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Date: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:06 PM
Subject: An Article From Slate
>
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>FRAME GAME
>Who Killed JonBenet?
>By William Saletan
>Posted Wednesday, March 22, 2000, at 4:00 p.m. PT
>
>JonBenet Ramsey is back. Last fall, after three years of
>investigation, a Colorado grand jury declined to indict
>anyone for the murder of the 6-year-old beauty pageant
>starlet. Now her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, have
>launched a media blitz to promote their book about the case,
>The Death of Innocence. The Ramseys argue that an intruder
>killed JonBenet and that the cops have tried to frame them
>instead of looking for the real killer. Colorado Gov. Bill
>Owens complains that the Ramseys are trying "to remove the
>focus on them as suspects" by faulting the police and
>"pointing a finger to some killer." Of course they are.
>There's no other way to clear their names.
>
>The Ramseys could spend the rest of their lives gathering,
>sifting, and spinning evidence to substantiate their
>innocence. It would do them little good. In the arena of
>public opinion, there is no presumption of innocence. There
>is only a presumption that the most likely culprit is guilty.
>If your daughter is murdered in your home while you're there,
>and if the police say they have no other suspects, you're
>presumed guilty. You'll never escape that presumption by
>refuting the case against you. The only way out is to make a
>case against somebody else—and to convince the public
>that the police, not you, are responsible for failing to
>prove it.
>
>In politics, this principle is well understood: When you're
>explaining, you're losing. George W. Bush could spend the
>next eight months rebutting accusations that he has sent
>wrongly convicted people to their deaths or that he has
>invited rich people to stay overnight in the Texas governor's
>mansion because they gave money to his campaigns. These
>rebuttals wouldn't help Bush. They would help Al Gore,
>because most people would get lost in the rebuttals and would
>come away with the vague impression that Bush must be guilty
>of something. The only way for Bush to gain votes is to stop
>talking about the accusations against him and start throwing
>accusations at Gore.
>
>This is the problem with the Ramseys' media tour. They've been
>forced to spend most of their time rebutting the evidence
>against them. They do a pretty good job of it. After all, the
>grand jury didn't indict them, and a veteran detective, Lou
>Smit, quit the case in 1998, deeming the evidence inadequate.
>"I want people to keep an open mind," Smit told the Rocky
>Mountain News last week. "All I want with the Ramseys is to
>put a question mark behind their name, instead of this
>exclamation point that everybody's been trying to put there."
>Good luck. In a celebrity murder case, people have no
>patience for question marks. They want answers. And until
>they get answers, they want theories. Theory 1 is that the
>Ramseys did it. As long as Barbara Walters and Katie Couric
>are talking about that theory, the Ramseys are losing. The
>Ramseys understand that they have to develop a second theory.
>"Our objective is to find the killer," John Ramsey told
>Newsweek. "That's the only way we will prove our innocence."
>
>The conventional wisdom about the Ramseys' PR blitz is that
>they're not saying anything new. That view is factually
>correct but strategically wrong. The difference is that this
>time, the Ramseys are on the attack. They've developed a
>"profile" of the killer—a 25- to 35-year-old pedophilic
>ex-convict with a stun gun and a fetish for autoerotic
>asphyxiation—and they're floating several names,
>including their former housekeeper and a disgruntled
>ex-business associate.
>
>Why haven't we heard these names before? The Ramseys blame the
>cops. "The police looked at the situation, didn't apply a lot
>of logic to it, and said, 'Child murdered in the home, the
>book says the parents always did it,' " John Ramsey told
>Walters. Ramsey suggested to Newsweek that "the vast majority
>of leads the police got were not investigated because the
>case concluded on Dec. 26th." Patsy Ramsey added, "The
>Boulder police would like this to go away. They would like to
>just close the books. … But we are not going away. ...
>We will be looking for the person that murdered our
>daughter." In the Walters interview, John Ramsey sent a
>message to Gov. Owens: "You've spent three years
>investigating my family. What are you going to do to find the
>killer of my daughter?"
>
>The media are beginning to take up the Ramseys' questions. On
>Good Morning America, Walters replayed John Ramsey's
>challenge to Owens. Other journalists are asking Owens, the
>district attorney, and the local police chief whether they've
>exaggerated the evidence against the Ramseys, why they
>haven't met with the couple, why they haven't accepted the
>Ramseys' offers to take lie-detector tests, and why they
>tried to prevent the grand jury from hearing Detective Smit's
>testimony that an intruder may have committed the crime. The
>police, the district attorney, and the governor have plenty
>of good answers to these questions. The difference is that
>now they're being forced to give those answers.
>
>So here's Theory 2: A pedophile saw JonBenet on the beauty
>pageant circuit and tried to kidnap her. He got into the
>Ramseys' house through the open window in the basement. He
>used a stun gun to disable her—leaving telltale marks
>in autopsy photographs—but she regained consciousness
>and tried to escape or cry out. He killed her, aborted his
>plan, and fled. The cops, having decided right away that the
>parents were guilty, ignored and squandered evidence that
>might have nailed the killer. Now they're covering up their
>mistake by telling reporters that the Ramseys are "hiding
>behind their attorneys" and remain under the "umbrella of
>suspicion," where it rains all the time. To get out from
>under that umbrella, the Ramseys don't have to make you
>believe the pedophile theory. They just need to make you,
>Barbara Walters, and Bill Owens start talking about it.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>TODAY IN SLATE
>
>How To Blow $6 Billion in a Day
>[http://slate.msn.com/Assessment/00-03-22/Assessment.asp]
>
>The Ramseys Fight Back
>[http://slate.msn.com/framegame/entries/00-03-22_77772.asp]
>
>A Movie Trailer We'd Like to See
>[http://slate.msn.com/Features/trailer/trailer.asp]
>
>A Brief History of a Bucket of Warm Spit
>[http://slate.msn.com/HistoryLesson/00-03-23/HistoryLesson.asp]
>
>
>[]
>
>
>
>Brought to you by the Internet's informed look at politics and
>culture. Read Slate at http://www.slate.com.
>
>Slate. What Matters.
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