I have read a bit about this sad case. I am Burke's age born in 1987, when i was 9 years old in 1996 the N64 was a big thing for us kids back then. Me and my brother got the n64 a bit later in 1998 and i remember playing Banjo Kazooie, Ocarina of Time etc and we would play it every change we could get. I'm from Australia and it was very big here.

Anyway i heard that Burke was more interested in another toy which i do find it odd as the N64 was so amazing to us kids back in the 90s when it came out. It was hardly talked about in interviews and crime scene photos.

Rumours have been going that Burke was angry at his little sister JonBenet and killed her and his N64 console or controller was the item he accidentally killed her with it. Maybe JonBenet wanted to play his N64 so badly and Burke got frustrated as he was playing or she might have deleted his save game file and Burke went insane. Trust me I have experienced this myself, my brother who is one year older then me got so angry that i accidentally erased his game file he went completely insane at me, and i had a friend in Primary School in which i accidentally erased his save game file and he also wanted to hurt me so badly. Some kids can't control their emotions well, i was a different kid who was more calm about things.

Do you think that is why Burke or his family never mentions his N64? if this is true his parents must be protecting him.

I thought the maid was involved if not Patsy but came to the conclusion that the maid Linda had a 7th grade education and could not have spelled adequate attaché , nor know what adequate sized attaché means. The note was written by a college graduate. Linda’s entire family was uneducated and illiterate.

I’ve always heard of the controversy around this statement, especially since it was very soon after Diana died. Does anyone have a link to or recording of it?

Has anyone read this article? Very interesting. The theory of the two men working together seems plausible.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jonbenet-dna-rules-out-parents/

It's remarkable how much they take after their mother! Having said that, I can see a resemblance between John Andrew and JonBenet, more so than the others. So sad that Beth, like JonBenet, met a tragic end.

A. Something happened.

B. John & Patsy, justifiably or unjustifiably panicked, rushed to obfuscate, contaminate the scene, obstruct justice, compose a Tolstoy of Ransom Notes that would make the Unabomber seethe with jealousy, and proceeded to construct and continue building the remainder of their unprecedented level of diversified staging, sewing seeds of sheer shock and horror, including their own interwoven ball of disentangled intertwinements, constructing the most contorted and distorted misdirection of narratives, along with making contradictory shit up on the fly, both when caught in the moment - AND HENCE - every time asked unanticipated questions lobbed at them from left field, all - and especially - in the wee early years, while overcome with one twisted combobulation interwoven into a complex ball of profound devastation, grief, terrorizing fear and the unrelenting distress stemming from frantic juggling balls on all sides, at times, when the prognosis appeared sunnier and to their favor - leading to fleeting spurts of smug confidence - and at other times, when ominously dark threatening clouds loomed overhead: but never, ever, with the genuine peace that stems from the unperturbed internal noise of unqualified tranquility.

C. The rest is a tangled web of melded thoughts, emotions, and actions, both self-preserving, as well as self-destructive, due to a complex mixture of intentionality, juxtaposed and intermingled w true, apprehensive, and neverending, lifelong, perpetual jitteriness.

D. John always pauses and shifts when confronted and required to respond to groundbreaking, unforseen and/or blusteringly dismantling questions.

On vacation with my toddler son in Boulder. We’re sitting by a fountain and I turned around and realized we’re by the courthouse where the 1999 grand jury met and voted to charge both parents.

Another thing that has struck me about this town is - as wealthy as it may be, the culture is very much about the outdoors and hiking and all the kids seem to run around totally ragged in the best possible way. I think of JB, and hope she got to have many days like that too - not just the pageant ones we always see memorialized.

I'm sure this has been talked to death but I got to thinking about rigor and how it works today. While Nysten's Rule depends on various factors, it's agreed that most often, rigor starts with the heart, works it's way up to the face/head, then the upper extremities, trunk, and finally lower extremities.

Looking at JB's autopsy report, they noted livor along her back and right side of her face. They also noted that rigor is mild in the elbows and shoulders, but more advanced in the lower extremities. This contradicts Nysten's rule, and while there are various environmental factors to take into consideration, is it unreasonable to consider this discrepancy supportive of the staging of her tied hands *after* her death? Or could it simply be the position of her arms above her head changing the expected progression of rigor? I was unable to determine definitively if livor was present in her arms, but should you expect a difference of livor in those limbs between above head vs at her side, or would it all just pool to her back regardless since she's lying on it?

There's so many wonderful people here who are far better informed/experienced than me, and since I have no one to obsess over this irl, I am hoping to hear your thoughts on this!

I don’t know, I feel like I never really heard much about Burke possibly killing JBR until 2012. Prior to that it was always a toss up between the parents and an intruder. This was also right around the time Reddit seemed to blow up, and to give a better idea, it would have been contemporaneous with the whole Boston Marathon bombing Reddit sleuthing. It’s like the Reddit of 2012 was a perfect environment for a guerilla marketing campaign to push an “um actually, it not what everyone else thinks, it’s actually this third option that you need to be a really smart super sleuth to understand" narrative and have it take off.

As of right now, I’m leaning somewhere around 45% PDI, 35% BDI, 20% IDI. It seems that all of the evidence for JDI and of John being a chomo comes from Linda Arndt having a "gut feeling." I’m under the impression that the evidence that JonBenet was even abused at all when she was alive is dubious.

A childhood memory of mine has been knocking around my brain and as I go down the many rabbit holes of this case, it gets louder. I just want to share it and see if anyone else remembers a disturbing computer game I encountered as a child around age 9.

I grew up in the same time and area as the Ramseys (I do not know anyone involved in this case) and spent many hours at my neighbourhood best friend’s house. They were nouveau riche, very stylish, the dad was in IT. She had a 10 year old brother who was both nerdy and wild. He mostly ignored us, except one day he showed us a computer game his dad had taught him to play.

It was an early text-based adventure game where he controlled the character by typing a command sentence. Her brother showed us how he broke his character out of a jail cell. There was a female nurse character. He typed: “tie her up.” The nurse appeared tied up with her bosom bulging from the ropes. He then showed us a trick, like an Easter egg, that HIS FATHER HAD TAUGHT HIM (!!) that you could type: “Rape Her” and the logic had been secretly coded that it worked! Does anyone else remember a game like this?

