JonBenét Ramsey’s Father Begs Police to Solve Her Murder 28 Years Later: "Just Do Your Job"
John Ramsey looks back on his Christmas bonus as a clue to who killed his daughter JonBenét Ramsey in 1996.
In a never-before-seen sit-down with Barbara Walters during the early aughts, the patriarch theorized that his 6-year-old's murderer—whose identity continues to remain a mystery—must have demanded a $118,000 ransom for a specific reason.
"One of the theories that I came up with," John—who shared JonBenét and son Burke Ramsey, now 37, with late wife Patsy Ramsey—said in the interview, airing fir the first time on the Dec. 13 episode of ABC News' 20/20, "that it was close to the net amount I'd received that year as a bonus."
He surmised to Walters, who died in 2022 at age 93, that the number "means something to the killer" or else they wouldn't have used such a specific figure in the ransom note, which was found on the kitchen stairs at the family's Colorado home.
"Whether that's tied to my bonus or something else, we don't know," John said. "Only the killer knows."
Patsy, who died in 2006 at age 49 after a battle with ovarian cancer, added in the same interview that she did not know John had received such a bonus until after discovering the ransom letter.
JonBenét was found dead in the basement of her home on Dec. 26, 1996, hours after her parents called the police to report a kidnapping. Her cause of death was determined to be strangulation and blunt head trauma.
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And though John and Patsy quickly became the center of suspicion in the case, a district attorney cleared the couple—as well as their son Burke, who was 9 years old at the time of JonBenét's murder—of any involvement in 2008 due to DNA evidence.
Now, nearly 30 years after JonBenét's death, John continues to seek answers. In fact, he recently appeared in Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey as a way to, as he explained, "put pressure on the police" for a solve.
"We're not going away," he said in the Netflix docuseries. "I'm going to be hammering on you 'til I die if you don't find this creature that did this to our daughter."
For a deep dive into the JonBenét murder investigation, keep reading.
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