48 Hours - Post Mortem | JonBenét Ramsey

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

48 Hours Correspondent Erin Moriarty and Producer Mary Murphy discuss the cold case of JonBenét Ramsey, who was murdered at home when she was just six years old. They discuss 48 Hours' decades long reporting, false leads on suspects, and a new interview with JonBenét's father, who believes genetic genealogy could identify the killer.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Welcome back to another episode of Post Mortem. I'm your host, Anne-Marie Green, and today we're discussing the unsolved case of John Benet Ramsey. Joining me now is 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty. Erin, you have been covering this for over 20 years, and of course, producer Mary Murphy. We have a lot to discuss, including a new interview that Erin did with John Ramsey, Jomany's father, and the latest developments on the investigation. So let's get going. Welcome. And I'm so happy to be here to talk about this. I really care about this case. Thanks so much for having us. But first, I want to remind you guys, if you have not listened

to the 48 hours episode yet, you can find the full audio version just below this episode on your podcast feed. So go and take a listen and then come on back so you can join our discussion. All right, Erin, like I said, you've been covering this case for over two decades. You first spoke to JonBenet's parents, Jon and Patsy Ramsey, back in 2002. That was just six years after John Bonet was murdered. And it was a really interesting time. The murder was rife with speculation and conspiracy theories.

And the Ramseys were right in the middle of that. Why do you think they were so willing to talk to 48 Hours? Well, in a way, in 2002, 48 Hours and the team that I worked with, we were a bit of outliers because they actually did polls back then and showed that most people in America thought that John and Patsy Ramsey had something to do with it. But we had really been looking at the real facts, not the rumors, not the things that appeared in the tabloids. And we were really open to the idea.

There was a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that an intruder could have come in the home. And so they opened their doors to us and we got incredible access. You know, at that time, Patsy was undergoing chemotherapy again, you know, when her cancer had come back. And she took us and showed us her paintings that showed great pain. And then the other thing that I will never forget, she did the interview with makeup and a wig, as I learned. And then after the cameras are off, she flips off the wig,

and there she is. You know what? She's bald. And it really told you what she was going through. But she also said many times, that's nothing compared to losing a child. I may have cancer, but the real pain is losing a child. I think that's so interesting because she in particular

was the one that took a lot of heat. There was a lot of suspicion towards her and she could have easily displayed all that she was going through in order to get some sympathy. But she chose not to. She was very, very strong. She had to be. And I think it's because she was going through cancer. There's no question she could have called for sympathy.

In fact, what she was most vocal about was finding the killer of her daughter. That's what you'll see in the interview is that she really wanted them to find who killed her daughter. Right. Why was 48 Hours so convinced that taking a look at the possibility of an outside intruder was the way to go. Well, I think there are so many different reasons, including the strength of Aaron's

reporting and also her producer, Doug Longini, who predates all of my involvement and my hat is off to him as well. But the other, I think, very compelling thing about this episode and the work that Doug and Aaron did was Lou Smith, who was the investigator for the DA's office, and interrogated John Ramsey very thoroughly and basically came away from it saying, I find John believable. And then he went on to quit the DA's office and began to work with the Ramses. I mean, that, you know, a guy like that with this incredible track record kind of switching sides in a way was very compelling.

And Lou Smith demonstrates exactly how an intruder could have gotten in, which also wasn't being talked about or looked at at the time. There's a lot of reasons why we were very open to the idea of an intruder. One of it is that we learned the way the child died, which was initially with a garrot. And as Lou Smith pointed out, there's no other case he had ever come across where a parent had used a garrot on a child.

I think another thing was, it really struck me when Patsy said to me, almost angrily at one point, saying, I was dealing with stage four cancer. I was not sure I would have more time with my children. You really think I was gonna get upset because my child wet her bed? That made so much sense to me as a mother.

But then the other thing is, a lot of people say, how could that happen with the parents being in the house? And I was in the house with Doug Longini, that producer, and he was in the house with Doug Longini, that producer, and he was in the parents' bedroom, and I was in JonBenet's bedroom, and I yelled, I mean, you know I have a voice, and I yelled at the top of my voice, he could hear nothing. And so again, that made me realize

that a lot of the things we were hearing, they just weren't accurate. I mean, you know, I remember when this case sort of exploded. And so I remember myself consuming all of this stuff and the conclusions that I was coming to and then watching this hour again. I just thought, it's so obvious. It is so easy to get in and the garage. Of course, I mean, you'd have to practice to make something like that.

