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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.
And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk, and I am absolutely loving it.
I love all the different narrators. I love Audible.
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Visit audible.com slash morbid. Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.
And I'm Alayna. And this is Morbid. It's morbid in the morning.
Morbid in the morning. And this is a redo, a remix, a remaster.
We decided to revisit the JonBenet Ramsey case because one, there's been a little talk of it in the news lately with the possibility of DNA testing happening.
And I just thought we could do a better job.
Yeah. With this case. I think the original Jaminé episodes were recorded when we were recording separately too.
So the audio was like really terrible and we just know that we could do it better.
Yeah. It just, I thought there's, you know, more stuff has come out.
There's been, there was stuff that I just didn't talk about or I felt like I rushed through.
So I figured I would take the time to do what is going to be only a two part.
It's not going to go further than that. We'll see.
Two parts. I'm capping it at that because we're going to talk about the crime.
We're going to talk about some of like the crazy stuff involved in the crime and the crime scene, the autopsy in part one.
And then part two, we're going to really discuss the intruder theory.
And we're going to discuss some of the suspects that have come out.
All right. So just putting it out there right now, I do not know who killed JonBenet Ramsey.
Yeah. I'm not going to say what my thoughts are on that because I don't know.
Yeah. I wasn't there. You guys, you know.
So you have yours. I have mine. We all will think them in our heads and then someday DNA will confirm one of them.
Yay. That's all. But right now, I just want to say that John Ramsey, JonBenet's father, did launch a Change.org petition where he asked the Colorado government to allow an independent agency to test DNA found at JonBenet's crime scene.
Okay. And is pushing very hard to have that happen.
Wow. So there's that. They're still petitioning, as we speak, police to allow Parabon nanolabs, which we've heard before.
That's like a pretty big lab that will test especially old DNA.
They're petitioning to have them test the DNA.
JonBenet's half-brother, John Andrew, is also helping his father try to get this pushed forward.
Nice. And in August, they did, Joe Biden did put forward a law that they were like really, the Ramseys were really, really like strong supporters of that allows victims' families to help reopen cold cases.
That's awesome. So that was a big deal.
John Ramsey told KIRO7 News, quote, we want to do whatever can be done technically and resource wise to find the killer of our daughter.
And if we do that and we can't, then we will have to live with it.
But to not do it is criminal and negligent and lazy.
The Boulder police have said they are actively reviewing genetic DNA testing processes to try to make this happen.
But it has not happened yet. All right. And I think there was a lot of sensational news coming out about it recently that everyone's like, we're going to know within hours.
What they were saying was if they give the DNA to Parabon Nanolabs, they could potentially have an answer in hours.
Okay. That's what they were saying. But at this point, they have not been able to yet?
At this point, it looks like they have not been allowed to do that yet.
Given the green light or whatever? We will all update if and when that happens, but...
Yeah. All right. So I just wanted to start that.
And now let's talk about JonBenet Ramsey.
JonBenet Patricia Ramsey was born August 6, 1990, in Boulder, Colorado.
She was born to John Bennett Ramsey and Patricia Patsy Ramsey.
Together, they had JonBenet, who was six at the time of this crime, and her brother, Burke, who was nine years old at the time of this crime.
John was the president of Access Graphics, which is a computer company.
They were a very well-off family. They lived in this beautiful Tudor-style home.
Their home is beautiful. Yeah, it's a really beautiful house.
But apparently it's a very maze-like house.
Their former housekeeper actually said that.
We'll talk about her in the second part for sure.
But she said it's very labyrinthian, so it can be very confusing to get around.
Okay. But not ideal. Yeah. But Patricia was his second wife.
He had three children from his first marriage, a son and two daughters.
One daughter, Elizabeth, actually passed away in a 1992 car crash.
Oh, I remember that. Yeah. So that's like a lot of tragedy.
Definitely. Patricia Patsy was a former beauty queen from West Virginia.
She had held the title of Miss West Virginia.
So that's like a big deal. She was beautiful for sure.
Oh, yeah. This was a big point of pride for her.
She carried it down to her daughter, Jean Benet, who also had entered pageants from a very young age, like the baby.
Yeah. Jean Benet had won America's Royal Miss, Little Miss Charleroi, Little Miss Colorado, National Tiny Miss Beauty, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl.
I think she's one more, but that's like a good lineup that I found.
There you go. I'm not going to share my thoughts on pageants.
Pageants are definitely not easy for a kid this age.
They're not just them walking out and being like, yay.
And then it's like, that's it. It's like a lot of hard work.
You've seen Toddlers and Tiaras. I know it.
Yeah, I have not. Not you. I know you have not.
She was wearing a lot of makeup, wore very interesting and adult costumes at times.
Did she have a flipper? Yeah, I was just going to talk about that, actually.
She also had her hair lightened. Yeah. It was like bleached.
And I was just going to say kids that age usually wear flippers to cover missing teeth, which I never understood because it's normal and adorable for kids that are six to have missing teeth.
That's like one of the hilarious and adorable parts of six-year-olds.
It's not like you're like old Miss California, like showing up on stage with no teeth.
Well, that's the thing. So if these pageants are looking to truly find an adorable child who is age appropriate and not a baby who has been turned into an adult, then why would missing teeth matter in the judging process?
I would not happen to know. Wouldn't it only help?
Like, to me, that would only help because they're children and they should be looked at as children.
And you should be like, oh, my God, look at that cute little baby with her missing front teeth.
Like, that's a baby. That's cute. We're supposed to be judging them based off of them being a child.
But that, to me, just proves that they're being judged to look like an adult.
Yeah, 100%. Which, again, I'm not going to share my thoughts on.
Yeah, that's why I just said, yeah. You know that I was almost a pageant baby?
Yeah. I wouldn't allow that to happen. No, I know.
You know what's wild? My mom actually wouldn't allow it to happen.
My grandma on my dad's side really wanted me to do pageants, and my mom was like, I don't think so.
You know what? That checks out. It does.
It certainly does. I think... I'm not positive if my grandma on that side did pageants, but...
But she wanted you to. She sure did. Because you're a beautiful bebe.
I don't have one. I don't either. I don't either.
So there was definitely some pageant mom behavior that was really focused on later when this case broke.
It is unfortunate that that became the focus of this case, I think.
Yeah, because that shouldn't be the focus.
The focus should be just the fact that JonBenet was killed.
Yeah, it's tough, which we all did it. We all looked at this and we're like, what the fuck is going on there?
Like, that was my first thought was like, what is happening here?
I know that people get really upset now, like when you say it was a different time, but it's literally just a fact.
It truly was. We all as a collective society, maybe not all of us, but as a collective society, we all were different back then and growing to where we are now.
And I think we've got to a place where we can look at it a little more like a little differently.
Exactly. And we can look at it like I think we've all seen that the media doesn't give you the full story.
And I think back then we were looking at it and going, holy shit, this is it.
Yeah. That's all like they're giving us all.
Very, very sensationalized. Yeah. And it's like, I think now we are better equipped as a society, at least slightly, some of us.
Yes. To look at it and go, okay, that is part of the story.
Sure. But there's more to this. And I shouldn't really just take this at face value of what splashed on a tabloid page.
Exactly. Like, let's dig a little deeper because I've seen, and I know you've seen in your research, like particular sources, you double check it and it's not even correct.
And it's not correct. That's the thing. So I think that's the reason too, why we want to redo some of these that we did even in the beginning of the podcast.
Absolutely. Because we even look at things differently now.
By doing this podcast, I feel like I look at things differently.
So that's why some of these are being redone because it's just like, I can look at this differently and more complete now.
And I feel like I can give you guys something better to look at and make your own decision on.
Yeah. I mean, three to four years ago, you do change a lot, especially when you're doing this day in and day out.
Yeah. And I think it's... I like to go into things now... like less with like, this is what I think happened, even if it's, you know what I mean?
