Crime Weekly - S1 Ep6: The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey (Part I)

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

It was December 26th, 1996 in Boulder Colorado. Boulder had seen a great deal of snow fall the previous week, but by the morning of the 26th, only a trace of it remained, just a small dusting that would most likely disappear as the sun rose. In an upper class Boulder neighborhood, the occupants of stately, million dollar homes were still slumbering peacefully, getting in their last moments of sleep before the day after Christmas chaos began, the cleaning up and getting back into the everyday routine.  But inside 749 15th St, the home of the Ramsey family, it was a much different scene. At 5:52 AM, 911 operator Kim Archueletta received a phone call from a frantic mother claiming she had woken up to a ransom note, and her six year old daughter missing from her bed. But JonBenét Ramsey had not been taken, she was not missing from her home, she had been there the whole time, and the events that would follow would lead to one of the most tragic mysteries the true crime world has ever known, a case that has often been referred to as the largest unsolved crime in America. Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ////// Linda Arndt interview/JonBenet Ramsey Case (Good Morning America, 1999 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saYsDKS-j4E&ab_channel=TheRamseyCase

It was December 26, 1996, in Boulder, Colorado. Boulder had seen a great deal of snow fall the previous week, but by the morning of the 26th, only a trace of it remained, just a small dusting that would most likely disappear as the sun rose. In an upper-class Boulder neighborhood, the occupants of stately, million-dollar homes were still slumbering peacefully, getting in their last moments of sleep before the day after Christmas chaos began. The cleaning up and getting back into the everyday

routine. But inside 749 15th Street, the home of the Ramsey family, it was a much different scene. At 5.52 a.m., 911 operator Kim Archuleta received a phone call from a frantic mother claiming she had woken up to a ransom note and her six-year-old daughter missing from her bed. But JonBenet Ramsey had not been taken. She was not missing from her home. She'd been there the whole time. And the events that would follow would lead to one of the most tragic mysteries the true crime world has ever known. Hello and welcome to Crime Weekly presented by i-D. I'm Stephanie Harlow.

And I'm Derek Levasseur. On this podcast, we do talk about difficult subjects. We're talking about real crimes and real people. And due to the graphic nature of some of this content, listener discretion is advised. Hey, guys, welcome to Crime Weekly. Stephanie, welcome to another week. Yeah, hello. Hello. This is a big one. This is a case, you know, with JonBenet Ramsey, there's a lot of pressure on us, right? Because everybody knows this case. Everyone thinks they know this case,

like inside and out. So we really got to get it right. And we obviously put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make sure we get it right. So Stephanie, I know we're going to be breaking down the JonBenet Ramsey case in a lot of detail over the next two parts, right? Not just today, but also next week. And we're going to cover a lot of material. However, ID is also running an exclusive special on Discovery Plus called JonBenet Ramsey, What Really Happened. So what I would say is everyone listen to this podcast. And then if you want to dive even a little deeper, go check out the exclusive content on Discovery Plus. So you can have not only an audio representation of what's going on, but also a visual representation. So I think the combination of the two is going to be good for

everyone who wants to really dive into this case with us. Yeah. And I mean, this is one of those cases historically where everybody has an opinion, right? Everybody has an opinion on who done it. That's what happens when these cases are unsolved. And, you know, I'm going to have my opinion. You're going to have your opinion. It might be the same opinion, but ID is going to look at it from a new side of the case with compelling evidence and exclusive audio recordings collected by the DA's now deceased special investigators. ID's going to ask if the Ramseys did not kill their daughter, who did? That's right. So there's a lot in there and knowing us, we're probably going to touch on most of it, but it's never a bad thing to double dip and really make sure you're dotting

all your I's and crossing your T's. So if you want to check it out, head on over to Discovery Plus and check out JonBenet Ramsey, What Really Happened. Yeah, I'm actually glad we're covering it because when I did this case on my channel, it was a new channel to me. So I think I did it within the first three or four months. I can't remember exactly, but I hadn't really come into my research methods by then. So I'm glad to be covering it now because I see as I'm doing the research for

this podcast that I missed a lot and I'm really looking forward to being able to fill in the blanks there. Right. And it's good timing. You know, we know that there's a new special out, which we just talked about on Investigation Discovery, the new JonBenet special. And so it's a good time to cover it because I'm sure a lot of people are going to have questions. And I also, for the people who are like, oh, because again, we're reading all the comments, anyone who's like, they're covering cases that have been covered a lot and we want to see more lesser known cases. We're going to do both guys.

But we want to create a archive for our podcast that contains all the big cases. So it's important for Stephanie and I to give our own perspective on these cases now that we've had time to research them, like Stephanie just said. So yes, you guys may think you know this case, but again, I know I've never covered it. So I think it's important for us to do our version of it because although it's a lot of the same facts, we are going to have a different take on it. So bear with us. If you're interested in learning more about it, you're going to get that here. And if you think you've had enough of JonBenet, give it a shot anyways, because again, even if we only bring up one or two things that you never heard before, that's another wrinkle

that just adds more length to the case and it gives it more depth. Yeah. And I think we're going to see some really good discussions coming from this. Cause I know we've talked over this past week and there's been times where we've kind of wanted to dive into talking about the case. And then we were like, no, no, no, let's not do that. Let's save it for the podcast because we both had things that we wanted to say. So I think that brings a whole new element to the case, your perspective, which I think is going to be invaluable in this case because of, of the way the Boulder police handled the murder of John Bonney Ramsey. Absolutely. There's a lot to dive into. We've been holding back,

so let's not hold back any further, right? Yeah. Yeah. And before we dive into the details of the case, I really do want to give some background on the Ramsey family, who they were, what they did, family dynamics, that sort of thing, because I think that it really helps to shine a light on the fact that before JonBenet was a familiar face to the world, she and her family were just normal people living everyday lives. I mean, not everyday lives. They were very wealthy, but they weren't public figures. They weren't well-known to the world. So I want to talk about them a little bit. When John Ramsey, who was John Bonet's father, married Patricia Powell, he was 14 years her

senior. And he'd already been married once before to a woman named Lucinda Pash, whom he'd met while they were both undergrads at Michigan State University. After getting married in 1966, John and Lucinda went on to have three children together, Elizabeth, Melinda, and John Andrew. Twelve years after that marriage, John and Lucinda divorced, and John met his future wife, the young and beautiful pageant winner who had been named Miss West Virginia in 1977. Patsy was young, outgoing, and very beautiful, but she wasn't falling back on her looks. When she won the Miss Virginia pageant, she was also pursuing a degree in journalism at the University of West Virginia.

And while she was there, she was also involved in a sorority. So when John met Patsy, he was enjoying a great deal of career success, having started his own company in the 80s after serving in the United States Navy for 11 years. So this company, which was called Advanced Product Group, would eventually merge with two other companies in 1988 to form Axis Graphics, a computer service company that sold Unix-based computer systems. Did I say that right? Unix? Yes, you did. I'm actually getting a degree in cybersecurity right now. You are 100% saying that correctly. Good. Okay. That sounds like, that's interesting that Unix is a cybersecurity computer system. Yeah. Yeah. An advanced system. And it's interesting that it was in this field and a lot of money to be made now. So I can, you know, back then it wasn't as much, but now, I mean,

guys, people make billions off of this software. I mean, they probably made a lot of money back then, too, because computers were new, you know? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So John and Patsy dated for only a few months before tying the knot in 1980 and eventually moving to Atlanta, where Patsy gave birth to the couple's first child, a son named Burke, on January 27th, 1987. Three years later, on August 6th, 1990, the Ramseys welcomed their second child into the world, a daughter that they named John Bonnet. A year later, two different things happened. The Ramseys left Atlanta and moved to Boulder, Colorado, and they purchased a massive 7,000-square-foot home that had been built in the 1920s. It was a beautiful home with plenty of character, the perfect house to symbolize John's growing success at work.

That same year, John's company, Axis Graphics, was purchased by Lockheed Martin. And Lockheed Martin is an American aerospace defense, arms, security, and advanced technology company. And at that point, John actually became president and CEO of Access Graphics. An article in the Daily Camera that I read, it was dated December 21st, 1996, announces that the company hit their $1 billion mark in revenue that year. $1 billion, not $1 million. And they were planning to keep pushing so that soon they could celebrate their $2 billion milestone. As the president and CEO, John Ramsey was financially benefiting from the company's growth, obviously, and his family's lifestyle illustrated this. This house had four floors, including a finished

basement, seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms, 104 windows, letting in all the sunlight that a wealthy person could ask for. There was a gourmet kitchen, three fireplaces, and a large terrace with amazing views of Colorado's beauty. The master suite where Patsy and John slept took up the entire top floor, essentially, and on the floor below, the children slept in their rooms, each with an attached bathroom. Burke and JonBenet grew up with the world as their oyster and every opportunity available to them. They went to the best schools. They were well-dressed. They were kept busy with activities and toys.

From the outside, the Ramseys had a life that anyone would envy. Successful, high-powered patriarch wore designer suits to the office. His charming and beautiful and charismatic wife, who was always dressed in the latest fashions and was the life of every party, especially the lavish ones she hosted in her own home,

and two beautiful, well-behaved children. The family even had a summer home in Michigan, which Patsy once called the most wonderful spot on earth. Every year at Christmas, Patsy had a Christmas tree in every single room, and the Ramseys did not send out your basic Christmas cards because their lives were too wonderful, too colorful to fit onto a one-dimensional card. In 1994, Patsy sent out an entire Christmas video welcoming everyone to their home and wishing them a very Merry Christmas. Now, Stephanie, before we continue, I just want to note too, you know, because in a lot of these cases, when you end up having what occurred in this case, you end up finding out later that there was something going on behind the scenes, even

though the family looked, you know, amazing from the exterior, there was a lot of issues going on, a lot of demons, a lot of, you know, turmoil internally. And by all accounts, because I was looking it up that, you know, from what I've seen, there was no reports of, you know, social services having to visit them or anything like that. These were good parents. This was a good family. They were very active with their children. As we're going to get into, as almost everybody knows, Patsy was huge into the pageants and got JonBenet into it. JonBenet was apparently one of the best in the business at it because of her beauty and because of her talent. So this was a good family. This was a

very good family. And obviously what we're going to talk about today isn't a happy ending, but up to this point, this didn't appear to be a story that we've heard before, which is on the surface, it looked good, but behind closed doors, it was bad. They actually were a very good, wholesome family. And they were raising these kids for the most part. I'm sure there was problems, but for the most part, they were doing the right things, but for the most part, you know, they were doing the right things from, from what I found. I don't know if you feel differently. Um, yeah, I, I mean, I, I, I don't like to assume what was going on behind closed doors. I don't know. Cause you know, we can always say they, they were good parents. They were doing the right thing. We have no idea. Social services wasn't called to their house. No,

that can definitely be said. You said you looked into that. But we also have to remember these were wealthy people, influential in the community. Patsy was very active in her community. She did a lot of charity work. Yeah, they seemed to be good people, but I don't want to assume that everything was sunshine and rainbows behind the scenes. There was probably definitely some things. And again, I'm not saying that a hundred percent, you know, there was clearly they were the perfect family, but usually when something like this happens, all your dirty laundry comes out, right? Anything that was going on internally in the house, anytime a neighbor or a family relative, they usually leak something, you know, you end

up finding out that things weren't as pretty as they looked. Yeah, but we do find that out. To an extent, but not to the point where these parents were mistreating these children. They weren't like presenting themselves as good parents, but behind closed doors, they were abusive or, you know, violent. There was nothing like that. And sometimes I've worked a kid, you know, anyone who watched Breaking Homicide, I did the Michelle Norris case. This was a young girl, seven years old, was kidnapped and murdered. On the surface, it wasn't really that bad. But, and I don't mind saying this because I spoke to her mother, you know, about this in the case. There was a lot of stuff going on. Social services was out there every week.

