Hi, Crime Junkies.
Today I have something a little different for you.
A conversation about a cold case, but it's not between me and Britt.
Anyone with a Crime Junkies social media algorithm knows that this month the Boulder PD released a public briefing on the JonBenet Ramsey case.
Now, for those who haven't heard it or seen the video, let me get you up to speed.
Hello, my name is Stephen Redfern and I serve as the Police Chief for the City of Boulder, Colorado.
I'm speaking on behalf of the Boulder Police Department, as I did this time last year, to give you an update about the ongoing investigation into the tragic murder of JonBenet Ramsey.
JonBenet was murdered in December of 1996, and our officers responded to investigate.
While I was not at the Boulder Police Department then.
I've worked in policing for more than 25 years and I want to assure the community that our agency is committed to doing everything we can to bring justice to JonBenet and hold her killer responsible.
My direction to our department has been clear.
Leave no stone unturned.
Follow the leads wherever they go.
Engage with and use outside partners' resources and expertise and never stop working to bring justice.
In this case,
Last year we gave you an update about a lot of the work that has been done to solve this crime and those efforts have continued.
This case remains a top priority for our department.
This past year, our detectives have conducted several new interviews, as well as re-interviewed individuals based on tips that we've received.
We've also collected new evidence and tested and retested other pieces of evidence to generate new leads.
Techniques and technology constantly evolve.
This is especially true with technology related to DNA testing.
Detectives continue to consult with outside experts from across the country, as well as our state and federal partners, to strategize and explore all options when it comes to evidence testing.
This will ensure we continue to use the most forensically sound and up-to-date methods in all aspects of the investigation, as they become available.
I've also met personally with the Ramsey family to let them know about some of this work.
I've told them that we share the same goal, to find and bring JonBenet's murderer to justice.
Our detectives will not stop following up on every lead and every tip until that person or persons is found.
While we cannot go into the specifics of who we interviewed, what we tested and what we've learned without compromising this active investigation, we know it's important to share this update with our community.
And that is why I'm speaking to you today.
It is never too late for people with knowledge of this terrible crime to come forward.
And I urge those responsible for this murder to contact us.
Next year will be 30 years since JonBenet was murdered in her own home.
She should be with us here today, living a full and happy life with her family.
Let me be clear.
The Boulder Police Department will continue to work diligently to investigate this crime, follow up on every lead and evaluate all technological advances that can help us solve this crime and bring JonBenet's killer or killers, to justice.
Now, I too can't go into specifics about who I've interviewed and what I've learned.
But since releasing our episode on JonBenet's case last year, I haven't stopped looking into the case.
And I hate to be as painfully vague as the Boulder PD, but that's all I can say for now.
Now, Boulder PD hasn't said what evidence it is that they're looking at specifically.
But last year, as part of my coverage on JonBenet, I got to sit down with her father, Jon Ramsey, and there were specific items that he wanted tested, which could be what Boulder's focused on now.
Now.
We released that conversation I had with him a year ago on YouTube, but because most people consume our podcast in audio only, many of you haven't heard that conversation yet.
So that is what I'm bringing you here today.
In early November 2024, John Ramsey invited me into his home for a one-on-one conversation.
Here's what happened.
To start, I feel like there is this perception that when you do kind of interviews that they're very orchestrated, or there's this party line and they're like oh, John's so composed, or it's John's tales.
And we reached out to you.
There is no off the record on it like you told me.
I've done a number of interviews over the years.
And my main reason for engaging the media is to keep pressure on the police to do their job.
And I've never wanted the questions in advance because I want to respond spontaneously.
If I have a made-up answer, then I think, what was my answer for this question?
I'd rather just, you know, ask the question and I'll spontaneously respond.
You know, and it could be, when did you stop beating your wife?
You know, no boundaries.
You don't want questions.
I got lots of questions.
Yeah.
And so it just is easier for me.
Yeah.
It's almost like I don't have to prepare.
Ideal.
Well, I did prepare for the both of us.
Okay, good.
JonBenet, she would be we were talking about this earlier too like she would be almost my age right now.
Yes, I realize that.
And what is that like?
When you picture her, she's stuck at six, I would imagine.
Oh, absolutely.
She's still my little girl.
And I can't imagine what she would be like as an adult, right?
Do you feel like you're ever stuck in 1996?
No.
I mean, I've learned two things.
One, life's not easy all the time, and life's not always fair.
And it's like, okay, those are the game rules.
Let's keep at it.
And one of the things I've noticed with families who have lost a child and I've looked at this in some detail.
I don't know what the percentage is.
It's a majority percentage end up in a divorce.
And for Patsy and I, we fortunately.
What really got us up off the floor was the realization we have three other children now that need us desperately to be strong.
They're hurt.
They're crushed.
They've lost.
At their age, they shouldn't have to deal with the loss and death of a family member.
Do you feel like you're still in shock?
You don't get over the loss of a child.
You get...
You move beyond it.
Did you ever give yourself time to have a pity party?
Because if anyone deserves a pity party— You do, once in a while, yeah.
Well, what was interesting was sometimes I'd be down and Patsy'd be up, and we sort of could offset each other.
We'll get into, I think, why they kind of looked at you guys as a whole.
But even in looking at the family, I do feel like, at least initially, Patsy bore the brunt of that.
She did.
She did.
And for, like, a long time.
I even watched something they did on Netflix a while ago called The Casting JonBenet.
And there's like a line in there where the guy was like oh, I bet she was probably a horrible bitch of a mother.
No, she was a wonderful mother.
An amazing mother.
And I don't know, why do you think they, like, they latched onto her so much?
When I know that there was.
If people want to have questions about what happened in the home, why is it her that everyone became fixated on?
I don't know.
Maybe didn't come across so good on television, I was told by people.
But she was a wonderful mother.
She was a wonderful stepmother.
And I never heard her say anything negative about anybody.
She was just a good person.
And so for her to take the brunt of that assault is just so unfair.
When we lost John Bonnet, she got very upset. focused on Burke.
I mean, that was our goal was try to give him as normal a childhood as we could possibly give him amidst all this chaos that was going around us.
We were afraid.
Somebody had attacked our family.
We don't know who it was.
And we were frightened, quite frankly.
And one of the challenges we wanted to keep Burke out of, out of video and pictures so that people would know what he looked like.
And so how do we get him from?
We were living with friends when we were in Boulder so he could finish his school year.
How do we get him to school without being photographed?
And it became a project.
And the way it was, it was diversion from grieving.
We would send out a decoy car Burke would be in another car on the floor in the backseat.
Just to go to school?
Yeah, to go to school.
And we'd get him to school, unphotographed, because we wanted to protect him.
What were the kids at school like to him?
Well, the kids are wonderful.
Really?
Oh, yeah.
I feel like that's the first time I've ever heard that.
Normally, school-age kids are awful.
Well, I say that, I mean, from my perspective, they seem like they really were great.
Did you guys have any moments with him where, like you're asking, I think about like kids, like what are the things that the parents don't know?
Like, what's happening?
No, you know, you know your children, and I'm not necessarily talking about like him doing something, but I'm saying like you know, they hang out together, they have the same group of friends.
Like was there someone that maybe she didn't tell mom and dad about but she's going to tell her brother about?
Or her brother like, did you guys have any of those like moments with Burke to be like like, help us and help us figure this out?
No, because we really just wanted him to be separated from it, from the chaos and the.
We wanted him to be normal.
And that was very difficult because, being followed around by the media and going through the grocery store line and seeing your sister's picture on the front of the tabloid, it was difficult to give him a normal life.
Do you think he might still know something that he doesn't even know he knows?
No.
Burke's a very solid person, despite all.
And went to college, graduated, had a good job ever since.
Well thought of by his employers and very, very disciplined.
Buys used cars and, you know, he's a good adult.
He was a good son.
If he knew anything, it would not be something he would thought.
It's important.
That's what I'm saying.
I wonder if there's something in there.
So I know, in the Dr Phil one of the things that came out was the idea that you used a flashlight to put him to sleep and that he came back down to play with a toy.
When he's down and people are sleeping, has he ever talked?
Did he get the sense that someone else was in the home?
Did he hear anything?
I don't know.
How long was he up?
No, we've never asked him that.
I don't know.
