The Abduction of JonBenet Ramsey

JonBenet Ramsey, a six year old celebrity in the world of child beauty pageants, was reported missing from her home in Boulder, Colorado on the morning of December 26, 1996. A hand-written ransom note claimed that the child had been abducted by a “group” representing a “foreign faction”and demanded  $118,000– the exact size of her father’s bonus– be  delivered to the kidnappers. But at 1:05pm that day,  before the ransom money could be paid, John Ramsey found his daughter’s body covered in a white blanket in the "wine cellar" room in the basement . Her wrists had been tied above her head, her mouth covered by duct tape, and her neck had been garroted by a nylon cord.  The advanced state of rigor mortis fixed the time of death between 10:00 p.m. on December 25, when her father had carried her to her bedroom, and 6:00 a.m. on December 26. The autopsy further determined that she was killed by strangulation and skull-fracturing blow to the head.  There were also  indications that she  had been sexually assaulted.
The three sheets of paper used in the ransom note, as well as the pen with which it was written, came from a table near the kitchen in the Ramsey home. So someone had taken the time to write a lengthily letter. What could not be determined by the forensic evidence was whether the perpetrator wrote it before or after strangling JonBenet. If the latter was the case, the note was likely meant to divert and confuse the police.
In many ways, the crime was reminiscent of the 1932 Lindbergh kidnapping which, like this tragedy, provoked a media frenzy. In both case, a high-profile child disappeared from its bed while the parents were at home. And in both cases there was no unambiguous signs of a forced entry, no identifiable fingerprints, and  no creditable witnesses. The only evidence of a kidnapping in both cases was a hand-written ransom note. And in both cases the child was later found dead.  But Lindbergh was a national hero (at least in 1932), and the local police accepted at face value what he had reported.
Unlike the Lindbergh case, however, the local police in of the JonBenet case fixed their attention on the possibility that  the child's death had resulted from domestic violence that been  disguised as a kidnapping.  One reason was that they  found scant evidence of an intruder.  To be sure, there was a footprint in the dust made by a hiking boot, a palm print on the door of the wine cellar, and a pubic hair in the blanket in which JonBenet was wrapped that could not be matched to any family member. But these possible clues  also could have been left in the house and blanket at an earlier time or even resulted from the accidental contamination of  the crime scene (which was not initially sealed off).
 The investigators were also unable to find an escape route.  There was an opened  basement window but there were no footprints in the snow outside the window. So the investigation focused on the activities of the three family members who were at home– JonBenet’s father John, her mother Patsy, and her brother Burke. Despite an intensive effort, however,  the police were unable to match the handwriting samples of any family member to the ransom note, or find any other evidence implicating them.  Meanwhile, the family hired lawyers to protect their interests and sue the media that was reporting police "leaks."  So the investigation ground to a halt.
 In took nearly 12 years, for the district attorney’s office to officially exonerate the family members on the basis of “new scientific evidence.” The district attorney explained: “The match of Male DNA on two separate items of clothing worn by the victim at the time of the murder makes it clear to us that an unknown male handled these items.”   Even though the investigation officially resumed, the Boulder  police chief observed, “Some cases never get solved.”

The theories of case can be found here,