Post Mortem | JonBenét Ramsey

Summary

Post Mortem | JonBenét Ramsey - Detailed Summary

Introduction to the JonBenét Ramsey Case

In the episode titled "Post Mortem | JonBenét Ramsey," CBS News' "48 Hours" delves deep into the unresolved and highly publicized case of JonBenét Ramsey, a six-year-old beauty queen who was murdered in her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado, in December 1996. Hosted by Ann Marie Green, the episode brings together seasoned journalist Aaron [Last Name] (Erin Moriarty) and producer Mary Murphy to discuss two decades of investigation, media coverage, and the latest developments in the case.

Historical Coverage and Access

Aaron Kelly, a correspondent with over 20 years covering the case, reflects on his initial interaction with JonBenét’s parents in 2002. At that time, public opinion was heavily biased against John and Patsy Ramsey, influenced by tabloid rumors and widespread conspiracy theories.

Jason Kelly (04:32): "She was very, very strong. She had to be. And I think it's because she was going through cancer... she really wanted them to find who killed her daughter."

Kelly emphasizes that "48 Hours" distinguished itself by focusing on factual evidence rather than sensationalism, which paved the way for gaining unprecedented access to the Ramsey family during a tumultuous period marked by Patsy Ramsey's battle with cancer.

Consideration of the Intruder Theory

A significant focus of the episode is the exploration of the intruder theory. Kelly recounts how early evidence suggested the possibility of an outside intruder, challenging the initial suspicion cast on the Ramsey parents.

Jason Kelly (07:28): "A lot of the things we were hearing, they just weren't accurate."

The team was particularly influenced by Lou Smit, a former DA investigator who publicly supported the Ramsey family's innocence and provided insights into how an intruder could have breached the home. Smit’s credibility and shift in perspective were pivotal in reevaluating the case dynamics.

New Developments and Interview with John Ramsey

One of the episode's highlights is a recent interview with John Ramsey, JonBenét’s father. After a long hiatus, Kelly reconnects with Ramsey, who remains steadfast in his quest for justice.

Erin Moriarty (08:48): "After 28 years, what do you want done now?"

Ramsey expresses hope that advancements in genetic genealogy could finally break the case open. He advocates for transferring existing DNA evidence to advanced labs like Othram to develop profiles compatible with extensive genealogy databases.

John Ramsey (08:52): "There is an answer."

Kelly discusses the skepticism surrounding the Boulder Police Department's current efforts, juxtaposing it with Ramsey’s unwavering belief in finding the culprit through modern DNA techniques.

Discussion on Genetic Genealogy

Genetic genealogy emerges as a crucial tool in the renewed investigation efforts. Ramsey is optimistic that even decades-old DNA evidence, when reprocessed, could lead to identifying his daughter’s killer.

Jason Kelly (09:50): "He has been told that a lab might be able to put this DNA in a format that can be put into a public database that we're all kind of familiar with."

Despite the police department’s dismissal of additional DNA testing, Ramsey remains committed to exploring every possible avenue to achieve closure for his family and ensure justice is served.

Examination of Other Suspects

The episode also revisits other suspects who have come under scrutiny over the years. Notably, Gary Oliva, a convicted sex offender, was investigated four years post-murder but ultimately dismissed due to mismatched DNA evidence.

Jason Kelly (13:29): "Interviewing a man like Gary Oliva was eye-opening because it's the part of our world that you don't want to think exists... but I thought it was important for people to hear and see him."

Kelly shares his unsettling experience interviewing Oliva, highlighting the disturbing reality of potential perpetrators lurking within the community, even though none have matched the DNA evidence.

Additionally, another suspect, John Mark Har, admitted to killing JonBenét but was released when his confession lacked corroborative evidence, such as the absence of drugs in JonBenét's system, contradicting his claims of accidental death.

Jason Kelly (16:13): "His DNA did not match the DNA from the crime scene."