Michelle was allegedly not being cleaned properly, was not eating appropriately. And so all these other things came out after her death. And, you know, it wasn't to that extent with JonBenet, at least from what I found. If you have something else, by all means, share it. But it seemed for the most part, they were good parents that were just trying to raise their children the best way possible. Let me ask you a hypothetical law enforcement question then. Yep. So let's say that you have a family like this, not the Ramseys, but any wealthy, well-to-do, influential family in the community. Do you think that you, or have you seen where there are issues like that and maybe law enforcement is called or maybe CPS is called and it kind of gets brushed under the rug or

kind of removed from the record? Like, is that possible? So, no. The simple answer is no, because, you know, you can have, you know, DCYF, which is, you know, out here in Rhode Island, they can show up. And so basically we get a call. Call comes into dispatch. Hey, you may want to check on these kids. I think they're being abused, whatever. So there's a dispatch log. The dispatcher enters it, sends a police officer over there with social services to look into it. They may decide to take a report. They may not. They may come back unfounded. However, there'll still be a dispatch log that shows we responded there for an allegation. So there's some type of paper trail to say, hey, no report was ever filed. Maybe it was brushed under the rug. Maybe it was unfounded. But there is documentation that leading

up to this person's death or disappearance, there was a paper trail of police being called or responding to said address. However, I will say this. There was an incident on December 23rd, uh, two days before this, this whole incident where police did receive a 911 hangup from the Ramsey residence. It was at 6 48 PM. And according to police, uh, immediately after getting this 911 hangup, they did call back approximately five minutes later. Um, there was no answer. It went to voicemail. So then they sent an officer to the Ramsey household. And according to police, they determined that it was basically an accident. They called the wrong number. There was a Christmas party apparently going on. And someone who was attending that party accidentally called 911 instead of the number they were intending to

call. So not a big paper trail, but I figured I would bring that up because just talked about there not being any indication of anything in the past. Again, police determined this didn't really have any relevance to the case, but for anyone who thinks it does, it does exist. And you can take that and interpret it any way you want. But according to police, it was basically a nothing burger. There was nothing to it. So you can't really delete the dispatch. Like, I mean, it would have to be an inside job by Boulder police. And I don't think that was the case. No, especially not in this case.

No. I'm thinking like how Boulder police ended up feeling about this case in the aftermath. So I feel like you're right. If anything had been going down there that law enforcement had been made aware of, they would have used it. In a heartbeat. Yeah. We would have known in a week of how many, they would have used it. In a heartbeat. Yeah. We would have known in a week of how many times they've been there for even a dog barking. You know, we would have known.

Yeah. So I agree with you. It absolutely seems like, you know, they probably had normal people problems. Father works too much. You know, mother has to take care of the kids. And I do see those dynamics here in this family because, as you know, Patsy recognized Jean Benet's natural charm and charisma, and she put her daughter on the pageant circuit from a very young age. Now, it is debated how Jean Benet ended up

becoming involved in pageants. Some say that she had expressed an interest in doing so since seeing her mother on stage at a pageant reunion. Others suggest that Patsy was the driving force behind it, wanting her daughter to follow in her footsteps. Some even suggest living vicariously through her. But however it happened, Jeanne Benet was a shining star in the pageants. She won her first competition in 1994 when she was just four years old at the Colorado All-Stars pageant. That same year, she also participated in the Little Miss Charlevo pageant in Michigan, and she would go on to take first place titles at Little Miss Colorado,

America's Royale Miss, and National Tiny Miss Beauty. Okay, Derek, so we both have young daughters. My Bella is four years old right now. And to me, the whole concept of a beauty pageant for little girls, I'm not sure how I feel about it. It makes me feel a little odd. I just don't know how I feel about putting a little girl on stage at such a young age to be judged, not exclusively for the way she looks. But let's be honest here, that is a big part of it. However, I have heard personal accounts from people who say pageants were like a really positive force in their lives, helps them in adulthood, helped with confidence and things. So what are your feelings or experiences with beauty pageants for children? Yeah, I don't have a problem with it. You know, I think it's no

different than, you know, a father wanting his son to play football or basketball. And, you know, in the beginning, in my opinion, the son doesn't really know about that sport until the dad starts to kind of, you know, push his own feelings about watching it. And it's subliminal, but it's like, you know, hey, why don't we watch this football game together? Why don't we do this? And I'm sure Patsy was probably bringing out her gowns and look how pretty they are. And I think we obviously are, our kids inspire to be like us in a lot of ways. And I will say this too, and I didn't know Patsy, but, you know, my daughters are both in like dance classes and gymnastics and all that stuff. And, you know, I can definitely see a situation

where, you know, some of the other moms whose kids weren't winning these competitions might have been a little jealous that JonBenet was winning. And that's maybe where the rumors of, oh, you know, poor JonBenet, Patsy's pushing this on her. Like, I would venture to say that those rumors are coming from the mom group that probably their kids weren't, you know, doing so well. That's just, again, my opinion, but we see it in different things and parents can almost sometimes be worse than the kids. Now you, Derek can see my face, but you guys can't. And when he said that he feels pageants are no different than football or baseball or whatever you said,

I think I made like a very outwardly dubious face, I guess, because they are very different, I think. Because one is a sport, as is gymnastics and dancing. And one is you get up on stage and look as pretty as possible. And as a four-year-old, put on five pounds of makeup. And we are going to have grown-ass adults judge you based on what you look like. So in my opinion, that's kind of what I was trying to see. Would you put your daughter up on stage in a bunch of makeup and say, I want these adults to judge her? I think at a young age, that can be a little hard for a kid.

Yeah, I mean, it can be. I mean, my look at it is like when kids get into sports or pageants, for me, it's not necessarily about what they're doing. It's about what they're learning as a child. Like they're learning sportsmanship. They're learning how to lose. You know, at least in my day, they were learning how to lose. They're learning sportsmanship. They're learning how to lose. At least in my day, they were learning how to lose. Now everybody gets a trophy, but they're learning about responsibility. They're learning about performing under pressure. They're learning

about social... Again, I always look at it as a character builder. You can definitely look at it that way. They're standing up there being judged on their beauty. And again, I'm acting like I know pageants that extreme, but I know with pageants, there's usually a talent portion of it where they have to display some type of talent that shows why they deserve to be. It's not supposed to be about the physical beauty. Although I am acknowledging that, yes, it is. And it is a little weird to think that that's even a parameter when the kids are so young. I get that. And I see your head shaking. I get it. But I do think there's more to it. And you and I may not do it with our daughters, but I'm trying to see why it can be a good thing if the intentions behind it from the adults

are good, are pure. Yeah. I think it's funny because you said everyone gets a trophy today. You sounded like my grandfather. We won't go there. That's a different podcast, I guess. But, you know, everybody gets a participation trophy now. And, you know, I failed at a lot of things growing up, sports, whatever. And I learned that, you know, it's important to be graceful in defeat as well. You know, you learn that as a kid and not everyone wins. And that's some of the things I didn't play professional sports, but I still took a lot from my sporting accomplishments and things that I achieved and things where I failed. So have you ever watched Toddlers and Tiaras?

I've definitely caught glimpses of it. I didn't like it. But that show to me is more about the moms and how crazy they are. Right. Like that's what it's that's why it's entertaining. I think it's yes. I mean, I don't I don't find it entertaining. I find it incredibly disturbing.

And I kind of think that's my point. Like, I don't think children should be put up on stage and judged for how they look. And I do think that they are made to look older thanious or, you know, malicious intentions or even thoughts could use something like that for their own sexual gratification when that's not the intended purpose. So 100 percent agree with you there. Well, after the death of his daughter, John Ramsey claimed that he believed John Bonet's involvement in pageants could have possibly led to her death, saying, quote, It's not a good idea to put your children on public display, end quote. He also said that he and his wife had been very naive, and his advice to other parents would be to recognize that no matter where you live, there could be evil around you, and you need to protect your children from that evil. And in my opinion, this was John Ramsey saying, yeah, we lived in a really nice area, an area of wealth and influence, and we didn't think it could happen to us. But, you know, it's anywhere. And I think that's a very

appropriate thing to say. And I think that's good advice to parents. But it really did seem like the family dynamic here put Patsy in charge of what happened at home. You know, John would go to work. He was the breadwinner. He was the one who made their lavish lifestyle possible. But she was the one who was home with the kids for most of the day. She would be the one who decided what activities they did or did not participate in. And he may have just said to himself at that time, happy wife, happy life. Well, we haven't talked too much about Jean Benet's older brother, Burke, and there's a reason for that. Burke was a very different child from his extroverted little sister. It seemed like Burke kept to himself more. He preferred to be on his own. And it was reported that he also had a bit of a temper as a child. Now, this is alleged.

