Things That Still Don't Make Sense About The JonBenét Ramsey Case

At 5:30 a.m. on December 26, 1996, Patsy Ramsey, a wife and mother living in Boulder, Colorado, got out of bed and headed downstairs in her family's sprawling mansion to make coffee. On the stairs, she discovered something shocking: a ransom note addressed to her husband, John. It began: "Mr. Ramsey, Listen carefully! We are a group of individuals who represent a small foreign faction. We respect your bussiness [sic] but not the country it serves. At this time we have your daughter in our posession [sic]. She is safe and unharmed and if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter" (per Biography). 

The note went on to demand the sum of $118,000, and for the Ramseys to make no contact with the police. Nevertheless, the Ramseys called 911 and reported their daughter, 6-year-old beauty pageant star JonBenét, had been kidnapped, sparking a search operation. At around 1 p.m., police instructed John and a friend to perform another sweep of the mansion, during which John discovered his daughter's lifeless body in the basement. She had been brutally murdered, with a "ligature" around her neck and what was later found to be a large skull fracture. Sexual assault was also suspected, per The Washington Post.

Nearly three decades on, the JonBenét Ramsey murder remains one of America's most notorious and disturbing cases. And as continued interest in the case shows, there are still a number of things about it that don't make sense.

To this day, opinion is split among both professionals involved in the case and armchair true crime enthusiasts as to exactly what led to the death of 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey. One of the most prevailing theories, however, is that it was a kidnapping gone wrong. Experts have noted the duct tape on the girl's mouth, and other effects point toward the possibility that the murderer had initially planned to incapacitate Ramsey and take her from the family home. Author and private investigator John Wesley Anderson, who had written a book about the JonBenét Ramsey case, told The Independent in 2023: "The killer went into that house with a kidnap kit. He brought duct tape, he brought parachute cords, he brought a stun gun to immobilize the victim. So this was very calculated. It was a very methodically executed kidnap attempt that went wrong and ended up in murder." 

What might have led a potential kidnapper to murder Ramsey rather than abscond with her as planned remains a mystery. Similarly, why the victim's body would remain at the scene has never been explained.

However, others believe that the ransom note may have been a decoy, made to throw police off the scent during their investigation. John Ramsey himself has stated that he believes a "masked intruder" broke into the house and murdered his daughter, according to People.

John Ramsey suggested that an unknown intruder who raped a 12-year-old girl in Boulder, Colorado nine months after the murder of JonBenét Ramsey was his daughter's killer. That upon examination JonBenét Ramsey also showed signs of having been sexually assaulted supports this version of events. However, his theory seemingly overlooks the presence of the mysterious ransom note and fails to explain one key detail about its demands.

As many familiar with the case have pointed out, the $118,000 the apparent kidnappers wanted from the Ramseys happened to be the exact amount that John Ramsey had recently received as a work bonus. This seems unlikely to be a coincidence; instead, it suggests that the would-be kidnapper and killer had knowledge of Ramsey's earnings ... and may have been someone connected to the Ramseys themselves. However, that the note was written on paper inside the house and that a paintbrush from the house was used to garrote her deepens the mystery further, suggesting a lack of premeditation.

A missing child case, particularly one involving a ransom note, would seemingly prompt a large and sweeping police operation, but when it came to the apparent kidnapping the police response seemed surprisingly muted. That John Ramsey was the one to find JonBenét's body after police instructions to search the house suggests how poor a job the police investigators did of searching for the girl in the hours after the alarm was raised.

And having John search the house again — instead of clearing it of people and treating it as a crime scene — had major repercussions for the investigation going forward. On finding the body, the distraught father carried his daughter's body upstairs, leaving the door to the cellar open. Doing so contaminated the crime scene and destroyed what might have been vital evidence that could have helped bring the killer to justice.

Following the discovery of JonBenét Ramsey's body and the beginning of what was now a murder investigation, the suspicions of detectives now turned toward the Ramseys themselves. Initially, the sum demanded by the ransom note drew some to believe that Patsy was behind it, but all of the Ramseys including JonBenét's older brother Burke were taken in and made to give samples of their hair, blood, and to have their handwriting compared to that of the note. 

However, as The New York Times reported the year after the murder, for four months early in the investigation the family ceased talking with the police as part of their investigation, instead establishing a "defense team" consisting of "eight lawyers, four publicists, three private investigators, two handwriting analysts, and one retired F.B.I. profiler." The Ramseys say they were frustrated by the police's lingering on themselves as suspects when they could have been investigating other potential suspects, and reportedly wanted to review evidence. But Boulder Police investigators have been keen to point out that they have investigated all avenues open to them: since the murder, detectives have spoken to over 1,000 people in 19 states, acting on more than 21,000 tips. "The assertion that there is viable evidence and leads we are not pursuing — to include DNA testing — is completely false," reads a police statement on the City of Boulder government website.

John and Patsy Ramsey would eventually be officially exonerated by a judge following the examination of DNA evidence, a development which several experts felt was unwarranted. "Exonerating anyone based on a small piece of evidence that has not yet been proved to even be connected to the crime is absurd," said Boulder police chief Mark Beckner (per PEOPLE True Crimes: Cases That Shocked America).

In 2013, four pages of sealed documents were released which gave a new insight into a grand jury that had been set up to investigate the Ramseys back in 1999. It emerged that the jury had voted to indict John and Patsy Ramsey on charges of child abuse leading to death and being accessories to the murder. The grand jury claimed that the parents "render[ed] assistance to a person, with intent to hinder, delay and prevent the discovery, detention, apprehension, prosecution, conviction, and punishment of such person for the commission of a crime, knowing the person being assisted has committed and was suspected of the crime of murder in the first degree and child abuse resulting in death."

The third party referred to in the documents is unidentified, and the unsealing raised fresh questions as to what the grand jury speculated had happened on the day of JonBenét's death. Patsy Ramsey died from ovarian cancer in 2006, but in response to the unsealing John Ramsey's lawyer argued that all the remaining documents ought to be published to give a clearer view of the aborted grand jury which in the end never indicted the Ramseys. For more details check out our timeline of the JonBenét Ramsey case.