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The Mystery of JonBenet: Inside the Coldest Case of the ’90s · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

• 0:34
  Speaker 1: On Christmas morning nineteen ninety six, the police in Boulder,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Colorado received an unusual phone call. The caller was Patsy Ramsey,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: and she told them that her daughter, six year old
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: John Bennay, had been kidnapped and ransom note had been
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: left in the house. Within three minutes of the call,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: officers arrived at the Ramsey family house. They didn't see
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: any signs that someone had broken in. From the very start,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: investigators noticed that the ransom note was unusual. While ransom
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: notes were usually brief and rushed, this one was extremely
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: detailed and it was two and a half pages long.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: The amount of money they asked for, one hundred eighteen
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars, was the exact amount of money that John
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: had received for last year's Christmas bonus at work. This
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: made it appear as if the note had been written
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: by someone intimately familiar with the Ramsey family, close enough
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: that they would know how much John's Christmas bonus was.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: During the early part of the investigation, nobody made an
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: effort to preserve the forensic evidence in the house. Apart
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: from John Benet's bedroom. Patsy called several family friends and
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: a minister, all of whom quickly arrived at the Ramsey
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: house to support her and John John started making plans
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: to pay the ransom. In the early afternoon of that day,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: one of the detectives asked John Ramsay and one of
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: his friends to take another look through the house and
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: see if they could find anything. John decided to examine
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the basement, and within minutes he found his daughter. John
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Benet was lying on the basement floor behind a closed door,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: her wrists tied with a nylon cord duct tape covering
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: her mouth and a crudely made garrat around her neck.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: She was dead, and she had been dead since before
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: she was reported missing. Instead of waiting for investigators to
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: examine the crime scene, John immediately picked up his daughter
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: and carried her body upstairs. Rigor mortis had already set
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: in and John Benet's body was frozen in place, with
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: her arms stretched above her head. Unable to cradle her
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: in his arms, John held her at arm's length. There
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: had never been a kidnapping. John Benet had never left
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: the house. In the investigation, police recognized two main theories
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: about who could have killed John Beney Ramsey. The first
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: theory relied on the ransom note being at least partially true.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Although John Benay was never actually kidnapped, an intruder broke
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: into the house and murdered the six year old girl.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: The evidence for this theory was limited to the ransom
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: notes and a partial bootmark left in the basement of
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: the house, which was never matched to any of the ramseys.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: One of the detectives working the case theorized that an
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: intruder broke into the house through one of the basement windows,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: which was broken. However, when searching the house, investigators had
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: noted that the cobwebs on the broken window had not
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: been disturbed, and neither had the dust on the windowsill.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: It seemed impossible that somebody had managed to squeeze through
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the window in the dark without touching any of the
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: cobwebs or disturbing any of the dust. John Benay's autopsy
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: ruled that her cause of death was a combination of
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: a fractured skars goal and strangulation with the garrot. However,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: both the injuries had not occurred at once. John Beney
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: had been hid in the head with a blunt object,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: causing an injury that would eventually become fatal, but it
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: hadn't killed her instantly. She had laid dying for around
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: an hour before the second injury, the strangulation had occurred.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Her killer had used a paintbrush handle and some nylene
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: cord to make a garrot, strangling the six year old
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: to death. Although no seaman was found on John Benet's body,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: there was an injury to her genitalia which appeared to
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: have been caused by the same broken paint brush which
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: was later used to create the grot around her neck.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: The genital injury had occurred after the head wound, closer
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: to the time that John Beney died. According to the pathologist.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Somebody had also used a cloth to wipe her genitalia
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: shortly before she died, and her stomach partially digested pieces
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of pineapple were found. There's one key problem with the
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: intruder theory. Investigators never found any concrete evidence proving that
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: an additional person had been inside the Ramsey house that night.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: In fact, the only people confirmed to be home that
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: night where John, Patricia, their son Burke, and John Beney.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: The second theory, which is what the initial investigation focused on,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: is that one of the Ramses was the killer. While
