Q. (BY MR. HOFFMAN) Mr. Thomas, I would just like to direct you to page 286 of your book.

A. Okay.

Q. All right. Now, this is a rather lengthy series of paragraphs and it runs to 289 and it's basically
from what I can understand your theory of how this crime was committed, who was involved in it; is
that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And have you had a chance to review pages 286, 87, 88 and 89 since the book was written?

A. Yes.

Q. Are these statements still accurate?

A. Well, I don't know the current state of the evidence of what may or may not have changed or
come to be known by Mike Kane and the cops. But at the time I left, this was certainly a hypothesis
that I felt was consistent with the evidence that I felt was certainly reasonable.

Q. Have you had any occasion to change your mind with respect to your analysis and the
conclusions that you draw in these pages?

A. Well, will you give me just a moment to reread quickly these three pages?

MR. HOFFMAN: In fact, would anyone object if he read this out loud into the record?

MR. WOOD: If you want to spend your time having him do that, Darnay, I have no objection
whatsoever.

MR. HOFFMAN: Well, yes, would you mind? Let's do it this way. Why don't you silently read this to
yourself and then I'll ask you that question again.

MR. WOOD: He might as well read it out loud because it's on the clock.

Q. (BY MR. HOFFMAN) Okay. Then why don't you read it out loud. Begin with "There was no
doubt in my mind that Patsy wrote the note."

A. "'I believe she committed the murder' I told Smit and proceeded to lay out what I thought had
happened ... "In my hypothesis, and approaching fortieth birthday, the busy holiday season, an
exhausting Christmas Day, and an argument with JonBenet had left Patsy frazzled. Her beautiful
daughter, whom she frequently dressed almost as a twin, had rebelled against wearing the same outfit
as her mother.
"When they came home, John Ramsey helped Burke put together a Christmas toy. JonBenet, who had
not eaten much at the Whites' party, was hungry. Her mother let her have some pineapple, and then
the kids were put to bed. John Ramsey read to his little girl. Then he went to bed. Patsy stayed up to
prepare for the trip to Michigan the next morning, a trip she admittedly did not particularly want to
make.
"Later JonBenet awakened after wetting her bed, as indicated by the plastic sheets, the urine stains, the
pull-up diaper package hanging halfway out of a cabinet, and the balled-up turtleneck found in the
bathroom. I concluded that the little girl had worn the red turtleneck to bed, as her mother originally
said, and that it was stripped off when it got wet.
"As I told Smit, I never believed the child was sexually abused for the gratification of the offender but
that the vaginal trauma was some sort of corporal punishment. The dark fibers found in her pubic
region could have come from the violent wiping of a wet child. Patsy probably yanked out the diaper
package in cleaning up JonBenet.
"Patsy would not be the first mother to lose control in such a situation. One of the doctors we consulted
cited toileting issues as a textbook example of causing a parental rage. So, in my hypothesis, there was
some sort of explosive encounter in the child's bathroom sometime prior to one o'clock in the morning,
the time suggested by the digestion rate of the pineapple found in the child's stomach. I believed
JonBenet was slammed against a hard surface, such as the edge of a tub, inflicting a mortal head
wound. She was unconscious, but her heart was still beating. Patsy would not have known that
JonBenet was still alive, because the child already appeared to be dead. The massive head trauma
would have eventually killed her.
"It was the critical moment in which she either had to call for help or find an alternative explanation for
her daughter's death. It was accidental in the sense that the situation had developed without motive or
premeditation. She could have called for help but chose not to. An emergency room doctor probably
would have questioned the 'accident' and called the police. Still, little would have happened to Patsy in
Boulder. But I believe panic overtook her.
"John and Burke continued to sleep while Patsy moved the body of JonBenet down to the basement
and hid her in the little room.
"As I pictured the scene, her dilemma was that the police would assume the obvious if a six- year old
child was found dead in a private home without any satisfactory explanation. Patsy needed a diversion
and planned the way she thought a kidnapping should look.
"She returned upstairs to the kitchen and grabbed her tablet and a felt-tipped pen," and flipping "to the
middle of the tablet, and started a ransom note, drafting one that ended on page 25. For some reason
she discarded that one and ripped pages 17-25 from the tablet. Police never found those pages.
"On page 26, she began the 'Mr. and Mrs. I,' then also abandoned that false start. At some point she
drafted the long ransom note. By doing so, she created the government's best piece of evidence.
"She then faced the major problem of what to do with the body. Leaving the house carried the risk of
John or Burke awakening at the sounds and possibly being seen by a passerby or a neighbor. Leaving
the body in the distant, almost inaccessible, basement room was the best option.
"As I envisioned it, Patsy returned to the basement, a woman caught up in panic, where she could have
seen--perhaps by detecting a faint heartbeat or a sound or a slight movement--that although completely
unconscious, JonBenet was not dead. Others might argue that Patsy did not know the child was still
alive. In my hypothesis, she took the next step, looking for the closest available items in ... desperation.
Only feet away was her paint tote. She grabbed a paint brush and broke it to fashion the garrote with
some cord." She then -- "then she looped the cord around the girl's neck.
"In my scenario, she choked JonBenet from behind, with a grip on her broken paintbrush handle, pulling
the ligature. JonBenet, still unconscious, would never have felt it. There are only four ways to die:
suicide, natural, accidental, or homicide. This accident, in my opinion, had just become a murder.
"Then the staging continued to make it look like a kidnapping. Patsy tied the girl's wrists in front, not in"
the "back, for otherwise the arms would not have been in" the "overhead position. But with a
fifteen-inch length of cord between the wrists and the knot tied loosely over the clothing, there was no
way such a binding would have restrained a live child. It was a symbolic act to make it appear the child
had been bound.
"Patsy took considerable time with her daughter, wrapping her carefully in the blanket and leaving her
with a favorite pink nightgown." As "the FBI had told us ... a stranger would not have taken such
care.
"As I told Lou, I thought that throughout the coming hours, Patsy worked on her staging, such as
placing the ransom note where she would be sure to 'find' it the next morning. She placed the tablet on
the countertop right beside the stairs and" put "the pen in the cup.
"While going through the drawers" and "under the countertop" -- "While going through the drawers
under the countertop where the tablet had been, she found rolls of tape. She placed a strip from a roll of
duct tape across JonBenet's mouth. There was bloody mucous under the tape, and a perfect set of the
child's lip prints, which did not indicate a tongue impression or resistance. "I theorized that Patsy, trying
to cover her tracks, took the remaining cord, tape, and the first ransom note out of the house that night,
perhaps dropping them into a nearby storm sewer or among the Christmas debris in wrappings in a
neighbor's trash can.
"She was running out of time. The household was scheduled to wake up early to fly to Michigan, and in
her haste, Patsy Ramsey did not change clothes, a vital mistake. With the clock ticking, and hearing
her husband moving around upstairs, she stepped over the edge.
"The way I envisioned it, Patsy screamed, and John Ramsey, coming out of the shower, responded,
totally unaware of what had occurred. Burke, awakened by the noise shortly before six o'clock in the
morning, came down to find out what had happened and was sent back to bed as his mother talked to
the 911 emergency dispatcher.
"Patsy Ramsey opened the door to Officer Rick French at about 5:55 a.m. on the morning of
December 26, 1996, wearing a red turtleneck sweater and black pants, the same things she had worn to
a party the night before. Her hair was done, and her makeup was on. In my opinion, she had never
been to bed.
"The diversion worked for seven hours as the Boulder police thought they were dealing with a
kidnapping.
"John Ramsey, in my hypothetical scenario, probably first grew suspicious while reading the ransom
note that morning, which was why he was unusually quiet. He must have seen his wife's writing
mannerisms all over it, everything but her signature. But where was his daughter?
"He said in his police interview that he went down to the basement when Detective Arndt noticed him
missing. I suggested that Ramsey found JonBenet at that time and was faced with the dilemma of his
life. During the next few hours, his behavior changed markedly as he desperately considered his few
options--submit to the authorities or try to control the situation. He had already lost one child, Beth, and
now JonBenet was gone too. Now Patsy was possibly in jeopardy.
"The stress increased steadily during the morning, for Patsy, in my theory, knew that no kidnapper was
going to call by ten o'clock, and after John found the body, he knew that too. So when Detective Linda
Arndt told him to search the house, he used the opportunity and made a beeline for the basement.
"Then tormented as he might be, he chose to protect his wife. Within a few hours, the first of his many
lawyers was in motion, the private investigators a day later.
"That's the way I see it, I said to Lou Smit." That's how evidence -- "That's how the evidence fits to
me. She made mistakes, and that's how we solve crimes, right? I reminded him of his own favorite
saying: 'Murders are usually what they seem.'".

