AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY: Who Really Killed JonBenét Ramsey?

“Do roses know their thorns can hurt?” – a quote attributed to JonBenét Ramsey from Lawrence Schiller’s Perfect Murder, Perfect Town 

Shawn Helton
21st Century Wire

It’s been nearly 20 years since the cold-blooded murder of JonBenét Ramsey shocked America.  

On December 26, 1996, the lifeless body of a 6-year-old girl, JonBenét Ramsey, was found brutally murdered in the basement of her family home. The grisly discovery stunned a quiet and affluent community in Boulder, Colorado and quickly became one of the most disturbing unsolved crimes in the United States over the past two decades.

The killing of JonBenét was an American tragedy and still to this day, it remains a haunting case and enigma.

Below we’ll examine some of the key elements surrounding the Ramsey investigation, along with some of the prevailing theories concerning JonBenét’s homicide…

Throughout the course of this crime analysis, there will be references to a compilation of media reports, independent investigative reports, as well as the court case, Wolf v. Ramsey in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia which convened in 2003.

The 2003 case stated that a Boulder journalist named Robert Christian Wolf filed a $50 million defamation suit against John Ramsey and wife Patsy Ramsey after being referred to by the family as a possible suspect in the death of JonBenét in the couple’s controversial book, Death of Innocence.

During the Wolf v. Ramsey court case, some shocking details surrounding JonBenét’s murder were reviewed once again. Subsequently, John and Patsy Ramsey were sued in two separate defamation lawsuits (Linda Hoffman-Pugh) after the publication of their controversial book about the murder of their daughter.

‘DARK HOLIDAY’ – The crime taped scene at the Ramsey residence in University Hill on December 26, 1996. (Image Source: eonline)

Christmas in Boulder 1996

JonBenét Ramsey was discovered dead in what has been referred to as the ‘wine cellar’ of her parent’s Boulder mansion just one day after Christmas.

According to investigators, the official cause of the young child’s death was “asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma.” The savage scene indicated a possible sexual assault based on DNA evidence collected.

Court transcripts confirmed that around the time of JonBenét’s death, an unknown object (possibly a flashlight) was used to cause blunt force trauma to her head. However, the strangulation came 45 minutes to two hours after the blow to the head (with the killer behind the victim).

The initial inspection of JonBenét’s body revealed that the child beauty pageant contestant was bound to a broken paintbrush, an improvised garrote with a slip knot that included some of her own hair. A closer forensic investigation would later uncover that the duck tape placed over JonBenét’s mouth, allegedly contained hair from a beaver. Similarly, it was discovered that unidentified dark animal hairs were found on her hands. Nothing in the home matched the animal hair samples found on duct tape.

According to the The Colorado Bureau of Investigations, there were fibers found on the duct tape that were also similar to a jacket worn by JonBenét’s mother on Christmas day.

Those close to the case would later remark how many elements of the crime scene appeared to be staged – as the cord, body positioning, additional bodily trauma, as well as the white blanket covering JonBenét and the Barbie nightgown found near her, indicated manipulation after the crime occurred.

In a report by the now retired forensic pathologist and medical examiner, Dr. Michael Doberson, “The right side of [JonBenét’s] face as well as on the lower left back are patterned injuries most consistent with the application of a stun gun.”

According to additional court documents, “Male DNA was found under JonBenet’s right hand fingernail that does not match that of any Ramsey.” The same court documents also stated, “Defendants also assert that male DNA was found under Jon-Benet’s left hand fingernail, which also does not match that of any Ramsey,” and that male DNA was found on the deceased’s underwear but did not match any other Ramsey family member.

The Ramseys assert that JonBenét was last seen alive around 10pm on Christmas day after attending a Christmas party at neighbors the White family. Along with her brother Burke, the young girl would be put to bed shortly after coming home from that party.

