John Ramsey received a letter recently from a woman naming her ex-husband as his daughter JonBenet’s killer.
‘I’ve kept this inside for as long as I can – please, please call me,’ she wrote and left her number.
Of course John called immediately … but it simply rang out.
Yet, as he tells the Mail, he didn’t view the incident negatively, nor feel any anger for the person – most probably a crank – who sent the letter. Quite the opposite in fact.
The reason for this is because, for nearly three decades, the sadistic, brutal murder of his little girl, six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, on Boxing Day 1996, was brushed aside by police as the finger of suspicion continued to point squarely at her immediate family: at John, now 81, his wife Patsy, who died of cancer in 2006, and even their son, Burke, who was just nine at the time.
This was despite them being publicly exonerated, and apologised to, by police in 2008 when an old DNA sample from the crime scene identified the presence of an ‘unknown male’.
Yet still the cloud of suspicion lingered, and the police investigation stalled.
Now, however, following a hugely popular Netflix series re-examining the case, people are starting to take notice again: to ask questions, to stop assuming, even point new suspicious fingers themselves. And that, John says, can only bring them closer to finally getting justice for JonBenet.
The Netflix series, Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey, has now been watched by millions and John is delighted with the attention it’s generating – from cranks and all.
Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenét’s body was found at her home in Boulder, Colorado on December 26, 1996
The child pageant star with her father John Ramsey, her mother Patsy and her older brother Burke
The home where six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was killed in Boulder, Colorado, pictured in 1996
‘You know, the police were doing nothing and had done nothing for 28 years, quite frankly, other than trying to explain away the evidence so they could prosecute Patsy or me,’ he says.
‘And they couldn’t do it so they thought “oh well, we know who did it, but we can’t prove it so we’ll just forget about it”.’
‘I think the documentary has brought a lot of renewed interest and it has kept pressure on the police to do their job.
‘We’ve had about half a dozen of these types of calls, and nothing’s come of them, so I’m always sceptical until there’s something more solid to go on.
‘I take them all seriously but at the moment it’s just another lead that may or may not have any credibility. We’ve shared it with a private investigator, so we’ll see what happens.’
The undisputed facts in the JonBenet case remain the same: early in the morning, on December 26, her mother, Patsy, came downstairs in the family’s sprawling, mock Tudor mansion in Boulder, Colorado, to make coffee when she found a handwritten note on the stairs.
Claiming to be from ‘a foreign faction,’ the letter said JonBenet had been kidnapped and demanded the precise sum of $118,000 for her safe return.
Later that afternoon, JonBenet’s tiny body was discovered by her own father in a disused boiler room in the basement. She’d been tortured, sexually assaulted and asphyxiated.
In the aftermath of her death, an ensuing media frenzy emerged with photograph after photograph of JonBenet on-stage wearing make-up, dancing and singing in costumes
JonBenet Ramsey pictured with her mother Patsy Ramsey and her brother Burke
JonBenet in a blue and white dress in the lap of Pamela Griffin her pageant coach
She had duct tape over her mouth, her hands had been tied and a garotte – fashioned from cord and a broken paintbrush from Patsy’s art supplies – had been wound so tightly it was buried in the flesh of JonBenet’s neck.
Local police investigating the crime refused to believe it was the work of an intruder and were convinced her parents were responsible.
They believed Patsy accidentally killed her daughter over a bed-wetting incident, or that Burke was somehow responsible, following some sibling dispute, and that the couple worked together to stage it as a murder scene.
America was transfixed, particularly as videos emerged of JonBenet taken at the beauty pageants she regularly competed in, where she won titles such as Little Miss Colorado and National Miss Tiny Beauty.
Sashaying in high heels, her blonde hair backcombed, and her baby doll-like features adorned in heavy make-up, the videos suddenly seemed sinister and obscene, warping public opinion against the family further.
Misinformation fed to the media, both local and international, that flocked to the well-to-do suburb in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, added to the suspicion surrounding the Ramseys.
And so it remained – for the next 28 years.
Now, however, there have been two significant developments: one of the original detectives handling the case, viewed by the Ramseys as a ‘roadblock’ in the investigation, was disciplined and is now retired.
‘Then they brought in a new chief of police [from outside the Boulder police department], that was huge,’ John tells me. ‘We’ve got a good relationship with him and we’re communicating.
John and Patsy Ramsey, the parents of JonBenét Ramsey, meet with a small selected group of the local Colorado media after four months of silence in Boulder, Colorado in May 1997
The couple were suspected of being involved in the murder of their daughter, but were later cleared due to DNA evidence (pictured: John Ramsey)
Local police at one point believed her brother Burke (pictured) was somehow responsible, following some sibling dispute, and that the parents worked together to stage it as a murder scene
‘We’re asking him, begging him really, to use the latest technology to do more testing on the unidentified male DNA and get it in a format that can be used in the public genealogy database.’
This technique, John says, has been successful in solving many cold cases.
Secondly, the FBI is now involved.
‘They’ve got a profile of the killer and I think it’s a good one. They said this is probably someone who was in his 20s or 30s, infatuated with movies [hence the foreign faction kidnap claim in the ransom note]. They said the ransom note was a fantasy, this person was acting out what would be done in the movies.
‘They also said this was not about JonBenet, but somebody who wanted to hurt me. They were either angry or jealous of me.
‘I told the agents that I can’t imagine I made anybody that angry, and the FBI said I might not even have known him.’
‘The other pieces of their profile was that the ransom note was obviously written by a psychopath, without any emotions like a normal human being, and he would have exhibited sadistic behaviour in the past. That just didn’t pop up all of a sudden in his character.’
