Butler's kitchen/pantry door locked?

An excerpt from John Fernie's testimony in the Tom Miller trial:

"I drove my car into the -- up the alley and parked in the back of your house, and went around to the patio door, which was a glass door leading into the kitchen and back of the house, and didn't see anybody, but saw a piece of paper laying on the floor. Looked at that. It was facing the other direction. Read it. And after the first few lines realized something very strange was happening. And so I ran around to the front of the house.
...
I didn't pick it up. It was inside the door and I was outside. The door was locked. I read it through the door.

This business of the butler pantry door and John Fernie is a confusing business. I have been confused myself about the matter in the past.

The geography of the Ramsey house has never been my strong point. From what I can make out the butler pantry door was on the north side close to the kitchen. This door that was locked seems to be a patio door and was the one John Fernie looked through to supposedly read part of the ramsom note.

At least John Fernie turned up for that Tom Miller trial unlike Steve Thomas and Fleet White. I wonder why they were so bashful?

This is some background waffle from me on Topix in 2007 about all this. I don't know if it makes anybody's mind any clearer about it:

"John Fernie did testify as a witness in that Miller case that Fleet and Priscilla were in the Ramsey house when he arrived. As far as I'm concerned that's a fact. Steve Thomas was mistaken in writng in his book, and the Schiller book, that John Fernie arrived first.

All this stuff from John Fernie about looking through the patio door and reading part of the ransom note is something I've always found difficult to understand.

I did mention my misgivings about that John Fernie Miller case testimony on Jameson's forum once. I think it was Margoo who replied that there was a simple explanation which I'm still not quite clear about.

The butler door was found ajar that morning. John Ramsey was shown a diagram by the Boulder police with 'door found open' marked on that diagram. As far as I'm concerned that's evidence. I'm not quite so sure that 'a friend' noticed the door ajar that morning, as written in Death of Innocence, is quite the same kind of evidence.

Boulder police chief Mark Beckner has been quoted as saying the butler door was probably opened by a crime scene technician. Beckner has never named that supposed crime scene technician as he must do if he wants that information to be regarded as evidence in a court of law.

Could Dots quote me any reference which mentions that John Fernie always entered the Ramsey house by the butler door as Dots has just said on this forum? I don't know about America, but in this country visitors almost always knock on the FRONT door when visiting other people's houses.

I hadn't realized when I mentioned that John Fernie testimony on Jameson's forum a couple of years ago that BraveHeart had similar misgivings about the Fernie testimony a few years before. This is what BraveHeart said then:

BraveHeart
unregistered user
Dec-19-02, 00:11 AM (EST)

5. "RE: Fernie at the back door"
In response to message #4

On page 78 of PMPT (PB):
"Fernie parked his car in the alley behind the Ramseys' house and ran to the patio door on the south side, which he always used. It was locked. When he looked through the glass-paneled door, the lights were on and he could see some papers lying on the wooden floor. They were not facing him, but from where he stood, he could read the first few lines of one page. That was all he needed. He understood immediately that JonBenet had been kidnapped. Once inside the house he read the entire ransom note...."

Looking at the photo above, which is where he would have been, I can't see this happening, even if the pages were lying in front of the phone table in the middle of this hallway."

(posted by me) I did wonder to myself a couple of years ago whether there might have been two Ramsey case ransom notes. That's because John Fernie testified in the Miller case that he read a ransom note when it was in rather a strange place.

I accept that is hardly an orthodox point of view, and I agree also now that it is probably most unlikely to have happened that way.

It's just, at the time, I thought that perhaps there might have been a second ransom note, in case the murderer thought Patsy might have missed the first ransom note on the stairs. That second ransom note could then quietly have vanished into somebody's pocket, like perhaps Fleet White's pocket, in the way several other items seem to have vanished from that JonBenet crime scene.

This is what Jameson had to say about that John Fernie seeing the ransom note business, from her forum a few years ago:

jameson
Charter Member
14245 posts Dec-17-02, 08:16 AM (EST)

1. "RE: Fernie at the back door"
In response to message #0

The note would have been on the floor in the hall very close to the south door -- Patsy was on the phone in the kitchen area -- very near that South door, the window overlooks the grate -- and she was reading over John's shoulder -- so the note WAS near the door.

John Fernie certainly could have seen the paper on the floor -- I don't for a minute think he could have read it --- or would have taken the time to try. He didn't get in there and went to the front of the house -- THEN I think he realized what he had seen, not before."

AHHH, thank you, Henri!  
I'm thinking the locked "patio door" is opposite the spiral staircase & adjacent to the study:

Mama2JML wrote:AHHH, thank you, Henri!  
I'm thinking the locked "patio door" is opposite the spiral staircase & adjacent to the study:

Certainly the RN was where it was left on the floor, where John in his underwear spread it out to read it. It was near the telephone in the hallway. I'm pretty sure that even if Fernie could not read the actual words clearly, he would have gotten the gist of it.

One thing that does actually confuse me about the Fernie testimony. Wasn't that supposedly his blue van that was parked in the front of the house in one of the photos. Of course, he may have left and returned later, as I think he was sent off to get the money for the ransom? If so, it puts a time on the photo if nothing else.