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John Ramsey was shaving on the morning of Dec. 26, 1996, when he heard his wife scream.

Patsy Ramsey was headed to the kitchen to put the coffee on, but instead found pieces of paper lying at the bottom of the staircase in their Boulder, Colo., home.

“Mr. Ramsey, Listen carefully!” began the letter which ultimately alerted Patsy to the fact that her 6-year-old daughter JonBenét Ramsey was not asleep in her bed—as her mother assumed she was at 5:45 a.m. on the day after Christmas.

At 5:52 a.m., Patsy called 911 to report that JonBenét, who would have turned 36 on Aug. 6, had been kidnapped and there was a ransom note.

“It was just unbelievable,” John, now 82, said in Netflix’s 2024 docuseries Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey. He recalled feeling “this horrible in-your-gut trauma,” comparing it to when a child wanders out of her parent’s sight for a minute at the mall.

Only he never saw his child alive again.

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Instead, John found JonBenét’s body almost eight hours later in what used to be an old coal room in the basement.

John recalled in the series ripping off a piece of duct tape that was covering his daughter’s mouth and carrying her directly upstairs, where officers checked for a pulse and swiftly informed him that she was dead.

She had been strangled with a cord used as a garrote, according to the autopsy report, and her skull was fractured from blunt head trauma. Microscopic fibers from a wooden paintbrush handle found on her body indicated she had been sexually assaulted with the item, retired Boulder Police Detective Bob Whitson, one of the first investigators on the scene that day, recalled in the series.

Paula Woodward, an investigative reporter for KUSA Denver who covered the JonBenét case, recalled being told that a group of investigators had gathered at the Boulder Police Department that morning. And, when word came in that JonBenét had been found dead, Woodward said she was told that one of the investigators “hissed in kind of an undertone and a whisper to another one, ‘I knew it, they killed their daughter.'”

And that pretty much set the tone for the police investigation into JonBenét’s death, according to John, journalists and several law enforcement veterans who participated in the three-part series, the latest addition to the ever-growing canon of morbid work dedicated to unpacking what really happened to the child.

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John and Patsy, who died of ovarian cancer in 2006 at the age of 49, were never arrested or charged in connection with their daughter’s death, but they remained under a cloud of suspicion for years. Which, in Patsy’s case, was for the rest of her life.

“We could have the killer arrested, convicted, in prison,” John reflected in the series, “and there’d still be 5 to 10 percent of the population that thinks we’re guilty.”

In the Netflix series, directed by Joe Berlinger, John details the ways the cops—and subsequently the media and the court of public opinion—seized on him and his wife as villains and never let go of that theory. But he also remains hopeful that JonBenét’s murder will be solved, alleging that there’s evidence in police custody that still hasn’t been subjected to the most modern DNA analysis methods.

DNA testing over the years has so far only resulted in clearing several persons of interest who were questioned in connection with the case.

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If those who’ve been saying the DNA “isn’t as valuable or significant as we think” are taken at face value, “then we’ve been ruling people out for the wrong reasons,” JonBenét’s older half-brother John Andrew Ramsey, one of John’s three kids from his first marriage, said in the series. “Everybody should be back on the table…You have to go deeper, you have to sort the DNA we have today and make more sense of it.”

John said in the series that “the whole purpose of engaging with the media was to put pressure on the police.” And, he continued, “We’re not going away. I’m going to be hammering on you till I die if you don’t find this creature that did this to our daughter.”

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In November 2024, Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn called the killing of JonBenét an “unspeakable crime” that has never left their hearts.

“We are committed to following up on every lead and we are continuing to work with DNA experts and our law enforcement partners around the country until this tragic case is solved,” he said in a statement. “This investigation will always be a priority for the Boulder Police Department.”

Added Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, “The murder of JonBenét Ramsey is a terrible tragedy and sparked years of unanswered questions and theories. Our office has successfully prosecuted other cold case homicides and many murder cases. In every one of those cases, it was the evidence that proved the defendant(s) guilty. Whether it is DNA or other evidence, more is needed to solve this murder.”

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In a subsequent video statement responding to the Netflix series, Redfearn said that authorities welcomed media coverage and documentaries in the chance they generated new leads, but that police had to be mindful about the information they shared with the public, as the Ramsey case remains an active investigation.