And more like, here are the facts, make your own decision.
It's like, I just want to try to give you what happened and be like, you guys have, you know, until we have definitive answers, this is all we can go off of.
But no matter what, It's really hard to argue against the fact that there was 100% some pageant mom behavior here.
Yeah, like a six-year-old's hair, in my opinion, and I would hope a lot more people's opinion, should not be lightened.
No, I don't agree with that at all. I agree with you.
And a lot of the pictures are very disturbing to look at, in my opinion.
That's just me. I think a lot of them are very disturbing, but...
That doesn't mean that anybody, you know, that that doesn't make anybody a killer.
No, it just makes, you know, a questionable choice.
That's all. But a story that did stick with me that I read in a couple of sources was that her friend actually came over once and she noticed JonBenet's numerous trophies and crowns and all that.
And they were in this very like big case all displayed.
And the friend was like, wow, those are so pretty.
Like, wow. Yeah, like tiaras. And she, so she said this to JonBenet and JonBenet said, they're not really mine.
They're more my mom's trophies. That broke my heart into pieces.
And that was like, that's bad. Wanted to have that realization at like five, six years old.
Yeah, like this isn't for me. This is for my mom.
And it's like, I do know that that happens a lot, that people will try to live vicariously through their kids.
Yeah. Don't do it. Yeah. Don't do it. I think a lot of times it happens and parents don't realize.
Well, that's the thing. Sometimes I think it's completely like I think they I believe that Patsy probably convinced herself that Jambadee loved doing this.
Absolutely. Because she loved doing this.
So it's and it's a thing they can do together.
Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, there's that.
Now, people who knew the family very well say that she wasn't forced to perform.
She wasn't forced to do this. She just loved being on stage.
She could be shy and quiet outside of that, but she really loved the stage.
She, like, flourished on there. Try theater.
Yeah. According to the Denver Post, family members said about JonBenet, one of her uncles actually said, the beauty pageant thing, that was a very, very small part of her life.
99% of her life was spent as a typical six year old.
What we see on TV and in pictures, that's not who JonBenet was.
And that's sad. And I think that's another thing that the media does is I'm sure there are photos of Sean Bonnet where she looked like Sean Bonnet.
Exactly. She wasn't all done up in a big glitzy crown and dress and everything.
Exactly. Let's show a picture of her and her friends, you know?
I know. Let's show a school picture. Yeah.
And it's like, that's the thing. And they do that with a lot of these cases where they'll only show certain photos that...
Kind of go to a certain image. And it's like, you know, she's a brutally murdered six year old.
Yeah. Can we show photos of her that are like, like you said, like her just being a six year old?
Right. Like, do we have to splash all those to further perpetuate? like pedophiles and like people who will take those in a way that they shouldn't like we really don't need to do that like just show her as a six-year-old so everybody can be like wow that like start like actually grieve for her right but you know whatever Now, in the same article, she's described as being a very loving, spunky and very kind child.
She loved fruit roll ups and anything with sparkles.
She also would give presents to Santa to thank him for gifts that he had gotten her.
That's so sweet. Like she was that sweet.
Her teachers and friends at school all described her as positive, very intelligent.
Neighbors said she was helpful and just adorable, like a sweet little light to have around.
Yeah. And I'll get into like the, there's like Santa theories and stuff in this.
That's going to happen in part two. Oh, I don't even remember those.
Yeah, there's one man, Bill McReynolds, who got like put on the suspect list by theorists, basically.
And he was like this, he would play Santa at the parties.
And actually she gave him a, and I'll get into this more in part two, but I'll just mention it.
She had given him a vial of gold glitter.
Oh. And he took it into his heart surgery with him.
Yeah. Because he said it was, like, he said, like, he was, like, she just, like, her kindness really touched me.
Yeah. Like, she was just... And he was, like, old.
Whatever. And he talked about it later and was, like, she was just, like, she really, like, touched me.
She was just, like, a sweet little girl and, like, gave me that because she thought I was Santa.
People love to read into things. And, again, we'll get more into that whole theory again, but...
It does. It's kind of a bummer that like everything gets twisted in this case, no matter what.
So December 25th, 1996, Patricia, John, JonBenet and Burke went to a Christmas party at a very close family friend's home.
This home was at the White's home. That was Fleet and Priscilla White.
They were very close family friends. Jean Benet, you know, she partied, she had some food, she hung out, she opened presents.
Then she fell asleep on the way home in the car.
So her parents, you know, did what every parent has done before.
John carried his sleeping daughter to her bedroom.
She went to sleep wearing white long John type leggings and a white long sleep T-shirt with a silver sequined star on the front of it.
Cute. Now, December 26th, 1996, this was very early.
According to Patricia, she woke up in the five o'clock hour in the morning and she found a two and a half page handwritten ransom note on a staircase at the bottom of the staircase when she went down there.
Like woke up, brushed her teeth, walked down there.
This is what she finds. The note claimed to be from a kidnapper who claimed that they had JonBenet.
They wanted money for her safe return. But it was a very strange, long, threatening, weird ransom note.
Yeah. It was then that she said she ran upstairs, found that JonBenet was not in her bed, and then woke up John.
Now, this is what the ransom note said. Mr. Ramsey, listen carefully.
We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction.
We 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.
Remember that number. $100,000 will be in $100 bills and the remaining $18,000 in $20 bills.
Make sure that 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 early to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence an earlier pickup delivery.
And that was like kind of X'd out pickup of your daughter.
Yeah. Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter.
You will be denied her remains for proper burial.
The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you, so I advise you do 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.
If the money is in any way marked or tampered with, 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 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. Jesus. And then it says victory!
S-B-T-C. S-B-T-C. There's a lot of... So I saw a lot of people talking about...
How this seems like something that they got out of like a movie.
Like a detective magazine. It's outrageously long.
A lot of people mentioned, why did they say like bring an adequate size attache to the bank?
Like, why does that matter? Why would you even write that?
What even is an attache? Like a bag of something to put the money in?
And I'm like, you're sitting here kidnapping a child and you have time to write out attache.
That's the thing. And it's like, and then what was the other?
Like, I saw a couple of sources. They were talking about, like, be well rested.
Like, how is he going to be well rested?
You've kidnapped his child. And also, like, why do you care?
Yeah. Like, why does that matter? That's a weird thing to write.
The $118,000 is the strangest amount and very low for a ransom of an actual human child.
There's also the, like, when they say, hold on, let me see the...
When they say you stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to outsmart us, why are you only putting it at 99%?
Right, like you've said if he tries to outsmart you, this is going to happen, this is going to happen, this is going to happen.
But now you're being like, there's a 1% chance you could fucking outsmart us.
It's like... Who's going to give that up?
Like these guys are being like, we'll fucking kill your daughter.
Don't fucking try to fuck with us. And then they're like, but you have a 1% chance of fucking outsmarting us.
I have never, ever, ever thought that this letter was real.
No, I don't at all. And then people have pointed out that it begins with Mr. Ramsey.
But then at the end, it says, don't try to grow a brain, John.
So suddenly we're on a first name business.
You started this out with Mr. Ramsey. Why wouldn't you write Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey?
Oh, don't worry. They wrote that in the practice note.
Yeah. They wrote Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey, but this one's only to Mr. Ramsey.
Uh, they also, it's weird. I saw people pointing out that it's weird that they said, we respect your business.
Cause you don't, you said, we don't like your business and we don't like who you work with.
And also like, again, if you're, you kidnapped his daughter for ransom and you're claiming you're going to behead her.
Right. Like, and you're saying like, we respect your business.
Like, why would you even let that out if you did?
Like, it's just so very strange. None of it makes sense.
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Some cases fade from headlines. Some never made it there to begin with.
I'm Ashley Flowers, and on my podcast, The Deck, I tell you the stories of cold cases featured on playing cards distributed in prisons designed to spark new leads and bring long overdue justice.