I didn't know, frankly, that he got up again.
I'm not sure he did.
Again, that's fiction.
There's so much fiction out there.
Because it's just thrown out there.
It's just Dr. Phil who says, you got up to play the toy?
And Burke says, yeah, I did.
It was something that I wanted to put together.
And then it kind of just, like, flew away.
Well, you know, again, when we got home...
John and I had fallen asleep.
I know you and Burke came.
I put her to bed.
Burke and I sat down and tried to put together one of his little toys for a little while, just because he wanted to.
And then he went off to bed.
You're saying that whatever Dr. Phil said and Burke said on the show, he didn't come back down?
I didn't know that he came back down, if he did.
Does stuff like that make you want to be like, oh my gosh, maybe there's something he knows?
Burke would have said something if something was weird, but he may have misunderstood the question too.
Do you think Burke regrets doing it?
Well, probably.
But, you know, the things that were interpreted by the Internet crowd, well, he's smiling.
Burke talks with a smile.
You know just the way he is.
You ask him.
You know what time it is, he'll smile.
Yeah.
They lit him up after that.
I know.
And, uh, that was very unfair.
Do you think there's like one thing that those that those people who will never believe you like hone in on, or like one thing you're like man, if we would have done this thing differently?
I don't, there's one thing, but you know, we were, uh, portrayed as very rich people.
We didn't consider ourselves rich.
We built a little computer business, sold our interest to Lockheed.
I mean, we're like a pretty penny though.
But I got, that was more money than I ever thought I'd have in my life, you know.
But we didn't, I still was working.
I still figured I needed to have a paycheck coming in and, But we were portrayed as I was president of a company that had done a billion dollars in revenue.
We were a distributor, like a grocery store.
You got to sell a lot of milk and eggs to make a little bit of money.
And that was the kind of business we were in.
So in our industry, that was not a huge business.
But that was publicized a few weeks before John Manet was murdered in the local paper.
But they perceived, therefore, I must be a billionaire.
Well, that wasn't true.
I was an employee of Lockheed.
But people don't like rich people.
And we were portrayed as super rich, callous.
Everybody knows rich people don't love their children kind of people.
I think.
I don't know.
And then we got into this child beauty thing, which Patsy and John Manet had fun with it.
And Patsy's philosophy with our kids is let them try anything they want to try.
Patsy, when JonBenet was, she'd been maybe four, I guess, was diagnosed, or maybe three, three or four, diagnosed with ovarian cancer, stage four, which has about a five-year life expectancy, and that's it.
And Patsy was so distraught she'd say God, why did you give me these beautiful children?
If you're not going to, let me be here to raise them?
But she was a fighter, and she beat it.
She was in remission.
For her.
It was a huge gift that she could now perhaps look forward to being with her children when they go to college, get married and have her grandkids.
But I think deep down she knew that may not happen.
And so she tried to cram a lot of mother-daughter stuff into their lives together.
She was a natural.
She loved performing.
She was a stunner, yeah.
Yeah, that's just the way she was.
And she'd put on little skits at home and make us interrupt our dinner and watch the skit that she and her friends put on.
So it was just, that was her personality.
And they had fun with it, but it wasn't an obsession.
And, of course, the media presented it as Patsy was this dominant mother who was living vicariously with her daughter, forcing him to do this stuff.
That was nonsense.
Gentlemen, they had fun with it and loved it.
If people say that you profited off of it, what's your response to them?
You're joking.
I lost my job.
I was not employable.
I had a company tell me look, we'd like you to come work for us, but we can't afford to have our good name on the front of the National Enquirer.
Mm-hmm.
So we can't hire you.
I was unemployed for, gosh, I don't know, five, six, seven years.
And I couldn't get a job.
Lockheed was wonderful to me at this time.
They couldn't have been more wonderful to me. during the time I was still working for them.
But they were in the process.
They had acquired our company to try to diversify their business model.
And after a couple of years, they decided we can't do it.
We don't think that way.
We're a military, industrial, government contractor.
We don't know how to deal in the consumer world.
And so they were in the process of- selling us and four or five other companies they'd bought to try to change their model.
And they engaged a conversation, I guess, with GE, and GE was going to buy us, it looked like.
And I'm sure, and I don't fault them, great company, but this Ramsey guy is a baggage.
It's a big baggage.
This isn't going to work.
And I didn't work for another, gosh, I don't know, five or six years because I couldn't get a job.
We were scraping by, basically.
Selling assets, selling our home, just trying to create an income that way.
But no, how could I have profited from this?
That's absurd.
I think people would just look at the books.
I think they would say, oh... Well, the first book...
We did get, what do we call it, an advance, and that kept us going for a while, financially.
By the time I wrote the second book, the whole book market had changed and the advances just weren't there.
But I did that second book mostly to help people because I'd gone through this trauma of, of course, the loss of a child.
My faith was broken. really challenged, how could God let this happen to a child?
And the book I wrote was really, I felt very compelled to try to help people.
The journey I went through wasn't to make money at all.
A lot has had to have changed over 30 years.
Like when you think about like you're in it day one in the house, you think it's a kidnapping.
How do you think differently now about the ransom note than you did day one?
Well, At least I have to imagine.
If it were me, I imagine that I've picked this thing apart.
10 ways to Sunday.
It didn't make sense, first of all.
I know in some of the interviews they bring up for Patsy, it goes back to the no.
And I think one of the reasons they keep those who believe she wrote it perpetuate the idea that she wrote it is because it seems like it's not the clear answer, answer or direction of how much of the note she saw.
Because initially, it's like, we have your daughter, and then she goes up and looks.
But then she talks about later looking out the window and seeing that it's a marked car and being concerned.
And people will say, oh, how did you know that that was later on the note?
People will say oh, when she calls 911, how does she know how it's signed if she only saw the first page?
You know, 30 years ago.
Yeah, I don't know.
You know, it was chaos that morning.
And I really thought I could get JonBenet back.
I really did.
We'd arranged.
You know I don't have 118000 laying around, but a friend of mine who was my banker got my ATM limit on my Visa card.
Jacked up?
Jacked up.
And I gave that card to a friend, I don't know who it was, somebody that was there.
I said, go get the money.
And they came back and didn't get the money.
And I was like, why didn't you get the money?
They're like, well, no, I don't need to do that yet.
But anyway.
Why 118?
That's something that everyone's obsessed with.
Well, yeah, it meant something to the killer.
What do you think it means?
Well, the only number that correlates that I know of is my bonus that year from Lockheed was 118000.
And it was paid in January.
Now we're in December.
It was on my pay stub.
Did you have those somewhere in the house?
Oh, yeah.
I'm sure laying around somewhere.
Did they ever find them?
I don't know.
So it comes back to somebody who's like so clearly I mean clearly they know she's in the basement.
They're not actually looking to get the money, but you think it was more of a message?
I think it was a mix.
I mean, why not a million?
Why not 500?
Why not a big number?
I mean, that's a big number, but doable.
And why 118?
Why not 100?
Why not 200?
It meant something to somebody.
People will, they just pick it apart.
It's crazy.
It's like I was criticized for disturbing the crime scene when I found John Monáe.
Oh my God, he removed the body.
If you're a parent, what would you do?
You'd pick up your child.
I was hoping, I was relieved I found her.
Thank God.
Took the tape off her mouth and tried to untie her wrists.
I couldn't because they're tied so tightly.
I didn't see the groat.
It was so deeply embedded in her throat.
Oh, he disturbed the crime scene.
That was wrong.
It's like, that's laughable to even say something like that.
Of course you would.
And have you ever been back in?
The house?
No.
Would you ever go back in?
No.
No.
We couldn't initially.
A friend of ours helped us move back to bar stuff, and we moved to Atlanta, which was our home.
That's where my family was.
That's where Patsy's family was.
JonBenet was buried there.
My oldest daughter was buried there.
So I was accused in the media of fleeing to Atlanta, but that's home.
Yeah, so that's something that people talk about, is they say oh, so I mean day one, you know.
They find JonBenet and within like within the hour Jon's on the phone saying I've got to get to Atlanta.
And people say it was for a business meeting.
Like, what was that?
Well, that's not quite the way it was.
Yeah.
There was so much misinformation out there.
