The famous cold case is back in the spotlight.
A new Netflix docuseries focuses on the unsolved murder of JonBenet Ramsey.
Premiering Monday, Nov. 25, the series “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey” explores the tragic case of the 6-year-old beauty pageant star, who was killed and sexually assaulted in her own home in 1996, while her parents and brother were also home, asleep.
Her mother, Patsy, initially found a ransom note demanding $118,000 for the safe return of JonBenét, but hours later, the child was found dead in their basement.
Twenty eight years later, the culprit still hasn’t been caught.
Her affluent parents were suspects at the time.
As “Cold Case” director Joe Berlinger told The Post, “I don’t think there’s been a good comprehensive documentary series that has really analyzed this case – that will also hopefully put a little pressure on the authorities to do the right thing.”
Who are the key players in this story, and where are they now?
Her mom, Patsy
Patsy Ramsey died in 2006 of ovarian cancer at age 49.
In 1998, a grand jury voted to indict John and Patsy Ramsey for child abuse resulting in their daughter’s death. This news wasn’t made public until 2013.
However, Alex Hunter, the district attorney at the time, didn’t believe there was enough evidence, and no charges were filed against them.
Detective Steve Thomas, who was the lead investigator on the case at the time, went on “Larry King Live” in 2000 along with JonBenet’s parents, John and Patsy.
There, he accused Pasty to her face of committing the crime, which she denied.
Patsy, John, and their son Burke were all cleared in 2008 after three pieces of male DNA were found on JonBenét’s clothing.
Her dad, John Ramsey
John Ramsey is now 80, and he appears in the docuseries “Cold Case.” Along with his late wife, he was cleared by the Boulder DA in 2008.
Berlinger told The Post, “John Ramsey agreed to sit down with us, did not ask to be paid, and was not paid – we don’t pay our subjects – and asked for no editorial input. No questions were off limits. To me, that is an 80 year old guy who….wants to get that case solved.”
The Oscar-nominated director added, “I am firmly convinced that the Ramsey family is innocent.”
“There have been horrible failures,” John told “Today” on Thursday. “But I believe it can be solved if police accept help from outside their system. That’s been their flaw.”
In a story published Thursday, John told People, “We’re begging the police to engage. There are cutting-edge DNA labs that want to help and who believe they can move the case forward.”
John also lamented the Boulder PD’s handling of the case.
“We assumed that the police would show some level of discernment and wisdom and say, ‘Yeah, well this is crazy, to think [we] murdered our child.’ Well, they never did. They made that decision on day one, and tried desperately to prove it.”
Her brother, Burke
Burke Ramsey was 9 at the time of his sister’s death. At various points, he’s been considered a suspect in her murder. Text onscreen in the documentary explains that “Cold Case” reached out to Burke, but unlike his father, he declined to be interviewed.
In 2016, Burke gave his first public interview to Dr. Phil.
“I know people think I did it; that my parents did it. I know that we were suspects,” he said at the time, adding, “For a long time, the media basically made our lives crazy.”
Burke continued, “It’s hard to miss the cameras and news trucks in your front yard, and we’d go to the supermarket sometimes, and there’d be a tabloid with my picture [and] JonBenét’s picture plastered on the front. They would follow us around. Seeing that as a little kid [was] just this chaotic nightmare … It just made me a private person.”
In September 2016, the CBS segment “The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey” implied that Burke killed JonBenet. Burke then sued CBS for $750 million, citing that they ruined his reputation. In 2019, the lawsuit was settled.
A spokesperson for the TV program said in a statement that “an amicable resolution of their differences” has been reached.
Today, Burke is 37, and lives outside of the spotlight.
“Is Burke happy? He’s as happy as he can be, given the circumstances,” a source told Us Weekly. “He’s productive. He’s moving past all the trauma and living the best way he can. That’s all you can expect.”
“He doesn’t read anything about the case, doesn’t watch anything about it. If he sees a show about it, he changes the channel. He’s not the least bit interested in watching any of the documentaries. He’s not going to watch [the Netflix] one. Absolutely not,” the source continued. “It’s triggering to him, and there’s no benefit for him.”
Per the outlet, he works as a software engineer for a midsized company and lives a quiet life. He’s dating, but he “likes to be alone” and has “trust issues.”
Her other brother, John Andrew
John Andrew is John’s son from a previous marriage. He wasn’t living with the family at the time of the murder, as he was 23 years old. Today, he’s 51.
