10-16-2017, 10:04 PM
GERALDO RIVERA: That is the haunting voice of the innocent little child who cries out from her grave for justice. But are we any closer to an arrest in the JonBenet Ramsey case? We will talk with several experts whose analysis of the evidence points in a startling direction. Our ongoing investigation of the Ramsey murder poses the question: Did the mother have anything to do with it? Next GERALDO RIVERA SHOW.
(Excerpt from beauty pageant)
RIVERA: It is painful enough to watch the video of JonBenet Ramsey dancing and posing. It is that much harder to listen to this little beauty queen, hear her voice. It seems almost as if she is still around, vibrant and just as adorable as she was when this video was taken.
It has been, ladies and gentlemen, just over three months since her brutal murder. Who did it and what in the world is taking so long to resolve this terrible mystery?
That's the main question we'll be asking over the course of this hour, but our very specific focus is much more narrow. Here's the question: Could it have been her mother? Could Patsy Ramsey have played some terrible role in taking the life of her precious daughter, or at least in covering up the crime?
Today--two exclusives. First, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine. This is the forensic psychiatrist Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, but we have known each other for decades.
Dr. JUDIANNE DENSEN-GERBER (JD, MD, Forensic Psychiatrist): Forty years.
RIVERA: Imagine. She is here today with never-before-seen video of little JonBenet. That video Dr. Densen-Gerber has carefully studied, scrutinized and analyzed. You know how I cherish your opinion and--and hold it in such high regard. My first question is having st--I--I tell you what. Before I get specific, give me a general overview of what you have discerned.
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Well, first I'd like to just comment on what you showed because it's the only patriotic beauty contest--child beauty contest singing that. And when I had reviewed about five hours, Geraldo, of the tapes and she sang "God Bless America," and she said, `land of the free,' I said, `The land of the enslaved children.' And my feeling very strong...
RIVERA: And I--land of the enslaved children. Isn't it true?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: And my first reaction is, one, we cry out certainly to catch the person who did--was the perpetrator or who covered up the perpetration. But what about all the other children? I brought you this, which I--first time I've ever seen--from Connecticut which advertises another beauty contest.
RIVERA: Mm-hmm.
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: And I have been talking--I wrote the child pornography and sexploitation laws for Gayle Kil--Kilde all the way back in 1978...
RIVERA: Mm-hmm.
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: ...which passed. We didn't put in beauty contests. We didn't even know about them.
RIVERA: Do you think that these contests, per se, are abuse?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Well, like this they are. The first one I studied was one Birch Bayh asked me to study, which was in Naked City, Indiana, and a very ticklish question, literally, because Indiana was the first state to have nudist camps. And these had children under 15 posing, and anybody who could pay $15 could take as many pictures of them as they wanted. And it took us a while to close it down, but we did. This is pretty much the same kind of thing.
RIVERA: Is there any indication, in terms of that tape, that this child was previously the victim of child abuse?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Oh, definitely, and I think you've shown some of them on prior shows, in that you can't look at these tapes and not see that she has bruises. She has a very big bruise during one time in her antec--what we call the antecubital fossa, the same place people shoot heroin. There's another time where one of her eyes when she's being crowned is barely able to be opened. And furthermore, there is even the fact that she--when she is crowned in one contest, she's disoriented and she can't find her way off the stage, and this is not the first contest. So I think that very much she was sort of in a trance or in a mesmerized state when she did this because, really, she was j--a puppet. She wasn't a--her person--her own person.
RIVERA: Was she the puppet of her mother?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Well, for the shows definitely. There is no question that I think there was a symbiotic relationship between the mother and child. This mother had been Miss West Virginia. I believe her sister was also Miss West Virginia and they didn't make Miss America. And certain people have told me that when this baby was just born the mother said, `This is my future Miss America.' So she was fulfilling a long-term dream of the mother to make it.
RIVERA: Is there any indication in your analysis, as you scrutinize, as you investigate, that the mother could have played any role in this?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Well, there is no reason--let me put it the other way--there's no reason to suspect the father any more than the mother.
RIVERA: What is there, if anything, in what you have analyzed in this case that would indicate any culpability or involvement by the mother, Patsy Ramsey?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Well, the first thing is definitely the bruises, the eye that didn't open, the disorientation at the beauty contest. To the best of my knowledge, the father never went with her. I mean, it was the mother who went with her. So it couldn't be the father at least being the physical abuser of the child. In addition, the 30...