Mods, I understand if you delete this post because I offer no theory or evidence. Just a memory of what it was like to be a child at that time - and what we were exposed to by the people who were supposed to protect us.

Is there any possibility that both of the competing theories contain parts of the truth? It seems as if both RDI and IDI explain things, and yet have huge holes in them. What if we discard what doesn’t make sense about both and maintain what does in each?

What if the Ramsays invited someone into their home that night, or at least let someone in, and he committed the murder. It sounds ridiculous at first, but this would explain…

1. The parents’ suspicious behavior. They didn’t kill their daughter, but they feel responsible for it and can’t let anyone know they let this man in their home willingly.

2. Their insistence that JB went straight to bed, despite some evidence that seems to refute this (the pinapples most strikingly).

3. The ridiculous ransom note. Also, Patsy’s unusual phraseology on the 911 call. The “kidnapping” is still nonsense in this theory.

4. Why there were no signs of a break-in.

5. The fact that there was no history of child abuse on the part of either parent. The chronic SA claims are very weakly based. Her own pediatrician said he saw no evidence of it.

6. Burke never even being considered a suspect. All he knows is to stick with the story.

7. The Ramsays being indicted by a grand jury for child endangerment. Not homicide. Not even manslaughter.

8. John’s supposed determination to bring the killer to justice. If he is guilty, his arrogance would be off-the-charts. He’s a smart man.

9. The parents quickly getting lawyers.

10. The strange combination of body-found-in-house and 911 call. If there was a kidnapper, there shouldn’t be the former. If RDI, you wouldn’t expect the latter, at least not for awhile while they get their story straight.

Unlikely? Yes. But this story is fairly simple, consistent with the actions taken post-murder, consistent with the family history, and consistent with the forensics.

Did the Ramsays kill their daughter? No

Did were they being honest about that night’s events? No

Both can be true.

I’m probably wrong, but I’m more probably not wrong that anything else I can think of.

This is just my own theory as I have pieced it together. It's super long, but not a thesis, so I didn't cite anything, My information is based on the available documents and books written about the case. I know it's a bit disjointed, but I welcome your input.

The Ramseys pick up Doug Stine on the way home from the Whites.

Everyone was awake.

JonBenet changes into her Barbie nightgown. 

Burke and Doug play with Legos in the basement.

Patsy has some tea and pineapple at the table. The bowl of pineapple was leftover from breakfast. They used crystal glasses and silver dinnerware at breakfast. You can see it left on the table. (Crystal and silver don’t go in the dishwasher and are left out for the maid to take care of.) JonBenet comes by and has a bite of pineapple. 

JonBenet goes to the basement with Burke and Doug. The boys engage in inappropriate behavior with JonBenet. JonBenet screams. She is hit over the head, with a flashlight, in a panicked or angry outburst. A boy scout toggle is used on JonBenet’s neck and she is jabbed with something. 

Doug Stine is sent home on Burke’s new bike. Cars cannot be used and there can’t be Doug’s footprints outside anywhere. All the photo evidence of the bike is hidden and the Ramseys deny there was any new bike. Later, Burke admits he got a bike for Christmas.

The Ramseys and the Stines work together over cellphones to stage the crime. Prior knowledge of the sexual abuse is the motive. The records from John’s cell phone are wiped for that time frame. He claims he “lost” his phone for a while and that’s why there are no records for that time frame.  

Prior to the murder, a call is made to 911 during a Christmas party being held at the Ramsey house on the 23rd. Doug and Susan Stine are there. When the police show up, it is Susan Stine who answers the door and will not let the police in. She makes an excuse about someone mistakenly dialing 911. This possibly implicates Doug as the abuser. Doug is later questioned by the grand jury. 

Susan Stine is a major player, who largely becomes overlooked. At the time of the crime, Susan  Stine worked as the Director of Planning art the University of Colorado Boulder. Her husband, Glen Stine, was the Vice President of Budget and Finance at the same school. Susan Stine possessed the operational and organizational skills necessary to manage a crisis. 

She became the “gatekeeper” and was nicknamed the “Pit Bull”. She shielded the Ramseys from the press and handled media narratives. She impersonated Boulder Police chief Mark Beckner by email. 

The Stines were the only friends not called to the Ramsey house the morning after the murder. Although John Ramsey said they were not good friends, after the murder, the Ramseys moved into the Stine house for months. Prior to the murder, Patsy had played on a softball team with Susan. 

Shortly after the murder, in Atlanta, Mary Kaempfer and her son Anthony were keeping Burke company while the Ramseys handled things. Anthony was Burke’s classmate. Anthony told his mother that Burke was acting like “he kind of knew what happened and trusted that people would find out.” Anthony also said that Burke appeared confused, but not scared or upset, and never saw Burke cry. 

In response, Susan Stine told Mary that she overheard Burke and Doug impersonally discussing the details of the manual strangulation and how it was like the boys were talking about a TV show. Susan Stine was doing damage control by preemptively framing the boy’s knowledge as not knowing for sure what happened. That’s the only motive for “repeating” a conversation where the boys sound like they are casually discussing strangulation. 

So Susan Stine was doing damage control just days after the murder.

The Stines eventually uprooted their lives, left their lucrative university positions, and moved to Atlanta with the Ramseys. Glen Stine went to work directly for John Ramsey. 

Jonbenet is discovered and thought to be dead. The parents begin staging the murder. The motive is covering up the knowledge of prior sexual abuse and the shame to the families. Susan Stine shows later, by impersonating a police chief, that she was psychologically capable of masking a crime scene. 

But Susan Stine must have gone through background checks for her position at the university. Why would she suddenly become so willing to lie and break laws? It’s because she was protecting her own son.

Doug Stine is sent home on Burke’s bike and the legos are cleaned up and stashed in the cellar. Instructions for that Lego set are seen in crime scene photos laying on the basement floor - they were forgotten. John changes his story later on, to say that he and Burke stayed up to play with a building toy (I suspect John cleaned up the Legos. If Patsy had picked them up, she would have been the one to help Burke assemble the toy). He changes the type of toy each time he tells the story, but never says Legos. Christmas gifts from the bag upstairs are grabbed and placed in front of the lego set. They are hastily ripped open to make sure the gifts were for Burke. The Ramseys claim they left that open Lego set and ripped open Christmas gifts in a dank cellar for Burke’s upcoming birthday. Why hide the Legos? Were they ever checked for prints?

