The Case:It was the day after Christmas in 1996. The town of Boulder, Colorado was quiet, people were in their homes with family and friends, enjoying their Christmas breaks.
One family, the Ramseys, were about to have their lives changed forever.
On the morning of December 26th, Patsy Ramsey finds a two and a half page ransom note on her staircase, alerting her to the fact that her six year old daughter, JonBenet, was missing. Her subsequent call to police would rock her life and draw the eyes of the nation for years to come.
JonBenet Ramsey was born in Atlanta, Georgia on August 6, 1990. She was the youngest of two children, her older brother, Burke Ramsey, being only 3 when she was born.
Her seemingly unusual name is a mash up of her father's first and middle names, John Bennet.
John Ramsey was the president of Access Graphics, and in 1991 he moved his family to Boulder, CO to be closer to the company's headquarters.
Once the family had settled in, Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet's mother began to enroll her daughter into various child beauty pageants. JonBenet won several titles during her short life, including that of Miss Colorado and National Tiny Miss Beauty. She was a star among children, her cheerful smile and traditional American beauty capturing the eyes of all who saw her.
Chances are, had she lived to adulthood, she would have continued to be a starlet, or at least win many more beauty pageant titles. But unfortunately, all eyes were on her, and not everyone was kind.
On December 26th, Patsy Ramsey finds a note on her staircase with explicit and detailed instructions about a money drop. The amount being demanded was $118,000, an eerily close number to her husband's Christmas bonus that year. The note commands that nobody else should be told about this, not the police, not family, not the FBI, not even 'a stray dog'.
The note also insinuates that some foreign power knows who John Ramsey is and wants his money. They say that if he doesn't cooperate, it's fine, they'll kill her as he isn't the only 'fat cat around'.
John Ramsey immediately begins to cooperate. He sends a close family friend to the bank to withdraw the money and waits for the call for where to make the drop. As the note was directed at John, he is the responsible party to make sure that his daughter is returned alive, and none of the terrible things, such as a decapitation, happen to her if he does not comply.
Patsy on the other hand, makes a call to local police. After searching the house and coming up empty handed, she calls friends and family who come over to help look for the girl, despite the warning that the family is being watched and the girl would die if anyone else was alerted.
Among those who came to the house were the Pughs. Linda Pugh was a hired housekeeper to the Ramseys, and her husband Mervin was a handyman. They also had a daughter, Ariana, who was close friends with JonBenet.
The Boulder PD has been under fire for the awful handling of the crime scene. In an ongoing kidnapping investigation, it's standard procedure, and just plain common sense, to keep outsiders away from the home of the kidnap victim, and to keep the family where they're at. During the course of the initial investigation, family and friends were running all over the house, compromising any evidence the police could have discovered, and several people were able to come and go as they pleased.
It was because of this that the actual crime scene was so badly compromised. John Ramsey and a family friend found his daughter's body in the family wine cellar, adjacent to the basement. He carried her lifeless form up the stairs and to the living room, essentially destroying the crime scene in the process.
Her body was covered by her favorite blanket, a nylon cord was wrapped around her neck, her hands were tied over her head, and her mouth was duct-taped shut. John Ramsey will probably never forget that moment, when he first saw her body.
I'm not blaming the man, any parent in that situation would rush to their child's body. It's a natural reaction, even if you had proper investigative training, your initial thought wouldn't be about evidence, but of your child.
Nevertheless, the evidence was severely compromised.
The girl's corpse was taken to the coroner for examination. The cause of death was strangulation. A rope with a broken wooden handle as a tourniquet was found still on the body. She also had been hit in the head, hard enough to fracture her skull and start a brain bleed, which caused swelling and would have eventually killed her if she had not been strangled. There were signs of vaginal trauma, probably due to a sexual assault, however there was no semen found on the body. The only DNA found on the body was in the girl's underwear and under her fingernails. She had urine in her underwear, which is possibly due to her being frightened, or just because she was a small child, or even if someone had done anything forcefully she might have peed. There was also small amounts of blood in her underwear, likely due to the sexual assault.
It was also noted that she had eaten pineapple not long before her death, and that the blow to her head happened somewhere between 45 minutes to 2 hours before she was actually killed.
Given that there were no signs of a break in, the first assumption was that it was someone she knew, and the police turned to the family.
John and Patsy Ramsey were interviewed together, and it was noted that Patsy was acting strange and aloof. Burke, the 9 year old son, was interviewed only once, by a social worker. While police would have liked to interview him more, it's unlikely that anything would have come from it. The only thing found linking him to the crime were his fingerprints on the bowl of pineapple that his sister had eaten from shortly before her supposed kidnapping. Not very compelling evidence.
John Ramsey was another obvious suspect, but his handwriting very obviously did not match the handwriting on the ransom note. Unfortunately, his DNA would have been all over the body due to the fact that he carried her upstairs. This has led many to believe he was somehow involved and used that incident to his advantage.
Patsy Ramsey, however, remains one of the most compelling suspects. Her behavior during the investigations was explained as erratic, and when taking the handwriting analysis, she went out of her way to write out the ransom number in letters as opposed to numbers, as if attempting to cover her tracks. A handwriting analysis never conclusively proved that it was not her handwriting, but the woman who took the analysis believes that nobody in the family was involved.
Another common suspect is Linda Hoffman-Pugh, the Ramsey's housekeeper. She would have had a key and access to the house, and would have known the layout of the home. It's also rumored that her husband, Mervin Pugh was involved in forcing their daughter into child pornography, although there is no conclusive evidence towards this theory.
