Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. The brutal murder of a six-year-old child beauty pageant queen in Christmas 1996 sent shockwaves felt around the world.
John Benet Ramsey was discovered murdered inside of her very own home in Boulder, Colorado, just seven hours after she'd been reported missing. Her killer left behind a chilling three-page ransom letter that left Boulder detectives scratching their heads.
Nobody could comprehend how a six-year-old girl could be strangled with a handmade garrote and could sustain a broken skull from a blow to her head. Early on in the case, with little signs of an intruder entering inside of the Ramsey home that Christmas night, the Boulder police were left with only two main suspects.
But as the years turn to decades without an arrest, the murder of JonBenet Ramsey has become one of the most notorious unsolved murders our country has ever seen. Will JonBenet's killer ever be identified? And how can forensic science help crack this one? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 51, The Murder of JonBenet Ramsey. ♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved. Others have turned cold. If you're interested in supporting the show and getting early access to weekly episodes and bonus material, consider visiting our Patreon page, patreon.com slash forensic tales.
Another great way you can help support Forensic Tales is by leaving us a positive rating with a review. Now, let's jump right into this two-part special. Hey, you guys. Before we jump into this week's episode, I just want to say thank you for jumping in and responding to the post on Instagram and on our Facebook page.
I shared on social media that we had a goal of hitting 100 reviews on Apple Podcasts by the end of 2020. And we are so close. You guys are awesome. And I'm so grateful for you taking the time to leave the show a review today.
And if you haven't done so yet and you'd like to help us get to our goal, your positive review of Forensic Tales is so appreciated. Thank you guys so, so much. I'm also really excited to announce that Forensic Tales is getting a brand new logo.
This has been something we've been working on for a while and we're so close to revealing it. So be on the lookout, our new logo, as well as some merchandise that is launching in just a couple of weeks.
So if you aren't following the show on Instagram, it's at Forensic Tales. So be sure to follow us and make sure you get all of the info about the new logo and the merchandise that is coming your way. So the case we're talking about this week on the show is actually a two-part special, and it's on the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.
It's one of my all-time favorite true crime cases. It's one that I could spend hours talking about with practically anybody. If I met someone at Ralph's and they were talking about JonBenet, I would be like, hey, hey, let me join in. And I've also decided to cover it this week and next week on the show because it's the week of Christmas. And the case itself begins on Christmas 1996.
So we're coming up on the 24th anniversary of this infamous American murder that has haunted me all of these years and probably has haunted you as well. In this two-part special, we're not only going to cover the facts of the case, the things that happened on Christmas Day 1996, as well as the days and weeks following the murder, but
But we're also going to take a deep dive into the forensic science of the case. We're going to talk about the forensic evidence we have and why this case should have been solved over two decades ago. And we're also going to discuss the harsh reality about whether this case will ever be solved based on the forensic evidence we have.
December 1996, the Ramsey family lived in a beautiful five bedroom, 11,000 square foot, very nice home in the upscale Boulder, Colorado neighborhood.
The Ramsey family purchased the home back in 1991 for a little over $500,000, which back in the early 1990s would be equal to just under $1 million now in 2020. John Ramsey was a multi-millionaire businessman. Back in 1989, John formed the Advanced Product Group.
one of three companies that would eventually be merged into Access Graphics. And during the company's merge, John made a lot of money. He was wealthy. He became president and chief executive officer at Access Graphics. And in 1991, his net worth was estimated at just around $6.1 million. Wow.
He was the head of a company that had grossed well over $1 billion in revenue and was considered a really big deal in the Boulder, Colorado area. He was previously married to a woman by the name of Lucinda Pash. They had three children together, Elizabeth, Melinda, and John Andrew.
John and Lucinda ended up getting divorced in 1978, and that's when John would go on to marry Patsy about two years later in 1980. The Ramsey family experienced their first real loss in 1992 when John and Lucinda's 22-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was tragically killed in a car crash alongside her boyfriend at the time.
This was a really, really tragic and unexpected loss for the Ramseys. Of course, we know now that this won't be the only daughter that John loses. John and Patsy Ramsey married in 1980. Patsy was a former beauty pageant contestant. She had actually been crowned Miss West Virginia in 1977 when she was just 21 years old.
She had also been a contestant in the famous Miss America contest. And she ended up meeting John, who was a little bit older. She was 23 at the time and John was 37, who had three children from his previous marriage. So John and Patsy would go on to have two children together.