It was hard to even combat any of it.
But Atlanta was our home.
We had a family cemetery plot.
That's where John Bonnet was going to be buried.
My oldest daughter was killed four years earlier in a car accident.
She was buried there.
That was our focus, to get John Bonnet buried, taken care of.
Boulder was not our home.
We had a house there, had a job there, but it wasn't home.
Home was Atlanta.
Is home, do you mean like you had a support system?
Yeah, and we lived there for 30 years.
When you made that, would you make the call?
Did you or you didn't make a call?
How do I remember that evolved?
No, I didn't, actually.
I'd asked one of the detectives, There was only one detective there that morning.
Everybody else was on vacation.
It was day after Christmas.
But there were lots of detectives and police there.
And I just, I can't remember what I said, but like, I want to go home.
And he said, yeah, that's fine.
Go.
And Lockheed sent one of the airplanes out, which is wonderful. flew us back to Atlanta.
And took one of our little Burke's friends with him at the last minute.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
What friend came with him?
I can't remember his name, but just one of his buddies.
And the mom, they were at the airport seeing us off.
And I forget how it came up, but whatever his name was, Taylor, could he come with us?
And they're like, I'm sure he could, but I don't know that his mother would like that.
And his mother, yes, that's great, wonderful.
Oh, wow.
So Burke and Patsy and I and this little friend are on this Lockheed plane that flew us back to Atlanta.
And that's as far as our planning had gotten.
There was no planning.
You're in shock.
When we left the house that morning after we found John Bonnet, I never went back in that home.
We were staying with friends.
Sharon took us in, and a lot of our friends were there to support us.
And the police came several times, and we sat and talked to them.
And when it started to not go so well, because we toasted the police.
We said, my God, they're our saviors.
This is in their hands, and we trust them.
And I had gotten a call from one of the fellows I worked with.
He said I got a call from inside the system get the best defense attorney he can get his hands on because they think he killed his daughter.
This is like the next day.
And I was like, unbelievable.
So anyway anyway, the police would come to the house and we'd talk to them as much as they wanted.
They'd ask questions and we did the best to answer them.
And then they said one of our friends that was there bringing food and help, comforting stuff, was a former uh attorney with the district attorney's office and he was kind of observing things.
You know, that's mike.
Mike yeah, and uh, The police were saying well, we need you to come down to the station.
Please come here.
We can't.
We're secure here.
We're safe.
Patsy's sedated in bed.
She's not capable of getting dressed and going down to the station.
You come here, please.
Oh, no, we need you to come to the station.
Why?
And this, I think, was Linda Arndt, actually, now that I think about it.
And then Mike stepped in and said, time out.
Because he knew the police department.
He'd worked with me before.
And he said, we'll get back to you.
We're not coming down to the station today.
We'll get back to you.
And the next day and I'd gotten that call which I hadn't told anybody about that I needed to get a defense attorney because the police thought I killed my daughter.
This was the day after.
They hadn't even looked at evidence or looked at our family history or anything.
It was just like, I had to be the father.
It's always the evil father.
Were they thinking it was you?
Mm-hmm.
This was Linda Arndt, I'm sure.
So Linda thought it was you, and then this idea of Patsy comes from someone else?
Apparently.
Okay.
And so our focus was to get JonBenet buried properly in our family cemetery in Atlanta.
Get back to our family for support.
And we did that within days of this happening.
And what we learned this was part of what made us really mistrust the police was we went back to Boulder to get Burke back in school after we buried Jean Monnet and to help the police.
And our attorneys, who Mike had brought in, on his own.
He had said, John, would you allow me to do some things here that were necessary?
When we did this timeout, we're not coming to the station.
I said, yes, absolutely.
So the next day he's introducing me to my attorney.
One attorney can't represent both parties.
So Patsy had to have an attorney.
We have these crime junkie roles and one of ours is always get a lawyer.
So like, first of all, I would have done that day one.
Yeah.
And you know, Our other is we always say, like, you don't ever know.
You don't know everyone inside and out 100%.
Yeah, that's true.
But did you ever question, like, does she know somebody?
Did you guys ever have a moment in private where you're like, or never, ever?
Never, ever.
Patsy has survived stage four ovarian cancer, was given the gift of life again for a while, which she was so thankful for.
And see, originally, our attorney said, look, this is nuts that you even looked at as suspects.
But this will get resolved in a couple months.
So, you know, if you hire heart surgery, you better hire a good one.
It's going to be expensive, but it's only going to last a couple months.
And it lasted about three years.
And we got to the point where we said, we're out of money.
We can't.
Keep paying.
And they said, doesn't matter.
We're committed to getting this horrible wrong corrected.
And so they worked on our behalf for several years for no charge.
Oh, wow.
But we were out of money.
It didn't matter.
When was that?
How long did it take to burn through it?
A couple of years, probably.
Yeah.
Yeah, probably.
What did they think about you guys doing CNN?
Oh, that was a mistake.
We shouldn't have done that.
Was that like, did they advise against it?
Did they think at the time?
They strictly advised.
We never asked them.
We were back in Atlanta for the funeral.
Some of our Boulder friends were there.
They say, oh, my God, you know, the media is going crazy.
You've got to.
Show them that you're normal people and Boulder's a wonderful place.
They're really focused on making Boulder not suffer a reputational damage nuts, but that was their focus.
That's weird, though, right?
Oh, totally weird.
What was their goal?
Like, to make Boulder look safe?
Like I don't think it makes Boulder look good because there's I mean, you guys are saying there's a madman in Boulder.
Yeah.
Well, and of course, Boulder was like... They...
The authorities, the mayor at the time, said, nothing to worry about.
There's no killer out there.
Because she'd been told by the police, it's the parents.
We know it's the parents.
We just got to prove it.
And it was weird.
It was weird.
But we shouldn't have been doing an interview like that.
What did your lawyers say when they, like, because, I mean, did they just see you on TV one day?
Because I think that's the thing people would be like, I don't understand.
Like, John's a smart guy.
He's consulting his lawyers for everything.
How does his lawyers not know he's going on CNN?
At that time we'd been introduced to our lawyers, but we then immediately flew back to Atlanta for John Romani's funeral.
We had not met with our lawyers.
Oh, okay.
It was a horrible mistake for several reasons.
One, we were no shape to do an interview.
There's no point in doing an interview other than to satisfy our friends who are pressuring us to show us.
Why did they want you on TV so bad?
That's the part that never made sense.
Well, they were concerned that the media was instantly piling on us as the killers, that that was horribly wrong and you need to show yourself and defend yourself.
I mean, I appreciate that they care for you, but it's just like.
Well, they don't know.
They weren't any more expert at it than we were.
And so we just reluctantly agreed to do it.
But in retrospect, that shouldn't have happened.
And our attorneys, well, in fact, from that point on, our attorney said, no, you're not.
We are not going to respond to the media accusations.
You're not going to respond to them.
We're going to defend you.
In fact, they said, look, we'll guarantee you one thing.
Money-back guarantee, we'll destroy them in court.
This will be a cakewalk if it gets to that point.
But they said, we can't practice law in front of a CNN camera.
That's not our job.
We don't know how to do that.
And they were frustrated by that because we were being accused in the court of public opinion but they couldn't respond.
Because there seems like there was this huge rift that I've not seen in such a stark way.
I've seen it happen before, but between the DA's office and the police.
And you had lawyers who I think they knew the DA kind of grew up with them, worked with them.
So I think that you guys obviously had an amicable relationship.
They're the one you eventually go and talk to.
Right.
I don't know.
What I was told, the police were like, oh, we know who did it.
Go arrest him and prosecute him.
And the DA says, well, show me the evidence.
Well, we don't have that much evidence.
We just know they did it.
And so the DA wouldn't charge him.
And the police took that as an offense.
And apparently that happened a lot.
That happened in our case.
I feel like there was like this circle where it was a lot of that, where I kept hearing like the DAs, like get the evidence.
The police would say and I don't know what's true.
But the police would say we're trying to get the evidence, but you're stalling us.
Right.
That's kind of what...
Do you feel like that?
And I don't know what advice you were getting or what was happening.
But I do see moments where there are certain things where I think like phone records.
Like the police say they don't have phone records until like a year later.
Oh, no.
