Latest / Heroes Behind the Badge / Morgan Wright — What the JonBenét Ramsey Crime Scene Actually Says | Part 2

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Morgan Wright — What the JonBenét Ramsey Crime Scene Actually Says | Part 2 · Heroes Behind the Badge

• 0:00
  She was found with dried urine on the
• 0:01
  top of her sweats, not on the bottom.
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  She did not die face up.
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  She died face down in the hallway
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  after being hit with a flashlight.
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  That conclusion comes at the end of a long chain.
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  It starts with a ransom note that by
• 0:24
  Morgan's analysis could not have been read.
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  All right.
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  So now we've disproved
• 0:29
  there's an intruder in your theory.
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  I would ask, is there other
• 0:35
  ways they could have gotten them?
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  Maybe they had a key or maybe
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  they had some other way to get in.
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  Was that looked into?
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  Yeah, they looked at the housekeepers.
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  They looked at the other people who had keys who got in.
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  But see what they did is they anchored in on because that
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  was the broken window was the only way to explain how
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  somebody could have got into the house.
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  And what they were saying is that they were going to take
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  Jambane out that same window.
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  It first of
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  all, how do you know if there really was an intruder?
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  How do you know that was their intent?
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  Why not walk out through a door?
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  Right.
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  Because they talked about was the alarm on or off.
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  So so many of these things, when you stack inference upon
• 1:12
  inference upon inference, pretty soon you reach a thing
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  that the only way the example I give is it's like waiting
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  to go on vacation till all the traffic lights turn green.
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  All of those things would have to line up like this for
• 1:24
  this story to be to pass the initial hypothesis test.
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  And from a first principle
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  standpoint, you have to analyze it.
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  And so, Craig, to your point, I did.
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  I looked at I said, OK, let's go down that path.
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  We're now at a fork in the road.
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  Was there an intruder or wasn't there an intruder?
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  There is nothing I could find that substantiates and
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  supports the evidence of intruder.
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  And there's some reasons why that get into the flashlight
• 1:47
  where Jambane was found, the
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  position of her body and the autopsy report.
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  So Morgan, a quick question about
• 1:53
  this now in the window and the intruder
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  issue.
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  What was the lead investigators position on all that?
• 2:01
  Do you know?
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  I think they got taken down the rabbit hole of the
• 2:08
  intruder, but in none of the reports.
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  Do they show that they went back and recreated this to
• 2:15
  show that somebody could have got in through the window,
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  left the cobweb intact and
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  not dragged any debris through?
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  So I think what they did is they they
• 2:24
  again, this goes back to assumptions, right?
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  The assumption is there was there was an intruder.
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  What they were trying to prove is that somebody in the
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  house did it as opposed to disproving
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  the fact that there was no intruder.
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  Once you do that, I don't have to
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  prove anything inside the house.
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  And then it leads into why were John and Patsy Ramsey
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  indicted both on two counts?
• 2:44
  Gotcha.
• 2:45
  So that's a nice thing.
• 2:47
  Yeah.
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  Why did Steve Thomas, the lead investigator, resign?
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  What was his big concern?
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  And that was that was I want to follow up with it.
• 2:55
  It was it was the influence the Ramses were having.
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  And it's over the case and then stonewalling and the way
• 3:02
  he was treated by, as he said, treated by the department.
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  I
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  don't want to read into what he
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  thought or what was in his mind.
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  I just look at it and I go.
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  When you tell the story, you
• 3:15
  tell it in a way that favors you.
• 3:17
  We all do.
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  Right.
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  So.
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  So I just I just leave it at that.
• 3:21
  His story, his book was about
• 3:22
  something that favored him about what he did.
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  But I will tell you, if I go back to the beginning,
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  the biggest defining moment of this
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  entire case was control of the crime scene.
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  Period.
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  Full stop.
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  Get everybody out of you have a kidnapping.
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  Everybody out of the house.
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  We don't know what evidence is in there.
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  And then this is the way I test people so.
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  We can get into the house one of two ways.
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  Either consent or a search warrant.
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  If if if if I'm truly the victim, whatever I'll sign any
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  document you need, whatever you need,
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  you get vans out there, you get everybody.
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  They allowed them to be in the house.
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  They allowed them to wander around.
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  John Ramsey disappeared for about 45 minutes.
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  And so there are some issues about
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  control, control of the crime scene.
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  If you had done that from the beginning, that would have
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  that would have made this case in the first 48 hours.
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  Hmm.
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  What was JonBenét sexually assaulted?
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  Do we know that?
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  That's a complicated issue.
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  Um, I looked at the reports of Dr.
• 4:26
  Cyril Wecht and some other people who looked at this.
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  The question was, was there evidence of sexual assault?
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  Some people say yes.
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  Um, the question is, did it occur at that time?
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  Uh, the autopsy report does show some things about
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  abrasions and places that wouldn't
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  expect abrasions to be in a crime victim.
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  So, um,
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  one of the things I learned though,
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  to Craig is I got to stay in my lane.