Because these stories deserve to be heard, and the loved ones of these victims still deserve answers.
Are you ready to be dealt in? Listen to The Deck now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Uh, so there was a partial draft of the note found in the home written on Patsy's notepad.
Weird. This note came from a notepad, Patsy's notepad that was in the home.
It was written by a pen that was on the counter.
So they didn't come in with paper and a pen.
They found one in the house. Which again, if you're going in to kidnap a child, like you would think quickly you would come prepared with a ransom note.
That's the thing. You're not going to write the ransom note in the house during all the mayhem.
No. You would bring the ransom note with you.
Right. And you would not leave the pen behind that you use to write the ransom note.
Yeah. These are the pieces of the puzzle that people... Peter Piper picked a pick a pick.
Well, I said a lot of pieces. You did. This is the piece of the puzzle that people do not understand.
Yeah. Yeah. how you explain this part. And I don't.
And the practice. That's the thing. And I would love to know if it was ever asked, like, where do you keep this pen?
Not this pen, excuse me, this pad of paper.
They did ask. It was sitting on the counter in like a little, like the pen was in a little cup and it was like out there.
Okay, okay. But on another piece of paper in the pad, Detective Jeff Kithart, who was the handwriting expert for the Boulder police, later found a started and abandoned ransom note that said, and it said, one of them said, Mr. and Mrs. and then a line.
And it appeared that they had started to write an R but had stopped.
It was like a line to begin an R. Sure. So the first one says Mr. and Mrs. Like, not only did you come into this house without a ransom note and took the time to write this ransom note there, but you didn't even know who you were writing it to.
Right. Like you actually at first were like, I'm going to write it to both of them.
Then you were like, no, I'm going to write it to him.
Why wouldn't you write it to both of them?
Well, that's the thing. I think because it wouldn't fit the narrative that this was business.
Yeah. Now, John received a bonus of exactly $118,000 for that Christmas.
Yeah. Which people have pointed to and I originally pointed to as, there you go.
That's how would anybody know that? But I will say the bank statement was out on the counter.
Okay. So someone could have seen the amount deposited and they could have used that as like, and here's my thought process on that because I'm just trying to give all angles here just with facts.
Absolutely. They could, these, whatever happened here, whoever did this, there was no ransom ever being, this was never a kidnapping.
No. In my opinion, this was never, this wasn't a kidnapping that went bad.
This was never a kidnapping. They would have come into the house with a ransom note, the end.
Right. So this was all supposed to be staged.
Right. So they might have just looked at that 118 and were like, all right, use that number.
It's just like they didn't want that money.
They didn't think they were getting that money.
They never called to get that money. There just was never that happening.
So if this is an intruder, then they could have looked, known they had to do this quick.
And looked at that and said, okay, $118,000 just went into his bank account.
I'm going to write that. Exactly. They could have just done that.
Exactly. Or it can be someone closer that knew that that money was there.
And that could have been like a business, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. But there's that. Wouldn't you also think, though, I don't know about the, like, it was the bank slip on the table, but wouldn't you think that you would ask for more because you're like, oh, if he just deposited that much into his account, then he must have more.
He probably has money. And like, you're looking around this beautiful home.
That's the thing. The 118 is a very strange number.
Even if you did see that on the table. Right.
Exactly. But then it's like if this is like somebody who hates his business and is like a business arrival, maybe that's like a that's like a pinpoint to be like, like I was supposed to know what your Christmas bonuses.
OK, that's what we want for your daughter.
But it's, again, very strange because it's like.
For a human, that is a very low ransom. It is.
And for somebody who is wealthy. Well, and that's the thing.
Like, if you know him and you know him well, you know that he's wealthy.
And why wouldn't you shoot your shot to get more?
Yeah, that's the thing. In my opinion. No, it's true.
It doesn't. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
The other thing is, this is a fucking long note.
Yeah. Ransom notes are not long. Did you say it took like 21 minutes to write?
It took 21 minutes to write this in the house.
That is crazy. And it was two and a half pages long.
Yeah. Like usually a ransom note is like a piece of paper.
The FBI literally said that this is an unprecedented.
Yeah. Yeah. Ransom note. They've never seen something like that before.
Because, yeah. Nothing. And in 2015, former Boulder, Colorado police chief Mark Beckner said, quote, the FBI told us they'd never seen a 2.5 page ransom note.
No note has ever been written at the scene and then left at the scene with the dead victim at the scene other than this case.
And wouldn't you also think that you would take the practice note with you?
That's one. Or throw it in the trash even.
Do something. Right. And also, if you are now trying to make this like get the money, like if you're really trying to like stage this, you would take her out of the house.
Of course you would. So that you could still pretend that she was alive.
You wouldn't leave her in the house so that they find her and then the ransom thing is over.
Right. Right. Unless your thought process is we don't actually want the money.
We just want to hurt him and we want him to find his daughter.
Yeah. There's sides, but to me, it's strange.
But why would you go through the whole entire business?
Exactly. Like, no. And why would you even write the ransom note?
I just think it would be like a completely, if you were going to sit down and write a letter, and we all know that she was in the basement, I think you would write a very different, cruel letter.
Right? Like, here are the steps to go find your daughter or something terrible, you know?
And again, like, that's a long time. To sit in someone's home in the middle of the night.
Right. After killing their six-year-old daughter.
Yeah. And just taking 21 minutes to write a note.
And presumably, and I know you're going to get into this, presumably also stopping for a snack.
Yeah. Or just like, it's very strange. It's very strange.
And again, 21 minutes, like 21. What intruder does that?
No. No. That's a lot of people have a lot of, that's the part that people are having trouble wrapping their brain around.
And I continue to have trouble wrapping my brain around it.
Some of this stuff you can sit there and go, okay, I can go to an intruder theory with this.
Like I can go somewhere else with this, but this, I don't understand this.
But like, I mean, strange things happen, but this is real strange.
Yeah. So experts think the note writer intended to disguise their natural handwriting.
They don't think that this was their organic handwriting.
They were trying to disguise it. A 1997 Vanity Fair article spoke to, quote, an investigator closely involved with the testing of the ransom note.
And they said that they analyzed 74 handwriting samples and Patricia Ramsey's handwriting was the only sample that, quote, set off alarm bells.
So there's that. In 2001, handwriting analysts Larry Ziegler and Gideon Epstein thought Patricia could be the writer of the note.
Okay. Handwriting, excuse me, Colorado Bureau of Investigation report said, quote, and this is the Colorado Bureau of Investigations report, said, quote, there are indications that the author of the ransom note is Patricia Ramsey.
Okay. So there is a lot of people looking at it and saying that they believe that she might have written it, but...
On the other hand, handwriting analysis can be... A little funky.
Iffy. Yeah. And even in their reports, it's not definitive.
None of them are saying she is absolutely 100%.
Exactly. But... Weird. If you look at her handwriting next to this handwriting, it is pretty, it's pretty close.
And there's a lot of little, little things, quirks, handwriting quirks that they look at that are the same throughout.
I remember watching, I think it was a few years ago.
I actually think it was right around the time that you had covered this case.
I remember seeing the handwriting myself and the comparison.
It's very similar. It is, but then you have to... These are the things that you can look at both sides.
Yeah, absolutely. Because they're not definitive, but they are slightly damning in some ways.
So it's like one of those things. And again, like what that person wrote could set off alarm bells.
Yeah, exactly. So there's that. That is a thing.
And that has remained a thing, that her handwriting is very similar.
It's the only one that made them really go, hmm.
Did she ever say anything about that that you know of?
She's always denied any of that and like...
You know, would say the same thing we're saying that like people's handwriting can look in if they were disguising their handwriting, then that's not my handwriting.
Right. So there's that. And people do have similar handwriting.
Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Now, Patsy called 911 at 5.52 a.m.