The Cultural Context: Child Beauty Pageants

A significant aspect of the discussion addresses the role of child beauty pageants in the case's midstream and how it fueled suspicions toward Patsy Ramsey. Critics argued that the pageants exemplified an unhealthy mother-daughter relationship, contributing to public distrust.

John Ramsey (17:35): "I was torn. I didn't like it. But I knew that JonBenét and Patsy did love doing it together."

Kelly and Ramsey provide context, explaining that the pageants were a shared passion and a bonding activity between Patsy and JonBenét, underscoring that their participation was based on mutual love rather than manipulation.

Current Status and Hope for Resolution

As the episode draws to a close, Kelly emphasizes the enduring impact of the case on all involved, particularly the Ramsey family. John Ramsey remains resolute in his pursuit of justice, motivated not for personal closure but to liberate his family from the lingering cloud of suspicion.

John Ramsey (20:03): "Finding the killer isn't going to change my life at this point, but it will change the lives of my children and my grandchildren."

Kelly expresses his own frustration and sadness over the case's stagnation, advocating for continued efforts to prevent such tragedies in the future.

Jason Kelly (21:24): "No child should die in her own home and that killer go free."

Conclusion

"Post Mortem | JonBenét Ramsey" offers a comprehensive and empathetic examination of one of America’s most perplexing and heartbreaking cases. Through thoughtful analysis, exclusive interviews, and a commitment to uncovering the truth, "48 Hours" underscores the importance of perseverance in the quest for justice and the profound effects unresolved cases have on families and society.

Transcript

[Jason Kelly]

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Welcome back to another episode of Postmortem. I'm your host Ann Marie Green, and today we're discussing the unsolved case of JonBenet Ramsey. Joining me now is 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty. Aaron, you have been covering this for 20 over 20 years, and of course, producer Mary Murphy. We have a lot to discuss, including a new interview that Aaron did with John Ramsey, JonBenet's father, and the latest developments on the investigation. So let's get going. Welcome.

[Jason Kelly]

And I am so happy to be here to talk about this. I really care about this case.

[Ann Marie Green]

Thanks so much for having us.

[Alex Rodriguez]

But first, I want to remind you guys, if you have not listened to the 48 Hours episode yet, you can find the full audio version just below this episode on your podcast feed. So go and take a listen and. And then come on back so you can join our discussion. All right, Aaron, like I said, you've been covering this case for over two decades. You first spoke to JonBenet's parents, Jon and Patsy Ramsey, back in 2002. That was just six years after JonBenet was murdered. And it was a really interesting time. The murder was rife with speculation and conspiracy theories, and the Ramses were right in the middle of that. Why do you think they were so willing to talk to 48 Hours?

[Jason Kelly]

Well, in a way, in 2002, 48 Hours and the team that I worked with, we were a bit of outliers because they actually did polls back then and showed that most people in America thought that John and Patsy Ramsey had something to do with it. But we had really been looking at the real facts, not the rumors, not the things that appeared in the tabloids. And we were really open to the idea. There was a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that an intruder could have come in the home. And so they opened their doors to us, and we got incredible access. You know, at that time, Patsy was undergoing chemotherapy again. You know, her cancer had come back. And she took us and showed us her paintings that. That showed great pain. And then the other thing that I will never forget, she did the interview with makeup and a wig, as I learned. And then after the cameras are off, she flips off the wig, and there she is. You know what? She's bald.

[Alex Rodriguez]

Wow.

[Jason Kelly]

And it really told you what she was going through. But she also said many times, that's nothing compared to losing a child. I may have cancer, but the real pain is losing a child.

[Alex Rodriguez]

I think that's so interesting because she, in particular, was the one that took a lot of heat. There was a lot of suspicion towards her, and she could have easily displayed all that she was going through in order to get some sympathy, but she chose not to.

[Jason Kelly]

She was very, very strong. She had to be. And I think it's because she was going through cancer. There's no question she could have called for sympathy. In fact, what she was most vocal about was finding the killer of her daughter. That's what you'll see in the interview is that she really wanted them to find who killed her daughter.

