Testing the Evidence, Considering the Logic: Jon Benet Ramsey

Overview

We revisit the heartbreaking case of six year old JonBenét Ramsey, who was killed in her Boulder, Colorado home sometime late on Christmas night or in the early hours of December 26, 1996. Her death by asphyxiation and head trauma was surrounded by unsettling details like a ransom note, unexplained evidence, and conflicting witness accounts that have fueled decades of speculation. This piece is worth reading because it does not push a single theory but instead invites you to sit with the mystery, reflect on the unanswered questions, and consider how logic and evidence intertwine in one of the most haunting unsolved cases in American history.

JonBenét Ramsey

She was a miniature version of Marilyn Monroe. So very blond and red-lipped and photogenic. So likely to break hearts one day. Yet vulnerable, as well, and likely to have her own heart broken.

But while Marilyn’s tragic life ended at 36, JonBenet Ramsey never even saw her 7th birthday. And no one calls her death a suicide.

Early on the morning of December 26th, 1996 Patsy Ramsey says she descended the staircase of her Boulder, Colorado home and found a ransom note, demanding precisely $118,000 for the return of her daughter. A check of her daughter’s bedroom, and yes, the girl had vanished.

Authorities were called to the scene. For hours there was little they could do except ask questions, comfort the Ramseys, and gather limited physical evidence. Then, around mid-day, a detective asked John Ramsey to search all levels of his multi-story, seven-thousand square foot home. From a small, remote room in the basement he returned upstairs, carrying the lifeless form of his daughter in his arms.

She had not been kidnapped, but murdered. Later the cause of death would be determined as asphyxiation, combined with blunt trauma to the cranium. Who would do that to a six-year-old child, in her own home, the morning after Christmas?

The answer to that question rocked Boulder, and the United States. Even foreign correspondents flooded into the country.

The Ramsey family felt not only stunned by grief, but also felt themselves the uncomfortable focus of police questioning. They lawyered up, quickly, with high-powered legal talent. Against law enforcement advice and wishes, they left town to bury JonBenet in Georgia.

Even before they left, their lawyers made it clear the Ramseys were only available for police questions submitted to them in writing. Law enforcement professionals were astonished at the firewall the Ramsey’s were able to build around themselves, with a murder under their roof, when they were the last to see JonBenet before the crime.

As time went by, their lawyers even asked for, and sometimes received, notes on the details of the investigation, from a friendly District Attorney’s Office. It was unprecedented for persons who were "persons of interest," almost by definition, to receive the inside scoop on unfolding police work.

Numerous possible suspects, many supplied by the Ramseys, were investigated through thousands of hours of police time. An elderly man recovering from surgery, Bill McReynolds, came to feel as persecuted as a witch at an inquisition, because he had dazzled children including JonBenet with his portrayals of Santa Claus. But all leads came up empty—neither McReynolds or anyone else in the police line of sight could have committed the crime. But hundreds were aware of the Ramseys, who threw large parties, and the little girl. The potential suspect list would thus be absolutely huge.

No one has ever been indicted for JonBenet’s murder, and at this late date no one is likely to. Some investigators believe that a violent pedophile, an intruder that night years ago, is out there still. Others in law enforcement, the majority, think the Ramseys got away with murder. Murder in a figurative sense, for walling themselves off from a legitimate investigation, and perhaps in the literal sense as well. After ten years of grief and miserable fame, Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in 2006. John lives on, perennially and indignantly proclaiming the innocence of his family and the incompetence of Boulder police in not finding the real killer.

Nonetheless, the JonBenét Ramsey murder haunts us, and like a prism reveals the colors of a dozen intriguing questions, each of which splits off into the shades of a dozen more.

MindOverMystery explores this story, the most tragic of stories.

JonBenet’s older brother, Burke, is an adult now. At the time of the tragedy his parents asserted he slept through all events and knew nothing of interest. But did he really? Although we find it garbled and inconclusive, some analyses of the 911 call--morning of the 26th of December--think his voice is heard in the background, that in fact he’d been awake. And both he and his sister had received care from child psychologists for behaviors, such as bed wetting and soiling, that raise the red flags of dysfunctional family life. We will probably never know what if anything Burke knows, any more than the secrets that Patsy Ramsey took to her grave.

