The Megyn Kelly Show - Revisiting the JonBenet Ramsey Murder Case, and How New DNA Technology Can Help, with Her Father John Ramsey

00:00:00.460 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.700 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today on the program,

00:00:15.960 we are speaking with John Ramsey, the father of little JonBenet Ramsey. JonBenet's murder

00:00:21.940 remains one of the most covered stories of the 20th and 21st centuries. Yet despite

00:00:27.800 decades of intense media attention, police investigations, and over 20,000 tips in this

00:00:33.840 case, we still don't know the person or persons responsible for her death. But there are several

00:00:41.220 new developments in the case, and Jon is here to walk us through what they are and whether he

00:00:45.480 believes they could lead to finding his daughter's killer after all these years. First, a reminder

00:00:51.960 of how this story began. It was Christmas night, 1996, Boulder, Colorado. The Ramsey home was

00:00:59.800 decorated with holiday wreaths tied with bows. Jon and his now late wife, Patsy Ramsey, had put six

00:01:07.100 year old JonBenet to bed after returning home from a Christmas dinner with friends. When Patsy woke up

00:01:13.000 early the next morning and went downstairs, she found a ransom note at the bottom of the steps.

00:01:19.140 It read in part, we have your daughter in our possession. Patsy ran to JonBenet's room. She

00:01:25.260 would later tell authorities, but she was nowhere to be found. Patsy called 911. Her voice was

00:01:31.080 hysterical, begging for police to come as soon as possible. At the end of the call, you can hear

00:01:36.520 Patsy praying and pleading, help me, Jesus. Help me.

00:01:40.300 There's a ransom note here.

00:01:42.640 It's a ransom note. It says F-B-T-C. Victory.

00:01:51.040 Please. Okay. What's your name? Are you Patsy Ramsey? I'm the mother. Oh my God. Please.

00:01:58.020 Okay. I'm sending an officer over. Okay. Please. Do you know how long she's been gone? No, I don't.

00:02:03.220 Please. We just got after you. I'm here. Oh my God. Please. Okay. I am honey. Please. Take a deep

00:02:10.740 breath away. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Patsy? Patsy? Patsy? Patsy?

00:02:22.340 Hmm. You couldn't hear it as well there, but she, she is on there saying, help me, Jesus. Help me,

00:02:26.920 Jesus. Oh, hours later, their little girl's body was found in the basement of their home,

00:02:33.380 not by police, but by John, who was sent around by the detective who was there saying, go look for

00:02:40.180 any belongings of hers that may be out of place. And he found his own child. John Benet had been

00:02:46.440 strangled and left for dead on a concrete floor. Police focused their investigation almost solely

00:02:53.040 on John and Patsy, believing there was no way an intruder was responsible. Why? That's one of the

00:02:59.300 big questions here. Why did they believe that? Because there's a lot of evidence suggesting the

00:03:03.040 opposite. They believe the parents did it. Case pretty much closed in their eyes. It would take

00:03:08.940 years before DNA evidence would clear them in 2008. But Patsy would never live to see that day.

00:03:17.060 She died of ovarian cancer two years earlier, 10 years after the death of her little six-year-old.

00:03:23.220 Oh, so tragic. To this day, John's hope is that this case will be solved. And that hope remains

00:03:31.200 in the hands of the same police department that pointed the finger at him wrongly. John Ramsey

00:03:38.200 is here today. John, thank you so much for being with us. Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having

00:03:43.800 me on. Oh, I've been following you for so many years, following the case and seeing so many of your

00:03:48.580 interviews. And you've handled it with such dignity. I appreciate the fact that here we are 25 years

00:03:54.140 later, and you're still, still trying to keep interest on the case and try to call attention

00:04:00.220 to what you need, you think, to solve it. And there's breaking news, I should say, about the

00:04:04.140 detectives involved in your case. That's extraordinary. The very guy who interviewed you and Patsy,

00:04:12.060 who you've been kind of complaining about, like he didn't follow up on leads. He didn't do this.

00:04:15.700 He didn't do that. There's news about him today. I assume you've heard what's happened to him.

00:04:20.660 Yes. Yeah, it was a big step forward, I think, in this case, because he was a roadblock.

00:04:32.660 When he was assigned to this case 25, 26 years ago, he was at that time a auto theft investigator,

00:04:40.180 and now he's put on the investigation of a murder of a child. And I've never criticized the

00:04:47.820 Boulder police for not knowing what they're doing or not having any experience. They didn't even have

00:04:53.120 a homicide department. But I have criticized them over the years and for the reason that they would

00:04:59.180 not accept help from those who offered it. And lots of help was offered. Right in the beginning,

00:05:04.840 the Denver police offered to put two experienced homicide detectives on Boulder's staff at Denver's

00:05:11.160 expense for as long as they needed them. Boulder said, no, we don't need that. We've got this under

00:05:16.280 control. That's been going on for 26 years. And they've just kind of had it. It's time to do

00:05:23.440 something different, put some people in charge that know what they're doing and be willing to put

00:05:30.480 their ego and arrogance aside and accept help. Yeah. The detective's name was Tom Trujillo. He was

00:05:37.880 one of the lead investigators in JonBenet's case. He just received an involuntary transfer

00:05:43.120 to another division where he's going to be working the midnight shift, not a promotion,

00:05:48.480 in addition to a three-day suspension. And they basically said that he and another

00:05:53.600 were not they were not investigating, appropriately investigating several cases. They said JonBenet's

00:06:00.980 case was not one of them. These are the cases that he's being accused of, you know, half-assing

00:06:06.000 it on. We're not we're not homicide cases, but he is being accused of not doing his job and not

00:06:13.520 following through on leads and so on and other significant investigations. Do you feel, you know,

00:06:19.660 validated at all by that? Well, in a way, yes. We've known that he's been a problem and not really

00:06:30.920 capable of thinking out of the box. And more importantly, his arrogance, I guess, and ego

00:06:40.140 prevented anybody from coming in to help. You know, our system, the way it's set up, it's kind of crazy,

00:06:47.600 but, you know, there's 18,000 police jurisdictions in this country. Each one's a little island of

00:06:52.520 authority. And if crime happens on that island, it's up to the local police to deal with it.

00:06:59.900 With the acceptance of a few things like bank robberies, nobody can come in and help them

00:07:03.900 unless they're invited. And that's a real crazy system because there's tons of qualified help that

00:07:14.060 could have come in, wanted to come in. But unless they were invited and asked to come in

00:07:18.420 to help, they can't. And it's been a huge frustration. And that's really what I'm very

00:07:27.740 critical of the police department on that issue.

00:07:31.980 Of course, because you see the bigger cities tend to have a higher homicide rate and thus more

00:07:36.920 experienced homicide detectives and people who know how to preserve a crime scene and, you know,

00:07:41.460 preserve evidence. And that's the problem. That was one of the major problems right from the get

00:07:45.700 go with this, which let's take a step back now and talk and set up the crime so that people have

00:07:52.380 a have a better feeling for what they did and didn't do and why you really kind of want this case

00:07:57.440 rested from them right now. I mean, it's been 26 years. It's kind of time. You know, there should

00:08:02.920 be a statute of limitations for the police. If they haven't solved it, they should be able to be

00:08:06.800 compelled to give the evidence to the family or to somebody else who might be able to have a go at it.

00:08:10.880 But we'll get to that. So let's go back. Let's go back to December 26, 1996. You were living in

00:08:17.660 Boulder, Colorado with Patsy, your wife, with little JonBenet, who was six. You had a son to

00:08:22.580 Burke at the time, who was 10. And things are going well for you. You were a successful business

00:08:28.980 executive. Was Patsy a stay at home wife? Yes. Yes, she was. She's very devoted to her kids.

00:08:35.800 Okay. Very devoted mom. We've seen the videos of her. She seemed like a very loving mother.

00:08:42.200 And you just celebrated Christmas Day. Was there anything out of the ordinary on that day,

00:08:47.600 Christmas Day? No, it was a very normal day. We had gotten up early, of course, and had made a

00:08:56.360 breakfast. And then all day long, kids were in and out of the house with their friends coming and going

00:09:02.260 and playing with new toys. And very normal, very normal Christmas Day for us.

00:09:08.900 So you went out over to a friend's house to eat Christmas evening dinner, dinner on the 25th with

00:09:14.740 the kids? Right. Yes.

00:09:16.460 Okay. Go ahead. Well, I say the friends we visited have kids our age, our kids' age. And so they were

00:09:27.120 buddies. And it was a logical place to have a family get together. So what time did you get home

00:09:33.600 from that dinner? Well, I think if I recall, it was about 930. JohnBenet had fallen asleep on the way

00:09:44.120 home. And it was only maybe six walks, but she was tired. She'd been up all day and having fun and

00:09:49.740 playing. And so I carried her upstairs and put her on her bed. And then Patsy came up and got her ready

00:09:55.940 for bed and tucked her in. So Patsy put on JohnBenet's pajamas that night. And this would later become an

00:10:04.020 issue, what she was wearing. What did Patsy put JohnBenet in?

00:10:07.960 I don't remember, quite frankly. I'd have to look at the pictures, but it was just nightclothes.

00:10:20.140 But my understanding of the reason I ask you, John, is that I've been reading up in the case

00:10:23.640 that there was an allegation that Patsy said she put her in a red outfit, like red PJs.

00:10:28.200 And when she was found, she was in she was in white. Is that was that familiar to you?

00:10:33.200 Yeah. Yeah. Well, I didn't know, but I don't know about the red nightgown. I hadn't never

00:10:39.580 heard that. But when I found her, she had on like a black and white

00:10:43.440 pants and and top.

00:10:49.220 OK, so Patsy puts her in bed. So probably by 10 o'clock, JohnBenet was in her bed.

00:10:56.600 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

00:10:57.460 And what time did you guys go to bed at Burke, too?

00:11:02.780 It had been shortly after that, probably 1030, I guess. Yeah.

00:11:07.820 And your son, too.

00:11:11.540 Yes. Yeah. He went to bed immediately when we got home.

00:11:14.640 He's also a little guy. It's not like you have a teenager at that point who likes to stay up late.

00:11:18.700 Oh, he was nine years old and worn out from Christmas Day as well.

00:11:23.300 OK. So everybody goes to bed by 1030 and you you like in our house before we go to sleep,

00:11:31.440 we lock all the doors, make sure the security's on and all that stuff.

00:11:34.420 Did you have any of that on your house?

00:11:37.600 We had an alarm system that was in the house when we bought it.

00:11:41.920 And it was the type that at that time, the theory was you scare everybody out of the house,

00:11:48.880 including the intruder. It was just this horrible, loud noise.

00:11:54.840 And so we didn't use it. It went off once.

00:11:58.940 JohnBenet, about dinnertime, I don't know, six months or eight months before, was playing.

00:12:05.680 We didn't know it, but she was punching the buttons on the alarm system.

00:12:08.900 And this horrible sound came up and I ran into where the control box was.

00:12:15.240 And I remember John Benet looking at me like it said, this makes my ears loud.

00:12:21.440 So security systems can be they can definitely be more annoying than, you know, they ought to go off when you don't want them to.

00:12:30.020 In this case, this would have given you a heart attack if it went off.

00:12:32.980 What about what else was there? Did you were there locks on the doors or the windows?

00:12:36.600 What was the security system? Well, it was an old house built in 1927.

00:12:43.740 Yes, there were locks on the doors and just typical window locks, but I didn't check them that night.

00:12:54.180 And that's to my deep regret.

00:12:55.620 But we were tired and and, you know, we always assumed Boulder was kind of a, you know, Ozzie and Harriet flowers coming up, quiet, safe place.

00:13:10.800 And so you get complacent.

00:13:12.940 Yeah.

00:13:13.440 And we regretfully admit we are complacent.

00:13:16.900 No, I know it. I know it.

00:13:18.140 I mean, I grew up in upstate New York.

00:13:19.440 We never locked our doors ever.

00:13:21.280 We go away for vacation for a week and not even lock the door.

00:13:24.720 And yeah, there was no incident.

