I've thought it was a kidnapping gone wrong just about from the time I jumped off of the fence after seeing the first Tracey documentary. Mainly, it was a result of compelling arguments from the BORG on alt.true-crime against the note being left to "buy time". Of course, they argued against everything else I said too, but the compelling arguments were absent.

I would imagine the killer's decision to leave a ransom note was something like the Sniper's sudden demand for ten million dollars - an idea that seemed good to him at the time for reasons the rest of us will never understand. Anyway, I've always felt the killer was a low-life like the rest of the scum who are on display in hundreds of true-crime books, so it just seems to make sense that he wouldn't be thinking enough moves in advance to write the note just as a means to buy time to get a head start.