JonBenét Ramsey’s dad is calling for child murder to be made a federal offense to prevent perceived mistakes in his daughter’s investigation from happening again.
John Ramsey’s appeal for change comes 27 years after the unsolved death of his daughter, who was found strangled and beaten in the basement of his family home in Boulder, Colorado, the day after Christmas 1996.
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“In our case, Boulder police refused help from the outside, which I’ve always said is the second tragedy in this case,” John, 80, told The U.S. Sun ahead of the grim milestone.
“We have 18,000 different police jurisdictions in this country, and each one is its own little island of authority, and if a crime happens on their island, they’re in charge, and if they don’t ask for help, help cannot come – and that’s what happened in our case.
“So I’d like to see a law come in that makes the murder of a child under 12 a federal offense so that when something like this happens, we can bring the full resources of our country together to find the killer.
“We’re not going to leave it up to the Barney Fifes and Mayor Mayberrys of the world to solve it,” added John, referencing the incompetent characters from The Andy Griffith Show.
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“If we leave it up to people like that, who won’t accept help because they’ve got a big ego, then we’re screwed.”
John last saw his 6-year-old daughter late on Christmas night when he carried a sleeping JonBenét from the car and up to bed before his wife, Patsy, changed her into her pajamas.
The family had to be up early the following morning since they were due to meet up with John’s older children from his first marriage to celebrate the holiday season on a Disney red boat cruise.
John and Patsy woke up sometime before 6 am on December 26.
He was shaving in the bathroom when he heard Patsy let out a guttural scream from down the hallway.
JonBenét was not in her bedroom and a strange, two-and-a-half-page ransom note had been left on a staircase toward the back of the home.
Addressed to John and purported to have been written by a foreign faction, the author of the rambling letter demanded $118,000 in exchange for the girl’s safe return.
But the kidnappers never called as promised.
Hours later, JonBenét would be found by John in a seldom-used room they referred to as the wine cellar in the basement of the Ramseys’ sprawling four-floor mansion, swaddled in a white blanket.
John was initially overcome with feelings of relief to have finally found his daughter, though as he got closer, he realized her hands had been tied above her head and duct tape placed over her mouth.
Her eyes were closed and she was not moving.
John screamed. He then picked his daughter up, carried her upstairs, and laid her down next to the Christmas tree.
REPAIRING RELATIONS
John and Patsy were immediately placed under an “umbrella of suspicion” and remained prime suspects in the case until they were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2008.
In the years since, John has been a vocal critic of Boulder PD and their handling of the investigation into his daughter’s murder, which he says was compromised from the very beginning when investigators failed to secure the crime scene.
His biggest criticism was of BPD’s reluctance to accept help when they were clearly out of their depth.
Had they done so after JonBenét was killed, John believes her killer would’ve been caught almost immediately.
“I was told by experienced homicide detectives that this case wouldn’t have been difficult to solve had they had the right resources in the very beginning,” said John.
“There’s been lots of help that’s been offered over the years from people that have the experience to solve this and they’ve always refused that help.
“And that’s foolish at a minimum, and criminal at worst.”
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John met with BPD investigators twice this year to discuss the status of his daughter’s case and appeal once again for officials to accept external help.
During the meeting, John made two demands to the department that he believes will help to solve JonBenét’s murder once and for all.
The first request, he says, was to test several items of evidence for DNA that were never tested in the immediate aftermath of her murder in December 1996, including the garrote that was found embedded in the tragic beauty queen’s neck.
While Boulder PD has voiced reluctance to conduct new DNA tests through fear of destroying the small sample they have left, John noted that DNA technology has developed significantly over the last two-and-a-half decades.
Now, it only takes an incredibly small sample to develop a profile when placed in the right hands.
After also re-testing the other items of evidence they have previously screened, John’s second request to BPD is to turn all DNA yielded over to a state-of-the-art genealogy lab.
“We’ve seen wild success stories with these genealogy labs involving some very old cases, so those are the two things we want them to do,” explained John.
“These labs can use the DNA to basically do a reverse family tree and narrow that down to someone who was in Boulder in 1996 that fits the profile.
“The key is they have to go to one of the two or three cutting-edge DNA labs in the country – not the government labs.
