke into the house, seemingly sat down, you
Speaker:know, found some paper, found a pen, wrote a ransom note
Speaker:that doesn't add up obviously.
Speaker:Um, and then in the ransom note, and this is, uh, you
Speaker:know, too much to believe $118,000 was the ransom amount
Speaker:that they wanted, which happens to match exactly with the
Speaker:bonus that John Ramsey had received from his employer.
Speaker:Um, how can that be?
Speaker:I mean, is there any explanation for that?
Speaker:How did John Ramsey Patsy Ramsey
Speaker:explain that part of the equation?
Speaker:So I got to go back and amend something.
Speaker:I said 543.
Speaker:I'm about to show you something. 543
Speaker:is when they found the ransom note.
Speaker:I think 602 is when they made the
Speaker:911 call, but let me share this.
Speaker:Let me share this screen with you and show you what I did
Speaker:to analyze just the ransom note itself, right?
Speaker:Cause what they said was, and
Speaker:it might be a little bit hard.
Speaker:So I'm going to, um, click
Speaker:here and see if, uh, I don't know.
Speaker:It doesn't show it on here, but so if you look in the,
Speaker:uh, if you look down along the bottom, down along the
Speaker:bottom is the light timeline for December 26th.
Speaker:I went back and again, pulled this is data driven, right?
Speaker:It doesn't matter what you believe.
Speaker:It only matters what must be true.
Speaker:So I went back and I looked and I said, okay, at seven or
Speaker:at five 45, what was the elevation of the sun?
Speaker:Because John Ramsey specifically said in his deposition
Speaker:and his statements, he was in his underwear, he took the
Speaker:ransom note by the spiral staircase, which is on the west
Speaker:side of the house, laid it on the floor and read it.
Speaker:He did not turn any lights on.
Speaker:He just read it on the floor.
Speaker:So I said, well, let's test that.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So at five 45 PM, the sun is
Speaker:still 17 degrees below the horizon.
Speaker:I'm 75 AM.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Seven by 45 AM.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Five 45 AM.
Speaker:The sun rises in the East and sets in the West.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So at that time, the sun rises in the
Speaker:East, he's on the West side of the house.
Speaker:The sun is still 17 degrees below the horizon.
Speaker:Now, why did I do that?
Speaker:Because the other thing I went
Speaker:into, I did the lunar light analysis.
Speaker:In other words, at five 45, the moment John Ramsey claims
Speaker:to have discovered and read a three page handwritten
Speaker:note, it was a 97.2 waning gibbous moon.
Speaker:Basically what that means above the horizon.
Speaker:That is the best case scenario.
Speaker:Under ideal conditions, you light
Speaker:illumination is registered in terms of Lux, L U X.
Speaker:So even under ideal conditions, a full
Speaker:moon produces only 0.05 to 0.3 Lux outdoors.
Speaker:Window glass reduces transmitted light by 70 to 90%.
Speaker:So the effective moonlight, the effective moonlight
Speaker:reaching an interior would be approximately 0.005 to 0.03
Speaker:Lux, which is 1600 to 20,000
Speaker:times below the minimum of 50 Lux.
Speaker:You need to be able to read something in ambient light.
Speaker:So just from a, just from a solar standpoint.
Speaker:So then I said, okay, let's talk
Speaker:about where he was reading the note.
Speaker:He's reading it here.
Speaker:Here's the house.
Speaker:It's total darkness.
Speaker:They have not turned any lights on.
Speaker:And so if we scroll up just a little bit, we look at the
Speaker:interior note location and John
Speaker:Ramsey's position where it was on the home.
Speaker:So I have the house up here.
Speaker:What I'm looking at is the light timeline and above.
Speaker:Is it, do you guys, there we go.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So it's going to be the very top half of that.
Speaker:So this is the spiral staircase down here in the top half
Speaker:of the picture where John in the
Speaker:yellow, you see where the ransom note was.
Speaker:But if you look to the right, that's the house where was
Speaker:the sun, not only angle, but azimuth.
Speaker:Where was it coming from?