Burke Ramsey was born in 1987, and then JonBenet Ramsey was born three years later in 1990. At an early age, Patsy, a former beauty pageant winner herself, got JonBenet competing in these kid beauty pageants.
If you Google the JonBenet Ramsey case, the first thing you'll get on the search are all these pictures of six-year-old JonBenet wearing a full face of makeup. She's wearing these incredibly elaborate outfits. Her hair is done in these big bouncy blonde curls.
Of course, this aspect of John Binney's life is going to play a huge part in what's ultimately talked about following her death. There was a lot of criticism on Patsy's behalf on her parenting decisions to put her six-year-old daughter in these types of beauty pageants following her murder.
with all the makeup, the clothes they wore, and just the whole idea of putting these little girls in these types of competitions. There's a lot of people out there that just don't agree with putting small young girls in these types of beauty competitions, which we'll be talking about in some great length when we get into the possible theories and some suspects that have emerged over the years.
point is, is that by just six years old, JonBenet had already won multiple pageant titles in her division. She had even been crowned Little Miss Colorado. I think her mom, Patsy, had hopes and dreams that her daughter, JonBenet, would become even more successful in the field of beauty pageants than even she was when she was younger.
And the whole beauty pageant thing seemed to work out for JonBenet. She was described as an extrovert who didn't mind being the center of everybody's attention. She also loved getting dressed up. So the hours upon hours that it would take in order to get her ready for these types of competitions, they didn't really seem to bother her, even as just a kid. She seemed to fit right into this lifestyle.
JonBenet practically won every beauty contest that she entered. JonRamsey would often tell Patsy that he wished his daughter would actually lose some of these competitions. That he felt like she needed to understand that you don't always win in life. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes you come in second place. Christmastime had always been a big deal at the Ramsey household.
Patsy would set up and decorate a Christmas tree in every single room of their home in Boulder. She would decorate the trees with ornaments that she collected from all over the world. If you watch some of the home videos that Patsy would take of her home around Christmas time, it was pretty spectacular. These home videos definitely make my apartment and my Christmas tree look pretty Mickey Mouse.
So Patsy participated in what was called the Historic Boulder Holiday Home Tour, which basically, as the name suggests, allows hundreds of people to just go to different homes throughout the city of Boulder that were known to be really well decorated for Christmas. Your home pretty much becomes a stop on this holiday tour.
Which also means that a lot of people have been inside of the Ramsey household. They knew who John Bonnet was, they knew Burke, and they knew John and Patsy really well. And in the days just prior to John Bonnet's murder, there were hundreds of people who walked through the Ramseys' home for this tour.
On December 23rd, just two days before Christmas, the Ramseys were hosting their annual Christmas party. As always, the party was incredible. There were a ton of people inside of the home. They even had Santa Claus make a special appearance for the children. It was just the kind of over-the-top holiday party that you'd expect from the Ramseys.
At 6.48 p.m. on December 23rd, a 911 call was placed from inside of the Ramsey's home directly to the Boulder Police Department. But before the 911 dispatcher could even pick up the call, it ended. The police attempted to call back twice and didn't get an answer either time. So they decided to send an officer out to the home where they were having the holiday party.
But when the officer got to the house, everything at the Ramsey house seemed to be completely normal. They just thought, well, maybe one of the people inside of the home, possibly one of the children, accidentally dialed 911. On the morning of Christmas Day 1996, everything started off completely normal. Santa Claus brought John Bonnet a brand new bicycle.
Sometime in the afternoon, John Bonnet and her father John took the bike out and went on a little ride around the neighborhood. And for Christmas dinner, the Ramsey family went over to the home of retired oil executive Fleet White Jr. and his wife Priscilla White's home. Fleet was one of John's best friends, and it just so happened that the Whites also had a six-year-old daughter, and she was one of John Bonnet's best friends.
After dinner, sometime around 10 p.m., John Benet had already fallen asleep. So John carried her up to her bedroom and Patsy reportedly helped put her daughter to sleep that night. John and Patsy Ramsey would have no idea that this would be the very last time they would see John Benet alive. Around 5.30 in the morning, Patsy Ramsey was the first to wake up.
