Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are walking
into a house that, well, I think everyone in
the world recognizes. Oh, absolutely. You know
the brick exterior, you know the date, you certainly
know the name. But the more I looked into the
stack of research for today, the more I realized
that what we think we know about this case is
basically a collection of magazine headlines
and you know, rumors. It is the ultimate example
of a case where the mythology has completely
overtaken the forensic reality. We treat it like
a soap opera, the beauty queen mom, the rich
dad, the pageant videos. But when you actually
sit down with the case files, the autopsy protocols
and the police reports, you realize it's actually
a tragedy of errors. That is exactly what we
are here to unpack. We are talking, of course,
about the killing of JonBenet Ramsey. And I have
to be honest with you, coming into this, I felt
like the ultimate learner. I was overwhelmed.
It's easy to be. I've seen the documentaries
where ominous music plays and they point the
finger at the parents. Then I watch another one
that points the finger at an intruder. And I
usually walk away feeling like I know less than
when I started. So what is our mission today?
Our mission is to strip away the sensationalism.
We aren't here to judge the pageants or the lifestyle.
We are here to look at the mechanics of the investigation.
We want to understand why this case is unsolved.
And to do that, we have to look at the massive
systemic failures that happened in the first
24 hours. The lost 24 hours. Exactly. If you
want to know why we don't have a conviction almost
30 years later, you don't look at the DNA labs
of 2024. You have to look at the floorboards
of that house on the morning of December 26th,
1996. So it's not just a murder mystery. No,
not at all. It is a case study in crime scene
contamination, a textbook example of what not
to do. So help us navigate this. What are the
sources we are deep diving into today? We have
a pretty comprehensive stack. We are synthesizing
the original Boulder Police Department reports,
the autopsy protocols, which are difficult to
read but necessary. Can you imagine? The grand
jury documents that were released years later
and the conflicting analyses from the district
attorney's office versus the police department.
We're also looking at the defamation lawsuits,
which, interestingly enough, established some
legal facts that the public often ignores. And
I think that conflict, the police... versus the
DA is going to be a huge theme today. It feels
like there were two investigations happening
simultaneously that hated each other. Hate is
probably not too strong a word. Really? It was
a war. And the casualty of that war was justice
for JonBenet. Okay, let's get into it. Let's
set the stage. December 1996. It's Christmas
in Boulder, Colorado, a wealthy, affluent university
town. The Ramsey family lives at 755 15th Street.
It's a large, sprawling, Tudor -style home. Right.
John Ramsey is the president of Axis Graphics,
a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. He's incredibly
successful, very high status in the community.
A tech millionaire, essentially. In the 90s,
absolutely. And then you have Patsy Ramsey. Oh,
former Miss West Virginia. Right. Very social,
very involved in the community. And they have
two children in the house, Burke, who is nine
years old, and JonBenet, who is six. And we have
to mention the pageants just for context, although
I know we don't want to dwell on it. It's relevant
only in that it made JonBenet a public figure
before she was a victim. She was Little Miss
Colorado. She was a national tiny miss. But on
the night of December 25th, Christmas night,
the glitter is off. They're just a family. They
are just a family. They go to a friend's house
for dinner, the White's house. They come home.
They put the kids to bed. The narrative, the
official story, is that everyone is asleep. Until
the morning of December 26th. This is where the
timeline starts, and honestly, this is where
the frustration begins for me. Walk us through
the first hour. It begins at 5 .52 a .m. Mountain
Standard Time. Patsy Ramsey calls 911. And it's
a frantic call, right? Oh, it's frantic. It's
panicked. She screams that her daughter is missing
and that there is a ransom note? So the initial
report is a kidnapping, not a murder. Correct.
And that distinction is vital. The police are
responding to a kidnapping in progress, not a
homicide. Two officers arrive within three minutes.
It's still dark outside. So really fast response
time. Very fast. And they enter the house. Now,
in a modern investigation, or at least in the
movies, you expect the police to come in, shout,
nobody move. tape everything off and put on the
white Tyvek suits. Right. The whole CSI treatment.