We gave them everything they asked for when they asked for it.
Early on, we gave them phone records.
We gave them credit card records, full access to our bank accounts everything, everything they asked for.
The only thing they asked for a year later, which they should have asked for in the beginning, was our clothing that we were wearing that morning, because they found unidentified fibers, pubic hairs that were not identified.
A year later, somebody said, oh, you should have asked for their clothing.
Well, they finally did, and we had to show us a picture.
I didn't even know what we were wearing.
But we supplied, we gave them everything they asked for, when they asked for it.
Handwriting samples.
We had to write that horrible note right-handed and left-handed.
So they had samples of our handwriting, which didn't match.
So they wanted to arrest us on probable cause.
They probably did this, so let's arrest them and beat a confession out of them.
In fact, we were told by the DA two things later, years later.
The whole police case was based on they didn't think we acted right that morning.
And the strategy to solve the case was to bring intense pressure on Patsy and I.
So the innocent one would confess.
What did they mean by you didn't act right?
So, like, what were the things that were bothering you?
That's the interesting thing.
I read that there was one detective there, this woman who I don't know if she'd ever investigated a murder or not, probably.
Linda Arndt, yeah.
Because she came when it was still a kidnapping, right?
Yeah.
They went to the sheriff's office, got a book on how to deal with kidnapping.
They didn't know.
And I read her report much later.
Okay.
And it was just nuts.
But the things that she observed would say yeah, that's not what you'd expect, because the way she wrote it.
For example, she said John was.
I observed him going casually through the mail waiting for this phone call from the kidnapper.
I was looking for another communication for the kidnapper.
We had a pile of mail that had come through the front door slot, laying on the floor.
I was going through it to see if there's anything else from the kidnapper.
She should have been doing that.
But she interpreted it as casually going through the mail while waiting for a call to come in.
She also said 10 o'clock came and went.
John didn't go nuts because we didn't get a call.
The note said, I will call you at 10 o'clock tomorrow.
I didn't know if tomorrow was tomorrow or the day we were in.
So when 10 o'clock came and went, I thought, oh my God, I got to wait another 24 hours for this call to come.
So it wasn't a big surprise that he didn't call because it said tomorrow in the note.
What was the other thing?
It was just nuts.
Oh, when he found JonBenet, he didn't cry.
There was no tears.
People react differently to trauma, but when I lost my daughter Beth in a car accident JonBenet's older sister I was mad.
I didn't cry.
I was mad.
I was mad.
Why did this happen?
I was mad at God with Beth.
And then with JonBenet it was.
And what I guess they didn't understand was when they're making these observations of our behavior.
When I lost Beth, I got a call.
It was over.
I couldn't do anything about it.
I couldn't get her to the best medical treatment.
I couldn't go by her side and come for her.
It was over.
It was done.
She was gone.
With Domine, it wasn't over.
I could get her back.
And I really thought I would, but I had to keep my wits about me.
And I had to keep my head together and do whatever I could possibly do, not knowing what to do.
Which is actually how I think I would respond to a traumatic situation is I'm very like jump in and act.
Yeah.
The thing that I think other people don't understand that this is the one that was hard for me is, like it's said over and over by Linda Arndt, that you and Patsy are just like completely separated.
What was your temptation?
Well, Patsy was literally sitting on the floor with a big bowl in front of her, ready to throw up.
Quite honestly,
She was devastated.
And so she was over there, that's fine, that's okay.
I was focused on trying to get JonBenet back.
How do I get the money together?
He wanted $118,000 in an attache case.
How do I get the cash done together?
I was working on that.
I got to get my daughter back.
That was my focus.
Patsy's okay.
She's got friends around her.
She had friends around her.
I got to get my daughter back.
That was the other thing.
Linda says in her interpretation of things that you disappear for an hour.
That's not true.
Yeah?
No.
I was looking out the window occasionally to see if I could see anything.
But no, I didn't disappear for an hour.
Linda Arndt was nuts.
She, on national television, said, well, I knew he was guilty because I saw it in his eyes.
I thought, well, that's quite a talent.
But she was way in over her head and not.
I don't think she's playing with a full deck.
Aside from that first day, did you ever do other interviews with her or have much interaction with her?
None.
Did her and Patsy end up having a relationship?
Well, you know, she was our savior.
I mean, she came to help us.
You call the police, you expect them to come to help.
We trusted her initially before we'd seen this report, all these crazy observations.
And so she was kind of our policeman personified.
We didn't know any of these other people that had come involved from the police department, but Linda was there that morning when we had this horrible tragedy in our lives.
So it's kind of a bonding in a way.
So did they, like, even after that, her and Patsy had conversations afterwards?
They had a few.
Okay, yeah, I've heard that, but I didn't know.
It seemed like you guys had such a... bad experience with her that I was surprised?
Well, at the time, we didn't know it was a bad experience.
You know you call the police.
You think they know what they're doing and that you trust them totally to do the right thing.
And... Did Patsy ever tell you what they talked about?
Because I think that's like a big mystery to people is like why she seems so Well.
I think I can't remember.
It's been so long ago, but...
Patsy wanted to know who killed her daughter.
And what are you doing?
What's going on?
You know, that was kind of the level of conversation, I'm pretty sure.
Gary Oliva, did you want to talk about him?
Oh, yeah.
Well, he was the lead that the DA gave us.
They said the police won't follow up on this properly, but it's a significant lead.
And it was back in the day.
I remember reading this name.
Yeah, it was early on.
In like the 90 the interviews you guys did back in like 98 when they were like do you recognize this name?
Do you recognize this name?
Yeah.
And Gary Oliva was on there.
Yeah.
And I say this circumstantially is very compelling.
I don't, I know the our guys looked at it, our investigators, and kind of confirmed the circumstantial information that was given to us and turned it over to the police.
My memory is that they interviewed him, but didn't, kind of blew it off.
I don't know if they did DNA testing, handwriting samples.
I've seen some handwriting recently.
More recently I don't know if they just recently got collected or they're bringing it up again, but I've seen some handwriting samples that look promising.
But I also think that handwriting 30 years later now people look at it sometimes the way they do it like bite mark, which is like kind of junk science.
Well, yeah, it's not admissible in court.
Yeah, and so I don't even know if they would the way that they felt so strongly about Patsy in 1996.
I don't know that anyone would feel that way now.
Well, again, it was wrong to feel that way back then.
She was 4.5 out of 5, which is pretty much no way, but.
I think it was because it was her notepad pen.
To your point, it was like that.
Well, again, yeah, but so it was in the house.
The person was in the house before we were.
None of that.
It was her paintbrush.
That was a little, okay, sorry, we didn't have the paintbrush locked up.
Yeah, it seems like there were these cultural shifts.
I think there was that distinct moment in 2016 when everyone started looking at Burke, and that's become the big story now.
That's absolutely insane.
Burke was a 60-pound, nine-year-old little boy.
This was a sexual assault, a violent assault.
It's just, even the police immediately said no.
He was interviewed by a child psychologist, which I guess is normal for two days early on and they said no, absolutely no way.
He wasn't aware of anything that happened and certainly wasn't the killer.
And so that's just absurd foolishness.
What was your thinking that morning when you're getting him out of the home?
Because I know you guys go to check on him.
You think he's still sleeping.
He says when he does his Dr. Phil that he's awake, but he's clear there's something going on.
He's like, I'm not messing with it.
I'm just waiting until they come and get me.
Why did you guys want him to not be in that environment?
Well, the police were there.
It was craziness.
He was a little boy.
We wanted him safe and protected.
And he took some of his Christmas presents with him and went to stay with a friend in his house.
It was a way to get him out of this nightmare of into a safe place.
Did you guys feel like he was safe?
Was it hard?
Because I think it would be hard for me to like, I'm missing one child.
Like, I don't know if you could get me to let go of the other one.
Well, no, we trusted our friends.
They were good friends.
Their son was Burke's age.
They were buddies.
They'd been friends for a long time.
It was a safe place for him to go.
Did they have, because Fleet took him away, but then Fleet comes back, right?
But were his in-laws or something at the house?
So there was like someone there with the kids?
You know, 30 years ago.
Yeah, I don't know.
You know, it was chaos that morning.
And I really thought I could get John Bonnet back.
