This week on BuzzFeed Unsolved we discuss the death of JonBenet Ramsey, a case that to this day still captivates the nation. I gotta say, this one really gives me the creeps. It's not fun. No, it's not fun. A child died.
I'm not stoked here. No, I'm not stoked, but everyone seems to want to hear about it, so here we go. On the morning of December 26, 1996 in Boulder, Colorado, Patsy Ramsey claimed to discover a ransom note. for her six-year-old daughter, JonBenet Ramsey, on the back staircase inside the house. This prompted Patsy Ramsey to call the police at 5.52 a.m.
to report JonBenet as missing. The people inside the house at the time were Jon Ramsey, her father, Patsy Ramsey, her mother, and Burke Ramsey, her nine-year-old brother. Bizarrely, the body of JonBenet Ramsey was found less than eight hours later.
And even stranger, The body was found inside the Ramsey residence, in the utility room, in the basement. The body was found by JonBenet's father. She was found with duct tape over her mouth and a smooth cord around her neck. It is widely reported that the crime scene was heavily compromised by people arriving at the scene. The police later claimed that they had not searched the house after Patsy's call because there was no reason to believe from the ransom note that JonBenet was in the house.
At the time of her death, JonBenet Ramsey was a well decorated beauty pageant competitor. Having won at least five high profile competitions, her death was ruled a homicide. Strange, right? Yeah, it's weird.
It's peculiar. I mean, I'm trying to think of, like, I've read a lot of these cases. I can't recall one case where the missing person was inside the house.
It's spooky. It is spooky. Have you checked the children?
The autopsy found that JonBenet was bludgeoned to death. while the county coroner ruled that JonBenet had died of asphyxiation caused by being strangled. A paintbrush from Patsy's hobby kit was used to tighten the rope that strangled JonBenet.
There was DNA found on JonBenet's long johns and underwear, both belonging to a single unidentified man, who, when compared to the FBI's database of convicted violent offenders in 2004, was not found. among 1.5 million samples. When you say DNA. Oh, it's not like that.
Okay. No, not like that. I just wanted to be, you know how gross we were getting here.
There were two sets of unidentified footprints found at the scene. There was a rope found close by JonBenet's bedroom that did not belong to the Ramseys. However, as of 2006, the rope had never been tested.
If somebody broke into the house, they did so cleanly, as there was no footsteps in the snow outside the house, as well as no sign of forced injury. This is Colorado, right? It's snowing.
I mean, conceivably, maybe the snow got covered up. No. But. There's also-I know snow. You don't know snow, because you're a Southern California lily.
Oh, you're gonna pull this car now from your Chicago from the Windy City, and I don't know anything about weather because it's California and it's so nice. It's not that hard. It falls from the sky and it hits the ground. There's some nuance to it, there's some intricacy and if...
Such as what? Oh, you don't even know. Let's move on to the contents of the ransom note. The note requested $118,000 in exchange for JonBenet Ramsey. Strange.
Why is that strange? Weird number. Oh, I guess it is very specific.
Actually, we're going to touch on why that may be so specific. This is my detective brain, this is what I'm telling you about. I think it is.
Did that number stick out to you the first time? It did, but I think you're tooting your own horn a little bit too much. Shame the brain.
Okay. With the exchange to take place the next day between 8 and 10 a.m., the highly scrutinized note starts with quote, Mr. Ramsey, listen carefully. We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We respect your business, but not the country that it serves, end quote.
A strange declaration that would ultimately lead nowhere. If you're sending someone a ransom note, I would imagine you would want to put in as little detail as possible. I'm not gonna say, dear Mr. Ramsey, it's me, a tall fellow.
It almost seems cartoony. Almost as if it was fake. Let's move on.
Here's another excerpt. Quote, the two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you, so I advise you not to provoke them. Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as police or FBI, will result in your daughter being beheaded.
Jesus Christ. Yeah, what? That's a fucking ransom note. You can try to deceive us, but be warned that we are familiar with law enforcement countermeasures and tactics. You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to outsmart us.
Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back. Fucking mathematician over here. This guy is a smug piece of shit. I've crunched the numbers.
I've run the permutations through my little computer and all of them say, you're fucked. My murder laptop. My murder laptop. The letter was signed SBTC.
Initials that stand for still remain a mystery. One curious fact is that the sum of $118,000 was close to the amount that John Ramsey received for a bonus that year. Mmm.
That's when you asked the question about the specificity of the. the number. There it is.
I've connected the two dots. You didn't connect shit, but. I've connected them. However, the most chilling fact about the ransom note was that it was determined that the note was written using pen and paper from inside the house.
While this detail is absolutely horrifying, it also brought a lot of suspicion into the integrity of the note. This suggests that the killer somehow entered the house, wrote the note inside, and for some reason, then killed JonBenet Ramsey after writing a ransom note. All of this occurring while the other three Ramsey family members were inside the house.