00:13:27.100 It's you know, I told people, I said, you know, just be aware there are bad people everywhere.

00:13:34.080 Not just because you live in a nice neighborhood or don't live in South L.A.

00:13:39.080 That you're safe, but don't be paranoid, but just be aware of that.

00:13:42.780 And your home should be your sanctuary.

00:13:45.020 And that's a huge regret on my part to to become complacent.

00:13:50.940 Do you know if you had locked just the doors?

00:13:54.820 Of course, you say you didn't check the windows, but had you locked the doors?

00:13:59.660 Well, I thought I did.

00:14:01.240 But yeah, the there was a door found open that morning, not by me, but by the police.

00:14:13.320 It shouldn't have been open.

00:14:15.320 It's possible the kids were playing and went through it and didn't close it.

00:14:18.640 I doubt it because that was kind of in a sub basement area.

00:14:22.600 They wouldn't have been going down there.

00:14:24.400 But I think the killer was in the house and we got home and it it he waited until we were

00:14:36.800 in bed and and took Jaminé from her room.

00:14:42.460 It's a chilling thought.

00:14:43.220 It's a chilling thought just to have him lying in wait there for for murder.

00:14:49.000 Can I ask you to just because before we leave the subject of security, was there a dog?

00:14:54.040 Was there any, you know, any other layers?

00:14:56.700 Jaminé had a little dog.

00:15:00.840 His name was Jock.

00:15:02.820 And we had taken over the neighbors before we went out to dinner because we were going

00:15:07.060 to leave town the next morning and have a second Christmas with my older children.

00:15:11.800 And then we had a reservation for the family on the Disney Big Red Boat.

00:15:18.360 And that was our, you know, take place, you know, right after Christmas.

00:15:22.660 So we were we we took the dog and took him to our neighbors and they were going to take

00:15:28.640 care of him until we got home.

00:15:31.240 Right.

00:15:32.040 That's.

00:15:33.420 Oh, gosh, I'm sorry.

00:15:34.800 Like all these things you'd like to have back and who knows whether they would have made

00:15:37.540 a difference.

00:15:38.000 But, you know, the dog basically says as many layers as you can put between a potential

00:15:42.760 bad guy and those you love, the better.

00:15:46.260 Yes.

00:15:48.700 You know, you're most vulnerable at night when you're asleep, for sure.

00:15:53.880 And it's just prudent to to pay attention to that, regardless of where you live.

00:16:04.200 How far away were your children's bedrooms from your bedroom?

00:16:08.060 Well, they were it was an old house.

00:16:11.400 There were basement, ground floor, second floor and the second floor is where the kids

00:16:16.520 were.

00:16:16.780 And then the upstairs attic, we converted it to a master bedroom.

00:16:20.320 So in terms of distance, I don't know, 30 feet, maybe something like that, 40 feet, but

00:16:32.120 also on a different level.

00:16:34.860 Did you sleep with the doors closed to your bedrooms?

00:16:37.580 Like, do you believe if you would if if.

00:16:39.520 No, they were open.

00:16:41.300 So do you believe if she had yelled, you would have heard it?

00:16:45.820 I think so.

00:16:46.820 Yeah, I really do.

00:16:47.560 I think with virtual certainty, we're we're we're sure a stun gun was used, perhaps when

00:17:01.260 she was asleep in her bed.

00:17:04.380 Don't know that for a fact, but I think if we if she just screamed or there'd been noise,

00:17:14.020 we would have we would have heard it, I think.

00:17:15.780 There were there were marks on her face and I think her neck, too, that suggested a stun

00:17:20.080 gun had been used on her.

00:17:21.680 John, forgive me, because I don't know the answer to this, but what would is what would

00:17:25.540 a stun gun do to to a person when used?

00:17:28.600 I mean, would it incapacitate you for, you know, for a time?

00:17:32.040 What would it do?

00:17:33.440 Well, apparently it does.

00:17:34.820 I don't know, but it we had we had it looked at.

00:17:42.700 Please discounted that idea.

00:17:45.160 And we had it looked at by a doctor who specializes in that kind of stuff somehow.

00:17:51.560 And he said with ninety nine percent certainty, those are stun gun marks.

00:17:55.200 And but I think because we didn't hear anything, we you know, you would think at least if this

00:18:05.880 creature had come in and and started to take Jaminia from her bed, she would scream.

00:18:11.140 And we would certainly have heard that.

00:18:13.060 Yeah.

00:18:13.280 Even if he covered her mouth, you know, you could you'd hear something, some sort of signs

00:18:17.600 of a struggle.

00:18:18.240 But if the stun gun were used and of course, I know that you found her with duct tape on

00:18:22.440 her mouth that kept her quiet.

00:18:25.360 All right.

00:18:25.840 So let's back up.

00:18:26.960 So you so Patsy comes downstairs early.

00:18:30.600 They say it was five fifty two a.m.

00:18:32.480 was that nine one one call.

00:18:33.660 So it was early in the morning.

00:18:34.620 You say you were taking a trip.

00:18:36.540 And was that your first sign that something was wrong?

00:18:39.720 She finds this ransom note at the bottom of the stairs.

00:18:42.000 And then what does she come find you or what happens next?

00:18:44.940 Well, she screamed and it was, you know, I was getting ready to get dressed and she screamed.

00:18:52.080 I could tell from the scream it was something was very, very wrong.

00:18:56.620 And I ran down and and she had this ransom note.

00:19:00.540 And, you know, it was just an unbelievable thing.

00:19:10.640 And we went or I did.

00:19:12.500 I think I did.

00:19:13.160 I looked to make sure Brooke was OK because his bedroom was on kind of the other end of

00:19:18.200 the house and he was still in bed and appeared to be asleep.

00:19:22.020 So he knew he was safe.

00:19:25.500 And so I, you know, I took the note and I mean, she Patsy explained, said, hey, this is this

00:19:34.740 is a ransom note.

00:19:35.580 Gemini's gone and checked her room.

00:19:36.960 And so I tried to grasp what was in the ransom note.

00:19:42.900 It was three pages and.

00:19:45.400 And just told Patsy to call the police, call the police, call 911.

00:19:51.860 And of course, funny thing, we were as criticized for that because the ransom note told us not

00:19:56.140 to do that.

00:19:56.980 Well, that's silly.

00:19:58.500 Of course, we did.

00:19:59.820 Of course, of course.

00:20:01.040 You're going to call the police and you don't follow the directions of a kidnapper to not

00:20:05.220 call law enforcement.

00:20:07.380 Yeah.

00:20:07.800 So that Patsy called immediately.

00:20:11.060 She was standing by the phone at that time.

00:20:13.340 And then I was still trying to comprehend what the note said and what what was going on.

00:20:19.780 I'll get to the note one second.

00:20:21.260 I think it's worth reading so that the audience can understand how bizarre it was.

00:20:25.060 Before we do that, I want to play the longer Patsy 911 call, because to this day, even though

00:20:30.580 you've been totally exonerated, people say, oh, the parents did it.

00:20:33.660 You know how that you know how it is.

00:20:34.820 Oh, yeah.

00:20:35.080 And I just think even after the killer's arrested and convicted, of course, you'll

00:20:40.300 be, of course, percent of DNA has exonerated you.

00:20:43.560 So it's like, OK, but I as a mother, you hear Patsy Ramsey in this 911 call and you can

00:20:49.700 hear the sheer panic in her voice.

00:20:53.780 And especially if you listen to the longer version, which I'll play here.

00:20:57.020 It's soundbite, too.

00:20:59.060 911 emergency.

00:21:01.680 Police.

00:21:02.160 What's going on there, ma'am?

00:21:05.380 We have a kidnapping.

00:21:07.380 Explain to me what's going on, OK?

00:21:09.920 There we have a note left and our daughter's gone.

00:21:13.420 A note was left and your daughter is gone?

00:21:15.580 How old is your daughter?

00:21:16.720 Six years old.

00:21:18.080 She's gone.

00:21:19.600 Six years old.

00:21:22.380 How long ago was this?

00:21:23.840 I don't know.

00:21:24.840 I took it on the note.

00:21:26.420 Oh, my God.

00:21:27.060 Does it say who took her?

00:21:29.220 What?

00:21:29.940 Does it say who took her?

00:21:31.460 I don't know.

00:21:32.640 There's a ransom note here.

00:21:34.760 It's a ransom note?

00:21:36.080 It says F-B-T-C.

00:21:38.500 Victory.

00:21:38.940 Okay, what's your name?

00:21:45.480 Are you Patti?

00:21:45.980 Patti Lamsey, I'm the mother.

00:21:47.680 Oh, my God.

00:21:49.280 Please.

00:21:50.160 Okay, I'm sending her to knock this over, OK?

00:21:52.180 Please.

00:21:52.660 Do you know how long she's been gone?

00:21:53.980 No, I don't.

00:21:55.380 Please, we just got out.

00:21:56.580 Is she not here?

00:21:57.800 Oh, my God, please.

00:21:59.200 Okay, girl.

00:21:59.940 Patti, somebody.

00:22:00.720 I am, honey.

00:22:01.740 Please.

00:22:02.260 Take a deep breath for me, OK?

00:22:03.700 Please, hurry, hurry, hurry.

00:22:04.420 Patti, Patti, Patti.

00:22:06.220 Patti, Patti.

00:22:15.020 That's where she says, help me, Jesus.

00:22:17.300 She's in a sheer panic.

00:22:19.020 You were there.

00:22:21.360 All she knew at that point was JonBenet was missing because she wasn't in her bed.

00:22:25.320 And you can feel you must have been feeling the same, Jon, just the slow reveal of wait,

00:22:30.840 a ransom note and wait, she's actually not in her room.

00:22:34.380 What on earth is going on here?

00:22:39.720 Well, we didn't know.

00:22:40.800 We knew she, according to, we believed what the note said, that she, they have our daughter.

00:22:47.560 And we were not to call the police.

00:22:51.160 And if we did, she would be beheaded.

00:22:54.380 And, you know, it was dark.

00:22:57.940 It was cold out.

00:22:59.760 It was a horrible feeling.

00:23:01.240 I tell people, it's like when, if you're with your child and you're at a department store or grocery store and you look around and the child's gone, you have this instinctive, just horrible feeling in your stomach that, you know, where's my child?

00:23:14.720 And it's a terrible feeling.

00:23:18.020 I think all parents have experienced that from time to time when their little one's gone out of sight.

00:23:25.100 You don't know where they are.

00:23:27.460 And that was the feeling we had.

00:23:29.420 And, you know, it went on for until under one in the afternoon.

00:23:35.500 Right.

00:23:36.000 And then an even worse feeling came.

00:23:38.900 We've all had that.

00:23:39.940 We've all had that.

00:23:40.640 And the moment of relief when you find your child well is overwhelming.

00:23:45.400 And you kept waiting, kept waiting for that, for that to happen.

00:23:49.560 And you can hear Patsy, you know, waiting for it with the, with the 911 operator and doing the only thing you can do at that point, which is pray to Jesus.

00:23:55.940 Just pray, pray, pray, pray.

00:23:57.180 It's not, it's not as you think it is.

00:23:59.100 The note, the note is one of the most important and bizarre things of this whole case.

00:24:04.720 The handwritten note, which for our listening audience, we've put on the screen and it's, you can see it on YouTube.

00:24:11.620 It's handwritten.

00:24:13.380 It's three pages long, as you point out.

00:24:15.460 And I'm going to read it just so the audience understands what you guys read.

00:24:19.920 It was addressed to you, you, John Ramsey, right?

00:24:23.800 Dear Mr. Ramsey.

00:24:25.600 And then it reads as follows.

00:24:27.960 Listen carefully, exclamation point.

00:24:29.780 We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction.

00:24:36.440 We do respect your business, spelled wrong, but not the country it serves.

00:24:41.220 At this time, we have your daughter in our possession, spelled wrong.

00:24:45.100 She is safe and unharmed.

00:24:46.700 And if you want to see her, if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter.

00:24:51.640 You will withdraw $118,000 from your account.

00:24:55.980 $100,000 will be in $100 bills.

00:24:58.620 The remaining $18,020 bills.