This is based on reports from, I believe, a family friend, Judith Smith. So Judith Smith did allege that she'd seen Burke have some emotional outbursts from time to time. She said that when he was born, he was the apple of his parents' eye. But then, you know, obviously Jean Benet came along. And once she started doing the pageants, a lot of that attention, especially from Patsy, was diverted from Burke and given to Jean Benet. Judith also said that Jean Benet had a scar on her cheek from a time when Burke had hit her in the face with a golf club, an incident that Patsy always insisted was an accident. Stephanie, let me interject real quick, you know, and this is important because we're bringing up some things that may or may not have been true, but I just

want to qualify this, you know, for my own personal experience and say, listen, as a kid, I had a temper. My brother had a temper. I have a scar over my left eye. Everyone thinks it's from like a fight I got in as a cop or whatever. It's from my brother hitting me with a shot glass accidentally. It was on a string. He split me wide open. Right. So again, whether these things are true or not, it's not suggestive of anything, you know, as regarding JonBenet. So again, we're pointing out what was said, but it could be exactly what Patsy said, which is an accident. And yeah, maybe he had some outbursts as a kid. Doesn't mean he did anything wrong.

And just, you know, just to put it out there, because it's easy to jump on something and run with it. We're just putting out there what we've seen, what we've heard to give the full story. Yeah. I mean, I have to tell my son all the time to be careful with his little sister because he does get rough with her. Absolutely. It's definitely, it could be completely innocent. Now, many years later, Burke Ramsey would sit down and talk to Dr. Phil McGraw and his interview

prompted many to speculate on what they thought was his odd behavior. Now, it could very well be that Burke just felt awkward talking about something that was clearly traumatic for anybody. He was only nine when his sister died. So it could be that he was just reacting to that. It could be that Burke is just socially awkward in general. I remember hearing that he pretty much, he worked from home before it was cool. He worked from home before everybody else did. So he did prefer to be on his own. And as a person who can be socially awkward, especially in front of a lot of people, I get that. It could also be that Burke might have fallen on the autism spectrum, and that would explain his behavior. I want to be clear. I'm not saying Burke Ramsey

is or was autistic, but it has been speculated by some people that he may have been due to these reportings. Yeah. And listen, we're leaving out the obvious one here, right? It's a guy who's not a celebrity who knows, is well aware that there are many people out there who think he killed his little sister and he's being interviewed by a celebrity. And this interview is going to be watched by millions of people. So I think that would make a lot of people uncomfortable. And yeah, sometimes there's a lot of different possibilities and they're all plausible. But, you know, we may never know because the only person who really knows is probably Burke Ramsey. Only he knows how he was feeling internally on the day of that interview or if any of

these other things are even true or not. Yeah. Can you imagine? I've never really put myself in Burke's shoes before. If he was innocent and he did nothing for years, it was speculated that he had something to do with it. So I imagine, yeah, you would be incredibly self-conscious and almost like defensive getting up on stage and doing like a public interview for the first time ever. 100% justifiable. Yep. I agree with you. Yep.

I would, I couldn't imagine. So now we've talked about the family. We have an idea, you know, kind of what day-to-day life was like for the Ramseys. Let's talk about the crime itself. And our timeline doesn't start on the morning of the 26th. It starts the day before, Christmas Day. On December 25th, 1996, the Ramseys woke up like many other families do on Christmas morning. They opened presents. Jeanne Benet received a new bike for Christmas, and she rode it outside on the terrace for a little bit that afternoon since there was barely any snow on the ground.

Around 4 or 4.30 p.m., the family left their house to go to the home of their good friends Fleet and Priscilla White for dinner and, you know, a little Christmas party. Everything had been pretty normal that night. Burke played video games with the White's seven-year-old son, and Jean Benet and the White's six-year-old daughter played in the daughter's room while the adults sat together and chatted. On the way home from Fleet and Priscilla's, apparently Jean Benet fell asleep in the car and her father carried her inside the house and put her right to bed. This was about 9.30 in the evening. Now, I have seen different variations of this, and I don't know if it has to do with changing stories from those who were involved or just different reportings, but most of the articles

and the news articles say that Jeanne Benet fell asleep in the car. She was carried inside. Almost every documentary I've seen on this, it shows it happened that way. But Jon Ramsey said that he had read a book to her that night. So he carried her up to bed and then he read a book to her. So if we're going by what he said, then she wasn't asleep and she just stayed asleep the whole time and she never woke up. Yeah. And as far as where I fall on this, I have nothing to suggest that John's lying. Some people may say there's an incentive for him to lie about this because of other things that came out in the future. But for me, whether she was asleep the entire time or woke up for a short period of time and then went back to sleep, at this point, it's not that significant to me, depending on what you believe it may be.

But I have no reason not to believe John that he did read a book to her. So if I were going forward at this point, I would I would tend to believe him unless something significant came forward that would prove otherwise. All right. So whether or not she was asleep when they got home, it doesn't matter. And this was at about 930 in the evening. Now, I think it matters a little bit more than you do, but that's a kind of difference of opinion we have. Tell me why. Tell me why.

Well, the reason I think it matters a little bit more is because of something Patsy said later in her police interview when she finally was allowing herself to be interviewed by the police. And she was asked a question about something, which we'll get to. And that's why I kind of didn't want to bring it up because I don't want to speed too far ahead. But, you know, she said JonBenet was asleep when we got home. So maybe Jon brought her up and JonBenet woke up and he just didn't tell Patsy. Like, that's very possible. And let me, again, we don't want to go too off the beaten path because this is going to be a long episode, guys. So some of you may love that, some of you may not, but it's going to be long. I was just watching an interview last night and it was between Jordan Belfort and the man, the investigator who arrested him, the guy who's in the, in the actual movie. I can't remember his

real name right now. I'm sorry. Wall Street. Yeah. So the whole guy who brought Jordan down, he has a podcast and he had the actual investigator on to talk about it. And he talked about irregularities and witness statements and stories coming from different people. And he made a good point that I think actually applies here. And I'm not saying this is the case. I'm just saying it could be. He said when he was doing white collar crime, financial crimes, if someone said to him, yeah, I gave that person 100,000 shares off the books. And he went back and looked and in actuality, the person gave him 125,000. He didn't hit him with obstruction or assume that he was lying. He just assumed he got some of the details wrong. But he said, if he said to me,

no, I didn't give him anything. And then I looked and he had gave him 2000 shares. That was a problem. And I think that in this particular situation, that could be a scenario where Patsy didn't put JonBenet to bed. So maybe she didn't know that Jon read her a book upstairs before she went to sleep. You know, again, you're giving that statement to the police. You're in a lot of stress. She may assume something. That's why as detectives, we always say, if you don't know the answer, say you don't know,

never assume because this is in stone once you say it. And it allows people like us and investigators to interpret what that means when she said she was asleep. That's the only thing I'll preface everyone out there who's coming to their own conclusions that it could be innocent, her saying that, or it could be something more. But the reality is we just don't know. Yeah, it could absolutely be innocent, especially four months later, you're going to have a completely different, I mean, it may seem clear to us. We're like, yeah, I remember that night.

Like it was yesterday. We always say that. I remember that like it was yesterday, but it wasn't yesterday. So our memory could be completely different. I think they call it false memory. And think about it. Your husband has probably read numerous books to your children and I'm sure he doesn't come downstairs. Maybe he doesn't. You're looking at me like he doesn't. But I can tell you, I read books to my daughters on certain nights and my wife does as well. And I never come downstairs and go, hey, just a heads up. I read him a book tonight before they fell asleep. It's irrelevant in the moment. You don't think it's important to relay that. So just something to keep in mind, guys. Stephanie and I are going to disagree on some things. And that's what's great about this because you're going to hear

it the way it is. It's just that's why we have two perspectives. That's why this is kind of an interesting case to cover, even though it's widely known. Yeah. Sometimes I'm listening to podcasts and there's one host and they say like, oh, I think this happened. And I'm like, no. So at least one of us, either Derek or I, will hopefully align with your thoughts. Yeah. They're choosing sides right now. You know that, right?

They're 100% choosing sides. I'm going to win. So at this time when they get home and John puts Jean Benet to bed, it's 9.30 p.m. Everything was fine, right? The house was locked up as it was every night before they went to sleep. You know, it had been a long day as Christmas Day almost always is, and the family was tired, so everyone went to bed. During that night, no one in the house heard anything. No screaming, no sounds of a struggle, nothing. But we do have to remember that Jeanne Benet's bedroom was on the floor beneath her parents' room.

And since the master suite took up a great know, a great deal of the third floor or the fourth floor, if you're counting the basement, but it's the top floor, John and Patsy's bed where they slept was actually located over Burke's room while John Bonet was essentially on the other side of the house. As we talked about already, this was a huge house, a really, really big house. So the next morning, Patsy woke up early. She claims it was, you know, around 5 a.m. She would it was, you know, around 5 a.m. She would later tell police that she'd gone into the bathroom and picked up the clothes that she'd taken off the night before, black velvet pants and a red sweater, the same clothes she'd

worn to the White's Christmas party. And she put these clothes back on before going down the back staircase to the kitchen to make some coffee. Now, the family had planned to all like get up early that morning since they were traveling via private plane that day to visit with John's older children in Minnesota. And then John and Patsy and their kids and John's older children were all going to fly on to their place in Michigan for a little holiday getaway. So let me put this in perspective for you and explain what I mean by the back stairs. It looks like from the floor plans, there was two sets of stairs that led from the third floor down, a set that led down to the second floor, and another set that led down to the second and first floors. So from my understanding, Patsy used the back set of stairs, which was this really cool looking spiral staircase, and this staircase led to the second

floor and then to the first. Patsy told CNN, quote, we have a back staircase from the bedroom areas and I always come down that staircase and I'm usually the first one down, end quote. It was on this staircase that Patsy claims she saw a letter addressed to her husband, John Ramsey, a ransom letter that would trigger her call to the Boulder police. Now, this is unlike any ransom letter I've ever seen or heard of before in my life. And what stands out initially is how long it is, like how lengthy it is, three pages to be exact. Should we read the letter to them, Derek? Of course. I think we have to. I think we

have to. Well, I do also want to say that she picked this letter up not knowing it was a ransom letter. It was addressed to John. She said initially she thought it was from her housekeeper and her housekeeper had left it there. So because at first I was like, oh, I don't know if I would like open something that was addressed to my husband. But if I saw it sitting on the stairs and I thought it was from my housekeeper, I probably would. Right. And again, we got to read the letter in its entirety because again, most of you know, but for those of you who don't, this letter is such a big element in this case for so many reasons, because it's so subjective of how you could look at it, how you interpret it based on what it was written on,

the length of it, what investigators ended up finding on what it was written on, the length of it, what investigators ended up finding out about it. I don't know if we want to go there yet, Stephanie, but there's so many layers to this ransom note and it can mean so much depending on what camp you fall in as far as what you think happened to JonBenet. And not only the letter of the physical elements of the letter, but also what was written in the letter. So that's why, yeah, we have to read it in its entirety. Yeah. And I think I told you on the phone the other day that no matter what theories I go down, no matter what paths I go down of different theories, like I keep coming back to that letter because it's the one thing that just does not fit. Yeah. You had said something on the phone. It's like,

if the letter's not there, I feel totally different about this case. And I think a lot of listeners are going to relate to you with that because it is so hard to compute. How does this fit in? And again, it's possible it does. It's possible the perpetrators are just idiots. But again, from a commonsensical perspective, it's tough to understand how this would be written in this duration under these circumstances and be what it is. But I'm foreshadowing way too much here. So we'll just let them, you guys, listen to the letter. Look at this as a parent or wherever you might be and imagine waking up to something like this. Put yourself there.