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  Um, and so I look at that and
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  I go, they say, well, was she,
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  personally, I can't tell you if she was or wasn't.
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  Um, that's where you have to get back into the history
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  between her and Burke and the
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  issues with Burke prior to that.
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  But that's when I, when I go through this case, I'm very
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  careful because those can become rabbit
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  holes and those can become distractions.
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  My whole purpose was let's talk about the case.
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  And in really my case is it's,
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  it's binary intruder, no intruder.
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  And if it's no intruder, it means somebody inside the
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  house, regardless of the history JonBenét had with
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  Burke, regardless of the
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  history, Burke had with his parents.
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  Uh, and, but those, those are some of the allegations, if
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  I'm being legally correct, those are some of the
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  allegations that were raised.
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  Craig is that there were Burke may have, uh, engaged in
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  inappropriate behavior with JonBenét.
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  I guess what I was getting at is if there was semen found
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  on her clothes or her body, um, that DNA, uh, would be
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  seemingly very easy to figure out who it came from.
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  Uh, I would think with today's
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  DNA forensic science, uh, abilities.
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  As long as the contributor is in CODIS, the combined DNA
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  index system, if they're not in there, then you have a
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  profile sitting there, but it's interesting.
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  You brought up because during
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  the reconstruction, they also, Dr.
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  Henry Lee has since passed
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  away, but at the time he was alive.
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  So they talked about the fact that on JonBenét's
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  underwear, they found, oh, we found touch DNA.
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  I thought Dr.
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  Henry Lee just totally put that argument to bed.
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  He got a brand new pair of underwear out of a store
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  inside the sealed wrapper had
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  never been touched and they tested it.
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  They found 25 different samples
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  of touch DNA on the underwear.
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  And wasn't it true, uh, Morgan, that the, the Ramses were
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  eventually exonerated in 2008
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  or some something like that.
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  And that was the reason because that touch DNA was found
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  and they said, well, it can't be them.
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  There isn't a finding of exoneration, but it's
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  inconsistent with the indictment and it's
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  inconsistent with the physical evidence.
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  And that's, um, that was the,
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  uh, district attorney at the time.
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  And I just spaced out her name.
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  Um, but they tried to say, look, we have this, they tried
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  to get a DNA sample into CODIS, so in CODIS, uh, for
• 7:08
  again, for you crime scene geeks out there.
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  To, to create a positive match in CODIS, you have to have
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  20 short tandem repeat markers,
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  20 STRs that's to get a full match.
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  You have to have a minimum of 13 to get a partial match.
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  The best they could come up with was about 10 or 11, not
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  anything that was even remotely.
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  And the difference between that, between 13 and 12 and
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  11, it's, it's, it geometrically,
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  uh, increases the size and scope.
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  It's not like two plus two equals four.
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  It's four times four times four times four.
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  You get a geometric progression, not an arithmetic
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  progression of the number of
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  available people who could become the profile.
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  So when you have a match, we're talking about odds that
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  are in the billions, you know, one in 25 billion, right?
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  But when you're at 11, you're talking about, um, you
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  know, it could be one in three, you know, one in three
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  people would have the same profile at 11 markers as
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  opposed to 13, as opposed to, um,
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  you know, what, what are the odds?
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  Right?
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  So, uh, it's the, the, the math
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  doesn't work in something like that.
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  And again, this is just me personally saying it was a
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  short sighted thing because it was
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  not supported by the physical evidence.
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  It was not supported by what I'm showing you right now.
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  And it definitely was not
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  supported by the crime scene evidence.
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  Um, so I, I, I can't talk for her about why she did that.
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  Um, again, when you're elected and you're in a political
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  position, some decisions are political.
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  Morgan, let's go back to the ransom note.
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  I mean, this is frankly, unbelievable.
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  I mean, you've got a ransom note that Patsy finds on the,
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  I think on the steps of the stairs and, uh, you've
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  indicated earlier that it probably took, you know, 45
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  minutes or more to write a
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  two and a half page ransom note.
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  Somebody broke into the house, seemingly sat down, you
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  know, found some paper, found a pen, wrote a ransom note
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  that doesn't add up obviously.
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  Um, and then in the ransom note, and this is, uh, you
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  know, too much to believe $118,000 was the ransom amount
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  that they wanted, which happens to match exactly with the
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  bonus that John Ramsey had received from his employer.
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  Um, how can that be?
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  I mean, is there any explanation for that?
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  How did John Ramsey Patsy Ramsey
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  explain that part of the equation?
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  So I got to go back and amend something.
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  I said 543.
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  I'm about to show you something. 543
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  is when they found the ransom note.
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  I think 602 is when they made the
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  911 call, but let me share this.
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  Let me share this screen with you and show you what I did
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  to analyze just the ransom note itself, right?
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  Cause what they said was, and
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  it might be a little bit hard.
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  So I'm going to, um, click
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  here and see if, uh, I don't know.
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  It doesn't show it on here, but so if you look in the,
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  uh, if you look down along the bottom, down along the
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  bottom is the light timeline for December 26th.