I really did.
But I'd never dealt with that or, you know.
John Douglas, who's probably the premier crime profiler, started that whole FBI program crime profiling.
We spent some time with him over a period of time.
And his profile of this was that this was a fairly young person, 20s to 30s, fascinated with the movies because there's some movie quotes in the ransom note and was either very angry at you personally John, or very jealous of you, John.
This wasn't about JonBenet.
That's John's assessment.
And do you still believe that?
I think that's part of it.
I really do.
But whoever did this is a monster.
Do you believe that you're the why?
I accept John Douglas's... theory is credible.
I really do.
Two weeks before her murder, our company had achieved a billion dollars in sales for the year.
And for us, that was a big deal.
And I wouldn't even pay attention.
And our financial guy said, hey, we're going to hit a billion dollars.
Holy mackerel, we need to have a party for our employees and make a big deal of it.
And our marketing lady said, let's let the newspaper know.
And I had this gut feeling.
Another lesson, pay attention to your gut feelings.
Had this gut feeling, ah, it's a bad idea.
But I let them do it.
Why does like if it was about money and like your greed and going back to a lot of things, the note said what do you think the way that they the sexual component to this and the way that they staged it like, why that piece of it?
I don't know.
If it goes back to being about you and about money, like, that doesn't add up.
No, it doesn't make sense.
I agree.
No.
Well, whoever did this is, you know, crazy, demented human beings.
Um... I don't know.
It doesn't make... I don't know.
I know you guys have been extremely clear that there was no sexual abuse on your part, any family member's part.
Our doctors could testify to that.
Well, that was my question, so I know that you guys have been clear.
Do you think that she wasn't abused by anyone ever?
Even if there's, We don't know that for a fact.
No, we don't.
I mean, there's...
We never suspected that, but we don't know that.
I mean, what most people don't, right?
Like you, but it's one in five girls are sexually assaulted.
We don't know for sure.
You know, did they ever look into knowing John Douglas's profile?
I know he's a 20 to 30, but his profile of this being a young, really unsophisticated person did they take a really hard look at, like the other kids in the neighborhood.
No, they never did any neighborhood survey.
They never went door to door, which is a huge mistake.
What's so wild to me is like they, they, like the first officer French, I think it was his name.
He goes to the room that John Bonny's found.
He just doesn't open the door.
It's latched.
So he's like, no, thank you.
How does fleet white open the door and not see?
I don't know if that's true.
That's a huge red flag.
She was, Right there.
Because the second you open the door, you see the white blanket.
At a microsecond.
Doesn't add up.
No, it doesn't.
And that's, again, you don't know if that's fiction or fact.
There's so much fiction that was put out by the police.
I mean so I know you guys don't have much of a relationship now, but like, are those some of the questions, like the hard questions that like I mean again, I think this is my friend, that I'm going to be like in their face.
Tell me how this makes sense.
What I think happened.
First of all, I think the police took Fleet away from the home we were in that morning or the day after.
And he came back after a couple hours and was different.
I think the police were leveraging Fleet to use him.
You know, we have evidence that the family killed JonBenet and you need to help us here.
I don't know, but they said he was different when he came back from meeting with the police for two hours.
Because you guys have like a huge falling out, right?
Well, it was just because it was bizarre.
I mean, he came back to Atlanta. to attend the funeral.
And we made arrangements for our Boulder friends to stay with Atlanta friends in their homes.
And our friends that we had that person stay with called.
They didn't call us, but they called somebody that was helping us and say we want him out of our house.
He's bizarre, something screwy.
And So we put him with my brother.
My brother called me a day or so later and said, do you have a gun in the house?
And I said, no.
Well, Fleet is on his way to your house.
We were with Patsy's parents.
Something's wrong.
What was he saying?
For your brother to say, do you have a gun?
That's scary.
My brother is as passive a person as he's ever wanted to be.
So what does he say when he gets to you?
Because I know in Patsy's deposition, she's like, I don't know.
I was in the basement.
Like, I'm not part of that conversation.
And it seems like she never asked you.
But like, what is that conversation?
I don't remember.
I honestly don't remember.
And then he comes one more time when you're back in Colorado, like comes at you kind of again, like interrupts the meeting with you.
We were with our priest or minister.
He barged in.
I think.
I think it was just a hugely at best.
It was a hugely upsetting thing for Fleet to be in the periphery of all this.
At worst?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I'd been with him a lot.
And I have no doubt that the police used him.
Probably said, well, John thinks you killed his daughter, and you got to work with us here.
Don't know that for a fact, but I wouldn't be surprised.
I had, Fleet and I used to sail.
Fleet was a really expert sailor, and I was not.
And I bought this sail.
Were you in the Navy?
Yeah.
That doesn't matter.
OK.
It's irrelevant.
Sure, sure.
I think it was a sail, you know, I don't know.
Just a couple years later I sent it back to him with a note and said look, I don't know what the police told you.
I'm sure they've probably told you things that weren't true, but I absolutely don't think you were involved in our daughter's murder.
And I never heard back from him.
But I knew him.
I knew him well.
I knew his kids well.
How do you not like go like, like, like shake it out?
Like.
This is the part that, as I'm like I like so hard to understand, and I understand why people spiral.
And then his wife I heard was telling Patsy, like, I, you know, I need a couple of minutes.
I might know something, but I'm just like, God, there's, is there something in there?
How do you, how do you feel like you have to like?
What is it that like makes you not be?
Not be the fleet who's like holding onto people's collars?
Yeah.
I've told people look, If you were a male living in Boulder on the 25th of December 1996, you're suspect in my book.
I can't rule you out.
I don't know.
I'm so suspicious and frightened and bewildered.
You're suspect in my book.
I don't trust you.
What was the deal with the 23rd 911 call and my favorite character, Fleet White?
Yeah, there's weird stuff like that.
What was the deal?
Somehow he dialed 911 from our home phone and meant to dial something else.
I can't remember.
I don't remember if the police came or they just called us back.
But we said, no, that was a mistake, I guess.
Did you ever ask him about it?
Ask Flea?
Yeah.
No.
You know, early on, you know, I was just so crushed.
I wished I would die.
Was that hurt?
People say, did you think about suicide?
Well, it crossed my mind, but that would impose more hurt on my children.
That's a dumb thing to do. but I would have been happy to die.
I was so devastated.
So you don't think about much else, I guess, other than your loss.
As I say, the fleet stuff was weird, but it didn't fit with who I knew as a person.
He didn't react well under stress.
I remember reading an anecdote you had about a sailing with him and how he just kind of like froze and you had to.
You guys had to come get saved by someone.
Well, we'd gotten into really rough weather and a line had got wrapped around our propeller as we were coming to port.
We couldn't steer the boat.
And we're getting blown into a big rock wall.
And somebody, well, they were blown like crazy.
And we're like, okay, this is the end of the sailboat.
We're not getting killed, but that's going to be the end of the boat that crashes into that stone wall.
And so he just acted very flustered and overwhelmed by that.
And I sort of attributed some of his behavior to that.
I don't know.
I know.
I think I would just bulldoze through my life.
I would probably ruin every relationship I had, like truly.
I think it would consume me because I think I would pick apart.
And maybe these are the people who can survive it and the people who can't, because I think I would
I would hunt down Fleet White and I would like, you know what I mean?
And I would like I would pick it apart, even if it was my own child, and probably to the detriment of my child.
And I think that's what so many people, we think we know what we're going to do in those situations.
Well, but you can't assume that.
I mean, it's like getting hit by a speeding truck.
It's so... devastating emotionally, your system's in shock.
I mean, Have you had different theories over the 30 years or has it been pretty much the same or did it?
I mean John Douglas' theory when he presented?
That to me was sobering.
It's like, Who hates you that much?
Well, that's what I said to John.
I said, I don't, I've never, we had 700 employees.
I knew most of them, but not all of them.
We've had to fire some for different reasons.
But since I was the president, I guess conceivably they could blame me for the loss of their job.
Let's say,
But I said, I've never made anybody that bad.
I can't imagine that.
And he said, you may not even know him.
They read a bunch of the paper.
They observed your, you know, we were, Boulder's a very liberal, far left community.
And.
What's that mean?
Well, very, it's described jokingly as 32 square miles surrounded by reality.
