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The Unsolved Murder of JonBenét Ramsey: What Really Happened? · Kat Has Questions: True Crime and Unsolved Mysteries

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Cat Has Questions. Curiosity, stories, and the strange
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  Speaker 1: corners of everyday life. Hi, and welcome back to Cat
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  Speaker 1: Has Questions, episode two. That means if you're here, you
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  Speaker 1: returned on purpose.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: Love that for us. If you are a family member
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  Speaker 1: or a friend, I bullied into hitting play. Also love
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  Speaker 1: that for us.
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  Speaker 2: Truly a win-win.
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  Speaker 1: I'm recording this right around what would have been my
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  Speaker 1: dad's 62nd birthday.
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  Speaker 2: He passed away in 2019.
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  Speaker 1: And so about six years ago from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, he
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  Speaker 1: had a battle with cancer for about a year and
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  Speaker 1: a half.
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  Speaker 2: So in honor of my dad's birthday, I.
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  Speaker 1: Am going to be covering the JonBenet Ramsey case. And
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  Speaker 1: you may be wondering how that is connected at all.
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  Speaker 1: But me and my dad would watch a lot of
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  Speaker 1: documentaries on the JonBenet Ramsey case. I think it was
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  Speaker 1: when I was just graduated from college and I was
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  Speaker 1: getting my doctorate in audiology.
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  Speaker 2: And one of the years I lived at home when
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  Speaker 2: I was getting my doctorate.
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  Speaker 1: So spent a lot of time watching TV with my
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  Speaker 1: dad and my parents and JonBenet Ramsey. We knew we
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  Speaker 1: could solve it. And we watched so many documentaries. And
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  Speaker 1: as I was researching for this episode, I realized how
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  Speaker 1: many documentaries and different things that came out in 2016.
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  Speaker 1: So I'm guessing that is why we got.
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  Speaker 2: Really hooked on it.
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  Speaker 1: And every docu-series we watched, we had it solved. And
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  Speaker 1: we even joked that we had our own murder-solving LLC
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  Speaker 1: that we were like, oh, what's the next case we're
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  Speaker 1: going to solve here? You know, with whatever one-sided documentary
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  Speaker 1: we saw that day, we knew who had committed the murder.
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  Speaker 1: So I am going to tell you this very overtold story.
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  Speaker 1: It's a very complicated case. Definitely not better than other
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  Speaker 1: people and likely a little bit worse. But here we
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  Speaker 1: go nonetheless. My sources for today are from biography.com. an
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  Speaker 1: article called JonBenet Ramsey by Catherine Caruso and Meredith Worthen.
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  Speaker 1: That'll be the main one. And then I also used
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  Speaker 1: an EBSCO piece titled The Ramsey Murder Case by Maureen
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  Speaker 1: Puffer Rothenberg, but I will put both of these in
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  Speaker 1: the show notes. So the JonBenet Ramsey case. Honestly, I
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  Speaker 1: feel like most people have heard of it, even if
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  Speaker 1: only vaguely. It's one of those cases that has lived
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  Speaker 1: in the true crime world forever. But if you actually
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  Speaker 1: haven't heard it, here's who JonBenet was. She was a
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  Speaker 1: six-year-old child beauty queen who lived in Boulder, Colorado. The
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  Speaker 1: day after Christmas in 1996, she was found dead.
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  Speaker 2: In her family's home.
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  Speaker 1: Her murder remains unsolved to this day, and it became
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  Speaker 1: one of the biggest and most controversial police investigations of
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  Speaker 1: the decade. There are two main theory categories people always
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  Speaker 1: go back to, that the family did it or an
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  Speaker 1: intruder got in. Her parents and brother were never charged,
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  Speaker 1: and DNA testing in 2008 actually cleared them at least
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  Speaker 1: according to investigators, but the theories really never stopped. So
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  Speaker 1: John Bonnet's early life, John Bonnet, Patricia Ramsey was born
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  Speaker 1: August 6th, 1990 in Georgia. Her name was literally a
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  Speaker 1: combination of her parents' names, John Bennett Ramsey, who was
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  Speaker 1: her dad. He was a multimillionaire businessman and Patricia Patsy Ramsey,
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  Speaker 1: her mom, who was a former Miss West Virginia, very
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  Speaker 1: pageant coded family already. In 1991, The family moved to Boulder,
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  Speaker 1: where John's business merged with another company, and they ended
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  Speaker 1: up in a big, luxurious home in a really nice neighborhood.