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  I went back and again, pulled this is data driven, right?
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  It doesn't matter what you believe.
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  It only matters what must be true.
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  So I went back and I looked and I said, okay, at seven or
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  at five 45, what was the elevation of the sun?
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  Because John Ramsey specifically said in his deposition
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  and his statements, he was in his underwear, he took the
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  ransom note by the spiral staircase, which is on the west
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  side of the house, laid it on the floor and read it.
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  He did not turn any lights on.
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  He just read it on the floor.
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  So I said, well, let's test that.
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  Right.
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  So at five 45 PM, the sun is
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  still 17 degrees below the horizon.
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  I'm 75 AM.
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  Yeah.
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  Seven by 45 AM.
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  Yes.
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  Five 45 AM.
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  The sun rises in the East and sets in the West.
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  Right.
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  So at that time, the sun rises in the
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  East, he's on the West side of the house.
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  The sun is still 17 degrees below the horizon.
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  Now, why did I do that?
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  Because the other thing I went
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  into, I did the lunar light analysis.
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  In other words, at five 45, the moment John Ramsey claims
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  to have discovered and read a three page handwritten
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  note, it was a 97.2 waning gibbous moon.
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  Basically what that means above the horizon.
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  That is the best case scenario.
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  Under ideal conditions, you light
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  illumination is registered in terms of Lux, L U X.
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  So even under ideal conditions, a full
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  moon produces only 0.05 to 0.3 Lux outdoors.
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  Window glass reduces transmitted light by 70 to 90%.
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  So the effective moonlight, the effective moonlight
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  reaching an interior would be approximately 0.005 to 0.03
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  Lux, which is 1600 to 20,000
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  times below the minimum of 50 Lux.
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  You need to be able to read something in ambient light.
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  So just from a, just from a solar standpoint.
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  So then I said, okay, let's talk
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  about where he was reading the note.
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  He's reading it here.
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  Here's the house.
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  It's total darkness.
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  They have not turned any lights on.
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  And so if we scroll up just a little bit, we look at the
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  interior note location and John
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  Ramsey's position where it was on the home.
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  So I have the house up here.
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  What I'm looking at is the light timeline and above.
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  Is it, do you guys, there we go.
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  Yeah.
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  So it's going to be the very top half of that.
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  So this is the spiral staircase down here in the top half
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  of the picture where John in the
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  yellow, you see where the ransom note was.
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  But if you look to the right, that's the house where was
• 12:37
  the sun, not only angle, but azimuth.
• 12:39
  Where was it coming from?
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  So the sun is coming from the east, 17 degrees below the
• 12:45
  horizon at a certain azimuth,
• 12:47
  he's on the west side of the house.
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  So no, you don't even have sunrise yet.
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  So there's no solar light.
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  There's not enough lunar light.
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  So the question is, how can you read a ransom note in
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  total darkness when, and by his own words and his own
• 13:00
  testimony, he did not turn any lights on.
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  He read it in the ambient light.
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  Um, based on all the analysis I
• 13:06
  could do, that's physically impossible.
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  So the $118,000, how was that ever explained by anyone to
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  justify that it wasn't an inside job that it was either
• 13:18
  Patsy or John that wrote that ransom note?
• 13:21
  So when the FBI looked at this case, and I know, um,
• 13:23
  actually I talked to one of the
• 13:24
  profilers that worked on the case.
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  She, she can't talk about it.
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  Um,
• 13:30
  but I just simply said, here's the question I posed.
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  I don't want to give away,
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  but I, I gave her the scenario.
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  Here's my scenario.
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  If I put this scenario out publicly, which I'm actually
• 13:39
  believing it or not, guys, I don't want to say like,
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  we're bringing, this is the first time I publicly said
• 13:43
  this gone through this entire case.
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  This is the first time.
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  So if I said, if I had this scenario of the case,
• 13:50
  would I be embarrassed when
• 13:51
  information came out later and she said, no.
• 13:55
  So I didn't ask her what it was, but I said, here's,
• 13:57
  here's, here's my view of the case.
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  Here's my hypothesis.
• 14:02
  When the information comes out, because they believe
• 14:04
  there will be some additional
• 14:04
  information coming out sometime this year.
• 14:06
  According to them.
• 14:08
  Uh, I said, would I be embarrassed?
• 14:10
  And she said, no.
• 14:11
  So the reason I laid this all out is to not only show
• 14:14
  that, Hey, what are the, what's the
• 14:16
  probability that there was an intruder?
• 14:18
  Then as we get into a staged crime scene, I analyze, I
• 14:21
  just don't take it at face value, right?
• 14:23
  Um, I don't look at what you say.
• 14:25
  I look at what you do.
• 14:27
  Uh, and I use the Edgar Allan Poe method, believe nothing
• 14:29
  that you hear and only one half that you
• 14:31
  see, you can tell me anything you want.
• 14:34
  But I'm going to, so what I did is I laid it out based on
• 14:36
  the house design, I have the
• 14:37
  floor, I have the architectural plans.
