Cold case series looks at JonBenet Ramsey death

Six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in the basement of her parents’ home the day after Christmas in 1996.

The tragic details — a tiny beauty pageant contestant bludgeoned in her home after a day of celebrations — captivated the nation and sparked years of fevered speculation about who killed her.

Now, a three-episode Netflix documentary series, “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey,” is introducing a new generation to one of America’s most extensively covered child homicide cases.

JonBenet’s mother, Patsy, called the police hours before her body was discovered in the basement, saying that her daughter was missing and that she had found a ransom note demanding $118,000 — the same amount JonBenet’s father, John Ramsey, had received in a bonus as chief executive of a Lockheed Martin subsidiary.

Initial investigations focused on family members, with police searching the family’s home in Boulder, Colo., seizing computers, files and video and still photography equipment to look for pornography after an examination of her body revealed possible signs of sexual assault.

The former Little Miss Colorado’s doll-like appearance in heavily made-up pageant photos fueled speculation that she might have been exploited, although the Colorado Bureau of Investigation ruled out the pornography theory.

A former police chief inadvertently revealed years later that officers had, in his view, bungled their response by failing to secure the crime scene — they initially thought they were investigating a kidnapping, not a murder.

John and Patsy Ramsey repeatedly denied any involvement in their daughter’s death. They were officially cleared of suspicion in 2008 based on DNA evidence from the crime scene.

Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in 2006. John Ramsey, now 80, appears in the documentary. He recalls how the family fell under a constant media glare.

“We’d stay with friends, and within a day or two, the house would just be surrounded by cameras and people banging on the door and the windows.”

JonBenet’s brother Burke, who was 9 at the time of her death, reached a confidential defamation settlement with CBS in 2019 after the network aired a series that included an unsubstantiated theory that he had killed his sister.

The Boulder police investigation remains open. A cold case review team including forensic experts from the FBI, Colorado Bureau of Investigation and Boulder County District Attorney’s Office made recommendations last year on ways to advance the case, but their advice has not been made public.