>floor in the cellar room? Wouldn't that be a logical place
>to get money from? Then JBR would have been found
>immediately, after JR went scrambling to get money. How did
>the killer know if there was money stashed in it or not?

I've thought about that safe a number of times. I understand it wasn't real easy to see. I also wonder why, if the perp was interested in the safe, he didn't come up with a plan that incorporated it, or why he would think the 118,000 was in the safe. Maybe there wasn't that much. Maybe, there was a whole lot more! If there were any relevance at all to the safe, I think it would be the symbolic message that John's sack of money and his safe can't buy back the life of his daughter.

>The one item that we don't know about is that magazine
>article that was marked up similar to "Ricochet." If that
>was part of the message the perp wanted to convey, it makes
>it more likely that this was some kind of vendetta...and
>yes, then I would agree that murdering JR's daughter and
>sexually assaulting her might have been pre-planned. On the
>other hand, as gruesome as this crime was, the parents whose
>children are never found never have closure----and they
>never have a "proper burial." They wonder forever what
>happened.

If only we knew for sure about that article. Lou Smit was curious. It sure got John Ramsey's attention. I don't know that they would get all that excited about a child's scribble.

>If murder was part of the plan, I don't think they would
>have left JBR in the house.......for one thing, the forensic
>evidence that can be obtained from the body.
>Remember--perps take something with then---they leave
>evidence behind. The perp was careful in trying to cover
>his tracks, but even with the contaminated crime scene he
>left plenty of clues behind, such as a
>footprint....DNA...hair and fibers...ransom note in
>someone's writing...and possibly a few things that have
>never been made public. It still seems like a kidnapping
>gone bad to me by an amateur.

You could be right. In some ways, it seems the most sensible way to think. If JonBenet had sustained more overall random injuries, I could see the kidnapping gone bad scenario. If the note, itself, sounded more like a ransom note then someone writing a self-gratifying, Hollywood script, I could believe it was a kidnapping. If he had fled in a panic, it would be more believable. I think he was over-confident that night, and that may be his undoing.