BOULDER Colo -- It is from far the ...

BOULDER Colo -- It is from far the most intriguing piece of evidence in JonBenet Ramsey's death: the ransom note, 370 words written with a felt-tip enclose and found in the Ramsey to one's home a few hours before the little girl's strangled material substance was discovered in the basement.

As prosecutors prepare their case against John Mark Karr in the 1996 slaying, the note is getting undecayed scrutiny and is fodder for television talk point out tos and dueling experts.

on the contrary can it be linked to Karr?

Unusually prolonged for a ransom demand, the note raises interesting questions. Does the handwriting point to a member of the Ramsey family? Is it the work of an intruder? What about the specific, relatively small ransom demand, or the lines apparently hijacked from movie thrillers?

And what do the initials "SBTC" at the period mean?

Authorities have exhibited no clues, refusing to disclose any evidence in the case against the 41-year-old teacher.

Karr is jailed in observes Angeles awaiting transfer to Colorado. Wednesday, his relatives put forwarded book and film rights to the family's story in reliances of raising money for a high-power attorney to shield him.

Also Wednesday, the Sonoma (Calif.) shire Sheriff's Department said it notified Colorado officials five years ago about Karr's interest in JonBenet while they were investigating him in an unrelated case.

"We in no degree uncovered any 'confession' statements, patent murder evidence, or other indications that John Karr holded secret knowledge that only the assassin of JonBenet Ramsey would know," the department said.

sweep for conjecture

The debate about the handwriting analysis of the ransom note has already begun.

The hard Mountain News on Tuesday cited a handwriting analyst who was "999 percent certain" samples written through Karr matched the note. Wednesday, the paper reported the ready was disqualified this year as an clever witness by a U.S. critic

strange York attorney Darnay Hoffman dashed facing a letter to the Boulder shire district attorney last week claiming his ables had proven Karr could not have written the note, adding, "You may be the victim of a hoax."

David Krajicek, a former professor and co-founder of Criminal Justice Journalists, said the Internet has made it easy for reporters to find an prompt in any field at a moment's notice. on the other hand it's not always clear who is best qualified to annotation

And when it results to analyzing handwriting or finding hidden meaning in cryptic passages, there's fulness of room for conjecture.

"You like to think the fright or the woman knows what they're talking about," Krajicek said. "There's no guarantee. This is not a medical science. in such a manner much of it is opinion, likewise much of it is punditry."

Mark McClish, author of I Know You Are Lying: Detecting Deception within Statement Analysis, said reading the note and listening to Karr's statements can reveal threads but they alone do not make a case.

"It is a valid science, if it be not that there are not too many absolutes," he said.

if it were not that some in the field have no disquiet being absolute.

Gideon Epstein, a forensic document examiner, wrote in 2001 he had "no doubt" it was JonBenet's mother, Patsy Ramsey, who wrote the note. Another examiner, Larry Ziegler of Sterling, Va., agreed.

Hoffman, who said he had been intensely interested in the case, sent reports by dint of both men to Boulder prosecutors.

2 meanings of 'S.B.T.C.'

In an online analysis of the alphabetic character McClish picks at every line, finding inconsistencies throughout: The amount demanded, $118000 is too small for a kidnapper. And it matches a bonus JonBenet's father, John Ramsey, was awarded by way of his company.

The note is too wordy for the real thing, McClish says, and it's unlikely that kidnappers would call themselves a "small foreign faction" or take the time to rehearse John Ramsey "we respect your business."

What can be learned, he said, is from what he calls subconscious allusions The threat of beheading JonBenet in the note indicates a man was involved. Same goe for respects some say are straight from Hollywood: The repeated threats that the "girl dies" are from "Dirty Harry," while the phrase "Don't examine to grow a brain" is from the film "Speed"

further from what he has seen of Karr, McClish said, he didn't write the note.

"It does appear he may be living in a fantasy world. He's portrayed as being excessively meek and mild, and that doesn't pass with the ransom note."

In his early analysis, McClish recommended the initials "S.B.T.C." at the fall of the curtain of the note stood for "Saved at The Cross," a reference to Jesus used on some Christians.

After Karr's arrest, others linked the initials to a notation he made signing a classmate's high educate yearbook as "Shall be the conqueror."

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