After she got in, we're going to get into the 911 call, but after she called, she immediately called friends and family right after.
The note said specifically not to do any of that or your daughter dies.
Right. And that we are watching you. Like monitoring.
I get that this may just be instinct that you need to call people because you're panicking.
Yeah. But if a note says your daughter is going to be beheaded and we're watching you, don't call anyone except 911.
Yeah. Like, get a police officer there. You know what I mean?
Like, I understand that. And that's the other thing about this case is it's... easy to look on the outside and say why did you do this but we don't know when when you're in the actual panic of like your child being missing so you can go okay some of these things can be a hysterical parent absolutely that just makes that decision other things questionable uh-huh for sure Now, Kimberly Archuleta was the 911 operator that took the Ramsey phone call that morning.
She told Kimberly Archuleta that she wasn't sure how long her daughter had been missing and was literally begging police to get there.
It's a very harrowing 911 call. You can listen to it.
She sounds absolutely terrified in the 911 call.
Before she hangs up the phone, you can hear her kind of like mumble to herself, like, help me, Jesus, help me.
And she never says JonBenet's name. She never says her name is JonBenet Ramsey.
She also hung up the phone very abruptly.
Didn't wait for instructions. Didn't wait for them to say, hang on the phone with me until the police get there.
She just down goes the phone. Which is, again, definitely weird.
Yeah. You're panicking. You're trying to run around.
I don't even know if she woke John up at this point.
Now, this is one that people can definitely look at different ways.
I don't understand that. Yeah. And you have kids, obviously.
I can say... Your lifeline would be 911 at that point.
And you would be like, I would be on there until the police got there.
Just to be like, I don't want to lose you.
I don't want them to get lost on the way here.
Please keep telling me they're coming. Tell me that they're outside.
Tell me that they're here. Like, that would be my thought, I would think.
Because that would be like, just you're safe.
Like, somebody needs to get here and help us.
And if you hang up, you've ended that lifeline and you just have to wait.
To see when they show up. And it's like, I would want somebody being like, they're around the corner.
They're on your street. They're pulling in your driveway.
They're coming up your walkway. They're in your house.
Like, you know, like I want to hear everything.
And they will do that. They will. And usually they tell you, stay on the line with me until they're in your house.
So Archuleta, the operator, actually told Dateline that she immediately thought something wasn't right about the call.
She said that the end of the call was strange because, again, she ended the call abruptly.
And she didn't say anything that indicated an end to the call.
And the phone didn't actually disconnect.
She said, like, it just kind of went back on the cradle but didn't actually disconnect.
And because remember, this is a landline.
This is back in the 90s. Oh, I'm picturing like my old kitchen.
Yeah. So Archuleta claimed she heard not only John and Patricia speaking muffled right after she put down that phone, but she heard a third voice that was a little more faint.
Now, this is strange because they claim later that Burke, who was the only other person in the house, the nine-year-old, was asleep during this call.
He was not near them or awake at this time.
So people have listened to the audio of this call, lots of different experts, and they hear various things in these muffled voices a little bit, but it's all pretty much the same.
There's not a lot of variation with what they hear.
They hear a couple of different things. It's a little, when you listen to it, With an untrained ear, I think it's a little like EVPs where you can probably hear what you want to hear if you try hard enough.
But mainly what they hear is a male voice who is thought to be John Ramsey saying angrily, we're not speaking to you.
And then they hear a female voice thought to be Patsy say, help me, Jesus, help me, Jesus.
Then they hear a young male child say, well, what did you find?
Yeah. Yeah. Now, also, according to an article by Bella Brennan, Kim, the 911 operator, was quoted as saying about Patsy, quote, if you hear the frantic in her voice as she's speaking to me where she couldn't even answer my questions, it immediately stopped.
It sounded like she said, OK, we've called the police.
Now what? And that disturbed me. Yeah, of course.
Because she said basically that panic, panic, panic, that phone went down, she thought she hung it up, and then she turned and said, we called the police, now what?
Yep. So Kim said, so I remained on the phone trying to listen to what was being said.
It sounded like there were two voices in the room, maybe three, different ones.
I had a bad feeling about this. To me, it sounded rehearsed.
Yeah. She said one of the reasons why it even stayed on until they disconnected was because there were things being said that people needed to know.
It was never addressed. I think it really would have turned the case around.
Probably. Now, apparently later when Archuleta got the news, Kim, that JonBenet was found in her home brutally murdered because she went, she left that shift, obviously not knowing how that ended.
And you said that, I think we were talking about this before.
That was her last call of her shift. She said she was inconsolable when she found out she was murdered.
Yeah. And she kept telling her boss and her family that something bothered her about that call.
And she told them they had to tell authorities to listen to the end of the call.
Because she was like, now it was weighing on me.
Like they found that child dead in her home.
Like I knew something was weird with that call.
They ended up sending the tape to aerospace technicians.
And they declared that there were three different voices at the end of that call, those aerospace technicians.
And after Patsy had meant to hang up, that's when they heard it.
Apparently a ton of the technicians at aerospace all listened to the call by themselves, like independently.
All of them said they heard the exact same conversation.
Wow. And they had like, they like take away background noise there and they like really clean the audio a little bit.
So they called in the Boulder police who sent Detective Melissa Hickman to listen at aerospace.
She listened independently as well. They put her, they did not tell her what they heard.
They sent her into a room and said, listen to this, tell us what you hear.
They had all heard the same conversation, including Detective Hickman.
I remember listening to the 911 call again when that documentary came out and I heard the exact same thing.
Yeah, and now that we have that conversation, it's hard to hear anything else, which can be a little confirmation bias-y.
But it sounds like it. And the three distinct voices do sound like they're on there because you do hear the... of a man you hear the patsy literally like just like upset and you hear a little child voice and definitely like a male child and they all said the same thing we're not speaking to you help me jesus help me jesus well what did you find in that what did you find just like i it just creeps me out And we're going to mention it again, but when everybody shows up, Burke is asleep and sleeps through all of it.
And people go into the room and look and they see that he's just in his bed asleep.
He never woke up through the chaos in the house.
And so a lot of people are like, was he just told to lay there and pretend to be asleep through this whole thing?
Yeah. And was that him on the tape and he was awake?
Uh-huh. Because they claimed he never woke up.
Right. They had to wake him up. Yeah. Again, that's a theory.
Yeah. But whatever. So another interesting note is that Patsy told Archuleta during the 911 call, and you can hear it when you listen to the call, that the note said, she goes, it says SBTC victory.
That's all she tells her about the note is that it says that.
But she told police later, I only read the first line of the note before I ran up to look for Jean Benet and call John.
I dropped the note back where it was. And John said he moved the note away.
So how did she know that at the end of the note it said SPTC victory?
Right. Unless... Unless she happened to see that.
Right. Or unless John said that in passing and was like, what the fuck would that mean?
That could have been it. They could have had a conversation before the 911 call that she just didn't recall.
She could have quickly seen the SPTC at the end.
That would be a little strange because it's a two and a half page note.
And she said she only saw the first line.
So she would have had to flick through to the end of the note.
Just giving all angles here. Yeah. But interestingly, a 911 call came in three days before this from the Ramsey household.
Did you say this last time? I don't know if I did, to be honest.
I don't know if I remember this. It was at 6.48 p.m. on December 23rd.
And the operator answered and no one said anything, then hung up the phone.
Oh. Police were dispatched to the home, but no report was made.
Okay. A report should always be made. Yeah, I was like, that was weird.
That's just a strange little. I know that like I have friends.
I have a friend who literally Snapchatted me the other day like, oh, it's 835.
And like my kids already called 911. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Because I had friends who did that before and the police showed up.
Yeah. Yeah. Kids do do. They do. Kids do do the 911 calls.
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Two police officers responded to the scene that morning, like of the actual 911 call, within three minutes of that call.