The Ramsey family had plans to fly on John's private airplane out to Michigan that day to meet up with John's older children. And then the plan was for the entire family to take a Disney cruise, which was a vacation to celebrate Patsy's upcoming 40th birthday. So she was up early the day after Christmas in order to get everything ready for this family vacation.
So she got out of bed and headed downstairs to make coffee like she did every morning. She took the back staircase on the way down to the kitchen. On one of the steps to this back staircase, she found what would later be called the three-page handwritten ransom letter.
And after reading just the first few lines of the letter, Patsy screamed, which immediately woke up John. The letter again was a three-page handwritten note. Now, I won't read the entire letter, but it begins with, quote,
We respect your business, but not the country it serves. At this time, we have your daughter in our possession. She is safe and unharmed. And if you want to see her in 1997, you must follow our instructions in the letter. End quote. The letter goes on to demand that John withdraw $118,000 from his bank account.
$100,000 must be in $100 bills and the remaining $18,000 should be in $20 bills. The letter then tells John that he will be calling them by 10 o'clock the following morning with further instructions on where to drop the money and how they'll eventually get their daughter back. The letter tells John not to involve the police.
and that if he does, John Bonnet will be killed. The letter ends by reading, quote, Don't try to grow a brain, John. You are not the only fat cat around, so don't think that killing won't be difficult. Don't underestimate us, John. Use that good Southern common sense of yours. It is up to you now, John. End quote.
The letter is signed Victory, explanation mark, with the initials S-B-T-C. So after John and Patsy read the letter, their first call wasn't to the Boulder police, which is probably what you'd expect. They actually call their friends Fleet and Priscilla White, the family they had Christmas dinner with the night before.
At 5.52 a.m., that's when Patsy finally calls the police. And here's what's on the initial 911 call. I want to play it for you because it's going to be something that we discuss later in part two. So here it is.
Police! What's going on? 5515th Street. What's going on there, ma'am? We have a kidnapping. Hurry, please. Explain to me what's going on, okay? There's a note left and our daughter is gone. A note was left and your daughter is gone? How old is your daughter? She's six years old. She's blind. Six years old.
How long ago was it? I don't know. I just found the note. Does it say who took her? What? Does it say who took her? I don't know. There's a ransom note here. It's a ransom note? It says FBTC. Victory.
Please. Okay, what's your name? Are you Kathy Ramsey? I'm the mother. Oh, my God. Please. Okay, I'm sending an officer over, okay? Please. Do you know how long she's been gone? No, I don't. Please, we just got out, and she's not here. Oh, my God, please. Okay, well. Please, there's nobody. I am, honey. Please. Take a deep breath. Please, hurry, hurry. Kathy, Kathy, Kathy, Kathy.
Seven minutes after the 911 call at 5.59 a.m., that's when the first responding officers from the Boulder Police Department, Officer French, arrives at the Ramsey home. Between 6 and 8 in the morning, four more Boulder police officers arrive. Officer Vetch, Weiss, Barklow, and their supervisor, Reichenbach. Keep in mind, this is December 26th, the day after Christmas.
So there aren't too many police officers on duty. And the ones that are, well, probably are at the bottom of the department's seniority list. Most of the more experienced, higher ranking police officers are off duty that morning. And this is a key detail when we discuss the disaster that this crime scene will ultimately become.
It wasn't until around 8.10 in the morning that the first detective arrived at the home, Linda Arndt. Typically, when police are called to a scene of a possible kidnapping, a child kidnapping, the first thing you do, this is Policing 101, is to secure the crime scene. You don't want anyone entering or leaving the home. The house should have been completely locked down.
And this is done to preserve any and all physical and forensic evidence that's still present at the crime scene. This mistake in not securing the crime scene and the lack of experienced Boulder police officers on scene are two of the worst things that can happen. Not to mention, the city of Boulder really doesn't see too many cases of kidnappings.
especially child kidnappings with ransom notes. So the police officers who first arrived at the Ramseys really didn't have the skill set or the experience in order to deal with what they were having to deal with. This doesn't excuse what the Boulder police did, but it does provide some insight as to their failures in this case right from the get-go.
So not only did Detective Linda Arndt not secure the crime scene, she allowed for not only her officers to come and go from the home that morning, she also allowed friends of the Ramseys to enter the home.
