"London Sunday Times - article on Foster"

September 27 1998 UNITED STATES

Mother 'faked' JonBenet note
by Tom Rhodes
New York

A RANSOM note found in the home of JonBenet Ramsey, the six-year-old beauty queen strangled and bludgeoned to death in Colorado in December 1996, was written by her mother, it was claimed last night. The note said JonBenet, who appeared in beauty pageants wearing exotic costumes, lipstick and eye shadow, had been kidnapped. It demanded $118,000 for her safe return.

The girl's mother, Patsy Ramsey - herself a former beauty queen - claimed to have found the note on her kitchen table early on Boxing Day. She made a frantic telephone call to the police.

JonBenet's father, John Ramsey, then discovered her body in the cellar of their home in Boulder, and carried it upstairs under a white blanket. The note has now been analysed by Professor Donald Foster, a Shakespeare scholar and handwriting expert employed by the FBI. His techniques for identifying authorship include studies of vocabulary, grammar, syntax and style.

According to a report on the ABC television network, he compared the ransom note with Patsy Ramsey's script in a letter from Christmas 1995 and in a photograph caption from 1978. Foster, who helped trap Theodore Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, concluded that all three were written by the same person.

The report will inevitably increase the suspicion that has hung over the Ramsey parents since the murder.

The couple, who now live in Atlanta, Georgia, have refused to speak to Boulder police throughout much of a heavily criticised investigation into the killing. But in a Channel 4 interview earlier this year, they denied any involvement.

Asked whether she had anything to do with JonBenet's death, Patsy Ramsey said: "Absolutely not. I mean, how do you say no any more clearly than no?"