“What I can tell you though,” the chief said, “is we have thoroughly investigated multiple people as suspects throughout the years and we continue to be open-minded about what occurred as we investigate the tips that come in to detectives.”

But in the meantime this nearly 30-year-old case grows ever colder.

According to Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, here is how the initial investigation went off course:

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A Contaminated SceneAfter Patsy Ramsey called 911 at 5:52 a.m. on Dec. 26, 1996, to report that her daughter JonBenét Ramsey had been kidnapped, she and husband John Ramsey also reached out to a number of their friends, who came right over to support the couple.In turn, in addition to responding officers, there were people milling around the Ramseys’ 5,000-square-foot home all day before John found JonBenét’s body in the basement shortly after 1:30 p.m.”I should have removed all those people from the scene, that was a crime scene mistake,” retired Boulder Police Detective Bob Whitson recalled in the Netflix docuseries Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey. “But, at the time, it looked like a legitimate kidnapping. So, I thought, Well, these are the support system for the Ramseys, and I let ’em stay.”Not knowing she was dead when he found her, John said in the series he at first tried to untie the cord that bound her hands. The knots were too tight, he said, but he did remove a piece of duct tape that was covering her mouth and tossed it onto a blanket that had been with the body.He then carried her upstairs, which, according to investigators, ensured that the evidence collected from her body, the pajamas she was wearing, the tape, etc., was contaminated.”There may have been some evidence on the duct tape if that wasn’t removed,” Whitson said in the series.

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Two Faulty SearchesPolice who responded to Patsy’s 911 call searched the three upper levels of the Ramseys’ home, and the basement, but it wasn’t until a detective suggested that John do another sweep of the house nearly eight hours later that her body was found in a part of the basement that used to be a coal room.”One of the cops did not open the door where JonBenét was lying,” Fox News’ Carol McKinley, who covered the case at the time, said in the Netflix series. “Major mistake, and I believe he lives with that to this day.”Retired Boulder PD Commander John San Agustin noted in the series, “You never have someone outside of law enforcement doing a search.”However, when John looked in the coal room, he said, “Her body was right there in front of me.”

JonBenét Ramsey’s Pageant HistoryIn a pre-Toddlers and Tiaras world, the media incredulously spotlighted JonBenét’s participation in children’s beauty pageants, with most of the commentary being of the what-sort-of-mother-lets-her-child-parade-around-like-that variety.Having competed and performed at local events since she was 4, there were myriad photos of JonBenét wearing a full face of makeup and videos that became Rorschach tests for critics of the Ramseys who were looking for signs of sexual abuse or other trauma behind the child’s precocious poise.And people who claimed to have diagnosed as much had no qualms saying it on TV, the Netflix series including a clip from Geraldo in which a woman identified as a “well-known expert in child abuse” described one of JonBenét’s performances as masturbatory. (Host Geraldo Rivera was staging a mock trial on his show, during which a six-person “jury” found Patsy liable for her daughter’s death. “I went to bed for about two days,” she said in the 1998 documentary The Ramseys vs. The Media, “because I just was mortified.”)Reflecting on his enthusiastic coverage of the case, Rivera told the Chicago Tribune in 2006, “Everyone I came in contact with was talking about the Ramsey case, whether it was my nanny or the people in the neighborhood or the guy that takes care of my koi pond.” Even his mom wanted the details, he added, so “when it gets to that level, you know it has an interest that’s almost universal.”

Helen H. Richardson/ The Denver Post

The pageant commentary painted the Ramseys as “delinquent parents,” recalled Paula Woodward, an investigative reporter for KUSA Denver who covered the case from the beginning.She interviewed JonBenét’s pediatrician at the time, the journalist said, “He told me, no, she’s never had any sexual abuse in her life. He would have lost his medical license if he ever lied about that.”In a 1997 interview, the doctor said there was “never any hint whatsoever of sexual abuse. I didn’t see any hint of emotional abuse, or physical abuse. She was a very much-loved child.”But, as seen on tabloid covers shown in the series, there was plenty of speculation that the child may have been abused in lieu of evidence to allege that she really was.”Let me address it very directly: I did not kill my daughter JonBenét,” John told reporters during a May 1, 1997, news conference. “There have been innuendos that she had been or was sexually molested. I can tell you that those were the most hurtful innuendos to us as a family. They are totally false. JonBenét and I had a very close relationship. I will miss her dearly the rest of my life.”Added Patsy, “I’m appalled that anyone would think that John or I would be involved in such a hideous, heinous crime. But let me assure you that I did not kill JonBenét and did not have anything to do with it. I loved that child with the whole of my heart and soul.”

