Chapter 7 (continued)
THE DNA
Countless potential suspects have been cleared and excluded from the JonBenét Ramsey investigation based on comparisons to unidentified male DNA found mixed with tiny drops of blood on JonBenét’s underpants and collected from her long johns and under her fingernails. This genetic material reportedly does not match anyone in the Ramsey family. It has been processed and reprocessed as forensic DNA technology has evolved over the past twenty-five years.
Various experts still hold to the belief that the DNA on her clothing could have been contributed by a source other than the perpetrator, such as a male factory worker who packed or folded the underwear or some other source of contamination. Questions about the validity of the samples and the completeness and accuracy of the profile are abundant. The technical aspects of the arguments are scientifically complex and beyond most laymen’s understanding (especially mine). However, I can say, absent a clear-cut scientific consensus on the validity of the DNA as a tool of exclusion in this investigation, any suspect cleared solely based on comparison between their DNA and that collected from JonBenét’s clothing or fingernails should be returned to the suspect pool.
SEXUAL ASSAULT
The autopsy report inferred but did not conclude that JonBenét Ramsey was sexually assaulted on the night of her death. The inference was based on the condition of her genital tissue and the presence of a wood splinter in her vagina that is assumed by some to have come from the paintbrush handle used in the garrote found around her neck. Yet, various forensic pathologists have taken issue with the possibility of sexual abuse, saying that the autopsy evidence of sexual assault was weak at best and open to multiple interpretations. The family pediatrician vehemently denied any evidence of sexual abuse prior to the murder.
THE GRAND JURY
In August 1998, the Boulder County district attorney, Alex Hunter, convened a grand jury to investigate the death of JonBenét Ramsey. They met for thirteen months before disbanding in October 1999. When the grand jury concluded its business, Alex Hunter appeared at a press conference and, in an oddly worded statement, said that no charges would be filed in the matter at that time, implying that the grand jury had not voted to indict any suspects in JonBenét’s death. Hunter said:
“The Boulder grand jury has completed its work and will not return. No charges have been filed. Yet, I must report to you that I and my prosecution task force believe we do not have sufficient evidence to warrant the filing of charges against anyone who has been investigated at this time.”
In October of 2013, fourteen years after Alex Hunter implied that the grand jury had disbanded without voting to indict, a court unsealed four pages of documents with the foreman’s signature redacted. Two pages contained indictments by the grand jury against John Ramsey and two pages contained identical indictments against Patsy Ramsey. One set alleged that both parents had unlawfully, knowingly, recklessly, and feloniously permitted a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation that posed a threat of injury to the child’s life or health, which resulted in the death of JonBenét Ramsey. The other set alleged that John and Patsy Ramsey unlawfully, knowingly, and feloniously rendered assistance to a person, with intent to hinder, delay, and prevent the discovery, detention, apprehension, prosecution, conviction, and punishment of such person for the commission of a crime, knowing the person being assisted had committed and was suspected of the crime of murder in the first degree and child abuse resulting in death.
The Police Who Bungle the Investigation…and the DA Who Won’t Prosecute the Offenders
I have to say here that my years of training in statement analysis screamed at me when I first heard Hunter’s statement.
Why say the jury won’t return after already saying they have completed their work? Why would they keep meeting if they had finished their investigation? And what is with the “Yet”? Why say “Yet” if Hunter believed his decision not to file charges was consistent with the grand jury’s findings? “Yet” implies conflict between the preceding and succeeding phrases. “I wanted to have ice cream, yet I didn’t get any because I’m on a diet,” or “I told you not to come, yet here you are.”
A more genuine statement consistent with the message he was trying to convey would have been, “The grand jury has concluded its investigation without issuing any indictments. No charges have been filed yet because we do not have sufficient evidence to support charges against anyone at this time.” Of course, Hunter couldn’t say that…because it would have been a bald-faced lie. Instead, he attempted to imply that was the case.