We open the File.. Whatever happened to JonBenet Ramsey?

CRITICAL THINKING, AND CRITICAL TO BE THINKING

A RECAP OF BASIC ISSUES AND EVIDENCE–MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES

As we at Mind Over Mystery teach up and coming mystery analysts the value of careful, critical thinking about any case we’re struck by one thing: it’s easier said than done. It’s easier to preach objectivity, and fastidious mental processes to examine each element of a grand mystery than it is to practice it. Confirmation bias–that tendency to view new evidence or perspectives in light of the leanings we already have about an issue-tends to grow back on our minds like a mental weed.

Let’s remember that keeping an open mind remains the eternal challenge of being a conscious human. And it’s especially important, deathly important, if we’re to grapple with the subtlest of mysteries.

With those critical considerations in mind, this section will enumerate a number of key issues in the Ramsey mystery–from differing perspectives. Most have been broached in previous sections, but the emphasis here is on legitimate disagreement, fact by fact. The same “fact,” like a kaleidoscope, can be rotated to offer myriad views. Our list, though not exhaustive, treats the highlights of the case, and demonstrates why there may never be agreement as to what happened that Christmas night to create horror in such a small, beautiful town.

AN INTRUDER IN THE RAMSEY HOME?

The Boulder Police were skeptical that there could have even been an illegal entrance to the property, given the lack of “footprints in the snow,” given the improbability of an acrobatic entrance through a basement window leaving no trace evidence (fibers, outdoor dirt), given that the home had supposedly been locked at all doors, given that no one was heard in a creaky house, given the difficulty of navigating the complex house and stairs in the dark with a victim in arms, given that no watchdogs barked at an intruder coming or going, given that no eyeballs in the neighborhood identified any person or car that would fit the bill, and finally considering an intruder whose many activities left no evidence behind with the possible, debatable exception of trace DNA. If the lighting pattern in the house was different that night as neighbors recounted, well, no intruder would light up rooms and risk exposure but the Ramseys would to cope with unusual events. From the Ramsey critic’s perspective, that’s over half a dozen reasons just off the bat that the “intruder” theory merely represents a fiction, a deflection. They feel sure the reason no intruder was ever identified is infinitely simple–there never was one.

But the intruder theorist presents the matter quite differently. Yes, it might take a certain nerve or prior knowledge of the Ramsey’s home and habits, or both, to pull off what the intruding perpetrator did, but literally hundreds had an introduction to the home through open houses and parties hosted by the family. Yes it might take some nerve and planning to pull off the home invasion, but that’s crime for you. Sneak jewelry thieves, murderers, many criminals have come and gone with great daring like phantoms in the night. The house had myriad possible entrance points, keys floating around the community, a family grown lackadaisical about locking all those doors and windows at night in such a safe-seeming neighborhood. There were brick walkways leading to and from the home which would leave no bootprints. The intruder clearly wore gloves and was careful not to leave a sloppy forensic trail. He (probably a male) moved quietly by flashlight and had four levels, almost seven thousand square feet to operate in. Intruders have often committed crimes, next to sleeping people, in extremely tight spaces–here he had plenty of room to maneuver. He got lucky in that no saw him, he did not alarm any neighborhood dog. At one point he may have flicked on the light in the kitchen area, well away from sleeping adult Ramseys by two floors, but so what? He knew that generated very little extra risk. Yes, of course there was an intruder in the home that night, we know because he left behind a brutally murdered child, and traces of DNA upon her clothing in intimate places. Of course he was there, he just hasn’t been caught, yet.

