JonBenét Ramsey
Encyclopedia
JonBenét Patricia Ramsey (ˌdʒɒnbəˈneɪ pəˈtrɪʃə ˈræmzi; August 6, 1990 – December 25, 1996) was an American child beauty pageant
contestant who was murdered in her home in Boulder, Colorado
, in 1996. The six-year-old's body was found in the basement of the family home nearly eight hours after she was reported missing. She had been struck on the head and strangled. The case, which after several grand jury
hearings remains unsolved, continues to generate public and media interest.
Colorado law enforcement agencies initially suspected JonBenét's parents and her brother. However, the family was partially exonerated in 2003 when DNA
taken from the victim's clothes proved they were not involved. Her parents would not be completely cleared until July 2008. In February 2009, the Boulder Police Department took the case back from the district attorney
to reopen the investigation.
Media coverage of the case has often focused on JonBenét's participation in child beauty pageants, her parents' affluence and the unusual evidence in the case. Reports have also questioned the police's overall handling of the case. Several defamation suits have been filed against several media organizations by Ramsey family members and their friends over reporting of the murder.
JonBenét is buried at St. James Episcopal Cemetery
in Marietta, Georgia; next to her is her mother, who died of cancer in 2006, and her half-sister Elizabeth Pasch Ramsey (daughter of John Ramsey and his first wife), who died in a 1992 car accident at the age of 22.
note demanding $
118,000 for her safe return—almost the exact value of a bonus her husband had received earlier that year. Despite specific instructions in the ransom note that police and friends not be contacted, she telephoned the police and called family and friends. The local police conducted a cursory search of the house but did not find any obvious signs of a break-in or forced entry. The note suggested that the ransom collection would be monitored and JonBenét would be returned as soon as the money was obtained. John Ramsey made arrangements for the availability of the ransom, which a friend, John Fernie, picked up that morning from a local bank.
The police were later claimed by observers to have made several critical mistakes in the investigation, such as not sealing off the crime scene and allowing friends and family in and out of the house once a kidnapping was reported.
Critics of the investigation have since claimed that officers also did not sufficiently attempt to gather forensic evidence before or after JonBenét's body was found, possibly because they immediately suspected the Ramseys in the killing. Some officers holding these suspicions reported them to local media, who began reporting on January 1 that the assistant district attorney thought "it's not adding up"; the fact that the body of the girl was found in her own home was considered highly suspicious by the investigating officers.
The results of the autopsy
revealed that JonBenét was killed by strangulation and a skull fracture
. A garrote
made from a length of tweed
cord and the broken handle of a paintbrush had been used to strangle her; her skull had suffered severe blunt trauma
; there was no evidence of conventional rape
, although sexual assault
could not be ruled out. The official cause of death was asphyxiation due to strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma.
profile. The DNA belongs to an unknown male. The DNA was submitted to the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS)
, a database containing more than 1.6 million DNA profiles, mainly from convicted felons. The sample has yet to find a match in the database, although it continues to be checked for partial matches on a weekly basis, as are all unmatched samples.
Later investigations also discovered that there were more than 100 burglaries in the Ramseys' neighborhood in the months before JonBenét's murder, and that 38 registered sex offenders were living within a two-mile (3 km) radius of the Ramseys' home—an area that encompasses half the population of the city of Boulder—but that none of the sex offenders had any involvement in the murder.
On August 16, 2006, 41-year-old John Mark Karr (now Alexis Reich), a former schoolteacher, confessed to the murder while being held on child pornography
charges from Sonoma County, California
. Authorities reportedly tracked him down using the Internet
after he sent e-mail
s regarding the Ramsey case to Michael Tracey
, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado
. Once apprehended in Bangkok
, Thailand
, he confessed to being with JonBenét when she died, stating that her death was an accident. When asked if he was innocent, he responded, "No."
However, Karr's DNA did not match that found on JonBenét Ramsey's body. On August 28, 2006, prosecutors announced that no charges would be filed against him for the murder of JonBenét Ramsey. In early December 2006, Department of Homeland Security
officials reported that federal investigators were continuing to explore whether Karr had been a possible accomplice in the killing.