What actually happened was the complete opposite
of that. They conduct what's called a cursory
search. That is the phrase used in the reports.
Cursory search. So just a quick look around.
A quick look. We walk through the house looking
for signs of forced entry. They don't see any
shattered glass or kicked in doors immediately.
They're trying to establish the parameters of
the crime. And this leads us to what I think
is the first sliding doors moment of the case.
The basement door. Yes. This is a critical, critical
moment. Officer Rick French is one of the first
on scene. He goes down to the basement. Now this
is a labyrinthine basement. Lots of rooms, storage
areas, a wine cellar room. It's not just one
big open space. It's messy, cluttered. Very.
And he gets to a door that is secured by a wooden
latch at the top of the frame. A latch. So it's
closed. It's closed and latched from the outside.
Officer French stands there. He looks at it and
he pauses. You have to try to get into his headspace
at 6 a .m. He's looking for a kidnapper. He is
looking for a kidnapper. He is looking for an
escape route. And logic dictates that a kidnapper
does. doesn't run through a door, and then latch
it from the inside behind them. I mean, it's
not even possible. It's a physical impossibility
for that to be the exit. So he reasons the kidnapper
didn't go this way. He turns around and walks
back upstairs. And what was behind that door?
JonBenet's body. That is just, it gives me chills.
If he opens that latch, if he just peeks inside.
Everything changes. The entire trajectory of
this case changes in that second. If he opens
that door at 6 a .m., the body is discovered
by law enforcement. The scene is frozen instantly.
It's a murder scene. It's immediately a murder
scene. The body is photographed in situ meaning
exactly as it was left without anyone moving
it. The house is locked down as a homicide investigation,
not a kidnapping negotiation center. But because
he doesn't open it, the police continue to operate
under the delusion that she is gone and they
are waiting for a phone call. Correct. And this
ushers in what we call the lost mourning. And
if you found the missed door frustrating, this
part is going to make you angry. I read the notes
on this and I couldn't believe it. I literally
wrote, are you kidding me? In the margins? Because
that house wasn't empty, was it? No, far from
it. Patsy Ramsey, in her distress, had called
friends. Before calling 911? Or after? Right
after. She called the Whites and the Fernies'
close family friends. She called their minister.
They all came rushing over to support the family.
So you have a crime scene, and you have civilians
pouring in, making coffee, walking around. At
one point, they were five, six, maybe seven non
-law enforcement people roaming the ground floor
of the house. And because the police were focused
on the phone waiting for the ransom call, they
let the friends do what friends do. They tried
to be helpful. Helpful meaning? What? Wiping
things down. Helpful meaning cleaning up. There
are reports that friends were in the kitchen
wiping down the counters with spray cleaner.
No. Yes. They were emptying the dishwasher. They
were picking up mail from the floor. One friend
even tidied up Jean Benet's bedroom. They were
cleaning the crime scene. They were wiping away
fingerprints. They were wiping away fingerprints,
fibers, potential DNA. In forensic science, we
have something called Locard's exchange principle.
Right. I've heard of this. It basically says
that the perpetrator of a crime will bring something
into the crime scene and leave with something
from it. Evidence is an exchange. But if you
have friends wiping down the surfaces with 409,
you are destroying that exchange. You're erasing
the ghost of the killer. Perfectly put. You're
erasing the ghost. And nobody stopped them. And
nobody stopped them. It was 1996 in a town that
rarely saw homicides, dealing with the kidnapping
of a prominent family. The protocol just collapsed.
The only room they taped off was John Benet's
bedroom, assuming that was the point of abduction.
The rest of the house was treated like a waiting
room at a hospital. Exactly. The morning drags
on. The ransom note said the kidnappers would
call between 8 and 10 a .m. Which is another
bizarre detail we will get to. A specific time
window. Right. But the time comes and goes. The
phone doesn't ring. The tension must have been
unbearable. Absolutely. By 1 p .m., the detective
in charge of the scene, Linda Arndt, is there
alone with the Ramseys and their friends. The
other officers had left to set up wiretaps or
investigate other leads. She's managing this
all by herself. Pretty much. And Detective Arndt
sees John Ramsey sitting there, just distraught
and helpless. She decides she needs to give him
something to do, keep him occupied. So she gives
him instructions. She asks John Ramsey and his
friend, Fleet White, to do a search of the house.