Why not charge the Ramseys? Why convene the grand jury only to ignore their indictments? Imagine the true statement. “The Boulder grand jury has completed its work and indicted John and Patsy Ramsey on the charges of endangering their child and protecting the person who killed her. Yet, the DA’s office has decided we don’t have enough evidence to support the charges, so we’re not going to file on the Ramseys.” The media attention would have been unbearable, and the public would have come unscrewed.
When I heard the “Yet,” I knew something was rotten in Boulder.
THE DA LETTER
On July 9, 2008, the Boulder district attorney, Mary T. Lacy, wrote a letter to John Ramsey clearing him and his entire family of any suspicion in the 1996 murder of his daughter, JonBenét, and apologizing for the pain and suffering his family experienced as a result of the umbrella of suspicion under which they had lived since the murder.
This letter has been highly controversial ever since it was written, particularly as questions still persist about the quality and interpretation of the DNA evidence in the case. I’m not a lawyer, but in my understanding of the system, DAs simply do not write this kind of letter. District attorneys evaluate evidence and grand jury indictments and file charges or don’t file charges. They are not in the business of explaining themselves beyond their court filings. Finally, district attorneys are not juries. On the contrary, they are prosecutors. Why a district attorney felt it appropriate to make such a statement about any suspect in a case, particularly two people indicted by a grand jury, is beyond me.
Chapter 8
INVESTIGATOR’S COMMENTS
Unfortunately, the tragic death of JonBenét Ramsey remains an open case. The family’s wealth, JonBenét’s participation in the pageant system, the conflicting and often confusing evidence in the case, the botched investigation, and the internal discord of the Boulder authorities all conspired to reduce the poor child’s life and death and the dynamics of her family to the tawdriest of tabloid fodder. Between the contaminated crime scene, the inconclusive forensics, the often freakish suspected intruders, and the bizarre ransom note, a perfect storm of red herrings has left a brutal murder unsolved.
My fondest hope is that, as the science of forensic genetics becomes more advanced and the database of possible links to the perpetrator increases, someday the killer will be conclusively identified. As in the D. B. Cooper case, I hope that DNA technology will eventually allow the authorities to generate a complete DNA profile appropriate for inclusion in the public databases, thus allowing the genetic genealogy community to suggest possible identities for the killer.
I am struck by the behavior of all those involved regarding the ransom note from the get-go. The Ramseys and the police apparently wholly discounted the threat to behead JonBenét if the family called law enforcement or discussed the matter with anyone. Why wasn’t the FBI involved all along if anyone really believed the kidnappers were foreigners as the note claimed? Why didn’t the kidnappers ever call and attempt to collect the ransom? And, if the author of the note was a foreigner, why was there no linguistic evidence of that in the note? I found nothing in the public record to indicate that even one single suspect from a small foreign faction or any group going by the initials SBTC was ever identified (beyond the Santa Barbara Tennis Club, which is surely not in the business of child murder). In my opinion, everyone involved treated the note as a sham.
I find it almost beyond credulity that a kidnapper would rummage through drawers to find paper and a pen, then sit in the kitchen of his victim’s palatial home for at least twenty minutes in the middle of the night and write a note as lengthy as that, then carefully replace the pad and pen in the locations where he or she found them.
Even more absurd is the idea that the kidnapper would serve the victim a pineapple snack from the family’s refrigerator and do it without the perpetrator or victim leaving a single fingerprint on the bowl or spoon. How reasonable is it to assume that two adults and a nine-year-old child would sleep through such activity, which involved turning on lights, opening and closing kitchen cabinets where the bowl and spoon were located, opening and closing drawers to find and obtain then later replace the pad and pen, and opening and closing the refrigerator door to access the pineapple. And all of this without JonBenét raising an alarm when a stranger was in the family home fixing her a snack in the middle of the night?
So, if the note was a sham, how could the intruder theory work? Someone came into the house for what purpose? To kidnap JonBenét? So the kidnapper snuck into the house, took JonBenét from her bedroom to the kitchen, fed her pineapple, then took her to the basement, bashed her head in, and killed her with a garrote, then snuck out of the house leaving her body behind?
