Hi guys! I know it’s been a while, but I’m hoping to extend the amount of these I can make in the upcoming months starting with this case. I decided to cover a case that has been ongoing for almost 30 years, though it is increasingly relevant and has recently been put into a Netflix documentary called “ Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey.” I thought that now would be an appropriate time to revisit one of the most notoriously unsolved cases of our generation, that is of who killed six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey.
Before:
On August 6, 1990, JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was born in Atlanta, Georgia to parents Patricia and John Bennett Ramsey. A year later, the family moved to Boulder, Colorado when her father’s company, Access Graphics, had merged with Lockheed Martin. Her father was a multimillionaire and when settled in Boulder, they lived in a spacious family home. Along with her parents, Ramsey lived with her brother, Burke, who was three years older than her. She had three more older siblings as well, but they were from her father’s previous marriage and all of them were over the age of 18 when they moved to Colorado so they did not come with.
From an extremely young age Ramsey competed in beauty pageants, winning multiple prestigious titles by the time she was six. In this way, she took after her mother who also competed in pageants and was crowned Miss West Virginia in 1977. Ramsey was brought up through a comfortable lifestyle and this was supposedly the primary reason she became a target.
At around 5:30 in the morning on December 26, 1996, Ramsey’s mother woke up to find a two-page ransom letter on the back stairs stating that her daughter had been kidnapped and that in exchange for her return, they demanded $118,000. Despite the letter saying not to contact the police, Ramsey’s mother did anyway and the police arrived at just before 6 a.m. Immediately, the officer, Rick French, performed a search of the house; however, he neglected to open the door that Ramsey would later be discovered behind. About two hours later the first detective arrived at the house and ordered a “top to bottom” search of the house to look for anything unusual. Well into the afternoon, John Ramsey discovered his daughter’s body lying dead in a room in their basement. It looked like she had been strangled and her mouth and neck were covered with duct tape. The next day, the coroner had determined that her cause of death was strangulation and it was done with a garrote made from cord and one of her mother’s paintbrushes. She had multiple contusions on her body and signs of sexual assault were present. By the end of the day, her death was ruled a homicide.
After:
To this day, Ramsey’s killer has not been discovered but there are a number of speculations among the public and authorities that are backed up with evidence from her case; however, the most common theories are placed with the idea that the murder was committed by someone within her family.
The parents
Similar to any other murder case, the people closest to the victim are almost immediately considered suspects in the case due to their proximity. However, they are most often quickly ruled out and then the investigation proceeds. In this case, due to it still being unsolved, one of the most common theories is that Ramsey was killed by her parents.
For starters, John Ramsey, her father, was the one to discover the body and authorities report that when asked to search the house he almost immediately went down to the basement where she was found dead. Suspicions turned to John and Patsy Ramsey as many believed that it was too much of a coincidence for her body to have been found immediately inside their massive house. Another suspicious factor was that the ransom amount was exactly the amount of money that John Ramsey had received as a bonus from his job. In addition, a kidnapping for a ransom was an extremely rare event at the time.
In Patsy’s case, when she and John Ramsey were asked to provide handwriting samples to be compared to the handwritten ransom note, it was discovered that the “first draft” of the ransom note had been written in Patsy’s notepad and their handwriting had some similarities. Whereas, John Ramsey was ruled out completely. In addition, the ligature used in Ramsey’s death was made from Patsy Ramsey’s paint supplies, specifically with a broken paint brush handle.
New case updates:
As of January 28, John Ramsey, now 81, told CNN that he would ask Boulder Police to do more DNA testing to help solve the case due to new genetic technology. This same technology has been used to solve high-profile cases such as the Golden State Killer. It uses DNA evidence and traditional genealogy to find connections between people, which helps to identify perpetrators despite not having their DNA in the system. The case has swung back into action and it is now considered an active and ongoing homicide investigation.
Sources:
“JonBenet Ramsey’s father John pushes for more DNA testing to be used to identify the killer”. CNN, 28 January 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/28/us/jonbenet-ramsey-john-case-update/index.html. Accessed 17 February 2025.
“JonBenét Ramsey’s Murder and Investigation Timeline.” Biography, 26 November 2024, https://www.biography.com/crime/jonbenet-ramsey-murder-investigation-timeline. Accessed 17 February 2025.
Moriarty, Erin, and Mary Murphy. “Who killed JonBenét Ramsey? Murdered girl’s father believes DNA could reveal killer.” CBS News, 22 December 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-killed-jonbenet-ramsey-colorado-murder-john-ramsey-believes-dna-could-reveal-killer-48-hours/. Accessed 17 February 2025.