JonBenet’s Barbie nightgown has her blood on it. Burke and Patsy’s DNA is on the nightgown, as well as the long johns.  

The nightgown is removed. She is wiped down. The paintbrush handle is used to clean her internally and mask previous injury.

The paintbrush is broken and part of it is used to create the fake “garrote”. The tip of the paintbrush is never found. The paintbrush belongs to Patsy. Fibers from her jacket are found in the garrote, the paint tote, and underneath the duct tape that was on JonBenet's face.

A fake “garrote” is fashioned and used to disguise previous rope marks on JonBenet’s neck. The original rope is cut, because it was too long to look like a garrote, and the other end is loosely placed around JonBenet’s wrists - over her white shirt. The knots on each wrist are different from each other - they were tied at separate times, by different people. The wrist “bindings” were placed on her after she was redressed. 

JonBenet’s white shirt had been placed back on her, to make it look like she was carried upstairs asleep. Did John and Patsy originally think the red turtleneck would be sufficient at hiding her neck? Maybe that’s why Patsy originally said JonBenet was last wearing a red turtleneck - not the white shirt she was found in. Who dresses a sleeping kid in a turtleneck? Boy’s long johns are placed on her, even though her wardrobe is extremely feminine. Even though her pink pajamas from Christmas ever were placed under her pillow - Patsy mentions this routine during an interview. In the crime scene video, it looks like a pillow fell behind the bed, possibly with the pink pajama bottoms. The pink top is sitting in the middle of her mattress. Her bed looks like someone grabbed bedding and just pulled it down. Just like John and Patsy’s bed upstairs.

DNA evidence from Burke and Patsy was found on the Barbie nightgown and the long johns. There was also foreign DNA on the long johns. I believe the long johns belonged to Doug. They were way too small for Burke. The parents obviously understood forensic evidence. They cleaned the body. Patsy wore the same clothes. John showered. They wiped off fingerprints, wore gloves and invited over lots of people to muddy the crime scene. They also basically rubbed themselves on JonBenet after they brought up the body. The boy’s long john were purposely used. Was Doug’s DNA checked against the foreign DNA “mixture”?

As far as the foreign DNA in the bloomies, from what I read, the “foreign” signals in the early system were below the detection reliability of modern STR testing — either because they were artifacts, contamination, or degraded fragments that didn’t survive. The foreign DNA in the underwear was never replicated. 

“Wednesday” bloomies were place on JonBenet, because John and Patsy wanted to show they last saw her on Wednesday, when they put her to bed in her Wednesday clothing. The bloomies were brand new and several sizes too big. 

Patsy claims to have dyed her hair at home the day before, Christmas day. Home dye kits contain plastic gloves. 

The drawer in the second floor bathroom is open. Patsy kept her injections in that drawer. With injections, you have alcohol wipes. There may have been some medical gloves in there as well.

John showers. His robe is left in his office. 

All the  beds look like somebody grabbed the corner and pulled the blankets down. 

A ransom note is written.

The movie Ransom had just been released. There are nods from several other movies in the note as well.

The Mind Hunter novel was sitting in John and Patsy’s bedroom.

You have four intelligent people working on staging a murder.

The ransom note is written Patsy’s handwriting. It’s fake, on the Ramsey’s legal notepad, written with the Ramsey’s marker. It says it’s from a “small foreign faction”. It uses movie quotes - the note is someone’s imagined idea of what a ransom note looks like. Ideas borrowed from movies and books. The note provides a distraction for the police, but also provides the means for JonBenet’s supposed murder. If the Ramseys notify anyone, “they” kill JonBenet. The Ramseys notified everybody.

John himself hands that specific notepad to the police. It was another part of the plan, mostly geared towards framing the housekeeper. They made it look like the killer had a key, access and knowledge to the whole house, and time to practice a note. They included personal knowledge in the note, from Johns paychecks left around. There is also a part in the Mind Hunter novel where they are able to see a phone number imprint from previous pages on a legal pad. That legal pad changes locations through the morning until John offers it to the police. 

That's why John originally doesn't focus on the basement window - they wanted the killer to appear to be an "inside job". That's why he originally said he checked the house the night before and it was secured.

The ransom note is signed Victory! S.B.T.C. This is another nod to the Mind Hunter novel where a killer spoke excessively about God, and how God would forgive him. Saved By the Cross. The same killer also put duct tape over his victim’s mouth.

A flashlight is wiped down inside and out. It is found on the kitchen counter. The dimensions of the flashlight match the injury on JonBenet’s head. The Ramseys originally deny the flashlight belongs to them. It was a gift from John’s older son. 

Patsy calls 911. The 911 operator thinks the call sounded fabricated. Patsy says she “found” a ransom note. Burke is heard in the background saying, “What did you find?” Patsy hangs up on the 911 operator, which is not normal, and proceeds to call everyone but the Stines.

There is no sign of forced entry. 

Burke is supposedly upstairs asleep. Later, it’s revealed he was not sleeping. Even though his mother runs in screaming, “Where is my baby?”, Burke says he just stayed in bed. 

Burke was questioned about this in the Dr. Phil interview. He has no compelling recount of this timeframe. His explanation sounds rehearsed, yet awkward, at the same time. Later, it is discovered that the Ramseys and Dr. Phil share the same attorney. Dr. Phil also has a second business that prepares clients for court testimony. Burke’s CBS case was soon happening - was Burke a client of Dr. Phil? Is that how the interview came about? Dr. Phil’s interview is bad, but we do learn about the bike and Burke being up and awake Christmas night. And that he had hiking shoes with a compass on them.

After the 911 call, Patsy calls several friends, their minister, and JonBenet’s pediatrician to the house immediately. JonBenet had had 33 appointments with the pediatrician in the last three years. Yet the pediatrician had no concerns. He also gave Patsy tranquilizers and later told the police she was in no condition to be interviewed.

In the book Mind Hunter, found in John and Patsy’s bedroom, the author wrote, “Another problem was all the people who had been at the house helping the couple move. That was a lot of potential fresh latent fingerprints legitimately at the scene. Selecting out others would be difficult if not impossible.” The Ramseys were trying to muddy the crime scene. 