Who's practicing that? You can't help but to think that maybe this would have been solved if the focus wasn't so much on the parents as a suspect. In fact, you have a new interview with John Ramsey. What was it like to sit down with him again? Well, I had stayed in touch through email. This was the longest time I hadn't spoken to him.

So I was a little worried that for this show I emailed him and then I heard right back literally like within minutes, you know, we've told every single angle of this story. John and Patsy Ramsey have believed that we are fair. And so it was wonderful that he was willing to sit down and talk about today. I want to play a clip. I'm part of the interview that you did with John. It wasn't in the show, but he's talking about his hopes for the continued investigation here.

In particular, he's talking about genetic genealogy and the way in which that may help to find his daughter's killer. So after 28 years, what do you want done now? I want the police to take all the evidence and give it to an author of labs, an outside expert, state-of-the-art DNA lab, let them develop a profile that's compatible with the genealogy database. It's out there, a huge database. Then do the genealogy research and see if we can find a relative that lived in Boulder, Colorado in 1996, December 1996, and go from there. That will solve the case if we can get that sample

and do the research. Do you believe that 28 years after your daughter was murdered, you can still find out who killed her? I do. So, what does John Ramsey think can be done with this DNA? Well, first we have to point out that we don't know what the Boulder Police Department has done because they are not sane at this point. But John Ramsey said that he has been told

that genetic genealogy might at some point be able to work for him. He has spoken to people who work in labs. There is DNA in this case. It does not match anyone in the Ramsey family, but he has been told because it was mixed with his daughter's blood, that it is not currently in the kind of format that would be necessary to go in the public databases.

I was surprised. Well, if there isn't enough to go in a public database, how did it ever go in CODIS? So CODIS is the FBI database that contains the DNA of offenders, you know, people usually who are in prison. And so there were enough markers. It was a sufficient DNA profile to go into CODIS, but not enough for the public databases, according to what John Ramsey has been told. But he wants the Boulder Police Department to turn to a private lab.

Sometimes the city and state and county labs don't have those facilities. And he believes because he's been told, I don't know how accurate it is, but he has been told that a lab might be able to put this DNA in a format that can be put in to a public database that we're all kind of familiar with, GEDmatch or 23andMe. And just to underscore, the Boulder Department is still saying, you know, they've pursued everything including DNA testing and to suggest otherwise is false. Exactly. Just in November of 2024, the Boulder Police Department issued a press release that said the assertion that there is viable evidence and leads we are not pursuing to include DNA

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suspects. 4 years after the murder, Boulder Police investigated convicted sex offender Gary Oliva, who frequented the area near the Ramsey home. But he was later dismissed as a suspect. His DNA didn't match the evidence at the scene. But Erin, you interviewed him. I did. And one of the reasons why he really caught our eye and maybe the Boulder Police Department was because he showed up at one of those candlelight ceremonies that would happen on the date that John Bonet had been murdered.

We knew he was sitting in a jail and we went to visit him. He agreed to speak to us. And I don't know how else to describe it, but just I was so disturbed by the interview. I'm a mother of a child that was just slightly older than John Bonet at the time. And this was a guy who admitted he had been obsessed with John Bonet and that she came to him after she died.

This was a man who had told a friend that he had hurt a child and he had a history. He had already served time for a crime involving a child. And so I think working this case was eye-opening for me. Interviewing a man like Gary Oliva was eye-opening because it's the part of our world that you don't want to think exists. But I thought it was important for people to hear and see him. I look at him in this show today and I am still, I don't know how else to put it, but

creeped out. Absolutely. And one of the things John Ramsey tells Aaron is that he wished he had been more vigilant about his home security. And, you know, in time, everyone began to report on the fact that there were more than 20 sex offenders living within a very, you know, two mile range of the Ramsey's house. So that tells you something about the area, the climate, everything. And he wasn't the only suspect I interviewed.

