The Unsolved Mystery of JonBenet Ramsey
With an unsolved murder of a young girl on Christmas night, contaminated evidence, and neglectful police officers, the case of JonBenet Ramsey is perhaps one of the most infamous cold cases in the United States. The gruesome murder of the six-year-old beauty queen from Boulder, Colorado, left the entire nation in a state of paranoia and blame. The world needed to know why, how, and who. Why would someone do such a heinous thing to a young girl like JonBenet? How did the murderer get away with such a thing? And the most important: who was responsible? There are many theories surrounding the heinous murder of the six-year-old pageant star, but one theory seems to hold its ground more often than not: her brother Burke is responsible and Pat and John did what they need to protect him from the consequences. This theory is more credible than the competing ideologies due to Burke’s history of violence and erratic behavior toward his sister, the evidence provided at and near the crime scene, and the Ramseys’ unusual behavior following the death of JonBenet.
The Suspicion Surrounding Burke Ramsey
There are many theories surrounding the heinous murder of the pageant star, but one theory seems to hold its ground more often than not: her brother Burke is responsible, and Patsy and John covered it up. Those who are against the theory that the Ramsey family had a part in her death claim that the act of accusing a nine-year-old boy and his grieving family of murdering the youngest family member is inhumane and unethical; however, looking at the evidence and the distinct connections, in this case, it is clear that the nine-year-old was more than capable of harming his sister. In Burke Ramsey’s interview with Dr. Phil, he is smiling as if oddly pleased by the mention of JonBenet’s death. When questioned about this, Dr. Phil clarified that Burke had become socially awkward due to the social isolation he faced after the constant media exposure following the murder. While this explanation might seem plausible, he was given a mental evaluation by a youth clinician after the murder. It seemed that he wasn’t the slightest bit affected by the idea of his sister’s killer coming back, saying, “I’m basically just going on with my life, you know?” (Brodsky). He also gives a “physical demonstration” of JonBenet’s death, “waving an imaginary weapon” (Brodsky). In fact, a family friend of the Ramseys, Judith Miller, said in an interview that Patsy Ramsey had mentioned a violent outburst of Burke’s wherein he hit her in the face with a golf club only a year and a half prior to her death. In addition, there have been many rumors, which Burke vehemently denies, that he had smeared feces on the walls of JonBenet’s room and in her bed (Huber). This past of aggression, paired with the evidence from the crime, can easily incriminate or cast suspicion onto Burke Ramsey.
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Evidence from the Crime Scene
The crime scene and evidence also build a clear case for motive and means in the case of the family’s responsibility. One of the most peculiar aspects of this case was the infamous ransom note found inside the Ramsey home. Patsy Ramsey had discovered that her daughter was missing when she found a three-page ransom note addressed to JonBenet’s father, John Ramsey. around 5 a.m. on a lower step of the “back spiral staircase near JonBenet’s room” (Douglas). It demanded exactly $118,000 in exchange for his daughter’s safe return, the same amount that John had received for a Christmas bonus just weeks before (“JonBenet Ramsey”). Yet, what really sparked curiosity was the fact that the note was written from inside the house, therefore it would need to be short and to the point to prevent being caught (Huber). This made the Ramsey family look more and more guilty. Within the note, the writer utilized odd language choices and quoted “movies including “Dirty Harry” (1971), “Ransom” (1996), and “Speed” (1994)” (Wittmer). The note maintained that the writer was from a “small foreign faction,” and threatened to behead JonBenet if they didn’t receive the ransom money, which seemed overly violent and forced. The note also said that the kidnappers would call later on with delivery instructions; however, this call would never come. To add to the ambiguity, John Douglas, former FBI Analyst and author of The Cases That Haunt Us, stated that the writing “resembled either anxious writer or one who was attempting to mask their handwriting by writing with their non-dominant hand” (Douglas). This would rope Patsy into suspicion. It’s quite possible that Patsy had staged the kidnapping and faked the ransom note after she had discovered JonBenet’s body. Despite the kidnapper’s request to exclude the police, Patsy quickly called 911, a phone call that would notoriously become a highly scrutinized piece of the unsolved puzzle. Officers on the scene failed to search the premises and secure the scene, a detail that would later contaminate the majority of the case. A detective that was working the case sent John and a family friend to “search the house on their own that afternoon” (“JonBenet Ramsey”). The search began and ended in the basement when John found his daughter’s body around 1:00 p.m. Her body was concealed by her favorite white blanket. She had duct tape covering her mouth, her wrists tied above her head, and a nylon cord wrapped around her neck (“JonBenet Ramsey”). Investigators concluded the time of death to be somewhere between 10 p.m. on Christmas night and 6 a.m. the next morning since her body had entered advanced rigor mortis. The official autopsy concluded that JonBenet had died due to a fractured skull and strangulation. When John discovered his daughter’s body, he picked her up and carried her up to the police, contaminating the evidence and disturbing the crime