That's because the Ramseys called the Whites once again. And within just a couple hours of the discovery of the ransom note, Fleet and Priscilla White were there inside of the Ramsey home, trying their best to console and comfort John and Patsy. The Whites are extremely close to the Ramseys, and they are inside the home trying to be there for their friends, who just found out that their six-year-old daughter, John Benet, had been kidnapped.
Now, the Whites may be good friends, but they are terrible for the investigation. They shouldn't have even been allowed inside the home to begin with. This is a crime scene. We have a six-year-old girl who's been kidnapped, presumably from her bedroom. All of this movement in and out of the home is a forensic nightmare. So the police, the Ramseys, and now the Whites
wait around when the time comes to 10 o'clock a.m. 10 o'clock is the time that the author of the ransom letter said that they would be calling with further information and further instructions in order to drop off the money and to ultimately get JonBenet back. But that call never comes. Nobody calls the Ramseys at 10 a.m. or at any time for that matter.
Law enforcement and friends of the Ramseys continue to drift in and out of the home all morning and into the early afternoon. They know the kidnapper hasn't called when they said they would, and nobody really seemed to have any solid leads as to who took John Benet. They also know that John Benet is gone and that her older brother Burke was found safe and sound inside his bedroom.
So it appears to investigators that John Benet was the only target in all of this. And that's when around 1 p.m., Detective Linda Arndt reportedly told John to start searching the home himself to see if there was anything suspicious. Now, I don't know if she said this to keep John busy or make him feel like he was doing something to help in the investigation somehow.
But in no way, shape or form should John have ever been told to help the police, well, basically do their jobs. That detective should have not only never allowed John to, quote, search the home, but the family should have been removed from the home completely. This is a crime scene.
We have a missing six-year-old little girl. We don't know if the parents are somehow involved. We don't know if the older brother knows something. We don't know anything at this point besides the fact that we do know kidnappings are often perpetrated by someone the victim knows. So to allow John and even encourage him,
To start searching the home for clues is just one of the strangest things I have ever heard any law enforcement agency do in a child kidnapping case. It's like allowing a potential suspect to go back into a crime scene to clean things up and take whatever they want. You just don't do that.
So around 1 p.m., John Ramsey, along with his best friend, Fleet White, start searching and looking around the home, just as instructed by the lead detective. And by 1.05 p.m., they had already found something. At 1.05 p.m., John and Fleet discover John Benet's body in a spare room in the basement.
a room that had been overlooked by one of the Boulder police officers during the initial search of the home. John Benet wasn't just found in the basement itself. She was actually inside of a room inside of the basement that at first glance, you probably wouldn't even realize the room was even there. It was this kind of tiny, sort of like a closet-like room inside of the basement.
And a strange twist of fate, this was the same exact room that John and Patsy Ramsey used in order to hide that year's Christmas presents. So it's not the police who discover John Bonet's body. It's her very own father, John. John found her body. She appeared to have been strangled and had duct tape across her mouth.
She had a white blanket covering her body. So he immediately picked up her body and started screaming for anybody to come help. Holding onto John Binney's body, he runs upstairs to where Patsy is and the rest of the detectives are. And within minutes of the discovery of her body, it's removed from the room inside of the basement and is brought up to the living room.
which is yet another problem from an investigative and evidence standpoint. Her body should have never been moved, and by allowing John to not only discover the body, but then to pick her up, well, that destroys a lot of potential evidence here. It also essentially guarantees that his DNA and fiber and trace evidence, either from John's body or from the clothing he was wearing,
it guarantees that it's going to show up on her body and her clothing. So this is now the, I guess, third huge mistake by the Boulder Police Department. But the crime scene contamination doesn't end there. Once John brings John Bonet's body up to the living room, Patsy then drops to the floor down to her knees and just grabs onto her daughter.
hugging her, screaming, crying, causing more and more cross-contamination. Once John Bonnet's body is brought upstairs, lead detective Arndt called for backup and called for the department's forensics team to return back to the home. This was no longer a kidnapping case. It had now become a murder case.
Detective Everett was the one to search the basement once the body was discovered in order to determine if the person was still present inside of the basement, which was ultimately cleared. But it wasn't until 1.30 p.m. that the police decided that it's finally a good idea to secure the crime scene.
This is now, what, close to eight hours after Patsy read the ransom note and found John Bonet's been kidnapped. It took eight hours for investigators to decide, hey, maybe we should lock this one down. It's a crime scene. I hate to say it, and I hate to come across as someone who's overly critical of the police.
