THIS IS ASSUMING STEVE THOMAS’ CLAIM ABOUT THE DICTIONARY BEING OPEN AND DOGMARKED TO INCEST IS CORRECT. If it’s not, disregard everything.
I’ve known about this oddity of the case for quite a while and always contemplated making my own post about it, but never really knew where to sit on it. If the book was really left open to that page out of the over 1500 pages (and probably 300-500 pages that people often dogmark or bookmark) in the entire dictionary in the same time period that a girl turned up dead with an incestuous injury, then there is really no way it wasn’t related in some fashion, whether it was done far ahead of time for relatively innuocous purposes and without knowledge of any looming trouble in the future, or closer in time or after the murder. As much as I usually believe in coincidences, and as much as I loved CliffTruxton’s work on this case and thought his explanation was sensible, I can’t buy that this one was a coincidence. I’m sorry to those left-brained ones—I just can’t.
But if was left open on the table in John’s study, that is the actual game changer. It is a massive deal. Under no circumstances would he have willingly left it behind in that state on the 26th. This isn’t the damn Riddler willingly leaving behind clues. Even if he wasn’t the actual molester, he still wouldn’t have willingly left it behind if he knew it was there. To be honest, I don’t think he’d do this at all at any point if he was the molester. Someone else would’ve had to be the one to do this without John’s knowledge.
Like, man. The dictionary being left where it was, if you’re right, actually made my belief that John did it all to himself and that he wasn’t set up in any way by Patsy or law enforcement that night, waver, for a half second. But no—that’s ridiculous.
Would Burke have done this? Technically possible, but… like, reaaaally infeasible. A kid might want to look up the definition, but first, why why would he dogmark it and leave it open like that? IN HIS FATHER’S OWN OFFICE? Come on. JonBenet? Definitely not. Patsy…? Well. Let’s say that my head’s swimming with a million thoughts at a pace probably not dissimilar to a whale swimming through Icelandic waters.
I guess one could surmise that if JDIA, then Patsy did this at some point after she called 911 when she slowly started putting the pieces together, but surely that’s not possible. She was in the solarium and then the den all that time after the police arrived. She never went upstairs during the kidnapping phase, as far as I can figure. So if it was Patsy and this deduction of yours is correct, Proper, then it had to either be during the extremely narrow time window after calling the Whites and Fernies and the first police officer showed up, or she really was awake all along during the night, or she did it ahead of time before the 26th.
Back to the previous train of thought. I really have to wonder when Patsy did this, if the dictionary really was in the third floor study and all that? I hate it but again, she’s the only remotely realistic candidate who would’ve done this. The housekeeper hadn’t been in the home for days prior to this.
I guess, Patsy did this. She left it open on John’s table… to say, what? That she knew he was an incestuous molester? There’s just no other even semi-reasonable explanation for why the book would be dogmarked to that page for such a circumstance like this and left open in such a place if it was in fact there. Neither adult didn’t already know what incest meant. A child might look it up, but again, the way it was supposedly left is so vanishingly unlikely to have been done by a child if it was in John’s study (even if it wasn’t, it still isn’t really that likely imo). And there is no way I could imagine her doing this for John if Burke was the one molesting JonBenet. She would simply tell John what Burke was doing, if John even cared enough to listen to her about it. Heck, he’d probably be mad she ruined the paper his dictionary was printed on.
After that… I have no idea what would’ve happened, if all of those facts thus far are correct. Like, this is already super shaky grounds I’m speculating on so I won’t go any further than where I am for now. Usually I try to only speculate with more proven evidence or safer inferences in my arsenal than this, but I couldn’t resist here because this is totally bonkers if true.
However, I will at least say this last thing: I understand your deductions if I’ve been following your train of thoughts properly but the fact that it was still there by the time the police went in leads me to think that John must have missed it or overlooked it, either during the chaos of the staging or while he was panicking after the body’s discovery while on call with his pilot. Otherwise, surely he would’ve at least moved it by the time the police photographed the dictionary, no?
Looking forward to everyone’s thoughts on this. This is so odd.
Altho, idk, maybe Thomas really was wrong or lied. That’s the other possibility, and while it’s realistic he could’ve been wrong, I don’t think he would lie about this and I also think this would be a really weird piece of possible evidence for him to get wrong about in so far as it having existed somewhere in the first or third floor study or wherever, plus the fact that it was photographed as well and Thomas having a named third party react to the same thing in his own account also helps add a little more credibility to the claim.