12 Days of Murder - "THE CHRISTMAS MURDER: JONBENÉT RAMSEY'S LAST NIGHT ALIVE - PART 1"

0:03 Callaroga Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Reed Carter. Wednesday, December twenty fourth, twenty twenty five, Christmas Eve. Welcome to twelve Crimes of Christmas. For the next twelve days. While the courts are dark for the holidays, we're covering classic cases that shook America, and we're starting with the one that happened exactly twenty nine years ago. Tomorrow, December twenty fifth, nineteen ninety six, Boulder, Colorado, a six year old beauty queen named John Beney Ramsey went to bed in her family's fifteen room mansion after a Christmas party. She never woke up. The next morning, her mother, Patsy, found a rambling, three page ransom note on the back staircase demanded exactly one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars for John Benney's safe return.

0:53 That number wasn't random, it was almost exactly what her father John had received as his Christmas bonus that year. Patsy called nine one one at five fifty two a m police arrived. Seven minutes later. They searched the house, but somehow missed the basement. For seven hours, John Bennet's body lay in the wine cellar, while officers combed the upstairs and friends wandered freely through the crime scene. At one pm, a detective asked John Ramsey to search the house again. He went straight to the basement, opened the door to a small storage room, found his daughter lying on the floor, duct tape over her mouth, hands bound above her head, a garrote made from a broken paint brush handle twisted around her neck. She was six years old.

1:38 John carried John Bennet's body upstairs, laid her on the living room floor, destroyed whatever forensic evidence might have remained, the crime scene was already contaminated beyond repair. Twenty nine years later, no one has been charged, the case remains officially unsolved, and we still don't know who killed John Beney Ramsey on Christmas night. I'm reed, Carter. This is Celebrity Trials today. The murder that has haunted America for nearly three decades, the botched investigation, the destroyed crime scene, and a six year old girl who should be thirty five years old today, Part one of three. Before we get to the horror, let's talk about who John Benet Ramsey was, because she deserves to be remembered as more than a victim, more than a case file. John Benet Patricia Ramsey was born August sixth, nineteen ninety in Atlanta, Georgia.

2:34 Her father, John Bennett Ramsey, was a successful businessman who ran Access Graphics, a computer company that had recently been acquired by Lockheed Martin. Her mother, Patricia Anne Ramsey Patsy, was a former beauty queen who'd won Miss West Virginia in nineteen seventy seven. The family moved to Boulder, Colorado, in nineteen ninety one, when Access Graphics relocated its headquarters. John was worth an estimated six million dollars. They lived in a Tudor style mansion on Fifteenth Street, fifteen rooms, a wine cellar, multiple staircases, and a basement so large and labyrinthine that police would later fail to search it properly. John Bennet had an older brother, Burke, who was nine at the time of her death. She also had older half siblings from John's first marriage, John Andrew and Melinda, and she'd had another half sister, Elizabeth, who died in a car accident in nineteen ninety two at age twenty two.

3:30 John Benney was buried next to her Patsy introduced John Benney to beauty pageants at age four. The Little Girl was a natural blonde hair, blue eyes, a smile that lit up stages. She won titles including Little Miss Colorado, America's Royale Miss, Little Miss Charlevois, Colorado, State All Star Kids, Cover Girl, and National Tiny Miss Beauty. The pageant world would later become controversial of John Bennet. Performing in elaborate costumes, full makeup, and styled hair made some viewers uncomfortable, but by all accounts, John Beney loved performing. She was described as outgoing, affectionate, and genuinely happy on stage. She attended High Peaks Elementary School in Boulder, loved her family, loved Christmas.

4:22 Had no idea that December twenty fifth, nineteen ninety six, would be her last day alive. That Christmas Day, the Ramsays spent the morning at home opening presents. In the early evening, they attended a party at the home of family friends Fleet and Priscilla White. John Benet played with other children ate dinner. By the time they left around nine pm, she was already asleep in the car. John carried her inside and up to her bedroom on the second floor. Put her to bed, still wearing the clothes from the party. Patsy changed her into pajamas without waking her. The family went to sleep. They had an early flight the next morning, heading to their vacation home in Michigan, then onto a Disney cruise. Sometime between ten pm on Christmas night and five thirty am on December twenty sixth, John Bennet Ramsey was taken from her bed, brought to the basement, sexually assaulted, struck in the head with enough force to fracture her skull, strangled with a garrot fashioned from nylon cord and a broken paint brush. She fought.