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: investigators didn't uncover evidence that somebody else had broken into
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the house, there was clear evidence that the crime scene
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: had been staged. Someone had left behind a false ransom note,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: despite John Benney never being moved from the place where
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: she was killed. Additionally, the Ramsey family weren't helpful to
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: law enforcement during the early stages of the case. John
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: and Patricia later claimed that this was because they were
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: concerned that they would be framed. Most of the theories
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: surrounding the Ramsey family focused on Patsy and nine year
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: old Burke. Some people believed that John Bennay had infuriated
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: her mother by wetting the bed, and Patsy had seriously
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: injured her by hitting her on the head, then bizarrely
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: decided to strangle her daughter with the garat and stage
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: a kidnapping in an attempt to get away with the crime.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: One of the main reasons that Patsy was suspected was
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: the belief that she had been the one to write
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: the ransom note. During the nine to one one call,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Patsy stated that she had realized John Bena had gone
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: missing after she discovered the note, which had been left
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: sitting on the stairs. Not only was the ransom note
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: incredibly long, but there was evidence that it had been
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: written inside the Ramsey house, meaning that the author had
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: risked being discovered while they took the time to write
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: not only a two and a half page long ransom note,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: but also a first draft which was discarded. The author
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: of the note appeared to have no idea what a
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: ransom note should actually contain. Instead, they referenced dialogue from
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: several movies, including Dirty Harry and Escape from New York.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Despite the note warning that any attempts to contact the
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: police or the FBI would result in John Benay being beheaded,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Patsy had read the note and immediately called nine to
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: one one. The pen and the paper used to write
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: the note both belonged to the Ramseys. No unknown fingerprints
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: were found on the paper. The only person who had
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: handled it appeared to be Patsy. Forensic pathologist Michael Bodden
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: stated that in his sixty years in the field, he
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: had never seen a ransom note similar to the one
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: found in the John Benney case, and he believed that
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: there was no way an intruder unknown to the family
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: had written it. A Colorado Bureau of investigation report came
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: to the conclusion that there were indications that the author
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: of the note was Patsy Ramsey. However, they didn't find
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: enough evidence to say for sure. Likewise, another theory is
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: that Burke her brother hit John Benay due to a
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: sibling dispute, and when he or one of his parents
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: realized how seriously she was injured, they fatally strangled her
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: and then staged the kidnapping. Burke was interviewed by the
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: police several times, and unlike his parents, he was never
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: officially considered to be a suspect. By two thousand and two,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: the case remained unsolved and a new district attorney took over.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: While the previous investigation had focused almost exclusively on the
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Ramses as suspects, the new DA was interested in looking
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: into the intruder theory. A year later, trace amounts of
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: unknown male DNA were found on swabs taken from John
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Benney's clothing. Investigations carried out numerous DNA tests trying to
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: find somebody who matched. Despite a long list of potential suspects,
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: they never found a match. In two thousand and eight,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: the d D sent a letter to the family apologizing
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: for the suspicion and claiming that they were now completely
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: cleared as suspects. By this time, Patsy Ramsey had been
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: dead for two years. She died of cancer at the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: age of forty nine. However, not everyone agreed with the
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: decision to clear the Ramses. The following year, the Bolder
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Police Force reclaimed the case and opened the investigation again.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: It has remained open ever since. In twenty sixteen, a
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: show titled The Case of John Beney Ramsey was released
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: on CBS. The experts featured on the show explained the theory
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: that nine year old Burke had hit John Bennay in
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: the head with a flashlight, and that even though he
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: hadn't meant to kill her, the injury had been fatal
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and the ransom letter had been written by Patsy to
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: try and avoid her son facing the consequences. Burke then
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: filed several defamation lawsuits and response to the show's claims,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: which were settled in Janey twenty nineteen. That's ten minute
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• 13:02
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• 13:05
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• 13:07
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• 13:09
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