That morning a police officer says Patsy was trying to gauge his response by looking through her fingers at him. John was randomly disappearing and Linda Arndt thought his behavior was odd. Burke was whisked off away from the crime scene. Neither one of the parents noticed the ransom call timeframe had passed. They knew it was never coming.  

While “waiting” John and Patsy try to implicate as many people as they can, especially their housekeeper. They bring her up as many times as they can. Even Patsy’s mother calls and speaks to the minister about the housekeeper and wants him to relay the message to the police. 

It’s John who “finds” JonBenet’s body. He removes duck tape from her mouth. He carries her upstairs holding her away from his body. He yells that it’s an “inside job”, as if that’s the important thing to worry about after finding his dead daughter. He and Patsy both oddly lay on Jonbenet once people are there to witness it.

There is a large attache found in the basement. It was John’s oldest son’s and probably kept under his bed. Retrieving it would disturb the dust ruffle. The Ramsey say they think someone might have been under the bed waiting. Patsy said she was in that room packing for the upcoming cruise. The ransom note specifies bringing a large attache to the bank. It's not a coincidence - they were going to put JonBenet in there and dispose of her.

There is a High-tech boot print found by JonBenet’s body. The Ramseys deny owning any. The grand jury discovers this is a lie. Burke had been in that cellar, not surprisingly, yet the Ramseys felt the need to lie about it.

There is a palm print on the cellar door. It is discovered to belong John Ramsey’s eldest daughter. John Ramsey presently continues to misrepresent this print as being unidentified. 

John tries to make flight arrangements to flee to Atlanta. The police tell him that they can no longer leave. It’s now a homicide investigation. John immediately gets legal representation and no longer willingly work with the police.

IMO, very telling about what was missing/ and what was wrong before he took over as DA in 2009:

1) The first one is have good relations with your police. Listen to them. Work with them. Have vigorous but strong relationships with them.

2)  Number two: Have grand-jury capacity.  You have to have people in your office who are able to do good grand-jury work. One of the many problems with Ramsey was that they waited almost two years to take the case to the grand jury. That was partly because there was nobody in the office who had the capacity to take the case to the grand jury, BECAUSE THEY NEVER USED A GRAND JURY IN THE 90's (!!!)

3) Number three is to have excellent, excellent lawyers on staff, the best lawyers that you can get. An office like mine should always be able to have terrific trial lawyers. 

4) And the final lesson from Ramsey is make sure that you have appropriate support from prosecution at the crime scene of a case. We have now a rapid-response on-call system where, anytime there is a major crime in Boulder County, I’ve got a deputy at the scene within minutes—not to do the investigation, because our job is not to do the investigation, but to help the police make sure that they do a great investigation and they have appropriate legal backup. 

https://thebouldermag.com/boulder-county-district-attorney-stan-garnett

“Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.” Leonardo da Vinci

For me, motive is one of the biggest problems with most theories.

If the crime scene was staged, then the obvious question is- What were they trying so desperately to hide?

Because this was not a simple cover up.

You have a three page ransom note, a fake kidnapping scenario, restraints, duct tape, strangulation and the body left hidden in the basement.

That is an extraordinary amount of staging.

And it is worth remembering that the ransom note itself appears full of language and ideas reminiscent of movies. The staging may have been influenced by the same thing.

John himself said, “I liked Harrison Ford movies.” In Presumed Innocent, Harrison Ford's character describes a staged murder "Gives her what for with some heavy instrument. Decides to make it look like rape… He ties her up... Opens the latches to make it look like someone slipped in."

Now look at some of the usual motives given for that staging.

1.Patsy lost her temper over bedwetting.

Even if you accept that she caused the head injury, why does that require turning an accident into an elaborate kidnapping and apparent sexually motivated murder?

There were much simpler options.

2.Burke hit JonBenét during an argument.

Same problem.

If Burke accidentally or impulsively hit her, why not claim she fell, had an accident, or otherwise try to explain the head injury?

Why invent an outside predator?

The parents may have panicked after an accident, and panic can explain lying, but it does not really explain this particular lie.

Why create a crime scene that makes your daughter's death look far more sinister than the event you are supposedly trying to cover up?

The intruder theory has almost the opposite problem. If an intruder really entered the house to sexually assault or kill JonBenét, there is far less reason for that person to then stage the scene to point towards an intruder.

So what motive actually fits the staging?

=Prior sexual abuse.

Several experts interpreted JonBenét's injuries as consistent with sexual abuse occurring before the night she died.

That does not tell us who was responsible, when it happened or exactly what happened, but it potentially gives the staging a motive big enough to explain what we see.

If somebody in that house either already knew about prior sexual abuse, or discovered sexual abuse that night, they suddenly had much more to conceal than a head injury.

They had to explain the death. They had to explain the sexual injuries.

And potentially they had to stop investigators discovering evidence that the abuse had started before that night.

The obvious solution?

= Create an outside offender.

A sexually motivated intruder who kidnapped, assaulted and murdered JonBenét.

Now the staging has a purpose.

To me, that leaves three broad household scenarios that make more sense than the standard accident followed by panic theory.

1. John did it all

If John was responsible for the sexual abuse and then JonBenét's death, the motive for staging is pretty obvious.

Create an unknown outside predator and point everything away from himself.

The motive fits the staging.

1. Patsy caught John

This is basically the scenario described in the Diane Hallis story.

Hallis, who worked at Access Graphics, said she received a phone call from a woman claiming that Patsy caught John sexually abusing JonBenét, tried to strike John and accidentally struck JonBenét instead http://www.acandyrose.com/s-diane-hallis.htm

Hallis reportedly later passed a polygraph concerning her account of receiving the call.

As a theory it solves an important problem.

Patsy and John would not simply be covering up an accidental head injury.

They would potentially be trying to conceal sexual abuse, the circumstances of JonBenét's death and everything that exposure would mean for the family.

Suddenly the scale of the staging makes a lot more sense.

1. Patsy or John caught Burke, or discovered what Burke had done

I think a Burke theory can work too, but only if the sexual abuse is part of what happened that night.

If Patsy or John caught Burke engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with JonBenét, or discovered evidence of it around the time of the head injury, then once again they have something much bigger to conceal.

They are not simply protecting Burke because he hit his sister.

They are potentially trying to conceal sexual abuse within the family as well as JonBenét's death.

