The tape first aired on the TODAY show, on July 8th, 2003. The 911 tape had NEVER been played publicly before.The 911 call
In an email Lin Wood sent to jameson: "I gave NBC the actual 911 cassette tape provided to me and when I got it back on Tuesday, I overnighted it to King for Wednesday delivery. I have not made a copy as I wanted NBC and CNN to have the actual 911 cassette tape provided to me by the DA's office."
Listen to the 911 tape as played on the TODAY show, HERE!
Scripps also has the tape available, but it is a shorter version - you can listen to that HERE.
But the longest copy was converted by a poster (Dave) and that is HERE
Transcript:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dispatcher: 911 emergency
(unintelligible)
Patsy: Police!
Dispatcher: What's going on?
Patsy: I'm at seven fifty-five 15th Street.
Dispatcher: What's going on there, ma'am?
Patsy: We have a kidnapping. Hurry, please.
Dispatcher: Explain to me what's going on, OK?
Patsy: There, we have a, there's a note left and our daughter's gone.
Dispatcher: A note was left and your daughter is gone?
Patsy: Yes.
Dispatcher: How old is your daughter?
Patsy: She's six years old. She's blonde, six years old.
Dispatcher: How long ago was this?
Patsy: I don't know. I just found the note and my daughter's gone.
Dispatcher: Does it say who took her?
Patsy: What?
Dispatcher: Does it say who took her?
Patsy: No. I don't know. It's, there's a, there's a ransom note here.
Dispatcher: It's a ransom note?
Patsy: It's say SBTC, victory. Please.
Dispatcher: OK, what's your name? Are you Pats...
Patsy: Patsy Ramsey, I'm the mother. Oh, my God! Please!
Dispatcher: I'm, OK, I'm sending an officer over, OK?
Patsy: Please!
Dispatcher: Do you know how long she's been gone?
Patsy: No, I don't. Please, we just got up and she's not here. Oh, my God! Please!
Dispatcher: OK, calm...
Patsy: Please send somebody.
Dispatcher: I am, honey.
Patsy: Please.
Dispatcher: Take a deep breath for me, OK?
Patsy: Hurry. Hurry. Hurry!
Dispatcher: Patsy! Patsy? Patsy? Patsy?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After the 2nd "Patsy", there is a click that appears to be the
sound
of Patsy hanging up the phone.
After the last "Patsy". there is clicking that most believe is the
sound of the 911 operator typing.
This tape, this transcript, is in total disagreement with Steve Thomas' report.
Read this Q&A, taken from a chat Steve Thomas had with Bill Bickel, an Internet chat host.
crimeADM: "Did you hear the 911 tape personally... and if so, once and for all, was Burke on it?"
Steve Thomas: "I heard the 911 tape, repeatedly, as did the other detectives. The consensus was unanimous, as supported by the enhancement-- there is a 3rd voice on the tape, appears to be Burke ... unless there was someone else present who has never been identified."
No one but Steve Thomas has come forward and said they heard a third voice or the conversations he reported. Aerospace tells media they "stand by their work", but they will not share a report so no one really knows what 'their work" means. And now we can all hear that cassette tape - - there is no third voice.
So where did the third voice come from?
The following information has been attributed to an unnamed inside source. I have reason to believe this source was a secretary-type who was listening in on conversations between the BPD and others.... and it concerns me because it seems (to me) to show an investigation anxious to put this crime on the Ramseys.
We have heard the tape, it makes the first sentence of this account seem.... whatever .... I will leave it to the reader to decide for themselves.
"While re-listening to the recording of the 911 call made by Patsy in the early morning of December 26, detectives thought they could hear a conversation in the background while Patsy was attempting to hang up the phone. On April 21, Det. Melissa Hickman flew to Los Angeles to meet with Mike Epstein and Jim Roeder, engineers at Aerospace Corporation, for purposes of enhancing the recording of the 911 call received at the Boulder Regional Dispatch Center.
At her first meeting with the three engineers, Hickman was told that it appeared that the cassette had been recorded in a Dictaphone format which would require a special recorder to re-copy. Hickman drove to the nearest Dictaphone company which was located in the San Fernando Valley. A Dictaphone technician examined the tape and told Hickman that the information was not recorded in Dictaphone format. Hickman, feeling the frustration of the proverbial goose chase, returned to her hotel.
That evening, Roeder called her at the hotel and asked her to return to Aerospace. Roeder had decided that the tape probably had been recorded on a regular format which could be copied digitally by their computer. A hard drive disk was made of the tape, and this disk was copied to a JAZ drive, a large disk with more memory than a standard floppy disk.
On the morning of April 22, Hickman met again with Roeder in his office at Aerospace. The detective and the engineer went to a small lab to work with the disk to try to filter out extraneous noise and enhance the voices in the background. Roeder made several variations using different noise reduction settings, and those recordings were then copied onto the JAZ drive. They returned to Roeder's office where they were able to further enhance the disk. With this latest enhancement, they were able to hear two voices on the tape - one of which sounded like a juvenile male, and the second one appeared to be Patsy. The first words seemed to belong to the juvenile, and then Patsy is heard to say, "Help me Jesus, help me Jesus." The voice again appeared to be the "juvenile male saying, "Please, what do I do?'' Hickman and Roeder agreed to meet again in the morning to continue enhancing the tape.
