Yahoo Lifestyle 17 Biggest Revelations And Most Interesting Facts From The New JonBenét Ramsey Documentary
This post contains mentions of sexual abuse, child abuse, and graphic details of death.
It's been almost 28 years since 6-year-old JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her Colorado home the day after Christmas. Now, there's renewed interest in the cold case thanks to Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, a three-part documentary released on Netflix last week.
JonBenét Ramsey's 1996 death drew intense media attention, fueled by her beauty pageant footage, her family's wealth, and the crime's shocking nature. A strange ransom note, potential police missteps, and rampant speculation led to scrutiny of the Ramsey family, who have consistently maintained their innocence and were never formally charged. The Boulder County district attorney formally cleared the family with new DNA technology in 2008.
The case remains unsolved and under investigation by the Boulder Police Department. JonBenét's mother, Patsy Ramsey, passed away from cancer on June 24, 2006.
The series features new interviews with key figures such as JonBenét's father, John Ramsey, detectives, and reporters initially tied to the case, offering an in-depth look at the possible police missteps, the media frenzy, and their lasting impact on the investigation.
So, with a new look at the case, below are 17 of the most interesting facts straight from the documentary about the case:
1.First, in the documentary, Patsy initially called the police, and in the 911 call, she says she believed their daughter was kidnapped after finding a ransom note in their home. That morning, now-retired detective Bob Whitson said in the documentary that police conducted a preliminary search of the house but "did not find any obvious crime scene" or JonBenét. John and Patsy stayed in the home and invited friends over.
Speaking with the documentary, Denver reporter Julie Hayden said the detective at the scene, Linda Arndt, told her that Arndt requested Ramsey search the house "to give him something to do." In the documentary, John Ramsey said the detective asked him to "see if you see anything unusual." While checking the basement, John Ramsey said he discovered a suitcase "that shouldn't have been there" set up "like a step" beneath a broken window that was wide open. "That looked fishy," he said. Behind the closed door of their wine cellar, he found JonBenét's body.
Linda Arndt would later do an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, sharing her own feelings from the case. ABC News reported that she asked John Ramsey and his friend Fleet White "to search the house top to bottom, looking for anything out of place" and that she "gave them specific instructions not to touch anything." When John brought the body "up the last three steps from the basement," Arndt said, "My mind exploded. And everything that I had noted that morning that stuck out instantly made sense."
In that interview, Arndt famously said that she “knew who killed JonBenét” and had "no doubt in [her] mind who killed" her. While she didn’t directly name anyone, she told ABC News that after John Ramsey brought the body upstairs, she had a “nonverbal exchange” with him that she'd "never forget." She said in the interview, "I didn't know if we'd all be alive when people showed up."
Arndt was not interviewed in the 2024 documentary, but John Ramsey defended himself against her claims in the documentary. He said, "We didn’t act right in the eyes of this ‘so-called’ detective that was there that day."
2.John San Agustin, a retired commander for the sheriff's office in El Paso County, Colorado, said in the documentary that the "lack of experience" by the Boulder Police "procedurally created a lot of problems in the crime scene."
In a police chief town forum held in 1997 that was aired in the documentary, Tom Koby, the then-Boulder Chief of Police, said, "it doesn't appear" that police "got down" to the basement room where JonBenét was in their preliminary search of the home that morning. Additionally, police "did not consider [the home] a crime scene" and the Ramseys "called their friends over," possibly contaminating the home, Carol McKinley, a Denver Gazette reporter who covered the case from the beginning, said in the series.
In the documentary, retired detective Bob Whitson said, "I should have removed all those people from the scene. That was a crime scene mistake, but at the time, it looked like legitimate kidnapping, so I thought, ‘Well, these are the support system for the Ramseys. I’ll let them stay.'"
Further, when John Ramsey discovered her body, he said in the documentary he "immediately pulled the tape off" that was on her mouth. Whitson claimed in the documentary that, "There may have been some evidence on the duct tape if that wasn't removed."