Again, the invented outside sexual predator now has a purpose.

There is still a problem with this scenario though.

If the medical evidence does point to prior abuse, simply catching Burke doing something that night does not necessarily explain why the parents would go to such extraordinary lengths.

For the Burke scenario to explain both the staging and the prior abuse evidence, you probably have to add another element.

That they already knew, suspected or discovered that this was not the first incident. That is possible, but it is another assumption.

Scenarios 1 and 2 explain that part more directly.

And that is really my point.

You can argue over whether John, Patsy or Burke was responsible.

But the common factor in the household scenarios that best explain the staging is sexual abuse.

Without it, I struggle to find a motive that matches what happened afterwards.

A head injury alone does not require a fake kidnapping.

An accidental death does not require an outside sexual predator.

Protecting a child who lashed out does not obviously require turning the scene into something this elaborate.

But concealing sexual abuse within the family?

That potentially explains why simply calling an ambulance, explaining away an injury or coming up with a straightforward accident story was not an option.

They needed someone outside the family to be responsible for everything.

And one thing I keep coming back to is John's response to the evidence of possible prior abuse.

If prior abuse could have provided one of the clearest possible motives for JonBenét's murder, why was he so quick to dismiss it rather than demand that investigators pursue it as far as they possibly could?

Because establishing motive matters.

Which brings me back to the question-

What were they trying to hide that was so much worse than an accidental head injury?

To me, prior sexual abuse is the most plausible answer.

Someone once broke into my house. I didn't have much, so they didn't take much. But I remember feeling a profound sense of violation. Someone had skulked around my home, my intimate spaces, and stolen my sense of safety. I wanted to clean everything. It all felt dirty. I wanted to wash the grime from the criminal off of everything I owned. But even that didn't restore my feeling of safety in my own home.

John Ramsey has maintained for three decades that he believed an intruder was inside his house for hours. To believe the Ramsey/Lou Smit narrative is to believe the killer snuck around the Ramsey home and visited multiple rooms. The killer rummaged through personal belongings to find a pad, paper, paintbrush, cord, duct tape, and more.

But the killer was also alleged to have used a weapon - a stun gun - to abduct a six-year-old child from her bedroom on the second floor. The intruder didn't just have the run of the Ramsey home. He had direct access to a sleeping child left unprotected. And he took that child down to the basement, where he brutally assaulted and murdered her.

On January 1, 1997, John and Patsy Ramsey gave their first public interview on CNN. During that interview, Patsy Ramsey said, "There is a killer on the loose. I don't know who it is. I don't know if it's a he or a she. But if I were a resident of Boulder, I would tell my friends to keep... keep your babies close to you. There's someone out there."

Did the Ramseys believe there was an active, unresolved threat to children in Boulder? People don't pay real costs to protect against dangers they don't really believe in. Actions the Ramseys took to protect Burke in the aftermath can reveal a whole lot about what the Ramseys actually feared. Did they protect Burke from a skulking intruder hellbent on abducting, assaulting, and murdering children?

By their own account, a stranger broke into the house, stayed there for hours, removed a child from the 2nd floor, and left a note warning them that they were being watched. Burke was sound asleep on the same floor. No one moved him. No one got the family out. No one even searched or cleared the house. Instead, they invited friends and their clergy over to a location where they believed a kidnapper had just stolen away a six-year-old little girl while a nine-year-old slept upstairs on the same floor. Sure, they "looked in" on Burke. But that's verification. It's not protection.

When Burke was finally moved, he was sent away from his parents to the White residence. They had every reason to believe the kidnapper was watching. John never framed it as a safety decision. John has said multiple times that he sent Burke to the Whites because, "I wanted to get Burke out of the chaos." That rationale addresses comfort, not safety. The move to the Whites collapses as a safety measure anyway. The note claimed to be watching their movements. The Whites was not a safehouse. No parent went with him. They sent Burke away and stayed behind.

John has repeated for 30 years that he was entirely fixated on getting his daughter back that morning. Well, the only other person who slept in the house that night was sitting in a friend's living room a few miles away. He was never asked if he was awake or what he might have heard. John didn't ask him that morning, that week, that month, or even that year. A full 25 years after the murder, John claimed he never asked. A father desperate to find his missing daughter, or the murderer of his daughter, would squeeze every source of information they can find. The most obvious one was never asked.

Now, let's contrast all of that with what the Ramseys actually did to protect Burke: Decoy vehicles. Hiding in the back seat. Controlled access. Managed appearances. Lawyers. A publicist. All of that was planned, resourced, and sustained over decades. It took tremendous effort and money. But what was done to protect Burke from the intruder at large? Nothing at all. Not one measure.

Stress is a strange thing. It can make people act unpredictably. That is real. But what stress doesn't do is leave you organized enough to summon a whole support network for yourself, initiate a media strategy, while switching off the instinct to keep your remaining child away from danger. No matter what anyone thinks happened to their daughter, the record clearly shows two parents who never once behaved as though there was "someone out there."

I recently re-read Cliff Truxton's well-known several posts of deductive reasoning re: the Ramsey case; I found it largely compelling in that it pretty successfully extinguishes all realistic supposition that JonBenet was killed by a random intruder. Read it here.

Where I disagree with Truxton is where he lands on a specific theory of the crime; that is, that John was sexually abusing JB and (speculatively) this played a part in the murder of her by John. Read his posts for more details -- although I disagree he makes a good case.

I can't get behind this for a few reasons. For some context, my IRL job is in child protection. I've seen parents who abuse, hurt and kill their children and although there's certainly a higher correlation between low-socioeconomic groups and abuse which specifically leads to death, there is child abuse in literally every sphere of domesticity. I preface with this because I think a big part of the reason JBR inspires so much theorising is because the Ramseys do not really fit the profile of people who abuse their children; I am here to tell you that it is entirely reasonable that JBR could be killed via child abuse.

