jbr: santa statement analysis
whodunit?
Here are some thoughts (statement analysis) as to why I think Bill and
Janet McReynolds should be thoroughly scrutinized as a suspects in the
murder of JonBenet Ramsey. I wish to remain anonymous because these
are just ideas that I think should be considered; not as fact, but as
possibilities. Whether you accept them or reject them, I don't care.
And whether Bill McReynolds was involved with the murder of JonBenet
Ramsey, I don't know. However, I like to use the internet for
expressing my ideas, and maybe some of these will help with the
investigation.
On January 31, 1997, Bill McReynolds was on NBC's Today show as a
spectator. I think he wanted to go public to make it look as though
he had nothing to hide. Here are some annotated excerpts from the
show. My comments are preceeded with '>>'.
________________________________________
ROKER: That's your latest--Santa--Santa...
Unidentified Man (>>Bill McReynolds): Right here.
ROKER: ...you went on a diet.
Man: I did. I lost 60 pounds, Al.
ROKER: Wow. That's great!
Man: Uh-huh.
ROKER: What's your name, sir?
Man: Santa Claus.
>> wants to be known as santa claus. he really wants everyone to refer to him as santa because it helps his image.
ROKER: All right, well, good to see you.
Man: Uh-huh.
ROKER: How are things up in the North Pole?
Man: Well, they're very fine. I just came back from Spain.
>>he took a month-long trip to Spain with his wife after the murder. he wants everyone to know that he's not some poor slob that everyone expects of a killer and (since no one came after him) that he didn't try to hide there.
ROKER: Ah, very nice.
Man: That's why I got a hair cut.
>>Maybe they don't cut hair in Spain. Another possible reason for getting a hair cut was to not look like an unkempt suspect. He wants everyone to know that the latter is not the reason he got his hair cut.
ROKER: Very nice, well, you--you look fabulous.
Man: My mortal...(unintelligible)...is Boulder, Colorado.
>>he's trying to ease into why he really wants to be on national TV.
ROKER: OK. Thank you, Santa.
Let's go inside to Matt.
>>Whoops, too late. Now he needs to convince folks, off-camera, to give him another chance to establish his character. He succeeds and gets an interview later in the show.
MATT LAUER, co-host:
And we're back on a Friday morning, the 31st day of January, 1997. And
we decided to come out and say hello to some people who've gathered
outside our studio, instead of being shut-ins that we have been for
the past hour and a half. We're outside with people now. I'm Matt
Lauer, along with Katie Couric and Al Roker. We have some people we
want to talk to.
KATIE COURIC, co-host:
Actually, we do. Mr. Bill McReynolds. Mr. McReynolds, hi, good
morning.
Mr. BILL McREYNOLDS: Hi, Katie.
COURIC: Nice to see you. I know Al spoke with you...
Mr. McREYNOLDS: Can I have a little hug?
>>Wants to show how affectionate he is and how he's not at all like the introverted, anti-social psycopath the audience expects a killer to resemble.
COURIC: Oh, well, thank you very much. I know that Al spoke with you
earlier, but we discovered some information about you that we weren't
aware of earlier in the program, and that is that you're from Boulder,
Colorado...
Mr. McREYNOLDS: Right.
COURIC: ...and that you are Santa Claus, as--as you mentioned...
Mr. McREYNOLDS: Right.
>>okee-dokee
COURIC: ...and that for the last three years you were the Santa at the
Ramseys' home...
Mr. McREYNOLDS: Right.
COURIC: ...in Boulder, Colorado. So you got to know JonBenet Ramsey.
Tell us a little bit about the family.
Mr. McREYNOLDS: Well, what upsets me about this whole thing is that
the family is not being celebrated enough, and were very, very
generous. For example, Patsy gave me this for this last Christmas, and
how many people do you think give Santa Claus presents?
>>wants to show how innocent the Ramsey family is and how much trust he's gained from them.
COURIC: This--this whole incident seems to be shrouded in a lot of
mystery and people are wondering about the family itself, even the
Ramseys have been called into question in terms of their possible
involvement. When you've heard all the speculation, what do you think?
