The father of JonBenét Ramsey, the murdered six-year-old beauty queen, has received a letter from a lady who claims her ex-husband murdered his daughter.
According to RadarOnline.com, John Ramsey, 81, was sent the information off the back of the recent Netflix documentary that featured the 1996 murder case, and he quickly followed up on the tip.
However, he has yet to hear back from the sender, but has forwarded the information to his private investigator.
Ramsey stated, “Based on all of this publicity, I recently received a letter from a lady saying, ‘My ex-husband’s the killer, and I’ve kept this inside for as long as I can – please, please call me.’
“We called her, but she did not answer, so I’m not sure. We’ve shared this information with a private investigator.”
JonBenét was discovered brutally beaten and sexually assaulted on December 26, 1996, in the basement of her family’s sprawling home in Boulder, Colorado.
Ramsey’s late wife, Patsy, called 911 that morning to report finding a ransom note and her missing daughter. Police arrived quickly, but the child’s body was not discovered until hours later, during a search led by Ramsey.
Suspicion quickly focused on the family, resulting in a strained relationship with the Boulder Police Department.
Ramsey’s late wife, Patsy, called 911 that morning to report finding a ransom note and her missing daughter. Police arrived quickly, but the child’s body was not discovered until hours later, during a search led by Ramsey.
Suspicion quickly focused on the family, resulting in a strained relationship with the Boulder Police Department.
Ramsey, his late wife Patsy, who died in 2006 at the age of 49, and their son, Burke, who was nine years old and at home at the time of the killing, were largely convicted in the court of public opinion, despite the Boulder District Attorney’s official clearing and apologizing in 2008.
He said any new leads were welcome after nearly 30 years of battling misconceptions and attempting to prove his family’s innocence.
On solving the case, he stated that it “will not change my life at this point – I just turned 81 – but it will change the lives of my children and grandchildren.”
“They need the cloud removed, clarified, and an answer. That’s why we’re working so hard to find an answer.”
Despite the possibility of a new suspect raised by the ex-wife’s recent letter, Ramsey remains skeptical, having previously had his hopes dashed.
One man, who appeared prominently in the Netflix docuseries, appeared to be the main culprit after confessing to a university professor in lengthy phone conversations.
John Mark Karr was even extradited from Thailand to Colorado, but DNA tests did not match, and his family claimed he was in Georgia when JonBenét was murdered.
Other false confessions have surfaced over the years, including one in the early days following the murder, when a man claiming to have been hired to kill JonBenét called the Ramseys’ pastor to confess and later spoke with Ramsey.
This man, who went by the alias “David Cooper,” initially called the Ramseys’ pastor and “said he was JonBenét’s killer and wanted to turn himself in but wanted to talk to me first,” Ramsey explained.
“I called him and talked to him for a while… and I was asking him questions,” he told me.
“I was looking for information that maybe he had that nobody else would have (from) reading the newspapers or watching television.”
Ramsey said the man mentioned items from the house that “were not in the news that I knew of,” so he thought the caller could be credible.
He informed the police, who, rather than investigating or reaching out, “were not interested in following up at all,” according to Ramsey.
The distraught father then claimed that cops said, “Well, he wants to turn himself in?” “We will be here.”
When he had another phone conversation with the self-confessed killer, however, “he said, ‘Well, I want to bring my family with me, and it’s going to cost me $3,000 for airline tickets,and I don’t have any money. Can you send me the money?
“And I was going to do it, because I figured, Well, who knows, it’s worth a shot,” Ramsey told the reporter. “And I discussed it before I did; I informed our attorneys about the situation. They said, “Oh no, wait, hold on, don’t send him money.” This does not smell right.
“So I didn’t, and our investigators came back and said, ‘Well, he’s a truck driver from Louisiana, and he’s just trying to con you out of money. Forget it.
“So that’s where it ended.”