The Killing of JonBenét Ramsey: The Crime and the First Investigation

The first officer to search the basement of the Ramsey house on the morning of December 26, 1996, came to a door held shut by a wooden latch at the top of the frame. He looked at it and walked away. That afternoon, six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was found in a room behind that door.

This post covers the crime and the first ten years of the investigation, from the 911 call to a false confession in 2006. The DNA evidence, the grand jury vote and what Boulder police are doing now are in a separate post on why the case is still open. No one has ever been charged in JonBenét's death.

The 911 Call and the Note

Patsy Ramsey called 911 at 5:52 a.m. on December 26 and reported her daughter missing from the family's home at 755 15th Street in Boulder, Colorado. She said she had found a handwritten ransom note on a staircase near the kitchen. The note was addressed to John Ramsey, demanded $118,000, said he would be contacted that morning with instructions, and warned him not to call the authorities.

The amount was nearly identical to a bonus John Ramsey had received from Access Graphics, the computer company he founded, and investigators looked at employees there who might have known the figure. At about 370 words spread over nearly three pages, the note was unusually long for a ransom demand. Investigators came to believe it had been written inside the house, with a pen and a notepad that came from the Ramsey home. A practice draft was also found.

The First Hours

Two officers arrived within minutes. They searched the house and found no sign of forced entry. One of them, Officer Rick French, went to the basement and stopped at the latched door without opening it. He later explained that he was looking for the route a kidnapper had used to leave, and a door latched from the inside could not have been that route.

The rest of the house was never sealed off. Because police were treating the case as a kidnapping, JonBenét's bedroom was the only room cordoned off to protect evidence. Friends, victim advocates and the family's minister came to the house to support the Ramseys, and visitors picked up items and cleaned surfaces in the kitchen. Detective Linda Arndt arrived at about 8 a.m. to wait for the kidnapper's call. The call never came, and no one ever tried to collect the money.

The Discovery

At about 1 p.m., Arndt asked John Ramsey and a family friend, Fleet White, to search the house for anything out of place. They started in the basement. John Ramsey opened the latched door and found his daughter in a room beyond it. Duct tape covered her mouth, a cord was tied around her wrists and neck, and a white blanket covered her body. He carried her upstairs.

Moving her disturbed the scene before forensic investigators could document it. The handling of those first hours has been criticized ever since: the house left open to visitors, the hours that passed before a thorough search, and evidence handled before it was recorded.

The Autopsy

The death was ruled a homicide. The autopsy gave the cause as "asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma." JonBenét had an 8.5-inch fracture on the right side of her skull. The cord around her neck had been made into a garrote using the broken handle of a paintbrush. Part of that brush was found in a tub of Patsy Ramsey's art supplies; the bottom third of it was never found despite extensive searching.

There were indications that she had also been sexually assaulted. No semen was found. The autopsy also recorded material that may have been pineapple, eaten a few hours before her death. Photographs taken in the house that day show a bowl of pineapple on the kitchen table. Neither John nor Patsy Ramsey said they remembered putting it there or giving her pineapple.

Two Theories From the Start

Boulder police focused early on John and Patsy Ramsey. They saw no forced entry and believed the scene had been staged. Handwriting examiners ruled out John Ramsey as the author of the note but could not rule out Patsy. The Ramseys denied any involvement from the beginning, and in April 1997 they placed a newspaper advertisement offering a $100,000 reward.

Others saw an intruder. Lou Smit, a veteran Colorado homicide detective, came out of retirement in early 1997 to work the case for the Boulder County District Attorney's office. He pointed to a broken basement window, two windows left slightly open for Christmas-light cords, an unlocked door and an unidentified boot print in the room where JonBenét was found. His theory was that someone came in through the basement window and used a stun gun to subdue her.

Critics of that theory noted an intact cobweb in the broken window, undisturbed cobwebs on the steel grate over it, and untouched plants around the grate. Believing the Ramseys were innocent, Smit resigned from the investigation on September 20, 1998, five days after a grand jury was convened. He kept working the case on his own until his death in 2010.

That grand jury heard evidence for 13 months. In October 1999 District Attorney Alex Hunter announced that no charges would be filed, citing insufficient evidence. What the jurors had actually voted did not come out for years; the companion post covers it.

A False Confession

Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in June 2006, at 49. Two months later, on August 16, 2006, John Mark Karr, a 41-year-old American schoolteacher, was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand. In emails to a journalism professor he had claimed that he killed JonBenét.

His claim did not hold up. On August 28, 2006, prosecutors dropped the case after DNA testing failed to place him at the crime scene. He was never charged in her death.

Where the First Decade Left It

Ten years on, the record held a child found dead in her own house, a ransom note written on paper from that house, a broken window with a cobweb still in it, a man who confessed and did not match, and male DNA that had matched no one. Each theory of the case leans on some of those facts and has to account for the rest. No one has been charged.

Sources

1. Murder of JonBenét Ramsey - Encyclopaedia Britannica
2. Killing of JonBenét Ramsey - Wikipedia
3. Annual JonBenét Ramsey case report mentions 'new evidence' - USA Today (via Arizona Daily Star)
4. JonBenet Ramsey grand jury sought to indict parents for child abuse - CBC News / AP, Oct. 25, 2013
5. Karr cleared in JonBenet Ramsey case - NBC News / AP, Aug. 28, 2006
6. JonBenet Ramsey (Homicide) - City of Boulder

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