scene. According to the preliminary report, several open windows and at least one open door could have easily given an intruder access to the house. Prints from the crime scene still to this day remain unmatched. Even with public scrutiny, they were unfortunately never officially named as suspects despite lead investigators stating that they believed she knew and trusted her killer. JonBenet’s underwear had a drop of blood, leading investigators to suspect sexual assault when they found evidence leading to a likely history of sexual abuse. In the past, Patsy Ramsey had brought her daughter “to the doctor for vaginal irritation” and said that it was “from a bubble bath” (Huber). This would lead to a suspicion of who was responsible for the sexual abuse. At the crime scene, near the aforementioned broken window, there was a suitcase with a footprint, which to this day has yet to be matched. The Ramseys denied ownership of the suitcase, which contained a Dr. Seuss book and a “semen-encrusted blanket” (Huber). The semen was matched to another family member: JonBenet’s stepbrother from her father’s previous marriage. A floor above the crime scene, the police found a bowl of pineapple in the kitchen with Burke’s fingerprints. An autopsy would later reveal that JonBenet had died with pineapple in her digestive system (“JonBenet Ramsey”). This would catch the Ramseys in their first lie. They had claimed that Burke was asleep when the crime took place, which “cast doubts on their innocence” since the evidence said otherwise (“JonBenet Ramsey”). If Burke had killed his sister in a fit of rage over the pineapple, this would explain why his fingerprints were on the bowl when his parents said that he was in bed during the commission of the crime. It was plausible that Patsy and John had staged the kidnapping to protect Burke from the consequences so that they would not lose another child. One of the main factors that hindered the unsolved case was the crucial neglect of the Boulder Police. They allowed people to come and go as they pleased, did not exercise a full property search, and failed to secure the crime scene, which disturbed the evidence. One of the biggest inconveniences for the theory was that the Ramseys were exonerated from the crime due to the touch DNA from the blood found in JonBenet’s underwear not being a match to any of the family members. In 2003, the DNA was found to be a male assailant and, like many other pieces of evidence, has yet to be matched. In 2008, the family was officially exonerated from the crime. Dr. Lee and Dr. Spitz disagreed with the decision to absolve the family from suspicion due to the fact that touch DNA can easily be transferred. Dr. Lee believed “that the presence of unidentified male DNA on a little girl’s underwear could have come from a factory worker was convincing” (McDonnell-Parry). John and Patsy made numerous media appearances in an effort to clear their names. There were several Grand Jury hearings held, but none led to an indictment. In 2013, court documents revealed that a 1999 Grand Jury had voted to indict JonBenét’s parents for child abuse resulting in death, which never followed suit due to lack of sufficient evidence. These hearings led to one of the biggest suspicions in the case: the parents had to be involved.
The Ramsey Family's Behavior Post-Murder
Following the crime, the Ramsey parents were believed to be behaving strangely following the police arrival. FBI profiler for linguistics James Fitzgerald and former FBI statement analyst Stan Burke studied the Ramsey family’s behavior during the investigation (McDonnell - Parry). According to many investigators on the case, the family had been acting unusually throughout the day following the crime. The parents didn’t remain together and didn’t mention the fact that the call from the kidnappers never came, a noteworthy observation to remember. If a child had been taken, wouldn’t the parents be waiting agonizingly for the phone call so that they could get their child back as soon as possible? Not to mention the 911 call that Patsy had made after discovering her daughter was missing. The call possessed some questionable oddities. During the call, she had spoken rather strangely, saying “We have a kidnapping,” which suggested a “passive language [that] has been linked to lying” (Huber). Patsy also neglected to mention JonBenet until she had fully discussed the kidnapping and the note. This isn’t concrete evidence that she was involved, but it’s rather odd that a mother had failed to mention her daughter’s name immediately after the operator answered the phone. Patsy even hung up on the operator so abruptly that “the operator asked if she was still there” (Huber). Most people stay on the phone until the police arrive. After the police arrived, the Ramseys, according to the officers on the scene, hesitated on being interviewed, and, nearly an hour after finding JonBenet’s body, John was overheard on the phone planning to leave the state with his family. He claimed that he was keeping his family safe, but why would he leave the state so soon after discovering that he had lost his daughter so heinous? In addition to this, the Ramseys had also been quick to hire attorneys to represent them. Their behavior earned suspicion from the police. “The Ramseys didn’t appear to behave the way parents in this situation are ‘supposed’ to behave. They didn’t cling together and constantly comfort and reassure each other,” John Douglas writes in The Cases That Haunt Us (Freeman). Jeff Shapiro, a journalist, had attended the Ramsey family’s church. Upon surveilling her, he noted, “I had never seen anyone pray for his own soul the way Patsy was praying for hers … At that moment, I decided she was the killer,” (Freeman). The Ramsey family retorted similar thoughts stating that they were “in shock and medicated so we could function” (Freeman).