One was Officer Rick French. Now, according to Foreign Faction by James Kolar, which is a really great book about this case.
So the police officers on scene noted that, and again, this is three minutes after the 911 call.
So this is like barely six o'clock. Yeah.
According to the book, the police officer said that John Ramsey was wearing a pinstripe button-up and khakis.
And Patsy was wearing black slacks, a red sweater, and her hair and makeup were done.
Oh, okay. I know everyone handles things differently, but I could not get dressed or do makeup when my six-year-old was supposedly kidnapped from her bedroom.
No, the makeup is... That's... And did she say previously that like when she had woken up, she put makeup on?
She didn't say that. I heard that she woke up, she brushed her teeth.
Maybe she just didn't say that she did her full routine before walking down the stairs.
And that is a possibility. Some people are early risers and they get everything done before they even walk down the stairs.
Yeah. And like we don't know how much makeup she was wearing.
Yeah. Yada, yada, yada. Just to, you know.
Yeah. The whole point of this is to give both sides and let you guys decide for yourselves what your theory is.
Because again, we don't know. We don't have a definitive answer here.
But strange. Definitely. Definitely a strange, strange look for everybody to be fully done up when this is happening.
But you know, like. I just have to say it.
Rich people are weird. Rich people are weird.
So that makes sense. They want to put like appearances first.
So maybe it was like a respect thing. And she's a pageant gal.
And they're Southern too. So it may have very much been a respect thing.
Like these people are coming into our home.
We need to be dressed. Well, and maybe that it wasn't even for the police.
Maybe this is just she's a pageant gal. She gets up early.
She gets her full shit done. And she doesn't walk down the stairs before she looks A+.
And we don't know. John may have been getting dressed as Patsy ran in and told him what was happening.
Yeah. And just maybe finished getting dressed.
Maybe he was in the middle of getting dressed when that happened.
We have no idea. We don't know. And both sides are valid arguments.
But if... If not, if we did know and like they did get dressed after calling the 911 call, I agree that's fucking weird.
Yeah, that's weird. So there's that. And they noted that that was strange.
Absolutely. That was strange to the police officers.
Yeah. Now, Patsy told Rick French that she had gone to JonBenet's bedroom and saw that she was not in it as soon as she woke up.
Which is not what she had originally said.
And then she said she had gone downstairs and found the ransom note.
That's not what she said. And we're going to get back to that in a second.
Now, Sergeant Paul Reichenbach showed up and ordered that no one use the police frequency just in case the kidnappers were listening on scanners.
Okay. So they were like, we don't want to alert them that we are here because that is part of the whole thing.
So no one use frequencies to talk about this.
They just didn't want to risk JonBenet's safety because at this point, this is a kidnapping.
So they searched around the home, but they didn't find anything suspicious or any signs of forced entry anywhere.
And everybody claimed, we locked all the doors.
Everything was locked. And John Ramsey said that we locked everything.
It was all locked last night. Yeah. Nothing was unlocked when they came in.
So Officer Rick French went into the basement.
And he went through, he came across the second door down there that ended up leading into a little wine cellar.
And it had a wooden latch that locked it.
And he said he stopped in front of the door, but never opened it.
Instead, he went back upstairs. Jean Benet was behind that door the entire time.
Why didn't he go into that door? The world's may never fucking know.
I don't understand that at all. You are searching the whole entire home.
There's a missing child. But then he came out later and said, well, this was a kidnapping.
We didn't think she was in the home. And it's like, but...
The problem is you're going in with preconceived ideas.
Like you're supposed to let the scene speak to you, not you speak for the scene.
Right. And a forensic team arrived and we're starting to like do the sweep.
And at this time, again, everyone was assuming she was abducted and removed from the home.
So they only cordoned off her bedroom. Right.
Which would have been where she would have been stolen from, obviously.
I understand, again, the initial logic of this thinking that she was obviously taken from her bedroom.
Right. But stop assuming shit at the crime scene.
Let it tell you what's happening. And sure, she's taken from her bedroom, but we don't know that that's where the note was written.
In my assumption, I would assume it was written either like at the kitchen table or in the living room at the coffee table.
Like, you know. This is what doesn't make sense to me.
Exactly that. Yeah. So you're assuming she was taken from her bedroom.
Sure. Absolutely. Logical. The person had to walk through the house, which means there's tons of evidence that can be taken.
Exactly. Had to stand in that kitchen and write that note, had to walk over to the staircase and put them there and then walk somewhere else to get out.
And you don't know how they got out because there's no signs of forced entry or exit.
So you should be treating this entire house as a crime scene because you have no fucking clue how they got in or how they got that kid out.
Right. Why the fuck would you only be looking at that bedroom?
Right. You should be getting these people out of that fucking house and you should be cordoning off this entire place.
Absolutely. Wake that nine-year-old up, get him out of his fucking bedroom, get out of the house.
It doesn't make any sense to me, this thought.
And they're like, well, you know, no, that doesn't make any sense.
That's botched as fuck. Mm-hmm. And now this was the only murder in Boulder during this year.
Oh, wow. So they were very unequipped. It's not like they were very used to handling this, but at the same time.
That is crazy. Use all your skills. That this was the only murder in Boulder.
Yeah. It's wild. In this like area at that time.
So they were, yeah, they were very unequipped.
Yeah. Yeah. But in 2015, they spoke with the same cop that they talked to before in 2015, Beckner.
He said, quote, as for the police department in general, I wish we would have done a better job of securing and controlling the crime scene on day one.
We also should have separated John and Patsy and gotten full statements from them that day.
That's like protocol. Yeah. That's what's always done.
It would be five months before they interviewed the Ramseys after that day.
That's crazy. And they didn't separate them.
I've had experiences where the police have had to come to my home when I was younger.
And every single experience that I ever had with police, everybody in my home was separated.
And it wasn't even about a kidnapping. No.
That's just what you do. Every single time that's ever happened, every person in the home is spoken to separately.
Why would you not just pull the parents apart?
There's two officers there, at least at this point.
Right. Pull them apart and say, what happened?
Right. What happened this morning? And just take their quick statements.
Of course. But no, they sat in front of both of them and were like, okay, what happened?
Yeah. Like, no. And they've had very different experiences that morning.
Exactly. That's the thing. Now, the rest of the house was just open season.
No evidence protection, no nothing for the rest of the house.
People just freely walking in and around, bringing things in and out.
In fact, the Ramsey's best friends, the Whites and the Fernies, showed up because they called them.
Their minister and other family members showed up.
In fact, Priscilla White started cleaning the fucking kitchen. which is beyond my fucking comprehension of course if i walked into my friend's home whose daughter had been kidnapped that morning i wouldn't be touching shit in that house i'd be like holy shit i would just be focusing on her and also i'd be too scared that i'd be fucking something up this is an active crime scene no matter what there's police around here why the fuck are you cleaning the kitchen That's weird.
That's crazy to me. Like, that's crazy behavior.
What are you doing? Yeah. What the hell?
I'm trying to come up with something in my head just to like, oh, the other side.
That's just me. That's just beyond my comprehension.
That is just not a move I would make coming into a friend's house.
That's a crime scene right now. But like, that's just me.
And what is wild to me, even more wild to me, is that when Patsy called the Whites and the Fernies right after the 911 call, she didn't tell them Jean Benet had been kidnapped.
She just said, I have an emergency. You need to come here.
So they showed up and she was like, Jean Benet is missing.
And they were like, what the fuck? Like, they were like, that's the emergency.
Like, you just need us to look. Why didn't you tell them that?
Why would you just have them walk into that?
That's so wild. No. Yeah. I don't. There's no reason.
All I was going to say was like, did she think the phone was tapped?
But she called 911. So now she already called.
That's bizarre. So wild. Now, so Barb, Barb Fernie, one of the family friends called to the home, talked to Patsy and she asked her what happened when she found the ransom note.
