June 1998 John Ramsey Interrogation by Lou Smit and Mike Kane (Movies, Rentals, Television)

0342
2 MIKE KANE: There are these phrases in
3 here that seem to have some kind of Hollywood
4 connection? What did you think about that?
5 JOHN RAMSEY: It didn't dawn on me at
6 the time, because we (INAUDIBLE) so much. But that
7 came out later. There was a couple of phrases that
8 came out later: "you must grow a brain"; and we
9 can talk about the of the fat cat; and other fat
10 cats here, or something like that.
11 MIKE KANE: You're not the only fat cat
12 around.
13 JOHN RAMSEY: Right. Those are the phrases
14 that we, you know, later we thought we had heard
15 from people around us who have tried to
16 reconstruct who, where.
17 MIKE KANE: When you say we thought?
18 JOHN RAMSEY: Patsy and I.
19 MIKE KANE: Okay. And how was it that you
20 heard?
21 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, grow a brain, fat
22 cats. We'd heard those before.
23 MIKE KANE: Were you ever able to --
24 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, we had some names
25 we came up with. We passed on (INAUDIBLE) our

0343
1 friends in Atlanta, "Atlanta fat cats" later in
2 that week.
3 MIKE KANE: When was that specifically?
4 JOHN RAMSEY: That was when she was back;
5 when we were back for the funeral.
6 MIKE KANE: (INAUDIBLE) friends saying that
7 about?
8 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, when we went back, Ron
9 Westmoreland had like a little reception after the
10 funeral, and some of my friends were there, and he
11 has a beautiful home in Atlanta. He makes a lot of
12 money. It's not a stretch for him to have it. It's
13 very nice.
14 My friends were around me, consoling me and trying
15 to give me advice. And to be a part of that group
16 it's the Atlanta fat cats.
17 MIKE KANE: And grow a brain. Does that
18 ascribe to anybody?
19 JOHN RAMSEY: I don't remember now. I'm
20 trying to remember that confrontation, but I don't
21 know. But I kind of forget who we came up with on
22 that. Do want me to give any number --
23 BRYAN MORGAN: I do.
24 MIKE KANE: No.
25 JOHN RAMSEY: One of the names that came

0344
1 up was Jim Reno because Don Paugh, I remember him
2 saying that in the mall once. "Grow a brain," to
3 one of the media indigents. And that was one of
4 the recollections that came up.
5 MIKE KANE: How about that "listen carefully"?
6 JOHN RAMSEY: No, it didn't really mean much
7 to me.
8 MIKE KANE: What about the reference to "the
9 delivery will be exhausting, so I advise you to be
10 rested"?
11 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah, that concerned me because
12 I didn't know whether that meant it was going to
13 be the next day that we'd get a call, and I'd be
14 out of mind by then. Certainly couldn't rest.
15 MIKE KANE: What about connections about
16 having something along that line before?
17 JOHN RAMSEY: I didn't have anything
18 (INAUDIBLE).
19 MIKE KANE: And likewise, the "talking to the
20 stray dog"?
21 JOHN RAMSEY: No.
22 MIKE KANE: Look at the second page --
23 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah. It didn't mean anything
24 to me. It doesn't ring a bell. It didn't then.
25 MIKE KANE: Subsequently, now that we've had

0345
1 discussions, do you know where that might have
2 come from or an association?
3 JOHN RAMSEY: No, we hadn't really focused
4 on that.
5 MIKE KANE: In the ads and the flyers
6 you put out, did you make references to movies
7 like "Dirty Harry"; because that was an original
8 line in "Dirty Harry."
9 JOHN RAMSEY: Is that right?
10 MIKE KANE: You didn't know that until today?
11 JOHN RAMSEY: (INAUDIBLE) said that, no.
12 MIKE KANE: Okay. And any discussions about
13 that and going through all of this --
14 JOHN RAMSEY: Not the "stray dog" line.
15 We talked about some of the other lines that came
16 out. One of them came out as apparently as this
17 "Ransom" movie, which I never saw. There was
18 similarities, we were told. Some people told us if
19 that it was or if we read the newspaper or what,
20 but apparently there's some very strange
21 similarities to some of these phrases, none of
22 which I don't believe, we had seen or have seen.
23 MIKE KANE: Have you ever seen "Dirty Harry?"
24 JOHN RAMSEY: Seems like I have. That's an
25 old movie, right?