And we knew that going in.
We were capitalists.
We were.
Businesses, capitalists, they're not really welcome here.
It was this feeling we got.
But, you know, who could do this to a child?
But anyway, John has lots of credit on his resume to being right.
Between him and your PIs.
Have you, over the years, come to at least your best working theory of what you think happened?
Like the order, what was staged?
Oh, I think the person came into our home when we were gone that evening, went out for dinner, was there when we got home and waited for us to go to bed.
That same scenario happened about nine months later in the same neighborhood with a little friend of JonBenet's.
Fortunately, the mother interrupted it.
But to me, they were very potentially the same person.
Police blew it off as the same.
But I know the father of that second little girl absolutely felt there's a lot of similarities.
They knew that the killer was in the house.
Fortunately, the child wasn't killed.
But they came home, saying that we did set the murder alarm, went to bed.
So the killer had, the bad guy had to be in the house when they got home.
So you think he's in the house waiting?
Mm-hmm.
And then what?
And then we went to bed and we believe that, As do experts, that a stun gun was used to silence JonBenet.
She was taken down the basement.
So you think that he went up to her room first, got her there, and then took her to the basement?
Yeah.
And do you have any and I know this is a little bit of detail details I know you've lived with for a long time do they have any ideas about what the intention was like, what some of the sexual activity, some of the choking?
Well, you know Lou Smith, this detective that was brought out of retirement, legendary detective in Colorado, solved over 200 homicides.
Amazing man was brought in by the DA because I think the DA suspected the police had it kind of messed up.
Lou spent a couple months looking at the evidence and very conclusively in his mind said no, there's lots of evidence of an intruder.
His theory was it was a kidnapping gone wrong based on the evidence.
And I've always thought those two conflicted between John Douglas' theory and Lou's, but somebody pointed out to me well no, they don't necessarily conflict.
And I was like, yeah, you're right.
Do they think that the person wrote the note while he's in the house waiting for you guys to come home?
John Douglas said nobody could write a three-page ransom note after murdering a child.
Okay, so that's done earlier.
You know, their war brain is going crazy.
And he said that note was written before.
Where do you assume it went wrong?
So if he wrote this note to get her out, like why does he take her to the basement?
Well, there was, I don't know.
I mean, she was sexually assaulted, apparently.
There was a suitcase.
The so-called detective that was there that day said well, go look through the house, see if you see anything unusual.
And I reported to her that I went to the basement.
There was a suitcase parked. standing up on its bottom under a window, and the window was open.
I said, that suitcase shouldn't be there.
It looks like it may have been a step to get out of the house.
And apparently they found and I don't know this for a fact, but there's so much information out there you don't know what's right and what's wrong but they apparently found fibers from JonBenet's clothing in the suitcase, along with a doll or something.
And Lou's theory was they may have tried to get her out of the house in the suitcase and it went wrong and it didn't work.
I don't know.
When you first saw the window because you had gone down initially.
But you said when you first saw the window you didn't think to mention it.
No, no.
I didn't, basically, yeah.
Yeah.
I, I, uh, the window was open and he had a pain broken in it and the suitcase propped up underneath.
And I told Linda Arndt, the detective, I said, look, that suitcase should not be there.
And you told her this before they, you guys found JonBenet?
Yeah.
I said, maybe that window was broken by me.
I don't know, but it shouldn't have been open.
And that suitcase shouldn't have been there.
And And, of course, the police came out.
A human couldn't get through that window.
Well, I did it.
Lou Smith did it.
I saw Lou Smith.
It's crazy.
They were so focused on convicting Patsy or me that nothing else mattered.
And then in January, they had sent some evidence in for DNA sampling.
And the report came back middle of January saying We've recovered unidentified male DNA from JonBenet's clothing.
Does not match anyone in the family.
Jon, Patsy, and Burke are excluded.
Yeah, the first one I think that they found, it was from a blood spot in the underwear.
And it was her blood, but it was what they determined, at least based on enzymes like saliva within the blood spot.
Those are the first things that they tested and ruled the family out.
Right.
Well, the police kept that a secret from the DA for six months because it conflicted with their conclusion.
It's like, holy crap, what do we got to do about this?
Because that's the first question the defense attorney would ask is, whose DNA is that?
Oh, we don't know, but it doesn't matter.
Well, it does matter.
Male DNA found in a sexual assault case is a huge clue And to discount it is absurd.
And they do eventually go back and get another sample that they put into CODIS from it.
They get a large enough profile to put in CODIS, right?
Right.
The first sample was CODIS qualified as well.
A new DA came in and set up her own investigative unit on this case, took the case away from the police.
They didn't position it that way in the media.
It was like, oh, we want fresh eyes.
No, I believe she took it away from the police, brought Lou Smit back in who had left because he was disgusted with the direction it was going.
And they started to investigate it again.
And she did additional DNA testing.
This is like in 2008?
Yeah.
And that supported the earlier DNA.
Mm-hmm. sampling that it was an unidentified male and they had no explanation police tried very hard to explain it away they even tried to get the county to pay for them to go to china i followed that one they wanted to go to china right and start sampling but then they they when they really honed in on oh no this isn't just like everywhere on the underwear it's just in the blood spots and we're we're showing these enzymes that show up in high levels with saliva yeah Well, and I don't know, I did learn a little bit about DNA, and it's complicated.
It's very complicated.
Really complicated.
In 2008, they do touch DNA on the side of her long john pants, basically saying like we think that whoever would have pulled her pants down might have done it here.
They get two profiles, one from each side.
They're not nearly as big as the one that went into CODIS, but they say they're consistent with that one.
Right.
And I heard the same thing where they're saying like in no other case have I seen where you see this much DNA of someone else and we're not looking for someone else.
Right.
Right.
When they ended up testing the nylon rope that was around her neck.
I don't know if they ever did.
I don't know that.
They tested the rope.
Okay.
But not the wooden handle itself.
And the rope came back with an unknown sample.
I didn't know that.
But it didn't match the other ones.
And I don't know what that means.
Like, has anyone ever considered that?
Well, Lou Schmidt...
And Lou told me, first of all, Lou said, I'll get this guy, John.
I'll get him.
And he has a track record.
Of getting him.
Of getting him.
And sadly, he died of cancer.
He believed there were more than one person involved.
But he also said, look, there's things I know that only the killer knows.
And I'm not going to tell you what those are.
I'm not going to tell anybody.
Did it die with him?
It may have.
I'm not sure.
Lou had an extensive database of information that now some of his former homicide detective colleagues have formed a group to finish Lou's work.
Lou said, this is a DNA case.
It'll be solved by DNA.
Have you ever asked to see all of his materials?
I mean, at one time you were paying him.
Well, it's huge.
Pardon?
I mean, one time you were paying Lou, right?
No.
I tried to buy Lou an ice cream cone one day.
He wouldn't let me do it.
He was that honorable.
No, I didn't pay him.
So you never asked to see his stuff?
I couldn't help it.
I would want to.
Well, it was voluminous.
And the group that took over.
They're doing it on their own.
They've taken lou's list and they're starting to go down the list and get dna and that costs money and so they've raised money over time to pay for the dna testing.
But they're not any of their expenses or anything.
It's all on their own.
I'm so grateful for that.
You know lou felt that he had a good enough sample early on that that is the killer's DNA.
You need nine markers out of 15 to be submittable to the database, the federal database.
You probably know a lot more about this than I do, but... I'm learning.
They determined that these 15 particular markers, it's like 100% match.
15 out of billions.
And we had nine of 15.
And nine was the threshold at which they would admit it to the COVID database as good enough.
I wonder if it's still in there, because I know back in the 90s, the database was less.
It was lower at nine.
And then over the years, I believe they've raised it to be like 13.
Is that right?
And I've seen other cases where, because it no longer meets the new standard, it drops out and people didn't even realize that it's not in there anymore.
That's very possible.
I don't know.
It'd be interesting.
It's something I'll need to look into.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I didn't know that they raised the threshold.
Do you know, did they ever test the JonBenet's bathroom?
Someone had gone to the bathroom and not flushed.
Did they ever test that?
Do you know?
I don't know.
Seems like a perfect sample for dna and i don't know if they tested and it was hers or well, you know the forensics.