Mr. McREYNOLDS: Well, it grieves me enormously, because I adore the
family. They adopted me as a member of the family, actually,
which--which they did at the memorial service, they--they recognized
us. It's a very, very hard thing for me.
>>he grieves from guilt, he didn't want the family to be suspect. its a very hard thing for him to think that he's been adopted by the family of a child he's just destroyed.
COURIC: And what about little JonBenet...
Mr. McREYNOLDS: Wonderful.
>>of course.
COURIC: ...I know you have a cute story about--you used to put glitter
in your beard.
Mr. McREYNOLDS: Well, yes. I tell the story about going out as Santa
Claus and--for a--for a rehearsal, and the--we run into stars, and I
put stardust on my beard, and so I put glitter on it, and so JonBenet
especially like that, so she gave me a little vial of stardust, or
glitter, and I took it with me to the hospital this year because I had
a major operation, near-death experience and all of that. And then
after I got well, I came to the party this year, it's one of my
favorite parties, she gave me another one. So I gave one of the vials
to the family for their celebration. We don't celebrate children
enough, Katie.
>>establishes his innocent relationship with the beautiful child he's known for 2 years.
COURIC: And tragically you were there two days before she was
murdered.
Mr. McREYNOLDS: Two days before, right. Yeah, it was very, very
difficult. Kind of like a thunderbolt or a lightning bolt, or whatever
it is.
>>That's right, not the day OF the murder.
COURIC: Well, Mr. McReynolds, thanks very much for talking with us.
Mr. McREYNOLDS: You're so welcome.
>>Thank YOU, Katie, for letting him establish his generous, innocent facade on national TV.
COURIC: And since you know the family, it must be very difficult for
you, so we appreciate it.
>>Yeah, right. If its SO difficult for him to talk about; then why did he come all the way to New York and stand outside, waiting for a chance to get on national TV to talk about it?
Mr. McREYNOLDS: Right. You're welcome. And I'm going to be on the
Geraldo show, if I should say that.
>>Which is another place where I'm sure he'll have trouble talking. OK, so now we know where to tune into if we want to watch him blather on about his innocence.
COURIC: OK. Well, that's all right, you can mention that. Thanks for
talking with us. Anyway, Matt, you are telling us what's coming up.
END OF EXCERPT
______________________________________________
The above annotations were my thoughts when I first heard of Bill
McReynolds and this interview in the beginning of February. I know its
pretty biased, but there's just something about this guy that doesn't
seem quite right. Anyway, since then I've decided to do a little more
web research (high-quality, unbiased information there, right?) and
find out more about what Bill M has to say. And up until today,
3/2/97, I was thinking, "Well, if the cops don't think he's a major
suspect, maybe his TV appearance was because he was lonely and looking
for attention". Well, another interview with Bill M showed up today
and I've included it with my annotations ('>>').
______________________________________________
Strange parallels in couple's life lead police to take hair,
handwriting samples
By Charlie Brennan
Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
BOULDER -- Police this week collected hair and handwriting samples
from the wife of a man who portrayed Santa Claus at the Ramsey home
two nights before JonBenet Ramsey's slaying.
They did so, the Rocky Mountain News has learned, due to concerns
about two perplexing parallels involving Janet and Bill McReynolds --
one of which came to detectives' attention only in recent days.
In 1974, the McReynolds' middle daughter, who was 9, was abducted with
a friend in Longmont. She witnessed the sexual molestation of her
friend. They were released, and there was never an arrest.
The date was Dec. 26.
>>I think that this date would haunt the couple for the rest of their lives. I would like more information about the incident. How was this information obtained? Were the McReynolds living in Longmont? Does they're daughter know the perp?
Twenty-two years later to the day, 6-year-old JonBenet was found
sexually assaulted and strangled in her parents' basement.
Janet McReynolds wrote an award-winning 1976 play, Hey Rube, which
centers on the sexual assault, torture and murder of a girl whose body
is found in a basement.
That compelled police to re-interview 64-year-old Janet McReynolds on
Wednesday. They also collected samples of her hair and her
handwriting.
