JonBenet Ramsey- The Cover-Up Continues

From my archived blog (September 2016) at donaldjeffries.wordpress.com

Note: This is another in a continuing series of previously published articles. Please subscribe to my primary Substack “I Protest” here: donaldjeffries.substack.com

The A & E Network has produced a new documentary on the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. This program, like every other aired on the case, is an apologia for the Ramsey family and about as one-sided an “investigation” as other televised documentaries in the past, on the JFK assassination, 9/11 and other subjects.

I became interested in the tragic December 26, 1996 death of six year old JonBenet Ramsey during the initial saturation coverage in the press. The case had all the elements of a classic locked-room mystery, and what really attracted me was the great wealth of the Ramsey family, and the favorable treatment they benefited from.

To accept the conventional story, we are asked to believe that an intruder or intruders broke into the Ramsey’s large house, without leaving behind any evidence of their doing so, on Christmas night. Frightfully unprepared, they were forced to use a notepad in the home, and write their ransom note on the spot. This absurd missive, dubbed the “War and Peace of ransom notes” due to its unusual lengthiness, was recognized for the fraud it was instantly by local law enforcement. To cite just one ludicrous example, what group refers to itself as a “foreign faction?”

When the body of little JonBenet was found later that morning in the cellar of her home, by her father, the authorities were left with a huge conundrum. There is no history of “kidnappers” leaving a detailed ransom note in the same location as the body of the victim. That would seem to defeat the whole purpose behind any kidnapping.

Also, there were strong indications that six year old JonBenet had been sexually assaulted. Renowned forensic expert Cyril Wecht was just one of many who claimed there was evidence of past sexual abuse. One forensic scientist stated that JonBenet’s vaginal opening was “twice the normal size for six-year-olds.” This expert, Dr. Robert Kirschner, went on to dramatically declare,  “If she had been taken to a hospital emergency room, and doctors had seen the genital evidence, her father would have been arrested.”

During the three year period from 1993-1996, JonBenet Ramsey visited her pediatrician an astounding twenty seven times. Any parent will instantly realize just how abnormal that is. Combined with JonBenet’s beauty pageant career, and all those troubling images of her dressed provocatively, it becomes clear that something very strange was going on in the Ramsey household.

You will not find any instances in the annals of crime, where pedophilia overlaps with kidnapping. Kidnappers are not interested in sexually abusing their victims, and sexual predators are not interested in obtaining ransom money. So what do we make of a murdered little girl, with indications of chronic sexual abuse, being found dead in her own home, where a ridiculous, rambling ransom note for her safe return was also discovered? As then Police Chief Mark Beckner described it, “No note has ever been written at the scene, and then left at the scene with the dead victim at the scene, other than this case.”

Investigators were also confronted with the fact that JonBenet had a huge fracture in her skull, that was termed in the autopsy “a severe blow to head shortly before or around the time of her murder.” But JonBenet was found with a ligature wound tightly into her neck, making it difficult for anyone to determine if she was killed from a blow to the head or strangulation. Most critics have speculated that the head wound was accidental, and the strangulation (perhaps even along with indications of sexual trauma) was staged.

Considering that Assistant District Attorney Bill Wise was quoted as saying that the little six year old was hit “with enough force to bring down a 350 lb. Green Packers lineman,” it is difficult to imagine such a blow being accidental. But with no evidence of an intruder, and all common sense arguing against someone entering the home on Christmas night, we can only speculate about what happened on that Christmas night in Boulder, Colorado, twenty years ago.

The reason that JonBenet’s parents came under instant suspicion is due to their bizarre behavior, which the police on the scene found uncharacteristic of those in such a horrifying situation. Detective Linda Arndt described John Ramsey as being “calm and cordial,” not distraught. Patsy Ramsey was described as peaking through her fingers in a very odd manner, as she covered her face. Both Ramseys smiled far too often, and seemed way too calm, in their public interviews.

Not only did the pad the ransom note was written on come from the Ramsey home, police found evidence that a practice note had been written there. Incredibly, detectives heard John Ramsey talking to his pilot, shortly after finding his daughter’s body, requesting that he ready their plane to go to Atlanta. Patsy Ramsey was wearing the same clothing she’d worn the night before when police arrived that morning, suggesting that she hadn’t slept at all. Instead of holding their other child close, the Ramseys immediately sent Burke to a friend’s house. The Ramseys showed no sense of anticipation as the proscribed time for the ransom payoff came and went. The list goes on.

Unlike any poor or middle-class family, the Ramseys were allowed to ignore the requests of the police to interview them separately, and seemed essentially disinterested in the entire investigation. Despite the warnings in the preposterous ransom note, the Ramseys called a slew of friends right away, and asked them to come over to their house. Any average family whose dead child was found in their basement, especially when accompanied by such an obviously fake ransom note,  would have found themselves jailed and indicted in short order.

