[OVERVIEW]

Six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey lived with her family in Boulder, Colorado: her mother, Patsy, her father, John, and her older brother Burke, who was nine at the time of the murder.

On Christmas night 1996, the Ramsey's hosted a party at their house in Boulder, Colorado.

The Ramseys put JonBenét to bed around 9 pm. The next morning at 5 am, Patsy Ramsey woke to find a three-page ransom note on the stairs.

The note claimed that someone had kidnapped JonBenét.

According to the ransom note, her parents would need to pay $118,000 for her safe return.

The note stated that the kidnappers were going to call between 8am-10am with instructions for how to drop off the money.

The family and the cops waited, but no call came.
Some time after the ransom call window, the cops asked the Ramsey's to check the house again for anything that was missing or out of place that they could use as evidence.

John and a friend immediately went to investigate the basement after the cops asked them to scan the house.

A few minutes later, John came up the stairs carrying the body of JonBenét. He had found her in a backroom in the basement.

JonBenét had died from both blunt force trauma and strangulation.

Her body also showed signs of sexual abuse.

The most popular theory is that a member of the family killed her. However there are a few other theories we will be talking about as well.

[RANSOM NOTE]

According to the police, the ransom note the Ramseys found was very unusual.

First of all, it was three pages long. That's, really, really long for a ransom note. What more do you really need to say besides "We have your daughter, here's how much money we want?"

Apparently a lot.

The Ramsey ransom note was incredibly chatty, going on for three pages about who the kidnappers were, what they were going to do with JonBenet, and other strange superfluous information.

The note asked for exactly $118,000 for JonBenét's safe return, which was a significant number to John Ramsey.

$118,000 sounds pretty random. Why not ask for a nice round $200,000?

But this number may have been precise for a reason: it was almost the exact same amount of money John Ramsey had received as a Christmas bonus earlier in the month.

Which could mean one of two things: either the kidnappers knew John had received this amount of money as a bonus and that he would have it, or John wrote the note himself, trying to make it appear that someone who knew his bonus amount was the kidnapper.

The long ransom note claimed to be from a "small foreign faction." What exactly is a small foreign faction?

Nobody is quite sure. It also claimed that the kidnappers would behead JonBenét if the money wasn't given to them in a brown paper bag after what they described would be an "exhausting delivery" for John.

It ended with the strange sign off "Victory!" It is an all-around weird note. Because of its strange language and weird demands, some people think the note was a fake.

The police were able to determine that the note was written on paper that came from the Ramseys' house.

Which means if there really was a kidnapper, they would have had to break into the house, kidnap JonBenét, and hand write a three-page long ransom note all while the family slept.

It seems a little risky to come to a kidnapping without a note prepared, why would the kidnapper take the time to write three entire pages and risk getting caught?

[BASEMENT]

The weirdest part of the kidnapping was that there was no kidnapping.

JonBenét was discovered in the basement after several hours. Apparently, the police hadn't searched the house thoroughly enough to discover her body until hours after they were called.

In the basement where JonBenét was found, there was a broken window and a footprint on a suitcase under the window.

It's possible if there was an intruder, this is how they got in. However, there were no footprints in the fresh snow outside the Ramsey house and there was a spiderweb across the window that was undisturbed.

If someone had broken in through the window, the spiderweb likely would have been broken. John Ramsey claimed he had accidentally broken this window before the murder.
But where did the footprint come from?

Was it a badly-done set up by John to make it appear that someone had broken in, did someone really break in through the window, or was it all just a coincidence?

[SUITCASE]

And a weird thing about that suitcase: the Ramsey's claimed it wasn't theirs and they didn't know how it got in the basement.

The suitcase was examined by police, and it was found to contain a semen-encrusted blanket and a Dr. Seuss book. But that's not the weirdest part.

The semen belonged to another family member. It belonged to John's oldest son from a previous marriage. He didn't live with the Ramseys, though. But the police were able to prove he wasn't in Boulder at the time of the murder.
But a lot of people think a different family member was responsible.