Speaker:So the sun is coming from the east, 17 degrees below the
Speaker:horizon at a certain azimuth,
Speaker:he's on the west side of the house.
Speaker:So no, you don't even have sunrise yet.
Speaker:So there's no solar light.
Speaker:There's not enough lunar light.
Speaker:So the question is, how can you read a ransom note in
Speaker:total darkness when, and by his own words and his own
Speaker:testimony, he did not turn any lights on.
Speaker:He read it in the ambient light.
Speaker:Um, based on all the analysis I
Speaker:could do, that's physically impossible.
Speaker:So the $118,000, how was that ever explained by anyone to
Speaker:justify that it wasn't an inside job that it was either
Speaker:Patsy or John that wrote that ransom note?
Speaker:So when the FBI looked at this case, and I know, um,
Speaker:actually I talked to one of the
Speaker:profilers that worked on the case.
Speaker:She, she can't talk about it.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:but I just simply said, here's the question I posed.
Speaker:I don't want to give away,
Speaker:but I, I gave her the scenario.
Speaker:Here's my scenario.
Speaker:If I put this scenario out publicly, which I'm actually
Speaker:believing it or not, guys, I don't want to say like,
Speaker:we're bringing, this is the first time I publicly said
Speaker:this gone through this entire case.
Speaker:This is the first time.
Speaker:So if I said, if I had this scenario of the case,
Speaker:would I be embarrassed when
Speaker:information came out later and she said, no.
Speaker:So I didn't ask her what it was, but I said, here's,
Speaker:here's, here's my view of the case.
Speaker:Here's my hypothesis.
Speaker:When the information comes out, because they believe
Speaker:there will be some additional
Speaker:information coming out sometime this year.
Speaker:According to them.
Speaker:Uh, I said, would I be embarrassed?
Speaker:And she said, no.
Speaker:So the reason I laid this all out is to not only show
Speaker:that, Hey, what are the, what's the
Speaker:probability that there was an intruder?
Speaker:Then as we get into a staged crime scene, I analyze, I
Speaker:just don't take it at face value, right?
Speaker:Um, I don't look at what you say.
Speaker:I look at what you do.
Speaker:Uh, and I use the Edgar Allan Poe method, believe nothing
Speaker:that you hear and only one half that you
Speaker:see, you can tell me anything you want.
Speaker:But I'm going to, so what I did is I laid it out based on
Speaker:the house design, I have the
Speaker:floor, I have the architectural plans.
Speaker:I know every room, every floor I laid it out and I said,
Speaker:you cannot have enough solar light, nor could you have
Speaker:enough, um, or lunar light, nor could you have enough
Speaker:solar light to read that ransom note, not physically
Speaker:physics, not me physics as you go through glass, it takes
Speaker:out a big majority of the available light.
Speaker:It's filtered through any glass that you have in there.
Speaker:So it's just not possible.
Speaker:You could read something like that.
Speaker:And then Craig, back to your point.
Speaker:Again, I go back to 118,000.
Speaker:That is an artifact that is
Speaker:unexplainable and they couldn't explain it away.
Speaker:And what they, the way they explained it away was we
Speaker:didn't write the ransom note, how would we know?
Speaker:Maybe somebody knew what his, um, uh, it was deflection.
Speaker:Maybe somebody knew what his
Speaker:bonus was and they put it in there.
Speaker:So they never fully, uh, implicated Patsy in writing the
Speaker:note, but they never fully cleared her either.
Speaker:They just say, um, uh, it was basically indeterminate.
Speaker:You know, we, we can't determine.
Speaker:Um, it's like when you have, uh, there's five, there's
Speaker:five manners of death, natural
Speaker:suicide, homicide, accident, and undetermined.
Speaker:So in the case of this note, it was undetermined.
Speaker:They weren't able to include or exclude
Speaker:her as being the source of the handwriting.
Speaker:So Morgan, we talked earlier a little bit about how the
Speaker:secret service looked at the, uh, the paper, the pen,
Speaker:what about handwriting analysis?
Speaker:They did that too.