She tells them to look from top to bottom for
anything amiss. Wait. She asks the father of
the victim to search the crime scene. It sounds
unbelievable today, but yes. She essentially
deputized the father and his friend to investigate
their own house. I mean, what if they found something?
They're not trained investigators. They're going
to touch it, move it. And that's exactly what
happened. So where does John go? He goes straight
to the basement. Doesn't start at the top, doesn't
check the other bedrooms. He goes straight to
the basement, to that latch door that Officer
French had skipped. He opens it, and he screams.
He found her. He found her. His reaction is entirely
human, completely understandable for a father,
but forensically catastrophic. He picks her up.
He picks her up. He carries her body up the stairs
to the living room. He lays her on the floor
right in the middle of the house. And didn't
he touch the tape? He ripped the duct tape off
her mouth. He tried to untie the cords on her
wrists. Oh, my God. So any DNA on the tape is
now mixed with John's DNA. Any fibers on her
nightgown are now mixed with fibers from John's
shirt from the blanket he covered her with. We
lost the position of the body, how she was lying,
which tells us about how she died. And the knots
on the cord. The non -integrity is gone. We lost
the lividity patterns, how the blood settles,
which helps determine time of death. The moment
he picked her up, the crime scene integrity went
from compromised to obliterated. So by 1 .30
p .m. on December 26. We have a body, we have
a contaminated house, we have wiped counters,
and we have a family in shock. The police finally
lock it down, but the damage is done. The horse
had not only left the barn, the barn had burned
down. Let's pivot to what the experts did find
once they finally got the body to the morgue,
the autopsy. I want to spend some time here because
there are terms used in the headlines that I
don't think people actually understand. The cause
of death. The official cause of death was asphyxia
by strangulation associated with cranioscerebral
trauma. So in plain English. She was strangled,
and she had a massive skull fracture, an 8 .5
-inch crack in her skull from a single powerful
blow. That sounds incredibly violent. More than
just, you know, a rage -filled slap. Oh, this
was extreme force. The blow to the head was severe
enough to knock her unconscious instantly and
likely would have killed her eventually, but
the strangulation was the primary cause of death.
Which brings us to the weapon. It wasn't just
a rope. It was a garrote. That's right. Okay,
I've heard this word. Garote. No! What is it
mechanically? A garote is a strangulation device
designed to create mechanical advantage. It's
not just wrapping a cord around a neck and pulling.
Okay. In this case, the killer took a white nylon
cord, tied a loop for the neck, but then attached
a stick to the other end of the cord. Like a
handle. Exactly, like a toggle or a windlass.
You use the stick to twist the cord. This allows
you to tighten the knot much, much tighter than
you could with bare hands, and it locks the pressure
in place. It's a mechanism. It suggests some
planning, some forethought. It suggests control
and extreme violence. And the stick, this is
where the insider theory gets some fuel. What
was the stick? It was a broken paintbrush handle.
A broken handle from a paintbrush. A paintbrush
from the house. Yes. Investigators found Patsy
Ramsey's art supplies tub in the basement, a
big plastic tote. Inside, they found the bristle
end of a paintbrush. It had been snapped off.
The handle of the wooden shaft was missing. And
that missing handle was the piece tied into the
garrote around JonBenet's neck. Correct. So the
murder weapon was manufactured inside the house
using materials from the mother's hobby kit.
It's a powerful piece of circumstantial evidence.
It seems almost undeniable. But there's a problem.
Here is the forensic puzzle piece that drives
investigators crazy. You have the bristle end
in the tub. You have the handle end on the body.