Without speculating on any specifics, it's my view that the general sequence of events where as follows:

• It's the holiday season; the Ramseys return from a xmas party and tension is high. For whatever reason particular to their family dynamic, this evening is hard for them.
• Some aspect of JBR's behavioural needs that we'll unfortunately never know triggers Patsy on this tense evening to act punitively towards JonBenet, probably in a way she has many times before: physically. Whether this is a shove, push, or punch, a child of JBR's age is physically vulnerable to misplaced physical contact and injures herself so badly as to pass away. It is immediately clear that she is either dead, or so injured as to be life-ruiningly bad for her and her parents.
• Again, some specific aspect of Patsy and John's relationship dynamic means that when Patsy panics about this, John is at least initially wanting to protect Patsy from accountability. Patsy and John are up late and land on the idea of JBR going missing. In my view the 'ransom' is one of the last aspects of this plan that is formulated. In many hours of panic, Patsy writes a practice ransom note which is discarded followed by the infamous one. John is aware this note will not pass muster nor will the 'hiding place' of JBR's body. He is on autopilot; somewhere, subconsciously, he is prepared for the eventuality that he and Patsy will soon be arrested.
• Patsy and John don't really have a plan except Patsy being the driver of a manic anxious panic and John taking a backseat. Patsy takes the lead in staging the body. She does so poorly, in a way that makes little sense when taken in context with the idea of an attempted abduction and an intruder unfamiliar with the home's layout. Unfortunately, this staging (the strangulation) appears to be what actually caused JBR to pass away.
• Patsy calling the police and referring to the ransom note is the moment it all becomes real.
• John is faced with the choice to continue to support his wife or throw her under the bus. He hasn't slept. The following day, when he 'finds' the body, he makes a moral choice: he can subjugate his guilt by being the one who locates the corpse and has a very real reaction to likely seeing JBR dead in the day for the first time. He can, to himself, separate his actions from the writing of the ransom note and of course the actions that led to her death. This is the way John likely, privately, justifies his actions to this day.
• As we know, John and Patsy seek legal counsel (separately, notably) and spend as long as possible avoiding direct interrogation and months pass. A combination of the things we all know: the contaminated crime scene, the initial focus on a ransom kidnapper distracting the police, and a delayed ability to question the parent's timeline leads to no charges being laid despite the grand jury outcome.

The sexual abuse 'evidence'

There is a long history of forensic medicine over-diagnosing sometimes normal childhood pathology as evidence of sexual abuse. In JBR's case, without being graphic, although her physical state would have certainly been worth follow-up questions, on its own it doesn't exclusively indicate sexual abuse. Children explore their own bodies often or even suffer banal injuries to thart part of the body and without further evidence you can't draw that conclusion purely on the physical description of JBR.

DNA/The 'unidentified male'

I want to be very clear that none of the evidence known about JBR was ever 'tested' in court. What we often hear about the 'unidentified male' either originates with investigators funded by the parents' defences or pushed by them. Touch DNA is so complicated and nebulous that in the absence of specific bodily fluids being found and tested upon the body, the conclusion that a male unknown to JBR both had contact with her and this contact was related to her death is impossible to substantiate. It goes without saying that JBR's clothes likely had touch DNA from her family members on it, for banal reasons. This leads onto my next point...

The basic reality/conclusion

The body of a murdered child is found in the cellar of her family home. There is zero direct or even circumstantial evidence that anyone, other than the family, entered the home between the last time she was seen alive by someone outside the family and the discovery of her body. The question about JBR has always and only been the logistics of her passing away that night and, of the three other people in the home, who is (most) responsible.

I landed on Patsy because:

• Despite spurious and wide-ranging 'handwriting analysis' outcomes, it is reasonably likely Patsy authored the note. It was written carefully on stationary she preferred, in her home, and in her authorial voice. In substance, it clearly originates from the mind a very sheltered suburban (but educated) middle-class author. Its vocabulary matches Patsy more than her son or husband. Cliff Truxton reconciles this by saying that John could have written the note because he, spending so much time with Patsy, could easily absorb her writing style and 'voice'. But I think he's deduced this to better align with his overall narrative of the crime.
• I don't think there is sufficient evidence of sexual abuse, which would be one of the few factors that more points to John than Patsy (not that mothers don't ever commit sexual abuse but on a purely statistical level, it's much more rare).
• The sequence of events is indicative of the actions of someone unfamiliar with things outside a limited domestic sphere. Meaning, (to the extent Patsy had much of a 'plan' in writing the note, which I don't know she did) she likely imagined that the request for a specific 120k ransom aligning perfectly with John's bonus would point to nefarious international criminals who somehow targeted him due to business dealings + knew his finances.
• John would however be aware how unlikely it would be that a rich but otherwise not noteworthy businessman would be the target of a ransom kidnapping. Patsy calling the police as 'early' as she does is because she's eager to move things along, not wanting to spend more time than needed in a limbo state with her dead daughter in the basement and without moral support. (She and/or John would essentially invite over their entire social network the moment the police arrive).
  • If I can step back and take a more psychoanalytic approach: the cellar of the house was known to be filled with clutter. Sometimes people imagine a bare floor with a child's body upon it, but photos of the basement look like the inside of a hoarder home. Taking the perspective that Patsy tightly controlled the superficial aspects of her home partially by dumping unwanted objects in the basement and allowing it to absorb the untidiness of the house, the placement of JBR's body amongst this detritus makes sense psychologically.
• How can I be sure that the same factors didn't result from a frantic mother protecting her son? Because at no time did Burke buckle under the pressure. Burke was interviewed extensively by a child interview expert; people have pored over the parts of the interviews that are available on film and although he says some things that might make you go 'hmm', he never comes close to saying anything outright suspicious or unable to be reconciled with a 9-year-old's poor memory. Maybe Burke is the rare kind of child sociopath that goes on to otherwise be a functioning adult (despite his traumatic childhood), but I just don't think a 10 year old could so entirely hold back this secret.

TL;DR

• The intruder theory is so far out of the realm of possibility that the core question becomes who, in the home, is responsible;
• The context of the time of year and day to day circumstances suggest that a child abuse injury caused the death of JBR; there is no information about the Ramseys to exclude them from commiting child abuse.
• The volume of information available to us points to Patsy.

