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A miscarriage of justice: Who killed JonBenet Ramsey?
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Eleven years ago, the American public was horrified by the rape and murder of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey in her home in Boulder, CO. No one was ever charged with the crime, much less convicted. People were suspicious that the parents were somehow involved, most likely because her mother Patsy and father John each hired their own lawyers.
A letter was found at the scene, written to the parents and addressing them by their given names. It demanded a ransom, which was exactly the amount of a bonus which John had earned from his company not long before. The letter was filled with quotations from action movies, indicating to profilers that the writer was male, and roughly 20 years old. It also contained the letters "SBTC". No one in Boulder knew what this meant.
One thing should have been clear from the start: the crime was committed by someone who was quite familiar with the Ramsey family. Nothing had been stolen, and the house was not ransacked. It was obvious that the killer was comfortable enough in the house to sit there and write his letter, probably while waiting for the family to come home. There was a broken basement window which might have been the killer's means of entry, but there were no footprints in the dusting of snow next to the window, indicating that the killer might simply have come in through the front or back door. Could he have had a key?
While the public was suspicious of the father -- and mother -- they have been exonerated by DNA tests of tiny (15-cell) samples taken from the blanket the girl was wrapped in. How curious that no DNA tests, or any tests for that matter, had been taken of the blood found under JonBenet's fingernails. But even without the DNA or blood tests, that blood still tells us something important: the little girl had fought back, and scratched the face of her attacker. That means that anyone without scratches on his or her face could not have been the killer. Besides, who would rape and murder a small child, leave her body in the basement where the crime took place, and then hang around waiting for the police to show up? Clearly it was someone else other than the immediate family, but someone who knew the Ramseys intimately.
And it was also someone who came from Atlanta. It was finally revealed -- as the result of a false confession by a child molester who came from there, and knew the Ramseys, although casually -- that "SBTC" stands for "Should Be The Conqueror," an expression which had caught on among teenage boys in the Atlanta area, but not elsewhere. In fact, the letter invited John Ramsey to "use your good old Southern common sense," another expression that indicated that the writer came from the South.
John Ramsey had been married before, and had three children by his first wife; one, a daughter, had died in a tragic car crash, but there were two surviving children -- one daughter, and a son, John Andrew Ramsey. The son was 20 at the time of the tragic death of JonBenet. After moving back to Atlanta, the Ramseys confessed to a friend that they thought "the brother" had committed the rape and murder. The tabloids headlined this as an accusation against JonBenet's full brother Burke, who now became a suspect in the public's eyes.
Would a ten-year-old have been able to carry his six-year-old sister down two flights of stairs? Would he have written a letter addressing his parents as "John and Patsy"? Would he have thought of making it look like a kidnapping, or of tying the victim up with duct tape? And where were the scratches on his face?
There is also the question of why JonBenet didn't kick or scream when she was being carried down to the basement where the rape and murder took place. Investigators noted that she had marks on her body indicating that she had been knocked unconscious with a stun gun, which was used twice. A ten-year-old would have no access to a stun gun.
There is every reason to believe that the Ramseys knew that the older half-brother John Andrew was a likely suspect in the murder. They wanted to protect him, and the indications are that the police and DA in Boulder were willing to go along with this. The father was probably molesting JonBenet -- the signs are hard to miss -- and may have molested his son from his first marriage as well. The son's motive, if he was the guilty party, would have been a combination of jealousy and revenge. Certainly, the letter showed that the killer had a deep-seated grudge with John.
Even at the young age of six, JonBenet showed signs of charm and talent, and had a lot to offer the world had she been allowed to live. With all the publicity the rape-murder received, one would think that the fairly obvious solution to the crime would have been forthcoming long ago.
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