The police were just as split as the onlookers by this investigation. Several clues pointed towards the killer being someone JonBenet knew, and possibly even someone in the house. The ransom note had been written on a notepad from the Ramsey's home, there were no signs of a break in, and there were no signs of struggle in the home or her bedroom, leading to the conclusion that JonBenet knew and trusted her attacker.
The court attempted to indict John and Patsy in the murder, but their lawyer threw it out, claiming there was not enough substantial evidence and the case was dropped. A common theory is that Patsy Ramsey had hit JonBenet in the head when she discovered she had wet the bed, and the whole thing was a cover up so she wouldn't get blamed for child-abuse and manslaughter.
While nobody was ever found guilty by the court system, many years later a man stepped forward claiming to have killed her in a sexual assault gone wrong, but his story was proven false within 18 hours, as photos of his were found at the time on the other side of the country.
The case is still open, as nobody has ever found the killer. The nation is still split about what actually happened to the girl. The family continues to live under the shadow of the horrific event, save for Patsy, who died of ovarian cancer at age 49.
While we may never know what actually happened to her, that doesn't stop the world from speculation. From those who believe it was an inside job, to those who believe she was hidden and reborn as pop singer Katie Perry, the theories surrounding this young girl's death will probably never cease. And neither will the horror and pain of those who knew and loved her.
My Theory:In all honesty, it's hard to have a conclusive theory in this case. There's more speculation than there are facts out there at this point.
Throughout researching this case, I've becoming more and more sure that Patsy Ramsey was deeply involved, if not the killer herself. I don't say this because I'm just jumping on the popular bandwagon for no reason though, I've seen a lot of different theories out there, but this is the only one that makes any sense to me.
When Patsy was younger, she too was a beauty pageant queen, winning the title of Miss West Virginia.
I'm a firm believer that 99% of beauty pageants and other similar ventures aimed towards young people and children are covers for a lucrative sex trade. Child pornographers and pedophiles flock from all over the place to watch these young people parade around as adults. Shows like Toddlers in Tiaras and whatever that show is with Honey Booboo are favorites of pedophiles for a reason.
When Patsy began to involve JonBenet in the pageant lifestyle, JonBenet was a very young child, and as such wouldn't have known anything different. They toured different states and JonBenet won the hearts of people everywhere she went. She was an all American Beauty, and ripe for the picking for the perverted industry.
The neighborhood the Ramseys lived in was strangely not up-to-par, at least not in my mind for a man who made so much money. There were several sex offenders in the area, and break-ins were not uncommon. That's the first thing that I found strange; why would a family with a beautiful and famous daughter, not to mention another child, move anywhere near a place with multiple sex offenders? Especially if you had money and it was an option to live anywhere else.
When JonBenet's body was being examined, it was discovered that there had been some recent sexual assault in the hours leading up to her death. This is another topic the country is split on, as her family physician claimed that he had never seen any signs of physical or sexual abuse before, saying that both she and her brother were in good physical condition.
Her death would have had to take place sometime in the night. Patsy called the police around 5:45 in the morning, having discovered her daughter was missing about 45 minutes earlier. I find it unusual that nobody in the house heard anything, so it's likely that JonBenet knew her attacker and therefore neither screamed nor fought against them.
Since there was also no sign of a break-in, it had to have been someone who was either in the house already, or who had a key to get into the house, which is what has led to the speculation surrounding the housekeeper. It's also possible that someone inside let someone else in, which is what I believe happened.
I believe that Patsy woke her daughter at some point in the night and brought her downstairs. JonBenet ate some of the pineapple that her brother had left on the table the night before. Patsy then hit JonBenet over the head with a heavy object, although the weapon was never found.
Because the blow was so hard, JonBenet would have fallen unconscious. Someone could then have taken her to the basement and sexually assaulted her. Someone then strangled JonBenet, covered her corpse with her favorite blanket, and gone upstairs to clean up. Patsy then wrote the 'ransom note' to cover her daughter's disappearance and then gone back to bed, then pretended to find the note early the next morning. I also think JonBenet was unconscious the entire time.
In 2008, new DNA testing data made it possible to identify DNA on JonBenet clothes. Mary Lacy, the local DA, believed that no woman could kill her child, and as such has been accused of ignoring evidence that she doesn't want to see. Either way, the family was given a clean bill when the DNA evidence proved that an unknown male had assaulted JonBenet, although who this unknown male has never been identified.
With this evidence, I don't know where to stand. I still think that Patsy Ramsey was highly involved, although she perhaps didn't commit the actual murder, or sexual assault. I also believe the entire situation was brought on due to some involvement in the sex industry.
What I do know is that someone killed this child in cold blood. She was only 6 years old, barely even old enough to be in school. The police did a terrible job and let the killer walk free. Was it because Patsy was paying people off? Was it because there was an elaborate coverup to hide a secret child pornography ring? Could it even have been to recreate JonBenet as Katy Perry years later? There's no way of knowing.
But you have to admit, it's strange that Patsy was up that early during the Christmas holidays. And that her handwriting so closely matched the ransom note. And that the note knew exactly how much money they had just received in a bonus.
Conclusion:There is so much more potential information out there, but it's all so jumbled and confusing, just like this entire situation. It's so horribly sad that JonBenet might never be avenged. It's even sadder if her own mother killed her in a fit of jealous rage. But we may never understand any of it.
What we do know is that there is danger everywhere. JonBenet was in her own home, surrounded by people she loved and trusted. But she was also an icon, a starlet, constantly in the public eye. There's already so much danger, it's seems foolish to me to parade your children around as adults. It's almost as bad as inviting a pedophile into your own home, which might have been what Patsy did.
Regardless of how it happened, the death was tragic and the family would never recover. Patsy died of ovarian cancer at 49. John went on to remarry. Burke continues to live his life under the shadow of the death so many years ago.
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