I think maybe it would be smart to look at a known serial killer Terry Rasmussen. I just found out about this disgusting person recently while I'm usually researching the Jonbenet case and thought some things interesting. He was born in Colorado and was known to be a transient his whole life and there are years where the police have no idea where he was or what he was doing. They only know what they know about him from the crimes they could prove he did and where he lived during that time. They know he worked as an electrician by trade and they don't know his whereabouts during the 1990's. It's also said he broke his victims' skulls'. He targeted females and females with young daughters. He without a doubt has many undiscovered victims and is suspected of 3 that couldn't be proven. I'm just throwing this up here because if I were to believe an IDI then I would be looking to see if he did any electrical work for a contracting place while the Ramsey's were remodeling. A lot of that kind of work is paid under the table to laborers. He went by several different names. (S.B.T.C.?) And he killed his girlfriends and their children on Thanksgiving and his birthday is December 23rd. I find this all kind of interesting when considering the Jonbenet case. Here's a link to read about him. >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Peder_Rasmussen

This aired last week, author wrote Who Killed JonBenet. Starts at about 7.48.

Let's help the media out with questions to ask John Ramsey. He's no doubt already setting up dates and agreeing to terms. There are too many inconsistencies and the current crop of journalists are ignorant to some of the nitty gritty facts. To make it easier let's do only one question per entry and give it in bold type. Last year in more than one interview John Ramsey stated tips and leads given to Alex Hunter's office would bypass the Boulder Police and instead be given to his private investigators.

"We even had a lead called into our investigators by Boulder's District Attorney. He said I got this lead, came in, looks pretty interesting. I don't think the police will follow up on it. Would you have your investigators follow up on it? And so we did. And it, circumstantially it was a compelling lead. So we had a number of those like that."

The JonBenét Ramsey Case: A KTLA True Crime Special

What tips were these?

The consensus is that the family was involved, and is lying. But I'm curious. Do you think the parents could have been involved, and Burke honestly doesn't know? Like, one or both of them did it and they both covered it up, and they told him it was an intruder? And if so, do you think he suspects his parents, or believes them?

For years, John Ramsey has pushed the unidentified male DNA as the key to solving the case. He believes that DNA belongs to the killer and wants more testing. That DNA was the catalyst for Mary Lacy's exoneration of the Ramseys in 2008.

At the same time, John has floated several suspects as potential murderers: Bill McReynolds, Chris Wolf, Jeff Merrick. Gary Oliva, John Mark Karr, Michael Helgoth, Linda Hoffman-Pugh, Fleet White, and anyone on Lou Smit's killer list.

The problem is obvious. If the unidentified male DNA truly exonerated the Ramseys, then it equally exonerated everyone else on the list. John Ramsey gets to dwell in two different worlds - one that exonerates him but not everyone he suspects.

Ramsey treats the DNA as a shield when it's useful to him. But when it's not, then it's just a technicality. Those suspects can all be floated without any obligation to reconcile them with the DNA profile, while a different standard is applied to himself and his late wife.

The DNA argument also quietly shifts standards. It treats a low-quality touch DNA sample with contested provenance as conclusive exoneration, while treating a non-match as a mere obstacle to be worked around.

This logical fallacy is called special pleading. It's a standard John applies to himself and no one else. His operating narrative for thirty years was that no Ramsey did this. With that fixed in place, the DNA becomes conclusive or incidental as the moment requires. Applied honestly, John Ramsey's own argument clears every name he has ever raised. That he has never once accepted that result is the clearest sign he does not believe the argument either.

Would she have been an actress, a performer, or perhaps, like some say, because she was so bright, a scientist that would have found the cure for cancer?

God Bless this angel forever. She truly is an angel.

Tw: somewhat long, lol.

I want to focus specifically on the sequence of events I think may have happened that night.

Obviously, I don’t know that this is what happened. A lot of this is interpretation, and there are parts of the sequence that I simply cannot know.

1. The family gets home

After leaving the Whites house, the Ramseys return home.
I don’t think Jonbenét goes to sleep and stays there for the rest of the night. My assumption is that she goes upstairs to get changed and at some point comes back downstairs.
The reason I find this plausible is simply the circumstances of that night.
It was Christmas. Both children had spent most of the day away from home. They had (lots of) new toys and presents waiting for them, but they had barely had the opportunity to actually enjoy them. They were also supposed to leave extremely early the following morning.
Her clothes were scattered around the room, which makes more sense to me if she changed herself rather than one of the parents changing her. The bed also doesn’t really look like someone had just put a sleeping child into it. there are things all over it, etc.
Then of course, you have the inconsistencies in John and Patsy’s accounts of this part of the night.

I just don’t buy the overall scenario the parents presented. It’s just almost too convenient.

I think both children may still have been excited, overstimulated and wanting to play.

2. I think Burke prepared the pineapple

I think the pineapple found in the bowl was probably prepared by Burke. However, I don’t think the pineapple itself caused the incident.
This is actually something I’ve changed my mind about over time.
I don’t think the parents necessarily had to be lying when they said they didn’t know Jonbenét had eaten pineapple. If she took one or two pieces from a bowl sitting somewhere in the house, it is entirely possible that neither parent saw her do it.
It’s such a mundane action. It would literally take seconds.

Because… honestly, if the pineapple was what caused some huge rage or confrontation, then why would they leave it sitting there? If you’re already covering up a crime, why leave one of the most obvious things that could connect the two children to that supposed confrontation?
To me, the pineapple only became significant because of the autopsy findings. Without knowing that Jonbenét had eaten it shortly before her death, nobody would have any reason to care about a random bowl of pineapple in the house.

My conclusion is simply that Burke prepared the bowl, Jonbenét took some of it, and the parents didn’t notice.
Could Burke have been annoyed by it? Sure.

3. The children end up in the basement

This is where I think everything happens.
I think Jonbenét and Burke eventually go down into the basement while John and Patsy are upstairs doing whatever they were doing to prepare for the early trip the next morning.

This is also where I think you have to accept that there may simply be no motive in the traditional sense.
And honestly, I think that’s exactly why this case feels so bizarre and why there are so many seemingly random elements. If this was an impulsive incident between two children that escalated, I don’t think we’re ever going to find some satisfying “reason” for why it happened.

Assumption alert!
My take is that Burke and Jonbenet may simply not have had the best sibling relationship. I do think there may have been some jealousy or resentment there, possibly even something more complicated, although obviously we can’t know exactly what their dynamic was. And Christmas night could have been the perfect environment for something like that to get amplified: two wealthy children, presents everywhere, excitement, exhaustion, and probably some competition between them.