• 14:39
  I know every room, every floor I laid it out and I said,
• 14:43
  you cannot have enough solar light, nor could you have
• 14:47
  enough, um, or lunar light, nor could you have enough
• 14:49
  solar light to read that ransom note, not physically
• 14:53
  physics, not me physics as you go through glass, it takes
• 14:58
  out a big majority of the available light.
• 15:00
  It's filtered through any glass that you have in there.
• 15:02
  So it's just not possible.
• 15:04
  You could read something like that.
• 15:05
  And then Craig, back to your point.
• 15:07
  Again, I go back to 118,000.
• 15:09
  That is an artifact that is
• 15:11
  unexplainable and they couldn't explain it away.
• 15:13
  And what they, the way they explained it away was we
• 15:15
  didn't write the ransom note, how would we know?
• 15:17
  Maybe somebody knew what his, um, uh, it was deflection.
• 15:21
  Maybe somebody knew what his
• 15:23
  bonus was and they put it in there.
• 15:25
  So they never fully, uh, implicated Patsy in writing the
• 15:29
  note, but they never fully cleared her either.
• 15:31
  They just say, um, uh, it was basically indeterminate.
• 15:35
  You know, we, we can't determine.
• 15:37
  Um, it's like when you have, uh, there's five, there's
• 15:40
  five manners of death, natural
• 15:42
  suicide, homicide, accident, and undetermined.
• 15:45
  So in the case of this note, it was undetermined.
• 15:47
  They weren't able to include or exclude
• 15:49
  her as being the source of the handwriting.
• 15:52
  So Morgan, we talked earlier a little bit about how the
• 15:55
  secret service looked at the, uh, the paper, the pen,
• 15:59
  what about handwriting analysis?
• 16:01
  They did that too.
• 16:03
  That was it.
• 16:04
  Same.
• 16:04
  That's the conclusion they came to.
• 16:05
  They could not, they could not rule her in or rule her
• 16:08
  out definitively of being the source of the handwriting.
• 16:12
  And they did determine based on, well, I guess you
• 16:15
  couldn't really determine anything.
• 16:17
  I mean, where does it, where does it come from when you
• 16:21
  said that the handwriting was,
• 16:26
  you know, disguised perhaps?
• 16:27
  Oh, that was, that came from the handwriting experts.
• 16:29
  They looked at it and based on their knowledge, skills,
• 16:31
  and experience it over time, they said that this was the,
• 16:34
  the writing was an attempt to disguise.
• 16:36
  There's certain, again,
• 16:37
  that's, that's outside my wheelhouse.
• 16:39
  I just, I can only tell you what they said, but the
• 16:41
  experts basically said when they looked at the analysis
• 16:44
  is that this is, this has all the indicia and the
• 16:47
  artifacts of disguised handwriting, somebody attempting
• 16:51
  to disguise the block lettering,
• 16:52
  you know, the different things.
• 16:54
  So,
• 16:55
  you know, one, one other question that I, I, I still am
• 16:58
  thinking about earlier in our conversation is you were
• 17:02
  talking about how Jambenay's mother was
• 17:08
  wearing the same clothes two days in a row.
• 17:10
  How does anybody know what
• 17:12
  she was wearing the day before?
• 17:14
  Pictures from the Christmas party.
• 17:16
  So they, they were at a Christmas party.
• 17:18
  People took pictures they've got.
• 17:19
  Um, that is all well-documented in terms of what she was
• 17:22
  wearing the day before when they went to the Christmas
• 17:25
  party and returned home that night.
• 17:28
  My other question.
• 17:29
  So the lead investigator from
• 17:31
  the Boulder PD, he resigned.
• 17:33
  Did he go to another law enforcement agency?
• 17:37
  Did he give up being in law enforcement and how much of
• 17:40
  that was just being in an
• 17:41
  immense media spotlight on a huge case?
• 17:45
  And he was just basically crucified.
• 17:49
  I don't know if I can answer the second part.
• 17:50
  I think he moved down to
• 17:52
  Florida was dealing in real estate.
• 17:54
  I believe he's still alive.
• 17:55
  I tried to reach out to him, but it's
• 17:57
  kind of hard to know which person it is.
• 17:59
  And I, the only reason I reached out to
• 18:01
  him was just to validate some of the, um,
• 18:05
  hypotheses I had, but whether I did or not, it's okay.
• 18:10
  Uh, but I think he's down there.
• 18:11
  I don't, in his book, he gets into it and I'm trying to
• 18:13
  remember some of the stuff he said, but I think part of
• 18:15
  it was just, he felt that he was betrayed by the
• 18:18
  department, that he was like made to be, like you said,
• 18:20
  in a sense, the sacrificial lamb.
• 18:23
  And I know he went on shows,
• 18:24
  they went on Larry King live.
• 18:25
  He debated the Ramses.
• 18:27
  There was a lot of back and forth.
• 18:28
  And what I go back to is the trap everybody fell into.