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  Speaker 1: John Bonnet had an older brother, Burke, who lived at home,
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  Speaker 1: but she also had three older half-siblings from her dad's
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  Speaker 1: first marriage. One of them, Elizabeth, had died tragically in
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  Speaker 1: a car accident in 1992. The other two, Melinda and
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  Speaker 1: John Andrew, were older teens or adults at the time,
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  Speaker 1: so they did not live in the Boulder home. JonBenet
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  Speaker 1: herself was known as outgoing, bubbly, and full of personality.
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  Speaker 1: Patsy put her into beauty pageants starting young, and by six,
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  Speaker 1: JonBenet had already won several titles. Little Miss Colorado, National
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  Speaker 1: Tiny Miss Beauty, America's Royal. She was good at pageants,
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  Speaker 1: a little pageant girly. And if you've ever seen photos
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  Speaker 1: of her, she was so cute. Back home, she was
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  Speaker 1: in kindergarten at High Peaks Elementary, and the Ramseys truly
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  Speaker 1: doted on her. They lived a very comfortable, very affluent lifestyle.
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  Speaker 1: They even owned a vacation home in Michigan. And because
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  Speaker 1: of that wealth, some people later claimed that JonBenet became
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  Speaker 1: a target. So the morning that everything changed. Early on
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  Speaker 1: the morning of December 26th, 1996, the day after Christmas,
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  Speaker 1: Patsy Ramsey called the police after finding a three-page ransom
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  Speaker 1: note demanding $ 118, 000 for JonBenet's safe return. Only three people
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  Speaker 1: were believed to be in the house at the time. John, Patsy,
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  Speaker 1: and nine-year-old Burke. The only sign of a possible break-in
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  Speaker 1: was a basement window that was open, but there were
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  Speaker 1: no obvious signs of a struggle. So friends, family, and
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  Speaker 1: officers all start searching the house. And again, this detail
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  Speaker 1: always gets me. There were people walking all over the
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  Speaker 1: house because police assumed they were dealing with the kidnapping,
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  Speaker 1: not a homicide. They didn't treat it as a sealed
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  Speaker 1: scene because they didn't know it was a homicide. Hours later,
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  Speaker 1: John Ramsey and a family friend went to the basement,
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  Speaker 1: a part of the house that somehow hadn't been searched,
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  Speaker 1: and found JonBenet's body in a small room. She had
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  Speaker 1: been strangled with a garrote made from a cord in
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  Speaker 1: what investigators believed was part of Patsy's paintbrush. She also
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  Speaker 1: had a skull fracture, bruising, abrasions, and signs that she
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  Speaker 1: had been sexually assaulted. DNA evidence was found, but it
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  Speaker 1: was very limited, and her death was ruled a homicide immediately.
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  Speaker 1: So there were quite a few mistakes within the investigation.
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  Speaker 1: When police arrived, they made several crucial errors. One, they
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  Speaker 1: didn't immediately secure the home. Multiple people were walking around
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  Speaker 1: contaminating evidence. JonBenet's parents were not separated for questioning. Some
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  Speaker 1: reports and evidence were shared back to the Ramseys. And
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  Speaker 1: Jon removed duct tape from her mouth and carried her
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  Speaker 1: body upstairs when he initially found her, which... understandably destroyed
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  Speaker 1: some evidence, but I do not blame him at all.
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  Speaker 1: No parent would be thinking straight of like, oh, let
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  Speaker 1: me preserve the crime scene when, you know, they're in
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  Speaker 1: shock because they just found their dead child. But because
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  Speaker 1: of these early missteps, the investigation started on shaky ground.
