The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey

The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey is a 2016 documentary miniseries about the murder of JonBenét Ramsey in Boulder, Colorado on December 25, 1996.^[1] The miniseries aired on CBS on September 18, and 19, 2016.^[1][2]

The investigative team said they reviewed the case, including the 911 call, ransom note, and other aspects of the case in re-created rooms of the Ramsey house. The documentary mixed past investigative footage with re-enactments of what they believe happened, along with that of this investigative team, which included former FBI agent Jim Clemente, forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee, former Boulder Police Department officer and Telluride Marshal's Department Chief Marshal Albert James Kolar, forensic pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz, former FBI agent James R. Fitzgerald, former Scotland Yard criminal behavior analyst Laura Richards, and former FBI agent Stan Burke.^[1][3]

In his lawsuit against CBS, Burke Ramsey's lawyers said that the CBS documentary contained no new investigation, but was a rehash of a 2012 book on the case by one of the participating investigators, Jim Kolar.^[4]

The team examined the theory about an outsider depositing DNA on JonBenet's underwear and concluded that this trace amount of evidence could have been transferred when the underwear were made and packaged.^[a]

Former FBI profiler Candice Delong has stated "This is a DNA case." In an interview sampled on the Dr. Phil show she laughingly dismissed the idea that the same touch DNA could have shown up on multiple items of JonBenét's clothing stemming from the same factory worker in China.^[6]

The team used modern equipment and an interview with the 911 dispatcher, Kimberly Archuleta, to examine the 911 call and claimed that there were three voices on the tape: Patsy, John and Burke. They believed one of the three voices was a boy.^[7] At the end of the call, the 911 dispatcher heard Patsy say "OK, we've called the police, now what?" By slowing down the last six seconds of the recording of the call, they heard three people talking. Patsy was deemed to have said "What did you do?" and "Help me, Jesus." John saying "We're not speaking to you." A child, likely Burke, saying "What did you find?"^[3]

Twenty years before, the Secret Service and the FBI had listened to the same tape and heard nothing to indicate that Burke's voice could be heard. In 2003, NBC had also sent out the recording to their own experts, who agreed that nothing of substance could be made out in the seconds after Patsy finished talking.^[8]

The wording used during the call was concerning to the team: During the call Patsy did not mention the name of her daughter. Also, she said "I'm the mother" and "we have a kidnapping".^[3]

According to E! News, "One of the strangest parts of the Ramsey case has always been the ransom note, which [...] made no sense given the fact that JonBenét's body was found in the house a few hours later".^[3] Misspellings and other mistakes were made to cover the fact that the writer was in fact a native speaker of the English language.^[3]

The note demanded $118,000, the rounded amount of John Ramsey's bonus that year. It took the experts 21 minutes or more to copy the ransom note and it noted that it would take more time to think about what to write. The pen and paper were not left out, but returned to their rightful place by the note's author.^[3] Many lines from the letter were taken from Speed, Dirty Harry and other films.^[3]

Fitzgerald said that the note appeared to be written by a "maternal" person.^[3] A US Federal Court had ruled that Patsy had almost certainly not written the note, and that "abundant evidence" demonstrated the innocence of all the Ramseys.

The letters ‘S.B.T.C’ have also been a mystery. There have been many guesses about what the letters could stand for, but none have been confirmed.

JonBenét was determined by police to have "suffered a blow to the head and had also been strangled with a garrote."^[7]

The investigators concluded that JonBenét could have been killed, perhaps accidentally, by a blow from a flashlight by a 10-year-old boy,^[1] based upon experiments performed using a child and fake skulls with wigs. They were also able to recreate the injury that JonBenét sustained to her head by having the boy in the experiment use a flashlight, similar to one found in the kitchen of the Ramsey's home.^[3]

John, Patsy and Burke have denied involvement in the death of JonBenét. No charges have been filed in the case, as of September 2016.^[b] Several days prior to the airing of this mini-series, Burke Ramsey was interviewed on the Dr. Phil show in a three-episode series about the death of his sister. It was his first public interview.^[7][c] The Ramsey family lawyer, L. Lin Wood, threatened to sue CBS for libel (defamation) based on its conclusion that JonBenét was killed by Burke.^[10] In time lawsuits were filed on behalf of Burke Ramsey and John Ramsey against CBS, as well as against various participants in the program, seeking close to $1 billion in total. Attempts at having the suit dismissed were unsuccessful. Eventually, all the defamation lawsuits related to the show were retired outside of court in a confidential settlement.^[11]

The review of the mini-series by Variety questioned the objectivity of the team, particularly in taking "hazy" assertions and declaring them as fact. For example, during the show it is stated that John Ramsey called out that he had found JonBenet before he turned on the light to the dark basement room where the body lay, but the source or veracity of the statement was not clear.^[1] Rolling Stone magazine found that there were three ways in which the investigation was flawed: 1) "Confirmation bias, selective hearing and the misleading 911 call analysis", 2) "Dismissing the DNA evidence entirely" and 3) "Overselling linguistic forensics and behavioral analysis as conclusive". They found that since the investigation did not unearth any new evidence, the conclusions were not new but subjective, and based upon the initial "flawed" police investigation.^[12]

E! News, on the other hand, offered three "bombshells" from the series regarding: 1) The 911 call, 2) The Ransom Note, and 3) Cause of Death.^[3]

Bob Grant, former Adams County District Attorney who was brought in to advise the Boulder District Attorney office on the case, voiced skepticism about any of the 2016 television show's abilities to unearth a new theory or solidify an existing theory in the case. He said, "The case will always be, in my mind, one where there are two likely scenarios. And to prove one, you have to disprove the other." He states that without a viable confession, it is unlikely that there will be resolution in the case.^[13]

CNN commentator John Philips called the show "shameful", and suggested that CBS should earn a "Fake News Award" for passing on information he termed "reckless".^[14]

Attorney Dan Abrams, who is a legal commentator for ABC, called the allegation that Burke killed his sister "total BS".^[15]

• Getting Away with Murder: The JonBenet Ramsey Story

• Roger Catlin (September 15, 2016). "Dr. Henry Lee Revisits JonBenét Ramsey Case In CBS Special". Hartford Courant.

• The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey at IMDb