• 18:32
  They made the assumption there was an intruder.
• 18:34
  And so they, they based everything from there about
• 18:36
  whether an intruder, nobody ever went back and said,
• 18:39
  let's do the work to determine in the first place, if
• 18:41
  there was an intruder, because if there's no intruder,
• 18:44
  then a suspect is a downstream artifact.
• 18:47
  People that were named all of this
• 18:48
  other stuff never should have been named.
• 18:50
  If you could show that there was never an intruder
• 18:53
  because they tried to blame housekeeper, the boyfriend,
• 18:55
  the husband of the housekeeper tried to blame
• 18:58
  photographers tried to, I mean, they were, you throw
• 19:01
  enough mud up against the wall and you see what sticks
• 19:03
  and then you start going in that direction because what
• 19:05
  it does is you have to spend all
• 19:06
  your resources disproving that.
• 19:08
  My simple thing was I don't
• 19:10
  have to disprove any of that stuff.
• 19:11
  I go back to,
• 19:13
  we cannot establish from an evidentiary standpoint that
• 19:16
  there was an intruder period.
• 19:19
  You know, today we have the, the
• 19:22
  advantage of, of sophisticated DNA.
• 19:26
  We have cameras everywhere.
• 19:28
  We have technology, you know, this more than any, anyone,
• 19:31
  because this is what you use for your
• 19:34
  company to really dig into all this stuff.
• 19:37
  We, uh, we did interviews recently on the OJ Simpson
• 19:42
  case, the Waco, Texas case, the Unabomber.
• 19:46
  One thing that I remember, we're talking about the
• 19:48
  Unabomber and the lead FBI
• 19:50
  agent was asked, I believe by Craig,
• 19:55
  how long would it take to, to
• 19:57
  solve the Unabomber case today?
• 19:59
  And I think his answer was four hours.
• 20:02
  And that was because of the cameras,
• 20:04
  the technology and everything else.
• 20:06
  You know, we've talked about a lot of these unique cases
• 20:10
  and you don't see kind of cases, these, these long drawn
• 20:14
  out cases, the serial killer cases today in our, in our
• 20:19
  modern era, just because of technology and, and having
• 20:23
  said all that your thought about how criminal
• 20:29
  investigations have evolved and using this technology
• 20:34
  today, do you think the Ramsey case will ever be solved?
• 20:40
  Let me make an interesting
• 20:41
  observation about the Unabomber case.
• 20:42
  Cause, uh, Dr.
• 20:43
  Bill Tafoya is a friend of mine, Dr.
• 20:45
  Bill Tafoya and Mary Ellen O'Toole, which I know some of
• 20:48
  you folks know, were the chief
• 20:50
  behavioral scientists for the FBI.
• 20:51
  They read, they, what happened was everybody had this
• 20:54
  assumption had to be a blue collar guy, they redid the
• 20:57
  entire profile and they said, no, it's a Luddite.
• 21:00
  It's somebody in their fifties
• 21:01
  trained in the hard scientists sciences.
• 21:04
  Guess who it was?
• 21:05
  What was Ted Kaczynski in his 50 a
• 21:07
  Luddite trained in the hard scientists.
• 21:10
  So what they did is they did the most important thing is
• 21:13
  they went back and revisited the assumptions, what I
• 21:15
  talked about the assumption stack that we do on Tuesdays,
• 21:17
  what are the assumptions test the, you have to name the
• 21:20
  assumptions in order to attest them.
• 21:22
  So I would say in the case of like, JonBenét could,
• 21:25
  how would this case be solved?
• 21:26
  I'd say the first thing is, I don't know, you know what,
• 21:28
  I'm going to make a bold statement here, modern
• 21:30
  technology wouldn't have been
• 21:32
  needed to solve the JonBenét case.
• 21:33
  You know why?
• 21:34
  Cause it's about preservation of the crime scene.
• 21:36
  If you have protected the crime scene properly from the
• 21:38
  start, you would have found here in that basement down
• 21:41
  there, you would have had the tape in a pristine
• 21:43
  condition, the duct tape that was removed.
• 21:45
  You would have had fingerprints, hair, fiber.
• 21:47
  You would have had at least a lockdown crime scene and a
• 21:51
  pool of people that you would have put
• 21:54
  your investigative focus on right away.
• 21:57
  So I, you know, sometimes what is old again is new.
• 22:00
  I go back and I preach first principles.
• 22:02
  What's the basic stuff?
• 22:04
  First officer on scene has only two
• 22:05
  duties and two duties, two duties only.
• 22:07
  Preservation of the, uh, of life, protection of life and
• 22:10
  preservation of the crime scene.
• 22:12
  If we employ that every single time,
• 22:13
  many of these problems solve themselves.
• 22:16
  True.
• 22:17
  Yeah.
• 22:17
  So all the technology that we use today that could be
• 22:22
  used to look at this DNA over
• 22:24
  again, it's not going to help.
• 22:26
  Is that your, and here, let me tell you why.