When Hickman returned to Aerospace the next morning to meet with Roeder, he said that he had continued listening to the disk after Hickman had left for the evening. He and another engineer had played the original version of the 911 call that had been transferred to the JAZ drive and found that to be the clearest recording. Both engineers had heard three distinct voices on the tape and written down that they thought was being said. The tape was then played for Hickman. After listening to the tape three or four times, Hickman heard John Ramsey say “We're not speaking to you”. In what sounded like a very angry voice. Patsy then says, “Help me Jesus, help me Jesus,” and finally Burke is clearly heard to say, “ Well, what did you find?”, with an emphasis on the word “did.” After Hickman told the engineers her impression of the conversation, Roeder handed her a piece of notepaper containing the conversation heard by himself and his fellow engineer – the conversation as written down was exactly as Hickman herself had just heard."
It seems that the BPD was out to invent evidence. That is my honest take on this at the moment - - a very disturbing view of what was going on.
After the tape was released on the TODAY show, Dateline did a more in depth report, then Larry King devoted an hour to the story. An excerpt:
LARRY KING: Steve Thomas, who appeared on this show with the Ramseys accused Patsy of being the murderer. He was the one that claimed JonBenét's brother, Burke, could be heard at the end of the 911 tape.
WOOD: Absolutely, and that information was leaked out from the Boulder Police Department in September of 1998. Again, allegedly the smoking gun, the objective proof that the Ramseys were lying. Well, in fact, that conversation is not on that tape. It's been enhanced by the FBI, the Secret Service, they found nothing. I gave it to one of the rival networks, NBC News. They hired two independent experts. They tested it. There absolutely is no voice on there discernible that belongs to Burke or John or Patsy.
KING: We had Patsy being interrogated by investigators about the 911 call and whether or not she talked to anyone else at the end of the call. Let's listen to that from 1998.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
TOM HANEY: Was there any conversation immediately following your last words to the dispatcher?
P. RAMSEY: I don't remember. I was out of my mind. My child was missing. I was trying to convey that to the person on the other end of the line. OK? I don't remember. If you have it on tape and would like me to hear it, I'll listen to it and see if that jogs my memory.
HANEY: It is on tape.
P. RAMSEY: OK. All right. Well, if you've got the tape and we can play it then I'll try and help you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KING: And you enhanced the tape, and there was no conversation.
WOOD: The test shows that there was no conversation. And you noticed that when Patsy said, "Play the tape, I'll listen. Maybe it will jog my memory." They don't play the tape.
KING: Where did they get the idea from?
WOOD: You know, Larry, there was a -- the evidence was established that there was, in fact, a plan by the Boulder Police Department to leak information accusatory to the Ramseys to the media, in an effort to convince the public that they were guilty, to pressure them so that somehow they might confess. I think that this tape was part of that plan; it's objective evidence of that plan. It was either intentional fabrication or it was the product of an imaginative but prejudiced mind. Because you listen to the tape as a lay person, there's no way that at the end of the tape the background noise could be a conversation. There's no way that a wall phone could not have been hung up. It was leaked, it was damaging. It's one of many things that was leaked about this family that I think has led to a public perception that they were involved, a perception, by the way, which I think has dramatically changed in the last several months in terms of how people feel about this family, how the public...
KING: Now the public looks at it differently.
WOOD: I think the public gets it. I think that they understand that this family was, in fact, victimized by a biased investigation, a flawed and failed investigation.
A few comments:
1. I wish they had let that bit of the interrogation tape air just
10 seconds longer. Patsy asked Tom Haney to play the tape - she
said,
"Well, if you've got the tape and we can play it then I'll try and help
you.", and he changed the subject. He asked her for the date of
JonBenét's
birth.
2. I would point out that Haney said there was "something" on the tape - - he didn't say Burke's voice was there.
3. I have been in the house with journalists, and there actually WAS an incident where we handled the phone and the phone did not properly hang up. That does NOT appear to be what happened on the morning of the 26th, but I need to report that it did happen at least once at a later date.
Now, CBS, 48 Hours, had also been working on a Ramsey piece. That program was expected to air in May, but it was pulled, and the reason became fodder for many discussions on the forum.
Newspapers reported that CBS "declined to air the tape because there was also a compact disc copy of the 911 call with more noises at the end that could not conclusively be analyzed." They quoted Al Briganti, executive editor of 48 Hours - "Our own analysis showed that there was something there. It's almost impossible to detect what it was. It was in conflict with what Lin (Wood) felt was on the tape, so we felt we didn't really have a story."
I had met Mr. Briganti before and wrote to him for his
thoughts.
He allowed me to post this on my forum:
"We never came
to a conclusion as to what exactly was on the full 911 audio. On the CD
loaned to us, one
does hear some noise after what appears to be a hang up attempt. Our
expert and even
one of NBC?s concluded as much, but interestingly the Katie Couric
report
never made much
of this. The question remains what is that noise, and does it rise to
the
level
of the discussion
described by Steve Thomas? We certainly were not able to confirm that.
But,
neither were we
able to confirm that there was ?nothing? at the end of the tape as Lin
Wood
contends. Any
serious
journalist wishing to advance this heavily reported story would have to
answer those
questions."
Since the CD was a copy of the cassette, didn't exist until some time in 2003 and included more "noise" than the cassette, I don't feel CBS should have given it the weight they did. But in any case, they are not saying they heard voices on the tape, not at all.
Some BORG argue that we need to hear the "enhanced" tape to hear the voices.
Well, the "enhanced" tapes that Steve Thomas spoke about are unavailable to the public. The Boulder police and DA have not shared them.
But several others have "enhanced" the cassette and CD since they have been made available - for network TV and for attorneys and just for the Hell of it - - and not one has come up with a tape that has a conversation on it.
If anyone has "enhanced" that tape and feels they have uncovered a real conversation, with identifiable words, if they are willing to take credit for same, I will include it on this page.
That only seems fair.
jameson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Update on 911 enhancement" - August 24,
2003
Dave has been doing
all he could to clean up and enhance the 911 casette and CD tapes. He
has
asked that these new
copies be shared and I am happy to do that.
