JonBenet Ramsey Christmas Murder Case

The entire country was baffled when a six-year-old girl; JonBenet Ramsey was murdered at her home on the Christmas night of the year 1996. She was born on August 6, 1990, and was about six years and four months old when she died (Lee and Thomas, 124). At the time of her death, their family consisted of John and Patsy Ramsey who were the parents and two children JonBenet and her elder brother Burke (Lee and Thomas, 130). According to Lee, (144-145), her body found by her father on December 26, 1996, at approximately 12:55 pm less than eight years after being reported to be missing. It was reported that her father was with Fleet white, a close friend at the time she found the dead body though White was not with Ramsey per se in the basement where she was found. (Wecht, Cyril and Charles, 46).The Ramseys were very affluent as JonBenet's father had just sold his company his company in addition to formerly being the president and the CEO of Access Graphics and according to Behm, 35), he was worth approximately 6.2 million US dollars. The family lived in a 15 room house located in Boulder, Colorado which was considered to be very safe as prior to the murder of JonBenet, there was no other case in that year.

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On 23rd December, two days before the murder, JonBenet's parents had made a celebratory Christmas party at their home. At the event, it was mentioned that a call was made to 911 by someone at the party and whoever did so hung up the call which went to Ramsey's answering machine when the 911 dispatcher called back (Behm, 35-36). Two police officers who went to Ramsay home to confirm were given assurance that everything was okay and they left. JonBenet's mother was reported to be a devoted Christian who claimed her daughter was her best friend and had dreams that one day her daughter would be Miss America just like herself. The little girl held a number of contests titles such as being America's Royal Miss, Little Miss Charlevoix Michigan, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl, Little Miss Merry Christmas, Little Miss Colorado, Little Miss Sunburst as well as Tiny Miss Beauty(Lee and Thomas, 121-124).On the eve of Christmas, the family is claimed to have attended an evening service at St. John's Episcopal Church in Boulder where on their way home, it is reported through the testimony of the parents that both Burke and his sister JonBenet fell asleep in the car(Hughes, 46). It is not certain exactly as to what time the family got home, however, John carried JonBenet up through the spiral staircase from the kitchen to her room where her mother undressed her and put her in bed (Behm, 48-49).In this case, Patsy Ramsey, the mother was the last person to be with JonBenet and she and her husband went to bed too shortly afterward never to awaken at any point during the night.

It was very early the next day on December 26th that Patsy Ramsey claimed to have found a ransom note laid across the bottom step of the spiral staircase as she was going to the kitchen to set breakfast. The note was two and a half page long and made demands of 118,000 dollars; with 100,000 dollars demanded it to be in 100 dollar bills while the raining 18,000 dollars in the form of 20 dollar bills (Behm, 76). The note further instructed John on the delivery method and where the money was to be delivered with clear instruction that the group would kill the daughter who they claimed to have possession in the event of deviation (Hughes, 82). Some things were odd about the note though. According to Lee and Thomas, 140, 118,000 dollars is a peculiar number for a ransom and as it turned out, the amount was almost equivalent to what John Ramsey's year-end bonus was and thus this knowledge suggests that it was written by someone with inside information of the Access Graphic's business. The length of the note and the nature in which it delved into personal details featured an emotional vendetta personally against Mr. Ramsey.

It was reported that the paper used for the note came from the inside the Ramsey home with a practice note entailing 'Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey' found before the pages that were torn out(Wecht, Cyril and Charles, 52-53). An analysis of the handwriting proved that John Ramsey was not the author,( Hughes, 114), but for Patsy, the analysis could not be conclusively established with experts claiming that the handwriting resembled hers though that could neither be approved or disapproved with total certainty. Also, the murder of JonBenet bore so much inconsistency with the ransom motive because it is unlikely that the authors did so after arriving at the house considering its length, in addition to the note showing signs of having been stepped on (Lee and Thomas, 137). Similarly, the first officer to respond to the scene stated that there was no evidence at all of a forced entry into the house and there were no fingerprints on the outside the house except on the main entrance where people used to get in and out of the house in that morning of the murder. (Lee, 148-150).It was therefore highly unlikely that there was an intruder in the home and the person who killed JonBenet was already present in the house from days before.