Speaker:That was it.
Speaker:Same.
Speaker:That's the conclusion they came to.
Speaker:They could not, they could not rule her in or rule her
Speaker:out definitively of being the source of the handwriting.
Speaker:And they did determine based on, well, I guess you
Speaker:couldn't really determine anything.
Speaker:I mean, where does it, where does it come from when you
Speaker:said that the handwriting was,
Speaker:you know, disguised perhaps?
Speaker:Oh, that was, that came from the handwriting experts.
Speaker:They looked at it and based on their knowledge, skills,
Speaker:and experience it over time, they said that this was the,
Speaker:the writing was an attempt to disguise.
Speaker:There's certain, again,
Speaker:that's, that's outside my wheelhouse.
Speaker:I just, I can only tell you what they said, but the
Speaker:experts basically said when they looked at the analysis
Speaker:is that this is, this has all the indicia and the
Speaker:artifacts of disguised handwriting, somebody attempting
Speaker:to disguise the block lettering,
Speaker:you know, the different things.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:you know, one, one other question that I, I, I still am
Speaker:thinking about earlier in our conversation is you were
Speaker:talking about how Jambenay's mother was
Speaker:wearing the same clothes two days in a row.
Speaker:How does anybody know what
Speaker:she was wearing the day before?
Speaker:Pictures from the Christmas party.
Speaker:So they, they were at a Christmas party.
Speaker:People took pictures they've got.
Speaker:Um, that is all well-documented in terms of what she was
Speaker:wearing the day before when they went to the Christmas
Speaker:party and returned home that night.
Speaker:My other question.
Speaker:So the lead investigator from
Speaker:the Boulder PD, he resigned.
Speaker:Did he go to another law enforcement agency?
Speaker:Did he give up being in law enforcement and how much of
Speaker:that was just being in an
Speaker:immense media spotlight on a huge case?
Speaker:And he was just basically crucified.
Speaker:I don't know if I can answer the second part.
Speaker:I think he moved down to
Speaker:Florida was dealing in real estate.
Speaker:I believe he's still alive.
Speaker:I tried to reach out to him, but it's
Speaker:kind of hard to know which person it is.
Speaker:And I, the only reason I reached out to
Speaker:him was just to validate some of the, um,
Speaker:hypotheses I had, but whether I did or not, it's okay.
Speaker:Uh, but I think he's down there.
Speaker:I don't, in his book, he gets into it and I'm trying to
Speaker:remember some of the stuff he said, but I think part of
Speaker:it was just, he felt that he was betrayed by the
Speaker:department, that he was like made to be, like you said,
Speaker:in a sense, the sacrificial lamb.
Speaker:And I know he went on shows,
Speaker:they went on Larry King live.
Speaker:He debated the Ramses.
Speaker:There was a lot of back and forth.
Speaker:And what I go back to is the trap everybody fell into.
Speaker:They made the assumption there was an intruder.
Speaker:And so they, they based everything from there about
Speaker:whether an intruder, nobody ever went back and said,
Speaker:let's do the work to determine in the first place, if
Speaker:there was an intruder, because if there's no intruder,
Speaker:then a suspect is a downstream artifact.
Speaker:People that were named all of this
Speaker:other stuff never should have been named.
Speaker:If you could show that there was never an intruder
Speaker:because they tried to blame housekeeper, the boyfriend,
Speaker:the husband of the housekeeper tried to blame
Speaker:photographers tried to, I mean, they were, you throw
Speaker:enough mud up against the wall and you see what sticks
Speaker:and then you start going in that direction because what
Speaker:it does is you have to spend all
Speaker:your resources disproving that.
Speaker:My simple thing was I don't
Speaker:have to disprove any of that stuff.
Speaker:I go back to,
Speaker:we cannot establish from an evidentiary standpoint that
Speaker:there was an intruder period.
Speaker:You know, today we have the, the
Speaker:advantage of, of sophisticated DNA.
Speaker:We have cameras everywhere.
Speaker:We have technology, you know, this more than any, anyone,
Speaker:because this is what you use for your
Speaker:company to really dig into all this stuff.