But a lot of forensic evidence is lost over the course of eight hours, especially when family is moving around the house, friends and detectives are coming and going. Multiple people are touching John Bonnet's body. This is just a complete and utter disaster.
At 1.30 p.m., Boulder police officers Ron Walker and Larry Mason secure the home. They don't allow anyone else into the home. And really, that's when the murder investigation finally gets started. And then 10 minutes later, this is around 1.40 p.m., John Benet is heard by Boulder police making a phone call to the pilot of his private airplane.
This is around 30 minutes after discovering his very own daughter's dead body in the basement. John is heard asking the airplane pilot to prepare a plane for him because he's going to head out to Atlanta. Now, I have no idea what would be going on in my mind after thinking my daughter was kidnapped to then learning she's actually been killed and is dead inside of my own basement.
But I know my first thought would not be to call my private pilot to arrange a flight out of state, no matter what the situation is. So I'm not the only one that had concerns. Because after hearing this phone call, this is when the Boulder police tell the Ramsey family that they aren't allowed to leave town. They said, this isn't a kidnapping. This is now a murder investigation.
you are not allowed to leave the city of Boulder right now. So John Patsy and their son Burke decide to leave the home around 1 45 p.m. to plan to stay the night at one of their friend's homes, the Fernies. Back at the home, investigators get their first real look at what happened to John Bonnet.
Investigators can see that her mouth had been covered with duct tape, and she also had a nylon cord around both her wrists and her neck. The nylon cord was used to create what is called a garrotte, which is kind of an old-school weapon. You don't really see those too often. And before the John Benet Ramsey case, I didn't even know what a garrotte was. So this garrotte around John Benet's neck was made from nylon rope and
and was wrapped around a broken piece of a wooden paintbrush. We're going to be talking about the paintbrush part once we start diving into some theories about what happened. So for now, just put that little detail in the back of your mind and we'll come back to it. But the garrotte appears to be what was used in order to strangle JonBenet. Her autopsy would later reveal that in addition to being strangled with a garrotte,
She also suffered a skull fracture. I know this is difficult to talk about, to say the least, especially since we're talking about a six-year-old victim. But it's obvious that John Benet suffered a very traumatic death. Not only did she have a near-fatal blow to her skull, she was then strangled with a nylon rope turned into a garrotte. Now, this next part is interesting.
Probably one of the hardest to discuss. But the autopsy also revealed that there may be some evidence that she was somehow sexually assaulted. We'll also put this detail of the autopsy on the back burner when we discuss theories.
So the Boulder medical examiner would go on to rule her death a homicide and the cause of death as asphyxia by strangulation associated with cranial cerebral trauma. In non-medical terms, she died from a combination of being strangled and suffering a severe skull fracture.
It's possible the skull fracture knocked her out and then her killer ultimately strangled her, causing death. Around 2.30 p.m. on the day of John Benet's murder, Detective Arndt drives over to the Fernies where the Ramses are going to be staying. This is also around the time that the Boulder police conduct their first interview with John Benet's older brother, Burke.
Burke, who was just nine years old at the time, is interviewed by Boulder Police Detective Patterson. And Burke tells Detective Patterson that he slept through the night. He slept right through all of the events from the previous night when John Bonnet would have been murdered. Burke, in this initial interview, doesn't really provide investigators with any helpful or useful information about
And that's probably not totally unexpected, right? He's a nine-year-old kid. So that same afternoon, sometime after Burke was interviewed by Detective Patterson, John Ramsey picked up the phone and hired an attorney. He hires an attorney by the name of Mike Bynum. Mike Bynum is a close friend of John's, and he also serves as the corporate attorney for John's company.
And after the phone call, Mike Bynum, the attorney, arrives at the Fernies. Right as he walks in, the Ramsey and Fernie families together are kneeling in the living room, praying with a reverend. Now, it's of course worth mentioning here that John Ramsey, within hours of discovering John Bonnet's body, is on the phone calling a lawyer. At first, he calls his private pilot.
Now he calls an attorney. To be fair, I think it is probably the smart thing to do in this situation to pick up the phone and call an attorney because you just, in these situations, you just don't know what's coming next. But I don't care no matter what. No matter what, that is going to look bad to a lot of people. People are going to say, why call an attorney if you've got nothing to hide?