00:25:01.400 Make sure that you bring an adequate size attache to the bank.

00:25:05.360 When you get home, you will put the money in a brown paper bag.

00:25:08.400 I will call you between 8 and 10 a.m. tomorrow to instruct you on delivery.

00:25:13.780 The delivery will be exhausting.

00:25:15.800 So I advise you to be rested.

00:25:17.520 If we monitor you getting the money early, we might call you early to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence a earlier delivery pickup of your daughter.

00:25:28.840 Another grammatical error.

00:25:30.520 Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter.

00:25:35.140 You will also be denied her remains for proper burial.

00:25:38.260 The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not particularly like you.

00:25:42.480 So I advise you not to provoke them.

00:25:44.100 Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as police, FBI, etc., will result in your daughter being beheaded.

00:25:51.100 If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies.

00:25:53.880 If you alert bank authorities, she dies.

00:25:55.760 If the money is in any way marked or tampered with, she dies.

00:25:58.680 You will be scanned for electronic devices, and if any are found, she dies.

00:26:02.680 You can try to deceive us, but be warned that we are familiar with law enforcement, countermeasures, and tactics.

00:26:08.060 You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to outsmart, two words, us.

00:26:16.260 Follow our instructions, and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back.

00:26:20.560 You and your family are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities.

00:26:25.080 Don't try to grow a brain, John.

00:26:27.480 You are not the only fat cat around, so don't think that killing will be difficult.

00:26:31.840 Don't underestimate us, John.

00:26:34.800 Use that good Southern common sense of yours.

00:26:37.940 It is up to you now, John.

00:26:40.160 Victory!

00:26:42.060 S-B-T-C.

00:26:45.980 Absolutely bizarre.

00:26:48.540 When you read that, other than the obvious, was there anything, you know, if you had a chance to read it and reread it, what jumped out at you?

00:26:55.900 Well, there are several things that you wonder, what did that mean to the killer?

00:27:03.440 One was the amount of the ransom money request, $118,000.

00:27:08.640 Why not a million?

00:27:09.680 Why not, you know, $100,000?

00:27:13.040 Why $118,000?

00:27:14.460 That had some significance to the killer.

00:27:16.980 And then the other, of course, was the beheading concept.

00:27:25.560 You know, that's very un...

00:27:29.720 You don't think about that as a punishment or a penalty, but yet that's a very common thing nowadays.

00:27:39.400 We read about some of the terrorists and stuff that goes off.

00:27:42.860 So you wonder, well, are they, is it really a terrorist group or terrorist individuals?

00:27:47.860 And that's a common threat they can make.

00:27:52.360 And then, of course, the final thing was S-B-T-C.

00:27:55.080 What does that mean?

00:27:56.120 Victory.

00:27:56.900 That's sign-off.

00:27:57.900 So those are kind of the three elements in my mind that just didn't make sense.

00:28:03.520 And the $118,000 happened to be my annual bonus that year, and I was paid in January of 1996.

00:28:20.200 And that is somewhat of a logical, where that number came from.

00:28:27.680 They would have had to known that.

00:28:29.840 But the rest of it just didn't make sense.

00:28:32.820 It was a bizarre note.

00:28:34.080 I mean, I've been told, too, that in a way it's a gift because I've been told by handwriting experts that with that long of a sample, three pages, if we had the handwriting of the killer, it'd be very easy to conclusively say, this person wrote this note.

00:28:53.180 It's a big sample of their handwriting.

00:28:55.380 What did the handwriting analysts say could be gleaned about the writing?

00:28:59.540 Could they tell anything about age, gender, psychological state, any of that?

00:29:06.120 Well, we didn't get that from the handwriting people.

00:29:08.500 Typically, they just told us what their findings were.

00:29:13.660 And they rank their findings on a scale of one to five.

00:29:18.860 One is, absolutely, this person wrote it when they're doing comparison.

00:29:22.760 A five is, absolutely, no way.

00:29:25.300 And I was a one.

00:29:27.340 They said, absolutely, you did not write it.

00:29:29.360 Passy, it was a four and a half.

00:29:30.560 And you say, well, why four and a half?

00:29:33.240 And I was told that there's, depending on who you're taught to write, what generation, there are certain things that are kind of common, but they're not significant and they're not a lot of them.

00:29:47.920 So the police were told, hey, you guys better look somewhere else because we don't see that either parent wrote the note.

00:29:59.460 Wait, but wait, wait, back up.

00:30:00.680 Because I thought you said one means you wrote it.

00:30:03.280 Five means no way.

00:30:05.020 But is it right?

00:30:05.960 And that you then you just said that you were a one suggesting.

00:30:09.300 Oh, no, I was five.

00:30:10.760 Sorry.

00:30:11.100 Yeah.

00:30:11.520 OK.

00:30:12.080 Yeah.

00:30:12.440 You were a five.

00:30:13.500 Patsy was a four and a half.

00:30:15.140 OK, so you were both on exactly the scale of you didn't write it or there's virtually no chance that you wrote it.

00:30:22.440 Right.

00:30:23.020 Yes.

00:30:23.560 Got it.

00:30:24.820 So what about what about since then?

00:30:27.140 The psychologist, the psychiatrist.

00:30:29.240 I'm sure you've had people like that.

00:30:30.480 FBI profilers who have read it.

00:30:32.220 And were they able to glean any sort of a profile from it?

00:30:36.560 Yeah.

00:30:36.800 Well, John Douglas, who started the whole FBI profiling program and is pretty, pretty much considered the top of the heap as far as that skill set and accomplishments.

00:30:48.860 We spent a couple, three days with him early on.

00:30:52.200 And our attorneys asked him to to spend some time with us.

00:30:58.260 And but his conclusion was and prediction is it's a young person fascinated by movies, you know, probably in his 20s, maybe early 30s.

00:31:09.600 And he said this was not about John Bonet.

00:31:12.180 This was directed at you to hurt you, John.

00:31:15.420 And somebody is either extremely angry with you or extremely jealous of you.

00:31:23.460 And this was done to hurt you.

00:31:26.600 And I thought, well, I couldn't possibly know anybody that I've made angry that to that degree.

00:31:32.360 And he said, you may not even know who they are.

00:31:35.560 They've either observed you in the newspaper or, you know, whatever, and developed this either anger, angry, anger or jealousy of me.

00:31:47.820 That was John's conclusion.

00:31:49.640 And I I think he's right.

00:31:52.920 Now, Lou Smith, who was the legendary detective from Colorado out of retirement to put up to and was put on this case by the district attorney early on.

00:32:01.900 And Lou's felt it was a kidnapping gone wrong.

00:32:06.860 And I always thought, well, those are two opposite theories.

00:32:11.740 And Lou is a legendary detective in Colorado.

00:32:15.580 And somebody pointed out to me recently that, well, that could be those two are not incompatible.

00:32:20.680 Those two theories.

00:32:22.240 I thought, well, you're right.

00:32:23.720 They're not.

00:32:24.640 Yeah.

00:32:25.160 Yeah.

00:32:25.540 That's somebody who wanted to hurt you went in there to kidnap your child.

00:32:29.060 Right.

00:32:29.680 Right.

00:32:29.980 And that that thought hadn't occurred to me in a good while, because I thought, well, here you got two top experts saying to giving me two different theories.

00:32:38.940 But they're they're they're compatible.

00:32:42.660 Yeah, they're compatible.

00:32:43.800 But what about I mean, the thing about just random intruder coming in that doesn't make sense.

00:32:47.900 If you look at the note is how do they know that you are from Atlanta originally now, like you are from the south, the one hundred and eighteen thousand.

00:32:57.000 How would they know your bonus?

00:32:58.200 I mean, it has to be somebody who and I realize there's a chance they just randomly picked the number that was your bonus.

00:33:03.000 But it seems like a small chance.

00:33:04.420 Seems more likely somebody worked at your company or had reason to know that that was your number.

00:33:08.860 Well, there's two ways I guess they could have known that, you know, they worked in our company that that amount was on my paycheck stub.

00:33:17.860 Since the previous January as a as a deferred compensation bonus.

00:33:25.860 So those, you know, we weren't real careful with that kind of stuff in our house.

00:33:31.160 We could have been tucked in a drawer or or somebody that knew that from some connection inside of our company.

00:33:42.720 To me, that's the logical explanation.

00:33:47.320 The only other explanation I heard was Psalm 118 is the right in the middle of the middle of the Bible.

00:33:56.600 It references the stone stone becomes the cornerstone is one of the passages.

00:34:03.780 And, you know, could that be the SPTC?

00:34:06.160 And it's that's possible as well.

00:34:08.620 One of the suspects that we are interested in signed his high school yearbook.

00:34:14.280 Stone becomes his cornerstone.

00:34:18.700 So, whoa.

00:34:21.860 It's a very bizarre note.

00:34:23.520 And what did they say, John?

00:34:25.920 What did they say about and I want to know, like, did they go and speak to everybody or company?

00:34:31.460 Did they I mean, that'd be like the first place I would start as a detective, right?

00:34:34.780 Like somebody knows what he made.

00:34:37.100 Somebody doesn't like him.

00:34:38.440 They've made that clear.

00:34:39.480 They know where his roots are.

00:34:40.860 They know you're from the south.

00:34:41.680 So, let's talk to everybody from the company.

00:34:45.520 Well, that kind of stuff just wasn't done.

00:34:48.760 They should have done a neighborhood survey that morning, gone around the houses to the neighborhood.

00:34:52.720 And, you know, if you see anything unusual, what have you, you know, they didn't do any of that.

00:34:56.720 So, they basically, in fact, the detective, the only detective so-called that was there that morning,

00:35:03.520 concluded that I was the killer because, quote, she saw it in my eyes.

00:35:10.520 And that became the conclusion before they even looked at evidence or investigated anything.

00:35:16.980 This is Linda Arndt.

00:35:19.020 Yeah.

00:35:19.260 And just, we were just dealing with incompetence.

00:35:26.100 Well, in Linda's case, not just incompetence, but maybe a desire to cover up her incompetence

00:35:32.120 because she, isn't she the one who said, search the house after seven hours of sitting there?

00:35:37.560 She didn't search the house.

00:35:39.280 The foot patrolman who got there per the 911 call earlier, he didn't search the house adequately.

00:35:43.980 She didn't do it.

00:35:45.200 And that's the reason you, you were put in the position of finding your own little girl.

00:35:50.260 Well, that's exactly right.

00:35:51.660 In fact, to show you what kind of environment she was working in, the chief of police said,

00:35:56.080 we didn't treat this as a crime scene because it was a kidnapping.

00:36:00.260 And you shake your head and think, where do these people come from?

00:36:07.200 Horrifying.

00:36:07.820 And just because at that point, they didn't know that it was a homicide.

00:36:10.920 You've got a six-year-old girl who's been taken from her bed in the middle of the night.

00:36:13.900 That's a five-alarm fire.

00:36:16.580 Yeah, exactly.

00:36:17.380 If that's not a crime, I don't know what it is.

00:36:20.940 That was the quote.

00:36:22.340 Because I could give you a dozen quotes that were just astounding from the police department over the years.

00:36:28.440 But that was really the first one that was just unbelievable.

00:36:33.920 What about the misspellings and the improper grammar and the use of the word attache, which is not really a thing we say in America?

00:36:44.320 It can mean either diplomatic assistant or it can mean bag in the way they're using it here.

00:36:50.460 But it's a bizarre – we're a small foreign faction.

00:36:53.840 Just for people who think – forgive me, again, for raising your son.

00:36:57.320 He, too, was ruled out, as I understand it, by the DNA in 2008.

00:36:59.900 But this is not the writing of a nine-year-old.

00:37:02.960 We're a small foreign faction.

00:37:04.600 Like, people, you've got to use your head.

00:37:07.280 But anyway, these misspellings and the improper grammar throughout tells us something.

00:37:12.080 It could be used intentionally.

00:37:13.920 But this doesn't sound like a very well-educated person.

00:37:18.680 No.

00:37:19.600 I got a letter – we had a lot of people trying to help.