“We were told by the FBI the government does not have the latest technology yet, so you’ve got to go to an outside lab […] and that’s what we hope they do.”
AN ‘ENCOURAGING’ DEVELOPMENT
John Ramsey believes DNA will ultimately be the key to solving his daughter’s case, though the culprit may likely come from left field – someone who may have never been on the radar of detectives before.
Someone who has been on the radar of Boulder PD is Gary Oliva, a convicted pedophile who has routinely confessed to killing the tragic child beauty queen accidentally.
A classmate of Oliva’s, Michael Vail, also claimed to have received a call from a crying Oliva on the evening of December 26, 1996, telling him: “I hurt a little girl.”
In an exclusive report earlier this month, The U.S. Sun revealed that handwriting analysis conducted on the Ramsey ransom note pointed to Oliva as the likely author.
John said he was encouraged by the results of the analysis and called the findings interesting.
“That is very interesting,” he reiterated. “When he was referred to us by the district attorney early on, they said he was a very interesting suspect.
“The district attorney told us, ‘Look, I know the police won’t follow up on this. Will you have your investigators look into it?’
“And we did and when it was described to me, all the circumstantial stuff, I said, ‘Man, this is the guy!’
“My attorney told me not to jump to conclusions, but there was some circumstantial stuff that was very compelling.
“I don’t know about him, but this is certainly encouraging.”
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The Boulder Police Department has been contacted for comment.
The department routinely declines to comment on the case, stating only: “This is an open and ongoing investigation, we’re unable to give any interviews or comment on specific aspects of this crime.”
In October, The Boulder Daily Camera reported that a long-awaited review of JonBenét’s murder will be carried out by the Colorado Cold Case Review Team, with the cooperation of BPD, before the end of the year.
The planned collaboration, which will bring fresh eyes to the case for the first time, was first announced in November 2022.
Curiously, the announcement coincided with the reassignment of a veteran BPD investigator, Thomas Trujillo, who for years had been in charge of the JonBenét probe.
In previous interviews with The U.S. Sun, John called Trujillo a roadblock in his daughter’s case who allegedly refused to hear any evidence that didn’t concern him or Patsy being responsible.
Last year, it was announced that Trujillo had been reassigned to night patrol after an internal investigation found that he and a handful of other officers had failed to properly investigate numerous cases.
In addition to the Cold Case Review Team, BPD has pledged to work with the FBI, the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office, the Colorado Department of Public Safety, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and several private DNA labs across the country.
John Ramsey called the repurposing of Trujillo encouraging in an interview in October, and indicative of the shift in attitude that appears to be occurring within the BPD ranks.
“[Speaking with them] I guess I sensed that they were not too cold towards us anymore and they genuinely seem committed to solving this,” he recounted.
“And then the fact that the so-called detective [Thomas Trujillo] that was responsible for our case for the last 25 years was recommended for termination of the citizen review board.
“Then they instead put him on night patrol, but at least he’s not responsible for our case anymore, which can only be a good thing because he was worthless.”
FESTIVE REGRETS
Last year, John reflected on his final Christmas with JonBenét and revealed the one particular regret that continues to play on his mind.
For her main present that year, John and Patsy bought their daughter a new bicycle.
So excited to ride her new bike, John went outside with JonBenét to watch her pedal up and down in an alleyway behind the family’s home.
But pressed for time, and needing to be at a friend’s home for Christmas lunch, he had to hurry her back inside, ignoring her pleas of “please, just one more go around.”
Calling the memory hurtful now, John shared: “We went out in the back alley and she rode it up and down the alley a couple of times.
“And I said, ‘OK, we gotta’ go, we’re going to be late for dinner.’
“To which she said, ‘Oh dad. Please let me go just one more time,’ but I told her no, we’ll do that tomorrow.
“And that’s what I remember vividly, her asking me to go just one more time, and me telling her no we’ll do it tomorrow.
“Of course, there was no tomorrow […] it’s a hurtful thought now.”
John called the haunting memory a life lesson to never be too busy to spend more time with your family because you never know what the future may hold.
“I had a mother write me [years later] and she said your loss made me take that extra five minutes when my child asked for my time because you don’t know,” he added.
“So that’s another life lesson […] don’t be so busy that you say we’ve got to wait until tomorrow.
“That’s what I remember most from that day.”
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