CrimeNews2000 Thread, "Fox Report Transcripts, May 21-25"
lizzieb
5/21/01 05:55 PM
I will use this thread for any Fox News Reports on JonBenet this week. I understand there may be several. Anyway, here is the first one.
Fox Report
Fox News
05/21/01
Note: This is not an official transcript. If anybody wants to copy this to another forum, that's fine, but please have the courtesy to acknowledge me as the transcriptionist.
Cold Case
Shepard Smith: We're five months into a new district attorney's reign in Boulder, Colorado. She promised to give the case of JonBenet a new look. So what's happening with the evidence and with the police? Tonight, updating the JonBenet investigation in a Fox Report now from Carol McKinley.
Carol McKinley: The JonBenet Ramsey investigation is on a shelf. Binder books of interviews, boxes of lab reports, and blueprints of the house where the six-year-old died are in storage. The case is almost as old as the little girl was when she was killed.
Henry Lee: This is what I would consider a cold case now. We had all kinds of problems and troubles and no luck.
Carol McKinley: Nearly four and a half years after JonBenet Ramsey's death here in Boulder, Colorado, people don't talk about her or the case much any more. First-year Boulder district attorney Mary Keenan, who promised to look at the case with fresh eyes, won't talk publicly about an ongoing investigation. But after nearly five months in office, she has only met with the Boulder police once, and she's never spoken with the grand jury prosecutor once thought to be the best hope to solve the case. Michael Kane, now in private practice in Pennsylvania, was asked to return his Boulder County-owned computer to the DA's office. For now, the Boulder Police Department has two detectives assigned to the case part time. But often weeks go by and no action.
There's no work being done on the original evidence sitting here at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, but the unmatched DNA found under JonBenet's fingernails and in her underwear has been sent by police to a separate lab for sophisticated testing.
Henry Lee: There's still testing going on and there are still reasonable explanations of DNA.
Carol McKinley: The foreign DNA under JonBenet's fingernails may be explained by contamination from the nail clippers used in the autopsy. Forensic scientist Henry Lee has been a lead consultant on the Ramsey investigation. He still sees one key question.
Henry Lee: The fundamental issue: Is this an accidental death or a homicide?
Carol McKinley: If JonBenet was killed because a near-fatal accident led to a cover-up, police believe the parents could be involved, but a retired detective believes the child was intentionally murdered by a violent intruder. Lou Smit is the only person actively looking for a killer. From Boulder, Colorado, Carol McKinley, Fox News.
CrimeNews2000 Thread, "Fox Report Transcripts, May 21-25"
lizzieb
5/22/01 05:04 PM
[Post#: 7173 / re: 7132 ]
Here's the second in what I think will be four reports.
Fox Report with Shepard Smith
Fox News
May 22, 2001
Note: This is not an official transcript.
JonBenet: The Search for Truth, Part II
Shepard Smith: A former cop on a mission now. You could call it an obsession with the murder of JonBenet Ramsey almost six [sic] years ago. Carrying her autopsy photos with him and showing them off as evidence that the little girl's killer is still out there, but not where investigators may think. A Fox News special report now from correspondent Carol McKinley.
Lou Smit: (showing a photo of JonBenet, which he pulled out of his wallet; it is a school photo where she is wearing what appears to be a navy jumper over a light blue oxford shirt) This is a picture of JonBenet.
Carol McKinley: You carry that with you?
Lou Smit: Yes.
Carol McKinley: All the time?
Lou Smit: All the time.
(There is photo montage of a lot of the crime scene/autopsy photos previously shown on the Today Show.)
Carol McKinley: These are pictures Lou Smit wants the world to see. They are early crime scene and autopsy photographs taken by the Boulder police and the Boulder County coroner's office in late December 1996, right after JonBenet's body was found. JonBenet's empty bed and bedroom. A footprint on the basement floor. A cord embedded in her neck.
Lou Smit: I was very reluctant to show these photographs.
Carol McKinley: But Smit says he is releasing them now because they point to JonBenet's killer. He took the pictures without permission when he resigned from the investigation two and a half years ago. Boulder authorities sued to get them back, but Smit won the right to keep them. His decision to go public angers case investigators, who want to keep these images sealed.