[Alex Rodriguez]

Right. Why was 48 hours so convinced that taking a look at the possibility of an outside intruder was the way to go?

[Ann Marie Green]

Well, I think there are so many different reasons, including the strength of Aaron's reporting and also her producer, Doug Longhini, who predates all of my involvement and my hat is off to him as well. But the other, I think, very compelling thing about this episode and the work that Doug and Aaron did was Lou Smit, who was the investigator for the DA's office and interrogated John Ramsey very thoroughly and basically came away from it saying, I find John believable. And then he went on to quit the DA's office and began to work with the Ramseys. I mean, a guy like that with this incredible track record kind of switching sides in a way was very compelling. And Lou Smith demonstrates exactly how an intruder could have gotten in, which also wasn't being talked about or looked at at the time.

[Jason Kelly]

There's a lot of reasons why we were very open to the idea of an intruder. One of it is that we learned the way the child died, which was initially with a garrotte. And as Lou Smit pointed out, there's no other case he had ever come across where a parent had used a garrotte on a child. I think another thing was it really struck me when Patsy said to me almost angrily at one point, saying I was dealing with stage four cancer, I was not sure I would have more time with my children. You really think I was gonna get upset because my child wet her bed? That made so much sense to me as a mother. And the other thing is, a lot of people say how could that happen with the parents being in the house? And I was in the house with Doug Longhini, that producer, and he was in the parents bedroom and I was in JonBenet's bedroom and I yelled. I mean, you know, I have a voice and I yelled at the top of my V. He could hear nothing. And so again, that made me realize that a lot of the things we were hearing, they just weren't accurate.

[Alex Rodriguez]

I mean, you know, I remember when this case sort of exploded. And so I remember myself consuming all of this stuff and the conclusions that I was coming to. And then watching this hour again, I.

[Jason Kelly]

Just thought it's so obvious.

[Alex Rodriguez]

It is so easy to get in the garage. Of course, I mean, you'd have to practice to make something like that. Who's practicing that? You can't help but to think that, you know, maybe this would have been solved if the focus wasn't so much on the parents as a suspect. In fact, you have a new interview with John Ramsey. What was it like to sit down with him again?

[Jason Kelly]

Well, you know, I had stayed in touch, like through email. This was the longest time I hadn't spoken to him. So I was a little worried that for this show I. And then I heard right back, literally like within minutes, you know, we've told every single angle of this story. John and Patsy Ramsey have believed that we are fair. And so it was wonderful that he was willing to sit down and talk about today.

[Alex Rodriguez]

I want to play a clip, a part of the interview that you did with John. It wasn't in the show but he's talking about his hopes for the continued investigation here. In particular, he's talking about genetic genealogy and the way in which that may help to find his daughter's killer.

[Jason Kelly]

So after 28 years, what do you want done now?

[Erin Moriarty]

I want the police to take all the evidence and give it to an othram labs, an outside expert, state of the art DNA lab. Let them develop a profile that's compatible with, with the genealogy database that's out there. Huge database. Then do the genealogy research and see if we can find a relative that lived in Boulder, Colorado in 1996, December 1996 and go from there. That will solve the case if we can get that sample and do the research.

[Jason Kelly]

Do you believe that 28 years after your daughter was murdered you can still find out who killed her?

[Erin Moriarty]

I do.

[Alex Rodriguez]

So what does John Ramsey think can be done with this DNA?

[Jason Kelly]

Well, first we have to point out that we don't know what the Boulder Police Department has done because they are not sane at this point. But John Ramsey said that he has been told that genetic genealogy might at some point be able to work for him. He has spoken to people who work in labs. There is DNA in this case. It does not match anyone in the Ramsey family. But he has been told because it was mixed with his daughter's blood that it is not currently in the kind of format that would be necessary to go in the public databases. I was surprised. Well, if there isn't enough to go in a public database, how did it ever go in coda? So CODIS is the FBI database that contains the DNA of offenders, you know, people usually who are in prison. And so there were enough markers, it was a sufficient DNA profile to go into codis but not enough for the public databases according to what John Ramsey has been told. But he wants the Boulder Police Department to turn to a private lab. Sometimes the city and state and county labs don't have those facilities. And he believes because he's been told, I don't know how accurate it is, but he has been told that a lab might be able to put this DNA in a format that can be put into a public database that we're all kind of familiar with. GEDMatch or 23andMe.