Mr. Ramsey, listen carefully. We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We do respect your business, but not the country that it serves. At this time, we have your daughter in our possession. She is safe and unharmed, and if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter. You will withdraw $118,000 from your account. $100,000 will be in $100 bills and the remaining $18,000 in $20 bills. Make sure you bring an adequate size attache to the bank.

When you get home, you will put the money in a brown paper bag. I will call you between 8 and 10 a.m. tomorrow to instruct you on delivery. The delivery will be exhausting, so I advise you to be rested. If we monitor you getting the money early, we might call you to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence an earlier delivery pickup of your daughter. Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter. You will also be denied her remains for proper burial. The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you, so I advise you to not provoke them. Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as police, FBI, etc., will result in your daughter being beheaded. If we catch you talking to a

stray dog, she dies. If you alert bank authorities, she dies. You will be scanned for electronic devices, and if any are found, she dies. You can try to deceive us, but be warned that we are familiar with law enforcement and countermeasures and tactics. You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to outsmart us. Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back. You and your family are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities. Don't try to grow a brain, John. You are not the only fat cat around, so don't think that killing will be difficult. Don't underestimate us, John. Use that good Southern common sense of yours. It's up to you

now, John. And the letter is signed, Victory, S-B-T-C. So what do you think about this ransom letter, Derek? unspoken using the words like attache. And then some are very violent and threatening and barbaric and, you know, we'll behead her. So it's kind of conflicting. That to me is a little off. And then the obvious is how long this letter is, right? It's believed that this letter, I don't know if we can say at this point, was believed to have been written while they were in the house. So this is an awful long letter to write out while in the home of the child you're kidnapping. And I also think from another perspective, how I would feel, and you guys can all put yourself in this position. If I came down my stairs and I found a letter like this about one of my daughters or both of my daughters. I can't imagine the feeling that

Patsy had in that moment to read that letter to herself as she's processing it and thinking about what could happen to her daughter if she doesn't cooperate. You as a mother, you come down the stairs and hate to even give these hypotheticals. But my first thought is just like right off the bat, like, what do you do in this situation? Are you calling the cops? That's my first question. Am I calling the cops? No, probably not. I don't know. Well, first of all, my first thought, if I got this exact ransom letter is like, what kind of small foreign faction is familiar with me and my family? Like why us? I would, I think I would, would question why myself, my husband and my children were targets of this

small foreign faction. And, and I don't know, it says, don't call the police. I don't know. Yeah. I probably would call the police. I don't know. Oh my God. I can't even, I don't know. Right. I mean, my thought is, you know, you talked earlier and that's why it's so important to cover everything. Like the Ramseys were, were very well off financially. So I have to imagine even then $118,000 to John Ramsey was probably not a lot of money. I mean, it's, it's a lot of money to you and I, but to someone like him, you know, with, you know, houses all over the place, it was probably not a lot of money. I honestly was thinking about this, knowing we were going to be talking about it, knowing I wanted to ask you that question. And I think

I don't want to stay in the middle. So I don't think I would call the cops. I don't. Here's my thought on it. Okay. As a cop, this is me being me. Like this happens to me tomorrow. There's two scenarios here. Either I'm going to give them money and they're going to let her live or she's already dead anyways. But if I call the police and these guys are being legitimate and they catch wind of it, I just killed her. So there's no benefit to calling the police ahead of time because if I call their bluff and I'm wrong, I just killed my daughter for 118 grand. I don't think I'd call them initially. I would try to cooperate with them if I thought it was legitimate, you know, and I would try to see if I could negotiate it myself because all I want is my daughter back.

And if I feel like they're playing me and she's either already dead or they're not going to cooperate, then I would say, Hey, now I have nothing to lose. I got to get the federal government involved. But I probably would initially try and settle it under wraps so that they feel comfortable and they give me back my child without thinking they're going to be apprehended. Yeah, I guess. Now that you say it that way, I suppose. But I don't know, because I would wonder, is this a tactic so that they can like get away so they have time? But if you think about it, she got up, you know, around 5 a.m. and they said they're going to call between 8 and 10. So the most you have to wait at this point is five hours. So I

probably would wait until that 8 to 10 window came and went. And then, you know, I'd be on the phone. But I mean, if I'm not a mother though, which I am, but if I'm just looking at this like a person and not the mother of the child who's allegedly kidnapped, I would say that it sounds like whoever wrote this letter was trying really hard to sound like some sort of terrorist. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, either they were trying to sound like it or they were one. Beheaded? Yeah. And the letter started off differently. And the only connection that I, you know, I'm sure investigators looked into is, you know, he was connected to Lockheed Martin. You know, there's a lot of big defense contracts out there and stuff. And, you know, you don't know, you know, what type of clients he was

dealing with. You know, he was definitely working with the military, you know, Lockheed Martin definitely works with the military, you know, multiple areas. So could there be a connection? I guess. I didn't look into the specifics of what John Ramsey was doing, but Lockheed Martin definitely has defense contracts. So could there be a connection? Maybe. We'll get into the money amount, $118,000, that specific amount. Why did they ask for that specific amount? I know we have something in here to talk about that. So I'll wait on that. But again, it sounded like the person writing the letter was pretending to be different people at different portions of the letter itself. Yeah. All of the, the, the last part of the letter feels pointless to me. They, they are very clear in the beginning, like, this is how much we want. This is how we want it. And

a hundred dollar bills and $20 bills. And then they just start like, just going on and on. Like if we catch a talk into a stray dog, she dies. Don't try to grow a brain, John, use that good Southern common sense of yours, you know, stuff like that. That just feels pointless to have in a ransom note, because you'd think in a ransom note, like you want to be short and sweet. This is what you have to do. This is when we want to buy goodbye. That's it. We have your daughter. We'll be calling you between five and eight and whatever the time was, right? That's it. How many pages was it? Two and a half, but overall there were three sheets of paper. If these are professionals, I'm not giving you three pages of content that you can use for a handwriting analysis later if I'm apprehended. Did we ever find out what SBTC stood for?

No, there's been people who have gone over this. Like I said, if you could spend your life going through this ransom letter and trying to decipher it. It's basically Zodiac, right? Yeah, exactly. You could spend your life doing this, devote your life to it because there's so much in here to unpack, like you said. But no, nobody ever figured out what SBTC is. I don't think it is anything. It's nothing that anybody knows about. And have you ever seen the movie Ransom with Mel Gibson?

Yes, of course. So, you know, what's interesting is that movie came out just a month before this happened. Interesting. That is very, I did not know that. That's really interesting. And there's some parallels in there, I would say. That's really interesting. And there's some parallels in there, I would say. That's interesting. Yeah. And I think we can both agree that, again, depending on what camp you fall into, it's very easy to make this letter fit your narrative. Is that fair to say? You know, if you believe a certain thing, there are elements in this letter that will 100% confirm what you believe. And if you're another camp, you could feel, you know, differently and interpret it another way. I disagree. Okay. Tell me why. I think that this ransom letter is the only thing that every

time there's a theory that's brought up, I'm like, okay, let's go down the path of this theory. And then I'm like, but where does the ransom letter fit in? It's like that whole Sesame Street thing. One of these things is not like the other. That is what this ransom note is like for me. So I do think that, of course, when we know this, this isn't anything new. There are people out there who believe that somebody in that household had something to do with what happened to Jean Benet. And I think it's those people who fall in that camp that have this letter fit their narrative. Any other camp, it just doesn't work and it doesn't make sense, especially considering the suspects that there are, which we are going to talk about in

part two of this, the other suspects. But if you look at the plethora of other suspects that there are, do you see any of them sitting down and writing this letter? No, but let me throw a scenario at you. One of the things is the fact that this letter was written on Patsy's stationery. And that's an element that suggests to investigators that whoever wrote this wasn't someone who worked within the household, took a piece of stationary home with them, wrote the letter out and brought it back the next day? Yeah. Possible? Very, very possible. Yeah. Very possible. That's just me sitting here for two minutes thinking about that, that, you know,

that's a way you write on that stationary and you take that time to write out that letter, but all they're really doing is just dropping it on the stair on their way out. Yeah. Or anybody else who'd been in that house. I mean, she was known, Patsy was known for having parties, these lavish parties, especially Christmas parties. She would do Christmas tours of her home where she'd bring people in to see how she decorated her home. So yeah, anybody could have snatched a couple sheets of stationary off her desk, written the letter, and then dropped it off. And I think that often is something that people really get fixated on. Like, what kind of kidnapper is going to come into a house, kidnap a child, and then sit there at the crime scene and write this letter out,

which would definitely take, you know, roughly, I don't know, five to 10 minutes, but longer than you probably want to be there. But like you said, anybody at any point who came in and out of that house, she liked to socialize, she liked to entertain, could have grabbed that stationary in an attempt to set them up. Absolutely. And again, some of the people listening may be like, Derek, what are you saying? But it's important for us to think outside the box, right? Whenever you have evidence in any case, one of the first things I learned as a detective, right, as a rookie detective was you don't want to be the detective that has an opinion and uses the evidence that supports that opinion to solve the case. You want to take the evidence and let that evidence develop the conclusion, what actually happened. So I don't like to reverse engineer a case because essentially that biased opinion of what I think will affect the way I perceive the evidence I uncover. And that's

important here because again, common sense tells you no one's going to write that in there. But again, we have to think outside the box because until we're proven definitively otherwise, anything's a possibility at this point. As we're going through this case together with our listeners at this point, anything's still on the table as far as what happened to JonBenet. Yeah, exactly. You don't want to have tunnel vision. So as a detective or anybody really looking at a case, you've got to remain impartial because you don't want to say, oh, I think this is what happened. Because then every piece of evidence you see, you're going to try to fit that into what you already believe happened.

It's a cognitive shortcut. And what happens is detectives don't want to acknowledge this, but sometimes evidence that contradicts what they believe somehow gets lost in the mix, you know, and never sees the light because that's going to show they were wrong. Not saying it happens often, but it happens. And it's an unfortunate part of law enforcement that we still have to improve on, but that is the world we live in. That's a reality. We all do it.