RIVERA: That's interesting. I'd not--I'd not thought that one through, but y--of course, that's logical.
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: ..the 30--the 30 visits to the pediatrician, the mother took her to. What did she go to the pediatrician 30 times in two years for? Looking at the autopsy report, with the chronic and old vaginitis or inflammation, I have to assume that that had to be told sometime to the mother. She must have had a discharge. I mean, she was abused for probably two and a half to three years.
RIVERA: What would have been the motive that night?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: There are many possible motives. Either that the child--which has also been said--did not want to go to the January 5th Las Vegas or--and I've asked for the curriculum...
RIVERA: That would be--What's that?--about...
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Two weeks.
RIVERA: ...two weeks--just under two weeks later, after the homicide.
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: It's under two weeks. Or it could easily have been that the child, in school--and I've asked for the curriculum from that first grade--could have been studying good and bad touching and she could have easily said, `I'm not going to do this anymore,' or `I'm going to tell someone.'
There's another thing which I learned from your associate that you had one of her friends on, and this friend said that Patsy loved her daughter very, very much, but she was always concerned that she go to the bathroom, urinate before--and I think this was on your show--before they went anywhere. Well, it's strange--it's--when you talk `went anywhere'--it's a little sick joke--before she went to heaven, I have to say. The fascinating thing in the autopsy that confused me from the very beginning is she had an empty bladder. So she had to be k--killed within five minutes after she went to the potty.
RIVERA: Meaning what?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Meaning that someone took her to the potty. It wasn't a death throes, death agony. So some--now to me, it's the strangest thing in the world for a perpetrator to take a child to the potty right before you kill the child. In addition, whoever killed the child, I feel, did not have much strength because the blows to the head did not fracture anything. It was a contrecoup concussion.
But second of all, if a man becomes enraged and it's a small child or a woman, he'll just put his hands around her and crack the cricoid. This person had to take long, thin strings, put ligatures--put it around the neck and even take a piece of wood to twist it tight enough to kill her.
In addition, the child appears to have been dragged naked downstairs because she has a--bruises all over her back and her thighs. So I would say, I assume, since the father picked the child up immediately upon seeing her dead in the basement, he would have picked her up. And if you could pick her up, you'd put her in a car and you'd throw her in the woods, if you'd done this thing. So it appears to me the person was not strong enough to pick the child up or take it. That doesn't mean it has to be the mother, but it does mean that it could be the mother just as easily as the father.
(Excerpt from beauty pageant)
RIVERA: It is painful enough to watch the video of JonBenet Ramsey dancing and posing. It is that much harder to listen to this little beauty queen, hear her voice. It seems almost as if she is still around, vibrant and just as adorable as she was when this video was taken.
It has been, ladies and gentlemen, just over three months since her brutal murder. Who did it and what in the world is taking so long to resolve this terrible mystery?
That's the main question we'll be asking over the course of this hour, but our very specific focus is much more narrow. Here's the question: Could it have been her mother? Could Patsy Ramsey have played some terrible role in taking the life of her precious daughter, or at least in covering up the crime?
Today--two exclusives. First, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine. This is the forensic psychiatrist Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, but we have known each other for decades.
Dr. JUDIANNE DENSEN-GERBER (JD, MD, Forensic Psychiatrist): Forty years.
RIVERA: Imagine. She is here today with never-before-seen video of little JonBenet. That video Dr. Densen-Gerber has carefully studied, scrutinized and analyzed. You know how I cherish your opinion and--and hold it in such high regard. My first question is having st--I--I tell you what. Before I get specific, give me a general overview of what you have discerned.
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Well, first I'd like to just comment on what you showed because it's the only patriotic beauty contest--child beauty contest singing that. And when I had reviewed about five hours, Geraldo, of the tapes and she sang "God Bless America," and she said, `land of the free,' I said, `The land of the enslaved children.' And my feeling very strong...
RIVERA: And I--land of the enslaved children. Isn't it true?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: And my first reaction is, one, we cry out certainly to catch the person who did--was the perpetrator or who covered up the perpetration. But what about all the other children? I brought you this, which I--first time I've ever seen--from Connecticut which advertises another beauty contest.
RIVERA: Mm-hmm.
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: And I have been talking--I wrote the child pornography and sexploitation laws for Gayle Kil--Kilde all the way back in 1978...
RIVERA: Mm-hmm.
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: ...which passed. We didn't put in beauty contests. We didn't even know about them.