[BURKE]

Some people believe that Burke killed JonBenét by accident and his parents helped covered it up

The theory is that Burke had killed his sister by accident, perhaps by accidentally hitting her on the head with something heavy or hitting her in anger, and then his parents wrote the note and tied JonBenét up in the basement to make it look like a kidnapping.

But JonBenét died of both blunt force trauma to her head and strangulation. She was found tied up with a cord around her neck, and it was shown through autopsy that she was still alive when she was strangled.

If Burke had accidentally killed his sister, why would she have been both beaten and strangled?

But it seems that before her death Burke had been having increasingly disturbing behavior especially towards his sister. So many believe that Burke intentionally killed his sister but pretended it was an accident. After 20 years Burke did an interview with Dr. Phil and many pointed his his behavior and body language was quite odd, especially since he was talking about the death of his sister. With every question asked he would just have a smile on his face which made found weird. Even when asked if he hit his sister in the head he kept the smile on his face. Many people wonder if you were getting asked about if you killed your sister who would you smile while answering the question?

[PAST SEXUAL ASSAULT]

She was found with a drop of blood in her underwear and some signs that she may have suffered sexual abuse in the past.

Her mother had taken her to the doctor for vaginal irritation in the past but claimed it was from a bubble bath.

[DNA]

There was DNA found on JonBenét's underwear that couldn't be matched to anyone in the family. But it also couldn't be matched to anyone in the police database.

Who was this DNA from? It's not clear.

A DNA specialist argued that it could have even come from the factory where the underwear was made.

Besides the mysterious DNA, the crime scene was completely contaminated since the Ramey's, and their friends were in the house all day before the body was found.

[ACTING STRANGE]

According to the investigator, the Ramseys acted strangely all day.

While they waited for the phone call from the kidnappers, before they found the body, JonBenét's parents barely stayed in the same room with each other.

They also didn't even mention that the kidnappers never called.

The police and the family waited for the kidnappers to call between 8am-10am as indicated by the note, but nobody ever called.

According to the investigator on the scene, nobody mentioned that the window had passed, which she found odd.

[911 CALL]

When Patsy called 911 to report her daughter missing, she used some pretty strange language. She said, "We have a kidnapping" when she explains why she is calling.

This type of passive language ("We have a kidnapping" vs. "My daughter has been kidnapped") has been linked to lying.

Patsy also didn't even mention JonBenét until a few sentences into the 911 call, she talked about the kidnapping and the note, but not that her daughter was gone.

This doesn't necessarily mean anything, but you would think the first thing you would tell 911 if you woke up to find your six-year-old daughter missing was that your six-year-old daughter was missing.

Patsy was the one who ended the 911 call. This is not typical. Usually, people stay on the line with 911 until police get there or until they know for sure the police will get there soon.

Patsy didn't wait on the line to give additional details or hear if the police are on their way, she hung up so abruptly the 911 operator asked if she was still there.

[SANTA CLAUSE]

One suspect was a man who dressed as Santa Claus and asked his wife to mix his ashes with a vial of glitter JonBenét had given him when he died.

JonBenét knew Bill McReynolds from Christmas parties, where he often dressed up as Santa.

She had given him a glass jar of glitter one year, which he took with him into heart surgery and asked to be mixed with his ashes.

But beyond his creepy behavior towards JonBenét, there isn't a ton of evidence that he could have killed her. He is now deceased.

[SEX OFFENDER]

Gary Oliva was a known sex offender who lived near JonBenét. He called a friend the night of her murder upset, claiming he'd hurt a little girl.

Strangely, he was also found with the same stun gun marks on his body that JonBenét had.

[SCHOOL TEACHER]

A school teacher named John Mark Karr reached out to a professor who was making a documentary about JonBenét and told him that he was the one who killed her after sexually abusing her.

But police were able to prove that Karr wasn't even in Boulder at the time of her murder and just wanted the fame, which is truly disgusting.

[KATY PERRY]

There are rumors on the internet that Katy Perry is actually a grown-up JonBenét, and that the murder never happened.

The person who started the conspiracy claims they have the exact same eyebrows.

[YOUR THOUGHTS]

Who do you believe killed JonBenét? Or do you believe she grew up to be Katy Perry?