Other Potential Suspects in the Case
Many other theories surrounding the unsolved case of JonBenet Ramsey involved three other suspects: Gary Oliva, Bill McReynolds, and John Mark Karr. These three suspects were cleared of accusation due to a lack of evidence pointing in their direction. Gary Oliva was a sex offender he allegedly “called a friend… claiming he’d hurt a little girl” (Huber). It has come to the media’s attention that no other girl had been reportedly hurting that night. He was cleared as a suspect due to a lack of evidence. Oliva had recently confessed to the decades-old crime but has not been taken seriously by the Boulder Police Department, who see his confession as nothing but a final plea for attention. As of the timing of the confession, Oliva is currently serving ten years for two counts of sexual exploitation of a child at the Limon Correctional Facility in Boulder (Brennan). Another suspect considered for the crime due to a confession was one John Mark Karr, a school teacher, and divorced father. He had falsely confessed to the murder of JonBenet almost ten years after the murder in a series of emails, over the duration of four years, to a “professor who was making a documentary about JonBenét and told him that he was the one who killed her after sexually abusing her” (Huber). In the emails, he used similar wording as the ransom note. He said that was in love with her, that he had struck her with a flashlight, which explains the blunt force trauma, and that he had taken her into the basement when she was asleep. It was later discovered that he wasn’t in Boulder at the time of the murder: he had just wanted the fame. He was tracked down to Bangkok, Thailand, where he was fleeing charges of child pornography. The third and final disturbed individual is Bill McReynolds, who often dressed as Santa at the Ramsey Christmas powers. One year, he received a glitter jar from JonBenet, which he took with him into heart surgery and asked to be mixed with his ashes (Huber). Oddly, McReynolds’ wife also wrote a play that resembled JonBenet’s case (“The Tragic Murder of JonBenet Ramsey”). However, there wasn’t any other concrete evidence that could link either man to the crime.
Conclusion: The Lingering Questions
The JonBenet case will continue to rest on the shelf, collecting dust, with the rest of the cold cases. Though much of the evidence added up to the Ramsey family is responsible for the death of their own flesh and blood, a few pieces of insufficient evidence wrongfully exonerated them from the crime. Burke, in the past, had a tendency to become violent and lash out at his younger sister, which should have been a red flag from the beginning, but the police, from the start of the investigation, had diminished and uncredited the evidence due to their lack of control over the crime scene.
Works Cited
- Brennan, Charlie. “Boulder Police Show Little Interest in Report of Pedophile’s Alleged JonBenet Ramsey Case Confession.” The Denver Post. 11 Jan 2019. https://www.denverpost.com/2019/01/10/boulder-police-jonbenet-ramsey-confession/
- Brodsky, Rachel. “‘The Case of JonBenet Ramsey’: Everything We Learned From Part Two.” Rollingstone. 20 Sep 2016. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-case-of-jonbenet-ramsey-everything-we-learned-from-part-two-106495/
- Douglas, John. “The Death of JonBenet Ramsey.” The Cases That Haunt Us, edited by Olshaker, Mark, Pocket Book Nonfiction, 2000, pp. 363-461.
- Freeman, Hadley. “JonBenet Ramsey: The brutal child murder that still haunts America.” The Guardian, 11 Dec 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/11/jonbenet-ramsey-the-brutal-child-that-still-haunts-america
- Huber, Lucy. “30 Crazy facts About the Death of JonBenet Ramsey.” 22 Words. 2019. https://twentytwowords.com/unsettling-facts-about-the-mysterious-death-of-jonbenet-ramsey/
- “JonBenet Ramsey.” Crime Museum. www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/cold-cases/JonBenet-ramsey/.
- “JonBenet Ramsey Murder: Brother Burke Ramsey Revealed Key Detail To Dr. Phil | TODAY.” YouTube, YouTube, 12 Sept. 2016, youtu.be/xWblt-Ru7pk.
- McDonnell-Parry, Amelia. “3 Big Ways ‘The Case of JonBenet Ramsey’ Got It Wrong.” Rollingstone. 20 Sep 2016. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/3-big-ways-the-case-of-jonbenet-ramsey-got-it-wrong-112062/
- “The Tragic Murder Of JonBenét Ramsey.” YouTube, 18 Aug. 2017, youtu.be/SiQ4t2EuhKU.
- Wittmer, Carrie. “All the theories about who really killed JonBenet Ramsey.” Business Insider, 3 May 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/11/jonbenet-ramsey-the-brutal-child-that-still-haunts-america
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