Police hadn't even sat down with Patsy or John, and he's already on the phone talking to Mike Bynum. So throughout the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, there was at least one detective that was assigned to stay at the Fernies' house and just to stay by the Ramsey's side. And this is also when other family members start to arrive in Boulder.
John's brother Jeff came in from Atlanta. Patsy's sister and brother-in-law also showed up. And then by 10.45 p.m., John Binet's body was eventually removed from the home by the coroner. Over December 27th into December 28th, John and Patsy Ramsey are reportedly extremely distraught over John Binet's murder.
They were both so distraught and so emotional that both of them were given prescriptions for Valium just in order to calm their nerves. Up until December 28th, two days after John Benet's murder, Patsy and John hadn't spoke to police. Their claim was that they were too distraught, they were too emotional for a formal police interview.
They didn't agree to a police interview. They had not been questioned. They weren't necessarily being uncooperative with police, but let's just say they weren't exactly being cooperative either, which raises some alarm bells. Your six-year-old daughter has just been brutally murdered, presumably inside of your own home on Christmas. You'd expect the parents to provide police with any and all information they had.
They would want to help the police catch their daughter's killer in any way possible. So alarm bells are ringing when it takes two full days for the Ramseys to finally start to cooperate and to finally agree to start helping police, even if the help they provide is only in a small way.
On December 28th, John Ramsey and his older son, John Andrew Ramsey, along with nine-year-old Burke, finally agreed to go down to the Boulder Police Station to answer some questions as well as to provide some forensic samples.
Patsy, on the other hand, was reportedly too distraught to submit to any forensic evidence collection. So Patsy stayed behind at the Fernies. She didn't go with them.
So John and his older son, Ann Burke, provide investigators blood, hair, and handwriting samples that can be compared to the forensic evidence recovered from John Binney's body. And also to have the handwriting sample in order to compare the writing that was found on the ransom letter.
After providing the samples around 12, the Ramsey's attorney informed the Boulder police that John and Patsy would not be providing any testimony and they won't be answering any questions by the police without their attorney present. Now, because Mike Bynum wasn't a criminal defense attorney, he was just the attorney for John's company.
He handed the case over to Brian Morgan of Hayden, Morgan & Foreman, which at the time was one of Colorado's top law firms. And by Saturday evening, the Ramseys had retained Brian Morgan and they were no longer going to be speaking directly with the police.
The next day, December 29th, the Ramseys got on a flight to Atlanta, where they had lived prior to relocating to Boulder. Within three days of John Bonnet's murder, they lawyered up with one of Colorado's best criminal defense attorneys. They weren't really cooperating with the Boulder Police Department, and now they left for Atlanta in one of John's private planes.
JonBenet's funeral was held on December 31st in Marietta, Georgia. She was buried next to her older half-sister, Elizabeth, who passed away in that earlier car crash back in 1992. Over 200 people turned out to lay little six-year-old JonBenet to rest. Nobody could really comprehend how or why something so terrible could happen to her.
And to be killed in such a brutal and such a bizarre way, nobody could seem to wrap their head around what really happened. Not only did the Ramsey family want answers about who killed John Bonnet, because the story had become national headline news, the entire country wanted answers. The day after John Bonnet's funeral, John and Patsy made their first television appearance.
This was a case that within hours of happening was making national headline news. Practically every American household was following the murder of this six-year-old beauty pageant contestant. So on January 1st, John and Patsy sat down for a 45-minute interview on CNN from their home in Atlanta.
In the days following the murder, the Boulder police reassured the community that there wasn't some murderer out there killing six-year-old little girls. They tried really hard to assure the people that lived in Boulder that they didn't have the evidence to believe a crazed baby killer was just running the streets.
But when Patsy speaks to the American people on CNN, she flat out says there is a killer on the loose. She says, quote, if I were a resident of Boulder, I would tell my friends, keep your babies close to you. There's someone out there. What Patsy was doing on national television for the world to watch was completely opposite of what the police in Boulder wanted the community to think.
and was completely opposite of what detectives thought might have happened to John Benet. And this interview with CNN caused more alarm bells to go off for the police. John and Patsy claimed that they were too distraught to sit down for a police interview, but now they weren't too distraught to go on national television and talk about their daughter's murder anymore.
Something about that just didn't sit well with the Boulder police. And what also didn't sit well was that some body language experts have argued that during the CNN interview said their responses seemed to be forced. They were rehearsed and didn't seem to be very genuine. That their body language wasn't consistent with two parents who just had their six-year-old daughter killed in a very traumatic way.