It is worth noting that a number of challenges were experienced at the crime scene. The initial responder officer, Rick French arrived at about 5:56 am at the house after Patsy Ramsey made a call to 911 and neither secured the crime scene nor establish a formal investigation into the murder (Hughes, 96). The ransom note that was found as claimed by Patsy was handled by her, the officer including other unknown persons thus contaminating it in totality. A few minutes after the officer's arrival, the family had been calling friends and people began to arrive at the scene. Later when Boulder police detectives Linda Arndt and Fred Patterson arrived at the home and observed that the free access of people inside and outside the house could have potentially disturbed or eliminated the evidence. (Lee and Thomas, 138-140).Additionally, the crime was initially reported to the 911 as a case of kidnapping, therefore, making the idea of other crimes having taken place not to be apparent to the officers. Notably, JonBenet's was not found until later in the afternoon more than seven hours after the call had been made to the police and was found by John Ramsey as opposed to the law enforcement officer present at the scene. After the discovery, John Ramsey moved the body from its original location and thus interfering with the evidence that might have been present in her body. Further interference was done by the officer Arndt who moved the body to another room of the house (Lee and Thomas, 144-146). Little effort was made by the initial officers who responded to the crime scene and it was late in the evening after some many people had been in and out of the house that a search was thoroughly conducted. Evidence and items observed initially or later could have been left as a result of many people getting in and out of the house unchecked. Therefore, according to Lee and Thomas, 147, original evidence at the crime scene could have been altered or eliminated and there was absolutely no way this could be concluded without having a secure crime scene.

However, subsequent searches of the Ramsey by the detectives over the next few days revealed many pieces of evidence. Around JonBenet's neck was tied a ligature which was a single length of white, flattened cord of approximately a quarter inches wide and was tied to knot(Lee and Thomas, 154). Her hands were extended up above her head as if they had been tied together by a cord and a duct tape was placed over her mouth. (Lee and Thomas, 145).The ligature around her neck was attached to a wooden stick which had been broken at both ends with many paint colors of paint with the word 'Korea' written on it in golden color. The other parts of the stick were discovered in the basement and it was established that they were from a paintbrush stored and used by Patsy Ramsey (Wecht, Cyril and Charles, 47). The other end of the cord was found tied to her right wrist over her nightshirt sleeve (Wecht, 43). At the crime scene, right at the basement area, a white blanket that John Ramsey had removed before carrying the child's body upstairs was discovered alongside the duct tape that he had removed from her mouth during that same time. (Wecht, Cyril and Charles, 79),

Physically, a horizontal groove which was curved at both ends as it moved across the neck was noticed at the point where the ligature was tied(Wecht, Cyril and Charles, 57), coupled with a linear fracture on the skull of about eight and a half inches running from the front to back on the right side of her skull. According to Lee and Thomas, (156-157), a piece of skull bone of about half an inch displaced at the back of the skull was reported by the coroner to be as a result of a blunt object. Wecht, Cyril, and Charles, p.57 note that hemorrhage on the brain at the right cerebral part and over the entire right cerebral lobe of the brain was injuries associated with the child's getting shaken soon before death. Furthermore, as cited by Lee and Thomas, (156), vaginal mucosa inflammation between a period of 48 and 72 hours was an indication that it was inflicted prior to the time of her death. Similarly, most of the hymen was missing and the vagina walls were reddened with the biggest impact on the left side towards the rear end of the vaginal canal (Lee and Thomas, 157). Wecht, Cyril and Charles, (67-68), explain that black fibers were discovered on JonBenet's clothes and over her genital area both beneath her clothes as well as inside the panty, something that the coroner concluded to the body had been wiped using a cloth-like material.

With way over sixty thousand pages of investigation files, and a grand-jury probe stretching for over a year, no one has ever been convicted in connection to the JonBenet's murder case. It is one of the cold cases witnessed in the modern times with the failure to solve the puzzle leveled against the police for mistakes made in the initial stages of the investigation as well as the district attorney then, Alex Hunter's reluctance to prosecute individuals connected to the case. The issue was also aggravated further by the deteriorating relationship that took place between the police and the prosecutors.

Though the public suspected that JonBenet was murdered by a member of her family, both John and Patsy remained adamant of their innocence. They were never charged and they held that an intruder was responsible for the killing. The case is tangled by tainted and unclear evidence a product of faulty police work. Prosecutors cleared the Ramseys in 2008 some years after the death of Patsy Ramsey. It is therefore very unlikely that the case will ever be resolved considering that no new evidence can be found.

Works Cited

Behm, Sarah. "Who killed JonBenet?: an analysis of a flawed investigation and main suspects." (2015).

Hughes, David J. An Angel Betrayed: How WPealth, Power and Corruption Destroyed the JonBenet Ramsey Murder Investigation Contact and Publish Dav. Strategic Book Publishing, 2014.

Lee, Henry C., and Thomas O'Neil. Cracking more cases: The forensic science of solving crimes. Prometheus Books, 2004.

Wecht, Cyril H., and Charles Bosworth. Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey?. Onyx Books, 1998.