Thanks to a new Netflix docuseries from true crime mainstay Joe Berlinger, audiences across the nation are asking a question true crime fans never really let go of.
The new series, Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, doesn’t actually spend all that many of its three hour-long episodes speculating about its title question. Instead, it spends most of them arguing a hot take that’s less hot than you might think — that JonBenét’s own parents didn’t do it.
Following JonBenét’s violent death — which occurred sometime during the early morning hours of December 25 and 26, 1996, in her family’s massive home in Boulder, Colorado — that was a very popular theory. During the ensuing media frenzy, many members of the public looked at John Ramsey and his wife Patsy (who died in 2006) and assumed the case was open and shut.
The victim was an eerily sexualized 6-year-old pageant queen; her face graced the tabloid magazine covers at every checkout line in America. In 1997, no single news story was bigger than this one; by 1998, the Los Angeles Times labeled her “the nation’s most famous murdered child since the Lindbergh baby.” And although a 2003 federal ruling supported the Ramseys’ innocence, and they were formally exonerated in 2008, many people remain convinced that one or both of JonBenét’s parents were the culprits and suggest they did it to cover up a horrible accident committed by their 9-year-old son. A hugely influential 2016 CBS series about the case confidently made that argument.
Yet in recent years, many experts, including several featured in Berlinger’s documentary, have argued that an intruder committed the crime — a theory that the original police investigation never really seemed to take seriously, and which led to deep divisions among Boulder police, the district attorney, and the FBI.
Much of the confusion stems from the problem that the original investigation was botched from the beginning, with police allowing the crime scene to be completely contaminated, evidence to be moved around and tampered with, rooms to be cleaned, and a string of visitors to traipse throughout the house for hours after the Ramseys called 911. This negligence torpedoed the integrity and reliability of nearly every piece of evidence in the case. As a result, even decades later, every detail remains up for debate.
As for a list of potential suspects, while there are several primary contenders, including the Ramseys, it’s often difficult to have an even-handed discussion about them. That’s likely all because of a single piece of evidence, one of the most infamous in true crime history: the ransom note.
For most people who look into the JonBenét case, how they view the ransom note determines how they view the rest of the case, including who did it. That’s because the ransom note itself is so inexplicable that it immediately, and perhaps permanently, biased and derailed the entire investigation.
The strangest ransom note ever
The first weird thing about the ransom note is where Patsy claims to have found it — lying unobtrusively on the floor of a back spiral stairwell in the early-morning hours of December 26. She gave conflicting stories about the sequence of events: In one version, she checked JonBenét’s room first and noticed she was missing, and then found the ransom note; in the more frequently repeated version, she found the note first, then ran upstairs to check on JonBenét, only to discover her missing.
The next weird thing about the ransom note is… well… everything about it. Here is the text in full:
Mr. Ramsey,
Listen carefully! We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We [the word “do” has been scribbled out] respect your bussiness [sic] but not the country that it serves. At this time we have your daughter in our posession [sic]. She is safe and unharmed and if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter.
You will withdraw $118,000.00 from your account. $100,000 will be in $100 bills and the remaining $18,000 in $20 bills. Make sure that you bring an adequate size attache [sic] to the bank. When you get home you will put the money in a brown paper bag. I will call you between 8 and 10 am tomorrow to instruct you on delivery. The delivery will be exhausting so I advise you to be rested. If we monitor you getting the money early, we might call you early to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence a [sic] earlier [“delivery” is scribbled out] pick-up of your daughter.
Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter. You will also be denied her remains for proper burial. The two gentlemen watching over your daughter do not [“not” has been inserted between words] particularly like you so I advise you not to provoke them. Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as Police, F.B.I., etc., will result in your daughter being beheaded. If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies. If you alert bank authorities, she dies. If the money is in any way marked or tampered with, she dies. You will be scanned for electronic devices and if any are found, she dies. You can try to deceive us but be warned that we are familiar with Law enforcement countermeasures and tactics. You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to out smart [sic] us. Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back.