00:37:22.980 And I got a letter from a teacher of – she taught English to non-English-speaking people.

00:37:32.380 And she said the misspellings in this are typical of a Hispanic person migrating to English based on her experience teaching them to read and write English and speak English.

00:37:48.920 And I thought that was pretty interesting and possibly could explain that.

00:37:53.720 And, you know, we were a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin and – or at that time, just Lockheed.

00:38:01.020 No, I take that – let's see.

00:38:01.900 Well, anyway, Lockheed – Martin bought Lockheed at some time in there.

00:38:05.060 But we had to – they required us to put a sign on the front of our building, which is downtown Boulder, a Lockheed Martin Corporation.

00:38:14.180 And at the time, I thought that's like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

00:38:19.560 Boulder's an ultra-liberal place.

00:38:23.580 And to put a – I'm sure in their minds a manufacturer of weapons sign in downtown Boulder was just inviting trouble.

00:38:38.620 It made me nervous, frankly, to do that at the time.

00:38:41.220 Right, and they referenced your company.

00:38:42.560 We do respect your business, spelled wrong, spelled B-U-S-S-I, a double S, S-S-I-N-E-S-S, but not the country that it serves.

00:38:53.340 So interesting.

00:38:54.140 They clearly – they're referencing something about what you do.

00:38:58.240 Yeah, that was bizarre as well.

00:39:02.940 And I start – I, of course, trying to think who this possibly could have been.

00:39:07.400 And I wondered at times, though, this was kind of an amateur terrorist group or person that fantasized some things and –

00:39:21.400 I'm sure you've got to consider everything.

00:39:23.460 I mean, the guy –

00:39:24.340 Really?

00:39:25.740 You know, the Unabomber, he used to write about himself as we and suggest it was some sort of international thing.

00:39:32.620 Like he wanted to make himself sound bigger and more important than just an eye.

00:39:36.000 And this guy slips into the first-person leader in the ransom note.

00:39:40.580 But, yeah, there's – it wouldn't be unusual for an individual to try to make themselves sound bigger, more nefarious in this way.

00:39:47.120 Yeah, very true.

00:39:48.400 Now, you know, I really do subscribe to John Douglas' theory that this was somebody that wanted to hurt me.

00:39:56.140 And that's a tough burden to carry.

00:40:00.900 But, thankfully, John said you may not even know him.

00:40:03.720 And, you know, we'd been in the paper a few weeks before having hit, for us, a significant sales goal.

00:40:11.280 And our marketing people wanted to put it in paper.

00:40:14.380 And I sort of had this gut feeling that that's not really a good idea.

00:40:18.140 But I wanted our people to be proud of their company.

00:40:21.420 And so we did it.

00:40:24.120 And that could have targeted me because I had a picture of me in quotes and stuff in the paper.

00:40:34.220 That could have been a –

00:40:35.780 You never know how you're affecting a sick mind who's going to transfer onto you.

00:40:40.420 Who knows?

00:40:41.320 Yeah, that's the problem.

00:40:44.160 We had people – you know, we hired two detectives to work this early on because we knew the police weren't capable of it.

00:40:53.020 And, in fact, we tried very hard in the early days to get the case moved somewhere else to another jurisdiction.

00:40:58.140 They could have put it in the sheriff's department's office, which is a competent organization, it was at the time, and had dual authority over it.

00:41:05.420 We could have very easily had a sheriff's officer come to our home that morning and sit at the city police department.

00:41:12.360 And that was a tragic first mistake, I guess, or luck of the draw, that that's what happened.

00:41:22.320 So, you know, it just wasn't ever properly handled and to this day is still not properly handled.

00:41:35.520 Well, and the theory that it's someone who didn't like you – because, of course, the other theory is that it's some pedophile, right?

00:41:41.000 That's what a lot of people –

00:41:42.340 Well, those are the two conflicting – and I thought at the time – conflicting theories between John Douglas and Lou Smith.

00:41:51.160 Well, I thought we were talking about someone who knew you versus random intruder.

00:41:55.380 But random intruder doesn't necessarily mean pedophile there to get the little girl, right?

00:42:01.160 Because that's one of the questions in the case about whether she was the victim of somebody who was a pedophile or whether it was somebody who just hurt her.

00:42:11.000 Because it was unclear – forgive me for the details, John – but it was unclear whether she was sexually penetrated by a man.

00:42:18.840 Well, first of all, this was not a random intruder.

00:42:26.000 This is somebody who had watched us, knew what our patterns were, you know, knew we were going to be out that evening.

00:42:33.300 Left the note on the back stairway, which is the stairway we always used, but would not have been obvious to somebody that just came into the house.

00:42:43.620 We had a front stairway, but we never used that.

00:42:47.760 And so why did they leave the ransomware on the back stairway?

00:42:50.340 How did they know that's where we would be coming down in the morning?

00:42:54.500 So it would have – I mean, there's some elements where somebody could have come into our home.

00:43:03.140 It was not a hard home to break into, regret to say, and really understood where things were.

00:43:11.920 Or they could have been in the house for hours before we got home that night.

00:43:16.700 Are we sure that the person – that sexual gratification was a goal of the killer?

00:43:23.240 I don't know.

00:43:24.140 I think, you know, there's another case seven months later that happened in the neighborhood.

00:43:30.500 Yes, I know about Amy, and I want to talk to you about Amy.

00:43:33.820 Forgive me for interrupting you because I want to go down this line, but I want to give us the proper time.

00:43:38.120 And I got to squeeze in a quick commercial break, so let me pause you right there, John Ramsey, and we'll come right back.

00:43:42.760 So much more to discuss.

00:43:44.440 It's an honor to have you here.

00:43:45.480 I know it's not easy to discuss even 26 years later.

00:43:48.540 Even just losing any loved one is tough to discuss, and certainly under these circumstances, even harder.

00:43:57.240 A couple things we're going to discuss when John comes back on in a minute, and that is on the ransom note, do the police believe it was written before or after the murder?

00:44:06.880 That's one of the big questions because I know the police had said originally not even a serial killer would have the steadiness to write a note like this after a murder.

00:44:14.020 So what did they think?

00:44:16.640 And by the way, a draft of this had been found.

00:44:18.620 He had started, the killer had started on a legal pad.

00:44:22.240 It was found in the Ramsey house by saying, dear Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey, and then started over addressing it just to Mr. Ramsey.

00:44:28.960 And then you heard what followed.

00:44:30.220 So there are a lot of questions still about this note and what can be gleaned from it.

00:44:33.720 But before we get to all that, I'm going to play you Patsy Ramsey's describing of the ransom note in a 1997 interview with CNN.

00:44:43.000 I didn't, um, I couldn't read the whole thing.

00:44:47.800 I, I, I just gotten up.

00:44:51.220 We were on our, it was the day after Christmas and we were going to go visiting and it was quite early in the morning.

00:44:59.180 And I had gotten dressed and was on my way to the kitchen to make some coffee and we have a back staircase from the bedroom areas.

00:45:12.600 And I always come down that staircase and I'm usually the first one down and the note was lying across the three pages across the run of one of the stair treads.

00:45:32.360 And it was kind of dimly lit because it was very early in the morning and I started to read it and it was addressed to John.

00:45:46.180 It said, Mr. Ramsey.

00:45:50.740 And it said, we have your daughter.

00:45:54.920 And I, you know, it just was, it just wasn't registering.

00:46:02.940 And I, I may have gotten through another sentence.

00:46:06.660 Like, I can't, we have your daughter.

00:46:11.680 And I, I don't know if I got any further than that.

00:46:16.360 And that's when she called 911.

00:46:19.560 Um, the whole thing is just, I mean, what, what was on the note?

00:46:23.900 Were there fingerprints?

00:46:25.600 Was there touch DNA of any kind?

00:46:28.120 Uh, John Ramsey's been saying, even if you didn't find fingerprints, there might've been DNA.

00:46:32.840 Even if the person had worn gloves there, there might've been DNA on that letter.

00:46:38.440 Has it been tested?

00:46:39.760 If not, why not?

00:46:40.740 Apparently there are several crime scene items that have not been tested for DNA.

00:46:45.020 Even in 2022, when touch DNA is out there, DNA has evolved so much.

00:46:49.180 We're going to discuss all of that with John.

00:46:50.740 Plus the neighbor, Amy, a young girl who was sexually assaulted by a man in her bedroom in

00:46:55.940 the middle of the night, just months after John Benet.

00:46:58.880 Wait until you hear what the police did in that case.

00:47:01.360 So John, on the subject of the, the ransom note, before we leave that, there had been

00:47:10.020 a draft addressed to both of you.

00:47:11.660 Then the final was just you.

00:47:13.000 It was written on a legal pad found in your home.

00:47:15.980 Um, and that's the question, whether, was it, were there any fingerprints?

00:47:19.860 Has it been tested for DNA?

00:47:21.780 Do you know where it came from in the house?

00:47:23.660 And was that area tested for fingerprints, et cetera, at the time?

00:47:28.280 I don't know.

00:47:28.720 Uh, I think the, my feeling was that the, uh, forensics people that came in did a pretty

00:47:35.240 good job in finding, uh, a palm print that was unidentified, run track to anybody, uh, um,

00:47:43.520 footprints that don't match any shoes of ours in the house, things like that.

00:47:49.940 But whether this stuff was ever tested or not, I don't know.

00:47:53.740 We know there's five or six, maybe seven items that were originally taken from the

00:47:58.520 crime scene, sent to, uh, an outside lab for testing along with others.

00:48:03.960 And five or six of those items were not tested.

00:48:06.740 They were returned to the police.

00:48:08.680 I don't know why the police didn't want to pay for it.

00:48:11.820 Cause back then it was expensive to do DNA testing.

00:48:14.960 Uh, but we know there's five or six items that had never been tested.

00:48:18.340 And so what else wasn't, I do know that, uh, the, uh, forensic people spent about with

00:48:23.720 the detective, spent a couple hours in the house and then told the DA, well, we're finished.

00:48:28.160 And he said, you can't be finished.

00:48:30.200 Uh, get back in there.

00:48:32.360 Uh, so they took a very cursory, uh, look at it and then were ordered back in by the DA.

00:48:38.340 Uh, forensics, uh, uh, uh, investigator experienced one told me they'll spend three days on a murder

00:48:46.160 site looking for evidence, not two hours.

00:48:50.580 So God only knows what was compromised.

00:48:54.120 And I know Linda aren't the detective also didn't secure the scene.

00:48:58.280 She let your friends come over and come into the house.

00:49:00.680 She sent you to look around as we discussed.

00:49:03.100 And then after you found John Benet, as I understand it, she actually moved John Benet's

00:49:07.400 body again from one spot to closer by the Christmas tree, which just should never be done when you're

00:49:13.940 dealing with a homicide victim.

00:49:16.280 Right now.

00:49:17.020 I, I, yeah, she just was way in over her head.

00:49:20.760 And, um, you know, I was criticized for disturbing the crime scene when I found John Benet by picking

00:49:28.180 her up and holding her and what parent wouldn't do that.

00:49:32.160 It just insane to be to that kind of, uh, level of misunderstanding of a parent's love for

00:49:41.100 a child.

00:49:41.520 No, no, that's, it's not possible not to pick her up at your child and hold her.

00:49:45.380 And, and at that point you didn't know whether she was gone.

00:49:49.380 Can we, can we spend a minute on that?

00:49:51.320 Because we talked about how Linda said, okay, search the house.

00:49:54.160 It's one o'clock now in the afternoon.

00:49:56.100 No one's called, you know, no kidnapper.

00:49:58.120 And I understand the note said, well, I'll call tomorrow.

00:50:00.420 So it was unclear whether they met the 26th or the 27th.

00:50:03.420 Um, but you're sitting there and you're waiting and nothing's happening.

00:50:06.300 And now it's one o'clock in the afternoon.

00:50:08.020 She says, go look around the house and the, the people who, who want to say, oh, you know,

00:50:13.440 look at John.

00:50:14.400 One of the things they say is, oh, he went right to the room.

00:50:16.900 He went to the basement and he went right to, there's a storage room off the basement where

00:50:20.200 she was found.