They also point out that the Ramseys were clearly state their theory that there is a madman on the loose in the Boulder area who is responsible for murdering John Benet. It's often strange when victims of crime, in this case, it's the parents of a murdered girl. It's unusual for them to come out and basically offer up their own theory about what happened.
So immediately following the CNN interview where Patsy tells America to hold on to their babies, that there's a killer on the loose, the Boulder mayor gets on TV as quickly as he could and shares his own message. He wants the public to know that Boulder is safe, that the residents shouldn't believe that a killer was on the loose.
I think this was the first time that the police and the mayor kind of made it known that they didn't really think there was a killer on the loose. They kind of hinted to the idea that the killer, well, the killer might be in the Ramsey family. Two days after the CNN interview, the Ramseys are still unwilling to sit down with police and answer any questions.
So the police make their first big public announcement in the case. The Boulder police announced that the ransom letter found on the staircase was actually written inside of the Ramsey home.
The letter was written on a notepad that was found in the Ramsey kitchen, which means that whoever killed John Bonnet and then wrote the ransom letter wrote the note while they were still inside of the home using the Ramsey's very own notepad and pen.
This also means that the killer stayed inside the home long enough to not only think, but to write a very elaborate, nearly three-page ransom note, and they apparently weren't too concerned if John, Patsy, or even nine-year-old Burke would wake up and catch them.
Something that would require a large amount of confidence. So as soon as the Boulder police publicly announced that the ransom letter was written on a notepad belonging to the Ramseys themselves, the Ramsey family quickly got on an airplane and headed back to Boulder.
And just as the Ramseys decide to head back to Colorado, authorities are getting on their own airplane to execute a search warrant on a summer home in Michigan belonging to the Ramseys. Besides the announcement that the ransom letter was written on a notepad belonging to the Ramseys, police also believed that there was evidence that the person who wrote the letter first practiced on another piece of paper.
That's because there were seven pages missing from the notepad. On the front were notes from Patsy herself, but the seven pages in the middle were missing. The first page after the torn out section of the notepad was the start of the ransom letter, but the ransom letter used three pages, not seven. So we know that there were four missing pages missing
suggesting to police that the author may have practiced. And these pages of the notepad have never been found during the course of the investigation. It was also leaked through the media that the ransom amount of $118,000 was the exact same amount that John Ramsey received that year for his bonus.
John got a $118,000 bonus, and that's the same amount the kidnappers requested for John Bonet's safe return. So either the author of the ransom letter and presumed killer had some sort of inside knowledge into how much John received for a bonus, or it's just some strange coincidence.
The odds of that being practically the same as picking all of the same winning lotto numbers correctly. So at the time, the Boulder Police Department didn't think that this was some odd coincidence. While John and Patsy refused to sit down with police, they did agree for nine-year-old Burke to be questioned for a second time.
This time, Burke was interviewed by a child psychologist. During the interview, Burke doesn't seem to express much emotion about his sister's death. He kind of appears to just be completely detached from it all. It's difficult to say exactly how a nine-year-old is supposed to react to his younger sister's tragic murder.
But his behavior during the second interview was something that the Boulder police were concerned about. It gave them some pause. Probably the most troubling thing police got from this interview with Burke was that he admitted to hearing some commotion going on downstairs that night. But he said he stayed in bed and he said he wasn't too concerned about what he heard.
During his first interview with police, he told detectives that he stayed asleep throughout the entire night. Again, he's nine years old, so I'm personally not going to put too much weight into that detail. Now, fast forward a little bit to late January. The Ramseys were approached about taking a lie detector test.
Not surprising, they refused to submit to the polygraph test. Again, not surprising. They haven't sat down with police, really. They haven't really given them much information. So they aren't going to agree to a polygraph test. I don't think that was a huge surprise to anybody working the case. Now, over the next several weeks, investigators conduct two very important tests.
The first is a handwriting analysis of the ransom letter. This is big because the key to solving this case is to find the author of this unusual letter. The author of the ransom letter is John Bonet's killer. It was an extremely unique letter. This letter is one of the longest ransom letters that were actually written at the crime scene.