John Andrew appears onscreen in the new docuseries, and defends his father and stepmother — while scorning the Boulder PD.
“They did their damndest to bring charges against John and Patsy, there was nothing there,” he said.
During a 2021 interview on “20/20,” he told ABC News, “We lost our sister and our daughter, a family member. We were victims, and the very people that we thought were gonna come in and protect us and help us were pointing the finger at us. We were just regular people and then all of a sudden our world just got turned upside down.”
He added, “This 6-year-old little girl was killed on [investigators’] watch and, ultimately, they are responsible for finding the killer, and they can do it, and we want them to do it.”
John Andrew has two other sisters: Melinda Ramsey, who leads a quiet life and doesn’t speak out about the case as much, and Elizabeth Ramsey, who died in a car accident at age 22 in 1992.
Detective Steve Thomas
Steve Thomas was the lead detective on the case at the time. He resigned from the Boulder police department in the summer of 1998, and he wrote a book about the case, “JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation,” published in 2000.
On a 2000 episode of “Larry King Live,” Thomas said he resigned “because I felt it had become such a debacle and was going nowhere. Out of frustration, I left the case.”
JonBenet’s father, John, slammed Thomas during that same “Larry King” episode, saying, “He has failed in his responsibilities as a police officer.”
Per the Denver Post, in Thomas’s 1998 resignation letter, he wrote, “The primary reason I chose to leave is my belief that the district attorney’s office continues to mishandle the Ramsey case. I have been troubled for many months with many aspects of the investigation… because of the political alliances, philosophical differences, and professional egos that blocked progress.”
He added, “What I witnessed for two years of my life was so fundamentally flawed, it reduced me to tears. Everything the badge ever meant to me was so foundationally shaken….”
According to a 2023 interview Thomas did with Websleuths, he now works in real estate and resides in Florida.
During that same interview, he said, “The public just doesn’t know what to believe. My hope remains that one day, there’s going to be some definitive closure to this case.”
DA Alex Hunter
Hunter, now 81, was the DA at the time of JonBenet’s murder. His tenure ran from 1972 to 2000.
After a grand jury indicted JonBenet’s parents in 1998, Hunter refused to sign the indictment papers and declined to prosecute, citing a lack of evidence.
“It was the right call by all of us working on this case, not the popular call, not what the public wanted,” Hunter said at the time, according to the Boulder Daily Camera.
“Maybe those people with time and on reflection will say I had the stuff to do the right thing. If that happens great, if it doesn’t, so be it — I will be out snowshoeing.”
He’s lived a quiet life outside of the spotlight since then, and hasn’t appeared in the countless documentaries about it.
At the end of his tenure in 2000, he told The Denver Post about JonBenet Ramsey, “We should not give up on this case.”
DA Mary Lacy
Lacy was the Boulder DA from 2001 to 2009. At the time of the murder, she was the chief deputy district attorney heading up the Sexual Assault Unit under then-DA Alex Hunter. She was among a team that walked through JonBenet’s home days after the killing.
In 2008, Lacy exonerated the family due to DNA belonging to an unknown male being found on JonBenet’s clothes.
“To the extent that we may have contributed in any way to the public perception that you might have been involved in this crime I am deeply sorry,” she wrote in her letter to the family at the time.
One of Lacy’s former DA investigators, Gordon Coombes, told ABC News in 2016 that he thought Lacy got too close to the Ramsey family and lost her ability to be objective.
“It was understood that if you didn’t fall in line with the intruder theory, you were out,” he said, referring to the theory that an intruder murdered JonBenet, as opposed to a family member.
Stan Garnett, Lacy’s successor, said Lacy’s exoneration letter was “not legally binding.”
“It’s a good-faith opinion and has no legal importance but the opinion of the person who had the job before I did, whom I respect.”
Detective Lou Smit
Lou Smit, who died in 2010 at age 75, was a Colorado detective who retired in 1996 after his work led to over 200 murder convictions. He was recalled to work on the Ramsey case, but he resigned 18 months later.
“I find that I cannot in good conscience be a part of the persecution of innocent people,” he wrote in his resignation letter, per the Denver Post.
He added, “At this point in the investigation ‘the case’ tells me that John and Patsy Ramsey did not kill their daughter, that a very dangerous killer is still out there and no one is actively looking for him. There are still many areas of investigation which must be explored before life and death decisions are made.”
At the time of his death, he was still investigating the case on his own.
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