THE RANSOM NOTE

The intruder theorist believes as does everyone else that to find the author of the legendary note is to find someone that, at the very least, can tell you what happened that night. They believe the police, in their excessive focus on the Ramseys, did a poor job in researching and pursuing the possible authors–persons with some knowledge of the family and home and its layout, especially of John’s business and financial life (as in the $118,000 ransom figure). That’s a limited but not tiny group, given the number of employees of John’s business, the high visibility of the family, the numerous open houses sponsored by the family. Somewhere from that pool of persons emerged the guy who took his fantasies about the child and his resentment of John’s success across normal bounds one night and slipped into the home late, or hid there earlier until the family returned. Possibly only a weird assault on the parents’ peace of mind was intended, as represented by the menace of the note, but one thing led tragically to another. Or an pedophile in full rape mode might have invaded the home, and penned the note as a twisted way to pass the time until the home went quiet, there are several possibilities. But few experts tagged Patsy as the author, John was excluded, and if the Ramsey’s needed to stage anything they would have more logically just staged a home invasion and an assault. When we find the intruder who left touch DNA behind we’ll find the note’s author, and vice-versa.

The inside-job contingent says nonsense, the experts have ever excluded Patsy as the author, and a number have pointed out strong similarities between her handwriting and the note, complicated by the fact that an ambidextrous Patsy had far more ability than the average Jane to change the “font” on her personal printing as she went, at will. In fact her deliberate efforts to monkey with her writing style after the murder reveal consciousness of guilt. But penmanship is not even the half of it, greater weight resides in assessing the text itself. Simply put, what are the odds that this unusual intruder, in addition to defying all other sorts of probabilities, had the same flair for drama Patsy had, used exclamation marks and acronyms with the same alacrity, the same sort of lively expressions and sentence structure she used, including rarely seen phrases like “and hence?” The chances that this intruding author would praise John’s business in almost the same breath as threatening to murder his child? Yes, it’s all possible, but what are the odds against such a multi-coincidence? Absolutely astronomical, no?

THE “STAGING” ARGUMENT

Most local and national law enforcement consultants perceived “staging” in the child’s placement in a remote room in the basement, with props like blankets and tied hands that weren’t really tied, and others. Come on, said the experts, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s almost always a duck. For heaven’s sake, the tape over the mouth was applied after the child was dead, according to forensic science. What murderer in an occupied house has ever taken the time to do that, or had a motive to? None, before this. Come on, this was desperately staged by amateurs, and that’s why we eventually (yes eventually, not from moment one) focused on the Ramseys as the only logical responsible party.

Hold your horses, say the believers in an intruder. Lots of misinformation was out there, for example, John Ramsey remembers partially loosening his daughter’s ligature in the first desperate, crazy moments after he discovered her body. That sort of thing can leave a false impression about the appearance of the body as found. There was a blanket down in the basement room, yes, but not a child-tucked-in-to-sleep presentation to the body as it lay. And there was a vicious rape and strangulation, now that wasn’t staged for gosh’s sake, the violence was perpetrated upon the child. It’s you guys that need to get real. Just because lots of murders have been in-house and then the guilty party alters the scene, it doesn’t mean that makes sense here. This was clearly a tragic rape and murder by a pedophile who had fantasies about this child beauty queen.

RAMSEY BEHAVIOR THE DAY OF DECEMBER 26TH

And just how is one supposed to act when the most unexpected, spirit-crushing thing than can befall a parent has landed on you like a ton of bricks? Grief and shock are handled in very personal ways. The Ramseys did their best under circumstances so trying most of us have never faced them, and even took hours trying to satisfy the myriad questions of the police.

We feel their pain, say the police from the other point of view, but it just didn’t add up to us. A ransom note that made the biggest production ever, of any ransom note in history, about not bringing in outside parties to the “kidnapping” and before long the Ramseys have invited half of Boulder over to their house. It was like Grand Central Station in that place. If the outside invader, the note, were all so real to them, why defy the note so openly, going far, far beyond a discreet contact with police? And John Ramsey may have later written that Patsy had to be restrained by friends when her child was brought up from the basement, but our personnel remember it quite differently, and we think they’re more objective. They recall a Patsy who at first didn’t come toward the child at all, as if she knew what to expect.

We know there’s no one way to act in the face of stunning tragedy and pain, but even so, the Ramseys in those early hours and days just didn’t ring true to us.

