JonBenet Ramsey Case: A Capsule Recap

After ten long years and endless aspersions cast on the victim’s family, it may finally be over.

The case many believe would never be solved took a stunning turn in Thailand Wednesday, with the arrest of a suspect in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

The Boulder, Colorado beauty queen was just six years old when violence shattered the holidays at her home on Christmas night 1996.

The crime was not only gruesome but completely unfathomable.

The child spent an ordinary day at her parent’s home, where she received a new bicycle as a Christmas gift. Her parents took her to a party and by the time they all returned around 9:30pm, their little girl was alseep in the backseat.

They carried her to bed that same evening without incident, and closed her bedroom door.

But somewhere in the night, something went very wrong very fast.

When her mother Patsy woke up at 5am the next morning, she discovered the last thing she ever expected – a ransom note demanding $118,000 for her daughter’s return.

The note warned she would be killed the next day if the money wasn’t paid.

Frantic, the mom raced upstairs to where her child was supposed to be sleeping.

But she wasn’t there, leading to a household alarm and a call to police.

But in a series of mistakes that would take on added significance later, cops failed to search the house or stop friends and neighbours from trampling through the crime scene.

Hours later, JonBenet was finally located in the basement. She’d been hit over the head and strangled.  

What happened next is a series of events that has become the subject of documentaries, movies, and numerous books. Police took the Ramsey family in for questioning, taking blood, hair and handwriting samples.

As time went by, both the police and the public turned from sympathy to suspicion. How could the youngster have been taken from her room to the basement without anyone in the home knowing?

Many started to publicly accuse the Ramseys of being behind the killing, despite a lack of evidence.

They hired an attorney and refused to talk to the cops or the media, only increasing the pressure and the speculation about what they might be hiding.

Over the years, experts have emerged with various theories, mostly pointing at the mother, with JonBenet’s father aiding in the supposed ‘cover-up’.

Both claimed their innocence but many were still left to wonder.

Despite years and years of investigations and what many call police bungling, the case was never solved. A decade later, an arrest on an unrelated charge in Thailand may have finally and forever changed all that.

Sadly, Patsy Ramsey never lived to see herself exonerated. She died from cancer in June, all the while missing her daughter and wondering who took her from the family.