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All eyes are back on the JonBenét Ramsey case after Netflix debuted Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey? – and police say the ransom note found by JonBenét’s now-late mother, Patsy Ramsey, was “bogus.”
“I was going through the notebook that contained Patsy’s handwriting, and I came across an entire sheet of paper in the notebook still attached with what appeared to be the initial ransom note,” former Boulder police detective Jeff Kithcart said during the Monday, November 25, premiere episode of the three-part docuseries. “It said, ‘Mr.’ and then like, maybe, the initial vertical stroke of an ‘R.’ It could have been the first draft of what had appeared to me to be the possible ransom note.”
Kithcart later admitted he was “shocked to find” that it “appeared that the ransom note was written from that notebook in the Ramsey household.”
The December 1996 ransom letter demanded $118,000.00 in exchange for JonBenét, which was also the amount that Patsy previously received as a work bonus.
“It’s quite unusual to see this magnum opus. Your typical ransom notes are short and to the point,” FBI agent Ron Walker said in an archived interview from 2006, one decade after JonBenét’s death.
Walker pointed out the cash request and deemed it a “really odd number to ask for.”
“The $118,000 is a low figure, but it’s also a very unusual figure because it’s just not typical of what you would expect to see. You expect to see 200,000, 300,000, 250,000, a million, a half a million. But not 118,000,” Walker continued, later adding that the ransom note was “essentially bogus. It was not truly a kidnapping note.”
JonBenét was found dead and strangled inside the basement of her home on December 26, 1996. The six-year-old beauty queen’s death quickly made headlines and has since become one of the biggest cold cases in the U.S.
Patsy realized JonBenét was missing the early morning of her death. While making coffee, the family matriarch found the two-page random note lying on their back staircase and called the Boulder Police Department thereafter. After officials showed up, JonBenét’s father, John Ramsey, and his friend, Fleet White, helped them search the house, where they found the young girl dead in their spare basement. JonBenét was sexually assaulted before she died and was found strangled with a cord loosely wrapped around her wrists.
People have shared their thoughts on who killed JonBenét, as her killer has yet to be found 28 years after her tragic death. Her family was ruled out of being suspects after DNA was gathered from JonBenét’s underwear and fingernails, neither of which matched with her parents or brother, Burke Ramsey. Police connected the DNA to an unknown and unrelated male, but the evidence wasn’t further sent to labs.
“For 27 years, we’ve been trying to get [police] to accept help,” John, 80, exclusively told In Touch in June. John accused the Boulder Police Department of being “very reluctant to tell us anything” and noted, “the only logical reason they won’t commit to testing it anymore is because they lost it.”
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