Every day we do it in life. I could say a million times where I do it, where I'm like, oh, I think that this is what I want to do, but this is telling me I shouldn't do that, but because I want to do this already, I'm going to completely ignore all of the other things that are saying I shouldn't do this already, I'm going to completely ignore all of the other things that are saying I shouldn't take this path. So we do it all the time in our regular everyday lives. It's supposed to be

helpful for us so that we can take mental shortcuts. But in an investigation, it's very detrimental. So yeah, the ransom letter, one of the oddest things I've ever read. And of course, Patsy sees this letter. And afterwards, she says she yells to her husband, John, you know, check on the children. And then that's when they discover that Dijon Bonnet is not in her bed, but Burke is still fast asleep in his. So that's when Patsy calls 911, even though the letter told them that they were being monitored and that they should not contact the police. Patsy calls 911 immediately. And after Patsy disconnects with 911, she then calls a bunch of her friends and she tells them what happened too. And she asks them to come over to her home

for moral support. So at this point, John and Patsy have done the equivalent of, you know, taking the ransom note and setting fire to it. Not only do they involve law enforcement immediately, but they also involve a bunch of other people. And then they invite these people to come out and basically hang out in a crime scene. Yeah. Didn't like this at all. You know, it's one of those things where we just spent 20 minutes talking about it. If you're set on calling law enforcement, sure. But you have to assume that if this is legitimate, there's probably someone from this faction who's monitoring your house, you know, either they're sitting on it or, you know, surveillance, whatever they have set up, bugged your house. You don't know. But by not only calling the police, but all your friends,

you're creating an environment externally that can be seen by others to say something's going on over there. So if you're trying to keep low key, this is not the way to do it. I don't agree with this move at all. Yeah. And you have to ask yourself, what time did the 911 call come in? I think it was like 5. 5.52. 5.52. Okay. So the 911 call comes in at 5.52.

Patsy claims she woke up a little bit after 5. So there wasn't really much of a discussion, in my opinion. I mean, this isn't where you and your husband are sitting down and saying, okay, the ransom note says don't call the police, but we're missing our daughter. We're stressed out. Like, what do you think we should do? There clearly wasn't much of a debate on this because there just wouldn't have been the time. Even a discussion.

Just, hey, what do we want to do here? Because this could be a life or death decision. You know, you would think there would have been a little bit more time taken. But also it could be that it was a knee jerk reaction. And, you know, she ran to the phone. I don't know. We don't know. We will never know because for anyone who doesn't know, Patsy is deceased.

But you have to wonder what she was thinking in that moment. Do you think it was a knee jerk reaction for her to call her friends and ask them to come over? Like I said, I don't agree with that at all. I don't understand that rationale. We know that happened. So, you know, there's no disputing that. And I don't understand why she would call them for support at that point. I think the only people you'd want to see at that point would be individuals who could help you. And that would be law enforcement. that someone in that house was responsible for what happened to Jean Benet. The whole scene was a cluster right from the beginning, and not a lot about the crime made sense. First on the scene was

Boulder Police Officer Rick French. He arrived at around 6 a.m., so very quickly after the 911 call, and he performed a quick search of the house. He found no sign of Jean Benet or a crime scene. Right after Officer French got there, Fleet and Priscilla White also showed up and they come into the house. And at this time, Officer French spoke to the Ramseys, obviously trying to figure out what happened, you know, what's going on. And he claimed that Patsy was very upset and distraught, which is completely understandable. I wouldn't expect her to be any other way. And it was very difficult to get any information out of her.

As he was trying to figure out what happened, two more friends of the Ramseys showed up as well as the pastor from their church. Within no time, three more detectives arrive at the scene, Bob Whitson, Fred Patterson, and Linda Arndt. Linda Arndt spoke with John Ramsey, and she let him know that she was placing a recorder on his home phone so that they could record the call from the kidnappers. After this, she spoke with Patsy Ramsey in the sitting room. Patsy appeared to be in a daze with a vacant look in her eyes, and she spoke softly as she told Linda that she had originally thought the note was from her housekeeper, who had asked to borrow money from the Ramseys just a few days prior on the 24th,

and that although the home did have a working security system, it had not been armed the night before or actually for quite some time. And I think this does really speak to how safe the Ramseys felt in this neighborhood, in their home. They had a security system, but they didn't feel the need to arm it at night. And I know for me, I mean, I feel safe in my home, in my neighborhood, but every night without fail, I have an alarm set on my phone that says arm the security system because I'm not taking any chances. So they did feel very safe. And what do you do? You agree?

Yeah, it's complacency, too. You know, it's it's the level of complacency. And they're not alone. Happened a lot of times while I was in patrol as an officer working the beat and as a detective where you show up to a house and the house has been ransacked. And I look in the corners and there's, you know, motion sensors and glass break sensors. And I'm like, oh, you know, did this go off? And we forgot to arm it. You know, it just and then you find out that they haven't been arming it for a while because no one ever thinks it's going to happen to them until it does.

And that's just the world we live in. Nobody's at fault for it. It's what happens over time. You buy this new shiny system, you're setting it every night and it's like, oh, I don't want to set it tonight, even though it's just an app, you know, but it happens. It happens. Yeah. It's a security blanket, having the security system, having the sign in your yard that says you have a security system. You know, it's, you think that's enough of a deterrent sometimes. Bob Whitson said by the time he arrived, there was already a bunch of people there. So the police, the Ramseys, and their friends all gathered together to tensely await the ransom call that was supposed to come between 8 and 10 a.m., but the phone never rings. Once they figure out that the call is probably not going to happen, Witson, Bob Witson, leaves with all other law never have left Linda there alone. She had no experience with missing persons cases in general. The Boulder police as a whole didn't have a lot of experiences with like abductions or homicides. It was a very safe area. Maybe they saw a handful of homicides in a year. And I think this year, we're talking December. It's the end of the year.

It's the very end of December, the very end of 1996. And this was the first murder of the year, 1996 in Boulder. So it's clearly, you know, not a high crime area. No, not at all. That was one of the first things when I was researching, I was like, wow, one murder in a year. That's what a place to be a cop in, right? I mean, it's easy sailing, you know, for most police departments. So not to their own fault, but,

you know, they're not very experienced in these types of cases, right? And that's why it's important to bring in outside agencies or even, you know, neighboring police departments that have guys who may handle one or two murders a month, you know? And so I love the fact that he admitted to this later, you know, he owned it, which is always a good characteristic to have the ability to reflect and say, you know, in hindsight, you should have did it differently. But let's talk about the fact that no one called for a second, right? The note said they were going to call between 8 and 10. Nobody ever calls.

So what I do want to ask you, though, before I tell you what I think about, you know, the whole fact that the call never came is, I don't know if you ever saw it, but Linda Arndt gave an interview with ABC in 1999. And she brings up the fact that this call never came. And, you know, she doesn't talk so much about why it never came, but she does talk about the reactions of the people inside the house. And she says in this interview, quote, 10 o'clock comes and goes, and there's no acknowledgement from anyone in the house that the deadline imposed by the author of the ransom note has come and gone, end quote. So what she's trying to say here is between eight and 10, somebody's supposed to call and tell you how you're going to get your daughter back. Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock comes and goes. And at 10 o'clock, nobody says, okay, it's 10 o'clock. They should have called by now. What

do we do now? There's no reaction from anyone. And I find that very odd. What do you think? Yeah, I completely agree. I saw the interview myself as well. I thought it was very compelling. And again, she was just making little mental notes. she goes on to say, like at the time, I didn't know if this was significant, but it made more sense later as things unfolded, but in her opinion. But yeah, I found it very interesting because if I had received a ransom note that said between eight and 10 AM, you're going to find out how to get your daughter back. We will be calling. I would be sitting in front of a clock and I would be watching every single second as it goes by. And I would become increasingly nervous with each passing second that I didn't receive

that call. And at 10 a.m., at 10 a.m., I would lose my mind and be looking at police for direction and saying, hey, it's 10 a.m. They haven't called. What does that mean? Do they know we're talking to you guys? You know, are they outside our house? What do we do now?

Like, I don't want to wait. That would be my number one concern. And the fact that Detective Arndt noted that they didn't even really notice that that time had passed is very interesting. And as far as the fact that the alleged perpetrators never called, what do you take from this? There's a couple of things and we can spell them all out. The note's a fake. The person who wrote this note was doing it to cover up something else and there was never

going to be a call. The other scenario is the individuals who wrote the letter said what they said. They meant it. John and Patsy didn't abide by what was written in the letter. And that's why they didn't call because they knew from however their counter surveillance, they knew that the police had been contacted. And that's two of the, I'm sure we can come up with some other ones, but to me, those are the two that really stand out. The ransom notes are fake. There was never

anybody who was going to call or the perpetrators from the letter were tipped off and they took off. That was it. I mean, you wouldn't have to know much about counter surveillance methods to see that the Ramseys had called the police and everybody else in town. I'm being sarcastic. Obviously, they didn't call everyone else in town, but all you'd have to do is be sitting outside of that house, right? And you'd know. And you'd know. And so that's where I fall on it. Those are the two most likely scenarios to me. And I think depending on who you get in a room, they'll feel differently about that. But that was the big thing because here comes the, this is the window where we're going to find out how to get our daughter back. No call, nothing. Not even a call saying, we told you to do something. We know the police are inside there with you right now.

Your daughter's dead, you know? But let me ask you something else. So this time between eight and 10, when they're waiting, it's going to be very tense, obviously a lot of stress, right? Yeah. Can't even imagine. No. Yeah, absolutely.

So this is your daughter and you're there with your wife. Would you be, would you be comforting her? Would you, you know, try to be, you know, standing together, holding each other, holding each other's hands, at least like waiting for this call so much is on the line, so much is at stake. Normally a normal married couple, regardless of if they have issues in their marriage or not, not that the Ramseys did, but regardless in a time like this, you're going to come together. You would think. I honestly don't know. There's been so many situations in my life where I thought I would react a certain way. And when it actually happens, you act differently.