No evidence has ever come to light that placed the then-married Alabama
resident Karr near Boulder during the Christmas 1996 crime. Evidence linking Karr to the killing is highly circumstantial in nature. For instance, handwriting samples taken from Karr were said to match the ransom note. In particular, his way of writing the letters E, T and M were described by the media as being very rare.
. For a long time, the local police supported the hypothesis that her mother Patsy Ramsey injured her child in a fit of rage after the girl had wet her bed on the same night, and then proceeded to kill her either in rage or to cover up the original injury. In November 1997, several handwriting experts determined that Patsy Ramsey more than likely wrote the ransom note. According to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation report, "There are indications that the author of the ransom note is Patricia Ramsey," but they could not definitively prove this assertion.
Another hypothesis was that John Ramsey had been sexually abusing
his daughter and murdered her as a cover. The Ramseys' son Burke, who was nine at the time of JonBenét's death, was also targeted by speculation, and asked to testify at the grand jury hearing. In 1999, the Governor of Colorado
, Bill Owens, told the parents of JonBenét Ramsey to "quit hiding behind their attorneys, quit hiding behind their PR
firm." Police suspicions were initially concentrated almost exclusively on the members of the Ramsey family, although the girl's parents had no prior signs of aggression in the public record.
The Ramseys have consistently held that the crime was committed by an intruder. They hired John E. Douglas
, former head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit
, to examine the case. Douglas detailed his assessment of the Ramsey case in a chapter of his 2001 book, The Cases That Haunt Us. While retained by the Ramsey family, he concluded that the Ramseys were not involved in the murder, citing several key points: (a) There was no physical evidence linking John and Patsy to the homicide, and physical evidence found near JonBenét's body suggested the presence of an unidentified person in the Ramsey home. (b) There was no plausible motive for the Ramseys to kill their daughter. Douglas regarded the bed-wetting hypothesis as so unprecedented as to verge on absurdity and furthermore inconsistent with Patsy's established behavior. (c) There was no evidence of physical abuse, neglect, sexual molestation, or serious personality disorders in the Ramsey household prior to the murder, some combination of which are associated with most cases of children killed by parents. (d) The behavior of John and Patsy Ramsey after the crime was consistent with the parents of other murdered children, and was inconsistent with known cases of parents who killed their children. Noting that a large percentage of child homicides are committed by parents and family of the victim, Douglas did not fault the original investigators for closely scrutinizing the Ramsey family. Douglas did, however, criticize authorities in Boulder for what he described as a deeply flawed investigation (eg., not securing the crime scene) that was further hampered by political infighting and refusal to ask for outside help. At the time, Boulder police normally handled one or two homicides per year, and had little experience with anything resembling the Ramsey case. He cites several other cases in which FBI consultancy or hands-on investigation helped local authorities resolve puzzling homicides outside their usual experience. Douglas also concluded that it was unlikely that anyone would resolve the case. The most likely scenario based on the evidence, Douglas speculated, was that JonBenét was killed by a young, inexperienced criminal {eg, the possible digital penetration of the girl's vagina was consistent with other young sex offenders motivated by a naive curiosity about female anatomy) who was sexually obsessed with the child and/or who wanted to extort money from her wealthy family. Douglas suspected that the ransom note was written before the crime, which might have been an attempted kidnapping gone wrong. The ransom note, Douglas noted, was peppered with what appeared to be phrases borrowed from motion pictures like Ransom (1996) and Speed (1994) which, he speculated, inspired the perpetrator.
Lou Smit
, a seasoned detective who came out of retirement to assist Boulder authorities with the case in early 1997, originally suspected the parents, but after assessing all the evidence that had been collected, also concluded that an intruder had committed the crime. In his book Cases That Haunt Us, Douglas writes that he quibbled with a few of Smit's interpretations but agreed with the general thrust of Smit's investigation and conclusions. Douglas particularly praised Smit's discovery in autopsy photos of what appeared to be previously-overlooked evidence of a "stun gun" having been used to subdue JonBenét. While no longer an official investigator on the case, Smit continued to work on it until his death in 2010.