JonBenét’s time of death has remained undetermined, though autopsy results suggest that sometime between 10pm on Christmas night and the early hours of December 26th. Reports confirm that rigor mortis had set in on the body and an odor of decomposition had also been present. It would later be revealed that JonBenét had undigested pieces of pineapple still in her stomach and small intestine.

According to other investigative reports, it’s inconclusive whether the 6 year-old had the pineapple an hour or two prior to her death or earlier in the day.

However, JonBenét did digest cracked crab she ate at the Christmas party hosted by the White family, suggesting the pineapple was served later that night at home. Interestingly, JonBenét’s mother Patsy, claimed to not remember giving her daughter fruit that day or night, even though the bowl containing the pineapple had her and her son’s fingerprints on it. Burke Ramsey‘s fingerprints were also found on a nearby glass.

‘RANSOM PLOT?’ – Above is the apparent ransom note found by Patsy Ramsey. Oddly, John Ramsey had recently received a holiday bonus nearly the exact amount demanded in the note (Image Source: pintrest)

The Ransom Note & 911

Early on December 26th, Patsy Ramsey (possibly in the same clothes), awoke at 5:33am and was said to have made her way down a staircase known to those familiar with the large house. Sitting on the stairs, the former Miss West Virginia found an apparent ransom note which stated that her abducted daughter was ‘safe and unharmed’ but demanded $118,000 for her return.

Strangely, this was the exact amount that her husband John Ramsey received for a Christmas bonus that year, while working as the “President and Chief Executive Officer of Access Graphics, a computer services company and a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin.”

After discovering that JonBenét was missing from her room, Patsy made a distressing 911 call to police at 5:52am, where son Burke was said to have been heard talking in the background. However, John and Patsy maintained that their son was not yet awake at this time.

Patsy then called her neighbor and close friends, Priscilla White, as well as John and Barbara Fernie, between 5:55am and 6am. Boulder police arrived at the scene some seven minutes later to find a frantic Patsy and an oddly clam John. There were no signs of forcible entry at the residence, which complicated the purported kidnapping plot

Below is an enhanced version of the Ramsey 911 call seen in a recent CBS series examining the case. The Ramsey 911 call on December 26th, has caused a tremendous amount of speculation about a possible family cover-up in the murder of JonBenét…

An in-depth investigative site revealed that Boulder Police Detective Melissa Hickman reviewed the 911 call and transcribed it after having it enhanced at the Aerospace Corporation. Similarly, Lawrence Schiller‘s book Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: The Uncensored Story of the JonBenet Murder and the Grand Jury’s Search for the Final Truth, suggested that the voice of Burke Ramsey is supposedly heard in the back ground of the 911 call stating, “Please, what do I do?,” in addition to CBS‘s findings above.

The December 26th phone call to police would be the second 911 call from the Ramsey home over a three-day period. The first was on December 23rd, during a party at the Ramseys house, which included guests said to be from the upper echelon of Boulder society. However, a complete list of attendees was not made public and the reason for the first 911 call was never fully explained as the unknown caller hung up without saying a word.

Schiller’s book Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, stated that Linda Hoffman-Pugh, the Ramseys longtime housekeeper named some of the families who attended the December 23rd Christmas party:

“At 5:30 P.M. Santa showed up. By then the Barnhills, the Fernies, the Stines, Pinky Barber, and the Whites, who came with Priscilla’s parents, had all arrived. Maybe eight couples and their children. Most of the men gathered by the spiral staircase. John made drinks for everybody from the butler’s kitchen. The kids played in the living room by the big Christmas tree. That’s where Santa read his little verses about everyone. This year, Mrs. Claus was there too, Santa looked kind of sick.”

According to FOX 13, former Boulder police chief Mark Beckner, stated the following during a ‘Ask Me Anything’ segment on Reddit. Here’s a revealing passage from that discussion:

“The FBI told us they’d never seen a 2.5 page ransom note,” [and that] “No note has ever been written at the scene, and then left at the scene with the dead victim at the scene, other than this case.”