0346
1 MIKE KANE: Um hmm.
2 JOHN RAMSEY: (INAUDIBLE) that it's Clint
3 Eastwood, but I don't remember what it's about or
4 (INAUDIBLE).
5 MIKE KANE: Did you see it before, or had
6 you seen it since?
7 JOHN RAMSEY: No. I haven't seen it since.
8 If I saw it, it was well before.
9 MIKE KANE: Did you see that in a theatre or
10 rented it?
11 JOHN RAMSEY: I don't remember seeing it.
12 I just remember I know the name and it's Clint
13 Eastwood. Usually what we did was we rented. If we
14 watched a movie we rented them. We watched them at
15 home. We very rarely went to the theater. I'm not
16 sure that I did go to the theater and see "Dirty
17 Harry."
18 MIKE KANE: How often did you rent?
19 JOHN RAMSEY: Actually not that often.
20 We had a projection, video thing in our bedroom
21 which would probably used it more frequently when
22 we first got it. But the kids watched, they liked
23 their kinds of movies.
24 The thought was when we rented a movie, we put it
25 in the bedroom so we could all pile in the bed and

0347
1 watch a movie together. But (INAUDIBLE), the kids
2 liked and I liked the ninja movies and Patsy liked
3 something else, so. It was always difficult to
4 rent a movie that appealed to the whole audience.
5 MIKE KANE: What was it, kind of action
6 movies?
7 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, I liked Harrison Ford
8 movies, "Indiana Jones", things that have
9 airplanes and boats and stuff going on. It's
10 entertainment but not -- I liked old movies, you
11 know, the old, old classics.
12 MIKE KANE: What's your favorite movie
13 of all?
14 JOHN RAMSEY: "African Queen".
15 MIKE KANE: what others?
16 JOHN RAMSEY: "Animal House" is one of
17 favorites. I've watched that one probably five
18 times or more. I mean, "African Queen", if I could
19 watch that kind of movie every week, I'd do it.
20 They just don't exist. That's a great movie.
21 MIKEE: Were you with a fraternity?
22 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah.
23 MIKE KANE: And was it (INAUDIBLE) "Animal
24 House"?
25 JOHN RAMSEY: (INAUDIBLE). Not quite as bad.

0348
1 MIKE KANE: Anyone break a guitar over
2 your head?
3 JOHN RAMSEY: No, we just rode our
4 motorcycles and (INAUDIBLE).
5 MIKE KANE: That movie system that was
6 up in the bedroom, was that already added when you
7 had the remodeling done?
8 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah.
9 MIKE KANE: And do you know how that
10 came about? I mean, was that -- I mean, was it
11 your idea or was it Patsy's?
12 JOHN RAMSEY: That was mine. We had
13 wanted a basement home, which we enjoyed back in
14 Atlanta. Be we never went down in the basement. So
15 it was silly to have that in the basement. Just
16 put in our bedroom where we live, you know, when
17 we're home most of the time.
18 MIKE KANE: Did it have a screen that
19 came down from the ceiling?
20 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah. And the room was
21 long so it was kind of a perfect set up to do it.
22 MIKE KANE: So that you never saw the
23 (INAUDIBLE) either before or after? How about some
24 of the other ones that your ad talked about the
25 "Speed"?

0349
1 JOHN RAMSEY: I watched "Speed" on an
2 airplane, and airliner without headphones. And if
3 you ever watch that movie without the sound, it's
4 the stupidest movie you can imagine. (INAUDIBLE)
5 throughout the whole movie. And it didn't have
6 sound. So I've seen it, but without the sound.
7 MIKE KANE: Before or since?
8 JOHN RAMSEY: Before. When it was out,
9 it was on one of the airlines.

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(SNIP)

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0390
13 JOHN RAMSEY: No, I'd go during school
14 days or a school day. (INAUDIBLE) Patsy and Burke,
15 or (INAUDIBLE) they used to watch the business
16 channel in the morning. Those were the only two
17 channels I watched on television.
18 The kids would be in bed by 8:30, 9:00.
19 And we'd go to bed shortly thereafter.
20 MIKE KANE: Were they
21 difficult to get to bed, either of them?
22 JOHN RAMSEY: No, not
23 really. If there had something going on, they'd
24 sometimes put up an argument. They used to like to
25 watch the movies when they went to bed. Sometimes

0391
1 we would let them do that. That was about the only
2 argument we had, whether or not they could watch
3 the movie that night. It wasn't an argument, it
4 was just a discussion.