5:25 The autopsy found scratches on her neck half moon shapes from her own fingernails trying to claw the cord away. She was conscious when the strangulation began. A six year old girl fighting for her life in her own basement on Christmas night, and nobody heard anything. John, Patsy, and Burke all claimed to have slept through whatever happened. No screams, no sounds of struggle. Nothing make it make sense. John Beney should be thirty five years old today, should have graduated high school, college, maybe started a family of her own instead. She's been dead for twenty nine years, buried in Marietta, Georgia, next to her half sister Elizabeth. Someone has to say her name. Someone has to remember she was a person, not just a case file. December twenty sixth, nineteen ninety six, the day after Christmas, five thirty am, Patsy Ramsey came downstairs to make coffee. The family had that early flight to catch. As she descended the back staircase toward the kitchen, she saw papers on the steps, three pages handwritten a ransom note. Mister Ramsey, listen carefully.

6:45 We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We respect your business, but not the country that it serves. At this time, we have your daughter in our possession. Patsy stopped reading ran upstairs. John Benet's bed was empty. She woke John, screamed, then called nine one one. The call came in at five point fifty two a m. Patsy was hysterical. We have a kidnapping. Hurry please. The dispatcher tried to calm her down, asked questions, how old is your daughter? She's six years old. She's blonde. Does the note say who took her. No, I don't know, there's a there's a ransom note here. Police officer Rick French arrived at five fifty five am, first responder. He did a quick search of the house, but missed the basement, missed the wine cellar, where John Benet's body was already lying.

7:42 Here's the first failure. French should have searched every room, every closet, every possible hiding place. That's basic procedure for a missing child. But the house was enormous, fifteen rooms, multiple levels, a confusing layout, and the ransom note said John Bennet had been kidnap, apped, taken somewhere else, So French focused on the upper floors, where she'd last been seen. By six a m. More officers arrived. They secured John Benet's bedroom, taped it off, but that was the only room they protected. The rest of the house open season. Patsy had already called friends and family. Fleet and Priscilla White arrived, John Fernie and his wife others followed. By mid morning, the Ramsey home was filled with people walking through rooms, touching surfaces, using bathrooms, contaminating any forensic evidence that might have existed. Your tax dollars at work. Meanwhile, the ransom note sat on a table, three pages over three hundred seventy words, the longest ransom note in FBI history.

8:48 Let me tell you what that note said, because every word of it would become evidence. You will withdraw one hundred eighteen thousand dollars from your account. One hundred thousand dollars will be in one hundred dollar bills and the remaining eighteen thousand dollars in twenty dollar bills. Make sure that you bring an adequate size attache to the bank. When you get home, you will put the money in a brown paper bag. I will call you between eight and ten am tomorrow to instruct you on delivery one hundred eighteen thousand dollars, not a round number, not a million dollars, which you'd expect from kidnappers targeting a multimillionaire.

9:29 One hundred eighteen thousand dollars, almost exactly what John Ramsey had received as his Christmas bonus that year. Whoever wrote this note new intimate details about the family's finances. The note continued with threats. Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter. You will also be denied her remains for proper burial. It referenced speaking to the two gentlemen watching over your daughter, warned John not to contact police, said the fa family was under constant scrutiny, and it was signed Victory SBTC. Nobody has ever figured out what SBTC stands for. Theories ranged from saved by the Cross to references from action movies.

10:14 The note itself contained phrases that seemed borrowed from films like Speed, Dirty, Harry, and Ransom. But here's the most damning detail. The note was written on a legal pad from inside the Ramsey home using a pen from inside the Ramsey home. The FBI told Boulder police this was extraordinarily unusual. Kidnappers write ransom notes beforehand. They don't sit in a victim's house composing a three page letter while a dead child lies in the basement, unless the killer wasn't a kidnapper at all. The call the note promised between eight and ten am never came because John Benney wasn't kidnapped. She was already dead, had been dead for hours.

10:56 At one pm, Detective Linda Arndt made a decision that would haunt the investigation Forever Frustrated that no ransom call had come, she asked John Ramsay and family friend Fleet White to search the house again see if anything was out of place. John went straight to the basement to a room investigators had somehow missed a small storage area, the wine cellar. He opened the door and there was John Bennet. She was lying on her back, a white blanket partially covering her body, duct tape over her mouth, wrists bound above her head with white cord, another cord, a garrot made from nylon rope, and a broken paintbrush handle wrapped around her neck. John screamed, picked up his daughter's body, carried her upstairs, laid her on the living room floor, ripped the duct tape off her mouth. Detective aren't watched in horror. Any forensic evidence on the body, fingerprints, fibers, DNA was now compromised. The crime scene, already contaminated by hours of foot traffic, was destroyed for by a grieving father holding his dead child. The coroner didn't arrive until eight pm that night. John Benet's body wasn't removed until ten forty five pm, more than seventeen hours after Patsy's nine to one one call. Welcome to justice in America.