In addition to Beckner’s Reddit commentary, the online magazine The Federalist stated that, “The FBI’s Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit had noted that JonBenét’s murderer almost certainly hadn’t committed a murder before. They also concluded separately that the ransom note was written by someone intelligent but criminally unsophisticated.”

Continuing, the same article summarized another important aspect in the Ramsey case,“…lab tests also showed it was Patsy’s Sharpie pen used to write the note. The pen used to write the note—an FBI profiler estimates it took 21 minutes for the author to practice on the pad and then compose it—was found in a cup with other Sharpies right next to the phone in the kitchen where Patsy kept them. It was very conscientious of the murderer to put everything back where he found it.”

Though Patsy was never conclusively proven to have had a hand in writing the purported ransom note, of those asked to give written samples, she was the only person police could not completely eliminate.

According to a longtime FBI agent, the note contained deliberate mistakes and strange manipulative elements in an attempt to confuse authorities.

The FBI was said to have arrived at the Ramsey house some fifteen minutes after the body was discovered. Schiller’s Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, also noted the protocol of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the following manner:

“FBI’s standard procedure is to investigate the parents and the immediate family first and then move outward in circles. Then would come people who had frequent access to the child–babysitters and domestic help. The next circle would contain friends and business associates. The outermost circle would be strangers. The technique was to avoid leaping over these concentric circles too quickly.”

According to the Bureau of Justice statistics from 1980 – 2008, 78.1 percent of the time, offenders were not strangers to the victim, and in more than 56 percent of cases, the victim was at least acquainted with an offender.

HOUSE OF HORROR – The police taped scene outside the Ramsey residence following the discovery of their murdered daughter (Image Source: ajc)

Spoiling the Scene 

Upon arriving at the Ramsey residence on December 26th, Boulder policeman Rick French, conducted a quick search of the house, looking for possible intruder exit points. French failed to search the wine cellar room where JonBenét would later be discovered, because he noticed that the wooden latch on the door was on the opposite side for a door exiting the house. Around this time, French was also given the alleged ransom note by the Ramseys. It was a two and a half page note, later described as one of the longest ransom notes in the history of kidnapping cases in America.

At least two searches were conducted by JonBenét’s father John and family friend Fleet White, Priscilla’s husband, in the Ramseys’ basement sometime between 6:06 – 8:00am. Shortly after arriving at the Ramsey residence, Fleet searched the basement alone including the wine cellar where JonBenét’s body was located within fifteen minutes of arriving. Documents would confirm the search effort in the following description,“Mr. White also opened the door to the wine cellar room, but he could not see anything inside because it was dark and he could not find the light switch.” 

Fleet then testified that a window in the basement playroom had been broken and that underneath that window, there was a suitcase and piece of broken glass.

Early on investigators were concerned about the lack of debris and other forensic evidence in and around the window thought to have been used in the alleged abduction/murder plot.

December 26th, at 6:45am, John calls and leaves a message for Michael Archuleta his pilot. At 7:00am, his 9 year-old son Burke was dressed and taken to the White residence. Also at this time, Rev. Rolland Hoverstock from St. John’s Episcopalian Church arrived at the Ramsey residence.

The UK’s Guardian described other compelling forensic details of the case:

“Eventually, other details emerged which competed with the original picture. Though there was no sign of forced entry, there was that small broken window into the basement that had been left open. Though there were no footprints in the snow, there was no snow on the part of the lawn that would need to be crossed to get in through the window. There was a footprint near the body left by a Hi-Tec boot. There was a latent handprint on the doorframe that didn’t match any of the Ramseys’.”

