Introducing..Crime Junkie - MURDERED: JonBenet Ramsay
08:15 Share

As the number one true crime podcast worldwide, Crime Junkie is the destination for anyone ready to dive into a new case every week. Every Monday, Crime Junkie host Ashley Flowers, alongside her best friend Britt, takes listeners deep into the details of a captivating case. From headline-making stories to those you've never heard, it's the ultimate destination for true crime enthusiasts.

And now, Crime Junkie explores a case Ashley vowed never to investigate. Murdered JonBenet Ramsey covers the case of six-year-old JonBenet, who was found murdered in her home the day after Christmas 1996, sparking countless questions. What happened that night? Who's responsible? And why has this case remained unsolved?

Ashley Flowers and Brit reveal exclusive insights, including a rare interview with JonBenet's father, Jon Ramsey. You can listen to this episode of Crime Junkie now wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can watch both this episode and the exclusive interview with Jon Ramsey on the Crime Junkie YouTube channel.

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And I'm finally freaking doing it. I am doing the case that I said I would never do. The case that is our Crime Junkie origin story. Yeah, we've said it a million times, but I mean, never say never, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And like, I think it is for a long time. I just didn't think that there was anything that I could add. Right. Like, it's been done, you know, seven ways to Sunday. I literally feel like there are more like or less versions of the Bible than there are of like books written by people who like maybe even tangentially touched this case. So like, what would we have to add? Right. That's kind of how it always felt. But what I didn't realize is like, I didn't know the whole story. And I, of course...

I'm talking about the case of JonBenét Ramsey. In all of that time, it was a media frenzy. I mean, in an era of tabloids, JonBenét reigned supreme, next in line only to a literal almost queen, Princess Diana. Like, I don't know if you remember, we talked about this being our origin story, but it was...

Right. Right.

I mean, put the pageant stuff on top of all of that. Like, there were not only a plethora of images of JonBenét being sold to tabloids and newspapers and magazines because these photographers had so much footage of her. But the pictures they had of her were of this little girl made to look like a young woman. And people had a field day with it.

And even though there was plenty of talk of people asking the questions of whether or not the pageantry put JonBenet in the path of someone dangerous, which, spoiler alert, like, yeah, the conversations always kind of came back to the parents. Yeah, but they made her do those pageants, which the family says is an inaccurate statement. They're like, no, this is something she liked to do with her mom. Like, Patsy was a former Miss West Virginia. Yeah.

But all of the tabloids were all about the family. So, like, the family was right in saying that they were out to get them. Yes, but, like, which came first, right? Like, it's a very chicken and egg situation. If they talked to the police and the police had cleared them, would there be the tabloid that put them in the center of things? Or are they in the center of things? It definitely fed it. Like, again, I think that...

It started so early, surprisingly early. But yeah, I think it definitely fed the monster to be like, they're not talking to police. Like, oh, they left Colorado and now they're in Georgia. Yeah.

And things don't get better. Like, the more time that passed, the more contentious things got, not just between the Ramseys and the police, but also between the police and the DA's office. Like, things were being leaked seemingly from every which way. I mean, it was so bad that at one point her autopsy photos were leaked to the Globe, and those actually planned to print those autopsy photos.

And it's like the police, they had become convinced that the Ramseys were involved. And so it actually came out in a deposition at one point, like years down the line, that the police were giving information to reporters to try and put external pressure on the Ramseys, hoping that they would crack. Like they couldn't do the thing they wanted to do inside of the interrogation room. So they were going to have the media do it. So at this point, it sounds like police are relying on

other details almost. Like, not just we don't like how the family is acting to support all these suspicions that they have. Correct. Because, like, during this time, like, things are getting leaked. Like I said, you have the police department. Things are coming out of the DA's office, too. The Ramseys had their own team. So, like,

Who is leaking what? Like, it is a messy, messy game. But let me actually give you a little bit of the lay of the land of some of the stuff that we were learning in the time after JonBenet's death. I'm going to go into her autopsy. I think that's a big part of it. But before I do that, I think we just need to talk about some of the physical evidence at the house, some of the observations that were made, because I think all of that, like, was informing police's opinion on the situation very early on. Right.

So one of the big ones, one of the ones that the Ramseys say kind of like defines the case is that police just didn't like how they were acting. Linda Arndt, I'll talk about her probably a lot in this episode. She was the first detective there that day. And she does this like one really infamous interview with Good Morning America in 1999. And the interviewer asks her like, how was John that morning? And she just keeps saying, cordial.

And she's like, okay, but cordial, what does that mean? It's the only word she would say, cordial, cordial. So she didn't like how he was acting. Mm-hmm.

Now, John tells me, he's like, and told everyone, like, I was trying to keep my wits about me. Like, I don't, like, Patsy was deeply upset. Like, she was just in the room with her friend. She's laying down. She's crying. He's like, I had to, like, go into action. Like autopilot almost. Exactly. Which I truly, I understand a little bit. I look at me and my husband and we are very different that way, where I think Eric would be the one, like, in the chair crying, laying on the floor. And I'm going to be like, okay, I've got to get the money. I'm going to get this.

Like, I'm lining everything up to be like, what can I do to fix this situation? Because I can't just sit here. Yeah. John's a CEO of a company. Like, I see him going in that way. But the other thing that Linda talks about is that they're, like, in separate rooms the whole time. So she's...

she just found that strange. And people have like weighed in over the years, like put their own spin on it. I don't like, I don't know that you could say one way or another that means anything. Like, I don't think people could say conclusively, but she just felt it was strange that like Patsy's in one room crying. Again, John is like over here in action mode. But in this giant house.

In a giant house. But I think she expected them to be like a unit and comforting each other. But that's not what she saw that day, which I think played into the beliefs that first day.

The other thing that gets talked about a ton and that she really, and I think Officer Franton and a lot of people there that day honed in on, was the fact that, so John had just been like freshly showered when he had just gone out of the shower when Patsy made that 911 call. And so he's fresh in the morning. She has like fresh makeup, but she's also wearing the same clothes that she'd worn the night before.

So they say, depends on who you talk to, right? Like they thought it was really weird that at five something in the morning, she's got full hair and makeup, but wearing the same clothes. To listen to this episode in full, find Murdered JonBenet Ramsey on Crime Junkie wherever you're listening, or watch this episode and Ashley's exclusive interview with Jon Ramsey on the Crime Junkie YouTube channel now.