Miscellaneous

A Tale of Two Cold Cases

By Anne Skove, Esq.

No, it's not a double-feature on tv.

Two notorious unsolved cases have come to the forefront of the media (if nothing else) recently.

One is the JonBenet Ramsey case. While no alternative suspects seem to have been found, and while the parents were always under the unofficial microscope of public shame, the father has been exonerated by science, at least. DNA testing proved that he was in all probability not his daughter's killer.

Is this good news or not? Someone we knew who lived in the Boulder area when the case first started never claimed to have known the truth, but when asked said "I hope [the parents] did it." Why? Because otherwise they were under that scrutiny and the object of public blame for nothing. No parent can imagine what the Ramseys went through.

Mrs. Ramsey passed away a few years ago. JonBenet would have turned 18 this year. Mr. Ramsey is now calling for more widespread DNA testing.

See DNA Delivers,(editorial) Baltimore Sun (July 14, 2008), and JonBenet Toxic Gossip Was in Itself a True Crime, Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune (July 14, 2008).

Meanwhile, in D.C., the Washington Post is taking a good hard look at the Chandra Levy case. Like the JonBenet Ramsey case, this case was in every newspaper, seemingly touched every headline, and CNN could not stay away. There was mystery, sex, politics, violence, a half-packed suitcase -- what else do you want, closure?

Well, there never has been closure, and perhaps there never will be. But the WP is running a 12-chapter series on what the heck went wrong. They start with the doltish search party (which somehow neglected to search 100 yards off the trails, where her body was later found), move on to the doofy apartment video tape (it was re-recorded weekly; by the time police got to the tape, it was too late), disrupted data (lesson: don't let just anyone try to figure out someone's search history!), and other screwups to illustrate the multiple ways this case went downhill.

What could have helped? So many mishaps, so little time. We're always in favor of the low-tech solution called common sense. If you have DNA, that might help, too. But again with the common sense -- chain of custody, proper preservation, etc., etc. -- or again we're left with nothing but a half-packed suitcase.

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on July 14, 2008 (boomark / email).