Tape
1 is the casette tape - the one that the BPD had enhanced long ago,
the one Lin Wood shared
with the networks.
In the casette, I don't hear anything that I would bring to any lab to
enhance. At
the end, I think Patsy
hangs up while the 911 operator was calling her name. Then I hear what
I would
think is the tape
recorder - the repeated sound that sounds just like my own reel-to-reel
turning a
tape.
Tape
3 is the enhancement of the end of the casette tape- - the section
where the BPD says they
heard conversation.
Please listen to it.
Tape 2 is the CD. The CD was made in 2003 as part of a larger
project
- the BPD started putting all
the 911 calls on CD
for more secure storage - - and the Ramsey 911 call was included. In
the
CD, we
hear much more, the
actual moment when the operator starts talking to Patsy. In some ways,
the CD
isn't as good as the
casette - BUT I think it is very important because it DOES contain the
noises at
the front of the
conversation.
IfI had been investigating the case, I might have had THOSE parts
enhanced, but that
did NOT happen. At first I didn't understand why the BPD had cut off
the
front of
the 911 tape - -
butnow
I think I do know. I think the police heard what I heard - - the same
repeated sound found
at the end of the tape. Listen for yourself and see if you agree. Then
realize
that if the sound
was there before and after - - - it is hardly likely the sound was from
the Ramsey
house at all - - it
was more likely from the recording equipment at the 911 emergency
center.
Tape 4 is an MP3 file that is made up of three loops from
the audio CD track.
In the Left channel
are various audio sections, one from the point
before the call is
answered, from the supposed Burke voice, and from
the extra CD stuff
at the very end.
In the Right channel
is the supposed John voice.
What do YOU hear?
A report from
Dave
follows to document what he did - - be warned that it may be detailed
and
confusing to some
of us....
He mentions two more bits and I will put them here asap.
This is what Dave
says
about them:
"They are from the
cassette tape, comparing the timing of the supposed Burke and supposed
John
voices. They are
filtered
out in a way that shows that they cannot be voices over the Ramsey
phone
line, and they are
compared to each other in Left and Right stereo channels so you can
hear
that the
timing is suspiciously
similar. This leads me to conclude that they are NOT voices, and that
there
is
something too
mechanical
about them, suggesting a mechanical origin."
Report to follow.
(for the record,
the
enhancement done by Aerospace for the Boulder police is not public. I
think
it may
well be sealed as
"grand jury evidence" and that would mean NO ONE has heard it since the
grand jury
ended.)
Dave's Report
Audio Analysis of the 911 Call
of Patsy Ramsey
20 August 2003, 24 August 2003
"Dave" on
Jameson's
Webbsleuths (www.webbsleuths.com)
Abstract
Copies of the
recording
of the emergency 911 call made by Patsy Ramsey were analyzed using
audio
software; results
are discussed. It is concluded that purported conversation between the
Ramseys is a
combination of several
different noise sources that give only the appearance of conversation.
MP3®
files have been
produced
which demonstrate both spectral differences between noise sources and
the
similarity between
different sections of the recordings in terms of timing and cadence,
suggesting
a
repetitive, mechanical
source for some of the sources.
Introduction
On 26 December
1996,
Patsy Ramsey, then of Boulder, Colorado, made a 911 emergency call to
the
Boulder Regional
Communication
Center to report the kidnapping of her daughter, JonBenét. The
911
call was recorded,
and very recently (July 2003) the Boulder County District Attorney's
office
has
released audio copies
of Patsy Ramsey's 911 call in the form of audio cassette tapes and
audio
CD's.
A controversy has
existed
ever since 1997 as to whether or not the recording of the 911 call
contains
unintentionally
overheard
conversation between members of the Ramsey family after the point where
it
was assumed that Patsy
had hung up the phone. Some of those investigating the case of the
murder
of six-year-old
JonBenét
Ramsey seem to think that this issue is a very important one while
others
believe that
regardless
of what is on the tape, it is of very little evidentiary value, unless
it is a
confession of some
sort. The main issue appears to be whether or not Burke Ramsey,
JonBenét's
older
brother, was awake
at the time of the 911 call. The Ramseys had maintained that Burke was
asleep at
this time while
certain
investigators had maintained that he was awake and speaking with his
parents,
therefore that the
elder Ramseys engaged in some sort of deception, so perhaps lied about
the
circumstances
surrounding
the death of their daughter.
This report
contains
a technical discussion of testing that was done on both an audio
cassette
recording and an audio
CD that were obtained from the Boulder County DA's office. The audio
cassette
and CD track are
described,
various types of processing are discussed, including separate
processing
and testing of
portions
of the recordings that some believe to be conversation. The conclusion
is
reached that these
purported conversations are almost certainly not actually conversation
by the
Ramseys which is being
picked up over their phone line and recorded after Patsy thought she
had
hung
up the phone. If there
is such conversation during the controversial audio sections, it is not
audible
even after various
types of enhancement. Instead it appears that different types of noise
with
different spectral
characteristics are superimposed in such a manner as to produce the
appearance
of
voices. The appearance
of voices would no doubt be especially strong in the presence of
imagination
empowered by
suggestion
and wishful thinking.
Audio Processing
A cassette tape
and
an audio CD of the emergency 911 call made by Patsy Ramsey on 26
December
1996 were obtained
from the Boulder County District Attorney's office in Boulder,
Colorado.
For a more
complete description
of the audio processing steps applied, please refer to the Appendix.
What
follows
here is a summary
in text form, but is still intended primarily for a technical audience.