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  Speaker 1: And quickly, the public and a lot of the investigators
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  Speaker 1: began looking at the Ramseys themselves. Okay, so this ransom note,
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  Speaker 1: people have analyzed the life out of it. So it
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  Speaker 1: was written on paper from inside the house. and it
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  Speaker 1: was three pages long, which is very unusual for a
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  Speaker 1: ransom note. Handwriting analysis also could not rule out Patsy
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  Speaker 1: as the author, and the amount demanded was $ 118, 000, which
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  Speaker 1: matched John's exact year-end bonus, so that was very suspicious.
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  Speaker 1: Fibers from the duct tape on John Bonet's matched fibers
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  Speaker 1: from Patsy's clothing, so you can see why people were
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  Speaker 1: pretty suspicious of them. But the Ramseys remained adamant that
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  Speaker 1: they were innocent, They hired private investigators, they offered a reward,
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  Speaker 1: and they did media interviews. Although those interviews, especially for Patsy,
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  Speaker 1: made people even more suspicious. She had a very pageant-polished
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  Speaker 1: vibe that read as cold to the public. Whether that's
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  Speaker 1: fair or not, it did hurt them. So then also
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  Speaker 1: some other things regarding the interviews and DNA and Burke's
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  Speaker 1: role in all of it. The Ramseys weren't formally interviewed
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  Speaker 1: until four months after JonBenet's death, which was April 1997,
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  Speaker 1: which is so wild. They were not interviewed for four months.
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  Speaker 2: About her death. And then they were interviewed again.
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  Speaker 1: June 1998. Burke, who was only nine at the time,
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  Speaker 1: was also interviewed. Some theories pointed at him mostly because
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  Speaker 1: there was a bowl of pineapple on the table and
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  Speaker 1: JonBenet had undigested pineapple in her stomach. People have speculated
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  Speaker 1: that maybe Burke got angry and struck her when she
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  Speaker 1: was trying to eat his pineapple. and that the parents
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  Speaker 1: staged the rest of the scene to protect him. But
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  Speaker 1: experts said a nine-year-old could not create the grot or
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  Speaker 1: inflict all the injuries, so officially he was only ever
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  Speaker 1: a witness, not a suspect. So some other suspects. Other
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  Speaker 1: names floated over the years included a sex offender named
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  Speaker 1: Gary Olivia, an electrician Michael Helguth, a pageant photographer, and
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  Speaker 1: even the town Santa. Yes, really, the town Santa. But
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  Speaker 1: none were charged. With the case stalling, the district attorney
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  Speaker 1: convened a grand jury in 1998. The panel actually voted
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  Speaker 1: to indict John and Patsy on child abuse, leading to
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  Speaker 1: the death in accessory charges. But this is huge. The
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  Speaker 1: DA chose not to prosecute, saying there wasn't enough evidence.
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  Speaker 1: And the existence of that indictment wasn't made public until 2013.
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  Speaker 1: I remember when this detail came out, it kind of
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  Speaker 1: reignited everything. In the early 2000s, The Ramseys released a
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  Speaker 1: memoir called The Death of Innocence, and they sued a
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  Speaker 1: Boulder detective for defamation because he also wrote a book
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  Speaker 1: accusing them. And they all settled that lawsuit. And then
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  Speaker 1: in 2002, Patsy Ramsey... sadly died of ovarian cancer at
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  Speaker 1: the age of 49. And then in 2006, so about
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  Speaker 1: four years later, a man named John Mark Carr, a
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  Speaker 1: teacher living in Thailand at the time, confessed to John
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  Speaker 1: Bonet's murder.
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  Speaker 2: This was international news.
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  Speaker 1: Investigators flew him back to the US and then DNA
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  Speaker 1: testing immediately ruled him out.
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  Speaker 2: So that ended as quickly as it began.