Speaker:We, uh, we did interviews recently on the OJ Simpson
Speaker:case, the Waco, Texas case, the Unabomber.
Speaker:One thing that I remember, we're talking about the
Speaker:Unabomber and the lead FBI
Speaker:agent was asked, I believe by Craig,
Speaker:how long would it take to, to
Speaker:solve the Unabomber case today?
Speaker:And I think his answer was four hours.
Speaker:And that was because of the cameras,
Speaker:the technology and everything else.
Speaker:You know, we've talked about a lot of these unique cases
Speaker:and you don't see kind of cases, these, these long drawn
Speaker:out cases, the serial killer cases today in our, in our
Speaker:modern era, just because of technology and, and having
Speaker:said all that your thought about how criminal
Speaker:investigations have evolved and using this technology
Speaker:today, do you think the Ramsey case will ever be solved?
Speaker:Let me make an interesting
Speaker:observation about the Unabomber case.
Speaker:Cause, uh, Dr.
Speaker:Bill Tafoya is a friend of mine, Dr.
Speaker:Bill Tafoya and Mary Ellen O'Toole, which I know some of
Speaker:you folks know, were the chief
Speaker:behavioral scientists for the FBI.
Speaker:They read, they, what happened was everybody had this
Speaker:assumption had to be a blue collar guy, they redid the
Speaker:entire profile and they said, no, it's a Luddite.
Speaker:It's somebody in their fifties
Speaker:trained in the hard scientists sciences.
Speaker:Guess who it was?
Speaker:What was Ted Kaczynski in his 50 a
Speaker:Luddite trained in the hard scientists.
Speaker:So what they did is they did the most important thing is
Speaker:they went back and revisited the assumptions, what I
Speaker:talked about the assumption stack that we do on Tuesdays,
Speaker:what are the assumptions test the, you have to name the
Speaker:assumptions in order to attest them.
Speaker:So I would say in the case of like, JonBenét could,
Speaker:how would this case be solved?
Speaker:I'd say the first thing is, I don't know, you know what,
Speaker:I'm going to make a bold statement here, modern
Speaker:technology wouldn't have been
Speaker:needed to solve the JonBenét case.
Speaker:You know why?
Speaker:Cause it's about preservation of the crime scene.
Speaker:If you have protected the crime scene properly from the
Speaker:start, you would have found here in that basement down
Speaker:there, you would have had the tape in a pristine
Speaker:condition, the duct tape that was removed.
Speaker:You would have had fingerprints, hair, fiber.
Speaker:You would have had at least a lockdown crime scene and a
Speaker:pool of people that you would have put
Speaker:your investigative focus on right away.
Speaker:So I, you know, sometimes what is old again is new.
Speaker:I go back and I preach first principles.
Speaker:What's the basic stuff?
Speaker:First officer on scene has only two
Speaker:duties and two duties, two duties only.
Speaker:Preservation of the, uh, of life, protection of life and
Speaker:preservation of the crime scene.
Speaker:If we employ that every single time,
Speaker:many of these problems solve themselves.
Speaker:True.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So all the technology that we use today that could be
Speaker:used to look at this DNA over
Speaker:again, it's not going to help.
Speaker:Is that your, and here, let me tell you why.
Speaker:So let me walk you through just a little bit more of the
Speaker:crime scene and this'll make sense, right?
Speaker:So when they found JonBenét's body,
Speaker:we have to put some things in context.
Speaker:You have to, one of the things I do
Speaker:is I say, you have to establish it.
Speaker:You have to exhaust the timeline.
Speaker:When I was talking about the Guthrie
Speaker:case, you have to exhaust the timeline.
Speaker:You have to really narrow down, narrow down, narrow down.
Speaker:So in this case where JonBenét was found, she was
Speaker:found face up in sweats and a white shirt, a sweatshirt,
Speaker:a garrote around her neck, hands tied.
Speaker:But when you go look at the autopsy report and look at
Speaker:the crime scene, there's a
Speaker:couple of things about that room.