The "tape" was a
recording
on a common-usage, 120-minute audio cassette, a Maxell® UR,
normal-bias tape.
This tape was played on a Pioneer® CW-650R dual-cassette tape deck.
A digitized
version was produced
by feeding the output of the tape deck into a Behringer® Eurorack
MX802A
mixer, the output
of which was fed into a Terratech EWX-2496 mastering sound card that
was
installed in a Pentium
III® computer. The recording software was Steinberg®
WaveLab(tm)
Lite, set
for monophonic
recording,
24-bit, 96,000 samples per second.
The "CD track"
was
a single audio track on a generic, brandless CD-R or CD-RW, probably
CD-R.
The
track data were
so-called
CD quality or 16-bit, 44,100 samples per second, stereo (actually dual
monophonic). The audio
track was ripped from the CD track using Ahead's Nero® CD burning
software
that was bundled with
a Creative Labs® 8432E CD/RW CD burner, reportedly a relabeled
Plextor®.
The
stereo image was
discovered
to be two completely identical monophonic tracks. The left channel of
the CD track was then
upsampled to a monophonic, 24-bit, 96,000 samples per second WAV file
using
Syntrillium's
CoolEdit®
2000.
Both the tape and
the
upsampled CD track were then processed through EXE Consulting's Engulf
Audio(tm) software
to produce a high-quality stereo image. This high-quality stereo image
simulates a
binaural recording,
including stereo separation, echo, and reverb, all calculated in a
self-consistent
manner by solving
the 3-D wave equation for a point source in a large enclosure. The
simulated
environment was a
large concert hall. The absorption (reverb time T60) was set to 0.30
seconds
for
100 Hz and 0.20
seconds
for 4,000 Hz. These reverb times are very short for a large concert
hall,
but
the tape is
conversation,
so the absorption was increased (T60 decreased). As is well known,
reverb
times should be
shorter
for speech than for orchestral music in order to maintain speech
comprehension. The
ideal listening environment for this simulated binaural recording is
studio-
quality
headphones, but with
the fast absorption (short reverb times), the use of computer speakers
in an
acoustically dead
office space was found to be acceptable. We used primarily
studio-quality
headphones for our
testing. Normally, this type of step would be performed later rather
than
earlier.
The reason for
performing
this step first was to create a stereo image so that following
processing
steps could be more
readily monitored using studio-quality headphones.
Both stereo
images
were subjected to dynamics processing (compression and expansion) to
bring
up
low-level sounds,
then noise-reduced using Syntrillium's CoolEdit 2000. Noiseprints were
taken from the
stereo images
themselves
during relatively quiet sections. The tape, in particular, produced a
very
noise-free 24/96
stereo
WAV file. The CD track was very noisy to begin with, so didn't produce
as
noise-free a WAV file.
Both 24/96 stereo
WAV
files were then downsampled to CD-quality (16- bit, 44,100 stereo)
images,
then compressed using
the Fraunhofer Institute's MP3 algorithms, licensed by Syntrillium for
their
CoolEdit 2000 program.
The images were compressed at a rate of 256 KBits per second. They are
joint
stereo, MPEG-1, layer
3. (See Reference <2> for a summary of MP3).
General Characteristics of Recordings
The cassette
recording
begins with Patsy Ramsey saying, "?55 Fifteenth Street." The "7" digit
is cut
off at the beginning,
but something sounding like the ending "n" sound can be heard. It is
possible
that
whoever made the
cassette
tape copy neglected to take into account the unmagnetized tape leader
at the beginning of
the cassette tape.
The cassette
recording
ends with what appears to be typing by the 911 dispatcher. There is a
final
louder click sound
as if the dispatcher hit a particular key harder than the others. The
CD
track begins
with buzzing, a quick
series of pops, a couple of separated pops, more buzzing, a very brief
amount of
noise, then a click
which probably was the connection to the Ramsey phone line being made.
Patsy
Ramsey utters
something
immediately after the click, then the dispatcher says, "911 Emergency."
Patsy then utters
something else which cannot easily be distinguished, then says,
"Police!"
The 911
dispatcher starts
saying, "What's going..." Then Patsy says, "?55 Fifteenth Street," the
point where
the cassette recording
starts. It is difficult to hear the "7" of the Ramsey home address in
this
case
because the 911
dispatcher
is talking at that point, as Patsy interrupts her.
The CD track
appears
to contain another audio section beyond the point where the cassette
tape
recording ends.
Immediately
after the point where the cassette recording ends at what sounds like a
final, loud key click,
there is a three or four second section of a buzzing sound on the CD
track,
the
same as that at the
beginning of the track. Then there is a very brief section of noise
like
an open
microphone followed
by a pop. Following this is a section of noise similar to that which
can
be heard
earlier in the track,
immediately after the 911 dispatcher said, "Patsy?" for the last time
and
prior to
her typing sounds.
This later noise section is three or four seconds long. A short series
of pops occurs,
then a short section
of buzzing sound on top of the noise ends the CD track.
The bulk of the
recordings
are very similar, as would be expected. A very notable difference
between
the recordings is
that popping noises occur throughout the CD track that cannot be heard
on the
cassette tape
recording.
The CD track is in general much noisier than the cassette recording. It
appears to be a
poor-quality
digitized version of what is contained on the cassette tape plus
additional
preceding and
succeeding
audio; however, it does contain this additional, critically important
information, from
a forensic standpoint, at the beginning and end of the track. These
additional
audio
sections were used
to draw conclusions about the controversial audio sections which some
claim
contain conversation.
It is important to note that the controversial sections are NOT
contained
in the
additional audio
sections
that are only on the CD track; the controversial sections potentially
containing barely
perceptible conversation are on BOTH the cassette recording and the CD
track.
