JonBenét Ramsey was a six-year-old girl who was brutally murdered in her family house at Christmas time. She was born in wealthy family and could have had all privileges, safe and happy growing up. She is remembered as a blonde, green eyed little girl with full face of makeup and stylish hair performing on the stage, entertaining people. She was just a little girl.
The audacity of the crime and all circumstances have made people engage in this case, even 28 years later. This was the most sensationalized case in the last decade of the 20th century.
JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was born on August 6th 1990. She was name after her father, John Bennett Ramsey. Her father graduated from Michigan State University (MSU) with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. Ramsey earned a master’s degree in business administration from MSU in 1971. He was a decorated World War II pilot. He has pretty remarkable military experience. He joined the Navy in 1966, served as a Civil Engineer Corps officer in the Philippines for three years, and in an Atlanta reserve unit for an additional eight years. Her mother, Patricia Ann Ramsey, known as Patsy Ramsey, attended West Virginia University from which she graduated with a B.A. in journalism. She was an American beauty pageant winner who won the Miss West Virginia pageant and was the Miss US contestant.
Patsy and John married in 1982 and went on to have two children. Burke was older and JonBenét was younger. John had three children from previous marriage. His eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was killed in a car crash in 1992.
In 1989, Ramsey formed the Advanced Product Group, one of three companies that merged to become Access Graphics. He became president and chief executive officer of Access Graphics, a computer services company that became a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin in 1991. In 1996, Access Graphics grossed over $1 billion, and Ramsey was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Boulder Chamber of Commerce.
They lived a lavish life style in Boulder, Colorado. They were paragons of Boulders high society, incredibly wealthy, incredibly successful. They were a couple that everyone would aspire to be. They lived in a gorgeous home in an affluent area of Boulder, 6 800 square feet house huge. They had a private air plane. They were great churchgoers.
Patsy Ramsey was taking care of children. When her daughter was young, Patsy entered her in children’s beauty contests, and she won some titles before the age of six. Patsy dyed her hair. John said that that had been their means of connection together and that was what they had been doing as a mom and a daughter. On the other occasion, he said that when Patsy was diagnosed with cancer in 1993, she wanted to experience with JonBenét everything. JonBenét had one little Miss Colorado and she picked up other pageants as well.
On the morning of December 26th 1996, Patsy Ramsey woke up fairly early to make coffee and get her family ready to fly to visit relatives. Patsy said that she had walked down the stairs and that she had been halfway down when she had noticed that paper on the stairs. When she had read it she immediately had become terrified. It was a ransom note and someone had taken JonBenét. She, allegedly, went running up the stairs to look in JonBenét’s room and screamed for John. The note told ‘don’t call the police or your daughter will die’, but Patsy called 911. When John was asked whether he worried if he were going to the police, that something could happen to her, he replayed: “All i could think about at that moment is that my daughter was missing and that we had to find her.”
Within six minutes the detective arrived as well as friends who was called by Patsy. Allegedly, a priest was also there. A detective looked at the ransom note and immediately called for backup. Kidnapping and a ransom note was far from typical as a 9-1-1 call can get. Despite the detective’s request for help it took them hours to arrive. It was the day after Christmas, so the Boulder police were short-staffed. They were dealing with a crime for which none of the officers or detectives had any experience with. Kidnaping for ransom in Boulder was a rare event.
The Boulder police department contacted the FBI to notify them that there had been a kidnapping with the ransom and they requested their assistance. Ron Walker, FBI profiler, immediately went up to Boulder. Patsy seemed completely inconsolable. She was surrounded by her friends who trying to keep her calm. She seemed distraught beyond belief. John was more stoic. He was even checked his emails and watch how much money he should pay. In the ransom note it was written $118.000. John Ramsey had a family friend take their son Burke out of the house. Kidnappers had written that they would make a phone call between 8 and 10 a.m. According to a police officer who was with them, they didn’t wait the phone call. The other people there said that Patsy had waited the phone call.
Meanwhile police allowed John Ramsey and Fleet White, his best friend, to search the house on their own, ultimately heading down to the basement to continue searching. Just a few hours into the investigation and the detective on site somehow lost control of the crime scene and John Ramsey. The detective was calling for help and saying they lost track of John Ramsey. At that point, around 1 p.m. they heard a blood curdling scream from the basement. Soon, John Ramsey was running up the stairs with a bundle in his arms. John ran in and said: ‘’Oh my god, it’s my daughter!” They carried her upstairs and Fleet was screaming and saying: ‘’We found her! We found her!”
She was found wrapped in her favorite blanket. She had duct tape on her mouth, her hands were tied over her head. Prominent was the ligature or cord around JonBenét’s neck that was tied to a wooden handle, described as a “garrote”, used to strangle the victim from behind.