3.Detective Bob Whitson said in the doc that he asked for handwriting from both John and Patsy Ramsey, which he received back in "two notebook pads" and gave to their forgery detective and handwriting examiner, Jeff Kithcart, to analyze. Kithcart told documentarians he found what he believed to be the "first draft" of the "possible ransom note" within one of the notebooks. "It appeared that the ransom note was written from that notebook in the Ramsey household," he said.
4.Some experts believed the ransom note to be fake. During a 2006 FBI agent interview included in the series, Ron Walker, an FBI agent, said when he read the note, it was "unusual" to see how long the note was. "Your typical ransom notes are short and to the point," he said. He also said it was "odd" that they asked for $118,000 specifically.
He said, "The $118,000 is a low figure, but it's also a very unusual figure because it's not typical of what you expect to see," citing that he'd more likely see $200,000 to a million dollars requested. He said, "All of this indicated to me the note was essentially bogus. It was not truly a kidnapping note."
5.According to reporter Carol McKinley, police initially thought JonBenét died by strangulation, but the autopsy listed both strangulation and a head wound as her cause of death. The report did not identify which event occurred first.
In the documentary, Bob Whitson said police identified both a baseball bat "found outside the Ramsey's house" and "the Ramsey's Maglite flashlight" left in the kitchen, but there was "no physical evidence" on either item. The autopsy report also noted injury to her vagina.
6.After JonBenét's death, the Ramseys did not come off favorably to many in the media, according to reporters who covered the case. "The Ramseys were very harshly judged as delinquent parents, as parents who forced their daughter into these beauty pageants," said former Denver KUSA-TV investigative reporter Paula Woodward in the documentary.
John Ramsey said in the documentary that he and Patsy did an interview with CNN after friends were "insistent" that they go in front of the media after accusations against them came out. Still, reporters in the docuseries said it didn't land right. "Why are they doing interviews with CNN if they aren't going to a formal interview, sit down, with Boulder Police if they want to find the killer of their child?" McKinley said in the documentary. Another famous investigative reporter from the case, Charlie Brennan, also said Patsy's remarks that there was a "killer on the loose" landed "awkwardly" in the local community.
In the series, John Ramsey said his attorneys advised him not to talk to the police without them present, as it was why a lot of "innocent people were in prison." Ramsey said he cooperated with police and gave them "anything they asked for," including "blood samples, DNA samples, records, and credit card records."
7.On Jan. 15, 1997, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation received a DNA report from samples taken from JonBenét's body. The test revealed that there was foreign DNA evidence in JonBenét's fingernails and underwear from an unidentified male that did not match anyone in the family. While the report was received in January, John Ramsey said in the documentary that they had not gone public with the results "for months."
"The January 15th DNA analysis by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation was never, ever leaked. The Boulder district attorney didn't even know about it," reporter Paula Woodward said in the documentary.
8.In 2001, the Ramseys filed a civil suit against former detective Steve Thomas — who led the investigation before resigning in 1998 — for purportedly making accusations in his book about their potential involvement in JonBenét's death. In his 2001 deposition, Thomas said police gave information to the media in an effort to compel the Ramseys to speak.
Thomas also agreed in his deposition that Richard Dusick (a document analyst with the US Secret Service) concluded there was "no evidence" Patsy Ramsey wrote the ransom note. Thomas previously wrote a theory that she may have in his book.
At the time, reports of potential child abuse were also sensationalized in the press and public opinion. "At the very beginning, not many people were on the 'Ramseys didn't do it' side. And most people thought John Ramsey killed his own daughter, maybe molested his daughter and killed her," Carol McKinley said in the documentary.
Despite conversations around abuse in the media at the time, and Thomas saying in his deposition that he looked to see if there was any "pathology" in the family, Thomas said that he "did not think there was anything remarkable or outstanding" in his deposition. He said, "Drug use, child abuse, or spousal abuse, not that I'm aware of."
9.One of the initial theories developed by the Boulder Police Department, which Detective Steve Thomas furthered in his book and deposition, was that Patsy Ramsey, in a fit of rage, killed her daughter because she had soiled the bed and then staged the scene to look like a kidnapping, according to retired Boulder detective Bob Whitson. In the doc, Whitson said, "The evidence does not match that at all. We know she was alive while being tortured in the moments before her death."