I feel like I've been in some big houses where you could be one end, someone in the other end could be straight up. murdering a human being and you wouldn't even know. Would you take that kind of a risk as a killer to do all these weird little things inside the house? Yes.
Analysis of the notepad U suggested that a practice letter was written and part of a practice note was found. They were spelling errors in the letter on words thought to be easy, like possession. Yet some wonder how words such as attache with an accent on the E were spelled correctly. Some believe this adds up to the letter being a hoax. and when combined with the lack of evidence of an intruder, this case becomes even more puzzling.
Maybe the practice letter was just sort of, you know when you write like a banner and you write with a big marker and then suddenly-Oh, when you're making the middle-You've got like three letters to squeeze in at the end and it looks all shitty. Are you under the impression he wrote this in bubbly letters? No, I'm just saying maybe he was spacing it out? It's a notepad, he doesn't need to space it out. Okay, then I don't understand the practice.
No, you do not. That's the point. Jesus, I don't understand the beheading.
What is that all about? With that, let's get into the suspects, starting with the Ramseys themselves. In the early goings of the case, the Ramsey family was under heavy scrutiny, given the suspicions of the ransom note's authenticity.
and the little evidence to suggest an intruder. The actual person responsible for the murder varies depending on who is theorizing. A recent television program claims that police theorized that Patsy accidentally killed JonBenet. That same program also posited that Burke Ramsey, JonBenet's nine-year-old little brother, accidentally killed JonBenet as well. However, for Patsy or Burke to be the culprit, not only would the note have to be staged, but so would the strangulation.
And that doesn't add up when you consider the evidence suggests that JonBenet was still alive as she was being strangled. Furthermore, handwriting analysis also ruled out John Ramsey and ruled Patsy Ramsey as inconclusive. Experts believe the signs are more consistent with child abduction and murder done by an intruder. Fascinatingly, in 2013, it came to light that in 1999, a grand jury had voted to indict JonBenet's parents on charges of child abuse resulting in death. However, the Boulder District Attorney at the time, Alex Hunter, did not sign the indictment, believing that there was not enough evidence to support the charges.
Casting further doubt on this theory is the fact that the DNA evidence procured from the crime scene officially exonerated the entire Ramsey family. You could see why people would think it may be one of them in the family though because if it was indeed an accident you would have to cover it up. You would have to write a note. Which brings us to our first non-Ramsey suspect, a local man named Bill McReynolds who had visited the Ramsey house two days before John Bonnet's murder. He sometimes dressed up as Santa Claus.
His own daughter had been kidnapped twenty-two years ago. two years before the JonBenet murder. His wife had written a play about a child getting molested and then murdered in a basement. According to the Denver Post, this man felt close to JonBenet. Here's a quote from him.
Quote, her murder was harder on me than my operation. She made a profound change in me. End quote.
McReynolds even brought a vial of glitter gifted to him by JonBenet into heart surgery. The gift had been meaningful to him since no child had ever given him a gift while playing Santa. He even asked his wife to mix the glitter with his ashes if he were to die.
I don't like this man. This also could be just the the acts of a kind old man. It is up until him wanting her glitter mixed with his ashes.
Bear, I tell you what, did he murder her? Maybe not. Is the glitter with your ashes a weird thing to ask for? It's the weirdest.
Absolutely. That's very weird. I don't like that at all.
No. I wish I didn't know it, but now it's in my brain. And now it's on all your brains, whoever's watching.
Watching this deal with it. However beyond these sensationalized details which can also be interpreted as the acts of a friendly old man There is nothing to suggest McReynolds as the murderer the next suspect is Gary Oliva a man who lived a few blocks away from the Ramsey home at the time of the murder in 2016 Oliva was arrested on charges of child pornography in December of 2000 Oliva was arrested on unrelated drug charges and was found to be carrying a photo of JonBenet in his backpack. He explained why he had the photo to the Denver Post.
Quote, JonBenet's murder touched me very deeply. I felt she was an exceptional girl whose death was an exceptional loss. I felt the need to build a monument, a shrine, to remember this little girl.
Oh, I don't like it. End quote. Ryan, Ryan. I know everybody wanted to hear about this case, but I don't want to anymore. I'm done.
Touching on the suspect, this guy's very suspicious. Yeah, Ryan, he is. And it's going to get worse.
Why? A high school friend of Oliva named Michael Vail revealed in an interview with In Touch magazine that Oliva called him a day after the murder occurred and said, quote, I heard a little girl. I heard a little girl. End quote.
According to Vail, Oliva also revealed the location of where he had hurt this girl, Boulder, Colorado, after which Oliva hung up the phone. This is interesting if true because records show that no other girl other than JonBenet was harmed in that area that night. Vale also revealed that the strangulation method used on JonBenet was also allegedly used by Oliva when Oliva attempted to strangle his own mother with a telephone cord. Why would someone make that up? I don't know, you gotta imagine these people, since this story's so sensationalized, they would get paid to give an interview, right?
An exclusive, because it is an exclusive with In Touch, which we all know is the major true crime publication of the United States. Nonetheless, Gary Oliva was also not a match to the DNA evidence. The final suspect is JonBenet.
