Murder of JonBenét Ramsey - Suspicion

Suspicion

Case speculation by experts, media and the parents has supported different hypotheses. For many years, the local police supported the hypothesis that her mother Patsy Ramsey injured her child in a fit of rage after the girl had wet her bed on the same night, and then proceeded to kill her either in rage or to cover up the original injury. In November 1997, several handwriting experts determined that Patsy Ramsey more than likely wrote the ransom note. According to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation report, "There are indications that the author of the ransom note is Patricia Ramsey," but they could not definitively prove this assertion.

Another hypothesis was that John Ramsey had been sexually abusing his daughter and murdered her as a cover. The Ramseys' son Burke, who was nine at the time of JonBenét's death, was also targeted by speculation, and asked to testify at the grand jury hearing. In 1999, the Governor of Colorado, Bill Owens, told the parents of JonBenét Ramsey to "quit hiding behind their attorneys, quit hiding behind their PR firm." Police suspicions were initially concentrated almost exclusively on the members of the Ramsey family, although the girl's parents had no prior signs of aggression in the public record.

The Ramseys have consistently held that the crime was committed by an intruder. They hired John E. Douglas, former head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, to examine the case. Douglas detailed his assessment of the Ramsey case in a chapter of his 2001 book, The Cases That Haunt Us. While retained by the Ramsey family, he concluded that the crime was most probably a kidnapping gone wrong, and that Ramseys were not involved in the murder. Douglas's argument focused on the following points:

(a) There was no physical evidence linking John and Patsy to the homicide, and physical evidence found near JonBenét's body suggested the presence of an unidentified person in the Ramsey home.

(b) There was no plausible motive for the Ramseys to kill their daughter. Douglas regarded the bed-wetting hypothesis as so unprecedented as to verge on absurdity and furthermore inconsistent with Patsy's established behavior.

(c) There was no evidence of physical abuse, neglect, sexual molestation, or serious personality disorders in the Ramsey household prior to the murder, some combination of which are associated with most cases of children killed by parents.

(d) The behavior of John and Patsy Ramsey after the crime was consistent with the parents of other murdered children, and was inconsistent with known cases of parents who killed their children.

Noting that a large percentage of child homicides are committed by parents and family of the victim, Douglas did not fault the original investigators for closely scrutinizing the Ramsey family. Douglas did, however, criticize authorities in Boulder for what he described as a deeply flawed investigation (eg., not securing the crime scene) that was further hampered by political infighting and refusal to ask for outside help. At the time, Boulder police normally handled one or two homicides per year, and had little experience with anything resembling the Ramsey case. He cites several other cases in which FBI consultancy or hands-on investigation helped local authorities resolve puzzling homicides outside their usual experience. Douglas also concluded that it was unlikely that anyone would resolve the case. The most likely scenario based on the evidence, Douglas speculated, was that JonBenét was killed by a young, inexperienced criminal (eg, the possible digital penetration of the girl's vagina was consistent with other young sex offenders motivated by a naive curiosity about female anatomy) who was sexually obsessed with the child and/or who wanted to extort money from her wealthy family. Douglas dismissed as implausible suggestions that Patsy wrote the ransom note, further arguing that the ransom note was written before the crime. In Douglas's experience, it would be practically impossible for anyone to remain composed enough to write such a detailed letter in the immediate aftermath of a murder. Additionally supporting his hypothesis that the note was written before the murder, Douglas argued, was its being peppered with what appeared to be phrases borrowed from motion pictures like Ransom (1996) and Speed (1994) which, he speculated, inspired the perpetrator.

Lou Smit, a seasoned detective who came out of retirement to assist Boulder authorities with the case in early 1997, originally suspected the parents, but after assessing all the evidence that had been collected, also concluded that an intruder had committed the crime. In his book The Cases That Haunt Us, Douglas writes that he quibbled with a few of Smit's interpretations but agreed with the general thrust of Smit's investigation and conclusions. Douglas particularly praised Smit's discovery in autopsy photos of what appeared to be previously-overlooked evidence of a "stun gun" having been used to subdue JonBenét. While no longer an official investigator on the case, Smit continued to work on it until his death in 2010.

Stephen Singular, investigative journalist and author of the book Presumed Guilty: An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, the Media and the Culture of Pornography, suggests the existence of a connection of the murder to the industry of child pornography. He refers to consultations with cyber-crime specialists who believe that JonBenét, due to her beauty pageant experience, was the perfect kind of child who could be dragged into the world of child pornography and was a natural candidate to attract attention and pedophiles.

With such contradictory evidence, a grand jury failed to indict the Ramseys or anyone else in the murder of JonBenét. Not long after the murder, the parents moved to a new home in Atlanta. Two of the lead investigators in the case resigned, one because he believed that the investigation had incompetently overlooked the intruder hypothesis, and the other because he believed that the investigation had failed to successfully prosecute the Ramseys. Even so, remaining investigators are still trying to identify a possible suspect. Patricia "Patsy" Ramsey died of ovarian cancer on June 24, 2006, at the age of 49.