People only spent two hours in our house after jabadee was found looking for evidence.
The da said get your you know what back in there.
Two hours is not enough, so they went back.
I don't know how long they spent.
When they went back, they did find um, you know, they recovered the evidence, some evidence and a palm print that Didn't match anybody on the door going into that room where JonBenet was found.
Didn't match anyone?
I thought they saw Patsy's and JonBenet's, but Patsy was, I know, wrapping presents in that room and stuff like that.
Well, we'd go in and out of that room.
It was a storage room.
We called it the wine cellar, but there wasn't... There was no wine.
No wine.
It was just an old coal cellar.
I don't think I realized that there was an unidentified print.
As far as I know, that's still unidentified, as there was in the same case nine months later.
Unidentified palm print.
Did they check them?
No.
You're talking about in the other case in the same neighborhood?
Very similar to JonBenet.
I think in the reporting they call her Amy.
Yeah.
They blew that off as similar.
Mm-hmm.
Because, as the police chief said, there's so many quotes I could give you that they said were just nuts.
First of all, we didn't treat JonBenet's abduction as a crime scene.
We thought it was a kidnapping.
It's a crime.
It's a crime.
I'm sorry.
Yeah.
And the little girl.
The police chief came out and said well, they're not the same, because the second little girl wasn't killed.
Because her mom walked in.
Her mom interrupted her.
It's just nuts we're dealing with.
And that's a real fundamental problem with our system.
That little Boulder, Colorado police department is an island of authority.
People can't come on that island and help unless they're invited.
And Boulder police never invited anybody to come in and help.
Lots of it was offered, but That's the fundamental problem with our system.
Would that be your hope with JonBenet's case?
Sure.
In a perfect world, who would you want to take over?
Well, you know, early on, we didn't care who had it.
We just wanted it out of the police hands because we knew they were A focused on us and B incompetent.
Give it to the Sheriff's Department.
We didn't care.
Just get it out of their hands because they're not capable.
We would like the evidence to be turned over to the FBI.
That the FBI run with the evidence.
Do some additional DNA testing?
So where do you think the evidence is?
Do they still have it?
What do you think still can be tested?
What can we pull this news out from?
Well, we were told, we know from looking at reports and stuff.
Early on in January of 97 there were a number of items sent into a lab.
Some were returned untested.
Don't know why, whether it's a cost issue or they had a sample.
They did get a sample of what they tested.
Maybe they decided that's good enough.
I don't know.
We want those other items tested.
We want the items that had previously been tested, 15 years ago, most recently retested, developing this new format that's needed to do the genealogy research.
That's what we're asking.
So far as we know, there's items that a crime scene of evidence that was taken from the crime scene sent to a lab but was never tested.
It seems pretty straightforward.
Like, what do you feel is because to me, on the outside, I'm like why wouldn't Boulder want to solve its biggest case?
There's only two logical reasons.
One is they've lost the evidence, which I hope isn't true.
Or two.
They're protecting somebody.
That is very, very that's a silly number two, but i can't think of any other reason they've lost the evidence.
Do you feel like i mean, you're somebody who has like amazing connections and you have, and you know, political pull, like do you feel like there's anything that you can do?
Or you like you've tried it all, like where We've tried a lot?
We've petitioned the attorney general in Colorado.
We've petitioned the governor.
This is early on, to meet with us, and they wouldn't meet with us.
You think this would be a great case for someone to.
I mean, if they're going to at least work the system, you'd solve the JonBenet Ramsey case.
Well, you'd think so.
And I've told, Bowler's had five police chiefs since this happened.
Have you met with the newest one yet?
Yeah.
Does he say anything about whether they have the evidence, don't have the evidence?
Are you waiting?
I've never challenged him on, have you lost it?
What do you mean, John?
Well, I've got another meeting coming up.
Yeah.
Well, the first meeting, I was trying to be a nice guy and not jump all over him.
He was a new guy at his job.
I liked him.
We had a nice conversation.
It was like, I need to.
What does he say?
Where does he say it stands?
Well, he says, there's things happening I can't tell you about.
And I think DNA testing isn't there yet.
We want to wait.
And I totally disagree with the last comment.
We're going to ask the hard question.
Have you... And you didn't lose it.
You're the new guy.
It's not your fault.
But is the evidence still in your possession?
Where is it?
And if it's not there, what does that make you think?
Well, it confirms my that the Boulder Police was a pretty dysfunctional organization for years, frankly.
Does that mean it's just over for you guys?
Well, that's a huge thing, yeah, if that's the case, because we have the technology, in my opinion, privately to do testing that I think, I really believe has a good chance of leading to Do you think it's someone, whether you recognize them or not, someone that would have had some kind of interaction with your daughter before?
Well, I think the person had been in our house before.
No question.
We have this car guy, Mark Carr.
We've had two people that said, well, I saw that guy.
I know it's him.
We had a lady that would come into our little house up in Michigan and clean it once in a while before we got there.
And she called after he became public and said, that guy was in your garage this past summer.
How do you make sense of that if the DNA?
Well, I don't know.
I don't know.
Does that make you go back and question the DNA?
No.
Well, I asked Lou that question.
I said, do you believe that this is the killer's DNA for sure?
He said, yes, I believe that.
Okay.
So, okay.
Based on that.
Well, the other thing she said was I.
When I was in your home that day, somebody had been staying in John Bonetti's room.
There was a suitcase open and obviously somebody was staying in there.
I thought you'd given someone permission to stay in your home.
I didn't think of that.
When this guy came out, she said I saw him in your garage, and then she told us about somebody staying in her home.
I said, no, we didn't give anybody permission to stay in our home.
And why would they have picked John Monday's room?
If you're going to squat in a house, you wouldn't have picked that room.
It's second floor, way in the back.
You couldn't get out of there easily if you were caught.
I think new testing is going to be important.
I don't know if you have thoughts or feelings on.
Have you seen all the stuff that's been happening with, like the Colorado State Lab?
Yeah.
Do you have any concerns?
So Missy Woods, I believe, is her name.
She's been accused of like falsifying, I mean like 600 and some cases between like 2008 and 23.
They're looking at even older cases.
Mm-hmm.
Is this something that you've talked to anyone in authority about?
Like, do you have concern that it affects the testing that you guys had done?
We were told, our attorneys looked into it, and they're still working on the case for us for free.
They don't charge us.
They're so committed to getting this right.
They said she was not involved in our testing back then.
It's like, okay.
Okay um, so that's the information we have.
It's really good.
What's it going to take to do new testing?
Well, what we want, we were told, probably a year or so ago now it's been over a year.
At that time we met with just accidentally met the head of the fbi region there and he said look, The government we, the FBI certainly not Boulder, not CBI do not have the latest DNA technology yet
And who said that?
The chief of police.
Because they've got a new one, right?
Or is this the last one?
The current one.
Yeah.
Get the evidence into their hands.
And let's see what they come up with.
They have also the ability to do the genealogy research, create this family tree.
Yep.
Even to give you, I mean the phenotyping that they can do to answer the question of okay, we know it's a male profile, but is it a white man?
Right.
Is it not?
I don't know what else to do.
But if they don't do that, then that's unacceptable.
It's ridiculous.
It's there, can be done.
We've had, I've offered to pay for it.
I don't know what the issue is.
I really don't know why they won't do all that can be done.
I'll have to ask some questions of them.
Yeah.
We're going to get a little more hard-nosed in our next meeting.
First question would be, do you have the evidence?
Be honest.
Have you lost it?
Where is it?
Who has it?
Sounds like a good next step.
Yeah.
Right now, in my mind, that's the key question.
Why?
Where is it?
If you're not going to test it, why?
It's baffling.
Absolutely baffling to me.
And you know, maybe it's down to police departments don't like to admit they've been wrong or they screwed up.
And I can't believe that with the new police chief.
I mean, he didn't cause that problem.
He didn't mess it up.
Do you think they're afraid of opening themselves up to litigation?
Possibly.
Very possibly.
Possibly.
Do you think you would sue them?
I don't know.
I explored that early on because we were again told they knew it was one of the parents.
Had to be one of the parents, always the parents.
And that's a flawed conclusion.
There's no one theory that makes everything make sense.
No, not really.
I don't know.