Stephen Singular, investigative journalist and author of the book Presumed Guilty — An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, The Media and the Culture of Pornography, suggests the existence of a connection of the murder to the industry of child pornography. He refers to consultations with cyber-crime specialists who believe that JonBenét, due to her beauty pageant experience, was the perfect kind of child who could be dragged into the world of child pornography and was a natural candidate to attract attention and pedophiles.
With such contradictory evidence, a grand jury failed to indict the Ramseys or anyone else in the murder of JonBenét. Not long after the murder, the parents moved to a new home in Atlanta. Two of the lead investigators in the case resigned, one because he believed that the investigation had incompetently overlooked the intruder hypothesis, and the other because he believed that the investigation had failed to successfully prosecute the Ramseys. Even so, remaining investigators are still trying to identify a possible suspect. Patricia "Patsy" Ramsey died of ovarian cancer on June 24, 2006, at the age of 49.
, Time, Inc., The Fox News Channel, American Media, Inc., Star
, The Globe
, Court TV
and The New York Post. John and Patsy Ramsey were also sued in two separate defamation lawsuits arising from the publication of their book, The Death of Innocence, brought by two individuals named in the book as having been investigated by Boulder police as suspects in JonBenét's murder. The Ramseys were defended in those lawsuits by Lin Wood and three other Atlanta attorneys, James C. Rawls, Eric P. Schroeder, and S. Derek Bauer, who obtained dismissal of both lawsuits including an in-depth decision by U.S. District Court Judge Julie Carnes that "abundant evidence" in the murder case pointed to an intruder having committed the crime.
In November 2006, Rod Westmoreland, a friend of JonBenét Ramsey's father, filed a defamation suit against Keith Greer, who posted a message on an Internet forum using the pseudonym "undertheradar". Greer had accused Westmoreland of participating in the kidnapping and murder. Greer has defended his statement.
Child beauty pageant
A child beauty pageant is a beauty contest featuring contestants up to 18 years of age. Divisions include talent, interview, sportswear, casual wear, swim wear, western wear, theme wear, outfit of choice, decade wear, and evening wear, typically wearing makeup as well as elaborate hairstyles...
contestant who was murdered in her home in Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
, in 1996. The six-year-old's body was found in the basement of the family home nearly eight hours after she was reported missing. She had been struck on the head and strangled. The case, which after several grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
hearings remains unsolved, continues to generate public and media interest.
Colorado law enforcement agencies initially suspected JonBenét's parents and her brother. However, the family was partially exonerated in 2003 when DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
taken from the victim's clothes proved they were not involved. Her parents would not be completely cleared until July 2008. In February 2009, the Boulder Police Department took the case back from the district attorney
District attorney
In many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...
to reopen the investigation.
Media coverage of the case has often focused on JonBenét's participation in child beauty pageants, her parents' affluence and the unusual evidence in the case. Reports have also questioned the police's overall handling of the case. Several defamation suits have been filed against several media organizations by Ramsey family members and their friends over reporting of the murder.
Life
JonBenét Ramsey was born in Atlanta, Georgia on August 6, 1990. When nine months old, the family relocated to Boulder, Colorado. Her first name is a combination of her father's first and middle names, John Bennett; her middle name is the first name of her mother, the late Patricia "Patsy" Ramsey. JonBenét was enrolled by her mother in a variety of different beauty pageants in several states. Patricia Ramsey funded some of the contests in which JonBenét participated, as well as rock climbing and violin lessons. Her active role in pageants was highly scrutinized by media following the murder.JonBenét is buried at St. James Episcopal Cemetery
St. James Episcopal Cemetery
St James Episcopal Church Cemetery was founded in 1849, as a parish burial ground that was laid out on the furthest corner of the 20-acre St. James' Episcopal Church property, at the corner of Winn Street and what is now Polk Street in Marietta....
in Marietta, Georgia; next to her is her mother, who died of cancer in 2006, and her half-sister Elizabeth Pasch Ramsey (daughter of John Ramsey and his first wife), who died in a 1992 car accident at the age of 22.