It wasn’t until years later that it was revealed that the grand jury assembled to study the murder had, in fact, voted to indict John and Patsy Ramsey on a charge of felony child abuse and as accessories to her death, but District Attorney Alex Hunter, who was basically owned by the Ramseys’ powerful legal team, had simply refused to sign the indictments. As always, money and influence corrupted the interests of our mightily flawed justice system.

There were four known people in the Ramsey house on the night JonBenet died. One of them was found dead the next morning. With no evidence of an intruder, and all logic arguing against any such scenario, that leaves her parents, and her then nine year old brother Burke. In my view, and the view of most of those who have studied this case in any depth, one of them caused JonBenet’s death, and a very amateurish cover-up ensued.

Patsy Ramsey seems to have been an eccentric, volatile character. At first, I was inclined to lean towards Detective Steve Thomas’s theory that she caused JonBenet’s death, in anger over the six year-old’s chronic bed wetting issues. Several credible handwriting experts have concluded that the ransom note was written by Patsy. Studying the anecdotal evidence of her personality, it becomes an inescapable conclusion that she was the author of this “War and Peace” manifesto.

But ultimately I cannot believe that Patsy, who whatever her faults was by all accounts a loving and caring mother, killed her daughter. And I certainly don’t think that her husband would have covered up for her if she did (or conversely, that Patsy would have covered up for John, if he caused JonBenet’s death in some kind of ugly sex game gone wrong, as some have speculated). That leaves nine year old Burke, the only person in the world that could have motivated both John and Patsy to devise the clumsy staging, ransom note and lies that followed.

Alex Hunter would be succeeded in office by Mary Lacy, who was overtly biased in favor of the Ramseys, and issued a misleading exoneration of them via some unknown male DNA found on JonBenet’s underwear, which could in actuality have been an artifact from a factory worker or any number of others. Lacy oversaw the 2006 fiasco where creepy John Mark Karr falsely confessed to murdering JonBenet. She even sent a letter to John Ramsey in 2008, two years after Patsy’s death, in which she formally exonerated them, something she had no legal power to do.

James Kolar’s self-published 2012 book Foreign Faction provided a key look into the case, from one of the detectives who originally investigated it. Kolar clearly inferred that Burke was somehow responsible for his little sister’s death. He mentioned a report from a former Ramsey nanny about Burke smearing feces on the wall of a bathroom. Oddest of all was Kolar’s description of finding human excrement smeared on a box of candy in JonBenet’s bedroom. Kolar, by the way, along with Steve Thomas and other researchers critical of the official “intruder” theory, was not included in the monstrously biased A & E recent documentary.

We know that JonBenet had been previously injured at the hands of Burke, when he accidentally hit her in the head with a golf club. He certainly had every reason to be jealous of his little sister, whose busy pageant career and excessive attention from her mother left little time and opportunity for his own nurturing. Burke was rumored to be on the Autistic spectrum, and videos of his 1998 interview reveal him to be a very fidgety child, whose own response to JonBenet’s death can be seen as atypical.

I could relate on a personal level to this tragic case, as my own children were very close in age to Burke and JonBenet. One of the most puzzling clues about what really happened in that house was the fact that there is no Ramsey videotape of Christmas morning 1996 to be found. Any parent who was raising small children in the 1990s knows just how important a camcorder was on such occasions. Parents, especially those with the means of the Ramseys, would have been obsessive about chronicling such delightful moments with their children. John Ramsey claimed that their battery was dead. One would have to be awfully naive to swallow such an excuse. There are also very few photographs from that morning, which again is just incredibly odd.

There are so many unanswered questions in this case. What about Nancy Krebs, the thirty seven year old who came forward in early 2000, alleging that there was a huge pedophile ring in Boulder, Colorado, which may have included JonBenet Ramsey? While there are serious questions about her story, anyone who had read my book Hidden History knows just how common sex with children is among the rich and powerful. What about the strange 911 call, placed from the Ramsey home three days before her murder, during a Christmas party?

Burke Ramsey has broken his years of silence, and will talk with Dr. Phil later this month. I’m sure he will stick to the script, and that Dr. Phil will not grill him about any pertinent point. A CBS special will also be airing, which promises to be more objective than the pablum on A & E.

It’s been twenty years, and realistically neither John or Burke Ramsey is about to confess, or admit to anything incriminating in regards to JonBenet’s tragic death. The mainstream media, as always, has contributed to the lack of closure here. Outside of the tabloids, and a few courageous local reporters, they have accepted the Ramseys’ ridiculous contentions as easily as they parrot the mantra that Oswald killed JFK. Our professional “journalists” are so gutless they can’t even honestly investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of a little girl.