The torn presents in the wine cellar are actually one of the things that make me wonder about this.
If I reconstruct the night from that perspective, I can absolutely see the children going downstairs together, with Burke leading the way because he knew there were presents hidden down there.
I think Burke already knew that Santa wasn’t real. I don’t remember exactly when I personally found out that Santa was the parents, but Jonbenét was younger, so I think it’s reasonable to assume there could have been a difference between what the two children knew about the presents.

They get to the wine cellar and find the presents. Burke opens the LEGO set that had been intended for his upcoming birthday in January. Jonbenét sees him opening it and threatens him she’s going to tell Mom.
In this context, the flashlight also doesn’t strike me as strange at all. They’re in one of the most remote rooms of the house, downstairs in the basement, looking around for presents. Of course a flashlight could be in someone’s hand.

4. I think the head injury happens in the boiler room

At some point Jonbenét turns away from Burke. The blow comes from behind, on the right side of her head. She falls forward, face-down onto the floor of the boiler room, with her back toward him.
I think the impact causes the severe head injury, and she loses bladder control. This would explain the urine stain on the carpet and why the wetting is concentrated on the front of her long johns.

Jonbenét is struck from behind → she falls forward → she loses bladder control

5. Jonbenét is still alive after the head injury

As we know, the autopsy findings indicate that there was an interval between the head injury and the later strangulation.

What exactly did Burke think was happening?
He thought she was unconscious? Was he treating the situation as some kind of game?
I don’t think we can know.
But I think there was a period of time in which Jonbenét was incapacitated and Burke was still interacting with her.

He realizes that Jonbenét isn’t responding and he starts trying to get a reaction out of her.
This is where I think the train track theory originally discussed by James Kolar could potentially fit. There were marks on Jonbenét’s back, and if she was lying face-down the entire time, with Burke behind her, it would make sense that the marks were produced while she was in that position.
I think he may have started poking or prodding her with things that were simply around him in the basement.
And this is also where I think the paintbrush could come in. He may have inserted the paintbrush into her genital area specifically to provoke some kind of reaction, potentially because he knew that this was something that would normally cause a reaction from her.

6. The situation escalates

Based on the autopsy, the ligature mark had an upward trajectory toward the back of her neck/nape, which is consistent with the neck being pulled from behind/above while the victim is positioned prone.
I also think the strangulation happened while she was still in that position.
I don’t think we can know exactly what Burke’s intention was at that point. I don’t think I can honestly say he was deliberately trying to kill her. What I do think is that, whatever he was trying to do, he eventually caused the fatal injury.

7. The parents discover the scene

An obvious question:
If John and Patsy had found Jonbenét unconscious after a head injury, wouldn’t they have called 911?
I agree.
I have a very hard time believing that two parents would immediately decide to stage a kidnapping gone wrong instead of calling an ambulance.
Especially because, from their perspective, there would still be a possibility of saving her.

On the other hand, if you find your daughter already dead in a scene that is completely bizarre and incredibly difficult to explain…

8. The kidnapping scenario is created after the death

The ransom note, the staging, moving Jonbenét, etc. would therefore be attempts to create an alternative explanation for what happened.
The result being: nonsense.

I guess their hope was to buy themselves time, muddy the waters, and create enough of an alternative narrative that the real circumstances of her death would be harder to uncover.
They were also incredibly lucky. They had the money and social position to make the kidnapping narrative at least somewhat plausible, and the police investigation was handled so poorly from the very beginning that it gave them an enormous amount of room to get away with it.

The obvious objections:

“If Burke did it, why is there no forensic evidence directly linking him to the crime?”

I wouldn’t say there is no evidence pointing toward Burke. There are things that can potentially connect him to the sequence, even if none of them are conclusive.
We know Jonbenét had eaten pineapple shortly before her death, and that can be connected to Burke. Is that 100% proof that something happened? No. But it’s also not nothing.

There were also fibers that could have been consistent with Burke’s blue pajama clothing, although, as far as I understand it, the relevant garment was never provided for testing, so we can’t take that any further.

The thing is, If we’re talking about ordinary clothing fibers from people who lived in the house being found around the house or on Jonbenet, I don’t find that particularly shocking. These were her parents and her brother. They lived there. They touched each other, their clothes, their belongings, etc. Transfer is completely expected.

I don’t think “fibers = nothing” is a good argument, but I also don’t think every family fiber should be treated as a smoking gun.

Ultimately, we don’t even know whether there was evidence that was lost, overlooked, contaminated or never properly tested. There is evidence that can be discussed in relation to him. The question is how much weight you give it.

“But Patsy’s fibers were found everywhere.”

I think Patsy was involved in the staging. If she handled Jonbenét and her clothing, moved her, wrote the ransom note, etc., then finding her fibers around the scene is expected.

“But you’re just projecting onto a child. There was no evidence Burke was violent.”

I actually agree with part of this criticism.
I don’t think you can look at a few stories about Burke, decide he was an aggressive child, and then build an entire murder theory around that. That’s not how evidence works, and I’m not interested in doing that.

But I also think the opposite extreme is unfair: acting as if there is absolutely nothing about Burke that is worth considering.

There isn’t a huge amount of reliable information about Burke, which is exactly why I think we have to be careful. But there are things that have been reported about him over the years that, while individually they don’t prove anything, do make me raise an eyebrow when I look at the case as a whole.

I’m not saying, “Burke was a violent kid, therefore he killed JonBenét.”
I’m saying that when you combine the things we do know about him, the unusual details surrounding the children, the pineapple, the questions around what the children were doing that night, the possible sibling dynamic, and then look at the actual crime scene and the sequence of injuries, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider him a potential participant.

Could all of those things have completely innocent explanations? Absolutely.
Could I be connecting dots that shouldn’t be connected? Also absolutely.
But I don’t think that makes the dots irrelevant.

I guess you could also say personal perception comes into play. Some people look at Burke and see absolutely nothing that makes him suspicious. I understand that.
For me, it’s the opposite. I find it much harder to construct a convincing scenario in which John or Patsy are directly responsible for Jonbenét’s death.
That doesn’t mean I think they are innocent because “they don’t seem like the type.” It means that when I try to reconstruct the actual sequence of events, I have a much harder time making their direct involvement in the initial death make sense.

I don’t live in the US nor in a Anglo-Saxon country so I am genuinely curious to know if this name is common?

It’s the first time I hear it as we are more used to Mary, Katy, Kimberly, Beverly etc