Lou said this is a DNA case.
It'll be solved by DNA, period.
And that's why this testing is so important.
I don't know.
You know we used I mean I used to Patsy when we'd travel, Carrie took always packed a blue dress, dark blue dress, that she was going to wear at the press conference when Chaminade's killer was found.
We were hopeful, confident that that would happen.
And she eventually quit packing the blue dress.
Somebody asked me the other day, do you think John Bonet's killer would be found in your lifetime?
I'm not so confident now at all.
I think eventually they will be caught or identified, but maybe not in my lifetime, given the fact that there's no movement in the government to do the right thing.
If they do it, I think there's a I don't know pretty good possibility that we could find the killer.
Now the killer may be dead, maybe, who knows.
But this forensic genealogy research is amazing.
And eventually that won't be available because the privacy advocates will fuss.
They're already fussing, but so far so good.
So that can't.
You can't wait on that forever because eventually the police will not have access to that.
My DNA is in the public database.
I just paid my $25 to see who my relatives were.
But did you submit it to GEDmatch?
That's a different... No, I don't know what that... What's that?
So this is my advocacy I always tell people.
So like certain, like Ancestry and 23andMe, they're no longer available to law enforcement.
So people actually- Oh, I didn't know that.
I know.
Most people don't.
And so you actually have to download your results and submit it to GEDmatch.
GEDmatch is the one that law enforcement can access.
So there actually is this big issue where people think they've done it and they actually haven't, which could build up the database in a really meaningful way.
Wow, I didn't know that.
I thought those were still available.
That's a big problem.
Yeah.
What's it called, GED?
GEDmatch, G-E-D, GEDmatch.
Okay.
Do you feel like you'll always have the indictment kind of hanging over you until there's someone else who's indicted?
Sure.
Yeah.
I mean, it's always going to be, it's an unknown.
Can they, is there any, like, does that mean anything now?
Like, could somebody say, oh, we have this indictment from 30 years ago.
We can still go charge John?
Or would they have to get a new grand jury indictment?
Like, I don't know how scary of a looming thing that is.
Yeah, I don't know.
The grand jury, as I'm told, you can convict a ham sandwich in a grand jury.
It's a one-sided argument.
Right.
It's easy to get an indictment.
It is.
It's just the prosecution's case.
But you guys weren't asked to even speak at that, were you?
I offered to do that.
And they didn't ask me or subpoena me.
My children were interviewed by the grand jury.
Burke was interviewed.
Melinda, my daughter, who was pregnant at the time, was brought into Colorado to be interviewed by the grand jury.
So their attorneys were present with them.
It's so strange they would interview everyone but you.
I know.
And I offered.
I said, let me know.
And I think they were afraid that... I think people think it's calculated.
I think that's the thing that nobody's saying, or people in the depths of the internet are saying is it feels like there's someone pulling the strings.
We had no rights.
The only requirement they had... was to talk to us once a year on our case.
By law, they had to do that.
First time we asked for that meeting, they said, oh, geez, we don't know how to do this exactly.
You're a suspect and you're a victim.
This Homicide Victims Family Rights Act gives families like us the right under law to get the case out of the police hands if they're not doing their job.
Or they haven't done their job.
What I read is that if after three years it's still a cold case, you can submit to have a federal review.
Yeah.
Well, I'd thought about that a bit like this law, this federal law.
That could be JonBenet's law.
If it advanced the cause, it'd be good.
But I'm not looking for that kind of memorialization of her.
But you want to be sure your home is safe. as safe as it could be for your family.
We were naive.
We were foolish, naive.
We thought we lived in a safe community.
We didn't check the door a lot, so we didn't set the alarm.
Who in the world would come into the house and we're there?
If they came in and we're gone, steal the silverware, okay, whatever.
Never, ever thought someone would come into our home when we're there and take our child from her bed.
But it happens.
And your home has got to be a sanctuary, a safe sanctuary, safe as you can make it.
Are you doing anything to get this Victims' Families Rights Act pushed through to Colorado?
Well, I just found out about it.
Okay.
And I've got to do that.
That's the one thing.
I've always said, what can we do to change the system?
The system's screwed up.
Big time.
I don't know how to fix it.
These 18000 little independent jurisdictions of authority with no higher authority, no ability to bring in the big guns when a child's murdered.
It's stupid.
It makes no sense.
But what can I do to affect it?
And early on, I was advocating DNA testing for anyone arrested for a felony.
Mm-hmm.
It's always come back to how do you make these little islands of authority like Boulder able or willing to accept the power of our country to solve cases like ours?
The murder of a child.
And so then I got to thinking well, let's make the murder of a child a federal offense, just like a bank robbery.
That seemed very logical.
Did you make any headway with it?
Well, I met with the Department of Justice and they said well, that's going to be a tough sell because we don't have the federal government, doesn't have that Lexis I think he called it to have even that authority to try to do that, to overstep state law.
He said, that's going to be a tough, tough road.
So now this is your new mission?
So my new mission I learned about this just recently and I'm retired now, so I got the time to do it is I met again a Department of Justice, federal Department of Justice fellow that pushed the federal government to enact a Homicide Victims Family Rights Act.
Are you going to focus that?
Because I know Biden signed it into law in 2021 federally, but to your point, not in a state.
Are you going to focus on Colorado?
Well, what it gets down to, and the DOJ fellow said, look, it's easy.
It's boilerplate.
Here's the law.
Mr. Senator, state senator, put your name at the top, vote on it.
You're done.
That's all you got to do.
It's real simple.
Colorado would be a tough place sell, I think because politicians don't want to be involved in our case.
It's like a tar baby.
If I touch it, I'm tainted.
The media has been brutal.
Would you advocate for it in another state?
Sure.
And I say, I literally just found out about this recently, and I've got to do it.
But I think that's a purpose I could Get behind.
Advocate and get behind and maybe make a difference.
But it's going to take, like, I don't know any politicians in Colorado.
They probably know me, but I don't know them.
And maybe that's a good place to start.
What do you think JonBenet's legacy is? she was kind of the spark plug in her family.
I mean, and my minister told me early on.
He said look, memories for a while are going to bring pain, but eventually they'll bring joy.
And to the large extent I found that, that you've been able to get past the pain period and memories make you smile.
And um, I still get tugged.
My heart gets tugged when I see a little girl hanging under her dad's hands walking down the street.
You know, that hurts.
But I remember the neat things about John Manet, the fun things.
You know, I believe that she's in heaven.
I don't understand heaven.
I don't have a, my brain isn't capable of comprehending what that is.
But You know, I did get one reassurance that life wasn't over for her in that respect.
She had won this little medal in one of her little contests, beauty contests.
And I used to tell her, look, it doesn't matter if you're the prettiest or whatever.
Your little talent is what you should concentrate on.
And she was a singer and Always with vigor, but sometimes all key.
But she was, you know, boom.
And her last little event was a couple weeks before she died, and I was late to get there.
But I always tried to go to watch her little talent thing.
And she came running up to me and said, Dad, Dad, I won this for you.
And it was a medal, and it was all-talent winner.
And she gave me that little medal, and I wore it around my neck.
And when she died, in my mind, I wanted to get that medal back.
It was in her house.
But I didn't tell anybody.
I just, in my mind, I said, that's the one thing I want at JonBenet is that I can keep physically.
And Pam, Patsy's sister, went to her house a week later to get us some clothes because we just left.
We didn't have any clothes to wear today.
And she said, I went to the house.
Please, you're kind of rude.
But I felt drawn to go into John Buddy's room.
And I felt like I should bring you this.
And she opened her hand.
It was a medal.
And her room was full of stuff.
You know how she would bring this little round about the size of a silver dollar metal and feel like I felt like I should bring this to you.
And I just, I could have cried because it was like John Manet knew I wanted that somehow.
So there's more to life than we see here.
Thank you, John.
Well, you're welcome, Ashley.
I'll make sure.
The stuff that we talked about again, the legislation that you're doing, the petition to get the DNA I'm sure everyone has the information for that.
And I think everyone is going to have an eye on Boulder.
Well, that's the objective.
These boys, this isn't going to go away.
We're going to be your worst nightmare until you do your job.
All eyes on Boulder.
Yep.
Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production.
I think Chuck would approve.