12:17 A six year old girl murdered on Christmas night and the police bungled the investigation from the first minute. We'll be right back with the autopsy findings that would shock the nation and the evidence that pointed in two completely different directions. Welcome back to celebrity trials. I'm Reed Carter. December twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six. The day after John Benet's body was discovered, Boulder County Coroner John Meyer performed the autopsy. The official cause of death asphyxia by strangulation associated with cranio cerebral trauma. In plain English, she was strangled and her skull was fractured. Both injuries could have been fatal on their own. Let me paint you the picture of what the autopsy revealed. John Bennet had an eight and a half inch linear fracture on the right side of her skull. Someone had struck her with tremendous force, likely a blunt object, possibly a flashlight or similar weapon.

13:29 The blow caused bleeding in her brain, subarachnoid and subdural hemorrhage, but she didn't die. Immediately from the head wound. The evidence suggested she survived unconscious but alive, for somewhere between forty five minutes and two hours after being struck. During that time, someone fashioned a garat, took a paint brush from Patsy Ramsay's art supplies in the basement, broke it into three pieces, used one piece as a handle, wrapped nylon cord around it, created a device specifically designed to strangle. Then they put it around John Bennet's neck and twisted. The autopsy found a deep ligature furrow around her neck, petechial hemorrhages in her eyes, tiny blood spots caused by strangulation.

14:14 She was alive when the cord tightened. The half moon scratches on her neck proved she fought tried to pull the garrote away with her own fingers, a six year old girl fighting to breathe in her own basement. There was also evidence of sexual assault. No seamen was found, suggesting no conventional rape, but there was vaginal injury, trauma to the hymen, a small amount of blood evidence that something, possibly the missing piece of the paintbrush that was never found, had been used to assault her. The coroner noted that her vaginal area appeared to have been wiped clean. Someone tried to eliminate evidence. Duct tape covered her mouth, though her arms were bound loosely above her head. Her torso was wrapped in a white blanket, her favorite blanket, freshly laundered that had been in the dryer. Whoever covered her knew which blanket she preferred, knew where the clean laundry was.

15:10 The autopsy also found fragments of pineapple in John Bennet's digestive system. She'd eaten pineapple within a few hours of her death, but John and Patsy insisted they hadn't fed her pineapple that night, said she was asleep when they got home from the party. Crime scene photos showed a bowl of pineapple on the kitchen table with a spoon in it. Burke's fingerprints were on the bowl. Did John Benet wake up after being put to bed go downstairs for a snack encounter her killer? The pineapple has never been explained. Here's what the evidence told investigators. Whoever killed John Bennett knew the house intimately knew where to find the paintbrush, the cord, the blanket, the notepad and pen for the ransom note, spent considerable time in the basement fashioning the garotte, writing a three page letter covering the body with care. This wasn't a rushed kidnapping gone wrong.

16:04 This was methodical, personal staged but it also contained elements that made no sense for the family theory. Unknown male DNA was found in the crotch of John Beney's underwear, mixed with her blood. That DNA didn't match John, Patsy or Burke, didn't match anyone in the FBI's database, still doesn't. A bootprint was found next to her body, didn't match any shoe owned by the family. A climbing rope was discovered in a paper bag and a guest bedroom. The Ramsey said it didn't belong to them. An open basement window, one that John Ramsey admitted he'd broken months earlier when locked out, showed possible signs of entry. Evidence pointing inside the house, evidence pointing outside. Twenty nine years later, we still don't know which direction leads to the truth. That's part one of our John Beney Ramsey Special. December twenty fifth, nineteen ninety six, a six year old beauty queen murdered in her own home. On Christmas night, December twenty sixth her mother found a bizarre ransom note. Police arrived but failed to search the basement. Seven hours later, her father found the body. The crime scene was destroyed before it was ever properly documented. Tomorrow, Part two. The investigation that turned the Ramses into suspects, the media circus that convicted them in the court of public opinion, the intruder theory that never got a fair hearing, and the nineteen ninety nine grand jury that voted to indict but was overruled

17:35 by a district attorney who refused to prosecute John Benet. Patricia Ramsey was six years old. She loved performing, loved her family, loved Christmas. She should be thirty five today, should be building her own life. Instead, she's been dead for twenty nine years and her killer has never faced justice. Tomorrow is Christmas, the anniversary of her murder. Will continue her story. Sory Rest in peace, John Benet. Someone has to say your name. I'm Reed Carter. This is celebrity trials.