Ex-CIA Analyst Ultimate Theory: She was a PATSY!!

TLDR: All the evidence and behaviors are rational. Burke hit JBR and got his parents when she wasn’t waking up. John realizes he’ll be in trouble for past SA if an autopsy discovers it. John tricks Patsy into thinking they’ll all be in trouble for Burke killing JBR. John convinces Patsy to participate in a “coverup” making it look like a kidnapping with the body dumped elsewhere, but the “coverup” strangulation is what really kills JBR. John has Patsy write the ransom note, but then realizes dumping the body is too risky for him personally and pivots.  He tells Patsy they can keep the body in the house but still use the note to trick their friends into coming over to help find JBR, and then blame the killing all on their friends. John didn’t expect the intruder/kidnapping/friends theories to fool anyone for long. They were really meant to fool Patsy into thinking they could get away with it, but the shenanigans are ultimately intended to protect John from SA allegations and to make it look like Patsy did the whole murder, SA, and coverup.  John SAs the body with Patsy’s paintbrush so the cops will ultimately pin any SA and the death on Patsy, not realizing an autopsy would detect prior abuse as well as the paintbrush thing.  John does his best to wipe down any evidence relevant to himself or Burke, and he takes a shower. He doesn’t wipe down anything related to Patsy and doesn’t give her a chance to shower or change. The biggest “proof” of all this is John quickly hands investigators the pad the note was written on. My theory could only be proved by a confession from John, the only one who ever knew the whole truth.  SHE WAS A PATSY!

PREFACE: I’m an ex-CIA analyst.  I’m skilled at understanding deception, manipulation, psychology, power dynamics, and conspiracies.  I posted a preliminary version of my theory a few weeks ago, but I’ve since plugged in a lot of the gaps. I believe I’ve come up with the only plausible theory of what happened that night, based on the evidence and everyone behaving logically and rationally according to their own interests.

TIMELINE: WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT

RAMSEYS GET HOME: The Ramseys came home from the Whites’ party. The kids may have slept for a bit, or maybe nobody slept; it doesn’t really matter.  At least Patsy was still up packing for the trip. At some point, Burke goes downstairs to eat pineapple and play with his toys. (The pineapple only makes sense for Burke. One would have to get a bowl and and mug glass, get pineapple out of the fridge, get milk, get a teabag, and put the pineapple container and milk back in the fridge, and it’s just too many steps for a 6 year old to do. Cutting pineapple is difficult labor I don’t think Patsy or John would ever do, and my guess is it was pre-cut or a maid had cut it up some day prior. The parents also didn’t know JBR ate the pineapple, so that rules them out as the preparers. Given that it was in milk, it couldn't have been left out from before the party, it would have curdled.)  

INITIAL STRIKE: JonBenet hears Burke and joins him downstairs. They snack together, and then he wants to go play with his trains. She's annoying him while he's trying to play with his toys in the basement, and he ends up grabbing something (the flashlight?) and hitting her. He has behavioral and anger issues (see, golf club incident, feces incidents) due to having shitty parents (Patsy ignored him once JBR hit the pageant circuit, and father is John Ramsey), but he didn't mean for it to go this far. He tries to wake her up. He pokes her with the train tracks to try and get her to wake up. Whether out of concern for himself or her, he gets his mom and tells her JonBenet is hurt, and she's not waking up. Maybe mom will be able to make her wake up or call 911.  

JOHN DEVISES COVER-UP SCHEME FOR SA: Either both parents come down together, or Patsy comes down first and immediately gets John (the order doesn’t matter). It appears JonBenet is dead, but she actually is not. They tell Burke to go to his room, lie in bed, and not come out until they tell him to. John, always calm and rational, realizes an autopsy will reveal that John had been SAing JBR, and he could be in trouble. He quickly comes up with a plan, a plan to get Patsy involved and frame her for the SA as well as murder. Patsy has no clue the SA had been taking place (she kept taking JBR to the doctor for vaginal issues), and John doesn’t tell her.  

JOHN MANIPULATES PATSY: John convinces Patsy that all three of them will be in trouble for JBR's death, and that they need to make it look like it was a kidnapping by desecrating the body and then dumping it somewhere. Patsy is freaking out. She goes along with the plan because she's worried of going to jail, losing Burke, and/or losing access to John's riches. John knows the police likely won’t believe the killer is an outsider; he wants them to think it was Patsy alone staging a coverup for herself.  John is so calm and rational that Patsy believes him when he says they can play it off as a kidnapping with cops finding the body dumped somewhere else.