00:50:21.320 Is that true?

00:50:22.360 Like what did, what did you do after Linda said, go search the house?

00:50:26.180 Well, we, I, a friend of mine that was there to help console us, uh, we, she said for both

00:50:35.480 of us to go, uh, search the house.

00:50:37.940 And so we went to the basement, which to me was a logical place to start third floor.

00:50:42.880 You couldn't get into the third floor from outside.

00:50:44.980 Uh, so we went to the basement and, um, went into what we call the train room where the

00:50:51.560 kids had a train set up and, um, there was an open window and a suitcase propped up under

00:50:59.160 the window as if it were to be a step.

00:51:01.360 And I told my friend, I said, that suitcase should not be there.

00:51:05.080 That's way out of place.

00:51:06.440 We wouldn't have put it there.

00:51:07.520 And so we, then I went into the, um, the only other room in that basement was this, we called

00:51:17.480 it a wine cellar, but it was an old coal cellar, uh, dark one door going into it, no, uh, entrances

00:51:25.820 from the outside.

00:51:27.520 And I opened the door and of course, immediately found John Bonnet and, um, uh, you know, I don't,

00:51:34.540 we heard Linda say on the media or on, uh, an interview that, well, I told him to go from

00:51:40.660 top to bottom and he started out in the bottom.

00:51:42.680 Why'd he do that?

00:51:45.640 This just was logical to me, but, um, yeah, it, it.

00:51:53.940 Do you remember that moment?

00:51:55.060 I mean, do you remember, was it, did it switch from concern to panic?

00:51:59.840 You know, do you, do you remember emotionally what that moment?

00:52:01.740 It was a switch from, from panic and, and, uh, it was a relief.

00:52:07.740 Thank God I found my child.

00:52:10.420 And, um, that was the immediate, uh, feeling that I'd found her.

00:52:16.160 I, she's safe.

00:52:18.200 And, um, but it fairly quickly concluded that she wasn't all right.

00:52:25.840 Um, and, um, so I just picked her up and ran, carried her screaming, actually I was screaming,

00:52:33.140 uh, uh, to, uh, upstairs to take her to help.

00:52:39.020 I mean, I don't know, it was just a instinctive reaction, I guess, but, uh, and we laid her

00:52:45.080 down on the floor of the, uh, living room in front of the Christmas tree.

00:52:49.300 And, uh, uh, Linda Art had looked for a pulse and, uh, looked up at me and, uh, said, no,

00:52:57.680 she's, she's gone.

00:52:59.280 And, uh, I guess it was that moment when she saw in my eyes that I was a killer.

00:53:05.820 So, um, and then we rushed her out of the house, uh, pretty quickly.

00:53:12.220 And, um, we never went back in that home.

00:53:16.060 Oh, that was the last time we were in that home.

00:53:19.160 John, can I ask you, cause I know that one of the things that John Benet was wearing was

00:53:24.720 her cross, her cross necklace.

00:53:27.680 And, um, according to what I read and, and then we heard Patsy praying to Jesus, you know,

00:53:32.800 to help her, help her.

00:53:33.920 And I wondered if you were a family of faith and if, you know, what this did to that, right?

00:53:41.020 If you were able to carry that on.

00:53:43.440 Well, that's, that's a good question.

00:53:44.960 Uh, and I really had to face that issue when my oldest daughter was killed in a car accident

00:53:50.360 about four years before.

00:53:52.840 And the first words that came out of my mouth was, there is no God.

00:53:56.700 There is no God.

00:53:57.560 How could, how could a loving God let this happen to a beautiful young child?

00:54:01.840 She was 20, 21.

00:54:04.100 Um, but it really forced me to, to think about my faith.

00:54:08.400 And, um, I spent, I had a friend came alongside of me and said, I'm going to help you study

00:54:12.960 the Bible.

00:54:13.400 And, and, uh, he was a, a real, uh, mentor to me in that struggle to, to understand why,

00:54:22.500 why this would happen.

00:54:24.240 You know, I, I was a Christian.

00:54:26.720 And I, I had joined the club, you know, if you're in the club, you shouldn't be subject

00:54:31.240 to, to, uh, harm or tragedy.

00:54:34.360 And of course, that's not at all what the Bible says.

00:54:36.420 You're going to get, uh, persecuted.

00:54:39.060 But I struggled with that for really for three or four years.

00:54:43.540 Uh, you know, is there an afterlife?

00:54:46.120 Uh, will I see Beth, my oldest daughter again?

00:54:49.740 Uh, I was, it was tough for three or four years.

00:54:52.420 Uh, and, but I'd kind of wrestled that down to, yeah, there's, there is more to life than

00:54:58.160 just what we see here.

00:54:59.200 And, um, and so when we lost John Bonet, uh, I didn't have to, I didn't have to go through

00:55:06.200 that struggle.

00:55:06.760 Uh, you know, I'd already been through, why did God let this happen?

00:55:11.400 Um, uh, so it was, it was, my face, faith was not challenged, uh, when John Bonet was killed

00:55:19.920 only because I'd gone through that challenge when I lost my oldest daughter.

00:55:23.260 Um, then you, then you go through the added pain of being not outright accused by the

00:55:29.780 authorities, but pretty close.

00:55:31.420 I mean, the DA earlier before Mary Lacey, the DA said they didn't do it.

00:55:36.420 The DNA rules them out.

00:55:38.480 Um, four months after John Bonet died, the DA, Alex Hunter said, um, Patsy and John are

00:55:43.960 the focus.

00:55:44.540 They're the focus opened up a grand jury proceeding and the grand jury came back and said, don't

00:55:51.220 see anything that you're going to be able to pursue as a, you know, beyond a reasonable

00:55:54.160 doubt.

00:55:54.460 And the DA ultimately had to admit that, but I mean, you're going through being accused

00:55:59.920 and then on top of all that, John, you've got the media coverage, right?

00:56:03.180 Which basically tried to make John Bonet and Patsy into this bizarre daughter, mother team.

00:56:11.420 You know, she was exploited.

00:56:12.840 She was sexualized.

00:56:14.160 The beauty pageant videos on endless loop on endless loop.

00:56:19.280 So talk about that for a bit and what that was like for you.

00:56:22.800 Well, you know, the media of course jumped on it, but they were being fed information

00:56:28.500 that was misleading, wrong.

00:56:31.180 Uh, and we were told by Mary Lacey, uh, several years after she got into her position as the

00:56:36.200 due DA, she said that was the police strategy that was defined to them by someone or there's

00:56:41.520 the FBI or some wacko psychologist, but it pends pressure on the family.

00:56:47.000 We know it's one of the two, they're in the house, either the father killed her or the

00:56:51.780 mother did.

00:56:53.280 One of them will confess eventually if we put enough pressure on them.

00:56:57.600 And, and Mary Lacey, the DA said that was their strategy to solve the case.

00:57:01.720 And so they released a lot of information, misleading information, incorrect information

00:57:06.640 to the media.

00:57:07.840 And of course the media ran with it.

00:57:09.100 Uh, and, um, we were quickly, uh, convicted in the court of public opinion.

00:57:16.660 Um, we didn't know that's exactly what was happening, but it was confirmed by the DA.

00:57:22.420 And the problem for the police was they did a great job of convicting us in the court of

00:57:26.780 public opinion with the assistance of the media, but they couldn't, they couldn't charge

00:57:31.700 us.

00:57:31.980 They, we would have, it had been a bloodbath for them in a court because the evidence

00:57:37.740 was quite contradictory to that, uh, as they got into looking at the evidence, because

00:57:43.380 they'd made their conclusion late on the day or the day after, uh, of John Bonet's murder.

00:57:48.760 And then went about, let's find the evidence to prove it.

00:57:52.180 Well, the evidence they were finding was contradicted to that conclusion.

00:57:57.060 Uh, and, um, that became a problem for him because, you know, the media and the public

00:58:02.960 was, you know, screaming, Hey, you arrest them, can you know, charge them?

00:58:07.220 And they, they couldn't, uh.

00:58:09.680 Well, and meanwhile, in the interviews, you, you held firm.

00:58:13.540 I mean, Patsy, they got all up in her grill.

00:58:16.300 And when I watch her, because I, I've spent a lot of time with this guy's name is Phil

00:58:21.000 Houston.

00:58:21.380 He, he invented the CIA's deception detection technique that they still use today.

00:58:25.420 It was there 25 years.

00:58:27.080 There's all sorts of ways you can tell somebody's lying and, um, they're pretty foolproof if

00:58:31.140 you know how to apply them.

00:58:32.520 And, uh, one of the things is just sort of no BS.

00:58:36.120 You don't, you don't do convincing behavior.

00:58:38.200 You're just hardcore.

00:58:38.860 No, no, you know, stop.

00:58:41.380 Like, I mean, I'm sure if I showed him the Patsy Ramsey tapes with the cops, he'd be like,

00:58:47.780 why did they waste so much time with her?

00:58:49.880 Right?

00:58:50.020 Like it was pretty obvious.

00:58:50.960 And I'll just show some to the audience, a clip.

00:58:53.540 Um, this is from 1998 to two years later, police interview with Patsy.

00:58:57.560 They're telling her falsely that they have trace evidence linking her or you to the murder.

00:59:03.660 I mean, the suggesting if I, if I had that, how would you react?

00:59:07.080 Here it is.

00:59:07.540 Stop five.

00:59:08.860 If I told you right now that we have trace evidence that appears to link you to the death

00:59:16.900 of John Bonnet, what would you tell me?

00:59:20.060 That is totally impossible.

00:59:23.380 Totally impossible.

00:59:24.400 Go retest.

00:59:26.160 Do a retest.

00:59:26.760 How is it impossible?

00:59:27.880 I did not kill my child.

00:59:30.960 I didn't have anything to do with it.

00:59:34.120 And I'm not talking, you know, somebody's guess or some rumor or some story.

00:59:42.320 I don't care what you're talking about.

00:59:44.880 I'm talking about scientific evidence.

00:59:47.480 I don't give a flying flip how scientific it is.

00:59:51.200 Go back to the damn drawing board.

00:59:53.180 I didn't do it.

00:59:54.920 John Ramsey didn't do it.

00:59:56.820 And we didn't have a clue of anybody who did do it.

01:00:00.380 But my life has been hell from that day forward.

01:00:06.100 And I want nothing more than to find out who was responsible for this.

01:00:10.860 Okay?

01:00:12.760 I mean, I want to work with you, not against you.

01:00:16.500 Okay?

01:00:17.220 This child was the most precious thing in my life.

01:00:21.420 And I can't stand the thought thinking somebody's out here walking on the street.

01:00:27.360 And God knows we might do it again to some other child.

01:00:31.340 You know, quit screwing around asking me about things that are ridiculous.

01:00:35.760 And I'm fine with the person that did this.

01:00:39.300 Wow.

01:00:40.400 The frustration.

01:00:42.060 It's palpable.

01:00:42.960 Because it's like, as she points out, he could be hurting other children.

01:00:48.220 Right.

01:00:49.720 Yes.

01:00:50.460 And probably did.

01:00:51.600 There's a high probability, I'm told, that that creature kind of creature doesn't just stop with one.

01:00:58.340 Or maybe has done it before.

01:01:02.200 This is right around the time where Lou Smith walked out.

01:01:07.300 The detective, the retired detective, who they brought in because they couldn't solve the case.

01:01:11.820 And he solved every single case he ever worked on except for this one.

01:01:14.660 They brought him in, take fresh eyes.

01:01:17.360 What do you think?

01:01:17.900 And Lou took his fresh eyes and looked at everything and said, they didn't do it.

01:01:23.320 This is not, Patsy and Ramsey are, that's the wrong tree to bark up.

01:01:27.640 And they didn't listen to him to the point where he quit.

01:01:31.760 He called this a travesty and said they were trying to railroad you.

01:01:36.280 It's crazy, John, that that wasn't the end of the story.

01:01:38.640 It would take another 10 years for Mary Lacey to get that DNA test and say, just stop.

01:01:43.740 Stop with the obsessive focus on the Ramseys.