Bill Ritter (Denver DA): This is an investigation that you could still pick up tomorrow and work, and the less the public knows about intimate details, the more likely you are to apprehend the real killer or killers.
Lou Smit: I don't blame them a bit, Carol. I think that if somebody interfered in my case I think that I'd probably be angry too.
Carol McKinley: These marks on JonBenet's lower back are part of what's driving Smit's theory. He thinks an intruder made the red dots with a stun gun, then carried her downstairs to a filthy basement room. There, Smit says, JonBenet was strangled with this garrote. This autopsy photo shows the 8 ½ inch skull fracture from a violent blow to her head.
Lou Smit: This is not a little accident, a little blink (?) on the head, "Whoops, I think she's dead, I'm going to cover it up."
Carol McKinley: Smit believes parents wouldn't do such horrible things to their own child, but forensic scientists who studied the autopsy report disagree. Has it happened?
Tom Henry (autopsy report consultant): Unfortunately, yeah, this and much worse.
Carol McKinley: Have you ever seen a parent do anything like this?
Unnamed man (in what looks like an autopsy room): Oh yes.
Carol McKinley: Smit believes the Ramseys are innocent and that these pictures prove it, but investigators are suspicious of John and Patsy Ramsey, still, in the investigation of the murder of the daughter. Now Lou Smit has had these pictures for a while. He's bring them out now. But investigators believe that he got too close to the Ramseys early on.
In fact, there was a prayer session in front of the empty Ramsey home between Smit and the Ramseys early on in the case. Investigators believe the Ramseys used that to get close to Smit. Now Smit said he's been conned before, and he said he'd know it if he saw it. Patsy Ramsey tells me Lou Smit put a lot of Christians in jail, and that religion has nothing to do with this. Shepard?
Shepard Smith: Carol McKinley, live in our Denver newsroom.
CrimeNews2000 Thread, "Fox Report Transcripts, May 21-25"
lizzieb
5/23/01 04:44 PM
[Post#: 7228 / re: 7195 ]
Thanks for the nice comments. I'm happy to do this.
Bethy, there will be one more report tomorrow on Fox News at 7:00 Eastern. Sorry I didn't see your post earlier.
Fox Report with Shepard Smith
Fox News
May 23, 2001
Note: This is not an official transcript.
JonBenet: The Search for Truth, Part III
Shepard Smith: A fresh look at old evidence in the JonBenet Ramsey case. The new district attorney in Boulder promised to give the clues another go-over. Now some conflicting opinions on what the evidence means and where it leads. Who's responsible for the death of the little beauty queen? A Fox Report now from Carol McKinley on the Search for the Truth.
Carol McKinley: There are many important questions, for instance, were these marks on JonBenet's back made by a violent intruder who tortured the child with a stun gun?
Lou Smit: If a stun gun was used on JonBenet, it's very likely it's not the parents.
Dr. Michael Dobersen: Everything is consistent with a stun gun.
Carol McKinley: Forensic scientist Dr. Michael Dobersen never saw the body, but worked from these autopsy photos and experiments with anesthetized pigs. But coroner John Myers's autopsy report says the marks are abrasions, not electrical burns.
Dr. Henry Lee: The best person to make such an interpretation is the medical examiner, Dr. Myers, who saw the body. We only see the pictures.
Carol McKinley: We have to believe him?
Dr. Henry Lee: We - Dr. Myers - I have to believe him.
Carol McKinley: Another troubling question:
Dr. Henry Lee: Is this really a homicide or an accidental death subsequently staged like a homicide?
Carol McKinley: Boulder police believe this fracture on JonBenet's skull was cause by an accident, and the strangulation came second to fool them into believing an intruder's elaborate plot. Autopsy consultant Tom Henry says JonBenet may have even survived unconscious for fifteen minutes before she was strangled.
Tom Henry: The fact that she's got this extensive of a - described as a - essentially a blood clot in the scalp to me indicates a little longer period of time that she had to survive, a little more blood pumping under pressure for a longer period of time.
Lou Smit: I see many red flags in the case.