‘MAP OF MURDER’ – Here’s a bird’s eye graphic detailing the Ramsey’s basement area and the hidden wine cellar room where JonBenét’s body was found (Image Source: denverpost.com)

In the striking book Programmed to Kill by writer and researcher David McGowan, we see an examination of the Ramsey case in a chapter entitled Boulder. In the following passage, McGowan underscored that the crime scene had been mishandled from the beginning:

“For reasons that have never been adequately explained, the investigation was compromised from the very beginning. Officers inexplicably failed to secure the crime scene, allowing the family’s pastor to come and go from the home. No effort was made to prevent contamination of any potential evidence. Detectives did not arrive on the scene until 8:10am, over two hours after the first patrol officers arrived. It took another twelve hours for the coroner to arrive (and once there, he reportedly spent just ten minutes examining the body and the crime scene).”

Detectives Linda Arndt and Fred Patterson arrived at the Ramsey’s residence at 8:10am and are given a rundown of the scene by Officer French from the Boulder police department.

Detective Arndt then prepped the Ramseys for the potential ransom phone call, tapping the house phone. Around this time, the police’s team of victims’ advocates who are skilled in dealing with trauma, arrive with breakfast food. Unfortunately, as was the case with many elements of the Ramsey crime scene, crucial evidence was potentially erased, as the team of advocates inadvertently wiped down parts of the kitchen.

Arndt would later remark that there was no acknowledgement from anyone inside the house that the ransom phone call deadline came and went. John would later be seen examining the contents of his mail during the developing tragedy at his home.

Detectives Arndt and Patterson sealed off JonBenét’s bedroom some time around 10:30am but did not block off the entire house as a potential crime scene. In fact, friends and family moved freely throughout the house most of the day.

At 10:30, Arndt calls for backup at least twice while left in the house alone with the Ramsey family and friends (seven in total), she is told that all officers are in a Boulder Police meeting and they received her message. Later a qualifier was given by BPD stating that they were short-staffed.

At 1pm,  Arndt decided that John should do a ‘top to bottom’ search of the house with specific instructions not to touch anything. John, Fleet and supposedly another family friend, John Fernie, trekked downstairs into the basement, during the tense wait for the alleged kidnappers to call – a call that never happened.

John located JonBenét almost immediately at 1:05pm in the wine cellar hidden in the basement of the Ramsey house. Upon discovering JonBenét, John reportedly ripped the duct tape from her mouth and untied her hands bringing her lifeless body upstairs. Arndt then grabbed the young girl placing her near the family Christmas tree after a strange nonverbal exchange with John. Patsy was also said to have grieved over the body at this time.

While it was a undeniably an emotional situation, Arndt made a mental note of the disturbance to the crime scene as this was not officially a homicide.

Twenty minutes later, after additional officers secure the house and the forensic team returns, John places a phone call to his personal pilot but is instructed by police to stay in Boulder.

Sometime later, testimony revealed a time discrepancy over the timeline of John’s basement search, as it appeared to contradict other time frames of the initial crime scene investigation. Some researchers contend that John perhaps searched the basement before 6am based on statements given to authorities.

Detective Arndt attempted to question Patsy further but the family’s lawyer Mike Bynum stepped in blocking the inquiry into his client. The Ramseys did not give formal police interviews until four months after JonBenét’s murder.

According to The Daily Mail‘s report, “They also assembled a team of private investigators, a public relations guru, an ex-FBI criminal profiler and two handwriting experts to look at the ransom note, arguing that the local police had botched the initial investigation.”

In a 1999, during a Good Morning America interview with Detective Arndt, described John’s discovery of JonBenét, “I decided that everything made sense in that instance. And, um, I knew what happened. I mean that’s, I knew what happened to her.”

Below is Arndt’s interview on ABC News, discussing the behavioral anomalies she witnessed at the Ramsey residence on December 26th…

During the course of that interview Arndt remarked how long it seemed before officers returned to the house following her radio to police, prompting the detective to become fearful of her own life waiting for backup, after witnessing the severe bodily trauma to JonBenét.

In May of 1997, Detective Arndt and Detective Melissa Hickman were dropped from the case.