Yeah. And Patsy told her that she, quote, just handed the note to John first.
Okay. But later, Patsy would tell police that she had screamed for John when she found the note.
John was asleep on the third floor, he claimed, so he wasn't getting dressed when the note was found, when she would have screamed.
And he claimed he heard her, but somehow Burke, who was down the hall from her when she screamed, slept through all of this, didn't hear any of it.
Okay. And we've said before, like, oh, kids will sleep through anything because, like, you know, it's not their problem.
If your mom is screaming, you're going to wake up.
You're probably going to hear it. And it's in the morning.
It's not like this is the middle of the night.
This is the morning. Barb Fernie was like, why the fuck is this kid still asleep?
Like, what's going on? It's mayhem in here.
No one's checking on him. I also, and this is just me and this is an opinion, but I would want my child right next to me.
Exactly. Right fucking next to me if my other child was missing.
I would be clinging on to that boy for dear life.
Thank you. That is part of something I don't understand.
That's exactly how I would feel. I would be...
You don't know what happened. There could be somebody in the home still.
That's the thing. Someone came into your home unbeknownst to you while you slept and stole one of your children out of their bedrooms.
Right. There is no fucking way my kid would be in their bedroom by themselves.
No. How the fuck do you know that that window isn't how they're going to get in?
How do you know they're not hiding in his closet right now under his bed?
That was my exact thought was could be hiding in his closet.
I would be literally clinging. Like headlocking my child to me.
Like they would be, nobody would be taking that kid away.
So the fact that everything's going on and they don't even know what the fuck is happening with Burke in his bedroom.
No. That's bizarre. It's just a bizarre thing.
It really, like, no one seemed concerned that the kidnapper was still in the house or how they got into the house and could they get back in.
Right. Like, how do you know that kid's safe?
Like, that's just so weird. I don't understand that.
But again, remember, they were supposed to make arrangements to get the money to pay the ransom.
The kidnapper was going to call between 8 and 10.
Yes. It was a window. So 8 a.m., Detective Linda Arndt arrived at the scene.
Patsy told Detective Arndt that she had gone downstairs, found the ransom note, and then ran upstairs and found JonBenet missing.
This is, again, not the order that she has given.
It has flip-flopped three different times.
Many, many times. So they were ready to, and again, that is something that can be, I'm hysterical, I don't remember what happened.
Yep. But not the same. So they were ready to do the ransom exchange at the time given by the note.
So they're sitting there, they have the phones are ready, they're tapped, they have like the whole thing set up in like a solarium, like a little sunroom.
Yeah. They're ready for this call, 8 to 10, they got to sit there, they want to make sure that it's tapped so they can trace it, all that.
Yeah. The 8 o'clock comes around, nothing happening.
By 10, the deadline had passed for the money to be transferred.
The ransom note writer never called. And Detective Arndt said that literally no one in the family noticed that the deadline came and went.
No one asked about it. Oh. That would be my first question.
I would be panicking that they hadn't called yet.
And I would also think, have they not called because I called the police and now my child has been beheaded?
Yeah. But no one even noticed that it was 10 a.m.
Like, they were not even... That is your...
I don't even know what the word is. Like that is like, that is the biggest thing on the docket right now.
Oh, that's priority number one is that timeframe.
And if that passes, then it should be like DEF CON one.
Full blown. Holy shit. What the fuck is going?
Like, what do we do now? I would be hysterical.
Yeah. Because what do you do now? I would absolutely be hysterical.
Because you would assume that they didn't, you would 100% assume had you read that note, if they didn't call, they know all these people are at the house.
I'm clearly being closely watched and they killed my daughter.
That's what I would think. Now, James, John Ramsey also left the room that had the tapped phone in it three different times.
And when it rang for something unrelated during the time frame, like someone else called, he had to run back in the room to answer it.
And the police, the detectives there were like, why would he leave the room?
Because if they called, why would you have to want to run from another room and possibly miss the call?
Uh-huh. Like, wouldn't you just be locked to that being just waiting for it so you could grab it immediately?
I would, yes. The only thing I could potentially look at differently is maybe he could not handle the pressure of sitting there looking at that telephone waiting and knew that he would run back in and get the call.
And that is something I can understand, too.
Right. Like, that it's too much. And they did say that he was, like—
Totally just panic stricken. Like he was pacing around.
He couldn't sit still. He was like very, he wasn't just sitting there like.
So I think that is probably. So that could absolutely be part of it.
Now, Officer French made a sweep through the house.
Fleet White made his first, like he made a sweep through the house.
He didn't find anything. Fleet White went down to the basement for the first time.
They're just allowing people to walk around.
Yeah. Through this house. I just want to point that out.
They're just like, yeah, sure, go down to the basement.
And he said later, Fleet White said he, quote, observed the window to be closed, but unlatched and left it in that condition.
So there was an unlatched window down in the basement.
And it was the middle window. Like it was, there was like these three windows, like a basement window.
You know what I mean? That has like a grate and everything that is from the floor.
Yeah. According to Foreign Faction, Fleet White is the only one who, while walking around searching, because people were searching for her, including John Ramsey.
Yeah. He's the only one who called out JonBenet's name while searching for her.
No one else did. What? Yeah. And he was like that because I guess his daughter, Fleet White, he had a daughter around JonBenet's age.
Yeah. And he said like a couple of years before that or some months or something like that, they actually had to call 911 because they couldn't find their daughter.
And she was hidden in the house. She was like hiding.
She was like playing hide and seek. So he said that was on his mind.
Right. So he was calling for her being like, hopefully she'll just come out.
Yeah. Yeah. Because he was like, JonBenet, you're scaring everybody.
Please come out. Like, right. You know, we're here.
Like, we just want to see you. But no one else was calling her name.
And that's bizarre because we've had that experience before where like one of your kids will run in the house.
Yeah. And play hide and seek. What the fuck?
And we're screaming their name like fully panicked.
Yeah. And he said when he went down to the basement and he saw that unlatched window and he said he didn't touch it.
But he said he saw the wine cellar door with the wooden latch on it.
And he said he opened that door. And he said he looked in, but it was pitch black.
And so he said he was looking for a light.
And he said he actually stepped into the wine cellar and was like feeling around.
And he said, I looked through the darkness and I didn't see anything.
I couldn't see a form. I couldn't see anything.
And I was like squinting, trying to find a light.
And he's like, but I didn't want to go too far in there.
I didn't know where a light was. So he's like, so I just, I just left because I didn't see anything.
That's so haunting when you know that. She was right there.
Oh, that's terrible. Now, John Ramsey gave, at this point, the police had John and Patsy give handwriting samples right away because they wanted to pass them off.
And Detective Jeff Kithart, who was the handwriting and fraud expert, he was the one who said later, like, This is a little strange.
Alarm bells. He was the one that found the practice at this point.
He found the practice ransom note. And he said whoever had written the ransom note clearly had started it a few times in that notebook, which is very strange.
Now, 10 a.m. came again. The call didn't come.
So John went down to the basement. Again, why is this happening?
Why are we allowing people to just keep searching?
Like civilians, why are we allowing this without a police officer with them?
He's now the third person to go in the basement.
Why is everybody continuously going to the basement?
Yeah. And while he was down there, he mentioned that there was a broken window.
And it was open. And just under it was a suitcase that had been set up.
But he later said that he actually broke that window accidentally because he got locked out.
Oh, okay. Like a few weeks prior and they just hadn't gotten it fixed.
Always get those fixed. Yeah. Because that's like a big deal, man.
It's a big security issue. Now, he closed the window when he went down there and just went back upstairs.
Okay. You would go upstairs and say, by the way, that window was open.
I just realized that is potentially how this person got into my home.
But then later in a crime scene video, you can see that the middle window down there is open again.
And this is after John Ramsey said he latched it closed.