Purported Conversation
The audio section
of
both the tape and the CD track that contains purported conversation
begins
shortly after the
911 dispatcher says, "Patsy?" for the fourth time with noise that could
possibly be
interpreted as "We're
not speaking to you" and ends with a very brief bit of noise resembling
"What did
you find?" and
containing
what sounds like a final, hard keystroke. A separate MP3 file was
created
for
this particular
section
from the audio cassette. This should help listeners locate the
controversial
section without having
to search for it. This section has slightly different audio processing
performed
on it in order to
help bring out the purported conversation so that listeners can easily
identify the
"We're not speaking
to you" and "What DID you find" sections. Please refer to the Appendix
for more
complete details on
audio processing of this section.
Analysis of Noise
Several loops
were
created from short audio sections extracted from both the digitized
cassette
tape
and the ripped CD
track. Audio sections were extracted from the purported conversation
between
the
Ramseys after the
911 call was assumed to be completed, from a section prior to the 911
call
being
connected to Patsy
Ramsey, and from another section on the CD track which appears not to
be
the
call from Patsy, but
is perhaps part of the recording of a subsequent call.
Immediately prior
to
the connection being made to Patsy Ramsey, there is a very brief audio
section
(hereinafter #1) on
the CD track that contains noise that sounds as though it could
possibly
be
conversation. After
the last time the 911 dispatcher says, "Patsy?" (the fourth time),
there
is another
audio section (#2)
which is relatively quiet except for some noise which sounds as though
it could also
possibly be
conversation.
It has been alleged at various times since December 1996 that this
conversation was John
Ramsey saying something like, "We're not speaking to you." This audio
section
is contained on both
the cassette tape and the CD track. At the time near the last audible
(what
is
assumed to be) key
press by the 911 dispatcher, there is another section (#3) with noise
which
could
possibly be
conversation.
This has been alleged to be Burke Ramsey saying something like, "What
DID
you find?" This
section
is contained on both the cassette tape and the CD track. A final audio
section
(#4) containing
similar
noise to section #2 is contained only on the CD track and follows a
section
of
buzzing which
resembles
that of an amplified ground loop where the ground loop is close to
electrical
equipment such as
a computer. Section #4 also sounds like #1 which is immediately prior
to
the
connection being made
to the Ramsey phone line.
This last audio
section
lasts about seven seconds and is somewhat of a mystery. It is not
contained
on the cassette tape
at all, and it appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with the call
from
Patsy.
The intervening
buzzing
sound between the audio sections #3 and #4 is very similar to the
buzzing
sound at the very
beginning of the CD track, before audio section #1 starts. During both
of these
buzzing sounds, there
is no audible input whatsoever, that is no discernible background noise
such as
from an open
microphone
or anything else such as that. This intervening buzzing sound is the
strongest evidence
that audio section #4 has nothing to do with Patsy's call. It is
fortuitous,
however,
that it appears to
have the same type of noise as does the recording of Patsy's call, as
if
it were from
the same original
recording system, perhaps something like a hangup call that came in
soon
after
Patsy's call.
The extracted
audio
sections were processed again, separately from the rest of the
recordings,
in
order to determine
whether or not they contained conversation. It was noted early on that
these
noises had higher
frequencies than should be passed over the Ramsey phone line; they were
also very
mechanical sounding
in their cadence and precision and in their apparently repetitive
nature.
Certain of these
audio
sections were overlaid with each other, one in the stereo Left channel,
the
other in the stereo
Right channel. With this arrangement, the timing of the audio sections
could be
independently altered
until a common sound was heard from both the Left and Right channels.
If
some
sort of repetitive
machine noise was present, it should be possible to synchronize the
sounds
from the
two channels so that
they became one, at least for any common, repetitive source. We found
that
we
could do this with,
for example, section #2 in the Right channel and each of the others in
the Left
channel. The composite
sections were then looped a number of times for ease of listening. It
is
much
easier to comprehend
a short audio section if it is repeated a number of times.
The cassette
recording
was judged to be probably the most faithful rendition of the master
recording
(evidence tape), even
though we did not have access to this master. We judge this because of
the
excessive amount of
extra noise on the CD track. With respect to the digitized audio
cassette
recording , it was
possible to overlay only audio sections #2 and #3 because sections #1
and
#4 were
not present on the
audio tape. Nevertheless, it was possible to find a particular offset
time,
the same
as for the CD track,
which seemed to join these sections together. Some of the noise was
very
similar
in both channels.
In particular, the cadence of the two was suspiciously similar.
Two additional
loops
were made from this overlay of #2 and #3 ("We're not..." and "What
DID...")
from
the digitized audio
cassette recording, one with low-pass filtering, the other with
high-pass
filtering.
The filtering had
a strong effect on certain portions of the noise and not on others,
depending
on
which type of
filtering
was performed. If the noise had been conversation from a single
individual
uttering a sentence,
one would not expect a strong filtering effect which caused the first
part
of the
sentence to disappear
almost completely yet leave the latter portion almost intact. One would
also not
expect two completely
different utterances (one a statement and one a question, no less) by
two
different individuals
to have the same cadence. Nor would one expect that word of sentences
uttered
in ordinary
conversation
to be precisely timed as though they were mechanically produced.
To summarize, the loops created were:
CD track
1) Overlay of #2
("We're
not...") in Right channel to #1 (prior to connection) in Left channel.
2) Overlay of #2 in
Right to #3 ("What DID...") in Left.
3) Overlay of #2 in
Right to #4 (end) in Left.
Tape
1) Overlay of #2
in
Right to #3 in Left with high-pass filtering.
2) Overlay of #2 in
Right to #3 in Left with low-pass filtering.
