Who killed JonBenet Ramsey?
- Thread starter UK_Dallas
- Start date
I don't think this special was all that well done. Just belabored and dramatized every point, could have summarized both nights in about 5 minutes. And in the end, they did what the Boulder PD did, and that was to groupthink into a convenient conclusion. Yep, he killed her over the pineapple, and his inability to identify the picture of a pineapple in a bowl proves that? That sounds very tenuous to me. I'm not totally convinced of the Ramsey's innocence, but John, Patsy and Burke have all been adamant about their innocence for almost 20 years now, and the DNA evidence does tend to give them some credibility.
There is no way you can watch that CBS special and Burke's interview with Dr. Phil and think anyone but him did it. That kid is a straight sociopath.
I now lean more towards the brother, but you got to be a little careful with these types of shows. Last week there was a three night special on the ID channel that had me walking away thinking the intruder did it. For example, there was a work boot print found downstairs that was never discussed in the CBS documentary (although I didn't see all of the first CBS episode).
Additonally, some of the CBS stuff was a little far fetched. The investigators making sweeping generalizations about the odd interrogation behavior of a 9 year old seemed like a huge stretch. I mean, they were talking about him like he was a rational adult. And the taser test performed on a 250 lb police officer and drawing conclusions on the effects on him vs a 45 lb 6 year old girl was laughable at best.
The CBS thing was persuasive but hardly definitive. The stuff about the window being undisturbed was very interesting, but using that window was just a theory of how an intruder would have gotten in. He could have gotten in other ways as well (unlocked door or other window, perhaps somehow had a key). And again, I always get a little skeptical when they start making behavioral assumptions about interrogations, the ransom notes, a 911 sounding "rehearsed". Those are all nothing more than opinions and don't really meant anything at all.
To me the family's actions toward investigators, then and now, is almost as telling as the evidence.
In 96 instead of cooperating with authorities immediately, doing everything they could to help, including helping to eliminate themselves as suspects, they spoke to CNN first.
20 years later another investigation takes place, instead of helping the team find the killer of their daughter, they don't help them, but instead go to speak to Dr Phil. Burke speaks for the first time publicly to him.
In my opinion the family knows who killed her.
We've all said how creepy and warped Burke is, hell, the whole family was warped. Prancing a 6 year old around in beauty pagents acting and dressing provacatively is nuts, Burke smearing **** all over the house, and then the parents apparently stage a crime scene while their daughter lays in front of them dead, carrying on with police and family as they look for Jon Benet all the while the little girl is dead in the basement, thats a scene out of a horror movie.
The crazt *** parents created a crazy *** son.
In 96 instead of cooperating with authorities immediately, doing everything they could to help, including helping to eliminate themselves as suspects, they spoke to CNN first.
20 years later another investigation takes place, instead of helping the team find the killer of their daughter, they don't help them, but instead go to speak to Dr Phil. Burke speaks for the first time publicly to him.
In my opinion the family knows who killed her.
We've all said how creepy and warped Burke is, hell, the whole family was warped. Prancing a 6 year old around in beauty pagents acting and dressing provacatively is nuts, Burke smearing **** all over the house, and then the parents apparently stage a crime scene while their daughter lays in front of them dead, carrying on with police and family as they look for Jon Benet all the while the little girl is dead in the basement, thats a scene out of a horror movie.
The crazt *** parents created a crazy *** son.
Yeah, I'm with you on this one. I was pretty disappointed, especially after watching that OJ docuseries earlier in the year, which was brilliant.
I'm up in the air. As Mac said above, I've watched some things recently that made me think it was an intruder. The detective who came up with the theory was one of the most respected murder investigators in the country. Obviously, the CBS show did a good job arguing it was the brother.
Take what Chad think happened & apply the opposite is the key to figuring out these high profile murder mysteries I've learned.
It's uncanny.
It's uncanny.
I had never seen the brother before. After seeing him, I changed my opinion. I have no doubt his jealousy was key in his dislike for her.
the 'kid' is now 29 years old & has had zero criminal accusations against him (that I know of). does anyone think someone warped enough to murder your little sister will not have antisocial behavior surface sometime in the next 20 years of their lives? Or maybe his parents had him in funny farm psychological care 24/7 since 1996, I dunno....
if I were him I'd be suing CBS & those old people around the table at the end of the show for eleventy billion dollars starting this morning for slander.
It's all really strange, but I try to not hold strange behavior against someone in these situations. No one ever knows how they would react to this type of stuff - there seems to be this idealized standard for appropriate behavior and everyone just assumes they'd react that way. But no one really knows. It's why I tend to roll my eyes when I hear "Oh, well, So and So should have been so much more visibly upset when he heard his wife died". It's kind of BS.