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The Ramseys’ Questionable SilenceJonBenét was laid to rest in Atlanta next to her half-sister Beth Ramsey (one of John’s three grown children from his first marriage, she died in a car accident in 1992) on Dec. 31, 1996.By then, the family had a spokesperson releasing statements to the media and had hired a lawyer.Which, at the time, “smelled a little funny,” Fox News’ McKinley said in the series. “And we were like, ‘What is going on?'”John said in the series, however, that their attorneys had advised them to be careful about anything they said or did. “But we gave the police everything they asked for,” John said. “Blood samples, DNA samples, whatever they asked for. Records, all our credit card [records], anything they asked for, we gave it to them.”Meanwhile, he added, “I would’ve been happy to die, quite frankly, to relieve the pain.”But with the media filling in the blanks so long as the Ramseys remained silent, soon enough friends in Boulder advised them to grant an interview ASAP, John recalled. So he and Patsy sat down with CNN on Jan. 1, 1997.

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“There is a killer on the loose,” Patsy memorably said at the time. “I don’t know who it is, I don’t know if it’s a he or a she. But if I were a resident of Boulder, I would tell my friends to keep your babies close to you. There’s someone out there.”Following the Ramseys’ interview, then-Boulder Mayor Leslie Durgin said on TV that there was no visible sign of forced entry at the Ramsey residence and the cops were saying, based on where JonBenét’s body was found, that “someone had to know the house. So, there isn’t a crazed killer on the loose wandering the streets of Boulder.”Listening to Durgin, “You would assume that she had information from the police that led her to feel comfortable saying that,” recalled KMGH Denver investigative reporter Julie Hayden in the Netflix series, explaining why authorities’ behavior in those early days also contributed to the cloud of suspicion growing around John and Patsy. The “implication from that clearly would be that it was somebody connected with the family.”

Helen H. Richardson/ The Denver Post

Accusations That the Ramseys’ Grieving Was StagedJournalist McKinley recalled in the series thinking that the Ramseys made “an orchestrated appearance” at a Jan. 5, 1997, memorial for their daughter in Boulder. “It didn’t seem sincere to me and it was almost like a performance,” she added, singling out Patsy’s big black sunglasses and all-black attire as a particularly notable touch.John barely remembered that day “’cause we were in shock, frankly,” he said in the series, but any accusation that aspects of it were staged was “absolutely false.”

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Information Run AmokLocal media were getting a lot of information from law enforcement sources, often crediting just one source if that’s all they could get, several journalists noted in the series. And not all of it was factual.Charlie Brennan of the Rocky Mountain News admitted getting it wrong when he reported for the paper that John, a licensed pilot, had flown JonBenét’s coffin to Atlanta in his own plane.”That was inaccurate,” he said in the Netflix series. “It came from a source that I thoroughly trusted and had given me other solid information. That information was wrong, my source was wrong in that case, and that was a mistake.”

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DNA Results Go UnreportedThe Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s report stating that unidentified male DNA found on JonBenét’s underwear and under her fingernails did not match her father or her then-10-year-old brother Burke Ramsey came back on Jan. 15, 1997. But police didn’t share the findings right away—not even with prosecutors.Police “were told that in January,” John said in the series. “They kept that secret from the media and from the District Attorney for months.”Stranger still, investigative reporter Woodward observed in the series, was that the info didn’t leak to the media. “DNA results often leak in murder cases,” she said, “yet when the one piece of evidence that clears them, or at least clears their DNA, comes back, there’s not a leak about it.”But, Woodward noted, early in the investiation there was “massive police leaking that Patsy Ramsey had written the ransom note.” (The theory was duly reported on; multiple handwriting experts determined her writing and the letter did not match, retired Det. Whitson recalled in the series.)”They kept that secret,” John said of the DNA findings, “because it conflicted with their conclusion that we were the killers.”