JOHN DOES THE PAINTBRUSH SA + COVERS UP FOR HIMSELF AND BURKE: At some point When Patsy's not there, John does the mild SA with the paintbrush, expecting that any eventual autopsy will attribute any past SA to this paintbrush assault. This is key to why they need a coverup; not to protect Burke, but to protect John.  John is sure to use the paintbrush for the SA, an item  attributable to Patsy, and he leaves it at the scene of the crime to make Patsy appear even more culpable.  He doesn't realize that the evidence of past SA will still be detectable. JBR is dead or close to dead at this point. John wipes down as much evidence as he can that he and Burke were involved, but he intentionally doesn't bother to get rid of any evidence that Patsy was involved.

MURDER + JOHN GETS PATSY TO LEAVE A LOAD OF EVIDENCE BEHIND: John instructs Patsy on the "staging" and makes her do a significant amount of it.  "Staging" is in quotes because the strangling is what actually ends up killing JBR, though the parents thought she was already dead. (Patsy had a strong reaction when she later found out the strangling was what killed JBR.  If she really thought someone else did it all, she would logically assume the final action caused the death, not the initial action.)  

PLAN TO DUMP THE BODY: The plan is to stage it as a kidnapping, have John dump the body, and allow police to find the dead body at some other location. They bring down the suitcase from JAR's room, planning to put the body in it.

PATSY WRITES THE NOTE: At various points, John has Patsy do some staging tasks while he covers for himself, like doing the SA with the paintbrush, wiping down evidence that he and Burke were involved, and later showering and getting rid of his clothes.  John has Patsy draft the ransom note, giving her some loose guidelines while he works on some of the tasks to cover for himself. He tells her to make sure the note demands he leave the house with a suitcase for ransom money, so if he’s seen, he can have an excuse for leaving the house with the suitcase when he goes to dump the body.  She's panicking and way too trusting of John, so she writes the note, but she does a terrible job. Maybe she writes it in the office area, using the bible passage (CTBS=SBTC) and John’s bonus check ($118,000) as inspiration. 

JOHN CHANGES PLANS, GETS FRIENDS INVOLVED: John realizes HE’s personally more likely to get in trouble if he dumps the body, so he comes up with an excuse for why they can’t dump it. John tells Patsy JBR won't fit in the suitcase, or that it's too risky, since he could be seen. John says they have to change the plan, so they hide the body in a hard to find place in the house. John tells Patsy they can still blame an intruder, and that they should invite their friends over. This way, if police don’t believe it was a random intruder,  they can accuse their friends of being the intruder/murderers.  He tells her the ransom note can still be used as a ruse to convince the friends to come over and blame them, but in reality he knows any scrutiny of the note and other evidence will have a mountain of evidence pointing to Patsy. He says it’s best if the cops are there and see the friends finding the body, to make John and Patsy seem less involved.  Patsy is panicking and trusts John, so she continues to go along with John’s plans. 

JOHN KEEPS COVERING UP FOR HIMSELF, APPROVES THE NOTE, DOESN’T GIVE PATSY TIME TO SHOWER: John gives Patsy some other staging tasks while he goes to take a shower, maybe telling her to set the scene for the cops by putting the pre-drafted ransom note on the floor. She takes the whole notepad down, sets the note on the floor, and puts the pen and pad back where they came from. John takes a shower to get rid of any evidence on his body, and he hides or disposes of his dirty clothes. He gets out of the shower, reads the note on the floor in his underwear (this part is true; that’s why it’s so odd), and decides it's good enough for his purposes.  He tells Patsy they have to call police immediately, using the planned flight time as an excuse. (The note gave them a plausible excuse to delay calling the cops until at least 10, but John told Patsy she didn't have time to shower or change, because he actually wanted more evidence to point to her.) The note is terrible and clearly still in Patsy’s voice and handwriting, because she was panicked and upset. John was OK with the note. The logical gaps between the note’s instructions and their actions don’t matter, because it’s more important to him that Patsy doesn’t have time to shower or change clothes. He actually wanted the note to be bad so it would point clearly to Patsy. (Later that day, John will immediately hand investigators the notepad the ransom note was written on when asked for a writing sample of Patsy’s.  He could have handed them anything else or nothing at all.)

911 CALL, BURKE COMES DOWN AND GOES BACK TO BED: Burke has been awake all night but stayed in bed due to his parents’ instructions.  During the 911 call, Burke comes down and asks, "What did you find?" in reference to JBR's status. All he knew was that he had hit her and she wasn't conscious last time he saw her and that Patsy was yelling and upset. (The question makes the most sense if Burke didn’t hear the whole call and was aware of some prior situation where there WAS something bad to find.  Otherwise, he would have simply heard the commotion and asked something like, “What happened?” The only reference in the 911 call to finding something was about the note at the beginning, and that was immediately explained on the call.)  The parents once again tell him to go to his room and stay in bed until they tell him otherwise. (“We’re not talking to you.”)