You and your family are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities. Don’t try to grow a brain John. You are not the only fat cat around so don’t think that killing will be difficult. Don’t underestimate us John. Use that good southern common sense of yours. It is up to you now John!
Victory!
S.B.T.C
There’s a lot to unpack here: The strange ransom amount — $118,000 — corresponded to John’s year-end bonus that year from the lucrative tech company he ran. The note’s over-the-top language seems to be referencing well-known quotes from movies that feature abductions and ransoms, including Dirty Harry, Ransom, Ruthless People, and Speed. The “foreign faction” is very obviously not real, and “S.B.T.C.” has never been linked to any existing group.
The final oddity about the note is where it came from — a notepad belonging to Patsy. The note’s author not only used the notepad, they wrote a draft version of the note originally addressed to “Mr. & Mrs.” before directing the note just to John. They even used a Sharpie from the house that they then helpfully returned to the correct pen holder.
Patsy participated in a string of handwriting analysis sessions, over which multiple analysts concluded it was probable, but not definitive, that she wrote the note. However, the modern understanding of handwriting analysis generally holds that it’s a shaky forensic arena prone to significant cognitive bias, and that less experienced analysts are more likely not only to be wrong, but to be more confidently wrong than their peers. Other handwriting analysts have since offered totally different opinions about who wrote it. Behavioral analysts, too, tried to analyze the note with dubious results. To give you an idea of the kind of hysteria that surrounded this case, one official psychological profile claimed that “SBTC” could have meant “Saved by the cross,” and argued that Patsy was a “delusional sociopath” who committed the murder as part of an arcane religious ritual.
The ransom note is so strange that for many people it’s impossible to get around the sheer improbability of anyone writing it at all. After all, what purpose could it serve an intruder to linger in the house after the crime, taking their time to write multiple drafts of a note, for a kidnapping that had not taken place?
One argument against this is that the intruder could have written the note before the crime. The Ramseys were away for hours at a Christmas party that evening, which gave a potential predator hours to enter the house, familiarize themselves with the home’s layout, and play around with creative writing exercises while waiting for the family to return and settle in for the night.
But the question of motive — why? — seems to lead, for most people, away from an intruder and straight back to a Ramsey: The note is so fantastical that the most glaringly obvious conclusion is that it was written by someone who was desperate to divert attention away from the home and away from the family.
For a while, if that was the motivation, it worked: Boulder police assembled at the house but then left without securing it as a crime scene, leaving only one officer there throughout the day until JonBenét’s body was ultimately found by her father in the basement.
Yet if this was really a cover-up by the family, the question of motive still remains: Why would the family leave (or place) JonBenét’s body in the basement if they wanted the police to think she’d been abducted? Why write such an elaborate ransom note or ask for such a specifically incriminating amount? Either way you look at it, the ransom note just doesn’t make sense.
For most people, there’s only one way to read the ransom note: Patsy wrote it. What else could it be?
One alternate way for us to think about this ransom note comes to us via The Consult, a recent podcast hosted by former members of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, of Mindhunter fame. We know criminal profiling is as pseudoscientific as every other cool-but-actually-junk forensic tool, so we have to take this analysis with many grains of salt. But in their two-part series studying the ransom note earlier this year, host Julia Cowley and her guest Robert Drew made interesting observations about the mindset of the letter writer — by honing in on the fact that they were really into movies about abduction.
That sounds like an obvious point, but the profilers used it to make a salient point about the kind of person who could commit this crime. Every film referenced in the note involves a villain who, at the moment he’s making ransom demands, fully has the upper hand over the hero. He’s not only calling the shots, but doing so gleefully and maliciously, exactly as the letter writer may be attempting to do with John. The former FBI profilers argue that the letter is a fantasy of having control over someone rich and powerful — that it’s not an anomaly, but rather an extension of a crime scene created by a sadistic child abuser.
This isn’t the only way to read the note, of course, but it’s a reasonable way to think about how the note fits into an intruder scenario. And given the resurgence of interest in the case, maybe this truly bizarre piece of evidence will finally start making some sense.
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