I don't know. I think everyone responds to traumatic events differently and you don't really know how you're going to handle it until it happens. But I would like to think, to your point, I would like to think that if it happened to me and my wife, I would be there to console her and comfort her and make her feel at peace as much as I could and be the stronger person. But there's a real reality that I would literally be upstairs loading my guns and being like, I'm going out there. I'm not staying here. I don't know. I don't know how I don't I don't ever want to know if I'm being honest. I don't ever want to know what my mindset would be in that moment. Well, after the rest of the police officers left and Bob Whitson, Linda was left alone with the Ramseys and their friends,

and she claims she made some mental notes about her companions while they sat and they waited. She claimed that for the most part, John and Patsy Ramsey remained in separate areas of the home. And at some point, John left the house to get the mail. And when he returned, he opened the mail in the kitchen. Linda said John was usually by himself, and she did not see John and Patsy interact with each other at all. Now, when Linda talked to John, she found him to be quite the opposite of Patsy. He was focused, clear-headed, cordial, even smiling and joking at points during the conversation with her. Is this just the businessman in him, do you think, or is this kind of an odd way to behave when your daughter is being ransomed? I mean, the way you're saying it sounds odd, right? I mean, it sounds odd.

And I think that's why it became something that Linda noted because she didn't think in her opinion, that's the way someone should be acting in that moment. But it's so hard. And I hate that. I'm not trying to be someone who's just making excuses for anyone, but you don't know how you're going to react until you're there. I can't say it enough.

And maybe laughter is a defense mechanism. I don't know how you're going to react until you're there. I can't say it enough. And maybe laughter is a defense mechanism for, I don't know. You know, I don't think even he knows how he's going to react in that situation. So it's some, I I'm glad she noted it because as a detective, she should be noting the little subtleties because they may be important later. But at this point I'm taking it at face value, which is, you know, doesn't seem normal to me, but I'm just making note of it and you interpret it the way you want. Yeah, I agree. I don't I don't think we should judge him based solely on that. And everybody acts different when they're in crisis. We are have already established that.

So by the time the police had arrived, though, Burke Ramsey had already been taken from the home and he was staying with friends of the Ramseys. So the police were unable to talk to him at that time. Now, while Linda was at the house, she asked John about the ransom note and if he noticed anything odd about it. At this time, the Ramseys' friends, who were also present, began giving their opinion on the note to Linda, saying that they felt the amount, $118,000, was a strange amount. And I mean, it is a strange amount to request for many reasons. Firstly, the author of the note seemed to know a great deal about John Ramsey, such as the fact that he was a fat cat, where he worked, et cetera. The Ramsey banker had told Linda Arndt that $118,000 was a small amount compared to John's actual wealth and what he was worth. And it also happened to be the exact same amount as the Christmas bonus that John had just received

from work. Now, usually also when kidnappers are asking for a ransom, they are going to demand a much larger amount, especially when dealing with someone like John Ramsey. All you have to do is look at him. You can see the kind of house he lives in. You can see the kind of lifestyle he has. You know he's probably got more than $118,000 in the bank. And that amount will also be like a round number. So $118,000 struck everyone as odd. Now I do want to point out in Linda Arndt's statement,

she says that no one at this time told Linda that John's bonus had been $118,000. She asked both John and Patsy if this amount was significant to them, and they both said it was not. So this came out kind of later in the investigation. At around 12.30 in the afternoon, Linda noticed that John had become very tense. His leg was bouncing and he had isolated himself from the rest of the people in the house sitting alone in the formal dining room. So Linda felt, you know, she needed to do something to keep John's mind off of his missing daughter. And she she kind of assigned a task Fleet White aside and asked him if he could help her help John. Basically, like, can you get John and you guys search the home from top to bottom, excluding Jean Benet's room, which had been sealed off. So she told them to look for anything out of place or out of the ordinary. And then Linda also talked to John Ramsey directly, once again, suggesting that he searched the house from top to bottom.

And right after she spoke to him, Linda claims John Ramsey made a beeline for the basement door and Fleet White followed him. About five minutes later, Linda says she heard some sort of shout or exclamation coming from the basement. And then she saw Fleet White come running out of the basement into the den. He grabbed the phone. He dialed two or three numbers. He hung up the phone, and then he ran back to the basement, yelling for someone to call an ambulance. Fleet and John had found the body of Jean Benet. Now, according to Fleet White, he and John went down to the basement, and John opened the door to what the Ramseys called the wine cellar. And he yelled out to Fleet that he'd found Jean Benet. And then he turned on the light. So this room was an unfinished area of the basement, concrete floors. It appears to be windowless

in the pictures that I see. And typically, if you have your wine in there and it's a wine cellar, you want it to be windowless because sunlight isn't good for wine. So I repeat, John Ramsey opened the door, shouted out that he'd found Jeanne Benet, and then turned on the light, which has obviously led to a lot of questions such as how did he see her body before he turned on the light? It could be that there was just light coming in from the hall enough to see, but Fleet also reported that John Ramsey rushed to the body of his daughter, which was covered by a white blanket. Which, you know, to a lot of people is another mystery of how he would have known immediately that it was his daughter. When it is kind of dim in there and there's a white blanket on top of her.

Now, at this point, John pulled duct tape off of Jeanne Benet's mouth before picking her up, carrying her upstairs, and per Linda's instructions, placing Jeanne Benet on the rug just inside the front doorway. Now, I do have to say that this information is coming directly from Linda Arndt from the testimony she gave. And when I made my YouTube video on this, I hadn't read this testimony. And I was under the impression that John had made the decision to place Jean Benet there all on his own. Now that obviously isn't the case. So it seems much less suspicious to me because Linda told him to place her there. But Derek, the body of a six year old, a six year old girl that's been missing has just been found. And already I see a lot of glaring issues with the initial investigation, like how this was handled. So I'm sure you have your thoughts about what the police and the Ramseys have already kind of done wrong.

Yeah. I mean, it's a difficult situation because it is their daughter, you know, at the end of the day. So to think that he wouldn't grab her and try to resuscitate or help her in any way he could is I think it's not it's not reasonable to assume that. But I will say this, and I don't know how you feel about this person, but I remember doing the OJ case with, uh, Henry Lee. We were covering it and, you know, depending on where you fall, some people like Henry Lee, some people don't, I really respect him. I think he's brilliant. Um, and I remember him telling me something and I was saying, you know, you never want to

contaminate a scene. And he said, well, Derek, every scene is contaminated the minute you show up. And so I think in this situation, the scene is already contaminated when detectives arrive, because there's people in the house that weren't there originally. You have the Ramseys walking around and the goal of the detective is try to limit that contamination. And in this particular situation, it got really messy really fast because now you have individuals touching JonBenet and the reality is she's a piece of evidence at that point and moving her body and removing things from her body. And then you have fleet nearby and trace evidence can be hair fibers. It doesn't have to be a physical touch that causes more contamination of a crime scene.

So yeah, it's, it's difficult. And to Linda's defense, she wasn't downstairs and she didn't expect them to go down there and actually find her like that, or she would have went down there. So I, you know, hindsight's20. I would like to think that if Linda had responded to the basement when she was initially discovered, JonBenet, Linda would have told them, hey, guys, everyone back out. We can't, I'm sorry, you can't touch her right now. You can't move her. This is a crime scene. But she wasn't. Jon reacted the way I think any father would. And it made a bad situation from an investigatory standpoint a lot worse. But it wasn't really Linda's fault that she didn't go in the basement and look, right? Because the initial police officer that got there, he said

he had searched the house. And he even said later he went down in the basement and he saw the door to the wine cellar, but he tried it. He thought it was locked. So he didn't kind of like pursue that. So that was, in my opinion, that was his bad because Linda got there to the scene thinking this scene's already been searched. This house has already been searched. So I'm just giving John Ramsey busy work to do at this point. Yeah, I agree. And I heard as well that like he, I saw in one thing, it wasn't substantiated that the officer, like maybe it was just for dramatic effect, but like he opened the door, but not all the way. I don't know. There was nothing to substantiate that, but I've heard different versions of what happened with that officer searching the house. And you have to

admit that that's the problem with this case is when you're doing your research, separating what's fact from fiction is sometimes difficult because as the years progress, the story changes. But yeah, to your point, the police allegedly searched the house completely top to bottom and there was nobody there. And you might say to yourself, well, why would Linda have them search again if she already knew no one was there? But you make an excellent point. Keep him busy, Keep his mind moving. Keep him occupied. And you never know, right? So I understand the rationale. Again, I'm sure if she had to do it over again, Detective Arndt would have chosen to do it differently. But it is what it is. Contamination,

you want to keep it to a minimum. In this case, the key piece of evidence, which was John Bonnet, was severely contaminated. Well, get this. So the initial detective or the initial police officer came in, searched the house. He thought that the door was locked. And then Fleet White, when he arrived, also searched the house. And he also went down to the basement and he also opened the door to the wine cellar.

And he said he looked in and he didn't see anything. But that was earlier in the morning. So it could have been that there wasn't enough natural light in the hallway. So that's why John saw her when, you know, it was afternoon, whereas Fleet searched, you know, probably around eight o'clock in the morning and there wasn't as much sun. But it's just crazy to me that two people stood outside that door before she was found and find her. And do you think it's odd that Linda told John Ramsey to search the house from top to bottom?

And as she says, he went straight for the basement. Knowing what we know now, I think that there's people listening right now going, of course, of course it is strange. Why would he search the basement? Right. But again, he could have went upstairs. And if she was upstairs and I try not to look too much into something, I try to just see it for what it is.

I don't know why he went to the basement. Right. Right. Let's say, for example, real quick. Okay. Purely hypothetical for the people out there who think John Ramsey had something to do with the death of his daughter. Right. If you're in that camp, if I'm John Ramsey had something to do with the death of his daughter, right? If you're in that camp, if I'm John Ramsey, I'm not going to the basement first. I'm going the opposite direction of where I know the victim is to try to throw off the detective. That's what I'm doing, right? I'm making it seem like I'm oblivious to what's going on. I'm going to search in some cabinets, search other places before ending up in the location where I know the body is. I'm not going right there because of this exact reason that you're looking at me right

now, right? I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do the opposite. So for those people in that camp, don't go there automatically because there's two ways to interpret it. You could say, well, clearly he knew, or you could easily say, clearly he didn't know. Yeah, because like we're saying right now, that's really suspicious that it's the first place he went and that's where she happened to be.

But wouldn't he know it's going to look suspicious if I go the first place and she's there? Yeah, let's keep in mind, John Ramsey is not a dumb guy. He's not. I don't care what your opinions are of him. You don't get into the position you're in being a dumb guy. So again, depending on what you believe, what I'm saying to our listeners is don't automatically go there because I could easily explain it away as to why it would be the exact spot he wouldn't go first if he was involved. Okay. So when John Ramsey brought Jean Benet up, Linda said that both of Jean Benet's arms were raised above her head, motionless.