Please refer to
the
Appendix for more complete details.
Discussion
CD track:
Overlay of #2("We're not...) to #1 (prior to connection):
The noise loops
from
the CD track demonstrate a repetitive noise which is present at various
times
throughout the track.
In particular, some of that repetitive noise was detected before the
911
dispatcher answered
the 911 call from Patsy Ramsey, audio section #1. A portion of this
noise
is
indistinguishable
that of #2. The previously purported conversation by John Ramsey, said
to be
something like, "We're
not speaking to you" could very well be this repetitive noise ("We're
not
speaking...") plus
a second, narrow-band "hooting" type of noise ("...to you") that
appears
to be
centered at
approximately
500 Hz, as determined from the tape overlay. The narrow-band hooting
type of sound is
repeated
during the sounds that are probably the 911 dispatcher's typing. The
repetitive noise
("We're
not speaking...") may simply be drowned out at this time by the typing
sounds.
It is a part of this
"We're not speaking..." section that is similar to the noise of audio
section
#1,
recorded prior to
the 911 dispatcher answering the call from Patsy.
Overlay of #2 to #3 ("What DID..."):
The overlay of
sections
#2 and #3 displays a very similar cadence for the two different
sections.
This
should be very
surprising
if one is expecting John Ramsey to be saying, "We're not speaking to
you"
and Burke to be saying
"What did you find?" These sections are too mechanical and precise to
be
ordinary human
conversation.
In addition, as just previously mentioned, the long 'u' sound of "...to
you" does not have
the same spectral characteristics as the part "(We're) not speaking..."
because
the high-pass
filtering
does away with the former but not the latter, as determined by the tape
overlay below.
Overlay of #2 and #4 (end of track):
The overlay of
sections
#2 and #4 reveal a repetitive background noise that sounds somewhat
like
a
dishwasher operating
can be heard in both channels at the same cadence. The cadence is
precise
enough that it would
appear to be a machine noise rather than speech, unless someone is
purposefully
speaking in a very
mechanical and unnatural manner.
Summary of CD track overlays:
Our conclusion is
that
there is no discernible conversation during the purported "We're not
speaking
to
you" and "What DID
you find?" sections of the CD track, but that these are instead
composed
of
background noises,
possibly modulated by the recording equipment, for example the
automatic
gain
control (AGC) which
is particularly evident after loud keystrokes. In particular, the
section
that
precedes the 911
dispatcher's
answering of the 911 call (#1) cannot possibly contain speech by the
Ramseys, yet this
early background noise is indistinguishable from the noise that is part
of purported
conversation between
the Ramseys (#2). One can easily fool oneself into believing that there
is
conversation, but
a more careful examination of the recording, complete with comparisons
of one
section of the
recording
to another by superposing them together in separate stereo channels,
allows
one to hear that the
background noise is repeated at various times throughout the recording.
Other
noises are recorded
on top of this repetitive background noise, especially the long 'u'
sound,
and this
causes the noise to
appear not to be as repetitive as more complete analysis shows it to
be.
There is
also some sort of
automatic gain control in operation, as was previously mentioned, which
may very
well be causing the
repetitive background noise to appear to come and go.
Tape Overlay:
When listening to
the
overlay of samples extracted from the digitized audio cassette
recording
which
are high-pass filtered
(6,500 and 16,000 Hz bandpass), one can hear ample signal of purported
conversation which,
in that case, sounds like clicking that is distinct from the clearly
audible
keyboard
typing sounds. But
this shouldn't be the case because phone lines have a fairly steep
cutoff
at about
3,000 Hz. Moreover,
the long 'u' or "hoot" sound is practically gone. With low-pass
filtering
(375 and
750 Hz bandpass),
we hear hooting sounds and something from the "What DID you find"
purported
conversation, but
not much of the other purported conversation. Conclusion: As with the
CD
track
overlay, these noises
have different spectral characteristics from voice, and the hooting
type
of noise
is again found to
have different spectral characteristics from the clicking type of
sound.
Summary of all overlays:
There appear to
be
at least four different noise sounds: the background repetitive noise,
the
purported "What DID
you find," the purported "We're not speaking...,"and the "...to you"
hooting
type
of sound. None of
these have the spectral characteristics of voice over a phone line,
although
perhaps
the "...not
speaking..."
comes closest in our analysis. These noises all have different spectral
characteristics from
each other. If someone said, "(We're) not speaking...," that same
person
did not
say, "...to you."
Also, because the hooting ("...to you") sound is repeated at intervals
during the
typing, and because
it is fairly narrow-band, it is unlikely to be the voice of anyone. A
very
short
instance of this sound
is also heard after the click of Patsy's hangup, immediately before the
third
"Patsy?" The purported
"What DID you find" noise is too broad band to be voice over a phone
line.
The
"(We're) not
speaking..."
noise has too many high frequencies at certain specific times (clicks)
to be
voice over a phone
line. There appears to be some sort of underlying mechanical cadence to
some
portion of all the
audio sections, even though all the sections do display different
spectral
characteristics. Also
of interest is that the purported audio sections and the occurrence of
the hooting
sounds during the
typing occur in an almost periodic fashion <3>.
Conclusion
After extensive
processing
and analysis, we conclude that recordings of the 911 emergency call
made
by Patsy Ramsey to
report the kidnapping of her daughter JonBenét do not contain
any
audible
conversation between
any of the Ramseys following Patsy's hanging up the phone. There are
too
many
discrepancies between
the expectations of voice characteristics and the characteristics of
the
noises
which some have
reported
as conversation for the hypothesis of additional conversation on the
recording to be
accepted.
