The first images of JonBenet Ramsey that were broadcast to the world showed a pretty little girl in heavy make-up and flamboyant costumes parading across a stage. At the time, the media described her as being “a painted baby, a sexualized toddler beauty queen. ” From the day in 1996, when JonBenet was found dead in the basement of her home in Boulder Colorado, the Boulder police and a large proportion of the world’s media believed that her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, were responsible for her death. Prior to the murder of their daughter, John and Patsy Ramsey’s life seemed almost ideal.
Patsy, a former beauty queen, was married to a successful businessman. They had moved to Boulder in 1991 where John ran a computer company that had started in his garage. The Ramsey’s readily adapted to their new life in Colorado and made several new friends. They built a large house in an elite suburb, and entertained often. Their last party in Boulder, just three days before the murder, was particularly happy. Over a hundred guests were present at a Christmas function with a difference as the Ramsey’s had good reason to celebrate.
Patsy had warded off cancer and John had been voted Boulder’s “businessman of the year. According to the Ramsey’s testimony, they drove home the few blocks from a party at a friend’s house on Christmas night. JonBenet had fallen asleep in the car so they carried her up the stairs to her room and put her to bed at 9:30 pm. Shortly after, Patsy and John went to bed as they planned to get up early to prepare for a trip to their holiday home on Lake Michigan. The next day, Patsy woke just after 5:00 am and walked down the stairs to the kitchen.
At the foot of the staircase, she found a two-and-a-half page ransom note that said that JonBenet had been kidnapped by a “small local action” and was being held for a ransom of $118,000. She was to be exchanged for the money later the same day. The letter warned that if the money were not delivered, the child would be beheaded. Patsy yelled to John as she ran back up the stairs and opened the door to JonBenet’s room. Finding she wasn’t there they made the decision to phone the police. The 911 dispatcher recorded Patsy’s call at 5:25 am.
The police arrived at the house seven minutes later. The uniformed police officers that attended were openly suspicious from the start. The Ramsey’s, treating the demand seriously, were already taking teps to raise the ransom. The note said that the kidnappers would call John Ramsey between 8-10 am but no call came. It was while the police were waiting for the call that they made several critical mistakes. They did not conduct a proper search of the house, the area was not sealed off and friends were allowed to walk in and out at their leisure.
No moves were made to protect any forensic evidence. The scale of their mistakes became apparent later. On December 27, the Rocky Mountain News quoted an Assistant District Attorney as saying, “It was very unusual for a kidnap victim’s body to be found at home – it’s not adding up. According to Charlie Brennan, the journalist who wrote the story, the police had also indicated to him that they held a strong belief that the parents were responsible. Julie Hayden, a television reporter for Denver’s Channel 7, also covered the story on the same day and drew the same conclusion.
She later explained that from her first exposure to the case, the police had made it very clear that they were not scouring the area looking for “some mad kidnapper” but instead, concentrating their efforts on John and Patsy Ramsey. While spokespersons for the Ramsey’s have contended that the Boulder police ailed to investigate anyone but the Ramsey’s, this is untrue.
There was a wide-ranging investigation. Other suspects: 1. All present and former employees of Access Graphics (and their spouses) – which had 360 employees in July 1997 – were asked to give handwriting samples. 2. People who had been in the Ramsey house on Dec. 3 were questioned and investigated. 3. The man who had played Santa on that day (for the third year running), 67-year-old Bill McReynolds, a retired University of Colorado journalism professor, provided handwriting, blood and hair samples to police. 4. His wife Janet, 64, who’d been a film and drama critic for the Boulder Daily Camera for 10 years, also gave handwriting, hair and blood samples after police learned she had written an award-winning play in 1976 about a young girl who was tortured and sexually abused for months, before being murdered in a basement.
It was based on a true story from Indiana. (Coincidentally, on Dec. 6, 1974, a 9-year-old daughter of the McReynolds was abducted and forced to watch as another young girl was molested. The two girls were then released and no one was ever arrested. ) The McReynolds told police that they both went to bed at 8 p. . the night JonBent was murdered. McReynolds, who had allowed his Santa-like beard to grow for years, eventually shaved it off and he and his wife moved to the East Coast. 5. Then there’s Randy Simons, the 46-year-old professional photographer who was a veteran of the beauty pageant circuit. In October 1998, Simons was arrested while walking nude down a rural road in Colorado.
When a deputy sheriff walked up to Simons, before the deputy said a word, Simons blurted, “I didn’t kill JonBent. ” Simons had taken some of the best-known pictures of JonBent, and told authorities he felt his career as a hotographer was ruined because he had been questioned in connection with her death. The Ramsey’s had reneged on an offer during the spring of 2000 to voluntarily submit to polygraph exams. On April 11, the Boulder Police Department had accepted John and Patsy Ramsey’s public offer with certain conditions to take polygraph exams regarding the death of their daughter.