It's a strange inconsistency. That's weird.
With all of it. Now, at some point during the day, Fleet White drove Burke to his home.
They woke Burke up, drove Burke to Fleet's home to stay with his family during the chaos.
They wanted to get him out of the scene because they were like, who knows what's going to happen here?
You need to get out of here. Yeah. So around 1 p.m., Detective Arndt asked John Ramsey and Fleet White, who had come back at this point, to search the house for anything that seemed amiss.
Okay. At first I was like, what? Why are you asking two civilian men to search the house?
Like, why are you asking them to? You're a detective.
Yeah. What is going on? I did read that they said it was just an attempt to try to give John Ramsey something to do because he seemed like he was losing it.
Okay. Like he was frantically pacing around and she was like, I needed him to have something to focus on.
Okay. Because he was losing it. I don't think that's a great...
I think that was probably a regrettable decision on their part.
Also, she told him and White to search the house from, quote, top to bottom.
And he went straight for the basement. Okay.
Could be preference. Could be that he was like, I'm going to start at the bottom and end at the top.
Yeah. You're already on the top. You're already in the middle floor.
So you might as well just go to the top and end at the bottom, I would think.
But that's me. Yeah. You know, so they started in the basement to work their way up.
And this was both of their second trips down to the basement at this point.
Now, again, the first trips where they went solo.
When they went down together, Fleet saw the broken part of the window and he was like, oh, I didn't notice that the first time.
Like, there's a broken window. And Ramsey was like, oh, I was locked out.
I broke it. And he was like... You should tell people.
That's how somebody could have gotten in.
That's pretty like, what the fuck? And he was like, oh, yeah, it's fine.
And he said, now, this is weird, too, because later, I guess police said it was not clear from either of the men's later interviews with the authorities whether they had opened the middle window.
So it's weird that it was in the crime scene photo.
It's open. Yeah. Yeah. Neither one of them would say that they opened it.
And why would you open it? It's just really weird.
John opened that wooden latch door to the wine cellar.
John Ramsey. This is when he found his daughter, Jean Benet, was lying on the ground with a white blanket over her torso.
Her hands or arms were over her head. This is really rough, by the way, guys.
It is, yeah. There was a nylon cord around them, her wrists and her neck.
There was duct tape over her mouth. She was wearing the long white t-shirt with a silver sequined star on it and long white Long John style leggings.
The cord around her neck was pulled incredibly tight to the point that John couldn't even initially see it around her neck.
Oh, wow. It was so, like, indented. It was pulled with a garrote made from a broken paintbrush handle, later found to be taken from Patsy's paint kit, which was outside of the wine cellar doorway.
The other part of the broken brush was found in the room as well on the floor.
Now, Fleet White, because John had turned on the light, so Fleet now saw what was in front of him.
He took off running upstairs yelling for someone to call an ambulance.
Yeah. John Ramsey immediately pulled the tape off of JonBenet's mouth and untied some of the cords on her wrist.
I get this. I absolutely 100 million percent.
No one should fault him for that. That's not, no question in my mind, I would pull the tape.
You wouldn't be thinking of forensics in that moment.
You would think, oh, my God, get this off my baby.
I need to get this shit off my baby. Exactly.
Like these cords around her wrists and this thing like, yeah, I get it.
Now, Fleet White later said he searched that room before this.
He mentioned to them, he's like, I actually looked there.
And he said that he swore that John yelled, oh, my God, before turning on the light.
Now, John Ramsey told police later that you could clearly see the blanket, the white blanket, even without a light.
He saw the form of the blanket, and that's why he yelled, oh, my God.
And he knows his home a little bit better, I will say.
Yeah, there's that. I get that a little bit.
Now, Fleet White, his best friend, said no.
He said, I stepped into that room a bit to try to find that light, and I didn't see anything.
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Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Later investigators did a test on this room to see if they could see.
None of them could see the blanket in the dark.
Okay. So there's that. Yeah. John Ramsey picked JonBenet up and ran with her screaming up the stairs.
Now Priscilla White was with Patsy in the sunroom when this occurred.
She heard John and left the room to see what happened, but Patsy didn't follow her.
Oh. So Fleet White... Has run up the stairs yelling, we need an ambulance.
Uh-huh. Wouldn't that startle you? Yep. Because you're wondering, have they found JonBenet?
Or did something happen to Jon? Did he have a heart attack down there?
Yeah. Do we need an ambulance because he's having a heart attack?
Like, I would be like, she didn't move. Yeah.
So once John had come upstairs, he placed JonBenet down on the ground in the hallway and kept saying, according to everybody around them, he kept saying over and over, my angel, which like breaks my heart.
Of course. And then strangely, Detective Arndt picked JonBenet up and moved her again, placing her at the bottom of the Christmas tree.
That's very bizarre. The detective. That's very bizarre.
Why? Why did any of this happen? I do not know.
Once she was moved there, a blanket was placed on top of her and also a Colorado Avalanche sweatshirt was placed over where her feet were to cover them.
Like family members were doing that. This is so bad for a crime scene.
Like this has been so fucking contaminated.
You should have just left her where John had put her.
I know it's hard. I know you're... You got to leave what's happening here so that they can collect what they can.
Patsy was brought in to the room, unable to walk herself.
They were holding her up and she threw herself on top of JonBenet and just sobbed.
Okay. And she was screaming like, Lazarus, you raised whatever.
And like, please raise my baby from the dead, like screaming.
And like the minister was there, obviously, and they're very religious, so it makes sense.
But she was like inconsolable. Now, according to the Foreign Faction book, Father Holverstack, the pastor.
Sorry, is there a difference between the pastor and the minister?
I'm sorry. I'm probably using those things interchangeably, and I apologize.
Okay. He's called a pastor in some things and a minister in others.
Okay. I'm not sure what the difference is.
And again, I apologize. Oh, no, you're fine.
I didn't know if there were two separate.
But it is one person. Okay. I'll just tell you that.
It's one person. Father Holverstock. He remembered John Ramsey saying something like, quote, I don't think he meant to kill her because she's wrapped in a blanket.
Or that, quote, she was warm. She was wrapped in a blanket.
Uh-huh. So I don't know if, like, he just mentioned that to police that he heard that.
Why would you say I don't think he meant to kill her when you were left that ransom note?
She has duct tape over her mouth and cord on her wrists that you pulled off.
Right. Why are you giving them anything?
Any kind of... humanity at all. I would never be like, these people didn't mean to kill her.
I'd be like, these people are fucking monsters and I'm going to hunt them down myself.
Well, and the note said that they had every intention of killing her if you did not follow their rules.
So Fleet White then went back downstairs to the wine cellar.
Again, That's a crime scene. She was just found in the wine cellar.
That's actually the crimiest of all crime scenes.
That's the place that we are looking at right now.
Right. He went back down by himself where she was found.
He collected the duct tape, cord, and blanket.
There is a crime scene photo after this point that shows the middle window downstairs wide open at this point.
He took all those things back upstairs and brought it to the police.
Right. Why is he collecting crime scene evidence, everybody?
What's happening? Well, and I wouldn't want to, like, I think Fleet was just trying to be helpful, but me personally, I wouldn't want to touch that shit.
Me, I would never touch that shit. Now my DNA is going to be on that.
I... I would never touch that shit. That would definitely not be mine.
Again, we have knowledge that tells us not to.
Yeah. And it's like, but I don't know. And I'm more fault, the detectives, for allowing this to happen, you know?
It's very strange. Now, the window is also a strange thing.
There's no sign of disturbance on the window pane.
There was dust, dirt, and even cobwebs, like spiderwebs, that have remained undisturbed.
Yeah. Like if someone had slid into that window from the outside, they didn't even touch anything on the windowsill with any part of their body or clothing.
Which is impossible. And even outside the window, there was no evidence someone had stood there or walked up to it.