John placed JonBenét’s body on the floor and began to embrace her, soon Patsy started to do the same. The detective picked the child up and placed her near the Christmas tree, which is a really sad juxtaposition. A dead child below a Christmas tree that’s supposed to signify hearth and family.
Once the child’s body was discovered, then and only then, did the Boulder police sprang into action. They seized a lot of very important physical evidence. They took the two and a half page-ransom note and they also found the pad that that was written on in the Ramsay’s own drawer. Crime scene investigators focus largely on the basement and what they find there was a broken window and a large suitcase that has been placed beneath it. Anyone who was there that day was treated as potential suspect. Usually when a child is murdered in her own home, a killer is brought to justice quite easily. But not in this case.
If there is ever a mess up of a crime scene, the JonBenét Ramsey case is classic. The problem with this particular crime scene is that everyone had traipsed all over the home and they had contaminated the scene before the body had ever been found. Boulder police allowed the ransom note to be moved several times by letting it be handled by so many different people any DNA or fingerprints that might have been lifted off the note was essentially destroyed. The fact that JonBenét’s body was moved multiple times destroyed any evidence that could have definitively pointed to her killer. We may very well have had this case solved had the boulder police secured what is a crime scene. Even in the case of kidnapping. This police work was substandard.
Ron Walker, FBI profiler said: “You can’t rule out anything. You want to interview everyone at the scene immediately and that means everybody. Garner’s office shows up much later in the day. The autopsy was done a day or two later.”
The autopsy revealed a piece of undigested pineapple in the small intestine. It had to have been consumed most likely after she got home. The autopsy also revealed ligature strangulation, a fracture of the skull was eight and a half inches long.
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “The medical examiner also finds evidence of sexual trauma. This girl was subjected to some sort of damage in the vaginal area that predates her death.” It seemed that somebody had engaged in some kind of perverted sexual game with this little girl and it ended tragically.
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “That brings an entirely different perspective to the nature of this murder.”
The autopsy report itself was controversial. Which came first the asphyxiation with the garrote or the skull fracture? The manner in which JonBenét was strangled points to a level of expertise. Whoever killed JonBenét had to be pretty sophisticated in the use of the garrote and to create this improvised fatal weapon of death.
There are those people that think that this might have been a setup to make it look like a torture scene. It’s possible that the strangulation was performed in effect to cover up a horrible head injury that had already happened. Some investigators suspected that she was murdered in a sexual act by accident or murdered to prevent her from telling. It was a very tenacious and widespread theory. There was a speculation that her brother, Burke, hit her with a baseball bat and that he beat her often. Only, that time it was fatal, so parents staged the crime scene to protect him.
I was always wondering what kind of parent/s would be capable to devise the garrote to strangle their daughter, even if they wanted to stage the crime scene. Some of them had to know how to tie very complex knot on the garrote. How did they know that? How did they come to that point to do that, even if they knew how to create the garrote and use it? Are those kind of people capable of sexually abusing and murdering their child?
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “Looping of the cord around her right wrist, I think was staging. There were no marks at all on her wrist that indicates that she was bound. It looks that the duct tape was probably put on her face after she stopped moving. There was no evidence of struggling on the sticky side of the duct tape.”
The horrific story of the murdered little pageant star hit the media like a storm. Right away the case seemed to strike a nerve. Opinions formed hard and fast about the crime and JonBenét’s parents. Once footage of JonBenét’s pageant activities became public and people saw her with a full face of makeup, huge hair, short dresses, swimming suits strutting up and down a stage, the firestorm of criticism on John and Patsy intensified. Everyone was horrified by the little girl seemingly being forced to act mature beyond her years. In the audience’s mind there was a link to what happened to JonBenét and the way she behaved in the beauty pageants. Seeing this little girl making these provocative poses was very disturbing.
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “What impact does this have on the child? You have to take into consideration the fact that there was evidence of chronic abuse that predates the child’s death. Someone had access to her and someone did something to her. is it possible that she has become sexualized and has now been a sex object for one of the other family members?”
With allegations of sexual abuse surfacing from the autopsy report, all eyes were on John and Patsy Ramsey.
The Ramseys do have their pediatrician step forward. He said very clearly that there was never any evidence of sexual assault to JonBenét at any point before the murder.
John and Patsy didn’t really want to cooperate with the police.