01:01:45.500 No, that's true.

01:01:49.340 Lou told me, you know, after he resigned and we were able to talk to him freely, that he'd looked at the case for several months and all the evidence and said, no, police are going the wrong direction.

01:02:03.860 So he said he went to their war room where they were strategizing this assault, frankly, and said, you know, you guys have looked at this case longer than I have.

01:02:12.500 But, you know, I've looked at it and have you ever thought maybe you're going the wrong direction?

01:02:16.340 And he said it was like pouring a bucket of water on the participants.

01:02:21.380 They wouldn't talk to him after that.

01:02:23.160 They banned him from their war room and just wouldn't listen.

01:02:26.800 And that's what he said.

01:02:29.280 I'm not going to be part of persecuting an innocent person and resign and continue to work on the case for the rest of his life, which I was very grateful for.

01:02:39.600 And he was an amazing fellow.

01:02:43.240 Well, I think it was a 60 Minutes Australia piece I watched.

01:02:48.500 They had old tapes of him and he went to the crime scene, to your old house, and he went to that window that was broken in your basement because one of the theories was nobody got in through that window.

01:03:02.080 That was a window you had broken not long before because you locked yourself out of the house and you were trying to get in.

01:03:06.860 And that's true.

01:03:07.680 Yeah.

01:03:08.360 So people were saying, no, somebody said only a midget could get through, a little person could get through that window.

01:03:14.660 That wasn't it.

01:03:15.620 This is back on.

01:03:16.440 It had to be one of the mother, the mother of the father.

01:03:18.500 And he goes right through it.

01:03:20.920 The video shows him going right through it.

01:03:23.920 Was that something, by the way, I meant to ask you, did you go through it when you had locked yourself out?

01:03:27.100 Had you gone through that window to get in?

01:03:29.400 Yes.

01:03:30.440 I had locked myself out one, I don't know, one day and nobody was home.

01:03:37.260 And so that was the way I got into the house so I could unlock the door.

01:03:41.160 I didn't have a key.

01:03:42.860 You know, the person that said, no, that, no, it's impossible for somebody to get through that window.

01:03:48.200 It was the detective investigating the case.

01:03:50.600 It was purely misleading, purely false information, but it biased everybody, the public, the media towards us once more.

01:03:59.640 That was the whole strategy.

01:04:00.640 The only evidence that they would present, and it's really not evidence, that led them to think that we were guilty was we did not act right that morning.

01:04:18.780 And that's the allegation was that Patsy was distraught, but that you didn't cry.

01:04:25.940 And one of the cops on the scene said, I never saw them console each other.

01:04:31.000 And in my presence, I never saw them hold one another.

01:04:34.420 Yeah.

01:04:34.600 Well, look, they've watched too much crime scene movie or TV, I think.

01:04:41.560 When I lost my first daughter, Beth, I got a phone call from my brother, and he said, Beth is gone.

01:04:49.180 She's killed.

01:04:50.980 And there's nothing I could do.

01:04:52.440 I couldn't get her to the best doctors.

01:04:54.200 I couldn't rush to her side.

01:04:56.620 It was over.

01:04:58.460 That morning with John Bonet, it wasn't over yet.

01:05:01.480 I couldn't get her back if I kept my wits about me and focused on getting her back to whatever I could possibly do.

01:05:10.700 I didn't – I was focused on getting her back, and I felt I could get her back.

01:05:17.180 I'd arranged for the ransom money to be available almost immediately.

01:05:20.960 One of the – again, this Linda Arn, I think, wrote in her report that John was observed casually going through the mail that morning.

01:05:33.440 There was a mail drop where the mail came through the house or through the front door, and I was going through it.

01:05:39.360 I was looking for another possible communication from the kidnapper.

01:05:42.760 The police should have been doing that.

01:05:44.580 I was not casually going through the mail, but that was her interpretation of that.

01:05:48.500 Again, biased perspective by someone who has never been in that situation to evaluate whether somebody's acting right or not.

01:06:01.860 So that was my focus.

01:06:03.440 You know, Patsy was rough.

01:06:06.300 She was in bad shape.

01:06:07.220 She had a bowl in front of her in case she threw up.

01:06:11.280 But I was focused 100% on whatever I could do to get John Bonet back.

01:06:15.640 That was my job.

01:06:16.440 Can we talk about two things?

01:06:20.120 We've touched on the Mary Lacy exoneration of 2008 based on DNA.

01:06:23.920 DNA came along.

01:06:25.000 Thank God they did get some DNA and preserve it back in 96.

01:06:28.860 DNA has come leaps and bounds since then, and it had to some extent by 2008.

01:06:33.420 So she said, we've tested it, and we've identified the perpetrator as one, possibly two, unidentified males.

01:06:41.720 So no hit in the database.

01:06:44.400 But they could tell it was a male, and they could tell it was one, possibly two.

01:06:49.040 And that's when she said, it's not the Ramseys.

01:06:51.320 Can I just say for the record, did that include Burke?

01:06:55.700 Yeah, it did.

01:06:56.660 And Burke was exonerated early on.

01:06:59.020 He had to be interviewed by the child psychologists that were associated with the police department.

01:07:05.180 And they said, absolutely no way.

01:07:06.360 Burke was not the fault of this.

01:07:09.400 He was a nine-year-old, 60-pound child.

01:07:12.920 Because CBS would do a piece really pointing the finger at Burke in 2016, and he sued over it, and they settled.

01:07:20.700 I don't know what they settled for, but, you know, in later years, you know, armchair detective wannabes have decided maybe it was him, maybe it was the nine-year-old.

01:07:31.660 But the Mary Lacey conclusion was it was not Burke.

01:07:36.760 Right.

01:07:37.320 And that was a conclusion that even the police came to very early on, and they ruled out that possibility.

01:07:43.620 Yeah.

01:07:43.840 In fact, they offered to support us in this suit against CBS if we needed their help.

01:07:50.320 Wow.

01:07:51.020 To discount that ridiculous accusation.

01:07:54.840 So he went on Dr. Phil not long after that, and then it just stirred up more.

01:08:00.680 You know, people were like, he wasn't acting right.

01:08:02.540 I'm going to play a soundbite.

01:08:03.660 I'd love to get your thoughts.

01:08:04.720 I really don't know.

01:08:06.220 I don't know how people sort of fly into the case.

01:08:08.540 You've been living it in the worst way for 26 years.

01:08:11.280 So put this in perspective for us.

01:08:13.120 This is Burke on Dr. Phil in 2016.

01:08:16.880 A police officer comes in your room, which I assume is the first time in your entire life

01:08:22.220 that a police officer has come in your room with a flashlight, looking around, and you

01:08:27.160 still just stay in bed.

01:08:29.040 To be fair, I didn't know it was a police officer.

01:08:31.660 It's just kind of...

01:08:32.440 But somebody comes in your room with a flashlight, and you never get up and say, what is going

01:08:37.280 on here?

01:08:38.040 I guess I kind of like to avoid conflict, or I don't know.

01:08:45.540 I guess I just felt safer there.

01:08:49.220 Were you curious?

01:08:50.720 I'm not the worry type.

01:08:52.280 I'm not the...

01:08:53.300 I guess part of me doesn't want to know what's going on.

01:08:56.520 Critics would say you weren't curious because you already knew.

01:09:00.200 He didn't have to get up and go check because he knew exactly what had happened.

01:09:02.820 I was scared, I think.

01:09:04.760 I mean, I didn't know if there was some bad guy downstairs that my dad was chasing off

01:09:09.640 with a gun or...

01:09:11.580 I had no idea.

01:09:13.200 Let's clear this up once and for all.

01:09:17.080 Did you do anything to harm your sister, JonBenet?

01:09:22.000 No.

01:09:22.360 And just for the listening audience, Burke's answers are all said through what looks like

01:09:33.320 a smile, which is one of the things his critics would react to.

01:09:37.100 Go ahead, Jon.

01:09:37.620 Your thoughts on it.

01:09:38.500 Well, Burke smiles all the time.

01:09:40.720 When he talks, he just naturally smiles.

01:09:43.920 And those are just laughable criticisms.

01:09:46.840 This was a violent, vicious, sexually assault case, not something that a nine-year-old could

01:09:55.820 even possibly do.

01:09:58.260 So that's just...

01:09:59.940 It's really disgusting that people jump to that kind of conclusion.

01:10:06.840 Let's move on because one of the other storylines, as we touched on a minute ago, was the pageants

01:10:13.860 and whether a pedophile was...

01:10:18.320 She captured the attention of a pedophile.

01:10:21.160 And they do say that some of these pageants can be very attractive to pedophiles in the

01:10:27.220 same way that most pedophiles, like if you want to find a pedophile, you don't go to an

01:10:31.160 AARP meeting.

01:10:32.860 They wind up...

01:10:34.020 They volunteer for the Boy Scouts.

01:10:35.860 And it's sad, but it's true.

01:10:37.580 They go where children are.

01:10:40.920 So that was...

01:10:41.760 Forget the blame, right?

01:10:42.780 I'm not interested in that storyline.

01:10:44.780 But it is possible that this person was a pedophile and had seen JonBenet at one of

01:10:49.300 these pageants where she was a darling.

01:10:51.720 I mean, she was winning them.

01:10:52.620 She was absolutely beautiful in every way.

01:10:55.140 So what do you make of that theory?

01:10:56.760 If we're thinking of the possible intruder, maybe they also knew you, but a possible intruder

01:11:01.200 pedophile.

01:11:03.380 It's possible.

01:11:04.240 Patsy had been diagnosed with stage four cancer a couple of years before this happened.

01:11:10.820 And she went through some pretty rough chemotherapy treatments and was declared in remission.

01:11:17.240 And she didn't say it, but I know she was trying to pack a lot of mother-daughter time

01:11:22.940 into what she maybe felt was a limited lifetime.

01:11:26.640 And I didn't really care for these little pageants.

01:11:31.580 I mean, I'm a father and I had preferred my daughters wear burqus until they were about

01:11:36.300 30.

01:11:37.340 But that wasn't my choice.

01:11:39.460 And I thought, well, this is a wonderful mother-daughter time for Patsy and JonBenet.

01:11:45.840 I, they didn't, excuse me, they didn't take it seriously.

01:11:50.380 Yeah.

01:11:50.740 So we got to win.

01:11:51.420 We got to win.

01:11:51.900 In fact, Patsy and I joked, it'd be good if she lost a few of these pageants because she

01:11:55.400 needs to understand you'd always win in life.

01:11:58.300 And, but she was, she just, JonBenet loved doing it.

01:12:01.080 It was fun.

01:12:01.600 She was an extreme extrovert.

01:12:03.820 And, you know, people accused us or accused Patsy of, you know, dragging JonBenet to these

01:12:09.880 pageants for her own satisfaction.

01:12:12.400 That wasn't true at all.

01:12:13.300 It was just something JonBenet enjoyed doing and Patsy wanted her to try a lot of different

01:12:18.980 things, which she did.

01:12:20.100 But I always thought the people at these little pageants were just moms and grandmoms.

01:12:26.260 That's quite, there was one indication, of course, we learned later that, yeah, there's

01:12:30.320 some, there was at least one guy there that wasn't, wasn't there for his daughter based

01:12:37.760 on some questioning that came out and some, some comments.

01:12:40.720 Um, but it's possible.

01:12:43.640 And, um, but I still fall back to, uh, I think John Douglas's theory and, and, uh, lose, uh,

01:12:52.360 lose, uh, lose miss.

01:12:54.060 Um, it might've targeted who JonBenet is and she was my daughter and, and she was obviously

01:13:01.340 I'm told, and I never read the autopsy.

01:13:04.040 I just couldn't bring myself to do that.

01:13:06.140 But I'm, I'm, of course, here through the news that she was sexually assaulted and, um,

01:13:13.980 uh, that, that wouldn't have been necessary to hurt me, uh, as much as to satisfy this

01:13:25.660 creature's, uh, desires.

01:13:29.220 So this is why, forgive me.

