For several years after her murder, JonBenét Ramsey’s family stopped celebrating Christmas. It was simply too painful.
With time, they found the strength to put up a tree again and wrap presents to place beneath it – if only to give her older brother Burke a semblance of normalcy. But nearly three decades later, the weight of JonBenét’s absence still hangs heavily over her father, John Ramsey, at this time of year.
Ornaments bearing images of the six-year-old pageant queen hang from the tree in his living room. In a guest bedroom, JonBenét’s costumes and drawings are preserved in a solemn display, while her smiling face serves as the background on his phone.
When Ramsey, now 82, thinks back to the final Christmas he shared with his daughter in 1996, just hours before tragedy struck, there is one memory that stands out above the rest – and it is one that continues to haunt him.
That morning, JonBenét raced down the stairs of her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado, to unwrap presents in the living room. The gift that excited her most was a brand-new bike Ramsey and his wife, Patsy, had bought her.
She tore off the wrapping paper and begged her father to take her outside so she could ride it in the alley behind their home.
Up and down she pedaled, laughing and smiling. Eventually, Ramsey told her they had to go inside because they were running late for Christmas lunch.
‘Oh, dad. Please let me just go one more time,’ JonBenét pleaded. ‘No,’ Ramsey replied. ‘We’ll do that tomorrow.’ But tomorrow never came.
The murder of JonBenét Ramsey in December 1996 remains one of the most famous unsolved crimes in American history
JonBenét (front left) her family. Pictured top from left to right: Melinda (half-sister), John (dad) and John Andrew (half-brother). Front center: Patsy (mom) and Burke (brother)
In the early hours of the following morning, JonBenét was discovered missing from her bed. Later that afternoon, her lifeless body was found swaddled in a white blanket in the basement. She had been beaten and strangled to death.
Twenty-nine years on, Ramsey said the exchange serves as a reminder to take those extra moments, because the future is never promised.
This year, as with every other, Ramsey said JonBenét will be at the forefront of his mind when he gathers with his other children and family around the dinner table.
‘I think you gotta remember what Christmas is all about and what the point of it is – and it’s an assurance that there’s more to life than what we see,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘And we’ll see JonBenét again. She’s safe in heaven. My little brain can’t comprehend what that is, but I know it’s true. So, Christmas is a celebration and a reminder of that.’
That belief, he said, has changed more than just how he approaches Christmas – it has also reshaped how he thinks about his daughter’s killer.
Where Ramsey once wanted revenge, he now just wants closure.
‘In the beginning, if you put me in a room with this guy, he wouldn’t have come out alive. There was that much rage in me,’ Ramsey said.
‘Then I realized forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. It doesn’t mean you don’t want justice, but you’ve got to release that desire for revenge and your anger, otherwise that can be a stop in your life until that happens.’
The ransom note was left on a spiral staircase towards the rear of the home (seen left). John and Patsy Ramsey believe an intruder entered through a window in the basement (right)
The Ramsey family home had the eyes of the world on it for months after the murder
The last time Ramsey saw his daughter alive was when he carried her up to bed late Christmas night before Patsy changed her into her pajamas.
The family had to be up early the following morning because they were due to meet up with Ramsey’s children from his first marriage to embark on a family cruise.
He and Patsy woke up shortly before 6am. Ramsey was shaving in the bathroom when he heard Patsy scream.
JonBenét was missing from her bedroom and a strange, two-and-a-half-page ransom note had been left on a staircase.
The letter was addressed to Ramsey, and purported to have been written by a ‘foreign faction.’ Featuring bizarre turns of phrase and apparent movie references, the author of the letter demanded $118,000 in exchange for the girl’s return.
The ostensible abductors never called as promised, and hours later, JonBenét was found dead in a room in the basement that the family referred to as the ‘wine cellar.’
Ramsey made the discovery, moments after he was instructed by a detective to sweep the home for clues.
At first, he felt relieved to have found her. But as he got closer, he realized she wasn’t moving.
John Ramsey spoke with the Daily Mail ahead of the 29th anniversary of his daughter’s death
The Ramseys discovered a bizarre ransom note in the early hours of December 26, prompting them to call police
That’s when he noticed her wrists had been tied above her head and duct tape placed over her mouth. Buried in her neck was a makeshift garrote – fashioned from a nylon cord and a broken paintbrush – that appeared to have been used to strangle her. JonBenét had also suffered a blunt-force trauma to her skull.