Murder case
According to the testimony of Patsy Ramsey, on December 26, 1996, she discovered her daughter was missing after finding on the kitchen staircase a two-and-a-half-page ransomRansom
Ransom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money or property to secure their release, or it can refer to the sum of money involved.In an early German law, a similar concept was called bad influence...
note demanding $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
118,000 for her safe return—almost the exact value of a bonus her husband had received earlier that year. Despite specific instructions in the ransom note that police and friends not be contacted, she telephoned the police and called family and friends. The local police conducted a cursory search of the house but did not find any obvious signs of a break-in or forced entry. The note suggested that the ransom collection would be monitored and JonBenét would be returned as soon as the money was obtained. John Ramsey made arrangements for the availability of the ransom, which a friend, John Fernie, picked up that morning from a local bank.
Police investigation
In the afternoon of the same day, Boulder Police Detective Linda Arndt asked Fleet White, a friend of the Ramseys, to take John Ramsey and search the house for "anything unusual." John Ramsey and two of his friends started their search in the basement. After first searching the bathroom and "train room", the three of them went to a "wine cellar" room where Ramsey found his daughter's body covered in her special white blanket. She was also found with a nylon cord around her neck, her wrists tied above her head, and duct tape covering her mouth.The police were later claimed by observers to have made several critical mistakes in the investigation, such as not sealing off the crime scene and allowing friends and family in and out of the house once a kidnapping was reported.
Critics of the investigation have since claimed that officers also did not sufficiently attempt to gather forensic evidence before or after JonBenét's body was found, possibly because they immediately suspected the Ramseys in the killing. Some officers holding these suspicions reported them to local media, who began reporting on January 1 that the assistant district attorney thought "it's not adding up"; the fact that the body of the girl was found in her own home was considered highly suspicious by the investigating officers.
The results of the autopsy
Autopsy
An autopsy—also known as a post-mortem examination, necropsy , autopsia cadaverum, or obduction—is a highly specialized surgical procedure that consists of a thorough examination of a corpse to determine the cause and manner of death and to evaluate any disease or injury that may be present...
revealed that JonBenét was killed by strangulation and a skull fracture
Skull fracture
A skull fracture is a break in one or more of the bones in the skull usually occurring as a result of blunt force trauma. If the force of the impact is excessive the bone may fracture at or near the site of the impact...
. A garrote
Garrote
A garrote or garrote vil is a handheld weapon, most often referring to a ligature of chain, rope, scarf, wire or fishing line used to strangle someone....
made from a length of tweed
Tweed (cloth)
Tweed is a rough, unfinished woolen fabric, of a soft, open, flexible texture, resembling cheviot or homespun, but more closely woven. It is made in either plain or twill weave and may have a check or herringbone pattern...
cord and the broken handle of a paintbrush had been used to strangle her; her skull had suffered severe blunt trauma
Physical trauma
Trauma refers to "a body wound or shock produced by sudden physical injury, as from violence or accident." It can also be described as "a physical wound or injury, such as a fracture or blow." Major trauma can result in secondary complications such as circulatory shock, respiratory failure and death...
; there was no evidence of conventional rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
, although sexual assault
Sexual assault
Sexual assault is an assault of a sexual nature on another person, or any sexual act committed without consent. Although sexual assaults most frequently are by a man on a woman, it may involve any combination of two or more men, women and children....
could not be ruled out. The official cause of death was asphyxiation due to strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma.