![Split image: Left side shows a letter labeled "Evidence/Property." Right side features a person speaking with the caption, "[Bob Whitson] The evidence does not match that at all."](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/5bWq0ljSDnEADupBOtyo5Q--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTYzNw--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/buzzfeed_articles_778/5ad275de096f927554b096c0d7cea5da)
Whitson argued that the hemorrhaging in JonBenét's eyes and heart were "consistent with being strangled." Additionally, he argued Patsy would have had to do all the staging while JonBenét was still alive, which he believed to be unlikely.
Private investigator Lou Smit pointed out in his own taped interviews of his investigation that JonBenét's bedding had "fibers and hairs" that "would probably not be there" if the bedding was washed and the bedding was not wet. JonBenét's pediatrician previously told reporters that there was "never any evidence" to believe JonBenét had ever suffered prior emotional or physical abuse.
In the documentary, John Ramsey said, "Patsy had just recovered from stage 4 ovarian cancer; she was grateful to be alive. Do you think that her child wetting her bed would be a big deal? No. She was happy to be alive and to have some more time with her children."
10.Throughout, several officials spoke up. Retired commander John San Agustin said there was "a lack of respect from the Boulder Police Department towards the Boulder district attorney's office" at the time. Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter said there were differing theories between the two departments. "Some Boulder Police thought they knew who did it, and some of my people were convinced an intruder did it so that you had a split," Hunter said in a 2004 interview tape.
Hunter hired well-known detective Lou Smit, recognized for his expertise in cracking high-profile murder cases, to lead a private investigation into the case.
11.In interviews shown in the documentary, Lou Smit said he believed that a stun gun caused marks on JonBenét's face and back. According to John San Agustin, this theory was "dismissed" by other investigators who attributed the marks to her lying on an object. Smit also highlighted several other pieces of evidence that led him to suspect an intruder was responsible for the attack.
In video and audio tapes Smit recorded, these included a rope found in the guest bedroom near JonBenét's room, the open basement window, where he videotaped himself entering in and out of despite skepticism from others that it was not possible, and the suitcase under the window, which had what he believed "a faint footprint mark" and a glass shard left behind on its top.
12.There were other cases in Boulder where suspects went into homes and attempted or completed sex assaults both before and after the case, according to detective Bob Whitson. This included a case a couple of neighborhoods over from the Ramseys that happened in September 1997, just a few months after JonBenét's death, where someone broke into a nearby home at night and assaulted a girl.
According to reporter Charlie Brennan in the documentary, the girl happened to attend the same dance studio as JonBenét, and the perpetrator has never been identified. Despite the parallels, Brennan said it's unclear if the cases are connected. Police have not publicly confirmed a link, if there is one.
13.In September 1998, a grand jury was convened to investigate the death. An indictment was needed to convict any suspect, including the Ramseys, of a crime. A year later, on Oct. 13, 1999, Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter announced that the grand jury had been dismissed without issuing any indictments, citing insufficient evidence.
In 2013, it was revealed that the grand jury actually sought to indict John and Patsy Ramsey, not on murder charges, but for child abuse, finding probable cause that the Ramseys allowed JonBenét to be placed in a situation that resulted in her death. However, former Denver special deputy district attorney Mitch Morrissey said in the doc that without "proof beyond a reasonable doubt," the "highest" standard in the criminal justice system, it becomes an "ethical obligation" as a prosecutor to not prosecute the case.
"It would have been easy to bring charges. But, to have brought charges when you didn't feel you could make your case would've been a horrible thing to do," Alex Hunter said in an interview clip shown in the documentary.
14.Several men were investigated for JonBenét's death. One lead was JonBenét's pageant photographer, Randy Simons, who had sold her photos to an agency that allowed them to appear in tabloids. In 2019, Simons was convicted on charges related to child sexual abuse images. However, according to investigative writer Joyce Singular, his DNA was not found at the crime scene.
Colorado Springs investigations commander Kurt Pillard also told documentarians that the Boulder Police took a "hard look" at Gary Oliva, who had sexually assaulted a neighbor’s daughter in Oregon before fleeing to Boulder, Colorado, around the time of JonBenét's death. However, Oliva's did not match the crime scene DNA.