RIVERA: Do you think that these contests, per se, are abuse?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Well, like this they are. The first one I studied was one Birch Bayh asked me to study, which was in Naked City, Indiana, and a very ticklish question, literally, because Indiana was the first state to have nudist camps. And these had children under 15 posing, and anybody who could pay $15 could take as many pictures of them as they wanted. And it took us a while to close it down, but we did. This is pretty much the same kind of thing.
RIVERA: Is there any indication, in terms of that tape, that this child was previously the victim of child abuse?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Oh, definitely, and I think you've shown some of them on prior shows, in that you can't look at these tapes and not see that she has bruises. She has a very big bruise during one time in her antec--what we call the antecubital fossa, the same place people shoot heroin. There's another time where one of her eyes when she's being crowned is barely able to be opened. And furthermore, there is even the fact that she--when she is crowned in one contest, she's disoriented and she can't find her way off the stage, and this is not the first contest. So I think that very much she was sort of in a trance or in a mesmerized state when she did this because, really, she was j--a puppet. She wasn't a--her person--her own person.
RIVERA: Was she the puppet of her mother?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Well, for the shows definitely. There is no question that I think there was a symbiotic relationship between the mother and child. This mother had been Miss West Virginia. I believe her sister was also Miss West Virginia and they didn't make Miss America. And certain people have told me that when this baby was just born the mother said, `This is my future Miss America.' So she was fulfilling a long-term dream of the mother to make it.
RIVERA: Is there any indication in your analysis, as you scrutinize, as you investigate, that the mother could have played any role in this?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Well, there is no reason--let me put it the other way--there's no reason to suspect the father any more than the mother.
RIVERA: What is there, if anything, in what you have analyzed in this case that would indicate any culpability or involvement by the mother, Patsy Ramsey?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Well, the first thing is definitely the bruises, the eye that didn't open, the disorientation at the beauty contest. To the best of my knowledge, the father never went with her. I mean, it was the mother who went with her. So it couldn't be the father at least being the physical abuser of the child. In addition, the 30...
RIVERA: That's interesting. I'd not--I'd not thought that one through, but y--of course, that's logical.
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: ..the 30--the 30 visits to the pediatrician, the mother took her to. What did she go to the pediatrician 30 times in two years for? Looking at the autopsy report, with the chronic and old vaginitis or inflammation, I have to assume that that had to be told sometime to the mother. She must have had a discharge. I mean, she was abused for probably two and a half to three years.
RIVERA: What would have been the motive that night?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: There are many possible motives. Either that the child--which has also been said--did not want to go to the January 5th Las Vegas or--and I've asked for the curriculum...
RIVERA: That would be--What's that?--about...
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Two weeks.
RIVERA: ...two weeks--just under two weeks later, after the homicide.
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: It's under two weeks. Or it could easily have been that the child, in school--and I've asked for the curriculum from that first grade--could have been studying good and bad touching and she could have easily said, `I'm not going to do this anymore,' or `I'm going to tell someone.'
There's another thing which I learned from your associate that you had one of her friends on, and this friend said that Patsy loved her daughter very, very much, but she was always concerned that she go to the bathroom, urinate before--and I think this was on your show--before they went anywhere. Well, it's strange--it's--when you talk `went anywhere'--it's a little sick joke--before she went to heaven, I have to say. The fascinating thing in the autopsy that confused me from the very beginning is she had an empty bladder. So she had to be k--killed within five minutes after she went to the potty.
RIVERA: Meaning what?
Dr. DENSEN-GERBER: Meaning that someone took her to the potty. It wasn't a death throes, death agony. So some--now to me, it's the strangest thing in the world for a perpetrator to take a child to the potty right before you kill the child. In addition, whoever killed the child, I feel, did not have much strength because the blows to the head did not fracture anything. It was a contrecoup concussion.
But second of all, if a man becomes enraged and it's a small child or a woman, he'll just put his hands around her and crack the cricoid. This person had to take long, thin strings, put ligatures--put it around the neck and even take a piece of wood to twist it tight enough to kill her.
In addition, the child appears to have been dragged naked downstairs because she has a--bruises all over her back and her thighs. So I would say, I assume, since the father picked the child up immediately upon seeing her dead in the basement, he would have picked her up. And if you could pick her up, you'd put her in a car and you'd throw her in the woods, if you'd done this thing. So it appears to me the person was not strong enough to pick the child up or take it. That doesn't mean it has to be the mother, but it does mean that it could be the mother just as easily as the father.