• 22:28
  So let me walk you through just a little bit more of the
• 22:30
  crime scene and this'll make sense, right?
• 22:31
  So when they found JonBenét's body,
• 22:34
  we have to put some things in context.
• 22:36
  You have to, one of the things I do
• 22:37
  is I say, you have to establish it.
• 22:38
  You have to exhaust the timeline.
• 22:40
  When I was talking about the Guthrie
• 22:41
  case, you have to exhaust the timeline.
• 22:43
  You have to really narrow down, narrow down, narrow down.
• 22:46
  So in this case where JonBenét was found, she was
• 22:48
  found face up in sweats and a white shirt, a sweatshirt,
• 22:52
  a garrote around her neck, hands tied.
• 22:56
  But when you go look at the autopsy report and look at
• 22:58
  the crime scene, there's a
• 22:59
  couple of things about that room.
• 23:00
  That room requires you to reach up and turn a clasp at
• 23:03
  the top so that you could open the door.
• 23:07
  JonBenét died from blunt force trauma.
• 23:09
  One of the things that the blunt force trauma resembled
• 23:12
  was the end of the flat, the end of a flashlight.
• 23:16
  Why would a flashlight be in the basement of someplace
• 23:18
  that you could flip open a light and then here's the,
• 23:21
  here's the hypothesis of putting together.
• 23:23
  She was killed with the flashlight.
• 23:25
  Why is the flashlight downstairs?
• 23:26
  Because an adult doesn't need it, but who needs it?
• 23:28
  Somebody who's younger who can't reach the wooden clasp,
• 23:32
  but you put a flashlight in their
• 23:33
  hand, it becomes an extension of their arm.
• 23:35
  Now I've done biomechanical modeling too on Burke to say,
• 23:38
  is that, can I prove or disprove
• 23:40
  that he could have reached that?
• 23:41
  And he could reach that based on his percentile, where he
• 23:44
  was and biomechanics, you know, anthropological studies,
• 23:48
  what his arm reach would have been using a flashlight, he
• 23:51
  would have made able to reach that.
• 23:52
  So why was that room important?
• 23:54
  Because Burke's birthday was a
• 23:55
  couple of days after Christmas.
• 23:57
  What was in that room?
• 23:58
  Burke's birthday presents.
• 24:00
  What did we find on one of the birthday presents?
• 24:01
  The wrapping was torn open.
• 24:03
  Now, let me ask you,
• 24:05
  Dennis, even though you are a seasoned citizen, let's say
• 24:08
  that you, and you might've forgotten what you got
• 24:11
  somebody for Christmas and you want to say, or their
• 24:13
  birthday, gosh, what's in there?
• 24:15
  Yeah.
• 24:16
  I'm going to ask you a simple question.
• 24:17
  It's going to sound like I'm being kind of,
• 24:20
  I'm not being obnoxious, but just like I did talk about
• 24:22
  how do we do the clothing, right?
• 24:24
  Explain to me how you would, if you truly forgotten, you
• 24:27
  wanted to make sure you remember, explain to me, how
• 24:29
  would you open an already wrapped
• 24:30
  present to determine what was inside there?
• 24:34
  Or why would I write?
• 24:36
  Well, now we're going to assume that you forgot you would
• 24:38
  need to know what's in there because there's two that
• 24:40
  look alike and you need to know which one switch.
• 24:41
  So how would you open an already wrapped package?
• 24:45
  How would I, I mean, I'd rip it open.
• 24:47
  I mean, I would, you know, I guess, I don't know.
• 24:49
  What I'm saying is that you need to be, you need to be
• 24:51
  able to give it to the person that
• 24:52
  you're going to give the gift to.
• 24:53
  So you just need to be able to see what's inside the
• 24:55
  package so you know, what's what, so
• 24:56
  that you can now give it to that person.
• 24:59
  Oh, okay.
• 24:59
  So you're saying just take a peek carefully.
• 25:02
  Yeah.
• 25:02
  Carefully.
• 25:03
  I say you're not, you're not going to rip it open.
• 25:05
  You just want to see what's in there.
• 25:07
  So how would you do it?
• 25:08
  You've got, you've got, you've got wrapping paper folded,
• 25:11
  you've got a ribbon, you've
• 25:11
  got tape, how would you do it?
• 25:13
  There's a reason I'm asking
• 25:14
  carefully.
• 25:15
  I guess.
• 25:15
  Yeah.
• 25:16
  Well, I don't want to disturb it too much.
• 25:17
  Right.
• 25:18
  Right.
• 25:19
  It's so like with the tape, you would cut the tape, you
• 25:22
  know, lift it open and then retame it, right?
• 25:24
  Yeah, I wouldn't rip it in your scenario.
• 25:27
  That wouldn't be the right thing to do.
• 25:28
  I'd do it very carefully.
• 25:29
  So Patsy Ramsey said she forgot what
• 25:31
  she got Burke for his birthday present.
• 25:33
  So she went in and she ripped it open.
• 25:35
  Oh, okay.
• 25:37
  Got.
