They assumed she was dead....

A very common claim made on this sub is that JB would have appeared dead after the head blow. Therefore, when John and Patsy found her, they assumed she was dead and did not assume that strangling her would kill her, because she was already dead. This is part of the foundation of many theories.

It is often asserted that experts have stated that JB would have appeared dead. If anyone could refer me to the actual sources of that claim, I’d appreciate it, because I can’t find any.

Often, in asserting that John and Patsy would have believed JB was dead, the extent of the brain injury is invoked. It is true that without medical intervention, the brain injury would have killed JB, the question is what would John and Patsy have been able to know about this head injury?

The answer is nothing. They wouldn’t even know she had suffered a head injury unless whoever hit her confessed to doing so.

There was no external signs of the head injury.

From Steve Thomas’s book:

“There had been a surprising lack of blood for such a violent murder. The child did not seem to have been beaten, and when the coroner examined the eyelids, he found the pinpoint petechial hemorrhaging that indicated she was still alive and her heart pumping when she was choked. The garrote was the most obvious cause of death. So the viewers at the autopsy were astonished when Meyer peeled back the scalp and discovered that the entire upper right side of her skull had been crushed by some enormous blow that left a well-defined rectangular pattern. The brain had massively hemorrhaged, but the blood had been contained within the skull. The caved-in skull was a second, and totally unexpected, possible cause of death.

Meyer concluded that JonBenét was alive at the time her head was struck and was still alive when she was choked. Either attack would have been fatal, but he officially called it asphyxia due to strangulation associated with massive head trauma. He could not establish a time of death.”

From PMPT

"The unembalmed, well-developed, and well-nourished Caucasian female body measures 47 inches in length and weighs an estimated 45 pounds," Meyer dictated. "The scalp is covered by long blond hair, which is fixed in two ponytails, one on top of the head secured by a cloth hair tie and blue elastic band and one in the lower back of the head secured by a blue elastic band. No scalp trauma is identified."

John and Patsy would have found an unconscious JB. She may have been seizing. It may have been difficult to detect signs of life. Difficult but not impossible for someone with John’s naval training.

She had no signs of external trauma. We don’t know exactly when the minor abrasions on her body were created, but if they were present at that time, they certainly would not indicate severe trauma.

Let’s assume that Burke told them he hit her on the head. Even with that information, there would be no reason to assume she was dead or going to be permanently brain damaged because there was no sign of external injury to her head.

Why would they assume that Burke had caused a fracture so severe that it is normally associated with car accidents when there was no external sign of injury?

Yes, JB was unconscious. Yes, signs of life may have been faint. But they would have been there. If they held a mirror in front of her nose or mouth, it would have fogged up. If they had laid their head on her chest, they would hear a faint heartbeat.

They also had least as long as they needed to plan their staging strategy and implement it. During that time, it never occurred to them to check for signs of life?

Does it really make sense to assume that without doing due diligence to figure out if JB was dead or alive, they just decide to strangle her?

The only way this makes sense to me is if every member of that family was a psychopath who wanted JB dead.