Police had talked to her previously, but only to corroborate the alibi
of her 67-year-old husband.
Janet McReynolds was in the Ramsey home the night of Dec. 23 -- two
nights before JonBenet's slaying -- accompanying her husband, who
played Santa Claus for the third consecutive year at a Christmas party
thrown by the Ramseys. The previous year, he'd been given a tour of
their 6,866-square-foot residence.
Bill and Janet McReynolds told police that their alibi for the night
of the little girl's slaying is that they went to bed at 8 p.m.
JonBenet died sometime between her bedtime Christmas night and dawn
the following day.
"They've always said they're doing this for the purposes of
exclusion,'' Janet McReynolds said of being asked by police for
evidence samples. "I'm sure we're very far down the list of potential
suspects.''
>>Janet implies "We think the cops consider us innocent".
"She could never be a suspect,'' said Bill McReynolds, a retired
University of Colorado journalism professor who has assumed the Santa
Claus persona and let his snowy beard grow unchecked in retirement.
"I know I had absolutely nothing to do with it,'' he added. "You know,
I always told my students to seek the truth. Now I'm on the other side
of it. ... I'm probably naive and stupid.''
>>the other side of what, the truth?
Hair, handwriting and blood samples were taken from Bill McReynolds on
Feb. 7, after he and his wife returned from a month-long trip to
Spain.
Officials connected to the case declined to comment on the
McReynoldses' status in their investigation. Both Janet and Bill
McReynolds say there is no significance in the events from past years
and their odd parallels to the JonBenet tragedy.
Bill McReynolds told the News that until a reporter pointed it out, he
had not realized that his daughter's abduction and the discovery of
JonBenet's body came on the same day of the year.
"You're kidding!'' he said. "That is peculiar.''
>>you betcha
Seated on an overstuffed easy chair in the couple's snowbound cabin
near Rollinsville, his faded plaid shirt tucked into a pair of bright
blue sweats, he folded his hands.
"That is surprising,'' he continued. "That's sort of a blow. ... It's
probably just a coincidence. A raw coincidence. I'm sort of stunned.''
>>probably? does that mean he thinks there's a chance that it isn't a coincidence? I would be stunned too, if a reporter found out something I wasn't prepared to answer.
Janet McReynolds, for 10 years a drama and movie critic for the
Boulder Daily Camera, placed little significance in the fact that
JonBenet was assaulted and slain in a basement, just like the
character in her 1976 play.
"I was surprised that the police wanted to talk to me about Hey Rube,
because it never occurred to me that there was a possible
connection,'' she said.
Her play is a fictionalized account of a real crime, the 1965 torture
and murder of Sylvia Likens in Indiana.
The 16-year-old girl was brutalized by a gang of teen-agers and a
woman who had agreed to board Likens in her home.
"She was a teen-ager, and the torture took place over a period of
months, and the whole neighborhood was involved,'' Janet McReynolds
said.
"In JonBenet's case, the torture was over a short period of time -- I
hope.''
>>she explains the differences between the two scenarios as factual and then remembers that she isn't supposed to know if it is factual.
JonBenet, the reigning Little Miss Colorado, was found by her father,
John Ramsey, and a family friend, strangled with a cord and her skull
fractured, at 1:23 p.m. Dec. 26.
About eight hours earlier, her mother, 1977 Miss West Virginia Patsy
Ramsey, had found a bizarre 21/2-page ransom note on the back stairs
leading to the family's kitchen.
Police conducted a cursory search of the Ramseys' luxurious 15-room
home shortly after answering a pre-dawn 911 call from Patsy Ramsey.
But they did not see the girl's body.
Handwriting samples have been taken from most family members and many
Ramsey acquaintainces, to seek matches to the block lettering on the
ransom note, which demanded $118,000 for JonBenet's return.
>>being a former journalism professor at CU, Bill M is probably well educated and able to converse with John Ramsey about the details of his business. Other than the obvious of having John explicitly state the amount of his bonus, Bill M could've possibly obtained detailed company information from a backdoor to the Access Graphics computers (not as likely).
That amount nearly matches the February 1996 bonus her father received
at Access Graphics, the Boulder computer distributorship where he is
president.