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(SNIP)

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16 MIKE KANE: Okay. Let me jump
17 around a little bit here. The train room, you
18 know what I mean when I say the train room, is
19 that what you guys called it? There was a train
20 set down there?
21 What was that? I know you said
22 that there was a lot of storage down there and
23 from looking at it on the diagram, it was --
24 actually looks like there was a little bit of a
25 divider in there so it was two different rooms.

0435
1 Where was, you said there were a lot of things
2 stored. Where were they stored?
3 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, we had, this
4 used to be an elevator shaft and that was like
5 the electronics for the elevator, so that's --
6 we were kind of' stuck with that when we bought
7 the house, so we had stuff stored in those
8 closets.
9 There was stuff, I think we had
10 some shelving installed, here, here, stuff
11 stacked on shelving. There was a little
12 bookcase here. What's that is. Usually had
13 junk in it.

June 1998 John Ramsey Interrogation by Lou Smit and Mike Kane (Movies, Rentals, Television)

0435
14 MIKE KANE: Did the kids play
15 there?
16 JOHN RAMSEY: They played, Burke at
17 course played with the train off and on.
18 Sometimes the would play back here. Not a lot,
19 but once in awhile.
20 MIKE KANE: Was it primarily used
21 for storage and--
22 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah.
23 MIKE KANE: And did they play with
24 the trains at all?
25 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah, Burke did a

0436
1 lot.
2 MIKE KANE: There was, I don't
3 believe we have a picture of it, but there was a
4 poster hanging up. Do you remember if there was
5 a poster?
6 JOHN RAMSEY: Okay. Some movie
7 posters, right?
8 MIKE KANE: Yeah.
9 JOHN RAMSEY: Hung up. Those were
10 from our old house, the space where we had the
11 theater, we had those hanging on the walls.

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(SNIP)

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0474
12 MIKE KANE: The, SBTC?
13 JOHN RAMSEY: (INAUDIBLE). I have
14 done, I have run numbers and letters, I have
15 tried to figure code. I have looked in the
16 bible extensively for that reference. Talked to
17 people who know a lot more about the bible than
18 I do. The only thing I have heard that makes
19 sense are that it's star-based technical
20 command, was a term on I think Star Trek, one of
21 those, Star Wars, Star Trek, I think, which kind
22 of fits the movie theme.
23 You know, this freak had a passion
24 for movies. Or Sanibel and, whatever her name
25 was, Claus, or the T could have possibly been a

0475
1 J, Sanibel or Janet Claus. But the T would have
2 had to have really been a J, that's the only
3 thing.
4 Then there was a guy early on that
5 was going to believe that had a tee shirt that
6 was Santa Barbara Tennis Club and I checked, and
7 there was a Santa Barbara Tennis Club and but
8 other than that I don't have a clue what means.
9 LOU SMIT: You said you looked at
10 a biblical theme. In what sense?
11 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, just because we
12 had heard there were psalms circled, possible
13 118 being 118th psalm and there was some, I
14 think some interesting things there. So I tried
15 to just take it another step, does SBTC mean
16 anything in the bible. I couldn't.
17 MIKE KANE: Did you do some
18 research yourself in that regard?
19 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah.
20 MIKE KANE: What kinds of things
21 were you looking in the bible for?
22 JOHN RAMSEY: Any time I pick
23 up the bible I look in the index. I read
24 passages, I read thinking does that stand for
25 anything. You know, looked in the dictionary.

0476
1 I looked it up on the Internet, there is a Web
2 site called SBTC, it's a little bit bizarre, as
3 far as I could tell.
4 MIKE KANE: Was that the one that's
5 the Small Business Technical Center that's on
6 the Internet -- had you ever --
7 JOHN RAMSEY: I saw that, I think
8 I saw that.
9 MIKE KANE: It's like a small
10 business trade organization?
11 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah, I --
12 MIKE KANE: Access was never
13 involved in at all?
14 JOHN RAMSEY: No. So we would
15 have -- that's been puzzling to me from day
16 one.