But when they tried to fit them together like
puzzle pieces. They didn't fit. They didn't fit
perfectly. There was a middle section, a splinter,
maybe an inch or so long that was missing. It
had broken in two places. Where did it go? That
is the million -dollar question. The police searched
that house for days. They vacuumed rugs. They
crawled on hands and knees. They never found
that middle splinter. That is bizarre. If you
break a stick in the basement to make a weapon,
the splinter falls on the floor. Right. Unless
the killer, in this moment of high tension, meticulously
picks up this tiny sliver of wood and puts it
in their pocket. Which seems unlikely. Very unlikely.
Or... and this is the intruder argument, unless
the paintbrush was broken somewhere else and
the killer brought the handle in with them, maybe
I had to make it in situ. Maybe they carried
the garrote in their pocket already made. It's
a tiny detail, a sliver of wood, but it prevents
us from saying 100 % that the weapon was made
in that basement. Yeah, it creates that sliver
of reasonable doubt. There was another piece
of physical evidence that people obsess over,
the pineapple. Ah, the pineapple. It's so critical
for the timeline. The medical examiner found
partially digested pineapple in Jean Benet's
stomach. So she had eaten recently. Based on
digestion rates, this suggests she ate it a relatively
short time before she died, maybe an hour or
two. But the parents said she was asleep. Right.
The parents' story was unwavering. They came
home from the Christmas party, Jean Benet was
asleep in the car, John carried her up to bed,
and she never woke up. They denied feeding her
pineapple. But there was a bowl of pineapple
found, right? Yes, on the dining room table.
A bowl of pineapple chunks with a large serving
spoon in it and a glass of iced tea. Okay, so
she wakes up, goes downstairs, has a snack. What's
the big deal? The big deal is the fingerprints.
They found Patsy Ramsey's fingerprints on the
bowl. But not JonBenet's. No. They also found
Burke's fingerprints on the glass of tea next
to the bowl. Okay, so Brooke and Patsy handled
the items. Right. Now, Patsy said she didn't
remember putting it out, but if she did, and
if JonBenet ate it, it proves she was awake.
It completely contradicts the she -was -asleep
-all -night story. And if the parents are lying
about her being asleep, the immediate question
is why. Why? What happened during that pineapple
snack? It creates a gap in the timeline where
something could have gone wrong. It opens the
door to the theory that an argument happened
or an accident happened downstairs late at night.
The pineapple is the key to that timeline. It
is. Let's move to the most famous piece of evidence
in this case, the ransom note. I feel like we
could do a whole episode just on these sheets
of paper. We absolutely could. It is, without
a doubt, the most unusual ransom note in FBI
history. Let's start with the physical reality
of it. You mentioned it was long. It was two
and a half pages, handwritten, on a legal pad
that came from a notepad inside the house. The
pen used to write it also came from a cup on
the kitchen counter. So everything was sourced
from inside the house. Everything. The paper,
the pen. Two and a half pages. I mean, standard
ransom notes are like, I have your daughter,
put $50 ,000 in a bag, no cops. Why two and a
half pages? The FBI estimated that to write two
and a half pages of coherent text, specifically
creating a persona, would take at least 21 minutes.
21 minutes. Minimum. Imagine that. You have just...
killed a child or kidnapped a child in a house
where the parents are sleeping upstairs and you
sit down at the kitchen table or on the stairs
and you write for 20 minutes you're not rushing
you're taking your time you take the time to
compose a manifesto it implies a level of comfort
that is terrifying Or it implies you know the
parents aren't going to wake up. And they found
a draft. A practice draft was found in the trash
can. The writer started with Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey,
then crossed it out and started over. Who edits
a ransom note during a crime? Someone who is
staging it. That's the argument. It's the strongest
argument for staging. Now look at the content.
It's addressed to Mr. Ramsey. It says, listen
carefully. We are a group of individuals that
represent a small foreign faction. Small foreign
faction. It sounds like a spy novel. It sounds
ridiculous. It sounds theatrical. And that theatricality
continues. The note is filled with aggressive,
almost cartoonish threats. She dies. She dies.