Referring to the demand for the precise sum of $118,000 in ransom money, John has always believed it referenced the sum of his bonus that year, which the killer could easily have found on pay stubs, lying around the house, after he broke in. There would have had plenty of opportunity for a full recce: the property had been empty for much of Christmas Day, and late into the evening, as the family were out celebrating with friends.
‘The number meant something to the killer. Why didn’t he ask for a million dollars if he thought I was so wealthy? I think it was a dig at me, a criticism, but I don’t know for sure. Obviously, this person is crazy and you can’t rationalise their thoughts because they’re not rational.’
The years following the murder were hard for the Ramseys. John, a successful businessman whose computer company had more than $1billion in revenue, could no longer function as a high-achieving executive, and he lost much of his fortune. Patsy, who’d been treated for ovarian cancer in the past, became ill again and died in 2006 – never living to see her family’s name cleared.
JonBenet’s father John (above with her mother, Patsy, who died in 2006), said he received the letter after the Netflix documentary aired
The mystery of JonBenet’s death continues to haunt the town where she died
John Mark Karr, 41, who falsely confessed to the murder of JonBenet seen departing the Immigration jail as he is deported from the Immigration Detention Centre in Bangkok in 2006
Earlier this year, the Netflix documentary stirred up interest in the long dormant case and introduced the haunting murder to a new generation of people, including armchair sleuths, who weren’t even born when JonBenet was killed.
Speculating on social media, some have taken part in what is commonly known as ‘Trial by TikTok’ and dragged up accusations against the Ramseys again, while others protest their innocence.
There have been multiple false leads too, which John has gradually become hardened to. Several instances of false confessions from known paedophiles were recounted in the Netflix documentary, including the infamous case of John Mark Karr.
Karr, a former schoolteacher, shocked the world in 2006 when he confessed to the killing, even being extradited from Thailand to Colorado, but his DNA did not match evidence from the crime scene, and his family insisted he had been in Georgia at the time.
Ramsey remembers another false confession from a truck driver in Louisiana who contacted him, early in the investigation, claiming he was the killer and seemed credible.
He said he was going to turn himself into the police but asked John for $3,000 for air fares to fly to Boulder, Colorado, where the Ramsey family lived.
‘I was going to send him the money because it was convincing, but our attorney said “wait, don’t do that.” And we had our investigators look into this guy and it turned out he was just a scammer,’ recalls Ramsey.
On separate occasions, two women contacted Ramsey to say they believed their fathers were the killer.
‘They provided DNA but there was no connection to the sample we had [from JonBenet’s body.]’ Ramsey says.
And every Christmas – just like this year – the anniversary of ‘that’ terrible day came around, without her killer ever being caught.
‘At first it was really difficult for us as a family to even have a Christmas. We didn’t celebrate or do any of the stuff people do,’ he says.
A truck driver in Louisiana also falsely confessed to the murdercontacting her father John, early in the investigation, claiming he was the killer and seemed credible
On separate occasions, two women contacted Ramsey to say they believed their fathers were the killer
‘We got past that after several years because we wanted to give our son Burke a normal Christmas and get life back to as normal as possible.
‘JonBenet is at the forefront of my mind every day so it’s not as if we have to do something special, she’s always there. So, we try to spend time with family and just be quiet and peaceful.’
Religion has been important to him, he says: JonBenet was not the first child he’d lost. Her half-sister, Beth, John’s daughter from his first marriage, died alongside her boyfriend on January 8 1992 when their BMW lost control on a highway in bad weather and collided with a truck.
Beth, who was a flight attendant with Delta Airlines, was a passenger and died of multiple internal injuries.
‘I lost my oldest daughter Beth several years before we lost JonBenet and that really challenged my faith,’ he continues.
‘How could a good and loving God let this happen to an innocent child? She was 21 years old and just out of college and was just starting her life. It took me down to the bedrock of my faith and I had to decide whether I had faith or not.
‘When we lost JonBenet, I had that foundation. It helped me prepare for the loss of JonBenet in a sense.’
Is he surprised that nearly three decades have gone by and his daughter’s murder remains unsolved?
He isn’t, and he’s unequivocal as to where the fault for that failure lies: ‘It’s because of that police department,’ he says, referring to the Boulder police who investigated the murder. ‘They were just grossly incompetent and refused help from the people who could actually help, like scientists and the FBI.
‘They did that from day one and continued to do that until they got new leadership, 27 years later.
‘We don’t know yet if they are going to do more DNA testing but we’ve asked for a meeting in January with the new police chief and we’re going to keep pushing.
‘If they do that, and don’t come up with anything. I’d say “thanks for trying. You’ve done the best you could”. At least I’d know that everything that can be done at this point has been done. But we’re not at that point yet.’
‘The killer’s out there and this thing hangs over my family. It needs to be cleared up for my children and grandchildren’s sake.’
Child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey is seen in 1996, the year she died
The grave of JonBenet Ramsey in Marietta, Georgia, pictured
‘If we got this guy arrested, convicted and in prison, there’ll still be five or ten per cent of people who think we’re guilty. And that’s just life. We can’t fix that. Once your reputation is tarnished, even if its unfairly, it never goes back to pure white.’
This Christmas will be a quiet one for Ramsey and his wife Jan, whom he married ten years ago.
Their children are all grown up now, with jobs, families and commitments of their own, meaning they won’t all get together until the 27th.
‘It’s going to be just me and my wife on Christmas Day and it’s the first time we’ve ever done that so its going to be different but nice,’ says John.
Does he ever allow himself to think what JonBenet would be like now if she had lived?
‘No, I can’t visualise her as an adult. She’s still in my mind as my six-year-old little girl. That’s how I think about her and of course all the pictures I have of her are like that.
‘So, I don’t go to that place of who she might have been and what she might have done in life. I just can’t .
‘If she had lived, she would’ve been here, probably with her children. So no, I just don’t go there. It’s too painful.’