No. It appeared like it had been open from the inside and no one had actually gone through it.
Oh. So that's strange. They searched the basement.
They found the paintbrush garage. They also found the broken window and the suitcase on the ground.
There were some markings around the window like scuff marks, but again, no disturbances on the windowsill itself.
And is that where John just had... That's what they assumed, that those were just from him.
And the reason there was no disturbance on the windowsill was it was weeks earlier that he had done that.
So dust had collected. Right. And that cobweb had formed.
Now, at around 1.30 p.m., detective Arndt, or no, excuse me, one of the detectives, I believe it was Detective French, actually, heard John Ramsey on the phone.
This is after Jean Benet has been brought upstairs.
Underneath the Christmas tree. Everything has been found.
He's on the phone, heard by detectives, booking a plane trip to Atlanta for him, Patsy, and Burke.
The detective then informed him. You cannot leave the city or state anything.
And he said, I have a meeting that I can't miss.
And they were like, your six-year-old was murdered in your fucking house.
You can't leave. And it's weird that I have to tell you that.
Yeah. It's weird that you think you would even be capable of taking that meeting.
That is the excuse of all excuses to call out of work.
Like, yup. That's beyond like that. I understand that.
Like some people go into like, just, I got a, I got a truck.
Yeah. Like autopilot that that's not your book in a private plane out of here.
As soon as your kid was found. What the fuck?
Like, what are you doing? That's weird. Like, that's weird.
No matter how you slice it, that's weird.
So Patsy and John provided hair and blood samples right away.
And they, along with Burke, were spoken to briefly by police after this.
But the medical examiner, John Meyer, didn't get there until 8 p.m.
Why? Don't know. His report states that he found her in the living room with a blanket and that sweatshirt on top of her.
The autopsy was performed the next morning.
The time of death was stated to be between 10 p.m. the night before and 6 a.m. that morning.
Now, it's believed this is probably closer to the 10 p.m. hour because decomposition had begun.
Oh, wow. Several injuries could have caused death.
Strangulation and a skull fracture killed JonBenet.
The official cause of death was listed as asphyxia by strangulation associated with cranocerebral trauma.
Now, there wasn't conclusive evidence of a rape, but there was questions related to whether she had been sexually assaulted in some way.
That's horrific. Blood was found in her underwear that she was wearing, like just tiny little like pinpoints of it, but still there.
Closer inspection revealed that JonBenet had marks on her back and neck that looked like they could have possibly been made with the prongs of a stun gun.
What? Yeah. Now, it was noted several times that the cords around her wrist were very loosely tied.
In fact, they didn't even make marks on her skin.
That's how loose they were. The cord around her neck, though, was so deep that it had made a very brutal indent in her skin.
There was notable petechial hemorrhages in her eyes showing that she was, in fact, alive when she was garroted.
That's horrible. But the hope is that she was unconscious from the blow to the head.
Yeah. Now, a bruise on the front of her throat was also really strange.
It's slightly triangular and the size is about a quarter.
And there's all these sources that say that they believe it's like analysts have said that they believe it was like her shirt was caught up in the garage and had pressed into it had like knotted.
OK. And pressed into her skin and just caused that.
OK, sure. I could see that. Like we'll say.
But it wasn't caught in it when they found it.
So that was interesting. Now, they also found, according to the official report, and this really broke my heart, a red ink line drawing in the form of a heart located on the palm of her left hand, like a little kid just drawing.
Yeah. What they discovered through this autopsy was that she had been, and this is rough, just trigger warning, sexual assault.
She had likely been sexually assaulted with a paintbrush handle at the time or after death.
They also found evidence that she could have possibly been sexually assaulted more times before that night.
I remember the doctor had made notes. Like weeks or months before.
There were several experts and physicians who all conclusively agreed on this fact.
That's so sad. Her pediatrician says they never found anything amiss and that she had visited like 30 something times in the past like three years or something like that.
And that they never questioned or were worried about that.
But who knows? Well, yeah. Yeah. Now, the cords were very interesting for other reasons, too.
The cord that was wrapped around the homemade garotte and then around her neck was from a new roll of cord.
It was white cord. They knew this because you know how new cord or rope will have like a melted end?
Yeah. Almost like there's like glue on the end or something.
Like an englet. Like it's a very like smooth end.
Yeah. Yeah. That's what was on the garrotte.
But the rest of the cords on her wrist were frayed and clearly cut, like roughly cut.
So this led them to believe that the garrotte was made first.
And then the cords were tied around her wrist, which would make it staged.
Mm-hmm. Because it would also explain why those were so loose, because there was no reason for them to be tight.
Right. And we believe she's unconscious anyway when she was carotid, so... So it doesn't really... That's all staged.
Now, there was mucus that had come from Jean Benet's nose... that will happen during strangulation, and down her face and lips, like it had gone down.
This happens during death, especially strangulation and a blunt force trauma to the head.
They noted that the outlines of the duct tape were on top of the mucus trail, meaning the duct tape was placed on her mouth when she was at the very least unconscious, but more likely when she was dead.
OK. Because the mucus was under the tape.
Right. So that had already happened. Right.
Like she'd already been strangled. There was also an imprint, according to Foreign Faction, that was very clear on the sticky side of the tape.
And the imprint was JonBenet's lips. But they were perfect.
It wasn't smeared. It wasn't. She wasn't yelling.
Nope. They had lips. That's what that was.
Wow, this is like really terrible. Which says staged.
There's no reason for that to be on there.
But there was DNA evidence found in her underwear and on her waistband.
And it did not match any of the Ramseys.
Okay. So there's that. We're going to talk about that more in part two.
But at this time after the autopsy, the Ramseys went to Georgia and refused to speak to the police.
They did go to Georgia. It was after all the autopsy was done and everything and they were allowed to.
They went to Georgia just to get away from, I think, the house, which again, parts of that you can understand.
I understand. I want to get the hell out of here.
But then they hired a huge team of lawyers.
Again, we all say like when anybody's get a lawyer because that's the first thing you should do.
But then they hired a PR firm. Mm-hmm. Okay.
Again, Boulder Police Chief Tom Kobe told the public at this point that there was no threat to them, no threat to the public, and that this was an isolated incident.
Mm-hmm. What? So there's no kidnapper on the loose is what you're telling me?
How do you know that? What says that? What are you talking about?
A kid was just murdered in her house. And we don't know who did it.
And everybody in the neighborhood was like, we're fucking terrified.
Of course. Like we were terrified. Like somebody had broken into their house and killed their kid in the middle of the night.
And you're telling us there's no threat?
What does that mean? You got to explain that, man.
Now, we are going to end part one here. I'm sure people are like, what about the pineapple?
Don't worry, we're going to talk about the pineapple in part two.
We're going to talk about the pineapple, which I'm sure some of you might know about.
Some of you are probably like, what the fuck are you talking about the pineapple?
It's a big deal. It's huge. We're going to talk about the flashlight.
We're going to talk about the suspects and we're going to talk about the theories.
All right. In part two. But that is part one of JonBenet Ramsey.
Hopefully this time around it's a more, I wanted to make it a more cohesive and easy to follow narrative than before.
I thought I jumped around too much last time.
And we're also not underwater this time, so you can probably hear it better.
No, that was great. Well, it was horrific, but it was... You could follow it, though.
I think you, yeah. I don't want to say I think you did a much better job, because I thought you did great last time.
Well, thank you. But I think it was definitely...
I think you've growth. Thank you. I think you've growth.
I think you've growth. But yeah, this is a rough one.
Part two, we're really going to get into the nitty gritty of all the theories and suspects.
That pineapple thing is a real interesting bone of contention for a lot of people, as is the flashlight.
But what we're not going to do is get sued by Schmerp Schmamzy.
So I'm not going to say anything. Nope. And with that being said, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird. Just don't keep it that weird.
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