JonBenét Ramsey’s father has said he believes his daughter’s murder case can be solved if police accept help from outside resources.
speaking in Today This morning, John Bennett Ramsey, 80, said he had appeared on the show to put pressure on police to catch his daughter’s killer.
JonBenét was reported missing after her family found a ransom note demanding $118,000 for the boy’s return inside their Boulder home on December 26, 1996.
The girl’s body was later found by her father in the basement of the family’s luxurious home, brutally beaten and strangled to death.
On Thursday morning, he said: ‘There have been some horrible failures in that space over the last 25 years.
“Hopefully there is someone who knows something that can be revealed, that’s why we want to keep the case alive and in front of people.”
‘I think it can be solved if the police accept help from outside their system; that has been the default for 25 years.
‘For 25 years, the police department was contained, with very poor leadership. Which is tragic, they had no experience.
‘The guy who investigated our case for 25 years was an auto theft investigator before he took over the case. It was an obstacle.’
Ramsey, 80, said he had appeared on the show to pressure police to catch his daughter’s killer.
Six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was a child beauty queen and homicide victim. His killer has not yet been identified, but the investigation remains open.
The details of the crime and video footage of JonBenét from her beauty pageants made the case one of the highest-profile mysteries in the United States. His parents are seen here in 1997.
Ramsey continued: ‘They would not accept help from outside. We are now hopeful that the new police chief will exercise good leadership and accept help.
‘To my knowledge, they have not worked with federal agencies and have been offered much.
‘I will not stop pressuring the authorities to do their job until I see them do it. And that’s been the frustration for 25 years.”
Ramsey appeared on the show ahead of a three-part Netflix documentary premiering next week.
Director Joe Berlinger appeared on Today alongside Ramsey and said, “This case can be solved.” DNA technology was very different back then, DNA was defective.
‘It is necessary to retest the old elements that were tested. The only good DNA sample we have is a mix of Jonbenet’s DNA and a strange man’s DNA.
‘Now there is technology that allows these samples to be separated. I don’t understand this institutional intransigence to solve a case, (the police) need help.’
Putting his hand on John, he added, “This is the most brutalized man in American history, imagine losing your child the way that child was lost.”
“To be blamed by the media largely because the police fed false stories to the press, it was a wildfire of unfair accusations.”
Director Joe Berlinger appears here alongside Ramsey, who also spoke to Today on Thursday morning.
The Ramsey family appears in a Christmas photo from December 1993. (Left to right) JonBenét, John, Patsy and Burke Ramsey
The crime scene at Ramsey’s luxurious Colorado home following the murder of his six-year-old son.
Ramsey added: ‘This cloud over our family name needs to be lifted. We have been defamed and our family reputation has been tarnished.
‘I’m going to do everything I can to clear that up for the sake of my children. Finding the killer isn’t going to change my life.
‘I’ve lost JonBenét, that’s not going to bring JonBenét back. I would like to close this chapter so that we can be calmer and more at peace.
‘You don’t get over it. You are different in the future, what we realized from the beginning was that we needed to be stronger now than ever for other children who are still living.
Detectives believe she was sexually assaulted and murdered the night before, on Christmas Day, by a blow to the head or strangulation with a garrote.
His death was ruled a homicide, but no one was prosecuted.
The details of the crime and video footage of JonBenét from her beauty pageants made the case one of the highest-profile mysteries in the United States.
She had been crowned Little Miss Colorado, Little Miss Charlevoix, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl and Little Miss National Beauty.
The district attorney at the time of JonBenét’s death said her parents were under “an umbrella of suspicion” from the beginning.
Theorists have also questioned whether her son Burke, who was nine years old at the time of JonBenet’s death, accidentally killed his sister in a moment of anger and his parents covered it up.
But tests conducted in 2008 on newly discovered DNA on her clothing pointed to the involvement of an “unexplained third party” in her murder, and not her parents or Burke.
She had been crowned Little Miss Colorado, Little Miss Charlevoix, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl and Little Miss National Beauty.
– In this Jan. 3, 1997, file photo, a police officer sits in her patrol car outside the home where 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found murdered in Boulder, Colorado, on Dec. 26, 1999.
Convicted pedophile Gary Oliva, long-time suspect in the murder, photographed at the Limon Correctional Center, Colorado.
John Mark Karr was extradited from Thailand and arrested for Ramsey’s murder after he confessed, but that admission was largely discredited.
That led former District Attorney Mary Lacy to clear the Ramseys of any involvement, two years after their mother Patsy died of ovarian cancer in 2006, calling the couple “victims of this crime.”
Investigators had identified other suspects and developed a theory about an intruder, or several intruders, entering the home and killing the pageant princess.
Among the suspects was convicted pedophile Gary Oliva, who allegedly confessed to the murder.
Others included Ramsey’s housekeeper, as well as the man who played Santa Claus at a party the young man attended.
In 2006, authorities announced that another suspect, John Mark Karr, had been arrested in Bangkok, Thailand.
He had allegedly told a US investigator that he drugged JonBenét and sexually assaulted her before accidentally killing her.
But prosecutors dropped that investigation after DNA testing failed to link him to the crime scene.
Boulder police and officials said in December 2021 that they had processed 1,500 tests and analyzed nearly 1,000 DNA samples in their search for the killer.
Detectives have digitized all the handwriting, fingerprints and shoeprint samples collected over the years, and periodically check for DNA matches in hopes of solving the case.
But dad John has questioned whether they are doing their job correctly. In May 2022 he asked that an outside agency take responsibility for DNA testing in the case.
The new series brings together archival footage of JonBenét happily walking through the family home and the frantic recording of mom Patsy’s 911 call declaring that her “daughter is gone.”
The three-part documentary series seeks to open up one of the most tragic unsolved cases in American criminal history.
The show focuses on police mistakes, including lack of security at the house and possible disposal of evidence.
It includes an interview with Burke, who describes the Ramseys as “just a normal family” before the fateful Christmas.
The trailer shows John remembering how the “unbelievable” tragedy unfolded. It also includes a clip from a person involved in the case saying, “We’ve been ruling out people for the wrong reasons.”
‘Everyone should be back on the table. We have to go deeper,” says the person.
The show also investigates whether Patsy, a former beauty queen, made JonBenet a target for predators by encouraging her to dress up for her beauty pageants.
She was buried in Marietta, Georgia, next to her mother and half-sister Elizabeth Ramsey, who died in a car accident in 1992.
Berlinger says the series takes aim at those who “played armchair detective for three decades, often cruelly pointing the finger at the very people who suffered such an unthinkable loss.”