JonBenet Patricia Ramsey was known as one of the most talented participants in children's beauty contests - by the age of six, the girl had won several major competitions at once, and the jury and industry representatives predicted her great future in the modeling business. However, the fate of the young beauty queen turned out differently - in December 1996, JonBenet was killed by an unknown criminal, and even twenty-five years later, the police cannot find the killer.
JonBenet Ramsey was born on August 6, 1990 in Atlanta, Georgia. Her father, John Bennett Ramsey, was a big businessman and owned his own IT company, and her mother, Patricia Ramsey, in the past was engaged in modeling and participated in beauty contests, including the prestigious Miss America competition, but at the time of her daughter's birth she left her career. …
Little is known about JonBenet's childhood - some sources close to the Ramsey family said that a very warm relationship developed between the parents and the girl, but others argued that Patricia and John were despotic people and imposed their interests on their daughter. So, already after JonBenet's death in 1996, many accused the victim's mother of forcing the girl to take part in beauty contests and “taking revenge” on her for her own failures, and it was this line of behavior that ultimately led to the tragedy.
A few years after the birth of their daughter, John Bennett's business began to grow rapidly, and the Ramsey couple moved to the town of Boulder, Colorado, where the company's headquarters were located. However, the move did not dampen Patricia's desire to make a star out of her daughter, and in the new place she continued to send JonBenet to auditions and auditions, which were easy enough for the girl.
CardJonBenet Ramsey
At the age of six, she was already famous in some circles - at that time, the young winner of beauty contests had a number of titles, including Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl, America's Royal Miss, Little Miss Charlevoix, National Tiny Miss Beauty, Little Miss Colorado, Little Miss Christmas, which was quite an impressive achievement for a child of her age. Even then, agents and venerable representatives of the fashion and beauty industry were sure that JonBenet was waiting for a resounding success in the future, and the media regularly published new pictures and articles about the achievements of the aspiring catwalk star.
Unfortunately, JonBenet Ramsey had a different fate - on December 26, 1996, the girl's mother went down to the kitchen to drink some water and found a three-page note on the kitchen table that would forever change the family's life. It said that a group of criminals had kidnapped the girl and was demanding a ransom of $ 118,000 for her release:
"Mr. Ramsey! Listen carefully. Your daughter is with us, and if you want to see her in 1997, follow the instructions"
Card
The shocked Patricia Ramsey immediately woke up her husband and showed him the kidnappers' letter. After making sure that JonBenet was really not at home, the couple called the police. The detectives who arrived at the scene carefully studied the note and noted that its size and detailed requirements did not resemble a standard ransom letter - most often the criminals left a message consisting of several lines. In addition, no traces or fingerprints were found on the note, which also alerted the authorities - according to surviving reports, in the very first hours of the search for the missing girl, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation suggested that the letter was written by Patricia Ramsey herself - a little later one of the participants in the investigation said:
“In the sixty years that I have been with the FBI, I have never seen such letters from criminals. I don't think it was written by someone else."
However, the police were unable to locate enough evidence to point to Patricia's guilt, and the investigation continued. After coordinating his actions with the authorities, on the same day John Bennett, accompanied by detective Linda Arndt, arrived at the place indicated in the note to give the ransom to the kidnappers, but no one showed up for the meeting. After that, the police decided to search the house of the Ramsey couple again in search of new evidence, and at about 13:00 John Bennett went down to the basement. Opening the door, he found on the floor the body of his own daughter, covered with a white blanket. At the time of the discovery, the girl had been dead for several hours.
The shocked father of the murdered JonBenet lifted his daughter's body and carried it to the first floor, which disrupted the scene of the crime and probably contributed to the disappearance of some evidence. According to the examination of the pathologist, the cause of death is asphyxia. A little later, experts also reported that indirect traces of sexual violence and blood that did not belong to the victim were found on the body.