Carol McKinley: But Smit thinks a pedophile choked JonBenet until she was almost dead, then hit her on the head to make sure.
Lou Smit: This was constructed for control (referring to a photo of the wrist cords). If Patsy Ramsey would have wanted just to, let's say, strangle, make it look like somebody strangled her daughter, why not do it with your hands or do it with just the rope around your neck. Why do you have to build a handle?
Carol McKinley: Smit thinks the intruder broke in through this basement window, waited for the Ramseys to return from a Christmas party, and took JonBenet from her bed while her parents and brother slept.
Lou Smit: She was taken downstairs into the basement, into probably the furthest corner of a very cluttered, dirty basement.
Carol McKinley: The room where JonBenet's body was found is at the end of the basement hall.
Dr. Henry Lee: Well, I was in the house for quite a while. I did not know how to get there. You have to go through couple of doors.
Carol McKinley: Plus it's dark.
Dr. Henry Lee: Very dark. You have to know exactly where's the light switches.
Carol McKinley: In Boulder, Colorado, Carol McKinley, Fox News.
(P.S. The unnamed man in yesterday's transcript was Dr. Dobersen; he was identified today.)
CrimeNews2000 Thread, "Fox Report Transcripts, May 21-25"
lizzieb
5/24/01 04:34 PM
[Post#: 7307 / re: 7235 ]
Fox Report with Shepard Smith
Fox News
May 24, 2001
Note: This is not an official transcript. This is the last in a four-part series.
JonBenet: The Search for Truth, Part IV
Shepard Smith: John and Patsy Ramsey. They've pointed fingers at friends and neighbors and total strangers, suggesting maybe they killed JonBenet. Now one guy's suing them, looking for big bucks and maybe some answers. Could the civil trial open the door to prosecution? A Fox Report now from Carol McKinley, in Search for the Truth.
Darnay Hoffman: The Ramseys are looking at a potential fifty million dollar award against them for what they have done . . .
Carol McKinley: Attorney Darnay Hoffman is suing John and Patsy Ramsey on behalf of sometime Boulder resident Chris Wolfe. Wolfe was cleared by Boulder police as a suspect early on the investigation. But in their book, Death of Innocence, the Ramseys indicated they had information suggesting police should continue to investigate him.
Chris Wolfe: I think they're obviously outrageous hypocrites.
Carol McKinley: Wolfe's civil trial is expected to start next spring.
Darnay Hoffman: This will probably be the only time the Ramseys ever have to sit in front of a jury and under oath in front of a jury . . .
Carol McKinley: Important information may be uncovered during the depositions and trial because there are so many unanswered questions. For example, the autopsy report indicates the last thing JonBenet ate before her death was fresh-cut pineapple. She didn't have pineapple at a Christmas party that night, and her parents say they put her to bed when they returned. But a bowl of pineapple with her mother's fingerprints was found on the kitchen table.
Patsy Ramsey: She was put to bed, sound asleep, did not have a bite of pineapple.
Carol McKinley: So, who fed JonBenet pineapple? A pedophile intruder with murder on his mind?
Dr. Henry Lee: For a pedophile person to go through the refrigerator, get some pineapple, feed her the pineapple, then stun gun her and bludgeon her and use a ligature, that's kind of way over (?) common pedophile's style.
Carol McKinley: Motive is another question. Former Boulder police detective Steve Thomas believes JonBenet was killed because she wet the bed. Were JonBenet's sheet's urine-stained? Colorado Bureau of Investigation sources say they were. And what about the rambling ransom note? Experts say whoever wrote it had something to do with JonBenet's death.
Dr. Henry Lee: Which pedophile would spend that much time writing three pages of note? It just doesn't make sense again.
Carol McKinley: At least ten lawsuits connected with the case have been filed, claiming more than $250 million in damages. The Ramseys are being sued, but they're also suing. They've already settled libel cases with two tabloid magazines. (to Dr. Henry Lee) And so on a scale of one to ten, where is it now?
Dr. Henry Lee: I still call it 50:50, because if I [unintelligible] say zero, that's hopeless case, but this case still have hope.
Carol McKinley: In Boulder, Colorado, Carol McKinley, Fox News.