[Ann Marie Green]

And just to underscore, the Boulder Department is still saying they've pursued everything, including DNA testing and to suggest otherwise is false.

[Jason Kelly]

Exactly. Just In November of 2024, they the Boulder Police Department issued a press release that said the assertion that there is viable evidence and leads we are not pursuing to include DNA testing is completely false.

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[Alex Rodriguez]

Welcome back. So although much of the police investigation really focused on John and Patsy Ramsey, there were other suspects. Four years after the murder, Boulder police investigated convicted sex offender Gary Oliva, who frequented the area near the Ramsey home. But he was later dismissed as a suspect. His DNA didn't match the evidence at the scene. But Aaron, you interviewed him?

[Jason Kelly]

I did. And one of the reasons why he really caught our eye, and maybe the Boulder Police Department was because he showed up at one of those candlelight ceremonies that would happen on the date that JonBenet had been murdered. We knew he was sitting in a jail and we went to visit him. He agreed to speak to us. And I don't know how else to describe it, but just I was so disturbed by the interview. I'm a mother of a child that was just a slightly older than JonBenet at the time. And this was a guy who admitted he had been obsessed with JonBenet and that she came to him after she died. This was a man who had told a friend that he had hurt a child and he had a history. He had already served time for a crime involving a child. And so I, I think working this case was eye opening for me. Interviewing a man like Gary Oliva was eye opening because it's the part of our world that you don't want to think exists. But I thought it was important for people to hear and see him. I look at him in this show today and I am still, I don't know how else to put it, but creeped out.

[Ann Marie Green]

Absolutely. And one of the things John Ramsey tells Aaron is that he wished he had been more vigilant about his home security. And you know, in time everyone began to report on the fact that there were more than 20 sex offenders living within a very, you know, short 2 mile range of the Ramsey's house. So that, that tells you something about the area, the climate, everything.

[Jason Kelly]

And he wasn't the only suspect I interviewed. I interviewed a man who lived in his mother's basement and if I had not gone down with a cameraman, I would have been terrified. He had come up as a possible suspect because they thought he had taken one of the candy canes that had been sitting outside the Ramsey home and they said it disappeared after the murder. Not only did he have a shrine to JonBenet, that's why we went to see him, he also had a shrine to John Wayne Gacy, a well known serial killer. Now none of these people that we're talking about there DNA did not match the DNA that was found at the crime scene of JonBenet Ramsey. But the idea that these individuals exist is frightening.

[Alex Rodriguez]

Absolutely. Because you think whoever's responsible for this is sort of a one off, Right? Have there been any arrests in this case?

[Jason Kelly]

There's been one. It was really interesting and how could I, I could never forget it because as you know, I've been on this case a long time. There always seems to be a new development. And there was a man by the name of John Mark Har and he insisted that he did kill JonBenet. So he was arrested, but he was later released because one thing he said was that he had drugged her and accidentally killed her. And according to the autopsy, she did not have drugs in her system. And also again, like the other suspects, his DNA did not match the DNA from the crime scene.

[Alex Rodriguez]

So I remember this case really well. But part of what I remember about the coverage was all the focus on these child beauty pageants. This was a culture I think most people were unfamiliar with. It seems to be uniquely American. I don't know if it happens anywhere else, but, you know, people were questioning why dress little girls up like this, even though it's innocent? That's part of what led people to suspect her mom. Because there was this idea that they had, like, a relationship that was not healthy, that only. Only a mother with an unhealthy relationship with her daughter would parade her daughter around like that.

