Paula Woodward - Unsolved: The JonBenét Ramsey Murder 25 Years Later

In 1996, the news of the murder of a six-year-old girl ricocheted through the world, splintering truth and cementing conviction that the parents of JonBent Ramsey of Boulder, Colorado, killed their daughter. There was little doubt, based on the initial news reporting, that it could have been anyone other than her parents.

Heres why.

The initial information in that first week, released by law enforcement authorities, was part of a strategy by certain Boulder police officers to convict the parents through public opinion. The information was deliberately incorrect, distorted, and was devised to take the focus off an initially botched police investigation. It also advanced the police theory about the murderthat the parents killed their daughterand justified to them any and all sharing of inaccurate information to the media and the public in those first days. It has continued for twenty-five years.

None of the initial investigators on the Ramsey case had homicide experience. There was no homicide department in the Boulder Police Department because there werent enough homicides to justify one. JonBent Ramseys murder was the first murder that year in the town. The Boulder Police Department still doesnt have a homicide department.

Here are the facts:

Twenty-five years ago, JonBent Ramsey was tortured, murdered, and found in a basement storage room in her home on the day after Christmas, December 26, 1996. It happened in Boulder, Colorado.

The circumstances surrounding her murder were devastating and bizarre. She was reported kidnapped by her parents early that morning. A two-and-a-half-page ransom note was left inside the home. The note, addressed to her father, said shed been taken.

Her body was discovered seven hours later, not by the police, but by her father. Why didnt the police find her body in their search of the home? A first-responding officer explained in his police report why he didnt open the door to the room where her body had been left.

Law enforcement settled immediately on John and Patsy as the killers and set out to prove it. The fact that JonBent was involved in child beauty pageants and there was video of her performing in them was widely publicized. Talk show entertainment focused on the pageants, the publicized video of JonBent, and whether her parents were acting responsibly in this choice for their child. Critics questioned the focus on beauty and sexuality for young children. JonBent was a naturally beautiful child with blond hair and blue eyes. Opinions were strong enough about child pageants that on January 19, 1997, The Kansas City Star headlined an editorial: Pillars of the Community? These Parents are Creeps.

The first book I wrote, We Have Your Daughter: The Unsolved Murder of JonBentRamsey Twenty Years Later, was published in 2016. That book examines the Ramsey case investigation, the hysteria of the media coverage, public reaction, and the decisions of those in power who were affected by the focused and erratic publicity storm. It also reports, for the first time, the intention by police to leak incorrect data to the media and public about the Ramsey family.

My new book is Unsolved: The JonBent Ramsey Murder 25 Years Later. This book refocuses and expands on the many aspects of the intentional agenda by police who manipulated evidence, ignored inconvenient evidence, and spread untruths in their campaign to convict Patsy and John Ramsey as their daughters killers. These actions had a profound impact on the direction, fairness, and honesty of the case. The added scrutiny provides new insight.

I talk with editors from Denver newspapers who worked at the time JonBents body was discovered and after and find out their reactions to the intentional misinformation campaign. I trace the huge number of newspapers and television networks throughout the country that published this false material and examine how it affected our perceptions of whether the Ramseys killed their daughter. The Ramseys believe Boulder police investigators tried to frame them. You can decide.

With hindsight, there are new truths and more input available about the evidence in the case. I investigate and expand on the conspiracy by law enforcement in the last twenty-five years to implicate Patsy and John Ramsey in their daughters sadistic death.

For this book, I interviewed a homicide detective about the planned leaks and the evidence. The detective has thirty years of homicide experience in a major metropolitan city. He has worked on hundreds of homicides and is familiar with the Ramsey case. He has never worked in Boulder and has the credibility of an outsider for this particular case. He wont allow his name to be used because of the negative impacts of this case. He comments about what is valuable and what isnt with the evidence available, and he has observations about the media disinformation plan as it unfolds.

The police on the Ramsey case spent untold dollars and acted without supervision in their zeal to convict the Ramseys. I believe its imperative to expose public servants whose job is to help, but who instead harm. Those are the types of stories I have reported as an investigative reporter for more than thirty years.

Unsolved includes documents and research from the twenty-five years Ive spent on the case. I began reporting on it the day after JonBents body was found. I was an investigative reporter for television station KUSA TV in Denver. I also wrote and reported during that time for The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News as part of a business partnership.

Documents utilized for evaluating the evidence in the case and the strategic and deliberate mistruths and leaks by the Boulder Police Department and Boulder District Attorneys Office include a re-examination of newspaper archives from Newspapers.com, The Denver Post, the Rocky Mountain News, and the Boulder Daily Camera. National television evening news broadcasts for ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN were examined using the Vanderbilt University Television News Archives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Other sources of information used to develop new facts on the evidence and misinformation include details from a 3,000-page JonBent Ramsey Murder Book Summary Index. The index is not publicly available. It was something I was able to obtain. It is a summary of thousands of Boulder police reports. The FBI, Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and the Boulder Sheriffs Department contributed to these reports which are listed in the book with the following identifiers: BPD Report #, and a listed number. The JonBent Ramsey Murder Book Summary Index was organized and prepared by the Boulder District Attorneys Office. The report numbers may have changed.