RAMSEY BEHAVIOR IN COMING WEEKS AND MONTHS

In fact, the Ramseys didn’t ring true as innocent, grieving parents, in a lot of what they did, for months. Okay, we’ll concede that maybe they “lawyered up” on the advice of friend Mike Bynum, and perhaps it’s true that the innocent need representation as quickly as the guilty in circumstances like these. We’ll even cut those lawyers some slack in having their investigators jump on key witnesses immediately and lock them in to their stories, before we could even get to them. A defense lawyer’s job is to consider the police or prosecution the enemy, and to tell their clients not to say a damned word without their counsel’s approval. But, John Ramsey was worldly enough to know that his lawyers Worked for Him. If he’d wanted to sit with the police for hours and days on end, answering the same questions over and over with the hope that suddenly something new, and helpful, might pop into his mind, he could have done that by all means; some fathers in his situation have, such as Polly Klaas’s dad. Instead the Ramseys circled the wagons before being accused of anything at all, although they did make time for investigators known to be leaning early on to the intruder theory.

They were helpful with leads, all right, some of the people they always hugged and kissed and wrote warm notes to were served up as names the police should jump on, silly leads in some cases, old men recovering from surgery and the like. The Ramseys acted classically guilty–we won’t answer hard questions from police, but we’ll tell you who to go and pursue.

No, not really fair at all, says the other side. You damned well better retain counsel if you slept under the same roof where a murder occurred, innocent or guilty, doesn’t matter. The police were given lots of names but didn’t seem to take them seriously, they wanted to stay in the Ramseys’ faces, and would have for weeks and months if their lawyers had not said, Enough Already. You can’t win with these cops when they’ve jumped to a conclusion. They even tried to withhold the daughter for burial as blood ransom for more interviews, cruel as that sounds. Yes, the Ramseys went a different direction, within a couple of days, from dealing with the local police, and in their place you would have, too.

FORENSIC EVIDENCE

The damned cops and so-called experts were big on their “intuition” from the start. Detective Linda Arndt even claimed to have seen guilt in John Ramsey’s eyes as he knelt, utterly stunned and crushed, over his dead child–she says she counted the bullets in her gun to see if she had enough to handle all the supposed murdering friends lurking about the house! Where do they find these people to honor with the rank of Detective, for the love of God?

But when it comes to real, scientific evidence, DNA and the like, these same experts are awfully quiet. They don’t like to tell you that traces of DNA from a male outside the household were found in all the key places, under the victim’s fingernails, and at several spots on her underclothing. They don’t tell you that DNA from the Ramseys was noticably absent from those same locations. No Patsy Ramsey DNA on the garrote cord, just for example. Let’s be crystal-clear, the evidence based in science all points away from the Ramseys, not toward them. And Mary Keenan Lacy, Boulder’s District Attorney by 2008, realized the science was so strong she deemed it exculpatory. She fully and officially cleared the three Ramseys of any involvement. That makes a lot more sense than counting the bullets in your revolver.

Yes, but hold the phone. Forensic evidence requires as much careful assessment as circumstantial evidence, you can’t just spout “DNA from unknown male! Ramseys cleared!”, shout that from the rooftops, and go home if you respect the subtlety of the evidence. Read a full book by a DNA expert, and the complexity of the matter will melt your brain cells. One thing that’s usually agreed on is that the smaller the sample, the smaller the clear forensic significance. Single-cells can come from anywhere, including all kinds of cross-contamination. They don’t assure an individual was on the scene any more than three molecules of ragweed pollen prove you brushed against a ragweed plant. The forensic evidence overall is voluminous, running to many thousands of pages. Many elements of it seem to cut both ways, or more often to only lead to more questions. The only forensic science which might, just possibly might exculpate the Ramseys is that DNA, and it’s simply not clear how much it means. Dr. Henry Lee, the most respected forensic scientist of them all, says the touch DNA in this case really has “no forensic value” in his opinion.

THE GRAND JURY

There must be a great deal that points straight to Ramsey guilt, however, or a Grand Jury would not have recommended indicting them in 1998 (for lesser charges than murder). The D.A., Alex Hunter, then declined to go along with the recommendation, and the process was sealed. No one knew for years what the jury’s recommendation had been. If the screws had been tightened one step further, by an actual criminal prosecution, who knows what might have come out. Once witnesses finally come forward, once the dominos begin to fall….