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Police vs. ProsecutorsBoulder Police Det. Steve Thomas took over leading the investigation into JonBenét’s death in early 1997 and he zeroed in on her parents. In his 2000 book, JonBenét: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, he detailed his theory that Patsy killed her daughter in a rage after the 6-year-old wet the bed, staged the scene in the basement and wrote the ransom note. He also said this to Patsy and John’s faces on an episode of CNN’s Larry King Live. They vehemently pushed back, Patsy ultimately saying, “God knows [what happened], and the truth is going to prevail.” (The Ramseys filed an $80 million defamation lawsuit against Thomas and his publisher in 2001; it was settled for an undisclosed sum.)In the Netflix series, John said that Steve’s theory “didn’t pass the sanity test.””Patsy had just recovered from stage 4 ovarian cancer,” John said. “She was grateful to be alive. Do you think that her child wetting her bed would be a big deal? No. She was happy to be alive and to have some more time with her children.”Steve Thomas resigned from the case in protest in August 1998, accusing the district attorney’s office of mishandling the Ramsey case. In a 2004 interview, Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter reflected on “a split” between his office and Boulder PD, noting, “Some Boulder Police people thought they knew who did it. And some of my people were convinced that it was an intruder that did it.”

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The Ramseys’ New ChampionIn 1997, the DA’s office brought in retired detective Lou Smit to consult on the case. Smit died in 2010, but he detailed in video and audio diaries sampled in the Netflix series why he believed the Ramseys were innocent.There was “no motive, no evidence of bad character,” he said in a 1998 recording, per the series. “There is evidence of an intruder. I say this over and over and over again. Nobody wants to listen.”So when prosecutors opted to take their case against the Ramseys to the grand jury in September 1998, Smit tendered his resignation from the case.”He would have no part in trying to convict an innocent couple,” Colorado Springs Police Department Investigations Commander Kurt Pillar, who considered Smit a mentor, said in the Netflix series. “That’s how strongly he felt about this case.”John recalled in the series, “We fully expected and were prepared to be indicted. ‘Cause they were saying, ‘You can indict a ham sandwich in front a grand jury,’ it’s a one-sided argument.”

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More than a year later, District Attorney Hunter announced on Oct. 13, 1999, that his office didn’t have the evidence to file charges against the Ramseys—or anyone—at that time.He did not share the grand jury’s recommendation with the public. “I feel at peace and to some extent proud of the fact that I weathered the storm and did the right thing,” Hunter said in 2004, “based on the evidence.”In 2008, his successor Mary Lacy publicly exonerated John, Patsy and Burke, citing the results of new touch DNA analysis. “To the extent that we may have contributed in any way to the public perception that you might have been involved in this crime, I am deeply sorry,” the DA wrote in a letter to John, per NBC News.It wasn’t until 2013 that the indictment was unsealed, revealing that the grand jury chose to indict John and Patsy on two counts each of child abuse resulting in death. Per the Denver Post, the document didn’t accuse them of killing their daughter, but rather of permitting her to be placed in a dangerous situation that led to her death and of assisting a person who “committed and was suspected of the crime of murder in the first degree and child abuse resulting in death.”

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“We didn’t know who did what,” a member of the grand jury told the Boulder Daily Camera in January 2013. “But we felt the adults in the house may have done something that they certainly could have prevented, or they could have helped her, and they didn’t.”After the 1999 indictment was revealed, Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner said in a statement that it proved “the investigation pursued by the Boulder Police Department was, in fact, based on the information and evidence available.””There are no new leads,” the statement continued. “While we believe at this point it is unlikely there will ever be a prosecution, the Boulder Police Department still holds out some hope that one day the district attorney and the Boulder Police Department will be able to put together a case worthy of presenting to a jury.”The Ramseys’ attorney Lin Wood said in 2013, per the Post, that the grand jury’s decision in 1999 was “based on incomplete evidence.”“It’s subject to the impression that criminal charges were warranted against the Ramseys,” he said. “A full examination of the evidence unquestionably exonerates the Ramseys. This is inflicting a terrible miscarriage of justice.”

(Originally published Nov. 25, 2024, at 5 a.m. PT)

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