She dies. It mentions beheading. It says, if
we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies.
Who talks like that? A character in a movie.
And you mentioned in the pre -show that there
are movie quotes in here. Yes, it is a collage
of 1990s action movie dialogue. The phrase, don't
try to grow a brain, John, is a quote from the
movie Speed, which had just aired on TV. The
line about law enforcement countermeasures is
from the movie Ransom, starring Mel Gibson. The
stray dog line echoes Dirty Harry. So the author
isn't a foreign terrorist. The author is a movie
buff. The author is someone role -playing a criminal.
They are using the language of what they think
a kidnapper sounds like based on Hollywood. It's
just the more you look at it, the weirder it
gets. And then we hit the number. What a money.
The demand is for $118 ,000. That is such a weirdly
specific number. Why not a million? Why not 100K
flat? That detail is the anchor that ties the
crime to John Ramsey. John's Christmas bonus
from Access Graphics the prior year was exactly
$118 ,117 .50. It's basically the same number.
It's too close to be a coincidence. So this tells
us the writer knew John's finances and knew them
intimately. Which leads to two possibilities.
One, it's the parents. John or Patsy chose a
number that was familiar to them. Or two, it's
a disgruntled employee who saw a pay stub. Exactly.
But it effectively rules out a random drifter.
A random burglar doesn't ask for $118 ,000. They
ask for everything you have. Okay, what about
the handwriting? I feel like everyone has an
opinion on this. It looks like Patsy's writing.
This is one of the most contentious battles in
the whole case. The police and the CBI, the Colorado
Bureau of Investigation, analyzed Patsy's handwriting
samples. They concluded that there were indications
she wrote it. Indications, so not a match? Not
a definitive match. They couldn't say 100%, but
they couldn't eliminate her. And crucially, she
was the only person in the Ramsey family they
couldn't eliminate. But didn't a court later
disagree? This is from the lawsuit documents,
right? Yes. Years later, in a federal court ruling
regarding a defamation case, the judge cited
six separate certified handwriting experts. These
were independent experts. They testified that
it was highly unlikely Patsy wrote the note.
They pointed to structural differences, letter
formation differences, things a layman wouldn't
see. The judge basically said the police are
relying on suspicion, but the science says she
didn't do it. So like everything else in this
case, the handwriting is a deadlock. One side
sees a match. The other side sees a coincidence.
Correct. Total deadlock. OK, we have to talk
about the science that is supposed to solve everything.
DNA. You called it the ghost in the machine in
our notes. Why is DNA so confusing here? Because
people think DNA is simple. You find blood, you
match it, you catch the killer. But in this case,
we're dealing with touch DNA or trace DNA. Explain
the difference for us. Traditional DNA is finding
a pool of blood or semen. A large sample, lots
of genetic material. Touched DNA is microscopic
skin cells left behind when you touch something.
We shed thousands of spin cells a minute. It's
much less reliable. Okay, so where did they find
it? They found traced DNA on JonBenet's underwear,
specifically mixed with a tiny drop of her own
blood and on the waistband of her long johns.
And whose was it? It belonged to an unknown male.
We call this profile Unknown Male Number One.
And we know who it wasn't. It wasn't John. It
wasn't Burke. It wasn't Patsy. It wasn't any
of their friends who were in the house. They
checked everyone. So stop right there. If I'm
a juror and you tell me there is unknown male
DNA mixed with the victim's blood on her underwear
and is not the father or brother, that's an intruder.
Case closed. Why isn't it that simple? Because
we don't know how that DNA got there. This is
where the controversy explodes. In 2016, new
analysis techniques, much more sensitive techniques,
suggested that the sample might be a composite.
Meaning? Meaning it might not be one person.