I'm more surprised that in all these years, no one in the family has accidentally spilled the beans or told someone else the truth, if there was something to be known. Burke seems like a weird dude, but I think it's telling that he didn't give anything up during all the interrogations as a 9 and 10 year old. I don't care how well he was coached, I find it hard to imagine that a kid that young wouldn't get tripped up by seasoned interrogators. And while some of his answers and behavior seemed odd, they could just as easily be explained as being from a 10 year old kid. 10 year olds are odd to begin with. But he never said or did anything definitive, which I think would be hard to do as a 10 year old keeping a secret.
The son whacks her in the face with a golf club a year earlier scarring her for life, smears **** all over everything she owns on Christmas morning, plasters his fingerprints all over the bowl containing the last food she ever ate before she was killed, blatantly lies about being asleep all night only to be repeatedly contradicted by his own statements and being overheard on the 911 phone call... the ransom note is beyond any question written by Patsy. John is on the phone making travel arrangements an hour after making a beeline to his daughter's body in the basement where he miraculously identified her body wrapped in a blanket in the dark before he turned the lights on.
Yep. Intruder. Obviously. Killing people and leaving their bodies behind while writing a 3 page ransom note on family stationary and then carefully replacing that same stationary and pen exactly where you found it after of course writing a 23 minute practice note before spending at least another 23 minutes writing the actual note and then choosing to put the note on an obscure spiral staircase in the back of the kitchen... these are all well proven pitfalls that thousands of would be kidnappers have fallen into. They never learn. How many times have we all seen this? Never gets old.
Yep. Intruder. Obviously. Killing people and leaving their bodies behind while writing a 3 page ransom note on family stationary and then carefully replacing that same stationary and pen exactly where you found it after of course writing a 23 minute practice note before spending at least another 23 minutes writing the actual note and then choosing to put the note on an obscure spiral staircase in the back of the kitchen... these are all well proven pitfalls that thousands of would be kidnappers have fallen into. They never learn. How many times have we all seen this? Never gets old.
I guess the son could friggen hover over the ground like the grim reaper spewing pea soup all over the damned place and he set baby seals on fire and a few in here would be like "I'm on the fence... could be him but what about that boot print?"
Who the f(*& makes a baseball sized wad of **** and puts it in your room, anyway? That's like some cult automatic lock this bastard up stuff all by itself, isn't it?
Who the f(*& makes a baseball sized wad of **** and puts it in your room, anyway? That's like some cult automatic lock this bastard up stuff all by itself, isn't it?
Yes, Z, it's a simple open-and-shut case, which is why it's still open 20 years later, has baffled experts, has lead to two or more compelling theories by veteran homicide investigators and the Ramseys were cleared by the DA.
[eyeroll]
[eyeroll]
The same DA that ignored two grand jury indictments against the parents and held a press conference intentionally misleading everyone for 13 years about the grand jury returning those indictments.
No, not the same DA- a different DA.
And the reason he didn't indict is because he would've had a mutiny in his office. Many in the DA office didn't think the parents did it.
I understand that no one knows exactly how they'll act in a situation like that, but if you know that you had no part in your kids murder you don't talk to CNN before the cops. Innocent people don't do that, they assist the police find the killer of their child.
You may not know how you would react but I'm pretty sure a shitball to the bed and smearing all the Christmas presents with it are not among the top 10 responses.
They didn't. They used a brand new pair to show that even a pair that not been touched by anyone without gloves could show touch DNA from the manufacturing process. Basically saying, if it could show unknown DNA on THIS underwear, imagine the touch DNA that could be found on an older pair. If anyone touched her shirt or pants or whatever and that garment contacted the underwear, the touch DNA could be transferred. Imagine if the underwear was taken to a laundromat, it would have touch DNA all over it. This is what they were getting at. It was pretty weak evidence. I will grant you, this part of the show was pretty confusing. I think that was somewhet due to the language barrier with Dr. Lee.
Burke seems like someone with high functioning autism. People with autism have a bad temper at times over trivial things. They also are not very aware of consequences.
Then how does that same kid manage to keep his involvement quiet, even while being questioned multiple times by trained interrogators trying to get him to say something? And then presumably stay quiet for 20 years?
Assuming he does have autism, that is a trait they share is honesty. But they can also be extremely intelligent, and can be coached. I could also see a scenario where he was made to believe that he did nothing wrong, therefore he would have no reason to feel guilty. He could have hit her, or thrown the flashlight down the steps at her then rushed away by his parents up to his room, without knowing the severity of what he just did. I haven't heard an interview with him where they asked him if he ever hurt her, if they did I think that they might have got the truth.
I'd guess it's possible that the mom was still up when Burke hit her over the head and she immediately sent him to his room and he doesn't realize that he actually killed her. He knows he hit her but he has been told an intruder came and took her/killed her and that has become his belief.
All it takes with the right personality is for a parent to tell their kid they didn't do anything wrong and they believe it.