‘MEDIA SPOTLIGHT’ – Many media interviews featuring John and Patsy Ramsey have often displayed uncomfortable body language. Furthermore, they were never seen consoling one another by police the day their daughter was discovered murdered (Image Source: crime.about)

Casting Suspicion

On December 27th, it was reported that Patsy’s friend Pam Griffin, the seamstress that designed JonBenet’s pageant costumes went to comfort Patsy, who was grieving at the Fernie residence. Here’s a passage describing that encounter in a Newsweek report three years after the murder of JonBenét:

“At the Boulder home of John and Barbara Fernie, friends of the Ramseys’, Pam, a former registered nurse, touched Patsy’s skin and realized she was dehydrated. She brought Patsy some water and made her drink it. “”You need to brush your hair,” Pam told her. “”You need to lie down a little bit.” But Patsy stood up to greet each new person who arrived to offer condolences, and as she did, tears streamed down her face. Hours later, Patsy finally took Pam’s advice and lay down in the bedroom.”

“Patsy reached up and touched Pam’s face. “”Couldn’t you fix this for me?” she asked. Pam thought she was delirious. It was as if Patsy were asking her to fix a ripped seam. “”Patsy said something like, “We didn’t mean for that to happen’,” Pam would say later. Pam couldn’t say why, but she remembered feeling as if Patsy knew who killed JonBenet but was afraid to say.“

Back in the spring of 1996, Griffin put local dance instructor, Kit Andre in touch with Patsy to help teach JonBenét a routine for the pageant circuit. Andre would later be quoted by media, stating the following:

“She was a fabulous child,” I told Patsy at JonBenet’s memorial service in Boulder. “”She was a star.” I never saw JonBenet in a pageant. Never saw her do the routine I taught her until I saw that pageant video on TV. I’ve looked at that video several times. They made JonBenet look like a clown. Someone else taught her those pseudo-adult movements, the provocative walk, the poses, all of it.”

The Daily Mail described the family preoccupation with the child beauty pageant circuit. Adding to that, family visitors noted that JonBenet’s room was filled with pageant trophies rather than toys:

“Patsy later insisted that while JonBenet loved taking part in pageants, it was just a little hobby. Experts immediately pointed to the coaching, dancing, singing, music and beauty sessions — along with the outrageous cost of outfits — that made it an almost full-time occupation.

‘FAMILY TIES’ – The Ramsey’s and White family on a ski trip. (Image Source: westword)

The case most certainly took a different turn once the police had indicated that the Ramseys themselves would also be investigated as possible suspects. Right away, the Ramseys ‘lawyered-up’ and hired an formidable legal defense team. Some twenty months after the brutal murder of JonBenet, John Ramsey’s friend Fleet White, wrote an open letter to ‘the people of Colorado’ that questioned the investigation by Boulder police and Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter:

“After JonBenét Ramsey was killed in Boulder nearly twenty months ago, her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, immediately hired prominent Democrat criminal defense attorneys with the law firm of Haddon, Morgan and Foreman. This firm and its partners have close professional, political and personal ties to prosecutors, the Denver and Boulder legal and judicial communities, state legislators, and high-ranking members of Colorado government, including Gov. Roy Romer. The investigation of her death has since been characterized by confusion and delays.”

Continuing, White outlined a larger conspiracy concerning the Ramsey case:

“During the course of the investigation, the district attorney has used inexplicable methods including the recruitment of magazine writers and tabloids to leak information concerning the case and to needle witnesses, “suspects”, and police detectives.”

White also mentioned the resignation of Boulder police detective Steve Thomas on August 6, 1998, after publicly accusing the District Attorney of ‘obstructing’ the investigation into the Ramsey murder case.

‘Torn Between Two Theories’

Something that continued to plague the Ramsey investigation, was that authorities were not able to reconcile the two different types of crime theories, one of the brutal killer and one of the ransom seeking kidnapper, based on the evidence presented.