It might be a mixture of genetic markers for
multiple people piled on top of each other. Think
of it like a messy signature with three people
writing on top of each other. You can see parts
of each, but it's hard to separate them. So it
could be a mixture of people who touch the clothing
at different times. Exactly. And more importantly,
trace DNA is... easily transferred transfer how
let's say i shake hands with you and then you
go touch a child's clothing my dna can end up
on that clothing even though i was never in the
room this is called secondary transfer or as
you mentioned in the notes could it be for the
manufacturing process yes this is a huge theory
that the dna could belong to a factory worker
in asia who packaged the underwear If they coughed
or touched the fabric, their DNA is there before
the package is even opened. It could be completely
benign. So view A, the intruder theory, says
this is the killer's calling card. View B, the
contamination theory, says this is biological
background noise. Exactly. And because the crime
scene was so contaminated with so many people
walking through the house, we can't rule out
that the DNA wasn't transferred by a first responder
or a friend or a blanket. Contamination comes
back to haunt every piece of evidence. Every
single piece. Let's organize all of this into
the two main theories, because really, everyone
listening right now is probably leaning one way
or the other. Let's start with Theory A, the
family, the inside Job. Why did the Boulder police
focus on them so intensely from the get -go?
It starts with the lack of forced entry. To the
police, the house looks sealed up tight for a
Colorado winter night. No kicked -in doors, no
shattered windows they could immediately find.
So the crime started from inside. That was their
working assumption. Then you have the ransom
note written, with house supplies, taking 20
minutes, asking for a specific bonus amount.
To the police, that screams staging. Staging
a crime to cover up. What? The prevailing theory
among the BPD was that this was an accident or
a rage killing. Maybe JonBenet wet the bed, which
was an issue she struggled with. Maybe Patsy,
who was a cancer survivor and under a lot of
stress, just snapped. Or the pineapple argument.
Or an argument over the pineapple. A blow to
the head happens. She's unconscious or dead.
Panic sets in. And to protect the family or to
protect themselves, they cover it up. They create
a kidnapping scenario to explain the body. But
then for some reason, the plan changes or goes
wrong and the body is left in the basement. Exactly.
The staging theory is that the cover up was clumsy,
amateurish because they weren't criminals. They
were panicked parents. And the parents' behavior
in the days and weeks after didn't help their
case? No. They lawyered up immediately. They
hired their own investigators. They hired a PR
firm. They refused to sit for formal separate
interviews with the police. For months. To the
public, that lifts guilty. If you have nothing
to hide, just talk to the police. But to a defense
attorney, that looks smart. The police had already
decided they were guilty. The leaks coming out
of the police department were vicious. The Ramseys
felt they were being framed, so they built a
wall around themselves. What about the brother,
Burke? He was nine. Surely he wasn't a suspect.
For a long time, the official line was no. He
was interviewed, of course, but cleared by the
police and the DA in 1999. But in 2016, CBS aired
a docuseries that blew the lid off this again.
A panel of experts proposed a new timeline. They
proposed that Burke, perhaps in a fit of jealousy
over the pineapple or a toy, hit her with a heavy
flashlight. A flashlight found on the kitchen
counter. Yes. A heavy mag light that was left
out. The theory was that the parents walked in,
saw what their son had done, and staged the entire
kidnapping to save their only remaining child.
That is a dark theory. It is. And it led to a
massive defamation lawsuit. Burke Ramsey sued
CDS for $750 million. They settled in 2019. We
don't know the terms, but the fact that a major
network settled suggests Burke had a very strong
case, that there was no actual evidence for this
theory. But the suspicion around the family was
strong enough to go to a grand jury. And this
is the part of the story that I think shocks
people the most. I remember when this news broke
in 2013. It was a bombshell. For over a decade,
the public thought the grand jury found nothing.
That they just couldn't decide. But when the
documents were unsealed, we learned that in 1999,
the grand jury did vote to indict John and Patsy
Ramsey. They voted to charge them. Yes. They
signed what are called true bills. But the charges
weren't murder. What were they then? The charges
were child abuse resulting in death and accessory
to a crime. Explain that distinction. That's
really important. It is. The grand jury essentially
said, we don't know who struck the blow. We can't
prove John killed her or Patsy killed her, but
we believe there is probable cause that they
placed her in a situation that resulted in her
death and that they assisted in the cover -up
after the fact. So the jury said charge them.
