ST: Patsy, once we were told that Burke, at times, would walk through the house whittling and that was something that apparently got on Linda Hoffman’s nerves somehow, to clean up after him.
PR: Right.
ST: Was this consistent with his little pocketknife?
PR: Yeah.
ST: He’d walk through the house whittling and … (I’m showing Patsy a photo of a little red Swiss army knife.)
PR: Right. He had one we had gotten him in Switzerland, it had his name on it. Does this have his name on it?
ST: I don’t know … I have spoken with Linda, and she’s identified this suitcase as belonging to, well, not necessarily belonging to, but a suitcase that she has used and that John Andrew has used, and that John Andrew likely had left at your house.

Okay, why did ST change the subject to the suitcase as soon as Patsy asked if the knife he was showing her a photo of had Burke’s name on it?? And what did he mean “Linda used” (the suitcase)?

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Previous knife posts:

Page 374 NE book - JBTPF
Another photo of the laundry area outside JonBenét's room also drew puzzled comments from John.
LS: ...That's a photograph of the upstairs laundry room area?
JR: Uh huh.
LS: There is a knife on the counter. What do you recall about that?
JR: Um, nothing. That looks like a kitchen - a knife that would normally be in the kitchen. It's hard to tell. Looks likeit might be a grapefruit knife or something. We normally didn't prepare any food at that counter.
LS: Do you ever recall that knife being there before?
JR: I don't recall, no.

Well, Don, it looks like you didn't just pluck your impression that it was a "grapefruit" knife from out of nowhere.

In the Search Warrant inventories, the only knife I see mentioned is the "red pocket knife with broken ornament (41KKY)". Does that mean this knife, found in the upstairs laundry room area, was not taken?

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Jameson’s post:
One little sidebar here- - Linda Hoffmann-Pugh said she thought the knife was Patsy's, used to peel potatoes. I asked the Ramseys about that and John laughed out loud - - said Patsy's potatoes come out of a box!
I am sure that somewhere in that house they had such a knife - - but no reason for them to take it to the second floor.
An intruder, on the other hand, he might have carried in a knife - - or looked for one while waiting around. He had the stun gun, but a knife might come in handy for a few reasons.
I still wonder if they checked at all to see if any of her hair was cut off - - and where is the missing hair ribbon? Two ponytails, two elastics, only one ribbon - - where is the other one? Does the killer still have it?

edited to add: Odd that no one asked Patsy about the knife on the second floor (or did they - does anyone recall them questioning Patsy about the laundry room knife?).

I doubt a knife came from the suitcase, but the intruder may have had a great deal of time and inclination to rummage in things.

It also seems strange to say 'knife' instead of 'pocket knife'.

Or it may simply be that the police had seized a knife that was at the crime scene and had later learned about the suitcase being owned by JAR and simply decided they might be able to build a case of that is where the knife had been. No real facts on which to base this assumption, but that ofcourse means there are no real facts to prove otherwise either. So it was probably just one more attempt at amassing a whole lot of innuendo.

John Andrew has spoken to me about the suitcase and what was in it. There was no knife in there.

I think this was just some ploy to plant an idea that could then later be quoted as supporting some possible theory.

If a paring/grapefruit knife were found in the basement, why isn't it on the evidence list?

Rainsong

Don't know where the "red knife with broken ornament" was found.

Don't know IF there was a red Swiss Army knife found.

Don't know IF there was a Swiss Army knife with Burke's name on it found.

I could only see ONE knife listed in the evidence list (the one with the broken ornament).

How many knives were there?

Knife, red knife, red pocket knife, could all be the same item.

There was a knife seized from the basement area.
There was a knife that was photographed in the upstairs laundry room and I assume it too was seized as evidence.
There has been discussion of an ornamented red pocket knife, but it appears that it was neither of the two knives that was seized.

Remember, the fbi has the superskilled and very methodical Evidence Respons Team. They didn't use them, ofcourse. The BPD are neither skilled nor methodical and but for Trip DeMuth's heroism, there would not even be the forensic evidence that we do have in this case!

"Then they showed her the picture of Patsy's paint tray - or tote, as she called it - and some paintings leaning against the wall. The photograph had been taken just outside the wine cellar, right next to where Hoffman-Pugh's own daughter had put John Ramsey's golf clubs. But that wasn't where she'd left the tray on December 23, she said. She had put it at the foot of the stairs and didn't know who had moved it."

So, the tote was moved from the bottom of the stairs to the hallway outside the door of the windowless room where the body was found.

The suitcase was moved too.

There was a chair that was moved up against a door in the basement (to inhibit entry?).

The "Barbie" nightgown was out of place.

With all the clutter in the basement, I wonder what else was out of place.

The flashlight on the kitchen counter was out of place.

The bowl of pineapple was out of place. Patsy would NOT have "set it up" with that big spoon or using that particular bowl.

There was a cup used for tea (?) on the kitchen table, which may have been something used by one of the many people at the house that morning, or was it, too, out of place?

edited to add: There was a baseball bat with carpet fiber from the basement that was out of place.

The bag of rope in JAR's room was out of place and unknown as to where it came from.

There was a "Santa" note, torn up and in JonBenét's trash basket in her room.

The paring knife was out of place in the laundry area on the second floor.

No one knows if the red pocket knife was taken from its hiding place on the second floor weeks or days before the crime or if it was taken the night of the crime.

With John and Patsy in such a tizzy the morning of the 26th and with never going back to the house after 1:30 that afternoon, I wonder what else was out of place in the house. What might have been missing?

Weird: bringing a can of pineapple and mucking about in the kitchen in the dead of night solely for some sort of very subtle inside joke.

Wired: He has to know that pineapple meant something special to JonBenet and would be recognized by her family as some sort of macabre joke.

I'm sure you all know that I'd be willing to bet A LOT that the bowl of "pineapple" was a set-up.

Quite possibly. It may have been an interrogation ploy. It may have been simply the witness advocate. It may have been some of this BPD attempt to supply a 'motive': Took a snack in the middle of the night and parents killed her type thing. Look how the BPD has tried to link everything to the parents even a knife in the laundry room. I really can't see a killer going around the home and leaving such a subtle and senseless clue, particularly since it would narrow the field.

Would McSanta have known about pineapple snacks?
Would LHP?

I do, however, think there is good reason to believe that there were a number of signs that there were "things" out of place, not where they should be, inexplicable indicators that there might have been even MORE things missing or out of place in the house. The Ramseys awoke to a nightmare, incapable of noting details and perhaps the household was not ordinarily 'orderly' enough for out-of-place (don't look right) things to be noted by them. I suspect there might have been OTHER things that were amiss.

The pineapple - - the large spoon - seems to me like a kid thing. My bet is on Burke and the other kids who were in the house that Christmas Day.

I don't believe Burke was ever asked about that pineapple - and years later, how would he ever remember?

>The pineapple - - the large spoon - seems to me like a kid thing.
I had not been aware of the 'large spoon' but have generally ignored this pineapple "evidence" because I've felt it just too weak in value.
I would tend to agree that if some sort of large serving spoon was used, it would have been unlikely to be the witness advocate people who did it.