I’ve seen no evidence in the public record that the head wound was considered to be the result of an accident. In any case, the death by garrote was surely intentional. So why intentionally kill the kidnap victim before even leaving the home? Did the intruder actually break into the house with the intent of murdering JonBenét? Why? She was a six-year-old baby pageant queen, not a capo in a Mafia crime family. No evidence in the public record implies that her parents had any criminal connections that could have led to a revenge murder.
If murder was the original intent, then why take the time and risk to leave the note? If the killer put forth this effort, why not take the body and hope for a reward as Hauptmann successfully did in the Lindbergh case? As far as I can see, if the note was bogus, its presence undermines the logic of any intruder scenario I can imagine.
If there was no intruder, then the crime had to have been perpetrated by a member of the household, a scenario supported by the statistics surrounding crimes such as this one. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any physical evidence proving or disproving this scenario, either. The astounding lack of evidence may indicate a careful and sophisticated perpetrator or be the result of a crime scene so badly compromised due to mismanagement that any physical evidence was destroyed or contaminated. Moreover, if the crime was committed by someone with a legitimate reason for being in the house previously, finding that individual’s DNA, fingerprints, or hair would be entirely inconclusive.
The Boulder DA cleared the entire Ramsey family in writing, complete with a public apology—and did so despite secret indictments of both John and Patsy by the Boulder grand jury. No charges have ever been filed against any member of the family. No one in the family has ever been tried, let alone convicted of any crime. Legally, they are all completely innocent of any involvement in JonBenét’s death. When Patsy Ramsey passed away from ovarian cancer on June 24, 2006, she died an innocent woman, and nothing will ever change that. John and Burke will remain so unless one or both of them is at some point in the future convicted by a jury of his peers.
John Ramsey had previously lost a child from his first marriage in a car accident. He then lost his youngest daughter to murder and his second wife to cancer. He is a man who has lived a tragic life of terrible loss who has never been convicted of anything. It is not my purpose to say who killed JonBenét. I am in no position to make that judgment. I am merely trying to work out the logic of various scenarios based on the limited evidence in the public record. I would remind everyone that the grand jury that indicted the Ramseys spent over a year looking at evidence most of which is likely not in the public arena.
As of Thursday, November 10, 2022, the Boulder Police Department announced that in 2023, they would be turning their records over to the Colorado Cold Case Team and asking for their assistance with reinvestigating the case. The Cold Case Team is a board under the Colorado Department of Public Safety. They welcome the public to review the materials they have for each case and contribute any help they might be able to offer.
INVESTIGATOR’S TIPS
Here are some quick tips from the Department of Justice for keeping your kids safe.
What you can do to help your child:
- Children should know their full name, home phone number, and how to use the telephone. Post your contact information where your children will see it: office phone number, cell phone, etc.
- Children should have an alternate trusted adult to call if they’re scared or have an emergency.
- Choose babysitters with care. Obtain references from family, friends, and neighbors. Once you have chosen the caregiver, drop in unexpectedly to see how your children are doing. Ask your children how the experience with the caregiver was, and listen carefully to their responses.
How to prepare for an emergency:
- Keep a complete description of your child.
- Take full face color photographs of your child every six months.
- Keep copies of your child’s fingerprints.
- Keep a sample of your child’s DNA.
- Know where your child’s medical records are located.
- Have your dentist prepare and maintain dental charts for your child.
What to do if your child goes missing:
- Immediately report your child missing to your local law enforcement agency.
- Ask the law enforcement agency to enter your child into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) Missing Persons File.
- Limit access to your home until law enforcement arrives and has the opportunity to collect possible evidence.
- Give law enforcement investigators all the information you have on your child including fingerprints, photographs, a complete description, and the facts and circumstances related to their disappearance.
For a free guide from the DOJ about what to do if a child goes missing, click here.
QUIZ
Test your knowledge about the JonBenét Ramsey case.