[Jason Kelly]

John Ramsey, in this current interview, made a real point about that, which I was really grateful for, because he knows there are a lot of people who think that he looks back and he has some regrets. He would not put his child in a beauty pageant today. Now, knowing what he knows now. But he reminds us that, remember, Patsy had just at that point thought she had survived cancer and she wanted to spend every minute she could with her kids. And she had been herself a beauty queen. And it was something that JonBenet loved to do, and it was something the two of them could do together. And so he said, I was torn. I didn't like it. But I knew that JonBenet and Patsy did love doing it together. And I think when you see it from that perspective.

[William Sinclair Moore]

Absolutely.

[Jason Kelly]

You don't see it as problematic. You know, it was a hobby.

[Alex Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Ann Marie Green]

And the pictures, I think they were very professionally done and done by people associated with the pageants. It's not like they were family photos or movies that were being released publicly.

[Alex Rodriguez]

How old would JonBenet be now?

[Jason Kelly]

Oh, it just gets to me. 34 years of age. Mary asked me to ask John, does he ever dream about his daughter? Because I never asked that question. And it was a good question because he said, I do, but I only see her as a 6 year old. I can't imagine her at 34 years of age. As he says, I lived with that child for six years and I still see that child in my head and in my dreams. I thought that was interesting.

[Ann Marie Green]

It was very affecting.

[Jason Kelly]

Yeah.

[Alex Rodriguez]

He's in his 80s now.

[Jason Kelly]

John Ramsey, 81. 81, yes. Remarried. And just the John Ramsey that I've known all these years. He holds all his emotions to himself, but very determined, as he says, why he's speaking out and putting himself out there is he really wants this killer caught. And he says it won't make a difference for his life because he is 81, but it will make a difference. He has three surviving children. He also, he had five children, three from another earlier marriage. And he lost a daughter in a car accident. So for his three surviving children and their children, he really wants his cloud away from the Ramsay family. And also, you know, he wants justice for his daughter.

[Alex Rodriguez]

I want to play a little sound of him explaining why he's keeping up the fight.

[Erin Moriarty]

Finding the killer isn't going to change my life at this point, but it will change the lives of my children and my grandchildren. This cloud needs to be removed from our family's head and this chapter closed for their benefit. So there is an answer.

[Alex Rodriguez]

I'm impressed by his ability to speak about this. He seems incredibly strong.

[Jason Kelly]

He is. I think what's interesting is he's not alone in this. Lou Smith, who was the investigator, has since died. But according to John Ramsey, his family is involved in this investigation. And John Ramsey's son, John Andrew Ramsey, they will take on that fight whatever happens to John. Although John pointed out to us wasn't his mother who lived to be nearly 100. And so he says he's not alone.

[Ann Marie Green]

He's not going anywhere.

[Jason Kelly]

Yeah. Yes. He's not alone. The family is right behind him trying to find who killed JonBenet Ramsey.

[Alex Rodriguez]

Well, I hope he finds the answers. Many people are still very, very interested in this case. It was really fascinating watching your coverage from decades ago. Right.

[Ann Marie Green]

I think it's a real testament to Aaron's reporting and the fairness and accuracy. Always.

[Jason Kelly]

The only thing that surprises me about it is that the case hasn't really changed since we did our reporting in depth. And that makes me sad. I want it for John Ramsey. I want it for all of us, too. No child should die in her own home and that killer go free. And so it's not just for John Ramsey and his family. I think it's for all of us. Whoever killed JonBenet Ramsey should be in prison and not out to ever hurt another child.

[Alex Rodriguez]

Absolutely. Agreed. Thank you so much, ladies.

[Jason Kelly]

Thanks for having us.

[Ann Marie Green]

Pleasure. Thanks.

[Alex Rodriguez]

So if you like this series post mortem, please rate and review 48 hours on Apple Podcasts and then follow 48 hours wherever you get your podcast. You can also listen ad free on the Amazon Music Wondry plus in the Wondry app or with a 48 hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening.

[Erin Moriarty]

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[Jason Kelly]

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[Erin Moriarty]

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