Speaker:That room requires you to reach up and turn a clasp at
Speaker:the top so that you could open the door.
Speaker:JonBenét died from blunt force trauma.
Speaker:One of the things that the blunt force trauma resembled
Speaker:was the end of the flat, the end of a flashlight.
Speaker:Why would a flashlight be in the basement of someplace
Speaker:that you could flip open a light and then here's the,
Speaker:here's the hypothesis of putting together.
Speaker:She was killed with the flashlight.
Speaker:Why is the flashlight downstairs?
Speaker:Because an adult doesn't need it, but who needs it?
Speaker:Somebody who's younger who can't reach the wooden clasp,
Speaker:but you put a flashlight in their
Speaker:hand, it becomes an extension of their arm.
Speaker:Now I've done biomechanical modeling too on Burke to say,
Speaker:is that, can I prove or disprove
Speaker:that he could have reached that?
Speaker:And he could reach that based on his percentile, where he
Speaker:was and biomechanics, you know, anthropological studies,
Speaker:what his arm reach would have been using a flashlight, he
Speaker:would have made able to reach that.
Speaker:So why was that room important?
Speaker:Because Burke's birthday was a
Speaker:couple of days after Christmas.
Speaker:What was in that room?
Speaker:Burke's birthday presents.
Speaker:What did we find on one of the birthday presents?
Speaker:The wrapping was torn open.
Speaker:Now, let me ask you,
Speaker:Dennis, even though you are a seasoned citizen, let's say
Speaker:that you, and you might've forgotten what you got
Speaker:somebody for Christmas and you want to say, or their
Speaker:birthday, gosh, what's in there?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I'm going to ask you a simple question.
Speaker:It's going to sound like I'm being kind of,
Speaker:I'm not being obnoxious, but just like I did talk about
Speaker:how do we do the clothing, right?
Speaker:Explain to me how you would, if you truly forgotten, you
Speaker:wanted to make sure you remember, explain to me, how
Speaker:would you open an already wrapped
Speaker:present to determine what was inside there?
Speaker:Or why would I write?
Speaker:Well, now we're going to assume that you forgot you would
Speaker:need to know what's in there because there's two that
Speaker:look alike and you need to know which one switch.
Speaker:So how would you open an already wrapped package?
Speaker:How would I, I mean, I'd rip it open.
Speaker:I mean, I would, you know, I guess, I don't know.
Speaker:What I'm saying is that you need to be, you need to be
Speaker:able to give it to the person that
Speaker:you're going to give the gift to.
Speaker:So you just need to be able to see what's inside the
Speaker:package so you know, what's what, so
Speaker:that you can now give it to that person.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:So you're saying just take a peek carefully.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Carefully.
Speaker:I say you're not, you're not going to rip it open.
Speaker:You just want to see what's in there.
Speaker:So how would you do it?
Speaker:You've got, you've got, you've got wrapping paper folded,
Speaker:you've got a ribbon, you've
Speaker:got tape, how would you do it?
Speaker:There's a reason I'm asking
Speaker:carefully.
Speaker:I guess.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, I don't want to disturb it too much.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:It's so like with the tape, you would cut the tape, you
Speaker:know, lift it open and then retame it, right?
Speaker:Yeah, I wouldn't rip it in your scenario.
Speaker:That wouldn't be the right thing to do.
Speaker:I'd do it very carefully.
Speaker:So Patsy Ramsey said she forgot what
Speaker:she got Burke for his birthday present.
Speaker:So she went in and she ripped it open.
Speaker:Oh, okay.
Speaker:Got.
Speaker:So we look at human behavior.
Speaker:We look at adult behavior.
Speaker:So what's more consistent, an adult doing that or a nine
Speaker:year old with impulse control doing that.
Speaker:And so if JonBenét and Burke are in the basement at the
Speaker:same time, and there's a
Speaker:confrontation, what was used to kill her?
Speaker:The same thing that was used to
Speaker:open the door, which is the flashlight.
Speaker:Interesting.
Speaker:So, but here's the other interesting part.