John Mark Carr. A divorced. You don't even like his name? Do you not like people with names?
No, I remember this fucking guy. Okay. A divorced father and elementary school teacher, Carr did not become a suspect until nearly 10 years after the murder, when he confessed to the murder via email to a journalism professor named Michael Tracy.
Tracy had emailed back and forth with Carr for four years in order to gain his trust. That's good journalism. It's good journalism, but I mean, you gotta imagine it takes a toll on you emotionally. Yeah, to have a weird pen pal like that. A weird pen pal, yeah, that's a good way to say it.
I just don't know what you say to someone for four years. Hey, do you know anything about that kid that got killed in Colorado? No one's ever asked me if I murdered anyone. Maybe they're not asking the right questions.
Tracy said this of the experience. Quote, you are reading and hearing a truly dark side of the human psyche and having to pretend it's okay that I wasn't going to sit in judgment because otherwise the communication would have stopped. This is the worst experience.
experience of my life by far. It was horrible."End quote. Was he also pretending to be a weirdo? He had to have been, right? Was he like, yeah man, I'm a journalist but I'm a sicko, trust me. Trust me, I'm a sicko. That's all he said over and over. That's for four years, trust me, I'm a sicko. Write me back. Judging from the character of this guy that you'll learn later, John Mark Carr, I don't think it's gonna take a lot to outfox him, to be honest. Yeah, I remember this, dum-dum. In his emails, Carr used similar wording as the ransom note. At one point, he used Patsy's mother's nickname in an email, Nettie, and it was bizarre that he would even know that. Carr would eventually write that he was in love with JonBenet, and would later confess to hitting JonBenet in the head with a flashlight. Here's some of the email. Quote, She of course was asleep from the time that she was, that I took her from her bed and took her into the basement. Her first reaction was, where am I? And I said, you're in your basement. She wasn't in that little room to be disgraced, and I would never disgrace her or dishonor her. She was there temporarily, and what really hurts me is that she stayed there. And that's where her father found her, and it's just a horrible thing."End quote. I got, I, yeah, this is, I'm just getting kind of bummed out and sad, but we'll keep going here.
On August 16th, 2008, with the help of British intelligence, the Royal Thai authorities, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, they were able to track down Carr in Bangkok, Thailand, where he had traveled to from the U.S. to escape child pornography charges in California. A few months after this confession, Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacey issued a formal apology to John Ramsey for the suspicion his family had lived with and said that no one in the Ramsey family is considered a suspect. Carr's DNA did not match the DNA found on the scene, and he was not charged with the murder.
However, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security continued to investigate John Mark Carr. He had always maintained that he had not acted alone. If you'll recall...
There were two sets of unidentified footprints found at the scene. It's worth mentioning that former Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner, the lead investigator on the JonBenet Ramsey case for a time, said in a Reddit AMA in regards to John Mark Carr that, his confession, once they shared it with us, did not match the evidence at the scene. We knew in about 18 hours he was not the guy. We were able to confirm he was not even in Colorado at the time by just doing some routine checking and then obtaining photos of him in Georgia at the time. End quote.
I think in all these cases, you just want justice to be served so badly that you just kind of wanted to just plug in the holes. On this one though, I almost-I don't want him-Like, you know, if he's just lying, I don't want him to- get what he wants. Yeah, it's true. If you are the kind of person that wants to take credit for a child murder, I don't know if we want to give him that satisfaction if you didn't do it. No, you don't get prison, you weirdo.
Now that we've looked at the suspects, I'd like to point out that in a recent CBS program, DNA expert Dr. Henry Lee, best known from the OJ Simpson case studied the DNA from the JonBenet scene. Dr. Lee found that JonBenet's underwear may have helped transfer DNA from the manufacture process and proved this by testing. an unopened bag of underwear, which also had foreign DNA on them.
The CBS program concluded that the DNA from the crime scene was therefore fallacious, meaning that conceivably, any of the listed suspects could possibly be the killer. Oh shit. So basically, it's just making the case even more open-ended than we already thought it was.
Yeah, because DNA was ruling out a bunch of other people. Yeah, so it could conceivably be anyone. Well, what the fuck are we doing here, man? Well, that's why it's unsolved. This is, why?
There's a reason why it's unsolved. In the end, nobody truly knows what happened to JonBenet Ramsey. The odd details of the case will likely forever cloud the truth, and the case tragically remains unsolved.
I can't say who I think did it. Our legal team has informed me that I can't chime in on that. But I will now blink to you in Morse code who I think did it. You don't know Morse code. He doesn't know Morse code.
Well, everyone who knows Morse code knows who I thought did it. So... So...
So... So... It's unsolved. Ha ha ha!
Okay. Alright. Well, we did nothing here once again. No, this was a...
this was the worst. Yeah, this was great. Thanks, Ryan.
Same time next week? No. Okay.
You... That's my chair. That's mine now. One way to treat people.