01:13:31.200 And if you don't want to go here, we don't have to, but this is why when I was reading

01:13:35.120 the autopsy report and we don't have to get into the details, but the one thing they said,

01:13:38.440 it was unclear to me whether they had semen, whether that was one of the DNAs that they

01:13:42.920 were able to retrieve.

01:13:43.820 And there was a suggestion that maybe there was some sort of, you know, they hurt her in

01:13:48.640 some way sexually that didn't involve, uh, you know, a male body part.

01:13:52.900 And that, that's kind of interesting.

01:13:55.800 If you think about this being a person whose goal was just to hurt you, like maybe it wasn't

01:14:00.420 a pedophile, maybe it was somebody who was just trying to hurt her as opposed to sexualize

01:14:06.300 her or, or do anything sexual with her.

01:14:09.460 Yeah, that's possible.

01:14:11.320 Uh, and there was no semen found, um, but, um, not dissimilar to this situation, a case

01:14:21.040 similar break in that happened a few months later in the same neighborhood with Amy.

01:14:26.940 Yes.

01:14:27.540 Okay.

01:14:27.860 So let's talk about that.

01:14:29.580 Um, there are many people who Lou Smith had been taking a hard look at the, you know, the,

01:14:35.700 the honest investigator who quit, um, before he died, unfortunately at, in 2019.

01:14:41.320 And he gave the list of suspects to his daughter, which is how we know who he's looking at.

01:14:46.740 And the daughter's a hero.

01:14:47.680 She's running around getting these people's DNA without them knowing him.

01:14:50.600 So it's kind of amazing.

01:14:51.720 This piece of the story.

01:14:53.340 Yes.

01:14:53.880 So I'm so grateful for that group.

01:14:56.120 Before we get to Lou and his daughter and what that, what happened there, there's this,

01:15:00.020 there's this neighbor and the, we're calling and the papers are calling the daughter,

01:15:05.480 Amy, her parents don't want her outed.

01:15:07.800 Understandable as a sexual assault victim.

01:15:09.600 But Amy, I think was very young too, nine or 12, right around there.

01:15:14.580 I don't, you know, I, I didn't know a whole lot about that case.

01:15:17.620 I knew that it happened, but I think she, they were, she and John Bonet were in a dance

01:15:21.640 class together.

01:15:23.660 Uh, and I think she was a year older than John Bonet, maybe.

01:15:26.720 Oh, no, actually my producers are telling me she's 12.

01:15:29.040 So she's a little, she's a young girl and she's at home.

01:15:32.260 This is months after John Bonet was killed.

01:15:36.900 Amy is in the same neighborhood and she had a man wake her up dressed in black in the middle

01:15:44.760 of the night who tried to muzzle her so that she couldn't scream and sexually assaulted her.

01:15:51.400 And by the grace of God, her mother heard something by the grace of God.

01:15:57.100 Truly the mother heard something and heard muffled voices coming from her 12 year old

01:16:01.300 daughter's room in a way that sounded very unsafe.

01:16:04.420 The mother grabbed pepper spray and went into the room.

01:16:08.740 I mean, it's an extraordinary story.

01:16:10.280 And the guy jumped out the second floor window and ran.

01:16:15.660 I mean, it's a miracle.

01:16:17.180 Thank God that unfortunately the daughter was molested, but she was not killed.

01:16:21.740 And they went to the Boulder cops and said, we think this might've had something to do with

01:16:28.500 John Bonet.

01:16:30.060 Like it's too close in time.

01:16:32.000 And, uh, you know, here's our evidence.

01:16:34.700 And the dad is on record as saying the Boulder cops could not have cared less.

01:16:39.280 We're not interested in pursuing any link between the two cases.

01:16:43.520 And they really felt like it was because they were just focused on YouTube.

01:16:48.500 Right.

01:16:48.800 That's what I've learned.

01:16:50.240 Uh, when I first heard about this, I thought, well, that's a very similar, uh, MO, uh, for

01:16:58.100 the, the criminal, uh, as it was in our case, he was in the house when they came home that

01:17:04.840 night.

01:17:05.120 Uh, they went to bed and then at three of the morning, he, uh, entered the little girl's

01:17:10.700 room.

01:17:11.600 And, uh, I thought, well, that's, man, that's so similar to what I think happened in our

01:17:16.520 case.

01:17:17.540 Uh, and, uh, chief Beckner, who was the police chief, uh, chief of police was asked, is there

01:17:25.640 a connection?

01:17:26.180 He said, oh no, these cases aren't the same because the second little girl wasn't murdered.

01:17:29.960 And it was one more of the, uh, unbelievable statements that came out of the police department.

01:17:35.640 Of course, it's similar.

01:17:37.220 And thankfully she wasn't murdered.

01:17:39.400 Uh, but, um, I'd heard that the father was quoted as saying on a scale of one to 10 in

01:17:46.380 terms of police performance, I'll give them a minus five.

01:17:48.700 So he was very unhappy with them as well, but only because they just kind of blew off

01:17:55.300 the case and went on.

01:17:58.780 And there's a real danger when the police get tunnel vision.

01:18:01.100 They're real.

01:18:01.460 I mean, every defense attorney who's ever represented a murder defendant argues they had tunnel vision

01:18:05.780 on my guy.

01:18:06.480 My guy didn't do it.

01:18:07.840 They had tunnel vision on him.

01:18:09.160 But in some cases it really is true and it can result in the wrong person being arrested

01:18:14.380 and put on trial, thankfully not in your case, but you were heading down that lane.

01:18:18.260 Oh, absolutely.

01:18:19.260 And we were, we weren't worried about this.

01:18:22.040 I mean, it was, it was distressing, but our attorney said, look, the system's broken.

01:18:26.060 The police don't know what they're doing.

01:18:27.860 Uh, I, we cannot promise you, you won't be charged with the murder.

01:18:31.720 We'll promise you one thing with a hundred percent money back guarantee.

01:18:35.020 We will destroy him in court.

01:18:37.280 So don't worry about that, but it's not going to be fun, but do not worry about being

01:18:44.280 convicted.

01:18:45.460 We'll, we'll kill him.

01:18:46.320 Cause we, we knew what the evidence was and what they're trying to, to do.

01:18:49.780 We had one, one, uh, experienced district attorney tell us, look, I have never, ever

01:18:55.580 seen police try to explain away unidentified male DNA in a sexual assault case.

01:19:02.180 Never.

01:19:02.580 That's the key piece of evidence.

01:19:04.500 And yet that's what the Boulder police tried to do is that was a real problem for them

01:19:07.900 that we had this unidentified male DNA.

01:19:10.980 Yes.

01:19:11.420 That's a, that's a massive problem.

01:19:13.420 And it's the reason you've never been charged.

01:19:15.120 And it's the reason Mary Lisa says it wasn't you guys, um, on the subject of DNA.

01:19:21.440 I read that the coroner did not examine the body until seven hours after she was discovered

01:19:29.500 and that the, the corner only spent 10 minutes at the crime scene.

01:19:35.440 That's a crazy amount of time.

01:19:38.040 That's, I mean, seven hours is a long delay.

01:19:40.520 And I wonder, John, whether they, have you ever been told whether they were able to determine

01:19:45.180 the time of death?

01:19:47.380 I've never been told.

01:19:48.760 No, I don't know.

01:19:50.960 Do you have any reason to believe there's any chance she was alive in the morning, you

01:19:54.880 know, before, like I didn't go there, but when the first cop got there, you know, is

01:19:59.780 there any chance she was alive?

01:20:00.920 I don't think so.

01:20:03.820 Uh, she was strangled to death is my interpretation of what I've heard.

01:20:12.720 And then struck with a object, uh, that created a pretty good, um, crack in her skull took to

01:20:24.300 be totally accurate.

01:20:27.260 Um, so I don't think she could have possibly been alive, uh, that morning.

01:20:32.620 Hmm.

01:20:33.720 Okay.

01:20:34.760 But that's another area of DNA that absolutely should be examined because there was a murder

01:20:42.300 weapon.

01:20:43.480 There was like a rope, they call it a garotte.

01:20:46.300 And, um, it was tied to a little piece of wood.

01:20:49.080 And so that one of the questions I know, John, people are asking is, do they ever, one, one

01:20:54.140 of the, one end of the rope had a knot and one had two knots or something like that.

01:20:57.400 But the question was, did they ever untie the knots and test in there for DNA?

01:21:03.560 To my knowledge, no.

01:21:05.320 Uh, they had sent a number of samples like that to, uh, Bodie labs, which is a, you know,

01:21:11.260 outside DNA lab.

01:21:13.280 And for some reason chose not to test or not to pay for the tests of five or six items,

01:21:19.680 one of which was the groat.

01:21:21.880 Uh, and that's one of the things we're asking the governor to make happen is let's get those

01:21:26.740 items tested.

01:21:27.700 Why weren't they tested?

01:21:28.720 Was it because it was too expensive?

01:21:31.980 Uh, they want to save money.

01:21:33.340 I don't know.

01:21:35.600 What do you think is in the, is in the box of things that have not been tested?

01:21:39.940 I don't know.

01:21:41.040 Uh, I don't know.

01:21:43.740 Uh, one journalist, uh, that has followed this case almost in the beginning has that

01:21:49.780 information and, and I need to get that from her, but I don't know exactly what it is.

01:21:54.320 She said there's five or six items that have never been tested.

01:21:57.800 And, um, the police keep referring back to, well, it's just a minute amount of DNA.

01:22:03.880 We don't want to ruin it.

01:22:04.880 Well, that just tells me they've either, well, they haven't tested the other items or they've

01:22:08.380 lost them or misplaced them.

01:22:10.600 For some reason, they always stay away from these other five or six items that have never

01:22:14.420 been tested or checked for DNA evidence.

01:22:17.660 And that's what we're asking to be done.

01:22:20.400 And, um, their reluctance, even mentioning those items makes me think they've either

01:22:26.900 misplaced them or lost them.

01:22:28.660 Oh, goodness.

01:22:30.140 Um, I know.

01:22:31.060 And you're on a push to have the governor remove this case from the Boulder PD and let

01:22:35.940 these sophisticated DNA labs have access to this as opposed to relying on the same cops

01:22:42.600 and detectives that have blown it thus far.

01:22:44.760 There are really sophisticated DNA labs that do you have confidence that if they had access

01:22:49.840 to this box, for lack of a better descriptor, they could, they could make whatever progress

01:22:55.340 is possible.

01:22:56.120 They could make it.

01:22:57.600 And that's really all we're asking the governor to do is push the case either out of the Boulder

01:23:03.780 hands, uh, or in, uh, require them to take this evidence to be tested by one of the one

01:23:13.460 or two really cutting edge labs in this country, uh, and see what we get.

01:23:17.540 If we can get a, some more good DNA evidence, then you take that evidence and put it in the

01:23:23.200 public database and see what you come up with.

01:23:26.880 Yes.

01:23:28.320 This has been done in the last few years with remarkable success.

01:23:33.200 And really what got me, uh, took, had me, in my mind, take the gloves off with the police

01:23:39.840 as we had spent some time with the, um, regional FBI folks there in Denver and, uh, got a relationship

01:23:48.000 where we said, look, this is what needs to happen.

01:23:50.320 And in fact, they were the ones who said, look, the government does not have the latest

01:23:53.860 DNA technology.

01:23:56.140 Uh, we'll get it eventually, but we don't have it.

01:23:58.060 We don't have it at the FBI.

01:23:59.060 They certainly don't have it at the state level and of course, not even ridiculous to

01:24:02.740 think they have it at the police level is that they've told it.

01:24:06.060 They told us that we've got to get this DNA testing done by one of these one or two very

01:24:11.560 cutting edge labs outside, and then use this new approach of, uh, genealogy tracing.

01:24:20.300 And there's a hope that would move this case along to conclusion.

01:24:24.500 They went to the Boulder police and we're here to help.

01:24:27.100 We'd like to make this happen.

01:24:28.620 We'd help you.

01:24:29.480 You can take all the credit.

01:24:30.620 And the Boulder police blew them off.

01:24:32.300 Said, no, we don't need your help.

01:24:34.060 And that was when, that was the game's over.

