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Almost thirty years ago, the world was shocked to learn about the death of the six-year-old child beauty pageant queen JonBenét Ramsey. The child was initially found missing, with a ransom note received by the Ramsey family. However, after a second search of the house, the girl was found dead in the basement of the house.
With Netflix’sCold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramseydebuting on the platform earlier this week, the case has received renewed interest. The three-part docu-series by Joe Berlinger, who also made the Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy docu-series, chronicles the several mistakes the police department made and the suspects of the case.
Who Was JonBenét Ramsey?
Born in 1990, JonBenét Ramsey was the daughter of Patsy and John Bennett Ramsey. She was born in Atlanta and then went on to do her schooling in Boulder. Her father John Ramsey was reportedly the president of a company and had recently moved to Boulder. Her mother would apparently make her participate in child beauty pageants.
As a frequent participant in child pageants, JonBenét Ramsey reportedly won multiple titles including America’s Royale Miss, Little Miss Charlevoix, and National Tiny Miss Beauty. Her fame in these circles eventually gave a lot of publicity to her case. Ramsey also had an older brother named Burke.
JonBenét Ramsey’s Death Happened Under Mysterious Circumstances
On the morning after Christmas in 1996, the Ramseys reported their six-year-old daughter JonBenét Ramsey missing. Her mother, Patsy, had reportedly found a ransom note for their daughter which demanded $118,000 for the daughter’s return. According to John Ramsey, the figure was eerily close to her Christmas bonus that year.
The family reportedly called the police at 5:52 AM and reported the kidnapping. While the police searched the house, seven hours later, John reportedly found his daughter’s lifeless body in the coal room of their basement. According toE! News, autopsy reports indicated that she had been strangled with a cord, and also had a cracked skull due to blunt force trauma. The reports also allegedly indicated evidence of s*xual assault.
After the death was ruled a homicide, the police began their investigations. According toNewsweek, the crime scene underwent many contaminations, and John Ramsey’s entry into the coal room to find the body resulted in a severe contamination of evidence. The police’s ineptitude during the case was a major point in the Netflix docu-series.
Parents of JonBenét Ramsey Were Major Suspects In The Case
The Netflix documentaryCold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramseydelves into the Boulder police’s alleged mishandling of the case. With inexperienced staff and contaminated evidence, the department was reportedly focused on the Ramseys as the suspects and refusing to budge on this notion, ultimately fueling much of the national interest in this case.
To date, no one has reportedly been charged with the murder of JonBenét Ramsey though according to theDaily Camera, the police had listed 1,600 suspects for the case. The personal lives of the Ramseys reportedly became a living hell as speculations arose about their lives before the death. The case reportedly received worldwide coverage.
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With no evidence to prove their innocence or guilt, after months of media trial, the Ramseys reportedly broke their silence for the first time on a British documentary. John Ramsey said (via Newsweek),
The American public has been led to believe that we went to bed that night after a wonderful Christmas, brutally beat JonBenét, sxually mlested her, strangled her, went to sleep, got up the next morning, wrote a three-page ransom note, called the police, sat around the house for four hours, [and] then I went downstairs and discovered her body and was able to act distraught. Help me understand that.
According toThe NY Times, the Ramseys were not cooperative with the investigation and refused to talk to the Boulder police for days. They reportedly did not allow the police to interview their young son Burke, which seemed to be highly uncharacteristic. Either way, the Ramseys’ reaction to the interviews made them guilty in the eyes of many.
In 2008, DNA evidence and analysis had exonerated the Ramseys as the suspects in the case (viaNBC News). However, the statement seemed to come a bit late as Patsy Ramsey had reportedly passed away due to cancer in 2006.
Several Other Suspects Were Found But None Were Charged
Apart from the Ramseys, another theory that the police and other investigators had was that an intruder had entered the home and murdered young JonBenét Ramsey. The Boulder police had reportedly listed 1,600 suspects including family, neighbors, and friends, as well as several s*x offenders in the area.
A spokesperson for the Boulder Police Department reportedly told the Daily Camera,
Even if we are looking at the Ramseys, we are looking at other people, too. If we get reports of something like someone unusual who began attending the Ramseys’ church right before the crime, or someone looking through trash cans in the Ramseys’ neighborhood before the murder, we have to investigate those leads.
Detectives reportedly interrogated a man called Robert C. Wolf in connection with the case, who accused the department’s detectives of forcing him to give a handwriting sample and threatening him with being charged with the murder of JonBenét Ramsey (via The Daily Camera). None of these suspects seemed to materialize.
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Some false confessions were made throughout the years. According toHarper’s Bazaar, a school teacher named John Mark Karr had confessed to the crime and claimed to have killed Ramsey by accident. He was reportedly connected to charges of child p*rnography at the time. However, his confession was regarded as false.
Another man named Gary Oliva reportedly confessed to the crime when he wrote a letter to his school friend, claiming that he loved Ramsey and had accidentally killed her. Oliva reportedly had multiple images of Ramsey’s autopsy and was serving a ten-year sentence for uploading pictures of children being s*xually abused (via Harper’s Bazaar).
Cold CaseDocumentary Director Believes That The Netflix Show Could Renew Interest In The Case
Over thirty years, many documentaries and specials have been made on the JonBenét Ramsey case. It is one of the most popular unsolved mysteries among other popular cases like the Zodiac Killer and the mystery of D.B. Cooper.
When asked about his decision to work on this vastly covered subject, Oscar-nominated director Joel Berlinger mentioned toVarietythat the suspicion of the Ramseys and the ineptitude of the police was what intrigued him about the case. He said,
The Ramsey family have been so brutalized for close to 30 years. One of the new things about my show that hasn’t been highlighted in other shows is the degree to which the Boulder Police, who, from day one, ‘had a feeling’ that John Ramsey was the killer, started that suspicion. They couldn’t get off it.
He also mentioned that the Netflix docu-seriesCold Casecould help move the needle forward in reopening the case and finding out who the killer was. With new technology and plenty of evidence reportedly being untested due to the police department’s focus on the Ramseys, the filmmaker believed that DNA testing could lead to better results.
Nishanth A
Senior Writer
Articles Published :2415
Nishanth A is a Senior Entertainment Writer at FandomWire, majorly focusing on TV shows with over 2,000 articles published. He has been an entertainment journalist for the past two years and a scriptwriter at various corporations before that, working on educational content. With a Communications, English Literature, and Psychology triple major, Nishanth usually covers news and analyses on Star Trek, particularly Strange New Worlds and The Next Generation; Doctor Who, the DCU, and more.A Nolan fan, Nishanth spends his time exploring the filmographies of various directors with an auteurial style or can be found making short movies of his own. He has also contributed as a feature writer for Film Companion, focusing on the South division.