• 25:37
  So we look at human behavior.
• 25:39
  We look at adult behavior.
• 25:40
  So what's more consistent, an adult doing that or a nine
• 25:44
  year old with impulse control doing that.
• 25:47
  And so if JonBenét and Burke are in the basement at the
• 25:49
  same time, and there's a
• 25:51
  confrontation, what was used to kill her?
• 25:54
  The same thing that was used to
• 25:56
  open the door, which is the flashlight.
• 25:59
  Interesting.
• 26:00
  So, but here's the other interesting part.
• 26:02
  Here's, here's our physics lesson for today.
• 26:06
  If I were to, um, if I were to, um, have a surface with
• 26:12
  liquid or let's say, I'm trying to
• 26:14
  think of a good look, I pour, um,
• 26:18
  I, I can't think of a good example.
• 26:19
  I'm just going to say, look, when the human body dies and
• 26:21
  I've worked death scenes, right?
• 26:22
  When the human body dies, not only do you get rigor
• 26:25
  mortis and livor mortis, but the human body expels
• 26:29
  like urine.
• 26:30
  Um, you lose bladder control.
• 26:32
  All right.
• 26:33
  When that happens,
• 26:36
  what does physics tell you and gravity
• 26:38
  tell you, which way does the liquid flow?
• 26:39
  Does it flow up or does it flow down?
• 26:42
  Well, if I remember my, uh,
• 26:44
  lessons in that, that would flow down.
• 26:46
  Okay.
• 26:47
  So if, if you found a body laying face up that it
• 26:51
  expired, passed away face up, or
• 26:53
  would you expect to find the urine stains?
• 26:57
  Well, I guess downwards, right?
• 27:00
  That's not a trick question.
• 27:02
  I promise you, right?
• 27:03
  So in the autopsy and in the crime scene, they found
• 27:08
  urine on the carpet in front of the door before you even
• 27:12
  got into the wine cellar room.
• 27:15
  And when JonBenét was found, she was found with dried
• 27:18
  urine on the top of her sweats, not on the bottom.
• 27:21
  She did not die face up.
• 27:23
  She died face down in the hallway
• 27:25
  after being hit with a flashlight.
• 27:27
  She passed away there.
• 27:30
  The urine went through her, her sweatpants onto the
• 27:33
  carpet where it was found in front of there, they, they,
• 27:36
  the crime scene that this is all established.
• 27:38
  Right.
• 27:39
  And so a staged crime scene is she was turned face up,
• 27:42
  but in the room, a garrote was put around her neck using
• 27:45
  twine and using a paintbrush that came from the paint kit
• 27:48
  that was right there next to the
• 27:49
  door that belonged to Patsy Ramsey.
• 27:51
  Right.
• 27:51
  And she was found face up after the urine had dried.
• 27:54
  So there was no urine below her in that room.
• 27:56
  The urine was all dried on her pants.
• 27:58
  Wow.
• 27:59
  So now you get into the question of how did that happen?
• 28:01
  So this, and then here's the other interesting part in
• 28:04
  one of the crime scene videos and crime scene pictures,
• 28:06
  you see the flashlight in the kitchen because people were
• 28:09
  marked with why did they, because it has that diamond,
• 28:11
  you know, etched shape on it.
• 28:13
  Like you remember the kale lights and the mag lights,
• 28:15
  they've got that to hold on to.
• 28:16
  Well, it was dusted with fingerprint powder.
• 28:19
  Well, the flashlight disappeared.
• 28:21
  It's not been found since the crime scene.
• 28:23
  Wow.
• 28:25
  There's another interesting twist, isn't there?
• 28:29
  I guess as we sort of wind this down here, Morgan, let me
• 28:34
  ask you, so do you feel that
• 28:37
  this case will ever be solved?
• 28:42
  That's a, that's a, let me, let me phrase it.
• 28:44
  There's a question of will it
• 28:46
  be solved or can it be solved?
• 28:48
  Can it be solved?
• 28:48
  Yes.
• 28:49
  Will it be solved?
• 28:50
  That requires political will that requires the new
• 28:52
  decision by the district attorney, and that requires
• 28:55
  going back and revisiting the case, stripping away all
• 28:58
  the assumptions and starting from the ground, which is,
• 29:01
  was there an intruder or was there no intruder?
• 29:03
  Because if there was no intruder,
• 29:04
  then the indictments makes sense.
• 29:07
  Think about all the evidence.
• 29:08
  Time will tell.
• 29:09
  Time will only tell.
• 29:10
  Think about all the evidence that had to be presented to
• 29:12
  indict two parents on very serious charges.
• 29:15
  And by the way, the reason I said you won't be able to
• 29:17
  charge anybody in this, if, and
• 29:19
  this is a, this is an if, right?
• 29:21
  If Burke is found to be the person that killed JonBenét
• 29:23
  you know why he can't be charged because he was
• 29:26
  nine years old at the time, he was short of his 10th
• 29:28
  birthday and you have to be 10 years old in the state of
• 29:30
  Colorado to be charged with the crime.