Her lips were blue and her body appeared to be in rigor mortis and her skin was cool to the touch. She was wearing white cotton pajama pants and a long sleeved white cotton top. Her feet were bare and drained of color. As Linda was close to Jean Benet making these observations, she detected the smell of decay, at which point she told John Ramsey that his daughter was dead. And, you know, he moaned. He reacted to this. Linda told John to go call 911, and then she too picked up the body and moved it once again, this time into the living room

next to the Christmas tree. Well, Stephanie, before you continue, I want to stop you right there because you brought up the ABC interview earlier, right? Yeah. And that interview is about 12 minutes. Strongly recommend you guys check that out. In that interview, there's a moment where Linda Arndt is talking to the interviewer, and she brings up that very moment that you just described, the moment where before JonBenet is moved to the living room under the tree, there's the moment where her and JonRamsay up at each other and they're very close quarters and they're looking eye to eye. And she said that in that moment, she, she wore a shoulder holster back then. And she felt herself kind of feel for that shoulder host holster. And she consciously counted the 18 rounds in her gun. You know, She was thinking about those rounds in her gun and the interviewer asked her why. And she said, don't quote me, it's not a direct quote, but she said,

because I didn't think when the police arrived that we'd all still be alive. Didn't she say like, I looked in his eyes and he looked in mine and I felt like he knew I just put it together or something like that? I don't remember. I don't know if she said that exactly. I know that was my interpretation of it. I don't know if she said that exactly. I know that was my interpretation of it. I don't know if she said in the interview that he knew I knew. I think there was just a moment where based on his look,

she felt something. And again, we're, you know, I don't want to put words in her mouth, but it's kind of hard to misinterpret that. She felt at that moment based on the reaction she got from John that she had just put something together and possibly it was going to result in a bigger altercation in the house because now she knew something she

wasn't supposed to know. I mean, I don't think you can misinterpret that. And the interview goes on to say, why? Did you feel that the killer of John Menae Ramsey was still in the house? And she's like, absolutely. Never wavered. That's how she feels. And this is the only investigator that was on scene at that time. So that was a really compelling moment in that interview for me. Yeah, we should link the YouTube video of that interview in the show notes so everybody can check it out for themselves. Absolutely. Yeah, I strongly recommend you guys go hear it, you know, directly as they say from the horse's mouth. I mean, it's when you hear it yourself and you hear how fearful she was, even in this interview, you know, kind of rethinking about it, you know, going back to that moment, you can tell it's genuine for her. And I found it very believable.

Personally, I found what she was saying very believable. So definitely go check that out. Just a minute after this, John Ramsey asked Linda if he could cover Jean Benet with a blanket. And before she had the chance to answer, he grabbed a throw off of one of the living room chairs and placed it over the body of his daughter. Now, Linda says that she told John that he could say goodbye to Jean Benet, but he should not move her. He should not touch her hands or adjust the blanket at all. And at this point, he knelt on the floor next to her body. He called her his little angel. He stroked her hair and then he laid down beside her, placing an arm around her body. And he made sounds like he was crying,

although Linda made a point of saying that she personally didn't see any tears. At this point, Linda testified that John told her it had to be an inside job, meaning it had to be someone that they knew since no one knew about the wine cellar in the basement besides those who were close to them and had been invited into their home. Then Patsy was brought in, supported by her friends physically, and she immediately went over to her daughter and laid on top of her. Patsy then raised herself onto her knees, stuck her arms straight into the air, and shouted, Jesus, you raised Lazarus from the dead. Raise my baby from the dead. So let's talk about what

made the Ramseys so suspicious to some in the Boulder Police Department from the beginning. First of all, within an hour or two of finding his daughter's body, John Ramsey was overheard by Detective Bill Palmer while he was on the phone making plans to fly to Atlanta either that afternoon or that evening. Why would that be suspicious, Derek? Well, I mean, I don't think it has to be that deep. You know, he's just learned that his daughter has been killed and he's making plans to fly to another state. Doesn't make sense to me, obviously. I don't think that makes sense to a lot of people. Do you know if they ever asked him about that? Like, what was his rationale

behind that? I don't think that they did. I don't think they directly asked him what his rationale was behind that, since, as you know, they didn't make themselves available to the police initially to be interviewed. So it was several months later. And I think by that point, when the police finally sat them down to interview them, there was probably other more important or relevant things that they wanted to discuss, because I do believe the Ramseys put a time limit on the interview, didn't they? Yeah. And then there was a point where they just said that unless they were given all the information regarding the case, like't they? Yeah. And then there was a point where they just said that unless they were given all the information regarding the case, like where they currently were in the investigation, they weren't going to speak anymore. And regards to the Atlanta thing, you know, I'd be interested

to hear what John had to say about it because, you know, I think you could interpret it like he, you know, was making plans to go to Atlanta for business or something. I'm assuming that wasn't the case. They were originally from Atlanta. So is it possible he wanted to go there because he was planning on bringing JonBenet there to be buried? I know that's what eventually happened. I don't know. I would love to be a fly on the wall to listen to that conversation, to hear the context of the conversation, and not just the fact that a call was made about a trip to Atlanta? I mean, John Mene's funeral ended up being held in Atlanta. She ended up being buried there. So maybe he was, I don't know. The only thing I can think of that would make it seem not suspicious

is in his head, he's broken. He has no concept of what to do. He feels useless. He feels powerless. And he's like, okay, let me start making the funeral arrangements. Not maybe thinking or putting two and two together, like this is an active police investigation. I'm most likely going to be a suspect since I live in this house. I mean, that's pretty normal. And they're probably going to want to talk to me. And me trying to flee the state might look bad. Yeah, absolutely. And just a double back, you know, because there's so much to cover and there's so many things that we probably won't dive into that people, you know, are going to say, oh, I wish we would have talked more about that. But just about the specifics of

JonBenet, you know, many of your listeners and I should say your viewers or our listeners may know what rigor mortis is, but for anyone who doesn't, when a human being or an animal, anybody, a living creature dies, within a few hours, the body usually stiffens up. And I can tell you from, unfortunately, from personal experience, it could be to the point where whatever position they were in when they died, like as you're moving them, you physically can't get them out of that position. It sometimes becomes complicated when you're trying to move a body. And that usually lasts, depending on the situation, for about 72 hours. And that's important because if you find someone who's deceased and their body is still mobile, it could mean one of two things. And this is when other elements come in, but it could mean that they just passed away, or it could mean that they've been dead longer than

72 hours. You'll be able to tell that in conjunction with some other things called lividity, which is the settling of blood in the body causes bruising. But in this particular situation, knowing what we know that JonBenet was seen alive the night before, it's highly suggestive that she had only been dead for a few hours at that point. Yes. And I did just kind of look it up. And it says John was confronted by police who heard him call his pilot. And he said to police he had an important meeting in Atlanta that he couldn't miss. So I'm a little confused about that, considering that they were supposed to be flying to like Michigan that day. Yeah. If that's true, I'd almost like to believe it's not true.

I'd almost like to believe it's not true because it doesn't make sense based on what their plans were, like you just said, but also you just found out your daughter was killed. Who cares about any meeting you had? Like I would be the last thing on my mind. So I won't dive into it. My personal opinion is if it's true, it's wrong. I wouldn't be thinking about that as a father. But I would be willing to bet John Ramsey, if he was here right now, would dispute that allegation, that that's what his response was. It also seems that his lawyer, his family lawyer was in Atlanta.

I mean, yeah, but they could have flown the lawyer out to them. Well, when he wasn't able to fly to Atlanta, he did within a few hours because it looks like this phone call to the plane happened at 140. Okay. Yeah. So pretty early in the day too. So within the hour after finding his daughter's body and then trying to get on a plane to Atlanta where, you know, he says he has an important meeting that he can't miss. And then when that doesn't work within just a few hours, he does hire a lawyer in Colorado. Yeah. And there's a lot of ways that can be taken to some people just prefer to have a lawyer there to represent them. You know, it's again, I can see your wheels turning. I can see I can hear our listeners and there's a lot of ways to go with that. And I think that's to your point why some people in the police department at this point are starting to become curious about the Ramseys and their whereabouts the night before and who they are as people. And

I think that's normal. I think as a detective, everybody is a suspect until proven otherwise, and the Ramseys were no different. Well, we also have that ransom letter, obviously three pages long, which was discovered to have been written in the middle of a pad of paper that was found in the Ramsey home. The pen used to write the note was also tracked back to the Ramsey home, and that was found placed back note was also tracked back to the Ramsey home, and that was found placed back in its normal place by the phone. There was one other page in the notepad that had been written on with just a few words. I think it said Mr. and Mrs. I or something, and many believe that this was a draft of the ransom letter, a false start or a mistake that, you know, caused the author to have to start over. The Boulder

police had requested handwriting samples from John, Patsy, Burke, and several other people in the vicinity of John Bonnet. And when the samples were compared to the ransom note, a handwriting analysis would later rule out John and Burke, but it could not rule out Patsy Ramsey. Many people have given their own opinion on this note and whether or not Patsy Ramsey. Many people have given their own opinion on this note and whether or not Patsy Ramsey was the one who wrote it. Sina Wong, she's a forensic handwriting expert. She believes that Patsy did write the note disguising her handwriting. Wong spent three weeks examining 100 examples of Patsy Ramsey's handwriting and the ransom note, and she found 200 similarities between Patsy's handwriting and the

handwriting in the letter. And she claims that the writing on the first page is sort of slow and awkward, but into the second and third page, it becomes more fluid and natural. And in her experience, it's hard to conceal your real handwriting for an extended period of time. You can do it successfully for maybe a few paragraphs, but after a while, your natural handwriting style will peek through because it's not natural for people to write differently than they do every single day. And as compelling as, you know, that handwriting analysis was, it's worth noting there was three other handwriting experts who couldn't definitively tie the ransom note handwriting to Patsy Ramsey's handwriting. So, you know, it's not a science. It's just sort of, I don't even think it's legally considered in court all of the time.