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “Within 36 hours of the murder Ramseys contact the best criminal defense law firm in Colorado, if not the entire Western United States. A couple of days after that, the Ramseys hire a publicist. The first place you always look is the family. Seven out of ten murders of children, when they are killed at home, they’re killed by a family member. When I first met the Ramseys, Patsy was looking out at the room through the fingers of her hands, like this, (showed: she covered her face with hands and looking through the fingers, secretly). Then I said ‘well I’m with the FBI’ and she started sobbing a little bit. You know I thought that whole thing was contrived. I would expect the mother of a dead child to jump up and say ‘my god, finally the FBI’s here! Do something’. None of that… is just kind of an emotional vacuum there. There are murders of children that happen every day that don’t get this kind of media coverage but they don’t happen to people whose family members were Miss America contestants and where the child is a beauty pageantry contestant herself.’’ And, let’s not forget, whose father is so successful, wealthy businessman.
On New Year’s day 1997, the day after JonBenét’s funeral, John and Patsy Ramsey addressed the public. John Ramsey: “There have been innuendos that she has been or was sexually molested. I can tell you those were the most hurtful innuendos to us as a family. They are totally false. We were we were absolutely nauseous by that we would even be considered suspects in the death of our daughter and felt that an interrogation of us was a waste of our time… the waste of the police time.’’
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “Going on national media before they’d even talked to the police, that made the police very suspicious.’’
Ramseys’ lawyer was calling the shots: “There’s no law that says people have to cooperate.” Reporter: “If the Ramseys don’t want to talk to police, they don’t have to at all? Ramseys’ lawyer: “That’s correct.” They were prime suspects and their lawyer protected them as every good lawyer would do in such case.
After talking with the media for months, in April 1997, John and Patsy finally agreed to an
interview with the Boulder police. They were with their attorneys and it was a contentious interview.
The police’s goal was to lock them in on a timeline there were significant inconsistencies. Patsy had said to investigators that JonBenét had gone straight to bed after coming home from a holiday party, that she had not stopped and had any snacks. There had been nothing further to eat. And the police knew that there was a pineapple in JonBenét Ramsay’s gut. Pineapple had not been served at any of the homes that the Ramseys had visited on Christmas day. When police searched the home they did find a bowl in the kitchen that had pineapple residue in it and Patsy Ramsey’s fingerprints were on the spoon and the bowl where the pineapple came from. It was the first crack in the Ramseys’ story.
The recording of Patsy Ramsey’s call to 9-1-1 was made public. In that call many experts say they can hear the couple’s son Burke in the background saying: “What did you find?” They had said that Burke was sleeping. The house was so big and children’s bedroom were on the other side of the house.
During a press conference Boulder police department came out clearly and said: “We have an umbrella of suspicion and people have come and gone under that umbrella. They do remain under an umbrella of suspicion, but we’re not ready to name any suspects.”
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “The JonBenét Ramsay case is the only case that the FBI is aware of in which a ransom note was left at the scene where the body was also found. The only case ever. The first thing that really was a red flag to me was the length of a note, two and a half pages long. This looks like the Magna Carta or the War and Peace.”
Wooden handle used to create the garrote was physically matched to a broken paint brush handle in Patsy’s art room, which was in the basement, near the wine cellar. Similar pieces of cord were also found in the home. As well, the pad which the note-paper originated from was located on the main floor, as was the pen used to write it. Everything used in the murder came from the house.
The ransom note was loaded with things that only the family could know. $118.000 was the exact amount of john Ramsey’s Christmas bonus.
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “Repeated references to this child is going to be murdered if the Ramseys notify anyone. Yet, what does Patsy Ramsey do that morning? She calls 9-1-1.”
The ransom note was signed “Victory! S.B.T.C”. Theorists have suggested that SBTC was the Subic Bay training center, which is the Naval base, where John Ramsey had trained when he was in the Navy. The investigators found a plaque in the basement, where JonBenét was. It had Subic Bay training center on it, so it obviously was in view, when, whoever wrote the note, was there.
Multiple rounds of handwriting analysis were performed. Patsy Ramsey was not eliminated from having written the ransom note.
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “The problem is you can’t build a whole case around handwriting. That’s not enough for me to charge that person with any crime.”
The public perception was that the Ramseys were prime suspects number.
The Boulder police department interviewed over 600 people. They talked to over 60 experts in all sorts of fields, there were a lot of suspects that were looked at.
There was an open window in the house and there was a suitcase at the bottom of the window. A detective on the scene asked John Ramsey if the home had been secured the night before and at that point John Ramsey admitted that he hadn’t actually activated the home’s alarm system.