FRAMING THE FRIENDS: Continuing with John’s plan, they call four of their friends right after calling the police. They want to be able to accuse their friends of the crime, so they intentionally don't include their two closest friends, the Stines, whose home they would stay at after the crime, and who would later MOVE TO ATLANTA with them. They want their friends to find the body, so whoever finds JBR can get their DNA on her, and so the Ramseys can tell police that person acted suspiciously.  But John doesn’t expect this to be convincing long term.

FINDING JBR: The friends and police come, hours go by, and John gets frustrated that the friends haven’t found the body.  He worries that more police will be coming, so this is his best chance to get the evidence contaminated; the plan doesn't work as well if the police are the ones to find the body. He also realizes that if he touches the body, then he'll have a more plausible reason for having his DNA on the body in case he didn’t wipe things down enough. So he "finds" JBR, brings her up, and tries to get others to touch her.

HOW TO KEEP YOUR STORY STRAIGHT FOREVER: KEEP IT SIMPLE

JOHN'S EASY ALIBI: John was fully prepared to tell the police that day and for the rest of his life that he was unconscious all night and sleeping deeply with his melatonin and had no idea what Patsy was doing.  This is his story to this day. He woke up in the morning (lie), took a shower (true), and as he was getting ready, he heard Patsy scream (probably lie or maybe she was screaming at various points due to being traumatized), and that’s the first he knew anything was amiss (lie).  He went downstairs, read the note on the floor in his underwear (true), and immediately told Patsy to call the police (true).  The only lies he had to tell were that he was asleep and only came down when he heard Patsy scream.  There’s not much he could slip up on with details. 

BURKE'S EASY ALIBI: Burke has basically the same fake alibi as John, which is that he was in bed and sleeping until he heard Patsy screaming. It’s easy for a child to keep straight because it doesn't require remembering any details, and his parents promised he wouldn’t get in trouble as long as he said he was asleep the whole time.  It didn’t require much coaching.  But as a recent poster noted, you can see in Burke's interview a year and a half after the crime that he got caught in a lie when talking about the pineapple. He’s interacting pretty normally when talking about his favorite snacks.  He himself brings up that he loves pineapple.  After some questions, he mentions JBR also liked pineapple.  Then the questioner pulls out a picture, and at first he doesn’t realize it’s related to the conversation.  When asked to describe it, he recognizes it as their dining room table. The examiner says, “Can you describe that to me?”  The lie was so simple and easy to keep straight, that the Ramseys didn’t think they needed to coach him about pineapple specifically.  If they had coached him on such a detail, he wouldn’t have volunteered it as his favorite food.  He could have lied.  And if he had been coached specifically, when shown the photo, he could have answered vaguely (“a bowl and a cup”) or had an answer prepared (“it looks like cereal”).  Instead, you see his demeanor change in real time as he realizes it was not just their table, but his pineapple from a time he was supposed to say he was asleep.  “It’s a bowl of <long pause> oh <long pause> something.”

PATSY'S TERRIBLE ALIBI: John and Burke's stories are completely in contrast to Patsy, who had a long list of lies to keep straight and who contradicted herself constantly, because lying is hard, and she herself didn’t fully know what happened or what the police would find.  

VICTORY! (SBTC): JOHN’S MASTER PLAN SUCCEEDS 

Ultimately, the intruder theory was created by John for Patsy.  John never expected police to actually buy the IDI theory long term, because he knew it was dumb and had no evidence to support it. IDI was intended to be a temporary distraction to manipulate Patsy into leaving behind tons of evidence.  Patsy would never even have to find out he planned it, and he wouldn’t have to turn on her publicly, because his story could be forever that he was asleep, heard nothing, and the evidence would point police to her.  It bears repeating that John immediately handed investigators the notepad she wrote the note on, because he wanted investigators to suspect Patsy. Between that and him having time to shower when she didn't....She was a Patsy. 

John’s plan succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.  Police incompetence and DA corruption meant they never really got around to taking Patsy down, and the DA stayed focused on the flimsy stories that were created to trick a hysterical Patsy during the worst hours of her life. The Ramseys also managed to get Patsy's sister to haul out a shit ton of evidence, pretending it was stuff they needed for the funeral. 

When I first got interested in the case, my biggest question was why did they do the staging so poorly when they had so much time?  But ultimately, my answer is that it wasn’t done poorly at all.  It was done exactly how John wanted it, with tons of evidence pointing to Patsy, very little to implicate him, and with nobody but him knowing the full truth. Even if the cops and investigators and FBI had gotten past the IDI theory, and Patsy had confessed, there was too much direct evidence against Patsy for it to be provable that John was in on it, too.  

Edit: It was a glass, not a mug.