It was written on a notepad belonging to Patsy Ramsey herself. So handwriting experts compared writing samples from John, and they also studied a notebook that contained Patsy's household notes. This is where some people are going to say that handwriting analysis is quote-unquote junk science, that it's not really a strong field in the realm of forensic science.
I, for one, completely disagree. I think handwriting analysis isn't junk science. I think this type of analysis can provide some serious and some valuable information to a case. I don't think it's enough to convict somebody. It's certainly not as strong as, let's say, DNA evidence is.
But in my opinion, it's enough for me to raise additional questions with for sure. So after the handwriting analysis experts studied a writing sample that John provided to police, and they also studied the notebook belonging to Patsy, they made some pretty big conclusions.
In early March 1997, the Boulder police essentially could officially rule out John as writing the ransom letter. John Ramsey did not write the letter, but they couldn't rule out Patsy. This means, for sure, John didn't write the letter. We know that. But...
They couldn't say that Patsy definitely didn't write it. They didn't say she did, but it was very inconclusive. They found a lot of similarities in the writing style on the ransom letter that was very similar to Patsy's. It wasn't a conclusive finding, like I said, but it was enough to say there was a chance that Patsy wrote the letter.
Several handwriting experts have found over 200 similarities between Patsy's handwriting and the handwriting on the ransom letter. From the way certain letters are shaped to the spacing in between letters and words. There were over 200 similarities. The letter itself was discovered by Patsy on the back staircase in the home. It wasn't on the main staircase.
suggesting that this was an extremely intimate detail that the author of the letter must have known that Patsy only uses that staircase in the mornings. Weeks after the handwriting analysis was done on the letter, the Boulder police conducted a second round of DNA testing in the case.
A DNA test had previously been done by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, but in April 1997, a secondary test was being conducted by Maryland's Cellmark Laboratories. Even though nothing conclusive or earth-shattering came from the second round of DNA testing,
On April 19, 1997, John and Patsy Ramsey become the prime suspect in John Bonet's murder. Boulder's district attorney, Alex Hunter, shared with CNN that obviously the focus was on John and Patsy as prime suspects in the murder. Hunter announced that they were under an umbrella of suspicion.
They had no evidence to believe that someone other than the Ramseys entered into the home, murdered her in that way, and then stayed inside the home to write a three-page ransom letter, a letter that couldn't be ruled out as Patsy's handwriting. This announcement by the Boulder DA prompted John and Patsy to finally agree to sit down with the police. I don't think they really had a choice by this point,
They couldn't really avoid this any longer. They needed to start answering questions. So on April 30th, John and Patsy begin their formal police interviews with detectives. In their very first police interview, police questioned Patsy for a little over six and a half hours. And John was questioned for just about two hours.
After hours of questioning, neither John or Patsy Ramsey were arrested. They were not charged. And both of them ended up going home for the night. And on the following morning, this is now May 1st, the Ramseys come out and basically declare their innocence. This is now five months after John Benet's murder without a single person of interest other than the Ramseys themselves.
Patsy tells reporters, quote, let me assure you, I did not kill John Bonnet. While John said, I did not kill my daughter. They completely maintained their innocence and they didn't address what took them so long to finally sit down with police from the get go.
Instead, they wanted the world to know that they were appalled that anybody would believe that they could kill and do this to their very own daughter. When they were asked about the rumors that JonBenet may have been sexually assaulted, something that wasn't 100% confirmed at the autopsy,
John was the first to say that these were some of the most horrendous and hurtful rumors and that somehow he could have done that. And if John is saying the truth, if he's telling the truth, I would completely agree with him that those are horrendous rumors as a father. Even though the Ramseys were publicly declaring their innocence publicly,
Once information about the ransom letter amount matching John's bonus, the inability to conclusively rule out Patsy's handwriting, and the lack of any evidence suggesting someone other than the Ramseys were inside the home the night of John Bonet's murder were all taken into consideration. This is when the world waited for John and Patsy Ramsey to be arrested.
But when days turn into weeks and there aren't any arrests, we were all left wondering, what is taking so long? Why aren't John and Patsy arrested and put behind bars? Sometimes it's just not that simple. This ends part one of the murder of John Benet Ramsey.
Next week, part two, we'll be covering the official autopsy report as well as other possible theories that emerge in the case. We will take a deep dive into all of the forensic evidence and you'll get to hear my opinion on who killed John Benet. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales on whichever app you listen so you don't miss part two. ♪
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