Why weren't they arrested? It is because of the
district attorney, Alex Hunter. In the legal
system, a grand jury votes on probable cause,
which is a lower standard. A trial jury needs
proof beyond a reasonable doubt. A much higher
bar. Much higher. Alex Hunter looked at the case.
Specifically, the unknown male DNA, the compromised
crime scene, the conflicting handwriting analysis,
and he believed he would lose a trial. He thought
a defense attorney would rip the case apart.
Exactly. He thought the unknown male DNA would
create reasonable doubt every single time. So
he refused to sign the indictment. He pocketed
it. He never filed the charges. And the Ramseys
walked free. That is a staggering amount of power
for one person to have, to override the citizen's
vote. It is, and it's why the police versus DA
war is so bitter. The police felt they had their
suspects. The DA felt the police had botched
the evidence so badly it was unusable. Let's
flip the coin. Theory B, the intruder. This theory
has a champion, a man named Lou Smit. Who was
he? Lou Smit was a legend in Colorado law enforcement.
He was a homicide detective with a reputation
for solving the unsolvable of these really tough,
cold cases. He was brought out of retirement
by the DA's office specifically to look at this
case with fresh eyes. So he wasn't part of the
original Boulder PD team. No, he was an outsider.
And he came to a very different conclusion than
the police. He did. He was convinced the Ramseys
were innocent. He believed the police had tunnel
vision and were ignoring a mountain of evidence
that pointed to an intruder. What evidence? He
focused on the basement window. There was a broken
window in the train room. Beneath it, on the
floor, there was a suitcase. A suitcase? Smit
theorized that the intruder entered or exited
through that window and used the suitcase as
a step to get in or out. He found a scuff mark
on the wall that looked like a shoe print. He
even found leaves and debris under the window
that seemed to come from outside. But I remember
reading a counter -argument to this involving
a spider web. The famous cobweb. Critics of Smith,
mainly the Boulder PD, pointed out that there
was a spiderweb in the corner of the window frame.
It was intact. They argued that a grown man couldn't
crawl through that window without breaking the
web. It sounds like a detail from Sherlock Holmes.
The curious case of the undisturbed cobweb. It
really does. But Smith had other evidence. He
found a boot mark in the mold on the basement
floor. A high -tech boot print that didn't match
any shoes owned by the Ramseys. An unidentified
print. An unidentified print right there in the
wine cellar where the body was found. Yeah, and
the stun gun. This was Smith's biggest contribution,
in my opinion. He looked at the autopsy photos
and saw two sets of small paired abrasions on
JonBenet's back and face. The police had written
them off as nothing. Okay. But Smit realized
they were spaced perfectly apart about the width
of the prongs on an air taser stun gun. So he
thought she was tasered. He believed the intruder
used a stun gun to subdue her silently. If that's
true, it points heavily away from the parents.
Parents don't typically use stun guns on their
children. And stun guns aren't usually household
items in 1996. That's a huge piece of evidence
for the intruder theory. It's massive. And it
leads to the question, who was this intruder?
I mean, who enters a house on Christmas night?
Smith pointed out that there had been over 100
burglaries in the neighborhood in the months
leading up to the murder, and ominously there
were 38 registered sex offenders living within
a two -mile radius of the Ramsey home. 38? That
seems incredibly high. It's a university town,
high density, but it creates a target -rich environment
for suspects. Smith believed one of them watched
the family, knew the layout, and struck when
the house was quiet. Did they ever have a solid
suspect from that list? I remember the name John
Mark Carr. John Mark Carr is the great distraction
of this case. In 2006, 10 years later, this man
was arrested in Thailand. He confessed. He gave
graphic details. He said he loved JonBenet and
that her death was an accident. It was huge news.
I remember the footage of him being flown back.
Everyone thought, this is it. But it fell apart
instantly. His DNA didn't match the sample on
the underwear. He claimed he drugged her, but
the autopsy showed zero drugs in her system.