01:24:36.280 As far as I'm concerned, we got to start.

01:24:37.520 When was that?

01:24:37.960 How long ago?

01:24:39.840 Oh, it's probably six months ago.

01:24:42.660 They're just so people know.

01:24:44.380 I had this woman on my show at NBC, CeCe Moore is her name.

01:24:47.440 And I know you, you, you must've talked to her.

01:24:50.160 She's the one who was really at the center of this genealogy research.

01:24:54.160 And what they do is they take a piece of DNA.

01:24:57.440 And we already know that the DNA that they found on JonBenet does, has not, it did not

01:25:01.820 produce a hit in the databases that are available, at least as of the last time they told us.

01:25:05.760 So the perpetrator had not gone into the system yet, but they don't need that.

01:25:11.940 All they need is for somebody related to the perpetrator to be in the DNA system.

01:25:18.500 So if I were in the DNA system, let's say I wanted to do 23andMe, let's see what my

01:25:23.260 ancestry is, whatever.

01:25:25.480 Then if my results got uploaded on this other website that CeCe Moore uses, that, that a

01:25:30.440 lot of people who upload the DNA results use, because you get more information from it,

01:25:34.160 it's not 23andMe, it's something related.

01:25:36.480 So let's say they're sitting there, she can access them.

01:25:39.240 She may not, you know, she, she can see a lot of things on there.

01:25:41.960 And let's say I have a relative who commits a crime.

01:25:45.280 That relative's DNA was not going to pop up like that.

01:25:49.120 Maybe they committed a crime, but the crime scene, they didn't see him because he didn't,

01:25:52.640 he hadn't been arrested yet, but mine will.

01:25:56.020 And this is what CeCe Moore, she's like, all I can tell you is that Megyn Kelly is related

01:25:59.780 to this killer.

01:26:00.860 And so I'm going to build this big family tree around Megyn Kelly.

01:26:04.540 I'm going to figure out who her grandfather, what great grandfather, look at her husband's

01:26:07.740 side.

01:26:07.940 I'm going to look at, because all this stuff is publicly available.

01:26:09.760 She looks at their wedding announcements and birth announcements.

01:26:11.740 It's, it's crazy, great detective work.

01:26:14.120 And she gets, she gets her man.

01:26:17.000 I mean, CeCe Moore, it's like they saw a case a week doing this.

01:26:20.760 And so if we could take a fresh look at the JonBenet DNA from that perspective, even if

01:26:28.080 the guy's never gotten into the system from the last time they tested it, somebody might

01:26:31.360 be in the system that could lead us to one.

01:26:33.440 That's right.

01:26:34.620 The COVID system that the FBI uses, the federal database of criminals or arrested felons,

01:26:41.480 is fairly small.

01:26:43.560 And the states can contribute or not to that database.

01:26:48.440 It takes nine markers out of 15 to be accepted in the database.

01:26:54.160 But it's, it's a people that are, have already been found criminal or at least arrested for

01:27:02.540 felonies.

01:27:03.540 And it depends on the state what that rule is, but it's not a very big database.

01:27:08.520 And what the, the, the, the public database of the, like the 23andMe and the way both Jan

01:27:15.140 and I submitted our $35, get our ancestry to that database.

01:27:21.560 They find a, a reasonably, you know, close match, uh, or something at least is interest of interest.

01:27:30.620 And they do almost a backwards, uh, uh, family tree.

01:27:36.260 And then they find, uh, Hey, here's a relative that lived in Boulder in December, uh, 2020, uh,

01:27:42.840 1996.

01:27:44.220 And, uh, then they start looking at that guy or that person and get his DNA.

01:27:49.700 And, and, and these remarkable success, uh, solutions to these old, old cases have been

01:27:55.360 using that technique.

01:27:57.500 And most of these people were not on anybody's radar.

01:28:01.940 They weren't in the, the, uh, COVID, uh, or the, uh, uh, federal database.

01:28:08.700 And, um, in fact, the, the golden state killer, which was, I think the first one found this way

01:28:13.900 was a 40 year old case and he was retired cop.

01:28:17.740 So he wasn't in, in the criminal database, but it's remarkable.

01:28:24.780 And, and we're, that's what we're asking the governor to make happen.

01:28:27.540 I don't care how it happens.

01:28:28.600 That's what has to happen.

01:28:30.140 And now, now what he's saying, John is, well, he doesn't said anything as I understand it,

01:28:34.040 but the Boulder PD there are, they're like, Hey, we have great news.

01:28:37.820 We're now going to refer this case to the cold case unit.

01:28:41.720 And the cold case unit we believe is going to do better than the other case unit.

01:28:45.740 Why?

01:28:45.980 Why?

01:28:47.740 I don't know.

01:28:49.520 I don't know.

01:28:50.180 I've never heard of this cold case unit.

01:28:51.740 Why is it going to refer to them next year?

01:28:54.240 Well, that could be 12 months from now, but I guess you say, well, it's no big rush.

01:28:57.180 It's been 26 years.

01:28:58.500 What's the hurry.

01:29:00.220 It's a huge frustration for us.

01:29:03.560 Do you believe that?

01:29:04.480 Is that just cover?

01:29:05.540 Is that a CYA?

01:29:06.660 Yeah, absolutely.

01:29:07.840 That was put out before I even released the governor's letter, which I only released because he never responded.

01:29:14.340 I thought that was, I would have at least expected to say, well, we'll take a look at it or I received a letter.

01:29:20.780 Still hasn't responded?

01:29:21.540 No.

01:29:23.560 Nope.

01:29:24.600 We're going to follow up with him.

01:29:25.420 And I'm not asking him to, you know, apologize to us for the faulty performance of the Colorado justice system.

01:29:37.300 I don't want that.

01:29:38.280 I just want to do the right thing.

01:29:39.560 This is what can be done.

01:29:40.880 You need to do it.

01:29:41.840 Yeah, we're definitely going to follow up with his office and find out what is his response and we'll stay on it and we'll annoy him to the point where he's going to have to respond because I know a lot of people in media who would be very happy to help me annoy him.

01:29:55.680 I would love that.

01:29:56.780 That's what it's going to take.

01:29:57.680 It's going to take intense public pressure to do the right thing.

01:30:02.280 That's all we're asking him to do.

01:30:04.360 None of them will do anything unless forced to by the public.

01:30:08.440 Look, and the people of Colorado and the country are on your side.

01:30:12.600 They're not on the side of some law enforcement group that's trying to protect its own backside.

01:30:17.040 So I actually think we can make progress with this.

01:30:19.840 First, I have to I have to squeeze in a break.

01:30:21.940 All right.

01:30:22.460 Stand by, John.

01:30:23.280 A quick break.

01:30:24.260 I'll be right back to you after this.

01:30:29.120 Dylan Howard put together an extraordinary podcast called The Killing of JonBenet Ramsey, and it's a 12 part series in which he took a very deep dive into possible suspects.

01:30:38.900 In the case, I recommend it to everybody and in part based off of Lou Smith's work and the work of his daughter.

01:30:45.100 Having listened to all of that and cooperated with that, do you have a chief suspect?

01:30:49.640 You know, it's easy to to say, well, that's the guy based on circumstantial evidence.

01:30:56.860 In fact, that happened fairly early on.

01:30:59.160 A person was brought to our attention by his girlfriend, former girlfriend, and had some pretty compelling data that would lead you to believe, hey, this this is the guy.

01:31:09.140 In fact, I said that to our attorneys.

01:31:10.480 I said, whoa, this is the guy.

01:31:12.460 And they said, no, no, no, don't do a bolder police on us.

01:31:14.880 We can't jump to conclusions.

01:31:16.740 It was a reminder that that's exactly what happened and that we got to be careful, too.

01:31:20.940 And so there's been four or five people like that that have come up on the radar, on our radar.

01:31:27.680 And but it's never been enough evidence.

01:31:33.160 And, you know, private individuals don't do so much.

01:31:36.220 They need the authority of the government to really dig into stuff.

01:31:39.160 And so we couldn't go so far in some of these investigations.

01:31:44.120 And so these people are still, in my mind, suspects of interest, people of interest.

01:31:51.940 But they need to be investigated.

01:31:54.720 That's the point.

01:31:55.440 They need to be investigated.

01:31:56.820 One of the things Lou Smith suggested was that there was that window broken in the basement.

01:32:02.000 So there was a scuff mark below the window.

01:32:03.960 There was a suitcase there, which we talked about briefly.

01:32:07.300 That wasn't normally there.

01:32:08.760 And in it, they found a duvet, a Dr. Seuss book and fibers of the outfit JonBenet was

01:32:15.020 wearing that night, indicating perhaps the murderer might have tried to kidnap her or

01:32:22.340 remove her from the scene in the suitcase.

01:32:24.520 But it was too big.

01:32:25.840 But that that would explain quite a bit about the crime scene.

01:32:29.160 If only we had a talented investigator devoted to following up on these leads.

01:32:34.220 The point is the governor must get involved.

01:32:36.400 The governor must remove this case from the Boulder PD.

01:32:39.200 They must get the fibers and the DNA that is available to a qualified lab and start working

01:32:44.020 with the family instead of against them after all these years.

01:32:46.980 And the time we have left.

01:32:49.900 How do you do it?

01:32:50.920 Because I know you said.

01:32:53.200 You've forgiven whoever did this to JonBenet.

01:32:56.040 And Jon, it just seems like a mountain too high.

01:32:59.960 How do you do that?

01:33:01.600 Well, I've dealt with forgiveness a lot over the few years after JonBenet was killed.

01:33:07.300 And I've looked back at how I felt and progressed with that challenge.

01:33:14.300 Certainly in the first couple of years, there was no forgiveness.

01:33:17.100 In fact, I've told people, if you put this guy in the same room with me and I know he's

01:33:22.680 the killer, he won't come out alive.

01:33:24.280 And I would be able to do that with no remorse.

01:33:27.960 And that's not right, but that's how I felt.

01:33:31.080 And then I got to the point where I said, OK, well, forgiveness belongs to the victim.

01:33:35.040 And I'm really not the victim.

01:33:37.080 JonBenet was a victim.

01:33:38.320 So only she can forgive.

01:33:39.920 And that's, of course, not possible.

01:33:41.260 And that kind of got me off the hook.

01:33:42.540 And then I finally realized forgiveness is really a gift you give yourself.

01:33:47.160 You release that anger and that desire for revenge.

01:33:50.820 Doesn't mean you feel sorry for the, in our case, the killer.

01:33:56.100 I still want him held to the accountability to the extreme level of our justice system.

01:34:04.740 But I've released that anger and it still crops up every now and then.

01:34:13.780 But it's a benefit to myself to release that in the form of forgiveness.

01:34:21.160 Don't want him held.

01:34:23.020 Staying connected to God helps, I know.

01:34:25.780 And I'm sure this time of year, even all these years later, is very tough on you.

01:34:30.420 I know you've remarried.

01:34:31.820 I'm so happy to hear that.

01:34:33.140 But God bless you, Jon, and your family.

01:34:36.540 And I think there's a way of finding a Merry Christmas.

01:34:41.920 You know, I hope that you found that way.

01:34:43.920 And I'll be praying for you this year in particular.

01:34:46.480 We had a hard time with Christmas for several years.

01:34:49.520 Finally, I didn't realize you've got to remember what Christmas is for.

01:34:53.760 And that's reassuring in our case that we know JonBenet is safe and we'll see her again.

01:35:01.660 Amen to that.

01:35:03.140 Take care.

01:35:03.840 Thank you so much for coming on and telling your story.

01:35:05.720 And we'll stay on it.

01:35:07.060 Thank you, Megan.

01:35:07.720 I really appreciate it.

01:35:09.000 Wow.

01:35:09.440 Just keep them in your prayers and keep their family in your prayers.

01:35:12.060 That little girl's with her mama now.

01:35:13.860 For that, we can be thankful.

01:35:14.760 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

01:35:20.460 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - December 13, 2022

Revisiting the JonBenet Ramsey Murder Case, and How New DNA Technology Can Help, with Her Father John Ramsey ｜ Ep. 452

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