Oh, we all know that a determined prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich. (In this instance it was a special prosecutor forced on the case by public opinion.) They choose what to present to a Grand Jury, and they only offered the Boulder police perspective. But Hunter retained the ultimate authority to prosecute or not, and he did the right thing. At the end of the day, what evidence is there, really, of Ramsey family involvement? That they slept under the same roof as the murder that night? Of course they slept in the same domicile as their six-year-old daughter, where else would they sleep? But the chaos and tragedy they awoke to the next morning has no scientific, or logical, connection to them.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The majority view of law enforcement experts–that the crime came from within the home—has held over the years despite the opposing view of the Boulder DA’s office, and the “clearing” of the Ramseys in 2008. The case springs from some contradictory facts and is stacked with loose ends, but overall we see no reason to disagree with the majority in the law enforcement community. One central suspect in the death of JonBenét, Patsy Ramsey, died of cancer in 2006, and her secrets, if any, rest with her in her gravesite.

• Although significant rewards have been offered, by the Ramsey family especially, no credible evidence of, or identification of, an outside perpetrator has ever surfaced. Even the 2006 “confession” of John Mark Karr proved to be a bogus trail.
  

• Although the total quantity of public money, private and media attention, and law enforcement man-hours devoted to the case in the end has been staggering, amazingly some of the most basic trails of potential evidence were not followed, in many cases because of the vigorous legal team protecting the Ramseys, and the acquiescence of the Boulder District Attorney’s office. To offer a powerful example, that both Ramsey children wet and soiled their beds—a huge red flag which suggests family dysfunction to child psychiatrists —yet regrettably the psychiatric treatment records for Burke Ramsey were never subpoenaed, honoring the family’s request for an “island of privacy.” Corners of remaining privacy and dignity for the family, in a case that must have made them feel like constant public spectacles, are quite understandable…but—not at the expense of resolution of the case. The relevance of recent family psychiatric history would seem to be so obvious that its exclusion from consideration leaves many observers aghast. More simply, evidence as basic as phone and financial transaction records of the Ramseys in the time surrounding the crime were not procured in a timely fashion, once again by the decision of the District Attorney’s office, to the immense frustration of detectives. Investigators felt that some of the most common and obvious threads of evidence were denied them, even as they labored under great pressure to resolve the case.
  

• We believe the case was never prosecutable and never will be, barring dramatic, unforeseen developments (such as the linking of clear forensic evidence to a perpetrator with a record of similar crimes, or a plausible confession). That is, there was never enough support for any one scenario to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, especially with blue-ribbon defense attorneys attacking the weaker links of any theory. As the legendary prosecutor Vince Bugliosi commented, the strongest evidence against the Ramseys is the extreme unlikelihood, the implausibility, of anyone else having committed the murder given all the circumstances of the setting. But that unlikelihood does not make for good prosecution of the Ramseys in a courtroom setting, in front of jurors not trained to weigh inferences drawn from circumstantial evidence. We hear Ramsey lawyers in our mind’s ear asking time and again, “Where, exactly and precisely, is the case against our clients? There isn’t one. The prosecution has no case.”
  

• Although resolution is unlikely, secret evidence from grand jury proceedings may leak out. DNA science may give a more convincing read on the touch DNA found in multiple places on JonBenet’s clothing. The mystery analyst may have more pieces of the giant jigsaw puzzle in the future, in other words. For now, we’ve assessed the probabilities to the best of our ability with the facts as known to us.

LESSONS LEARNED

How will the JonBenét case be remembered, and what can it teach us as mystery analysts? We predict it will be remembered for decades, in fact for many generations. Our great, great-granddaughters, enrolled some day in a class in forensic studies, may dive into the robust file which is the Ramsey murder and emerge many, many hours later with the question: “Just what the hell happened in that house that night?”

The crime scene left behind was both tragic and confounding. And some evidence, both physical and circumstantial, points in different directions. In that sense the crime will always be a richly perplexing one, “the perfect mystery,” if you will.