John and Patsy Ramsey have each provided two handwriting samples to
the police. Patsy Ramsey has not supplied a third sample requested by
police.
Also, JonBenet's parents have not agreed to a formal police interview.
They have, however, retained high-caliber legal counsel and a team of
other specialists to assist in conducting an independent investigation
into their youngest child's death.
Janet and Bill McReynolds, meanwhile, spoke freely to the News about
how they came under police scrutiny in the Ramsey investigation.
But Janet McReynolds would not provide a copy of Hey Rube, which won a
1976 Western States Arts Foundation regional prize and earned her a
$7,500 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts the same year.
>>Come on, cough it up; it could be interesting.
Despite winning acclaim, the play was never published. And a worldwide
search conducted by a Denver Public Library reference librarian at the
request of the News failed to produce a copy.
"It would sound very quaint now,'' Janet McReynolds said. "It was a
'70s play. It was written for its time.''
>>Yeah, I always think 'quaint' when I think of girls being sexually assaulted, tortured and murdered by a gang of teen-agers.
In a local newspaper interview in 1977, Janet McReynolds said, "I've
always been interested in the way victims very frequently seem to seek
their own death, or to deliberately choose their own murderer.''
In the same interview, she said, "It seemed improbable to me that this
girl would have permitted herself to be physically and psychologically
tortured over a series of months unless there was part of her that
wanted to die.''
>>This is good stuff.
The New York Times, in a June 1, 1978, review of a performance of the
play at New York's Interart Theater, said, "It is not clear what the
author intended to write.
"The play could be a psychological study of the killer, a sociological
study of sexism, a sympathetic profile of the hapless victim, or a
courtroom melodrama.''
One thing it is, Janet McReynolds said emphatically, is totally
irrelevant to the Ramsey case.
>>How does she know that it's irrelevant? Is she saying that she knows for a fact that JonBenet didn't seek her own death, as is so in-'frequently' the case? Or is she just now realizing how her previous statements indicate her detachment from reality?
And both Janet and Bill McReynolds say the only significance of their
own child's abduction to the Ramsey case, regardless of what dates
they occurred, is that it underscores the compassion they feel for
John and Patsy Ramsey.
Their daughter's ordeal "makes you sensitive to the horror'' of
JonBenet's slaying, Janet McReynolds said. "It's unbelievable, to
imagine what her final hours were like. To think that her fairy-tale
life could have ended in such a horrible way.''
The abduction and the play are nothing more than coincidences, said
her husband of 34 years.
>>Now he's certain its just a coinidence.
"There were a lot of coincidences in the Kennedy assassination, too,''
Bill McReynolds said.
>>Such as...
"All I can say is, ... I don't know. In my heart, I know there is no
connection. Anything I'd say would sound suspicious. That's the nuts
and bolts of it.''
>>First you don't know, then you do. No suspicion there.
He gazed silently out the window into the woods, where any sign of
spring was still a well-kept secret.
"Isn't life strange?'' said the man who plays Santa. "So strange.''
>>Better not open your mouth again, unless you're talking to a lawyer.
______________________________________________
Now after saying all this, I'd like to reiterate that these are just
ideas. There are many more possibilities, including the involvement
by the Ramsey's themselves, or the housekeeper, Linda Hoffman-Pugh, or
her husband Mervin Pugh. It is up to the justice system, to
investigate, implicate and try the perpetrators of this crime. These
thoughts are my effort to get the ball rolling for further
investigation of the McReynolds solely because they have had their
statements published and I feel they're statements are questionable.
I don't know if they're involved with this murder, but it seems as
though their statements deserve further professional analysis. If
anything, this document is probably an good example of why one should
never talk to the media, or why the internet should be inaccessible to
people like me.
Linda and Cliff Griffith
I enjoyed your "statement analysis," and you noticed many of the same
oddities that I did.
Never having been to Colorado, and only having heard of the "big
cities," I don't know: Are Longmont and Rollinsville in Colorado?
Near Boulder? By the context, it sounds as if they are.