All it takes with the right personality is for a parent to tell their kid they didn't do anything wrong and they believe it.
I'm on the The Brother Did It train as well.
But a question I had after watching the CBS thing: why did the parents allow him to be filmed (on multiple occasions) and questioned by both the social services person and then the other investigator?
That second guy who was trying to lead him into identifying the pineapple was pretty aggressive. Not sure why the parents would allow that to happen if they were hellbent on a cover-up.
Another strange thing about the case was how weird the house was. Crap all over the place. For as keen as the Ramseys were on outward appearance, the fact that their home looked like it had been run through by a cyclone was bizarre.
But a question I had after watching the CBS thing: why did the parents allow him to be filmed (on multiple occasions) and questioned by both the social services person and then the other investigator?
That second guy who was trying to lead him into identifying the pineapple was pretty aggressive. Not sure why the parents would allow that to happen if they were hellbent on a cover-up.
Another strange thing about the case was how weird the house was. Crap all over the place. For as keen as the Ramseys were on outward appearance, the fact that their home looked like it had been run through by a cyclone was bizarre.
All fair points, but to me it would be very telling if the parents told the investigators and social services that they were not allowed to question Burke. Would seem like a red flag that he might know something and they are withholding information. I think he was coached for sure. Then again, you would think a 9 year old would fumble a story and give different facts during different interviews. Really hard to tell which is why this case was never solved I guess.
Did not watch the show (wife did and kept me up one night talking about it)
I read "Perfect Murder Perfect Town" by Lawrence Schiller which as I recall was a very lengthy and well researched book. His final conclusion has proven to be 100% accurate, i.e., that absent a confession, the case would never be solved because no one theory fits all the weird facts.
Personally, I tend to believe an outsider that knew the family and knew the details of John's job and bonus was the culprit, maybe a couple trying to make a ton of money were the culprits, like the LIndbergh kidnapping. Killed her by accident and got the hell out of there.
I do have a very hard time believing two parents who doted on that little girl so much would either (a) kill her outright; or (b) make up an air tight cover up to protect their son who killed her, on the fly, in a few hours on Christmas day, and then never tell anybody or never slip up over 20 years. Not saying it absolutely couldn't happen, just think that is highly highly unlikely.
I read "Perfect Murder Perfect Town" by Lawrence Schiller which as I recall was a very lengthy and well researched book. His final conclusion has proven to be 100% accurate, i.e., that absent a confession, the case would never be solved because no one theory fits all the weird facts.
Personally, I tend to believe an outsider that knew the family and knew the details of John's job and bonus was the culprit, maybe a couple trying to make a ton of money were the culprits, like the LIndbergh kidnapping. Killed her by accident and got the hell out of there.
I do have a very hard time believing two parents who doted on that little girl so much would either (a) kill her outright; or (b) make up an air tight cover up to protect their son who killed her, on the fly, in a few hours on Christmas day, and then never tell anybody or never slip up over 20 years. Not saying it absolutely couldn't happen, just think that is highly highly unlikely.
I actually thought some of his answers to the questions seemed honest to me.
I saw a conversation on Reddit where they were talking about the pineapple exchange as if it were this devastating piece of info. I have a nine-year-old (not autistic) and as I watched that it looked like he was legitimately unsure what he was being shown.
Not that any of that speaks to his innocence. Or that all the clips worked in his favor.
The part where he talks about sleeping and says something like, "I was asleep...you know," sounded rehearsed to me.
But it's hard to tell with a kid who's already admittedly strange.
Definitely already fashioned. From the photos, the knots on the paint-stick are much to intricate for a 10 year old boy to produce and are too detailed to be created under pressure. As for the purpose? Who knows? The room likely had overhead, unfinished, exposed structure that cord / handles may have been used to create a drying line. Obviously there was some creative painting taking place in the room.
But your theory avoids one component / evidence that both Boulder police and DA have never refuted. Stun gun marks.
Wasn't a stun gun. They showed that the marks matched the connectors from a train track.
If you watched any of the CBS special, they proved that they were not stun gun marks, but rather marks from the edge of the train tracks that penetrated the skin. The measurements were identical to that of the train track, and not of the stun gun.
Last edited:
I agree with everything you said, he came off very honest. I'm not entirely sure he did it, but someone in the house did.
The pineapple exchange was another big eye roll moment for me during the CBS special. The investigators were acting so confident that this 9 year old all of a sudden realized what was going on and that he had slipped up about the pineapples, and then was intentionally stalling to avoid answering the question. No, the kid is 9, and was being shown a 1997-level quality printout of a photo. He very likely could not tell what he was looking at. The investigators really lost credibility with me with the over-analyzing of this kid as if he were some seasoned criminal mastermind.
The brother theory makes total sense, but I just have no idea how he wouldn't have slipped up at some point.