Speaker:Here's, here's our physics lesson for today.
Speaker:If I were to, um, if I were to, um, have a surface with
Speaker:liquid or let's say, I'm trying to
Speaker:think of a good look, I pour, um,
Speaker:I, I can't think of a good example.
Speaker:I'm just going to say, look, when the human body dies and
Speaker:I've worked death scenes, right?
Speaker:When the human body dies, not only do you get rigor
Speaker:mortis and livor mortis, but the human body expels
Speaker:like urine.
Speaker:Um, you lose bladder control.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:When that happens,
Speaker:what does physics tell you and gravity
Speaker:tell you, which way does the liquid flow?
Speaker:Does it flow up or does it flow down?
Speaker:Well, if I remember my, uh,
Speaker:lessons in that, that would flow down.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So if, if you found a body laying face up that it
Speaker:expired, passed away face up, or
Speaker:would you expect to find the urine stains?
Speaker:Well, I guess downwards, right?
Speaker:That's not a trick question.
Speaker:I promise you, right?
Speaker:So in the autopsy and in the crime scene, they found
Speaker:urine on the carpet in front of the door before you even
Speaker:got into the wine cellar room.
Speaker:And when JonBenét was found, she was found with dried
Speaker:urine on the top of her sweats, not on the bottom.
Speaker:She did not die face up.
Speaker:She died face down in the hallway
Speaker:after being hit with a flashlight.
Speaker:She passed away there.
Speaker:The urine went through her, her sweatpants onto the
Speaker:carpet where it was found in front of there, they, they,
Speaker:the crime scene that this is all established.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And so a staged crime scene is she was turned face up,
Speaker:but in the room, a garrote was put around her neck using
Speaker:twine and using a paintbrush that came from the paint kit
Speaker:that was right there next to the
Speaker:door that belonged to Patsy Ramsey.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And she was found face up after the urine had dried.
Speaker:So there was no urine below her in that room.
Speaker:The urine was all dried on her pants.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:So now you get into the question of how did that happen?
Speaker:So this, and then here's the other interesting part in
Speaker:one of the crime scene videos and crime scene pictures,
Speaker:you see the flashlight in the kitchen because people were
Speaker:marked with why did they, because it has that diamond,
Speaker:you know, etched shape on it.
Speaker:Like you remember the kale lights and the mag lights,
Speaker:they've got that to hold on to.
Speaker:Well, it was dusted with fingerprint powder.
Speaker:Well, the flashlight disappeared.
Speaker:It's not been found since the crime scene.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:There's another interesting twist, isn't there?
Speaker:I guess as we sort of wind this down here, Morgan, let me
Speaker:ask you, so do you feel that
Speaker:this case will ever be solved?
Speaker:That's a, that's a, let me, let me phrase it.
Speaker:There's a question of will it
Speaker:be solved or can it be solved?
Speaker:Can it be solved?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Will it be solved?
Speaker:That requires political will that requires the new
Speaker:decision by the district attorney, and that requires
Speaker:going back and revisiting the case, stripping away all
Speaker:the assumptions and starting from the ground, which is,
Speaker:was there an intruder or was there no intruder?
Speaker:Because if there was no intruder,
Speaker:then the indictments makes sense.
Speaker:Think about all the evidence.
Speaker:Time will tell.
Speaker:Time will only tell.
Speaker:Think about all the evidence that had to be presented to
Speaker:indict two parents on very serious charges.
Speaker:And by the way, the reason I said you won't be able to
Speaker:charge anybody in this, if, and
Speaker:this is a, this is an if, right?
Speaker:If Burke is found to be the person that killed JonBenét
Speaker:you know why he can't be charged because he was
Speaker:nine years old at the time, he was short of his 10th
Speaker:birthday and you have to be 10 years old in the state of
Speaker:Colorado to be charged with the crime.
Speaker:What?
Speaker:That's interesting.
Speaker:That's interesting.
Speaker:How many more twists and turns are there?
Speaker:This is crazy, Morgan.
Speaker:I mean, how much time do you have?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We, we got to do another one on that.