• 29:33
  What?
• 29:36
  That's interesting.
• 29:38
  That's interesting.
• 29:39
  How many more twists and turns are there?
• 29:42
  This is crazy, Morgan.
• 29:44
  I mean, how much time do you have?
• 29:46
  Yeah.
• 29:47
  We, we got to do another one on that.
• 29:49
  This one has more, you know, more, uh, uh, issues than we
• 29:54
  can cover in just one session.
• 29:56
  So I'm, I'm going to say a huge thank you.
• 30:00
  This is the most intelligent
• 30:03
  presentation I've ever heard of this case.
• 30:06
  And you are truly a student of this
• 30:09
  and you have the facts and figures.
• 30:11
  Like I love what you say.
• 30:13
  It's not what you believe.
• 30:15
  It's what's true.
• 30:16
  It's all that matters.
• 30:17
  Yeah.
• 30:18
  And sometimes those two things are different things.
• 30:20
  Aren't
• 30:22
  they?
• 30:23
  These conspiracy theories are all fueled by what people
• 30:25
  believe, not by what they can prove.
• 30:27
  Absolutely.
• 30:28
  And this one is a, uh, this
• 30:31
  one is a granddaddy of them all.
• 30:33
  The twists, the turns, the questions, uh, particularly
• 30:37
  the crime scene, um, contamination.
• 30:41
  Wow.
• 30:41
  And that's something you can't go back and reconstruct.
• 30:44
  So that's permanent.
• 30:45
  That's that fourth category of knowledge.
• 30:47
  That's permanently unknowable.
• 30:48
  You will never able to go back to the crime scene the way
• 30:50
  it was at 602 in the morning
• 30:52
  when the first officer showed up.
• 30:54
  Never, never, never.
• 30:57
  Uh, what can I say other than a million?
• 31:00
  Thank yous for this.
• 31:01
  That's, and thank you for sharing for the first time.
• 31:05
  A lot of this stuff on our heroes behind the badge.
• 31:08
  Uh, this is what we try to do on this podcast is get you
• 31:11
  interesting people like who know what the hell they're
• 31:15
  talking about and can give us insights that you'd never
• 31:19
  get anywhere else about important
• 31:22
  cases like the JonBenét Ramsey case.
• 31:25
  So, uh, in closing this segment, I want to remind
• 31:29
  everyone that heroes behind the badge is brought to you
• 31:33
  by citizens behind the badge.
• 31:35
  Citizens behind the badge is the leading organization in
• 31:39
  support of the ladies and gentlemen,
• 31:42
  the men and women of law enforcement.
• 31:44
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• 31:47
  badge.org citizens behind the badge.org and find out all
• 31:53
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• 31:55
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• 31:58
  Also on citizens behind the badge, when you like and
• 32:02
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• 32:06
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• 32:09
  Okay.
• 32:09
  You'll always get first notification.
• 32:12
  So we would appreciate also if you
• 32:14
  have any comments, we love your comments.
• 32:17
  We read your comments.
• 32:18
  We learned from your comments, please.
• 32:21
  If you liked anything Morgan had
• 32:22
  to say today, give us a comment.
• 32:25
  There was plenty of like, by the way.
• 32:27
  And if you have questions about what
• 32:29
  Morgan had to say, give us that too.
• 32:32
  We'd like to hear your questions and your comments.
• 32:35
  But once again, Morgan, is there any way that people can
• 32:37
  reach out and get in touch with you if they'd like to
• 32:40
  know more, is there any website
• 32:42
  or anything you would give them?
• 32:44
  Why don't you tell us what that is?
• 32:46
  Openunsolved.org.
• 32:47
  That's the home of the national
• 32:48
  center for open and unsolved cases.
• 32:50
  We talk about the work that we do.
• 32:51
  We actually have over 30 volunteer case analysts where I
• 32:54
  train them in the use of AI, everything we're talking
• 32:56
  about here, our volunteer case
• 32:58
  analysts actually have their own accounts.
• 33:00
  I train them how to use it.
• 33:01
  Uh, and all of our con the way
• 33:02
  to contact us is off of that site.
• 33:04
  Openunsolved.org.
• 33:06
  Open and solved on openunsolved.org.
• 33:09
  Right.
• 33:10
  One word.
• 33:10
  Yeah.
• 33:11
  Just one word openunsolved.org.
• 33:13
  Okay.
• 33:14
  Excellent.
• 33:15
  I recommend it, uh, for more of what you
• 33:18
  heard today on Heroes Behind the Badge.
• 33:21
  I'm sure there's a lot more there.
• 33:23
  And again, a great big thank
• 33:25
  you, Morgan, for joining us again.
• 33:27
  I hope we cross paths again.
• 33:29
  You always, you never disappoint.
• 33:32
  You give us and our audience a fabulous show.
• 33:35
  So thanks again.
• 33:37
  And that'll do it for this
• 33:38
  episode of Heroes Behind the Badge.
• 33:40
  We'll see you the next time.