Murder of JonBenet Ramsey

Filicide theory

The police from beginning suspected the parents to be responsible for the death of JonBenet. It is the most common in police practice that in cases of murder the first step is to check the family, especially since the statistics show that in most of the cases someone in family is the killer.

Facts that are supporting the theory:

  • there were no signs of forced entry, thus pointing to someone inside the house as killer,
  • there is suspicion that Patsy Ramsey was author of the ransom note, although there is no way to prove it or disprove it (especially since she died in 2006 of ovarian cancer),
  • if the head injury was inflicted first, the aim of strangulation would be to make sure that JonBenet would not be able to tell what happened,
  • the amount of money mentioned in the note ($118,000) was suspiciously exact and suspiciously close to what John Ramsey got as a bonus that year (not many people would know the exact value of the bonus),
  • the part of paintbrush used to make the garrote was taken from among items belonging to Patsy Ramsey,
  • the murder seems to be improvised after the head injuries were caused, which may suggest the cover up after accidental death and that doesn’t exclude parents from the list of suspects,
  • the house wasn’t treated as crime scene from the beginning of the investigation, which means that some evidence might have been lost during the time people from outside were able to enter and leave the house.


Facts that oppose the theory:

  • if the parents would be responsible for death of JonBenet (accident, fit of rage, etc) the strangulation and ransom note would put them even more under suspicion than just calling police and stating that it was accidental death (f.e. she fell down the stairs),
  • part of the paintbrush was found on the body, part in belongings of Patsy Ramsey, but the third part was never found, which suggests that killer must have taken it with him,
  • the part of the paintbrush that was used to make the garrotte belonged to Patsy Ramsey, if the parents would try to create false evidence they would more likely use something that did not belonged to any of them, since that may put them under suspicion and they didn’t have to hurry with calling police,
  • no signs of forced entry doesn’t mean that there was no intrusion, it just means that force wasn’t used to get entrance,
  • there are no signs of any sort of abuse from parents, so the mentioned fit of rage of Patsy is pure speculation,
  • Patsy Ramsey won the Miss West Virginia beauty title in 1977 and was typical "stage mother" focused on reliving her dreams through her child - in that kind of relationship the mother could be very demanding and strict, but very unlikely to be violent towards the child; after all without that child her dreams would also die,
  • if there were signs of sexual assault that would most likely exclude parents from the suspects list (even without that element they would be able to put investigation on false track),
  • there was a DNA sample of unknown male on the JonBenet’s body, although we can’t be sure that the DNA sample belonging to unknown male, that was found on JonBenet’s clothes, was the DNA of a kidnapper / murderer or even that the sample was left during the kidnapping or murder,
  • if there were stun gun marks on JonBenet’s body this would rule the parents out since they did not need to stun her, also if they would make them to create false evidence it is unlikely that they did not try to draw police attention towards that discovery (the marks were found by a detective on the photos from autopsy at the late stage of investigation).


The scenario of parents killing JonBenet and then creating false evidence of the intruder attacking their child is tricky to decide one way or the other - on one hand it is possible that the scenario was true, but on the other hand there are equally strong point against it.



 theory




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