[Where did John Ramsey live/work in 1975? Is that when he was at Subic
Bay?] ---more below---
In <331cb266...@news.compuserve.com> 76703...@compuserve.com
(whodunit?) writes:
>In 1974, the McReynolds' middle daughter, who was 9, was abducted with
>a friend in Longmont. She witnessed the sexual molestation of her
>friend. They were released, and there was never an arrest.
>Seated on an overstuffed easy chair in the couple's snowbound cabin
>near Rollinsville, his faded plaid shirt tucked into a pair of bright
>blue sweats, he folded his hands.
>But Janet McReynolds would not provide a copy of Hey Rube, which won a
>1976 Western States Arts Foundation regional prize and earned her a
>$7,500 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts the same year.
>
>>>Come on, cough it up; it could be interesting.
>
>Despite winning acclaim, the play was never published. And a worldwide
>search conducted by a Denver Public Library reference librarian at the
>request of the News failed to produce a copy.
>The New York Times, in a June 1, 1978, review of a performance of the
>play at New York's Interart Theater, said, "It is not clear what the
>author intended to write.
>
>"The play could be a psychological study of the killer, a sociological
>study of sexism, a sympathetic profile of the hapless victim, or a
>courtroom melodrama.''
How can it be that the play was never published? She got a grant from
the NEA, and the Interart Theater produced the play. What did the
actors do, read their lines from the original manuscript? How can she
*refuse* to provide a copy? The same way the Ramseys can *refuse* to
answer the BPD questions, I guess. Doesn't Janet have sense-enough to
know that her refusal to produce the copy makes her look as if she
might possibly have something to hide? Did she learn nothing from her
"good friends," the Ramseys?
Linda
cyli
What struck me was the few sentences about when he was last at the Ramsey
home. I read that page about lying recently and it struck me that he
used pronouns, particularly 'I' a lot, as many of us do. But in that
response, he didn't. He used assumed pronouns. No explicit personal
involvement there. I left in the response he made just before it when I
snipped your post so that the next readers could see what I think is a
typical example, too.
Very distant. Very disassociated with the event and home.
Not that my money's not still on a parent or two.
whodunit? wrote:
snipped.
>
> COURIC: ...I know you have a cute story about--you used to put glitter
> in your beard.
>
> Mr. McREYNOLDS: Well, yes. I tell the story about going out as Santa
> Claus and--for a--for a rehearsal, and the--we run into stars, and I
> put stardust on my beard, and so I put glitter on it, and so JonBenet
> especially like that, so she gave me a little vial of stardust, or
> glitter, and I took it with me to the hospital this year because I had
> a major operation, near-death experience and all of that. And then
> after I got well, I came to the party this year, it's one of my
> favorite parties, she gave me another one. So I gave one of the vials
> to the family for their celebration. We don't celebrate children
> enough, Katie.
>
> >>establishes his innocent relationship with the beautiful child he's known for 2 years.
>
> COURIC: And tragically you were there two days before she was
> murdered.
>
> Mr. McREYNOLDS: Two days before, right. Yeah, it was very, very
> difficult. Kind of like a thunderbolt or a lightning bolt, or whatever
> it is.Snipped
"If I die of curiousity, who will entertain you with naive questions?"
I only answer my mail on an average of once every two months. Be
patient.
Stu
>> Never having been to Colorado, and only having heard of the "bigcities," I don't know: Are Longmont and Rollinsville in Colorado?
Near Boulder? By the context, it sounds as if they are.
Longmont is a small city (more than a town these days) is 10-15 minutes
NE of Boulder. Very rural compared to Boulder. Rollinsville is a very
small community about 45min west of Boulder in the mountains, right at
the edge of the continental divide. Both cities are in Boulder County.
Michael Souther
It is worth noting that one of the characteristics of "birefringent"
material is that it can sparkle like glitter. Hmmm....
DeeTigress
Many of us have commented on the fact that we feel, from the few facts
released, that it seems obvious the crime scene was altered to appear like
a different type of crime than it actually was. Surely the Ramseys were
familiar with the McReynolds woman's work - a prize-winning play is
definitely something a person would be proud to discuss.