There appear instead to be several different noises with different
characteristics,
including
at least one that has a cadence and is repeated. It is suggested that
the
combinations of these
noises provide merely an appearance of conversation, particularly to
wishful
thinkers after the
idea of conversation has been suggested to them. Unfortunately this
noise
has not
only been falsely
portrayed as conversation, but the idea that it is conversation has
been
bootstrapped into
a demonstration of deception by the Ramseys, and then to a virtual
proof
of the
guilt of at least
one of the parents.
Further work
could
be done to test the actual evidence tape to verify these findings,
although
one
shouldn't expect that
the spectral characteristics would be appreciably different; however,
one
may
find that certain
noises that are on the audio cassette and especially on the CD track
not
to be
present on the
evidence
tape. One or more of the several noise sources we found may be due to
copying rather than
due to the original recording. Unless one of these potential copying
artifacts
is
masking something,
we expect the same conclusions would be reached regarding the lack of
audible
conversation from
the Ramseys' phone line after Patsy hung up the phone. We also don't
expect
any
revolutionary findings
because after various enhancements, we do clearly hear something that
we
could imagine, with
a little effort, to be "We're not speaking to you" and "What DID you
find?"
It would
also perhaps be
beneficial
to produce a better-quality audio CD for distribution by the District
Attorney's office.
It may also prove beneficial to determine the actual audio environment
during the
recording of Patsy's
911 call, although it may be far too late to do that accurately if the
environment
has changed
considerably.
Thanks to the
Boulder
County District Attorney's office for providing the audio cassette and
audio CD.
Thanks to "Jameson"
of www.webbsleuths.com for encouragement in this project.
References and Notes
<1> An
attempt was
made to acknowledge trademarks the first time they are encountered in
this
document. CoolEdit
is a registered trademark of Syntrillium Software Corporation. WaveLab
is a
trademark and
Steinberg
is a registered trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies AG. Engulf
Audio
is
a trademark of EXE
Consulting. Pioneer is a registered trademark of Pioneer Electronics
(USA)
Inc.
Behringer is a
registered
trademark of Behringer International GmbH. Nero is a registered
trademark
of
Ahead Software. MP3
is a registered trademark of Thomson Multimedia. Maxell is a registered
trademark of Hitachi
Maxell, Ltd. Creative Labs is a registered trademark of Creative
Technology
Ltd.
Plextor is a
registered
trademark of Plextor Corp. Pentium III is a registered trademark of
Intel
Corporation. Microsoft
and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other
trademarks are
trademarks
of their respective holders (obviously).
<2> The
following
web page contains a good summary of what MP3 is all about as well as
links
to
related pages:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/mp3/mp3.html
<3> The
mechanically
repetitive noises during this section sound something like "...to you,"
"HOOT-hoot,"
"HOOT-hoot,"
"What did..." on the tape and "...to YOU," "hoot-hoo-hoo-HOOT,"
"hoot-hoo-hoo-HOOT,"
"What did you find" on the CD track. Closer examination indicates that
the
"hooting" sounds are
also composed of more than one sound. One is almost a short, squawking
or
squeaking sort of
hoot whereas the other one, usually following the former by a half
second
or so, is
quieter and more drawn
out. The short one is particularly noticeable in two occurrences during
the
typing that follows
the purported "We're not speaking to you."
Appendix
Specific processing steps.
A) Cassette tape digitizing and processing steps were as follows to produce MP3 file:
Recorded with
Steinberg
WaveLab Lite: 24-bit, 96,000, monophonic into
a Microsoft®
Windows®
RIFF format PCM WAV file:
Pioneer CW-650R
dual-cassette
tape deck to
Behringer
EurorackMX802A
mixer to
Terratech EWX-2496
master recording sound card.
Engulf Audio from
EXE
Consulting to create high-quality stereo image:
Concert Hall room
(22.51m X 37.51m X 15.01m)
Binaural simulation:
Solutions obtained at (11.135m, 15.0m, 3.0m)
(Left) and (11.375m,
15.0m, 3.0m) (Right) in left-handed
coordinate system.
Point source placed at (11.135m, 6.0m, 3.0m)
in same system, 9.0m
from Left solution. Solves 3-D wave
equation, providing
stereo separation, echo, and reverberation in
a self-consistent
manner.
Absorption: T60 =
0.30 seconds at 100 Hz, 0.20 seconds at 4000 Hz.
Reverb times kept
low to maintain speech comprehension.
Designed for headphone
listening.
The reason for
performing
this step first was to create a stereo
image so that
following
processing steps could be more readily
monitored using
studio-quality
headphones.
During this process,
the resulting file is normalized to very nearly
0 db while the data
are being maintained as double-precision
floating point.
CoolEdit 2000
from
Syntrillium for the following steps:
Dynamics Processing:
flat 1.00 : 1 above
-20 dB
cmp 2.00 : 1 below
-20 dB
exp 10.5 : 1 below
-96 dB
Noise Reduction
(primarily
removed noise produced by tape deck):
Noiseprint from
section
at end of digitized recording of
cassette tape
4096-point FFT
40 db reduction
Smoothing Amount =
2
Flat, 100%
Trimmed end and
beginning
to remove non-cassette tape audio
sections. These
sections
are NOT part of the cassette tape but
were produced between
the time the digitizing program was started
and the tape deck
was started AND between the time that the tape
deck was stopped and
the digitizing program was stopped.
Downsampled from
24-bit,
96,000 samples per second stereo to CD
quality (16-bit,
44,100
samples per second stereo),
Compressed as MP3
using algorithms licensed from Fraunhofer
Institute. 256KBits
per second, constant bit rate, 22,050 Hz
maximum band width,
"High Quality" Codec.
