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Forum Name: old depo and interview threads
Topic ID: 72
Message ID: 20
#20, RE: Thoughts
Posted by Dave on Nov-04-03 at 01:53 PM
In response to message #18
I believe that the statement that DocG repeatedly quotes without reference is actually a misquote of: "The strongest evidence against the Ramseys is nothing that directly implicates them." (V. Bugliosi as quoted in PMPT, hardcover, page 568). This is still a true statement. The fact that it's still true after millions of dollars worth of attempts to invalidate it strongly suggests that they are indeed innocent.

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We are very, very unlikely to see the full report for reasons I'll mention later in this post. The full report probably lists dozens if not hundreds of fibers. The vast majority of those fibers should be expected to be sourced to something in the house. Therefore, finding a fiber on JonBenét, on her clothing, in her hair, etc. is representative. Leaving the burglar alarm off is representative of the Ramsey home at night; they didn't often turn it on. No footprints in the snow is representative of all photos that we've seen; clear pathways are representative of the house that morning. Finding any type of fiber from either John or Patsy tells us nothing --- nothing at all. It's completely meaningless, just like no footprints in the snow and the burglar alarm being off. Some people, especially the ones we fondly refer to as "BORG," are making this same mistake regarding what is representative and what is not over and over and over again.

What these inquisitors were hoping for, and I think that this should be rather obvious from the transcript, is that John would say something like, "Uh --- well --- uh, she had to go to the bathroom and --- uh --- she was too tired to wipe herself off --- so --- uh --- I think I might have done that. Uh --- maybe that's --- DUH --- how it got there. Yeah, that's it." Then they would show this at trial to discredit him. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: How many of you think it's appropriate for a father of a ...?" The type of technique that was used here is known to result in high rates of false confessions. Many people feel compelled to try and explain things, even to the point of making things up even when they're completely innocent. This interrogation is nothing short of pathetic.

The unidentified or unsourced fibers MAY be clues about a possible intruder. The problem is that she had been out of the house very recently prior to her murder. The usefulness of unsourced fibers is that if they can be traced to someone who was supposedly never in the house, never near JonBenét, and so forth, it would be very incriminating. This is the only utility of the fiber evidence that is reliable. Anything else that is derived from the fiber evidence should be highly suspect.

We probably won't see the entire report because it probably has many unsourced fibers in it and it probably has dozens if not hundreds of fibers that are sourced to items in the house, including clothing of John and Patsy. Showing John and Lin the report would merely verify that finding a fiber from John or Patsy is common, expected, representative. That is, providing the full report would show that pointing out any single fiber is a misrepresentation of the totality of the evidence if the source of that single fiber is an item in the house.

Perhaps the situation could be summarized in saying that evidence needs to be evaluated in context, just like quoting someone. Showing someone a single fiber is like taking a single sentence out of a speech. It means something only under very particular circumstances. Lin is simply saying, "Show us the speech, and then perhaps John can comment on it."