Police also investigated John Brewer Eustace, a man in North Carolina who was charged with "first-degree burglary, rape, kidnapping, first-degree sex offense, and four counts of taking indecent liberties with a child." Eustace also kept a shrine to JonBenét in his home, according to investigative writer Stephen Singular. However, according to Singular, Eustace was confirmed to have a "rock-solid alibi" for the night of the crime.
15.In 2002, Michael Tracey, a professor emeritus in mass communications at the University of Colorado, who said in the documentary that he became involved in the case early on because of how it was depicted in the media, was contacted by a man with the pseudonym "Daxis," claiming to have killed JonBenét. Over taped phone calls, Tracey explained in the documentary how Daxis went into graphic detail about how he assaulted and killed JonBenét.
In 2006, Tracey said he sent Daxis "the last photo" of JonBenét, with investigators using it as bait to track and identify him. Daxis was then revealed to be John Mark Karr, an American schoolteacher living in Thailand. Karr had previously been arrested in California in 2001 on charges related to child sexual abuse images but fled the country before facing trial and disappeared.
Karr was arrested in Thailand and brought back to Colorado. In the documentary, John Ramsey claimed that when Karr's photo went public, his housekeeper at his vacation home in Michigan called to tell him she was "100% certain" she saw Karr wandering in the Ramseys' garage "asking questions" the summer before JonBenét was killed.
While Karr was arrested, his DNA did not match the DNA at the crime scene, and he was released. As of May 2024, per the documentary, Karr claims to be living "a very covert life outside the US" and "has not been convicted of any crime against children."
16.Some investigators and reporters believe there may be a problem with the DNA due to the contamination of the crime scene, indicating that suspects shouldn't be ruled out yet. "The DNA in this case has been problematic from the beginning, many experts have told me, and this goes back to the contamination of the crime scene," investigative reporter Charlie Brennan said in the documentary.
"The Boulder Police Department made a lot of mistakes early on in this case. I was always convinced that that may have made an important difference in issues of contamination," said Mitch Morrissey, the former Denver special deputy district attorney who was brought in as "an expert in DNA evidence" to help present the case to the grand jury in 1998.
17.In 2022, John Ramsey petitioned Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to transfer DNA evidence in the case from the Boulder Police Department to an independent investigative agency. In the documentary, he stated that "five or six items" were sent to the lab but never sampled for DNA. "We want the items that have been sampled and tested to be retested and then use the public genealogy database to look for not only a match but a similar relative," he said in the statement.
As of November 2024, ahead of the release of the documentary, the Boulder Police Department released its yearly update on the case. In a video update, Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn said, "While I was not at Boulder police 28 years ago, I have worked in policing for more than 20 years, and I want to assure you that our agency is committed to doing everything we can to bring justice to JonBenét and hold her killer responsible."
Redfearn acknowledged that there were a "number of things" law enforcement could have handled better regarding the case.
Redfearn said Colorado Police have since partnered with the Colorado Cold Case Review Team, a "panel of outside experts," to review the case, generate recommendations, and determine if updated technologies or forensic testing might produce new leads. They've since digitized all evidence into a searchable database.
"Those files include more than 21,000 tips, over 1,000 interviews which were conducted across 17 states and two foreign countries, samples from more than 200 different individuals — including handwriting, DNA, fingerprints and shoe prints — nearly 2,500 pieces of evidence and roughly 40,000 reports with more than one million pages documenting the investigation," Redfearn said in his update.
In a post on X, the Boulder Police also wrote, "The assertion that there is viable evidence and leads we are not pursuing — to include DNA testing — is completely false."
Redfearn said that the department continues to have ongoing conversations with the Ramsey family. He said Boulder Police welcomes any tips and coverage related to the case to bring the killer to justice.
Via the statement: "The Boulder Police Department encourages anyone with any information to contact detectives at BouldersMostWanted@bouldercolorado.gov or by calling the Boulder Police tipline at 303-441-1974."
As of now, the case remains cold.
If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 (4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 (HOPE), which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local center here.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