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  Speaker 1: In 2007, new DNA testing concluded the killer was not
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  Speaker 1: a blood relative. And in 2008, DA Mary Lacey wrote
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  Speaker 1: a formal letter clearing John, Patsy, and Burke saying no
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  Speaker 1: innocent person should endure the level of public scrutiny that
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  Speaker 1: they had. The DNA belonged to an unknown male, though
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  Speaker 1: some experts later questioned whether the sample might be mixed
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  Speaker 1: DNA rather than a single person's. So even the so-called
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  Speaker 1: clear-cut DNA evidence isn't totally clean. And then this brings
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  Speaker 1: us to 2016. So around the 20th anniversary, Brooke appeared
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  Speaker 1: on Dr.
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  Speaker 2: Phil.
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  Speaker 1: This was a huge moment because he had basically never
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  Speaker 1: spoken publicly before, and he maintained his family's innocence and
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  Speaker 1: said he believed it was a pedophile from the pageant world.
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  Speaker 1: That same year, I think it was like a couple
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  Speaker 1: weeks later, the CBS documentary, The Case of JonBenét Ramsey,
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  Speaker 1: came out and heavily implied that Burke killed her. And
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  Speaker 1: I 100% remember when this blew up, everyone online was
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  Speaker 1: speculating again. TikTok didn't even exist, but this would have been.
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  Speaker 2: Made for TikTok energy.
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  Speaker 1: Burke sued CBS for defamation and settled for an undisclosed
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  Speaker 1: amount in 2019. So this case has so many theories.
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  Speaker 1: An intruder sneaking into the basement, a family cover-up, Burke
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  Speaker 1: reacting in anger. pageant world predators, someone who knew their schedule,
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  Speaker 1: or someone who clearly knew John's work bonus, so maybe
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  Speaker 1: from work, or maybe there are multiple people involved, especially
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  Speaker 1: if the DNA is mixed, if it is mixed. So
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  Speaker 1: people point to DNA, but then argue the DNA might
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  Speaker 1: be contaminated. People point to the window, but then they
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  Speaker 1: argue there's no debris. People point to the ransom note,
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  Speaker 1: but then argue an intruder could have staged it. It's
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  Speaker 1: one of the most endless debated true crime cases ever.
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  Speaker 1: As of the last major updates, more than 2,500 pieces
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  Speaker 1: of evidence exist.
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  Speaker 2: Samples from 200 plus people were taken.
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  Speaker 1: Over 21,000 tips have come in and nearly a thousand
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  Speaker 1: DNA samples have been analyzed.
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  Speaker 2: In 2023, the case fully became digital. In 2024, a
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  Speaker 2: Colorado cold case team.
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  Speaker 1: Reviewed it and gave recommendations that the Boulder PD is
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  Speaker 1: still currently reviewing. And in the world of documentaries and dramatizations,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: there was Casting JonBenet in 2017, The Killing of JonBenet,
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  Speaker 1: The Truth Uncovered, Netflix's Cold Case, Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey,
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  Speaker 1: which just came out in 2024, and then there's actually
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  Speaker 1: a new limited series coming out on Paramount +, starring
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  Speaker 1: Melissa McCarthy as Patsy Ramsey and Clive Owen as John.
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  Speaker 1: So this case is not going anywhere anytime soon. And today,
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  Speaker 1: it remains unsolved. Even after decades, thousands of interviews, endless theories,
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  Speaker 1: and mountains of evidence, no one fully knows what happened
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  Speaker 1: that night. Was it an intruder? Was it an inside job?
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  Speaker 1: Was it a tragic accident covered up? Or a crime
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  Speaker 1: of opportunity that spiraled? There are clues pointing every direction,
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  Speaker 1: but none of them tie neatly together. And that's why
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  Speaker 1: this case still grips people almost 30 years later. But
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  Speaker 1: that is all I have for episode two.
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  Speaker 2: Stick around.
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  Speaker 1: I will have another episode released next week. Thanks for
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: listening to Cat Has Questions. If you liked this episode,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: follow the show and share it with someone who loves
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: a good spiral.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: See you next week.