The news of the murder of six-year-old JonBenet shocked America - journalists tried to break into the house of the Ramsey couple and the police station to find out the details of the crime, caring local residents participated in a private investigation, but there were also those who blamed John Bennett and Patricia for the death of the girl. The fact is that the Ramsey couple changed their testimony several times, and later avoided questioning at the police station for a long time.
However, in the end, all family members of the deceased began to cooperate with the FBI - Patricia, John Bennett and the victim's older brother Burke donated DNA samples, and also agreed to provide handwriting samples, which proved their innocence in the murder of the girl, and already in October 1997, the police had about 1,600 suspects, none of whom have been charged.
Further investigation did not yield any results - the high-profile case and the associated excitement forced the US authorities to attract specialists from different departments, which ultimately led to internal conflicts between the local police department and representatives of the district attorney's office. Lou Smith and Steve Thomas, the two chief detectives assigned to the case, could not come to a consensus, since the first believed that the investigation was poorly conducted, and the Ramsey couple were not involved in the JonBenet murder, and the second insisted on the guilt of Patricia and John Bennett, despite evidence obtained earlier. In the end, the governor of the state had to convene a grand jury to decide on this convoluted case, and in 1999 its participants delivered a verdict - the jury indicted the Ramsey couple for putting the child at risk.which resulted in tragedy and obstructed the investigation (the family used lawyers for several months to avoid official questioning), but District Attorney Alex Hunter did not support this decision and did not press charges against the victim's family.
As the Ramsey spouses themselves later reported, they did not want to be present at the interrogations without preparation, because they were afraid that the police would accuse them of killing their daughter - given that the detectives really suspected John Bennett and Patricia, these fears were justified.
In the next few years, the investigation was suspended, but in 2002 the case was reopened - District Attorney Mary Lacey officially admitted that the Ramsey couple had nothing to do with the JonBenet murder, and in 2008 this decision was confirmed by a DNA examination, according to which the material under investigation did not belong one of the family members. However, the removal of all suspicions from Patricia and John Bennett did not satisfy many representatives of the authorities - in the following years, police officers repeatedly made statements that Mary Lacey's decision was hasty and was "a slap in the face to a group of detectives who worked on this case for many years."
Another suspect, high school teacher John Mark Carr, who was arrested in Bangkok in 2006, was also linked to the JonBenet Ramsey murder. A few years before the arrest, Carr contacted the author of the documentary film about the murder of the girl, Michael Tracy - the man wrote that he was very passionate about JonBenet, and later said that it was he who accidentally killed the girl, having lost control after taking psychotropic drugs. Tracy reported the letters to the police, and Carr was arrested, but detectives were unable to collect enough evidence to bring him to justice - moreover, DNA testing also failed to establish his connection with the victim, and the suspect was acquitted.
There was also another version, which was actively developed by media representatives - according to their theory, her elder brother Burke was responsible for JonBenet's death. The boy, who at that time was nine years old, allegedly quarreled with his sister and hit her on the head with a flashlight (an open wound was found on the head of the deceased girl), which caused her death, and the parents decided to stage the attack and save their son from criminal liability. However, this version was called "erroneous" by the authorities, and the Ramsey's lawyers filed several lawsuits against the publications in which materials were published about Burke's involvement in the murder - all of them were satisfied. In 2016, Burke Ramsey gave an interview to ABC channel, in which he spoke about the events of past years and said that he was "incredibly sorry for his sister"however, this presentation did not clarify the circumstances of the girl's death.
Despite not all efforts, the police did not manage to solve this crime - most experts believe that the investigation was poorly conducted, and many important evidence and evidence were destroyed at the very early stages. In 2006, the mother of the murdered JonBenet died of cancer, and her father moved to another state and married again - at the moment he lives a quiet life and tries not to attract too much attention to himself.
However, this shocking story still excites the minds of caring Americans, and the question of who is actually responsible for this terrible crime remains open.
Photo: Getty Images, Legion Media, Splash, TASS photo
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