JonBenét Ramsey Case: The Quiz (playbuzz.com)
SNARKY HUMOR
REFERENCES & COOL SITES
JonBenet Ramsey Case Encyclopedia
https://www.jonbenetramsey.pbworks.com
What’s The History Of Child Pageants?
https://www.bustle.com/articles/183975-whats-the-history-of-child-pageants
7 Ugly Truths About Child Beauty Pageants
https://www.bustle.com/articles/183975-whats-the-history-of-child-pageants
Inside $5bn Industry Of Child Beauty Pageants | US News | Sky News
https://news.sky.com/story/inside-5bn-industry-of-child-beauty-pageants-10334507
Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls
https://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report
Top News Stories from 1996 | Infoplease
https://www.infoplease.com/year/1996
CNN – 1996 Year in Review
http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/year.in.review/
The JonBenet Ramsey Ransom Note – Statement Analysis®
https://statementanalysis.com/jonbenet-ramsey-murder/ransom-note/
Evidence – The Unsolved Murder of JonBenét Ramsey
http://www.jonbenetramsey.com/evidence/
Burke’s Behavior – A Short Life in the Spotlight
http://sites.gsu.edu/moyasfinalproject/support-3-maybe/
The Murder of Jonbenet Ramsey – Forensic Pathology – 1979 Words | Research Paper Example
https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-murder-of-jonbenet-ramsey-forensic-pathology/
Child Abduction Statistics for Parents
https://www.parents.com/kids/safety/stranger-safety/child-abduction-facts/
New enhanced audio Patsy Ramsey 911 call | YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=686Ic9-yIwo
Homicides of Children and Youth
https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/187239.pdf
BehmThesis – Final.pdf
https://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/3897ab6d-dbc7-4650-a146-39f3083728a1/content
What Did JonBenet Ramsey’s Autopsy Report Say? It Prompted Even More Questions
https://www.romper.com/p/what-did-jonbenet-ramseys-autopsy-report-say-it-prompted-even-more-questions-18586
JonBenet Ramsey autopsy report details brutal attack
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1997/07/15/jonbenet-ramsey-autopsy-report-details-brutal-attack/
Autopsyfiles.org – JonBenet Ramsey Autopsy Report
https://www.autopsyfiles.org/reports/Other/ramsey,%20jonbenet_autopsy.pdf
‘The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey’: Everything We Learned | Rolling Stone
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-case-of-jonbenet-ramsey-everything-we-learned-from-part-two-106495/
Investigators Identify Whose Feces Were Smeared All Over JonBenet’s Room And Gifts | USA Daily Brief
https://usadailybrief.com/investigators-identify-whose-feces-were-smeared-all-over-jonbenets-room-and-gifts/
THROWBACK THURSDAY: Burke hits sister with golf club, is it an accident? : JonBenetRamsey
https://www.reddit.com/r/JonBenetRamsey/comments/jkfw06/throwback_thursday_burke_hits_sister_with_golf
The Death of Innocence : The Untold Story of JonBenet’s Murder and How Its Explo: Amazon.com: Books
https://www.amazon.com/Death-Innocence-Untold-JonBenets-Murder/dp/B002J81N2A
Who killed JonBenet Ramsey? An investigator’s dying wish keeps the search going with his family | ABC News
https://abcnews.go.com/US/killed-jonbenet-ramsey-investigators-dying-search-family/story?id=75186109
Seven unanswered questions in JonBenét Ramsey case – from intruder theory to who wrote the ransom | The US Sun
https://www.the-sun.com/news/4311920/seven-unanswered-questions-in-jonbenet-ramsey-case-from-intruder-theory-to-who-wrote-the-ransom/
Pedophile Confesses to Killing JonBenet Ramsey in Letters to Friend | Rolling Stone
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/jonbenet-ramsey-murder-gary-oliva-confession-letters-778025/
Cold Case | Colorado Bureau of Investigation
https://cbi.colorado.gov/sections/investigations/cold-case
While the entire book will be presented free of charge in these blog posts, for an easier reading experience, you can obtain the ebook version of Part 2 – Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey? for free by clicking on the button at the bottom of this post. You can also buy the entire anthology of Anthrax to Zodiac at Amazon.com.