Crime scene
The bristle end of the paintbrush was found in a tub of Patsy Ramsey's art supplies, but the bottom third was never located despite extensive searching of the house by law enforcement in subsequent days. Experts noted that the construction of the garrote required a special knowledge of knots. Autopsy also revealed that JonBenét had eaten pineapple only a few hours before the murder. Photographs of the home, taken the day JonBenét's body was found, show a bowl of pineapple on the kitchen table with a spoon in it, and police reported finding JonBenet's nine-year-old brother Burke Ramsey's fingerprints on it. However, both Patsy and John claim not to remember putting this bowl on the table or feeding pineapple to JonBenét. (The Ramseys had always maintained that Burke had slept through the entire episode, until awakened several hours after the police arrived.) While it was reported that no footprints led to the house on snow-covered ground, other reporters found that snow around the doors of the house had been cleared away. Police reported no signs of forced entry, although a basement window that had been broken and left unsecured before Christmas, along with other open doors, were not reported to the public until a year later.Later developments
In December 2003, forensic investigators extracted enough material from a mixed blood sample found on JonBenét's underwear to establish a DNADNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
profile. The DNA belongs to an unknown male. The DNA was submitted to the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS)
Combined DNA Index System
The Combined DNA Index System is a DNA database funded by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation . It is a computer system that stores DNA profiles created by federal, state, and local crime laboratories in the United States, with the ability to search the database to assist in the...
, a database containing more than 1.6 million DNA profiles, mainly from convicted felons. The sample has yet to find a match in the database, although it continues to be checked for partial matches on a weekly basis, as are all unmatched samples.
Later investigations also discovered that there were more than 100 burglaries in the Ramseys' neighborhood in the months before JonBenét's murder, and that 38 registered sex offenders were living within a two-mile (3 km) radius of the Ramseys' home—an area that encompasses half the population of the city of Boulder—but that none of the sex offenders had any involvement in the murder.
On August 16, 2006, 41-year-old John Mark Karr (now Alexis Reich), a former schoolteacher, confessed to the murder while being held on child pornography
Child pornography
Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...
charges from Sonoma County, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. Authorities reportedly tracked him down using the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
after he sent e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
s regarding the Ramsey case to Michael Tracey
Michael Tracey
Michael Tracey is an English born scholar and researcher, with a specialty in public service broadcasting. He acquired notoriety as a result of his tenure as the head of the Broadcasting Research Unit in London, Britain's leading think tank dealing with media issues, and later with his...
, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado
University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado...
. Once apprehended in Bangkok
Bangkok
Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, he confessed to being with JonBenét when she died, stating that her death was an accident. When asked if he was innocent, he responded, "No."
However, Karr's DNA did not match that found on JonBenét Ramsey's body. On August 28, 2006, prosecutors announced that no charges would be filed against him for the murder of JonBenét Ramsey. In early December 2006, Department of Homeland Security
United States Department of Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the United States and protectorates from and responding to...
officials reported that federal investigators were continuing to explore whether Karr had been a possible accomplice in the killing.
No evidence has ever come to light that placed the then-married Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
resident Karr near Boulder during the Christmas 1996 crime. Evidence linking Karr to the killing is highly circumstantial in nature. For instance, handwriting samples taken from Karr were said to match the ransom note. In particular, his way of writing the letters E, T and M were described by the media as being very rare.
Letter from District Attorney: Ramsey family deemed innocent
On July 9, 2008, the Boulder District Attorney's office announced that as a result of newly developed DNA sampling and testing techniques, the Ramsey family members are no longer considered suspects in the case. In light of the new DNA evidence, Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy gave a letter to John Ramsey the same day, officially apologizing to the Ramsey family:New District Attorney
In January 2009 Stan Garnett, the new Boulder County D.A., stated he planned to take a fresh look at the case. On February 2, 2009, Boulder police Chief Mark Beckner announced that Garnett was turning the case over to his agency, and that his team would resume investigating the homicide. "Some cases never get solved, but some do," Beckner said. "And you can't give up."Suspicion
Case speculation by experts, media and the parents has supported different hypothesesHypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
. For a long time, the local police supported the hypothesis that her mother Patsy Ramsey injured her child in a fit of rage after the girl had wet her bed on the same night, and then proceeded to kill her either in rage or to cover up the original injury. In November 1997, several handwriting experts determined that Patsy Ramsey more than likely wrote the ransom note. According to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation report, "There are indications that the author of the ransom note is Patricia Ramsey," but they could not definitively prove this assertion.
