Tonight, ‘The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey‘ is by all accounts set to blow both the lid off the whole case and the socks off both of your feet when it drops new theories on the 1996 murder of the American child pageant star.
The documentary will interview heaps of people who were involved with the original case, including former New York City prosecutor Jim Clemente, forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee, former chief investigator for the District Attorney in Boulder, James Kolar, and leading forensic pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz.
They also went to the incredible effort of building an entire goddamn recreation of the Ramsey family home so as to properly run through possible scenarios from the kidnapping and murder of JonBenét.
To give you a bit of a primer on the weirdness of the case, here’s some of the stranger details that have kept investigators baffled for 20 years:
The ransom requested was almost identical to the amount JonBenét’s dad received as a bonus
Whoever the kidnapper(s) / killer(s) was/were, it seems like they knew that that John Bennett Ramsay, the father, had received around $118,000 as a bonus from work (not a bad bonus, hey) earlier in the same year, because they requested that very same, very specific amount – almost like they knew he would have that amount of cash to give away.
The ransom note was written on pen and paper from inside the house, with handwriting similar to that of the mother
This is either suspicious or just a weird coincidence combined with some really ill-prepared kidnappers: the ransom note was written with and on materials that were taken from inside the house and a draft copy of the ransom note was also found inside the house.
Seems to me like if you’re going to go to the trouble of doing a kidnapping, you’d probably write that shit before you got to the victim’s house? But I guess I’m not the one who has so far gotten away with the crime for 20 years.
Handwriting tests found that they may have been written by the mother, Patricia, but that there wasn’t enough evidence to say so conclusively.
There was no sign of a break in
Initially it was reported that there were no signs of a forced entry, although later reports said that a broken window may have been to blame – but Detective Jim Kolar, who both worked on the case and wrote a book about it, said that claim was ridiculous as the broken window was both still obscured by cobwebs and that a piece of broken glass that had been sitting in the windowsill had not been dislodged.
JonBenét’s autopsy revealed she had eaten pineapple hours before her death
While not super weird in itself, photos of the Ramsey household taken the day the body was discovered just so happen to show a bowl of pineapple with a spoon in it on the kitchen table.
Neither of the parents recall feeding JonBenét pineapple or putting the pineapple, but police did find fingerprints on the bowl from their then 9-year-old son, Burke, who they insist slept through the entire ordeal.
Weird? Yes. Spurious? Definitely yes.
Police found DNA on JonBenét’s clothing from an unidentified man
Analysis of a mixed blood sample on JonBenét’s underwear was found to belong to an unidentified man, and was conclusively not matched to the DNA of their Burke, Patricia or John.
Someone took credit for the murder in 2006
41-year-old John Mark Karr was arrested in Bangkok on child pornography charges and confessed to drugging, sexually assaulting and accidentally killing JonBenét.
Police were sceptical about his admission because there was no evidence she had been drugged and Karr only provided details about the case that were already widely known. The claims were dismissed after police couldn’t find DNA evidence or any other kind of evidence linking him to the scene.
Katy Perry is actually JonBenét
OK this isn’t so much a weird point of the case as it is an insane theory from an insane person, but uh, watch this:
Well, that seems conclusive enough to me.
‘The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey‘ is a two-parter that starts tonight at 8:40pm on Channel 9, get into it.
