The 1996 murder of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey gripped the nation for years.
To this day, though, only one suspect has ever even been arrested for the crime, but he turned out to simply be a crazy person who was likely guilty of many heinous crimes just not this one.
And now JonBenét Ramsey’s father is blowing the whistle on a stunning piece of evidence law enforcement potentially missed.
It’s been right in front of them this entire time
Nearly three decades have passed since Boulder, Colorado, and the nation at large, was rocked to its core as news spread that six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey had been heinously murdered in her family’s home as they apparently slept soundly the night after Christmas.
As the story goes, her family awoke on December 26, 1996, but quickly realized that JonBenét was nowhere to be found, causing them to report her missing.
Seven hours after authorities were alerted – a full seven hours in which police, family, and friends poured into the home, and supposedly thoroughly searched the home without finding anything – the deceased six-year-old was found in her family’s basement with her mouth duct taped, a nylon cord around her wrists and neck, and a white blanket covering her torso.
And over the years, numerous suspects have emerged, including JonBenét’s parents, John and Patsy, her older brother, Burke, who was nine-years-old at the time of his sister’s death, and even a certifiably insane former teacher and convicted pedophile who apparently created a story in his head that he was in love with JonBenét and was with her the night she “accidentally” lost her life, causing him to erroneously take credit for a crime he didn’t commit.
But throughout it all, police have somehow never even come close to actually solving the case.
Now, as has been the case every few years since the case became national news, a new documentary has sparked renewed interest in the case, while also pointing out some crucial pieces of evidence that have seemingly gone completely unnoticed this entire time.
As everyone knows, one of the biggest reasons JonBenét’s case became such a massive story is because many were largely focused on the fact that her now-deceased mother, Patsy, was apparently fixated on putting her toddler daughter in beauty pageants from the time she was born, treating her more like a Barbie doll than a human child, causing them to believe that the pageants could somehow play a role in solving her murder.
But obviously, at least as far as the public is aware, that was supposed to be a dead end that didn’t produce any legitimate leads.
That is, until the recently released Netflix docuseries, Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, brought to light the 1997 assault of another young girl who attended the very same dance studio JonBenét attended in Boulder.
According to the docuseries, on September 14, 1997 – less than nine months after JonBenét was murdered in her own home in the middle of the night – an unidentified man broke into a home just two miles from the Ramsey residence.
Fortunately, in this case, the girl’s mother heard noises coming from her daughter’s room, and in rushing in to check on her, scared off the assailant, most likely saving her daughter’s life.
Police: ‘Nothing to see here’
Needless to say, as far as John Ramsey is concerned, “There’s a possibility it was the same person.”
The father, who took part in the Netflix docuseries as he has other such productions seeking the truth about his daughter’s disappearance in the past, went on to tell Fox News that if nothing else, “I think there’s a very strong indication that there possibly is a connection.”
The father also let it be known that he knows law enforcement never even looked at a possible connection between the two cases as an option for solving either case.
“The police blew it off in the beginning, and to my knowledge, never looked at that as an option,” John Ramsey added. “The police chief at that time said, ‘Well, it’s not the same because that little girl in the second incident was not murdered.’ That’s absurd to say something like that.”
Back in 2004, the father of the girl who was assaulted within one year of JonBenét’s death and just two miles from her home told 48 Hours that he believes the intruder broke into the home while the family was away and hid until they returned.
“My feeling is he got into the house while they were out and hid inside the house, so he would have been in there for perhaps four to six hours, hiding,” he said at the time.
Unsurprisingly, one of the theories that were floated during the early days of the investigation into the Ramsey case was the idea that the perpetrator had broken into the house while the family was away and hid until they were sound asleep.
While that connection seemingly meant nothing to law enforcement, the second girl’s father knew instantly that there was a potential parallel between the two cases.
“The first thing that occurred to us was that it was the parallel to the Ramsey case, because it was exactly the same situation,” he explained. “I think someone, somewhere, drew a bead on her. Obviously had us under surveillance that we were not aware of.”
John Ramsey is also of the belief that in both cases, the intruder used the same “method of operation.”
“I believe he was in our home when we got home from going out to friends for dinner with the kids,” Ramsey said. “We went to bed, and he waited till we were asleep and attacked JonBenét. In the second case, the parents had gone out. They came home, and they set the burglar alarm on. And the mother heard a noise, eventually, and went into the child’s bedroom, and there was a person standing over her bed. So the person was in the house when they came home because they set the burglar alarm. He couldn’t have gotten in otherwise.”
To date, Boulder Police have responded to inquiries about the possibility of a connection between the two crimes by claiming that “detectives found no definitive connection at the time” despite the fact that “the two cases have some similarities.”
No matter how much time passes, it seems as though the JonBenét Ramsey case will always have far more questions than answers.