In 2000, Boulder’s Daily Camera news, reported that the White family would be drawn even further into the Ramsey case, due to a California woman’s descriptive allegations of an expansive child abuse ring. Her claims initially garnered attention because she allegedly knew John and Patsy Ramsey through Fleet:

“The White family did come in for more public scrutiny than some Ramsey associates during the star-crossed investigation.

In his statement, Becker noted that, in 2000, “The police department did investigate allegations made by a California woman to District Attorney Alex Hunter, as reported in the press, that were intended to cast suspicion on the White family. The department found no evidence to support the unfounded allegations.

“There has never been any evidence to link the White family to the JonBenet Ramsey homicide.”

The Camera in February 2000 reported that a 38-year-old woman had told Hunter that, when she was young, she had been ritually and sexually abused in a manner similar to the way JonBenet Ramsey died.”

Prior to the article mentioned above Barrie Hartman, editor for the Daily Camera for 18 years, added the following details concerning the woman interviewed by Boulder law enforcement which describe a deeper level abuse:

“The woman has described to police years of sexual and physical abuse in California homes at the hands of adults who stayed at holiday and other parties after other guests had left for the evening. Then, she said, another “party,” one of sexual abuse for the gratification of a select group of adults, would begin.”

Though Fleet White was cleared as a suspect in 1997 and officially exonerated in 2008 along with John Ramsey, publicly scrutiny has remained to this day.

In 2014, even though Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett declined to write yet another letter of exoneration for the Whites, which would have been the fourth such public decree regarding the family.

According to reports, in 2002, former Detective Lou Smit who believed in John and Patsy’s innocence, “… named a convicted Oregon sex offender Gary Oliva as his prime suspect after discovering the drifter had been in Boulder in December 1996. But Oliva’s DNA did not match samples taken from the body.”

Throughout the last 20 years, at least 140 different men have been considered by investigative authorities, including convicted sex offender John Mark Karr, who gave a false confession that was later cleared through a DNA analysis.

Additional investigative details state that,“DNA samples from 1.6 million offenders — 86,000 in Colorado alone — have been checked over the past five years and forensics experts update those files once a week.”

It was recently revealed in April of 2016, that Ollie Gray, a private investigator hired by John and Patsy Ramsey claimed to have named the killer as one Michael Helgoth. The story implicated Helgoth, a 26-year-old whose family owned a junkyard on the edge of the city. According to an interview with The Daily Mail, Gray stated the following, “Based on what we know now, I believe Helgoth and his accomplices committed the crime. There’s no doubt about it.”

The Helgoth story gained traction because John Kenady, a former employee of Helgoth’s, said his employer allegedly taped a video of JonBenét’s death. Kenady supposedly tried to reach police some twenty times according to the Ramseys private investigator.

The Daily Mail continued:

“Then, on February 13, 1997, Alex Hunter, who was then the district attorney, held a press conference where he spoke to JonBenet’s unknown killer, saying; ‘The list of suspect narrows. Soon there will be no one on the list but you.’ 

Helgoth died of an apparent suicide two days later at his home. Kenady believes he was murdered by an accomplice or accomplices who were with him when he killed JonBenet.

‘The gun was found on Helgoth’s right side, but the bullet hole goes from left to right. It doesn’t make sense why someone would commit suicide in that manner,’ said Kenady.”

Below is a documentary featuring former Boulder Detective Steve Thomas – regarding a bed-wetting rage theory revolving around JonBenét’s murder (Thomas’ testimony is at 24:20)…

Ramsey Case Oddities 

In 1998, the NY Times reported that a private detective named Brett Sawyer had been convicted of paying a photo lab tech for ’20 autopsy photographs’ and reselling to The Globe newspaper for $5,500. Naturally, this caused quite a public outcry, stirring questions about morality, societal behavior and the media’s role in sensationalizing violence.

