LAST EDITED ON Sep-01-02 AT 11:29 PM (EST)
 
> H: There were a couple of times when I thought 'We're real close' but you'd be very surprised and I'm not gonna tell you, and I'll use the word "target", who the target was.

This was perhaps the most tantilizing piece of information yet to surface in this case. No one would be "very surprised" if the target was John or Patsy, and clearly it wasn't Burke. (Well, I guess most of the forum posters would be very surprised if the target was John instead of Patsy... except docg...) Anyway, both before and after this comment was made, the Ramseys were under the BPD's infamous "umbrella of suspicion". Of course, this could be explained by the disconnect between the DA's office and the police.

Then we have ST's assertion on TV that Alex Hunter was in the PDI camp. Since, as I recall, he and Hunter were on the same program when the comment was made, it is probably true. I had always thought Hunter's comments - on many occasions - about the dangers of confronting "double jeapordy" by rushing the case to trial, were thinly disguised shots at the Ramseys. But, maybe not. Hunter knew that John had been eliminated as the writer of the ransom note. That means if Hunter shifted from PDI to someone else, that someone else would seem to have to be an intruder.

edited to add:

Just to clarify a point. The ST assertion that Hunter thought Patsy did it was made long after he left the case, making Hunter's thoughts about who did it at that time unavailable to him. In other words, ST was operating with stale data.

one mo time:

Hunter's suspect would not just have been any intruder. Since he said he thought they were "close", I think we can assume the "target" was an individual. That means his name has probably popped up somewhere in our discussions here over the years.