But overall, I found it very fascinating. It's interesting to see how multiple different people can look at the same evidence or the same thing and get different kind of, I don't know, synapses or opinions from it. Yeah, absolutely. And I think also it's, you know, using samples that, you know, in a lot of cases they'll have the, you know, witness or potential suspect, they'll have them write out a sample for comparative, you know, analysis, but, you know, someone could alter their handwriting in that moment. So it's always good when you can go back to writings that were written prior to the incident, you know, as far back as possible, because they're going to be the most authentic. But very, it's very interesting stuff. And again, you know, starting to get into the facts, these are experts who are analyzing these handwriting

samples. It's her stationery, it's her pen. This is evidence. This is hard evidence right here that really can only be interpreted a few ways. It is suggestive that this note was possibly, possibly written by Patsy because of these facts and circumstances. So I can definitely see where some of the law enforcement officials were starting to turn their attention to Patsy and John because the evidence was taken in there, especially when it came to the letter. Additionally, certain words used in the note seemed to point to the Ramseys, specifically the phrase and hence. Even the word hence, I think we can both admit, is not super commonly used. I can't remember the last time I've used it

in conversation or heard it used in conversation, but the two words together, and hence, it's not super commonly used. Like, I can't remember the last time I've used it in conversation or heard it used in conversation, but the two words together, and hence, it's not even the proper way to use those words, since hence is a transition word. It's sort of intended to be used in place of and, you know, you don't say and hence, so you really don't often hear them used together. On December 14th, 1997, there was a memorial service for Jean Benet held at the family church. And in the program that was given out at this memorial service, there was a message from the Ramsey family. And part of that message is as follows, quote, had there been no birth of Christ, there would be no hope of eternal life and hence no hope of ever being with our loved ones again, end quote. So it should just say no hope of eternal life, hence no hope of ever being with

our loved ones again. So this is really just not common to say. So Patsy, who, I mean, I assume she wrote this in the program and the author of the ransom note used the words and hence together. And much later, Patsy Ramsey actually addresses her usage of these words together in the book she wrote about her daughter's death. And she claims she has no idea why she used the phrase. And she said it was probably because she'd seen it so much in the ransom note, which I mean, I guess that's plausible. What do you think? It's possible. Again, regardless of what we think is, to tell Patsy what she was thinking or why she did something, it's a slippery slope.

You may not believe her, but that's what she's saying. And unfortunately, there's nothing again, I know I sound like a broken record, to discredit what she's saying. It's her own personal opinion of why. Right. So you can't prove or disprove. No.

No point to getting us caught up on it because it's speculation. So then hours, just hours after their daughter's body was found the same day, the Ramseys lured up and they each hired their own separate attorney. In your experience, why would a married couple feel the need to be represented by different lawyers? This was something I didn't understand. I think I would have to know the dynamic of the family more. I'm sure affluent family, they probably had individuals that they felt comfortable with. You see this very often in a divorce, obviously, but they're separate in that situation. I don't understand why they would hire different lawyers. That's something that there's probably a reasonable explanation for. He probably had someone he really trusted. She had someone she trusted. It also could be a situation where

this is a high profile case. This is going to have a lot of eyes on it. And they wanted individual lawyers to focus on them both as individuals individuals because the reality is they probably knew at this point they were both individually being looked at as suspects. And some detectives may feel that Patsy was involved. Some may feel John was involved. There's a real scenario where one of the two parents was involved with the death without the other one knowing. So maybe they felt that was the best legal strategy to give them the highest level of a defense. So I forget what I was watching. It was, I think it might have even been on Investigation Discovery, a documentary about this.

It was in three parts. It was very well done. But in this documentary I watched, it was, I believe it was a retired detective who said he believed that they did this because sort of of a conflict of interest. So that they couldn't, I guess, be turned against each other. Does that make sense? Well, clearly there would be an attorney-client privilege. I think that would apply whether it was both of them being represented by the same person or two different people. But as I just said earlier, I think there was some type of legal strategy there. They wanted to avoid a certain situation if it went to a trial. And that was probably the reasoning behind it. But isn't it strange now that you said it like

that? Because I think that that's probably the reason sort it. But isn't it strange now that you said it like that? Because I think that that's probably the reason sort of like to have this continuity of representation throughout any, you know, possible legal proceedings, legal battles, court dates, things like that. So why would you be assuming just within hours of finding your daughter dead that you're going to be embroiled in, you know, legal matters. Do you think it's normal or I don't know, I guess, do you think it's suspicious at all that they lawyered up so quickly? Maybe, but I also think it could be a situation where they might be looking at the facts of the case, might be seeing what the detectives are seeing and saying, wow, I know I would be able to, you know, like, even if I wasn't a former cop, like this does not look good for me and my wife. This is not looking good. You know, this is, I've seen the movies. I see how this plays out. You know, they're both again, intelligent,

well-off people. A lawyer for them is not a big deal. They have them on standby. They're on the Rolodex and, you know, they probably they probably wanted to play it safe and said, listen, we can already see the looks we're getting from maybe not only their friends and family, but also the investigators that were there and read the room and were like, you know what, we need to have legal representation here. It may have even been because of some of the questions they were already being asked. Yeah. I mean, if you're kind of wealthy and you're kind of in the know in the business world, maybe that's just your initial thought. You know, I'm nobody. So if something

like that happened to me, my first thought wouldn't be, let me go get a lawyer. But this is John Ramsey. He has business interests. He's got stuff at stake. So his first thought may be like, yeah, I know this looks suspicious. I haven't done anything, but in case I become a target of the Boulder Police Department, I want to make sure I'm covered. Yeah. And to be fair to them, and this goes for anybody out there, you know, having legal representation should not be a sign of guilt. It's actually very smart. When we read you your rights, Miranda rights, that's what we're, you know, whether you can afford one or not, one will be appointed for you at no cost to you. And so if I were arrested tomorrow or under any suspicion, whether I was innocent or guilty,

I would have a lawyer there as well. So I have no issue with it from that standpoint. I think it's smart, especially if it's someone that they know and trust and they chose the strategy that they chose as far as the two lawyers. And again, it doesn't, you know, that doesn't raise too many red flags for me. So everything kind of broke down almost initially, you know, nobody was really talking to anybody. And I believe out of like the people who are close to the Ramseys, there was only one person that ever spoke to like the public and the press, and that was Judith Smith. And she said that everybody in the friend

group, I don't want to say that the Ramseys told her directly, but she just kind of had the feeling in the friend group, it was clear that no one should be talking to the police or the press. But Judith, who sassily says she never does what she's told, she did sit down with the police twice. And after that, she claims she was iced out. Nobody talked to her. They just didn't affiliate or associate with her anymore. And we are going to have to end it here because we're going quite long. But when we come back, we're going to talk about whether or not the Ramseys did cooperate with police right off the bat. We're going to talk about what part the press played in not only the early days of the investigation, but in this case in

general. This was a field day for the press. They love this kind of stuff. And anybody who watches my channel knows how much I hate the press and the media who just kind of give the families of these victims and just the victims themselves no privacy in the beginning. But Boulder police also found themselves hitting wall after wall. No one wanted to talk. And we're going to talk about that. And we're also going to go over, because obviously, I mean, we want to talk about how the Ramseys have been viewed under a lens of suspicion since this happened, because that's a fact. They have been. Whether or not they did it, whether or not they were involved, we can't deny or do a podcast about John Bonnet Ramsey without discussing that. It's just a matter of fact. It's a fact of this case. But next time, we're going to talk about how,

I think it was three or four months after this investigation started, the DA, the district attorney, brought in another detective, a seasoned homicide detective from Colorado Springs, which I guess sees more murders than Boulder did. So this guy is going to come in and he's going to have a completely different viewpoint of what happened in this case and what happened to John Bonet. So we're going to get deep into that and we're going to talk about multiple suspects that have come out over the years and been at one time or another, you know, suspected of being involved with her horrendous death. Yeah. There's a lot, there's a lot to this case left. I mean, we're going to talk about the turmoil between the police department and the DA's office and how they weren't on the same page. We're going to talk about leaks to the press that led to the firing of employees within, you know, government agencies.

You know, we're going to talk about extortion plots where people were trying to get, you know, money out of people for photos and all these different things. And so there's a lot to cover here. And there's a lot of twists and turns that we haven't even scratched the surface of yet, in addition to the other potential suspects, one of which, a little teaser here, admitted to killing JonBenet Ramsey. So there's a lot to get into and I'm looking forward to it, but we will have to wait for that next week because we're pushing close to two hours here on this one. This is a record for a crime weekly as far as length of one podcast, for sure. And it's midnight here.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we got a lot to cover. We can't wait to get into it with you guys. We appreciate everything so far, all the support. We're seeing social media. We're seeing the charts. Crime Weekly is doing incredible and we couldn't do it without you guys. We love interacting with you. We hope you're enjoying this process as we kind of figure out what we want to be going forward as a podcast. And we love interacting with you. We hope you're enjoying this process as we kind of figure out, uh, what we want to be going forward as a podcast. And we, we love the, uh, the constructive criticism we received and, you know, we're going to continue to grow together. So we appreciate you guys going along for the ride. If you want to follow along with us again, as always, you can go to at crime weekly pod on all of our social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Uh, you can go to at Crime Weekly Pod on all of our social media platforms, Instagram,

Facebook, Twitter. You can also head on over to crimeweeklypodcast.com. We have an ability for you to contact us and leave a written message, or you can leave a verbal message, which we've actually already gotten a couple from you guys. We appreciate that. Stephanie and I have both listened to them. Some of them are recommendations for cases, so we're not necessarily going to put them in the show now, but we have made note of them and we heard about your case suggestions and some of them are really good. So thank you for that as well. Stephanie, I'll leave you the floor. Thank you guys so much for being here today. I know this was a long one. I know we did a lot of talking, but hopefully you got something new out of it and hopefully you can kind kind of look at it from both perspectives, because that's really what we want.

We want everybody to look at this as you would if you were investigating an actual case. And hopefully if you were investigating a case, you would look at things from both sides so that you could find the actual solution or the actual suspect and not just kind of cave into public opinions. So thank you for bringing that up, because I am giving a different opinion on a lot of things. And I want anyone to kill the messenger here, but I think it's important to present all sides, not just the side that's maybe the most popular. And that's what that's what we're doing, which is different from a lot of the programs out there. And that's important. Yeah. I mean, I know that everybody's sitting here thinking like, what is Derek working for the Rams? He is, you know, how much do they pay him

off to, you know, approach it with such, I don't know, generosity or unbiasedness. Is that a word unbiasedness? But that's what, that's what he has to do. He was a cop. That's what you want cops to do. You don't want to be in the positions of the Ramseys and be innocent and have every single person out to get them. And they do ignore other evidence and they do ignore other avenues. So this is what you really want to see in law enforcement is somebody looking at things from both sides. And I think he did that very, very well. I leave you with this saying, I'd rather see a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted of a crime they didn't commit. And we see too often, because even one is one too many, where individuals are arrested, tried in a court of law, and it's later discovered that they had nothing to do with the incident. And so again, it's important to stay

impartial, objective, and let the evidence guide the case. And that's what we're doing here. So hope you guys can respect that. That was deep, man. I want to like put it on my MySpace page. We'll see you guys next week. Crime Weekly, presented by i-D, is a co-production by Audioboom and Main Event Media.