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The 1996 holiday season was completely uprooted after 6-year-old pageant star JonBenét Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her family’s home. To this day, her case has remained an unsolved murder, but her immediate family — Patsy, John and Burke Ramsey — were suspects for a while, and one person falsely confessed to her murder.
Learn more about JonBenét’s case below.
Who Killed JonBenet Ramsay?
Although a ransom note was left for the Ramsey family at the time of JonBenét’s death, Boulder, Colorado, police initially suspected that Patsy and John staged the scene to avoid being caught for her death. They also didn’t fully cooperate with police questioning. Nevertheless, there wasn’t enough evidence to support the theory that they killed their daughter.
JonBenét’s’s older brother Burke later became a suspect by the court of public opinion, as some believed that he struck his sister with a golf club. However, he was never identified as an official suspect in the case, and he denied any wrongdoing in the years since JonBenét died.
After DNA testing was put into place in 2002, authorities found an unidentified male’s DNA on JonBenét’s remains, which cleared the Ramseys from the investigation by the DA’s office. Seven years later, the Boulder police department reopened the case.
In 2006, a man named Alexis Val Reich (who was known as John Mark Karr at the time) falsely confessed to killing JonBenét. He was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand. Despite his confession, authorities found no DNA match to the crime scene.
What Has Her Family Said About the Case?
JonBenét’s parents have vehemently denied abusing and/or killing their late daughter. Patsy died in 2006 after battling ovarian cancer, and John has continued to shut down rumors that he was behind his daughter’s death.
In 2016, Burke sat down with Dr. Phil to explain everything he knew about his sister’s death. Since he had been downstairs in the house that night, he explained that he was simply playing with a toy.
“Yeah, I had some toy that I wanted to put together. I remember being downstairs after everyone was in bed … wanting to get this thing out,” Burke said. “I just remember being downstairs with this toy.”