On an intriguing note, in 2001, the Daily Camera reported that the Ramsey house’s address would be changed:

“…[The] Tudor where JonBenét Ramsey was found dead nearly five years ago have discarded the 755 15th St. address plate. Small adhesive-backed, black numbers — 749 — now adorn the mail slot to the right of the front door,” and that “Before the address change was granted, city officials contacted 18 different agencies — including emergency responders, utility companies and the post office, to determine if such a change would be practical.”

In 2007, it was reported that a year after Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer, husband John was for a short time reported by some publications to be romantic with Beth Holloway, the mother of Natalee Holloway who disappeared in 2005 after allegedly being ‘abducted.’

Other case oddities have included the apparent meaning of acronym signature at the bottom of the alleged ransom note that read S.B.T.C, something of which that caused quite a stir. Here’s a 2011 FOX News report that has only added to the confusion,“Some journalists erroneously believed that phrase was a war reference to John Ramsey’s training in the Philippines at Subic Bay Naval Base (they believed it could mean Subic Bay Training Center).”

However, according to the Chicago Tribune in January of 1997, “John Ramsey, 53, spent March 1968 through November 1969 assigned to the Navy Public Works Center at Subic Bay Training Center, according to the Bureau of Navy Personnel in Washington.”

In another bizarre and uncanny twist to the Ramsey murder case, the man who dressed up as Santa Claus on the night of December 23rd at the Ramsey house, Bill McReynolds had is own daughter abducted exactly twenty-two years (December 26th, 1974) to the date of JonBenét’s murder. Strangely, he and his wife purportedly wrote a screenplay called Hey Rube (possibly named after the circus cry for help) that dealt with the brutal murder of a child in a similar manner to JonBenét.

In the early days of the Ramsey case there was also concern about Randy Simmons, a child photographer known on the pageant circuit.

In 1999, well-known Denver-based journalist Stephen Singular wrote a book about the murder of JonBenét, which investigated the exploitation of children and the dark and seedy elements potentially connected to the brutal crime in Boulder.

In terms of historical context concerning Singular’s theories, the book by former Nebraska state Senator John De Camp entitled, The Franklin Cover-up, comes to mind. The Cover-up scathing expose’ implicates politicians, judges, those in the military, police, as well as members of  the intelligence community – for the subsequent abduction of numerous children over the course of many years, including connections to the wider Boys Town scandal. Former CIA director William Colby wrote the preface to De Camp’s courageous book, lending even more credibility to its claims. Decamp had previously been an aide for Colby, who became disillusioned by his time in the CIA.

You have to wonder, was JonBenét also a victim of a larger criminal conspiracy?

‘LAST PICTURE’ – The last photo of JonBenét alive. Here she is with her mother Patsy on Christmas morning 1996 (Image Source: dailymail.co.uk)

Only Theories, No Conclusion

Theories about JonBenét’s killer or killers, have ranged from an unknown intruder, members of her family, family friends, a larger network of abuse, a wandering criminal who may have acted alone, or someone who played a role in a potential murder-for-hire scenario. But after all these years, every one of these so-called theories has one thing in common: the investigation seems to lead straight back to questions regarding John and Patsy’s official story – despite the couple’s exoneration.

Adding fuel to the fire, for the first time in public,JonBenét’s brother, Burke Ramsey, recently discussed the murder of his sister during an exclusive three-part interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, something which has caused more speculation about the tragic and troubling case.

In 2013, the Daily Camera revealed that an “unprosecuted grand jury indictment revealed the grand jury prepared charges of child abuse resulting in death and accessory to a crime for both John and Patsy Ramsey in the death of their daughter,” and that “Alex Hunter, the Boulder County district attorney at the time, never signed the true bill, apparently believing he could not successfully prosecute due to a lack of evidence.”

The tragic story of JonBenét continues, a portrait of innocence shattered – a truly unbelievable crime still unsolved 20 years later.

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