But we have mixed feelings in finding so much fascination in the case–after all, there was a real child victim of murder, and a trail of tortured lives left behind. These shaken lives belonged to real and living people, this was no harmless creation of Hollywood. “My child was murdered in my home on Christmas night,” a sadder, older John Ramsey said 20 years later. “Don’t ever forget that.” Indeed, whether John was honest with authorities about the crime or not, we must respect the pain of a grieving family.

An entire, sleazy tabloid industry fails to recognize anyone’s pain, or privacy. We agree with the Ramseys–they are pure dollar chasers of the most despicable sort. But are we any better, the lovers of mystery who will analyze this case and even find excitement in a “perfect mystery?”

We at least like to think so. We can offer a sober analysis of evidence and context which may not make the mouth water like a tabloid headline, but helps frame good forensic analysis. We can compare what happened that tragic night to a hundred other cases–after all even the strangest history, in the strangest ways, will somehow repeat itself. We can offer the anti-tabloid version of analyzing the crime, trying always to be mindful that real people suffered overwhelming tragedy. And we can broaden the scope, remembering that everyone suggested as a perpetrator, many of whom where grilled at length by police and discussed openly in the media, had their lives forever changed as well.

Each major mystery leaves its legacy, and its lessons. This murder will almost surely never be “solved” in the sense that some courtroom, somewhere, will declare a verdict. It’s been obvious since 1999 that this case would never be prosecuted.

But even in a case that will never go to trial, we have learned compelling lessons about our justice system.

1. We must devise a system to compel, when appropriate, timely cooperation of key witnesses or suspects with police in potentially capital cases. The Ramseys left Colorado shortly after the death of their daughter and would not return, or submit to questioning, for some period of time. High-priced lawyers protected them from normal scrutiny.
   

2. We must seek some manner to distance District Attorney’s offices from political influence (although that’s always quite the challenge) and seek means to further distance money, such as the Ramsey wealth, from influence in the criminal justice system.
   

3. We must have better cooperation between law enforcement and prosecutors on sensitive cases, even if independent authorities need to be brought in. Given the enormous importance, notoriety, and cost of this case, the cross-purpose efforts of the Boulder Police Department and the Boulder District Attorney’s office was utterly unacceptable.

DEVELOPMENTS

As discussed in other sections, “The Ramson Note” will forever be central to speculation on the case, because the author at the very least knew all about the crime. The Ramseys and their Counsel have long disparaged the notion that Patsy could have been the author, the “sloppy” writing was far from hers, they claim, and her concocting the note would have simply made no sense. The oddball intruder, for whatever reason, wrote the equally oddball note and that any similarities to Patsy’s handwriting style and habits of expression are purely coincidental.

Objective observers have always been split on the subject, with much opinion that Patsy was by far the most likely author.

The following, from the Mirror in the UK on September 13, 2016, is an example of ongoing coverage:

“A chilling new docu-series evaluating evidence from JonBenet Ramsey’s murder has presented evidence to suggest that the beauty queen’s mother could be linked to the ransom note found at the murder scene.

The two-and-a-half page ransom note was discovered by Patsy on that tragic morning in 1996 on the bottom of the staircase.

Handwriting expert Cina Wong has evaluated the note and compared it to JonBenet’s parents’ handwriting.

“When I looked at the first page, I noticed that the writing was slow and a little awkward,” Wong explained in Investigation Discovery series JonBenét: An American Murder Mystery.

JonBenet Ramsey was found murdered at her home in Colorado in 1996.

“But as I progressed to the second page and the third page, I saw that the writing was more fluid, written more naturally. It tells me that what we’re dealing with is a disguised writing.”

Wong explained that it was “difficult to hide the natural habits of your handwriting”, stating that quite often you can change your style for up to a paragraph.

While she ruled out JonBenet’s father out of writing the ransom note, Wong did find similarities with her mother Patsy.

Looking at the unique characteristics of handwriting, Wong found over “200 similarities” with the ransom note writer and Patsy.

Meanwhile in the CBS docu-series The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey, retired FBI profiler Jim Clemente suggested that a long time would have been taken to write the ransom note.