Q. All right. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Now, I want to ask you, do you still agree with this analysis
of the murder of JonBenet Ramsey?

MR. WOOD: Are you asking him as to the state of the evidence in August of 1998?

MR. HOFFMAN: No, I'm asking him whether now he still agrees based on his own personal
knowledge of the case whether or not he still stands by these statements.

MR. WOOD: I want to make sure that we understand, Darnay, because he, as I understood it,
testified that short of media reports and public statements he doesn't know anything about the state of
the evidence from August of 1998 through September of 2001. And I think in fairness, we ought to
make sure that we are asking him what he is standing by.

MR. HOFFMAN: All right.

Q. (BY MR. HOFFMAN) Do you regard the statements that you make on page 286, 287, 288, 289
as being true to the best of your knowledge?

MR. WOOD: We've got a conference again.

THE DEPONENT: Just a second, Darnay.

MR. HOFFMAN: Yeah, um-hum.

(Discussion off the record between the deponent and Mr. Diamond.)

A. I'm sorry, Mr. Hoffman. Yeah, as I said, given what I knew when I resigned in the summer of
'98, I don't know the status of the evidence now but this was a hypothetical scenario that I purported
that I felt was consistent with the evidence at the time. And unless something is changed drastically or
markedly, that I'm unaware of, yeah, it's still my belief that something -- or let me state it this way: It's
still my belief -- or I still stand behind this hypothetical scenario in that regard.