During the next month, from May 6 through 17, they underwent “a series” of polygraph exams administered by nationally prominent polygraphists of their choosing. The first indication that all was not well at the Ramsey household took lace three days before JonBent’s murder. At 6:48 p. m. , Dec. 23, 1996, a 911 call was placed from the Ramsey home to the Boulder Police Department. The call was terminated before an emergency dispatcher could speak to the caller. Six minutes later the police called the Ramsey home, but got a voice-mail message, so a police officer was dispatched to the house.
No police report was filed, so one must presume the officer was told that the call was in error, and was satisfied with the explanation. While initially vowing they would do everything in their power to cooperate ith police so the killer of JonBent could be caught, the Ramsey’s erected barriers that would stifle the investigation to this day. The major findings of the autopsy, however, were that she died of ligature strangulation, with a furrow surrounding her neck, and cranial damage – including an 8-inch long skull fracture, with a piece of skull nearly an inch square broken loose.
However, there was no laceration of the scalp, as would be expected if she was struck with a flashlight or a golf club. The wound would be more likely the result of her head being bashed against a toilet or a bathtub. It was determined that the strangulation was accomplished by the murderer using part of the handle on one of Patsy’s paint brushes to tighten the cord around JonBent’s throat to choke her to death. There were also abrasions on her back and legs consistent with her having been dragged.
There was bloody mucus under the tape, and a perfect set of the child’s lip prints, which did not indicate a tongue impression or resistance, indicating that JonBent had not been alive when the tape was affixed to her mouth. The Ramsey’s have vigorously promoted the theory that an intruder murdered JonBent. The first fact militating against this possibility is the alleged absence of footprints in the snow around the house. Plus there was no sign of a forced entry.
One of the fact’s pointing at the family is the ransom note. The person who breaks into a house to kidnap a child is apprehensive — fearful lest any sound wake the parents. Such intruders tend to come prepared — complete with a ransom note if they intend to leave one. The police quickly eliminated John Ramsey as author of the ransom note, but after a series of handwriting samples from Patsy Ramsey (five altogether), he police refused to eliminate her as the possible author of the note.
Det. Thomas a handwriting specialist said that after studying all the writing samples “I believe I am going to conclude the ransom note was the work of a single individual: Patsy Ramsey. ” Thomas explains that his textual analysis work is based on “much more than one letter looking like another. Even the slightest things, such as the use of periods or the space before the start of a paragraph, could create a distinctive linguistic fingerprint “We can’t falsify who we are, Sentence structure, word usage, nd identifying features can be a signature,” says Det.
Thomas. Thomas had studied Patsy Ramsey’s writing samples from both before and after the murder of her daughter. According to Thomas he noted to the investigators “Not only did certain letters change, but her entire writing style seemed to have been transformed after the homicide. There were new ways of indenting, spelling, and writing out long numbers that contrasted with her earlier examples, and she was the only suspect who altered her usual preferences when supplying writing samples to the police.
These findings alone, considering they were coming from the top-most uthority in the nation in textual analysis — the same expert who had unmasked the anonymous author of the sensational best-seller Primary Colors and that the FBI had used to identify Theodore Kacznski as the Unabomber — would have been more than enough evidence for the Boulder Grand Jury to return an indictment against Patsy Ramsey, but the Boulder District Attorney’s office chose not to permit Foster to testify before the grand jury.
A year after JonBenet’s murder, police basically have two theories about the case: That someone entered the Ramsey’s house through unknown means, possibly exually abused then brutally, yet silently, killed JonBenet, hid her body, took the time to write a long ransom note, then left unheard and unseen; Or that someone who was in the house that night committed the horrible crime. However the investigation is concluded, police will have three options: make an arrest, ask for a grand jury investigation, or deactivate the case until new information is obtained.
As things stand, it is highly unlikely that anyone will ever be charged or prosecuted for the murder of JonBent Ramsey – unless someone were to come forward and confess. Time is on the Ramseys side. When the grand jury failed to indict them, they passed their gravest test. In the Ramsey’s’ book, The Death of Innocence, they describe in great detail the fear they had of the grand jury and how they expected an indictment against both of them.
They were so sure they would be indicted that they returned to Boulder in the days before the grand jury was mandated to finish its deliberations. They wanted desperately to avoid the ignominy of being arrested in Atlanta and forced to spend several days in the Fulton County Jail before being extradited to Colorado. Both had a deep revulsion to the image of their being arrested nd handcuffed. Above all, they did not want to be handcuffed.
They wanted to be able to just turn themselves in to the District Attorney’s office and have bond posted immediately for their release. Chances that the new district attorney, Mary Keenan, will convene another grand jury are not strong, but not so fast, there is another shoe that could drop. The Ramsey case is spawning a number of lawsuits, both criminal and civil, and, no doubt, more will be filed down the road. Two civil suits that are perking their way through the legal system could be of particular value in breaking the case open if they make it into a courtroom.