Another hypothesis was that John Ramsey had been sexually abusing
Child sexual abuse
Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities , indecent exposure with intent to gratify their own sexual desires or to...
his daughter and murdered her as a cover. The Ramseys' son Burke, who was nine at the time of JonBenét's death, was also targeted by speculation, and asked to testify at the grand jury hearing. In 1999, the Governor of Colorado
Governor of Colorado
The Governor of Colorado is the head of the executive branch of Colorado's government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military forces. The governor has a duty to enforce state laws, and the power to either approve or veto bills passed by the Colorado General Assembly, to convene the...
, Bill Owens, told the parents of JonBenét Ramsey to "quit hiding behind their attorneys, quit hiding behind their PR
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
firm." Police suspicions were initially concentrated almost exclusively on the members of the Ramsey family, although the girl's parents had no prior signs of aggression in the public record.
The Ramseys have consistently held that the crime was committed by an intruder. They hired John E. Douglas
John E. Douglas
John Edward Douglas , is a former special agent with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation , one of the first criminal profilers, and criminal psychology author.-Early life:...
, former head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit
Behavioral Science Unit
The Behavioral Science Unit is one of the instructional components of the FBI's Training Division at Quantico, Virginia. Its mission is to develop and provide programs of training, research, and consultation in the behavioral and social sciences for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and law...
, to examine the case. Douglas detailed his assessment of the Ramsey case in a chapter of his 2001 book, The Cases That Haunt Us. While retained by the Ramsey family, he concluded that the Ramseys were not involved in the murder, citing several key points: (a) There was no physical evidence linking John and Patsy to the homicide, and physical evidence found near JonBenét's body suggested the presence of an unidentified person in the Ramsey home. (b) There was no plausible motive for the Ramseys to kill their daughter. Douglas regarded the bed-wetting hypothesis as so unprecedented as to verge on absurdity and furthermore inconsistent with Patsy's established behavior. (c) There was no evidence of physical abuse, neglect, sexual molestation, or serious personality disorders in the Ramsey household prior to the murder, some combination of which are associated with most cases of children killed by parents. (d) The behavior of John and Patsy Ramsey after the crime was consistent with the parents of other murdered children, and was inconsistent with known cases of parents who killed their children. Noting that a large percentage of child homicides are committed by parents and family of the victim, Douglas did not fault the original investigators for closely scrutinizing the Ramsey family. Douglas did, however, criticize authorities in Boulder for what he described as a deeply flawed investigation (eg., not securing the crime scene) that was further hampered by political infighting and refusal to ask for outside help. At the time, Boulder police normally handled one or two homicides per year, and had little experience with anything resembling the Ramsey case. He cites several other cases in which FBI consultancy or hands-on investigation helped local authorities resolve puzzling homicides outside their usual experience. Douglas also concluded that it was unlikely that anyone would resolve the case. The most likely scenario based on the evidence, Douglas speculated, was that JonBenét was killed by a young, inexperienced criminal {eg, the possible digital penetration of the girl's vagina was consistent with other young sex offenders motivated by a naive curiosity about female anatomy) who was sexually obsessed with the child and/or who wanted to extort money from her wealthy family. Douglas suspected that the ransom note was written before the crime, which might have been an attempted kidnapping gone wrong. The ransom note, Douglas noted, was peppered with what appeared to be phrases borrowed from motion pictures like Ransom (1996) and Speed (1994) which, he speculated, inspired the perpetrator.
Lou Smit
Lou Smit
Andrew Louis "Lou" Smit was an American police detective in Colorado Springs, Colorado who worked on a number of notable cases before his retirement in 1996, and then was recalled to work on the murder of JonBenét Ramsey...
, a seasoned detective who came out of retirement to assist Boulder authorities with the case in early 1997, originally suspected the parents, but after assessing all the evidence that had been collected, also concluded that an intruder had committed the crime. In his book Cases That Haunt Us, Douglas writes that he quibbled with a few of Smit's interpretations but agreed with the general thrust of Smit's investigation and conclusions. Douglas particularly praised Smit's discovery in autopsy photos of what appeared to be previously-overlooked evidence of a "stun gun" having been used to subdue JonBenét. While no longer an official investigator on the case, Smit continued to work on it until his death in 2010.
