Summary: The Murder Of Jonbenet Ramsey

Imagine having a perfect six year old daughter that participated in many beauty pageants and loved watching Shirley Temple movies. Then suddenly one night, you find a note and run up to her room to discover she is gone (Schiller 8). That is what happened to the mother of Jonbenet Ramsey when she found out that her daughter was missing. Everything was fine the night before, but when her family woke up, they had no idea their life would be changed forever. They didn’t know what happened, but they wanted to find out. The longer the investigation went on, the more suspicious it got. The death of Jonbenet Ramsey was a devastating tragedy.
Jonbenet Ramsey was a very sweet little girl. She was six-years old and participated in many beauty
pageants. She also loved to watch Shirley Temple movies (Schiller 1,4). She had a brother named Burke (Helling 1). Jonbenet and her family lived in Boulder, Colorado, where the crime occurred on December 26, 1996 (Bane 1). Everything was normal until one fateful morning. It was a little bit before 6 a.m. when Patsy, Jonbenet’s mother, descended the staircase and found a note. She read the first sentence, “Mr. Ramsey, we have your daughter,” and ran upstairs to Jonbenet's room to discover that she was gone (Peyser and Keene-Osborne 1). The ransom note was extremely long (Keene-Osborne and Glick 4). Shortly after she discovered that Jonbenet was missing, Patsy made a call to a dispatcher at Boulder’s emergency communication center. As soon as the dispatcher answered, she heard “We have a kidnapping. Hurry, please. There’s a note left and our daughter’s gone. She’s six years old. She’s blonde. She’s six years old.” Patsy sounded very concerned (Bane 1). After the authorities arrived, they looked to see if Jonbenet was still inside the house. Jonbenet’s father, John, eventually found her at 1:05 pm (Schiller 2). Jonbenet was found in her basement with duct tape over her mouth, and a garrote was around her neck (Bane 1). She was struck in the head by an object that was very heavy, most likely a flashlight (Bane 3). There were more than 140 suspects, 1,400 pieces of evidence, and 50,000 pages of documents recorded. Despite having so many suspects and pieces of evidence, the case has yet to be solved (Bane 1).
There are many theories of what happened and there are many pieces of evidence to prove them. Most of the evidence suggests that she was killed by an intruder (Bane 3). One reason many people believe that it was done by an intruder, is because of a broken window in the basement. However, John Ramsey said that he had broken it one day when he forgot the keys to get inside the house (Keene-Osborne, Glick, and Murr 3). Even though many people believe that she was killed by an intruder, there was dust and a spider web by the window that were not touched, which proves otherwise (Bane 1). There were also no footprints found in the snow outside their house. However, the weather was very warm and there was not much snow outside, so nobody can prove if it was an intruder or not (Keene-Osborne, Glick, and Murr 3). One very popular theory is that she was killed by someone in her family. The ransom note was written on a pad of paper that was found inside the Ramsey house (Keene-Osborne and Glick 1). Patsy was definitely considered a suspect. Burke said that his mom would never kill Jonbenet. He said, “She never spanked us. Not to say she never got upset, but nothing near laying a finger on us, let alone killing her child (Helling 1).” Even though Nate and Burke do not think John and Patsy killed Jonbenet, they are still major suspects. One person assumed that the person who killed Jonbenet would have known where the blanket was. This was the same blanket that was covering Jonbenet when she was found (Schiller 9). A deputy District Attorney believes that Patsy Ramsey might have accidentally killed her daughter. They said that she might have accidentally hit her on the head. They also said that Patsy might have thought that Jonbenet was already dead and didn’t want to be seen as a murderer, so she decided to cover it up (Schiller 7). However, the deputy D.A. said that if it was an accident, she probably would have called 911 for medical attention (Schiiler 8). The detectives concluded that it would be very hard, and it would take a long time for someone, especially a stranger, to get to the wine cellar where she was murdered (Shiller 6). Pam, the person who designed the costumes for Jonbenet's pageant, said that it felt like Patsy knew who killed Jonbenet. However, she did not want to say who did it (Schiller 3). The killer could have also been someone who worked with John Ramsey. The ransom note demanded $100,000 in $100 bills and $18,000 in $20 bills from the Ramsey family (Kenne-Osborne and Glick 3). People say that it could have been done by someone from John’s work because the $118,000 from the ransom note was almost the same amount as the bonus John had recently received from his work (Keene-Osborne and Glick 2). Another suspect was a teacher named John Mark Karr. He confessed to being in the basement and killing Jonbenet, but he said that he did not mean to do it (Tresniowski 1). The Boulder District Attorney claimed that there was no proof that John killed her. John’s brother, Nate, told “PEOPLE” that John would never kill Jonbenet (Tresniowski, et al 2). The Ramsey’s housekeeper was also one of the suspects. Some detectives tried to get her to write down some of the words from the ransom note, but she wouldn’t do it because she was too afraid and worried (Schiller 2). She also said that she didn’t know the room in the basement was there, so she didn’t think a stranger would know how to get to that room. For those reasons, she did not think it was a stranger who killed her (Schiller 4). There are also some very strange things about the crime. There were many mistakes made when the police were investigating the crime.
One mistake that the police made was a failure to search a certain room A police officer stood in front of the door to that room, but he walked away without going in (Keene-Osborne, Glick, and Murr 1). Jonbenet’s dad later found her in that same room (Schiller 2). One of the family’s friends said that they had looked in the room before, but they had not seen the body (Keene-Osborne, Glick, and Murr 2). When Jonbenet’s dad found her, he carried her body upstairs, which contaminated the crime scene (Keene-Osborne, Glick, and Murr 1). After her dad moved her upstairs, a detective moved her body under the Christmas tree, which also removed any evidence that was on her body (Keene-Osborne, Glick, and Murr 3). Another one of the family’s friends tried to help by cleaning the kitchen, but they could have destroyed some of the evidence by doing so (Keene-Osborne, Glick, and Murr 2). There were also some very mysterious things about the crime. The police suspected that a black flashlight hit Jonbenet in the head. A flashlight was seen on the kitchen counter at their home on the morning that Jonbenet was found, but then it went missing (Howard 1). There was also a mysterious bear shown in some of the pictures of Jonbenet’s room. The bear was shown near other stuffed animals, but the Ramseys said that they had never seen this bear before. Some people wonder if it was brought in by an intruder (Howard 1). The mysterious murder of Jonbenet Ramsey may never be solved.
The death of Jonbenet Ramsey was a devastating tragedy. When the Ramseys woke up on December 26th, they did not expect their lives to change forever. The unusual case made them very curious to figure out what happened. The case has gotten more and more suspicious as it has been going on. Imagine always wondering who murdered your child, and living with the possibility that the murderer could still be out there, waiting for
its next victim.