“Whoever wrote this managed to commit a murder, find the pad, find the pen, practice a couple of times because they didn’t want to show bad penmanship or something, write it and then put the pad and pen back to where they normally are kept,” he suggested.

John and Patsy Ramsey after completing two days of police interviews regarding the death of their daughter in 2000 (Photo: Reuters)

John and Patsy Ramsey after completing two days of police interviews regarding the death of their daughter in 2000 (Photo: Reuters)

“That is 21-and-a-half minutes they could have been caught.Twenty-one-and-a-half minutes that they stayed in the house longer than they needed to.”

Patsy, who died in 2006 after a battle with ovarian cancer, strongly denied any involvement in her daughter’s death.

“I didn’t do it, John Ramsey didn’t do it, and we didn’t have a clue of anybody who did do it. This child was the most precious thing in my life,” she said at the time.”

The Mirror (UK), 2016

Another website, inquisitor.com, also teed off from the starting point of the observations of profiler Clemente and colleagues on (September 8, 2016):

“Another point the team looked into is how long it took to write the note. The clip shows the team re-creating the note, which took around 21 minutes on average, to complete. Why would someone who committed a murder stay in the home any more time than necessary? The following is according to Clemente.

“That is 21-and-a-half minutes they could have been caught. Twenty-one-and-a-half minutes that they stayed in the house longer than they needed to… I think we can all agree this letter is clearly staged.”

Even more alarming is that whoever wrote the note knew the exact amount of John Ramsey’s Christmas bonus. Aside from his wife, there were very few people that would’ve have that kind of information.

“You will withdraw $118,000.00 from your account. $100,000 will be in $100 bills and the remaining $18,000 in $20 bills. Make sure that you bring an adequate size attaché to the bank. When you get home you will put the money in a brown paper bag. I will call you between 8 and 10 am tomorrow to instruct you on delivery.”

Inquisitor.com, 2016

While the general public once placed the blame directly on Patsy’s shoulders, other weren’t so sure it was that simple. Perhaps someone was trying to frame her in the murder of her own daughter, someone who knew that authorities would suspect her if her husband’s bonus amount was listed.

The fact that these debates are still active 20 years downrange illustrates the complex, almost eternal nature of this mystery. It requires infinite patience and humility to continue to look at all the evidence, from all sides.

The 20th anniversary occasioned half a dozen new studies or mini-documentaries. The quality varies enormously.

The two highest-profile programs from Fall, 2016 demonstrate stark contrasts.

Our reviews:

Dr. Phil’s three-part special in the end emphasized an exoneration of the Ramseys, and flogged the issue of Boulder Police malfeasance throughout, but centered on Burke Ramseys first ever interviews in the limelight. Phil stretched out his questions with Burke over the three segments, but to what purpose? Obviously if Burke agreed to sit under the lights for questions, we essentially knew his answers beforehand–as in ‘I have no idea who killed my sister.’ At the end of the day, the much bally-hooed “exclusive interviews” were more showmanship than anything that could help serious mystery analysis. And overall, the tenor of the show is badly misleading on many issues, misinformed on others. The Boulder Police did not conduct a model investigation, but trashing their performance, even their motivation as John Ramsey and his attorney are allowed to do on the show is shamefully off the mark.

Critical circumstantial evidence is given only token attention in Dr. Phil’s treatment, while the science behind DNA evidence, apparently, is woefully misunderstood by commentators. The program even commits the cardinal sin of inviting a paid advocate on the show, Ramsey’s Georgia attorney, as if he would have anything to offer apart from spin favorable to his client. We could go on.

We don’t necessarily reject the conclusion of the program, that an intruding pedophile still needs to be brought to justice, but the road to getting there does not follow the principles of good mystery analysis. We all like Dr. Phil, but his staff served him very poorly in preparing this mash-up of superficial content.

The CBS four-hour special fares distinctly better in our view, but we have problems with it as well. Originally scheduled as six hours and pared down by the network, the program would undoubtedly have come across as more thorough, and balanced, had those hours been left in. The shortened version had the committee of experts (and we must say, these were true experts, unlike many guests on other specials) appearing to plunge head-long toward a very particular theory–Burke’s impulsive clobbering of his sister and Patsy’s desperate cover-up, hoping not to lose both children in one horrible night. We don’t necessarily disagree with the logic behind this theory either, in fact we lean toward Patsy’s authorship of the note from our assessment thus far.