Stephen Singular, investigative journalist and author of the book Presumed Guilty — An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, The Media and the Culture of Pornography, suggests the existence of a connection of the murder to the industry of child pornography. He refers to consultations with cyber-crime specialists who believe that JonBenét, due to her beauty pageant experience, was the perfect kind of child who could be dragged into the world of child pornography and was a natural candidate to attract attention and pedophiles.
With such contradictory evidence, a grand jury failed to indict the Ramseys or anyone else in the murder of JonBenét. Not long after the murder, the parents moved to a new home in Atlanta. Two of the lead investigators in the case resigned, one because he believed that the investigation had incompetently overlooked the intruder hypothesis, and the other because he believed that the investigation had failed to successfully prosecute the Ramseys. Even so, remaining investigators are still trying to identify a possible suspect. Patricia "Patsy" Ramsey died of ovarian cancer on June 24, 2006, at the age of 49.
Defamation lawsuits
Several defamation lawsuits have ensued since JonBenét's murder. L. Lin Wood was the plaintiff's lead attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey and their son Burke, and has prosecuted defamation claims on their behalf against St. Martin's PressSt. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in the Flatiron Building in New York City. Currently, St. Martin's Press is one of the United States' largest publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under eight imprints, which include St. Martin's Press , St...
, Time, Inc., The Fox News Channel, American Media, Inc., Star
Star (magazine)
Star is an American celebrity tabloid magazine.-History:Star was founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1974 as competition to the tabloid National Enquirer with its headquarters in New York City. In the late 1980s it moved its offices to Tarrytown, NY and in 1990 Murdoch sold the magazine to The Enquirers...
, The Globe
The Globe (tabloid)
Globe is a supermarket tabloid first published North America on November 10, 1954 in Montreal, Canada as Midnight by Joe Azaria and John Vader and became the chief competitor to the National Enquirer during the 1960s. In 1978 it changed its name to the Midnight Globe after its publisher, Globe...
, Court TV
Court TV
truTV is an American cable television network owned by Turner Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Time Warner. The network launched as Court TV in 1991, changing to truTV in 2008...
and The New York Post. John and Patsy Ramsey were also sued in two separate defamation lawsuits arising from the publication of their book, The Death of Innocence, brought by two individuals named in the book as having been investigated by Boulder police as suspects in JonBenét's murder. The Ramseys were defended in those lawsuits by Lin Wood and three other Atlanta attorneys, James C. Rawls, Eric P. Schroeder, and S. Derek Bauer, who obtained dismissal of both lawsuits including an in-depth decision by U.S. District Court Judge Julie Carnes that "abundant evidence" in the murder case pointed to an intruder having committed the crime.
In November 2006, Rod Westmoreland, a friend of JonBenét Ramsey's father, filed a defamation suit against Keith Greer, who posted a message on an Internet forum using the pseudonym "undertheradar". Greer had accused Westmoreland of participating in the kidnapping and murder. Greer has defended his statement.
Case reopening
In October 2010, the case was reopened. New interviews were conducted following a fresh inquiry by a committee which included state and federal investigators. Police were expected to use the latest DNA technology in their investigation.External links
- RockyMountainNews.com - Exclusive interviews, one of the largest archives of JonBenét Ramsey coverage in the world
- Complete Ramsey Case File from "Court TV"
- Denver AM 670 KLTT Talk Show Case Theory
- DenverPost's evidence list linking Patsy Ramsey
- JonBenet - Crime LibraryCrime LibraryThe Crime Library is a website documenting major crimes, criminals, and trials, forensics, and criminal profiling from books, police reports, crime television shows, and writers...
- The Smoking Gun - JonBenet Ramsey Case Documents
- Crime Magazine: The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey
- Analysis of The JonBenet Ramsey Ransom Note
- The Mystery of JonBenét Ramsey by Joyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol OatesJoyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...