In the winter of 1996 in her family home in Boulder, Colorado, little Jonbenét Ramsey was murdered at the age of 6. She had been reported missing not 8 hours before she was found by her father in the basement of the home. Or so the girl's parents told police when they were questioned. At the scene was also found what appeared to be a ransom note, that had quite some oddities about it, in and of itself which i will get into in a little bit.
It was evident by the state of Jonbenét's body that she had suffered major head trauma, to the extent of it crushing her skull. Furthermore upon inspection she still had a ligature around her neck, her wrists, tying them together and her mouth had been covered with duct-tape. The medical examiner would later conclude that the head wound and strangulation both contributed to her death. It is important to take into consideration that the responding officer would write in his report, that the scene of death had looked staged in his opinion.
Now, it is unclear to me whether the responding officer was a homicide detective or Bob the traffic patrol man, either way... But when a body/death scene is staged, it is generally not to cover the nature or the circumstances of the crime up. Rather it's usually attributed to an underlying psychological need the offender has. The driver behind such behavior can be either pathological, a compulsion someone has to do something with the body afterward. Or it can be an indicator of remorse, depending on how exactly the scene is staged. I'm kind of going off on a tangent here but bear with me. The way i understand in which the body was found, was as if she had been murdered on the spot and someone had left in a hurry, since they forgot to take some important evidence with them, least of all the ligatures.
However, besides the violent nature of the scene, her body was covered with a blanket as well. So either, this offender took the time to break into the house, where there was no initial sign of a break in i might add, get Jonbenét to the basement, proceeded to murder her by first tying her up, then strangling her and then to top it all off literally bashing her skull in, which was overkill. But then, after she expires, he is in such a hurry to get out that the fastest way of concealing the body even for a little bit is to put a blanket over, or after all the violence, the offender suddenly can't bear to look upon his handiwork? Now IDK the significance of the blanket, but something isn't right with this picture.
Now, remember the ransom note? Here's where things get stranger. It was very long for a ransom note, more than two pages, and take a look at how it starts off.
Listen carefully! We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction.
bussiness [sic] but not the country that it serves. At this time we have your daughter in our posession. She is safe and unharmed and if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter.
You will withdraw $118,000.00 from your account. $100,000 will be in $100 bills and the remaining $18,000 in $20 bills. Make sure that you bring an adequate size attache to the bank
Oddly specific and it goes on like that for a while, and i think it is safe to assume that this "evidence" is meant to throw us off track. What's more, i read somewhere that the "$118,000.00" number was the exact amount of money the father was getting paid for that year's bonus. But i have no way of confirming whether it was true or not. Still interesting.
If we grant that the ransom note was planted then it doesn't seem far-fetched that the positioning of the body, post-mortem, could indeed in this case be for the purposes of masking the events that had transpired. Also, think about it, Jonbenét is reported missing. Yet it would take her parents 8 hours to realize that she was laying lifeless in the basement? u Wot m8?
It didn't help alleviate suspicions that when the police turned up the heat they immediately lawyerd up. Well that's it then right? Case closed. Daddy lost his temper, bashed his little girl's skull in and went to great lengths to point every finger away from himself. The mother, would obviously be complicit.
Yeah, you'd think that, until when in December of 2003 trace evidence from the victim's underwear was analyzed and it was determined that the DNA present there neither belonged to the father, the mother or the brother. What does that mean? Well it means that no matter what happened, we cannot definitively rule out the possibility of there being a third party outside of the family involved in the death of Jonbenét.
It's a real whodunnit, and in fairness the police during the course of the investigation had developed what appeared to be evidence of a break-in. But the details, again are fuzzy at best. Perhaps you find these statistics more compelling. Over a hundred burglaries in the Ramseys' neighborhood took place in the months leading up to JonBenét's murder. And there were no less than 38 registered sex offenders living in a three mile radius around her. Not only that, she was a little beauty queen, and her mom would often take her out to pageants before this whole tragedy.
So the question remains, who on that winter night so many years ago, murdered little Jonbenét Ramsey? What do you think?
We may never know. Join me next time, on Murder Mysteries with Sophie.
