Assignment #1

Homework Assignment #1 – Burke Ramsey vs. CBS “Re-investigation”

CBS’s “The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey” casts itself as a re-investigation of the 1996 murder mystery case. The show begins with introductions of the team that will walk the audience through what they think happened to the once 6 year old beauty queen, JonBenet. “Elite and renowned team” and “never been done before” are statements used to describe the experts who came together to take another look at the case. The whole thing seemed like a pissing match between the experts. Each gave their opinion as they reexamined already reviewed case evidence.

The young JonBenet Ramsey was murdered and found in her own home the day after Christmas. It has now been over 20 years, and this case is still unsolved. Patsy Ramsey, the victim’s mother, is the one who made the 9-1-1 call, to report her daughter abducted, after finding a ransom letter. Patsy Ramsey held a journalism degree, and I am not sure the relevance that had to the investigation. It almost seemed like investigators were trying to paint a picture that Patsy was well educated, and because of that, she could have either murdered, help murder, or cover-up the murder of her daughter.

The CBS investigation began with taking a look at the 9-1-1 call made by Patsy Ramsey. In examining the tape, experts focused their attention on the last six seconds of the call where Patsy thought she had hung up. There were murmurs and static that could be heard. Using what the experts said to be new technology, they slowed down and cleaned up the sound track. They found what they called “new evidence”. The new enhanced audio had John Ramsey possibly saying “we are not speaking to you,” and Patsy saying “what did you do?” and Burke saying “what did you find?”

The trouble with this new evidence is that while on one hand it could be incriminating conversation, the fuzz at the end of the 9-1-1 call could also be absolutely nothing. It seems if one took any sort of noise and manipulated it enough in certain ways, they could make it sound like something incriminating. That new piece of information revealed by the cutting edge investigation team was not enough to convince me the Ramseys had anything to do with the murder of their loved one.

While looking at the 9-1-1 call, a couple of the investigators interviewed the 9-1-1 operator who responded to Patsy’s call for help. The operator mentioned she had never been asked for her opinion of the call. That’s because her opinion does not matter. Evidence matters. The whole entire show was not fact based, but suspicion based with blatant intentions to prove the Ramsey family was responsible for the murder of young and innocent JonBenet. Though opinion should not drive an investigation, it is worth noting that the 9-1-1 operator “thought the call from Patsy that morning seemed rehearsed.”

The next piece of evidence reviewed by the dream team was the ransom note. This was first said to be found at 5:45 a.m. on the morning after Christmas. Investigators said this note was extremely unique. It was longer than other ransom notes. Some of the language was taken from movies like Dirty Hairy and Speed. In reviewing the linguistics of the letter, one expert thought the line “one of them doesn’t particularly like you” was clearly language a woman would use. Another expert claimed he was sure the misspelling of “bussiness” was done on purpose. The confidence of these experts in their guesses really bothered me. I understand they were providing their expert opinions, but they consistently were leaving out that there was a chance for an alternative to be true.

Another piece that rubbed me the wrong way was the reasoning behind the opinions of the experts. One expert gave his opinion and eluded the audience should believe his theory because he’d done thousands of linguistic reviews. Just because someone has looked at more than 1,000 things and has opinions on them, doesn’t mean their opinion is right.

I am still waiting for proof, and I feel for Burke Ramsey. Don’t get me wrong, on that Dr. Phil interview he did, he does seem a little creepy. But, in my OPINION, I have met a lot of creepy people who are not murderers…or at least, I don’t think they aren’t.

If I personally had suspicion of someone committing a murder, it would be okay and appropriate for me to say so. For me to give my opinion is just that – my thoughts. When an expert gives an opinion though, they should be held to a higher level of responsibility and should not take accusing people lightly (especially of murder).

Who is S.B.T.C. Victory? Will we ever know?