Crime Of A Beauty

In the early morning hours of December 26th 1996, the Ramsey family was preparing to leave their home for Christmas vacation. As John Ramsey and Patsy Ramsey, made preparations for their trip, they discovered a ransom note on the kitchen staircase. The parents soon realized that their six year old daughter, Jon Benet Ramsey, was missing. Less than 8 hours later, as police and family members searched the house, John Ramsey found his daughter’s body in the utility room of the Ramsey basement. She had been strangled with a garrot, her skull fractured and duck tape over her mouth and a smooth code over her neck. The murder of Jon Benet Ramsey set off a national media frenzy that fueled supermarket tabloids for decades, its twists and turns unanswered questions casting suspicion onto strangers, Jon Benet’s parents, and even her nine year old brother. The police later claim that they have not searched the house after Patsey’s call because there was no reason to believe in the ransom note that Jon Benet was in the house. At the time of her death, Jon Benet was a well decorated beauty pageant competitor having at least 5 high profile competitions. The autopsy found that Jon Benet was beaten to death while the County corner ruled that Jon Benet had died of asphyxiation caused by being strangled. A paintbrush from Patsy’s hobby kit was used tighten the rope that strangled Jon Benet. There was DNA found on Jon Benet’s long jeans and underwear, both belonging to a single unidentified man who when compared to FBI’s database of convicted violent offenders in 2004 was not found among 1.5 million samples.

THE RANSOM NOTE

The nearly 03 page ransom note requested $118,000 in exchange for Jon Benet Ramsey, with the exchange to take place the next day ( 27th December) between 8.00 and 10.00 am. The highly scrutinised note starts with “ 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, " which ultimately lead to nowhere. The police suspect the note was fake and was scripted. The $ 118,000 was close to the amount that John Ramsey received for a bonus that year. However, the most chilling fact about the ransom note was that it was written using pen and paper from inside the house. While this detail is absolutely horrifying, it has brought a lot of suspicion on to the integrity of the note. This suggests that the killer somehow entered the house, wrote the note inside and for some reason then killed Jon Benet after writing the ransom note, all of this occurring while the other 03 Ramsey family members were inside the house.

SUSPECTS

THE RAMSEYS’

The early going of the case, the Ramsey family was under heavy scrutiny given the suspicion of the ransom notes authenticity and the little evidence to suggest an intruder. A recent TV programme claimed that the police theorized that Patsy Ramsey accidentally killed Jon Benet. That same programme also posited that Burke Ramsey (Jon Benet’s 9 year old little brother) accidentally killed Jon Benet as well. However, for Patsy or Burk to be the killer not only would the note have to be staged but so would the strangulation . But that doesn’t add up when you consider the evidence suggests that Jon Benet was still alive when she was being strangled. During 1999, a grand jury had voted to indict on charges of child abuse resulting in death. But the district attorney at the time, did not sign the indictment believing that there was not enough evidence to support the charges.

BILL MCREYNOLDS

Bill McReynold’s visited the Ramsey House 02 days before the murder. He sometimes dressed up as Santa Claus. His own daughter has been kidnapped 22 years before the Jon Benet murder. His wife has written a play about a child getting molested and then murdered in a basement. McReynold even brought a vial of glitter gifted to him by Jon Benet into heart surgery. The gift had been meaningful to him as no child had given him a gift while playing santa. He even asked his wife to mix the glitter with his ashes if he were to die.

GARY OLIVA

Gary lived a few blocks away from the Ramsey house at the time of the murder. In 2016, Oliva was arrested with chargers of child pornography. In December 2000 Oliva was arrested with unrelated drug charges and was found to be carrying a photo of Jon Benet in his backpack. A high-school friend of Oliva later revealed that Oliva had called and told him, “ I HURT A LITTLE GIRL, I HURT A LITTLE GIRL “ and he had also revealed the location of where he had hurt this girl which is Boulder Colorado ( exact hometown of Jon Benet ). Records show that no other girl other than Jon Benet was harmed in that area that night. It was also revealed that the strangulation method used on Jon Benet was similar to what was used by Oliva to strangle his mother using a telephone wire. Nonetheless, Oliva was not a match to the DNA evidence.

JOHN MARK KARR

A divorced father and elementary school teacher, Karr had not been a suspect until nearly 10 years after the murder when he confessed to the murder via email to a journalism professor. The professor has replied back and forth for 4 years in order to “ gain his trust." In Karr’s email he used similar words to the ransom note and even used Patsy’s mother’s nickname (Neddie) which was bizarre to how he would even know that. Karr would even confess that he was in love with Jon Benet and confess that he hit Jon Benet’s head with a flashlight. Later with the help of the British intelligence, there were able to track down Karr in Thailand trying to escape child pornography charged in California. A few months after the confessing Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacey issued a formal apology to John Ramsey for suspecting his family, that they had lived with suspension and confessed that none of the family members were considered a suspect. However it was confirmed that Karr was not even in Boulder Colorado at the time of the murder and the confession had not matched the evidence found at the house.

Later the DNA expert relived that the DNA found from Jon Benet ‘s underwear was false DNA and maybe from the manufacturer. Thus it can be any of the suspects. In the end nobody really knows what happened to Jon Benet and the case remains unsolved.