But we wouldn’t go as far as this group did in singling out one perpetrator, only a child at the time and a young man now attempting to live his life in peace. The scene where a sample ten-year-old breaks a sample skull with a vigorous blow from a heavy flashlight commits its own excesses of showmanship–although the result is quite interesting.

Although it suffers from the editing done to chop it to size, the CBS treatment gets the idea very right, that is, look at all evidence through the eyes of decades and decades of expert experience. Drs. Henry Lee and Werner Spitz bring as much gravitas as any forensic scientists in North America, and they convincingly debunk the crime scene as anything more than staging, piled on top of more staging. Evidence generally cited as proving the intruder hypothesis is not ignored, in fact Dr. Lee demonstrates on-camera the problems of contamination with microscopic “touch DNA.” In the end, he opines that the much touted DNA evidence of the case really holds “no forensic value.” Agree or disagree with the debate on each element of evidence, or the overall conclusions of the committee, this program offers something all too rare: a very penetrating analysis of subtle evidence, by the best minds in the field.

SELECT BOOKS AND STUDIES

“JonBenét: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation,” the first major look behind the scenes of the JonBenét case, was published in 2000. It’s recommended as a gut-real accounting of the investigation from the perspective of a detective who gave thousands of hours, and ultimately his health, to the quest for an answer. Detective Steve Thomas’s opinionated account does not claim objectivity, though to us it rang true and valuable. The litigious John Ramsey sued Thomas (a case settled in 2002) over the book’s conclusion: that the Ramseys failed to cooperate with authorities to hide the fact that Patsy Ramsey had killed her daughter accidentally.

Earlier, in 1999, Lawrence Shiller had published and widely sold “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town.” A respected journalist’s work, it nonetheless lacks the insider feel of some of the other accounts. (It really makes a very interesting sound dull and confusing.)

Even earlier in 1998, Dr. Cyril Wecht, a true crime expert trained in both medicine and law, weighed in with a careful analysis of, especially, autopsy results, in “Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?” Wecht’s perspectives on high-profile cases are perennially interesting and worth considering.

John Ramsey offered two books from the family’s perspective: that they were persecuted from the start, compounding the intense pain of their loss (“The Death of Innocence,” 2000, and “The Other Side of Suffering,” 2012). Analysts wishing to consider “both sides” of the story may wish to read one or both accounts. We at M.O.M. believe in multiple perspectives on any mystery, and thus review all materials. The Ramsey’s account is especially poignant in regard to the unseemly–at times downright brutal and disgusting–behavior of media outlets in sensationalizing the tragic event. The family must have felt a cruel salt was being rubbed into open wounds. They correct as many sensational media misstatements are they can, but go beyond that in aggressive criticism of almost everyone who ever criticized them.

Interesting books, but we harbor some skepticism– the spin appears as the product of much legal and public relations counseling. Where the Ramsey’s version of the facts conflicts with law enforcement, we generally find the official account of authorities more credible.

“Foreign Faction: Who Really Kidnapped JonBenét?” was the 2012 product of Detective A. James Kolar’s intimate review of the crime, for the Boulder DA’s office, years after the fact. One of the more contemporary treatments of the case, it may be the one to read above all others. The attention to detail impresses–Kolar had access to voluminous files and organizes the presentation well across some 500 pages. In the end, Kolar became as skeptical as the vast majority of lawmen of the “intruder” theory, which he considers a stretch, and hints at various scenarios of what might have happened inside the home that night, now decades ago.

The 2016 anniversary of the child’s death has spawned new books. “Once Upon a December: Inside the Death Investigation of America’s Most Famous Beauty Queen” by David Kennedy, and “We Have Your Daughter: The Unsolved Murder of JonBenét Ramsey Twenty Years Later,” by Paula Woodward who long reigned in local, Denver TV as a star on-screen reporter. We have not at this time been able to review these materials–at our next update of the JonBenét case we will offer a view as to the value of these works.