One of the key suspects in the intruder theory was actually Santa Claus. A man named Bill McReynolds, had played Santa at holiday parties and was a close friend of the Ramsey family. Sixty-seven-year-old Bill McReynolds at holiday parties promised JonBenét a special Christmas gift. His nine-year-old daughter on December 26 1974, had been kidnapped with a friend. The poor little girl had been forced to watch her friend being sexually assaulted. It happened on December 26th, 22 years to the day before JonBenét’s body was discovered in the basement of the Ramsey family home. In 1976 McReynold’s wife wrote a play where a young girl is molested, tortured and then killed in a basement. she later defended the play as being a sort of purging of her emotions about the event. There was something about McReynolds that could cross him off the suspect list. Bill who was 67 years old was not in the best shape so his ability to participate in such a crime would be limited. Furthermore, none of the DNA was a match for Bill McReynolds and his wife.
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “When you have a case like this and you’re kind of struggling with which way to go. It’s not unusual for a DA’s office to seat a grand jury and have the grand jury look at all the evidence. And have the grand jurors make a determination of should there be charges filed or not.”
In October 1999 a grand jury convened to decide if John and Patsy were responsible for their daughter’s death. For the next 13 months the 12 grand jurors heard from dozens of witnesses and reviewed 30.000 pieces of evidence. The grand jury was significant because it was the first time the public felt the case was moving forward and something might actually happen.
Patsy and John were sure they were going to be indicted and they had signed over the care of Burk to John’s brother.
The district attorney’s office looked at the DNA evidence. There was male DNA on the crotch of the child’s panties and on the waistband of her leggings. These were two separate garments where the DNA matches. The clear implication was that she was disrobed by a male individual. Once technology allowed that DNA was able to be checked and it was able to be run against the DNA of the Ramsey family. When police finally did this, they found none of the DNA was a match.
Still, Ramseys, on many accounts, had already lost in the court of public opinion.
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “Before I hung my professional opinion on DNA report, I would want to see how certain that laboratory was and was there sufficient DNA to develop a full profile? The other thing that I take issue with on that DNA is the only DNA found on the waistband was the unknown DNA. We know that John Ramsey carried her up, holding her around the waist. We know that Patsy Ramsey touched the child and we suspect that some of the people in that room may also have put hands on the child. Why wasn’t their DNA found?
Modern “touch DNA” suggests that a male of Hispanic origin. The official exoneration was done against normal practice, and the Boulder police have still not cleared them. The trace DNA found on JonBenét’s underwear (believed by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to be either sweat or saliva) was in such minute quantities (nanograms) that it could have come from the clothing’s manufacturing process.
It was virtually impossible for them to go on with their lives. The Ramseys moved to Atlanta to escape the spotlight, but nothing would ever end the suspicion that one or both of them were involved in JonBenét’s murder, guilty or not. In 2003, after nine years in remission, Patsy was again battling ovarian cancer until she died on June 24th 2006.
Another suspect emerges from across the world. Ten years after the murder of this little girl, the district attorney’s office focuses on an individual John Mark Karr. He was living in Thailand at the time. He was in Thailand in large part because of access to sex clubs. He was a known pedophile. He was a person with clear evidence of mental illness as well as these perversions. Through email correspondence with someone at the University of Colorado Mark Karr admitted having been fixated on JonBenét. He claimed to have been there when JonBenét was killed and then ultimately claimed that he had committed the crime. They brought John Mark Karr over from Thailand and he came into Boulder. As soon as detectives sat down with Karr, they realized something is amiss. The problem with John Mark Karr was how he said he killed her is not how the crime scene indicated. Karr claimed that he drugged her and then sexually assaulted her, but the autopsy report doesn’t find any drugs or alcohol in her system, nor is any semen ever found on her body. They also do some interviews with his ex-wife. He wasn’t even in Boulder at the time that this happened. Once his DNA was excluded from the crime scene, it was clear that of all the people in the entire universe who could have killed JonBenét, John Mark Karr was not one of them.
In 2013 one local Boulder media outlet decided to dig into the past. The Boulder Daily Camera sues for the grand jury’s decision from nearly 15 years earlier to be unsealed. What they discover is a bombshell that turns this case upside down.
Ron Walker, FBI profiler: “The public was never aware the grand jury issued an indictment. The grand jury came up with two charges. They believed that John Ramsey and Patsy Ramsey should be charged with child abuse or child neglect resulting in death.”
The jury believed that the family was involved from the evidence they had heard, but that they were not convinced that they actually murdered the child themselves. They could have proceeded to prosecute the Ramseys for those two counts. The D.A. chose not to follow through with their wishes to indict the Ramseys for child neglect resulting in death.
For an indictment it only has to be probable cause, more probable than not. To prove a criminal case to a jury of 12 it must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
Burke Ramsey lately was on Dr. Phil talk show and said that he hadn’t remembered anything. John Ramsay also appeared in the media.