B) The CD track
was
ripped from the audio CD using Ahead Nero into a
CD-quality, Microsoft
Windows RIFF format PCM WAV file (16-bit,
44,100 samples per
second, monophonic). Then the following steps
were performed:
Conversion of
two-channel
identical monophonic to single-channel
monophonic by removing
right channel data using Syntrillium's
CoolEdit 2000.
Engulf Audio from
EXE
Consulting, same conditions as for the tape
(above, part A).
CoolEdit 2000
from
Syntrillium for the following steps:
Dynamics Processing,
same settings as for tape (above, part A).
Noise Reduction:
Noiseprint taken from
approximately time = 8.95 seconds to 9.85
seconds
4096-point FFT
40 db reduction
NR Level 53
Sloped Noise Reduction
Level: 0 Hz -30.2 %, 48,000 Hz -100%
Precision Factor =
5
Smoothing Amount =
2
No trimming was
performed.
Noise samples for
part C were extracted into separate files.
Downsampled from
24-bit,
96,000 samples per second stereo to CD
quality (16-bit,
44,100
samples per second stereo),
Compressed as MP3
using algorithms licensed from Fraunhofer
Institute. 256KBits
per second, constant bit rate, 22,050 Hz
maximum band width,
"High Quality" Codec.
C) Four noise
samples
were taken from the 24-bit, 96,000 samples per
second, stereo file
that was upsampled from the CD track (see part
B above) and were
each further compressed according to the
following:
flat 1.00 : 1 above
-10 dB
cmp 2.99 : 1 below
-10 dB
exp 15.3 : 1 below
-96 dB
The samples were:
1) From position
at
beginning of CD track, time = 8.95 seconds to 9.85
seconds.
2) From time = 1:18.67 to time = 1:20.10.
3) From time = 1:23.69 to time = 1:24.67.
4) From approximately time = 1:28.6 to approximately time = 1:32.9.
Noise samples #1,
3,
and 4 were edited so that only the left channel
remained.
Noise sample #2 was edited so that only the right channel remained.
Each of noise
samples
1, 3, and 4 were overlaid one at a time to noise
sample 2. Noise sample
2 remained in the right channel while each
of the others remained
in the left.
Noise samples
were
then adjusted in overlay so that a repetitive
background noise
common
to both the left and right channels was
synchronized. Although
there were other noises in the recordings,
the common noise,
somewhat like that of a dishwasher in operation,
could be heard in
both left and right stereo channels. The
offsets used were:
-0.2 seconds for #2 overlaying #1; -0.4 seconds
for #2 overlaying
#3; +0.7 seconds for #2 overlaying #4. The
offsets are defined
as the offset of the zero for #2 relative to
the zero of the
section
to which it is being overlaid, with "zero"
being defined as the
beginning times listed above for each audio
section.
The FFT filter
"Mackie
Mid Boost" from Syntrillium's CoolEdit 2000 was
applied so that the
repetitive noise common to both channels could
be heard more clearly.
After trimming,
the
three overlays were each looped eight times for
ease of listening,
then they were concatenated into a single file
with a 0.3 second
silence between them.
The resulting
concatenated
file was then downsampled to CD quality,
then compressed into
an MP3 file with the same settings as used
previously.
D) Two noise
samples
were extracted from the digitized version of the
cassette tape. These
two samples correspond to #2 and #3 above
(see part C above),
the only corresponding ones that are available
on the cassette tape
recording:
After Engulf Audio processing, samples were extracted.
Overlaid with 0.3
seconds
offset --- times not same for cassette
recording as for CD
track due to difficulty of locating zero.
Trimmed to area of overlap only.
Dynamics
processing:
flat 1.00 : 1 above
-10 dB
cmp 2.99 : 1 below
-10 dB
exp 15.3 : 1 below
-96 dB
Filter FFT Mackie Mid Boost
Quick Filter:
hi: 187, 375, 750,
1500, 3000, 48,000 Hz sections of filter: -30
db; 6,500 and 16,000
Hz + 3.7 db
lo: 187, 1500, 3000,
6500, 16,000, 48,000 Hz sections of filter: -
30 db; 375 and 750
Hz + 3.7 db
Amplified: +6.0 db boost.
Created loops,
then
MP3 files:
high: looped eight
times, then normalized, downsampled to CD
quality, compressed
to MP3 at 256 KBits per second.
low: downsampled,
looped eight times, compressed to MP3 (not
normalized) at 256
KBits per second.
MP3's used "High
Quality"
codecs as before.
E) An MP3 file
was
created from the purported conversation on the
audio cassette
recording.
This section begins shortly after the
fourth time that the
911 dispatcher says, "Patsy?" It was
processed with the
following:
Normalized to 0db
Dynamics
processing
(to bring up low-level sounds):
flat 1.00 : 1 above
-10 dB
cmp 2.99 : 1 below
-10 dB
exp 15.3 : 1 below
-96 dB
FFT Filter,
bandpass
(lessen hum):
220 Hz, 0%; 656 Hz,
100%; 2350 Hz, 100%; 8106 Hz, 0%
2048-point,
Blackman-Harris
windowing
Dynamics
processing
(to bring volume of keystrokes down):
cmp 3.00 : 1 above
-30 dB
flat 1.00 : 1 below
-30 dB
Amplify 400%
Engulf Audio from
EXE
Consulting, same conditions as for the tape
(above, part A).
© Copyright "Dave" on Jameson's Webbsleuths 2003. All rights reserved.
If you have any comments or additions, please e-mail me at 
This page is part of the TimeLine by jameson ò¿ó
Last updated on August 5th, 2003
Copyright 1997-2003 © jameson
All rights reserved.