He was a fantasist, a man obsessed with the case
who wanted the attention. So a false lead. A
huge false lead that just added more noise to
the signal. So where does that leave us? We have
the inside Job theory that fits the psychology
and the ransom note, but fails on the DNA. We
have the intruder theory that fits the DNA and
the stun gun marks, but fails on the logic of
the note. And that is the paralysis of this case.
The two theories are almost perfectly balanced.
Every time you find a fact that proves one, you
find another fact that contradicts it. And the
investigation wars didn't help. The people supposed
to solve this were fighting each other. It was
toxic. Steve Thomas, the lead BPD detective,
resigned and wrote a book attacking the DA. Lou
Smit resigned from the DA's office and essentially
spent the rest of his life as a private citizen
fighting for the Ramsey's innocence. You had
a fractured system. And then the exoneration.
This is a roller coaster. It really was. In 2008,
a new district attorney, Mary Lacey, who had
worked with Lou Smith and believed in the intruder
theory, wrote a formal letter to the Ramsey family.
She apologized to them. She said that based on
the development of new touch DNA technology,
they were officially exonerated. That sounds
like case closed for them. It was for a while,
but legal experts hated it. Police hated it.
And in 2016, the former police chief, Mark Beckner,
did a Reddit AMA and asked me anything. And he
let loose. What did he say? He called the exoneration
absurd. He said, you simply don't clear primary
suspects based on a tiny piece of unexplained
DNA that might be transfer, that might be from
a factory worker. You just don't do it. So the
police still think they did it. Many of the original
investigators went to their graves believing
the Ramseys were guilty, but officially. The
case is open. It is an active homicide investigation
in Boulder, Colorado. It's tragic. We are talking
about a little girl who died and her death has
become a battlefield for egos and theories and
careers. And that brings us back to the beginning.
The tragedy isn't just the murder. It's the lost
justice. And that justice was likely lost between
6 a .m. and 1 p .m. on December 26th. Because
of the contamination. Because the scene wasn't
frozen. Because the note was handled by Patsy
and the police. Because friends were cleaning
the kitchen. Because the body was moved. We can
never go back and test the real scene. We are
only testing the contaminated scene. So every
piece of evidence has an asterisk next to it.
A giant asterisk. Maybe it's an intruder. Maybe
it's staging. Maybe it's a stun gun. Maybe it's
just a random mark. It's all maybe. So as we
wrap up this deep dive. What is the takeaway?
We usually try to find a lesson, but this feels
like a lesson in what not to do. The takeaway
is about the fragility of truth. We live in the
CSI effect era. We think that if a crime happens,
a team of geniuses with blue flashlights will
find a hair and solve it in 45 minutes. Right.
But the reality is that forensic science is fragile.
It relies on human procedure. If a cop doesn't
open a door or if a friend picks up a notepad,
the truth can evaporate. It can be lost forever
in a matter of hours. And it leaves us with this
haunting ambiguity. If you trust the DNA, you
have to believe in an intruder. If you trust
the behavioral profiling and the bizarre ransom
note, you have to look at the family. And you
can't really reconcile them. They are irreconcilable
poles, the North and South Pole of the same crime.
I want to leave the listener with a final thought
to chew on. We often look at cold cases and say
science will catch up. We were waiting for that
one familial DNA match in a database that will
crack it open. Right, the Golden State Killer
model. Exactly. But in the case of JonBenet Ramsey,
is it possible that DNA is actually the problem?
That our reliance on this God key of biology
has blinded us to the circumstantial evidence
that was right in front of us. Or conversely,
is the DNA the only truthful thing in a house
full of lies and chaos? That is the question.
Is the DNA the boast of the killer or is it just
a ghost in the machine? I have a feeling we will
be debating this for another 30 years. If you
want to see the ransom note yourself, and I highly
recommend reading the full text to see the movie
quotes and the bizarre language, check the links
in the show notes. We also have diagrams of the
house so you can see that basement door for yourself.
It's worth a look. Just be prepared to go down
a very deep rabbit hole. Thanks for diving in
with us. Stay curious.