Speaker:This one has more, you know, more, uh, uh, issues than we
Speaker:can cover in just one session.
Speaker:So I'm, I'm going to say a huge thank you.
Speaker:This is the most intelligent
Speaker:presentation I've ever heard of this case.
Speaker:And you are truly a student of this
Speaker:and you have the facts and figures.
Speaker:Like I love what you say.
Speaker:It's not what you believe.
Speaker:It's what's true.
Speaker:It's all that matters.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And sometimes those two things are different things.
Speaker:Aren't
Speaker:they?
Speaker:These conspiracy theories are all fueled by what people
Speaker:believe, not by what they can prove.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:And this one is a, uh, this
Speaker:one is a granddaddy of them all.
Speaker:The twists, the turns, the questions, uh, particularly
Speaker:the crime scene, um, contamination.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:And that's something you can't go back and reconstruct.
Speaker:So that's permanent.
Speaker:That's that fourth category of knowledge.
Speaker:That's permanently unknowable.
Speaker:You will never able to go back to the crime scene the way
Speaker:it was at 602 in the morning
Speaker:when the first officer showed up.
Speaker:Never, never, never.
Speaker:Uh, what can I say other than a million?
Speaker:Thank yous for this.
Speaker:That's, and thank you for sharing for the first time.
Speaker:A lot of this stuff on our heroes behind the badge.
Speaker:Uh, this is what we try to do on this podcast is get you
Speaker:interesting people like who know what the hell they're
Speaker:talking about and can give us insights that you'd never
Speaker:get anywhere else about important
Speaker:cases like the JonBenét Ramsey case.
Speaker:So, uh, in closing this segment, I want to remind
Speaker:everyone that heroes behind the badge is brought to you
Speaker:by citizens behind the badge.
Speaker:Citizens behind the badge is the leading organization in
Speaker:support of the ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker:the men and women of law enforcement.
Speaker:You can get involved by going to citizens behind the
Speaker:badge.org citizens behind the badge.org and find out all
Speaker:there is to know about how you can get
Speaker:involved in supporting law enforcement.
Speaker:Also on citizens behind the badge, when you like and
Speaker:subscribe and follow, you will always know when we
Speaker:release a new episode of heroes behind the badge.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:You'll always get first notification.
Speaker:So we would appreciate also if you
Speaker:have any comments, we love your comments.
Speaker:We read your comments.
Speaker:We learned from your comments, please.
Speaker:If you liked anything Morgan had
Speaker:to say today, give us a comment.
Speaker:There was plenty of like, by the way.
Speaker:And if you have questions about what
Speaker:Morgan had to say, give us that too.
Speaker:We'd like to hear your questions and your comments.
Speaker:But once again, Morgan, is there any way that people can
Speaker:reach out and get in touch with you if they'd like to
Speaker:know more, is there any website
Speaker:or anything you would give them?
Speaker:Why don't you tell us what that is?
Speaker:Openunsolved.org.
Speaker:That's the home of the national
Speaker:center for open and unsolved cases.
Speaker:We talk about the work that we do.
Speaker:We actually have over 30 volunteer case analysts where I
Speaker:train them in the use of AI, everything we're talking
Speaker:about here, our volunteer case
Speaker:analysts actually have their own accounts.
Speaker:I train them how to use it.
Speaker:Uh, and all of our con the way
Speaker:to contact us is off of that site.
Speaker:Openunsolved.org.
Speaker:Open and solved on openunsolved.org.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:One word.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Just one word openunsolved.org.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Excellent.
Speaker:I recommend it, uh, for more of what you
Speaker:heard today on Heroes Behind the Badge.
Speaker:I'm sure there's a lot more there.
Speaker:And again, a great big thank
Speaker:you, Morgan, for joining us again.
Speaker:I hope we cross paths again.
Speaker:You always, you never disappoint.
Speaker:You give us and our audience a fabulous show.
Speaker:So thanks again.
Speaker:And that'll do it for this
Speaker:episode of Heroes Behind the Badge.
Speaker:We'll see you the next time.