Ramsey screamed. He picked up his daughter, carried her upstairs and laid her next to the Christmas tree.
The lives of the Ramsey family would never be the same again.
Almost immediately, Ramsey and Patsy became the prime suspects in the case, with Boulder PD convinced that one of them – if not both of them – had played a hand in the girl’s death.
JonBenét’s murder quickly made headlines locally, and before long, the story attracted the attention of the watching world.
Theories abounded and disturbing accusations surfaced, but Ramsey and Patsy maintained their innocence.
The couple was convinced JonBenét was killed by an opportunistic intruder, likely an obsessive pedophile who had targeted her from the pageant circuit or someone who harbored a deep-seated jealousy of Ramsey.
As Boulder police zeroed in on the family, Ramsey and Patsy accused investigators of tunnel vision, saying their fixation on them came at the expense of pursuing other viable suspects in the earliest, most critical days of the case.
The world remembers JonBenét as the tragic child pageant queen. But to her father John, there was so much more to his daughter than costumes and make-up
Ramsey and Patsy would remain the prime suspects for more than a decade until 2008 when then-District Attorney Mary Lacy wrote a letter to Ramsey, saying new DNA evidence had absolved them of any suspicion.
Lacy formally apologized for the cloud of suspicion the Ramseys had been forced to live under for years. But the vindication came too late for Patsy, who died from ovarian cancer two years earlier at the age of 49.
In the years that followed, Ramsey dedicated much of his time to seeking justice for his daughter, even as his relationship with Boulder Police deteriorated into open hostility.
Nearly three decades later, he said that fraught history has begun to soften, replaced by a cautious and unexpected optimism that the case could finally be resolved.
That optimism has been spurred by a change in leadership at Boulder PD, and an announcement made earlier this month by Stephen Redfearn, the new Chief of Police, who shared that new evidence has been recovered in the case, older material had been resubmitted for DNA tests, and new interviews had quietly been conducted.
Ramsey told the Daily Mail he hasn’t been made privy to any of the details, but he said Redfearn’s remarks felt like a rare spur of momentum after nearly three decades of false starts and dead ends.
‘I am optimistic – more than I’ve been in 29 years,’ he said. ‘I take encouragement because finally there’s movement and I’m encouraged by Chief Redfearn.
‘This has been a marathon project, and it’s a project that’s got to be finished.’
John and Patsy Ramsey were, for years, the lead suspects in the case. That changed in 2008 when the local DA cleared them of wrongdoing via DNA
Ramsey believes the key to unravelling the mystery of his daughter’s death lies in investigative genetic genealogy (IGG), a modern tool that has been used in recent years to crack dozens of cold cases and active investigations, from the Golden State Killer to the University of Idaho murders.
He said there were several key items collected during the initial investigation that were either not tested for DNA or were tested using methods that are now considered outdated.
Those items include the garrote found wound around JonBenét’s neck, and a still-unidentified male DNA profile that was recovered from JonBenét’s clothing and beneath her fingernails.
That same male DNA profile was entered into the federal CODIS database in the late 1990s and again years later using newer testing, but it has never produced a match.
Ramsey said there were four or five other seemingly consequential items collected into evidence from the home in December 1996 that were never tested, including a suitcase left beneath an open window in the basement and a rope found in a guest bedroom.
Testing those items using IGG could finally unmask his daughter’s killer, he believes.
It remains unclear whether Redfearn has or will heed Ramsey’s call. The chief said the department is now working with external experts from across the country as part of its renewed investigation, but declined to specify which specialists are involved.
When the arrest finally comes – if it comes – Ramsey said he doesn’t know how he will react or feel, but he knows how painful the trial will be, learning of the whys and hows, and reliving a nightmare that most could never comprehend.
A garrote found embedded in the young girl’s neck could contain vital DNA, her father John believes
A still-unidentified male DNA profile that was recovered from JonBenét’s clothing and beneath her fingernails
The world remembers JonBenét as the tragic child pageant queen. But to Ramsey and her other loved ones, she was so much more.
She was learning to play the piano and the violin, and Ramsey and Patsy had just signed her up for rock climbing lessons. She was just as at home in dresses and costumes as she was playing in the dirt in the yard with her older brother.
What she would’ve grown up to become is hard for Ramsey to speculate about.
‘That opportunity’s gone,’ he said during an earlier interview. ‘It’s gone for her, it’s gone for us, and it’s gone from the world.’