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(SNIP)

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0600
22 LOU SMIT: Before we take a
23 break, Mike, what I would like to do and then we
24 will get back in, there is an area here, in
25 order to determine, a lot of things are going to

0601
1 have to be determined. Let's say you wrote out
2 a check for duct tape. People want to know if
3 you did or didn't. We are going to need a lot
4 of records from you, do you have any objection
5 to signing waivers for records? I mean,
6 yourself.
7 Now I will tell you just some of
8 the records we are going to need okay, and I
9 made kind a list of them and they are just
10 general, we don't have specifics. But we are
11 going to need, for instance, we are going to
12 need your bank records, if we can get them. We
13 are going to need credit card records, to see if
14 you charged anything on credit cards.
15 We are going to need movie rental
16 records, just to see if you rented "Speed" and
17 "Dirty Harry" or any of those movies. We are
18 going to need --
19 JOHN RAMSEY: You don't have any of
20 that, those kind of records now?
21 LOU SMIT: Certain records
22 require permission to do that or we need a
23 subpoena for certain records, so we can
24 either have it where it's given
25 voluntarily or sometimes I have to go

0602
1 through a subpoena, and that's one of the
2 Grand Jury things that would need to be
3 done. But again we are asking here for
4 these things and it's up to you whether
5 you want to --
6 JOHN RAMSEY: Absolutely no
7 problem with that.

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(SNIP)

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0632
4 MIKE KANE: Okay. I talked a
5 little bit about movies, you said "Animal House"
6 you have seen four or five times. You have
7 never seen "Ransom", never seen "Speed"?
8 JOHN RAMSEY: "Speed" only
9 sitting in an airline seat.
10 LOU SMIT: (MULTIPLE
11 SPEAKERS).
12 JOHN RAMSEY: No.
13 MIKE KANE: I guess I already asked
14 you about "Dirty Harry". You talked about, when
15 you had the theater, theater installed, you had
16 a different taste in movies, and I don't know
17 that I followed up on that. What, you said you
18 liked adventure, Indiana Jones type stuff, and
19 you said but the kids were different and Patsy
20 was different. What did the kids like?
21 JOHN RAMSEY: Well, the kids liked
22 kids' movies. Patsy, gosh, I don't know,
23 she -- you know, I would come home, like
24 sometimes I come home with these older movies
25 that were kind of semiclassic movies, but...

0633
1 MIKE KANE: When you say come
2 around.
3 (MULTIPLE SPEAKERS.)
4 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah, she --
5 MIKE KANE: Patsy --
6 JOHN RAMSEY: She always fell
7 asleep so it wasn't an issue for long, but.
8 MIKE KANE: Where did you grab
9 there down in --
10 JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah, Blockbuster,
11 on -- well, Blockbuster on 28th usually where I
12 went.
13 MIKE KANE: Okay, used to be a
14 video store at Baseline and March. Still there.
15 Do you remember going there?
16 JOHN RAMSEY: I don't think I ever
17 went there. But.
18 MIKE KANE: Have you had any
19 inclinations since this talked about how you
20 have done some of your own research about this.
21 I was surprised you haven't gone back to see
22 "Dirty Harry".
23 JOHN RAMSEY: Why?
24 MIKE KANE: I thought you were
25 looking for clues.

0634
1 JOHN RAMSEY: I don't know, what's
2 the clue in "Dirty Harry"?
3 MIKE KANE: Well some of the
4 language out of there?
5 JOHN RAMSEY: I thought --
6 MIKE KANE: The dog, talking to the
7 dog. Be arrested, you're going to need it, that
8 kind of stuff. That's were the fliers that were
9 put out?
10 JOHN RAMSEY: No, I didn't do
11 those. In fact, I don't know I even saw them.
12 I don't like to watch any movie now that has
13 anything to do with violence, children, I mean.
14 MIKE KANE: I mean watch it on
15 entertainment about --
16 (MULTIPLE SPEAKERS).
17 JOHN RAMSEY: No, it would be hard
18 for me to watch frankly. I am very careful with
19 what movies we do watch. I haven't been to see
20 "Titanic". I know it's going to be a sad movie
21 and I don't want to deal with that.

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(SNIP)

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0753
15 LOU SMIT: Have you ever seen the
16 movie "Nick of Time"?
17 JOHN RAMSEY: No.
18 LOU SMIT: And it's about the
19 kidnap of a six-year old and it just happened to
20 be on cable, according to one of the Internet
21 things I read, on the 25th.
22 JOHN RAMSEY: No, I have never --
23 it doesn't ring a bell at all. I wasn't aware
24 of that.

---

(SNIP)

---

0763
15 LOU SMIT: That was posters in the
16 basement of movies?
17 JOHN RAMSEY: Oh, yeah.
18 MIKE KANE: Okay.