I interviewed a man who lived in his mother's basement. And if I had not gone down with a cameraman, I would have been terrified. He had come up as a possible suspect because they thought he had taken one of the candy canes that had been sitting outside the Ramsey home and they said it disappeared after the murder. Not only did he have a shrine to John Bonet, that's why we went to see him, he also had a shrine to John Wayne Gacy, a well-known serial killer. Now none of

these people that we're talking about, their DNA did not match the DNA that was found at the crime scene of John Benet Ramsey. But the idea that these individuals exist is frightening. Absolutely. Because you think whoever's responsible for this is sort of a one-off, right? Have there been any arrests in this case? There's been one. It was really interesting and how could I, I could never forget it because as you know, I've been on this case a long time, there always seems to be a new development.

And there was a man by the name of John Markhar and he insisted that he did kill John Bonet. So he was arrested, but he was later released because one thing he said was that he had drugged her and accidentally killed her. And according to the autopsy, she did not have drugs in her system. And also, again, like the other suspects, his DNA did not match the DNA from the crime scene. So I remember this case really well. But part of what I remember about the coverage was all the focus on these child beauty pageants.

This was a culture I think most people were unfamiliar with. It seems to be uniquely American. I don't know if it happens anywhere else. But you know, people were questioning why dress little girls up like this. Even though it's innocent, that's part of what led people to suspect her mom. Because there was this idea that they had like a relationship that was not healthy, that only a mother with an unhealthy relationship with her daughter would parade her daughter around like that.

John Ramsey in this current interview made a real point about that, which I was really grateful for because he knows there are a lot of people who think that way. He looks back and he has some regrets. He would not put his child in a beauty pageant today, knowing what he knows now. But he reminds us that, remember, Patsy had, just at that point, thought she had survived cancer. And she wanted to spend every minute she could with her kids, and she had been herself a beauty queen. And it was something that JonBenet loved to do,

and it was something the two of them could do together. And so he said, I was torn. I didn't like it, but I knew that John Bonet and Patsy did love doing it together. And I think when you see it from that perspective, you don't see it as problematic. It was a hobby.

Yeah. And the pictures, I think, they were very professionally done and done by people associated with the pageants. It's not like they were family photos or movies that were being released publicly. How old would John Bidae be now? Oh, it just gets to me.

34 years of age. Mary asked me to ask John, does he ever dream about his daughter? Because I never asked that question. And it was a good question because he said, I do, but I only see her as a six-year-old. I can't imagine her at 34 years of age. As he says, I lived with that child for six years and I still see that child in my head and in my dreams.

I thought that was interesting. It was very affecting. Yeah. He's in his 80s now, John Ramsay. 81. 81. Yes, remarried. And just the John Ramsay that I've known all these years, he holds all his emotions to himself, but very determined as he says, while he's speaking out and putting himself out there as he really wants this killer

caught. And he says it won't make a difference for his life because he is 81, but it will make a difference. He has three surviving children. He also, he had five children, three from another earlier marriage, and he lost a daughter in a car accident. So for his three surviving children and their children, he really wants this cloud away from the Ramsey family. And also, you know, he wants justice for his daughter. I want to play a little sound of him explaining why he's keeping up the fight. Finding the killer isn't going to change my life at this point, but it will change the lives of my children and my grandchildren.

This cloud needs to be removed from our family's head and this chapter closed for their benefit. So there is an answer. I'm impressed by his ability to speak about this. He seems incredibly strong. Yes, I think what's interesting is he's not alone in this. Lou Smith, who was the investigator, has since died. But according to John Ramsay, his family is involved in this investigation

and John Ramsay's son, John Andrew Ramsay, they will take on that fight, whatever happens to John. Although John pointed out to us, wasn't his mother who lived to be nearly a hundred. And so he says he's not going anywhere. Yeah. Yes. He's not alone. The family is right behind him trying to find who killed John Benet Ramsey. Well, I hope, you know, he finds the answers. Many people are still very, very interested in this case. It was really fascinating watching your coverage from decades ago, right? I think it's a real testament to Aaron's reporting and the fairness and accuracy always. The only thing that surprises me about it is that the case

hasn't really changed since we did our reporting in depth. And that makes me sad. I want it for John Ramsey, I want it for all of us too. No child should die in her own home and that killer go free. And so it's not just for John Ramsey and his family. I think it's for all of us. Whoever killed John Bida Ramsey should be in prison

and not out to ever hurt another child. Absolutely. Agreed. Thank you so much, ladies. Thanks for having us. Pleasure. Thanks.

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