Who killed JonBenet Ramsey?

I believe Patsy wrote the ransom note.

The ransom note - especially the exact amount of his Christmas bonus was too bizarre a coincidence to not to involve someone in the family or the family knew well. No one asks for $118,000 as a ransom. I have no idea what happened to that little girl, but it wasn't a random intruder.

Hmmm ... guess I'm in the minority    

I think her brother killed her and the parents tried to cover it up by inventing the intruder story. An outsider wouldn’t leave the body inside the house and leave a ransom note, it doesn’t make sense.

I think the parents believed the brother did it, and tried to cover it up. Thus the odd ransom note. In reality there was a break in and some one else did it.

I don’t think we’ll ever know since the police botched the investigation from the very beginning by letting family and friends wonder around the house. Plus, they were so convinced from the beginning that it was the family, they didn’t even explore other possibilities.

The specific information in the ransom note certainly points to the family. However, would they have tied up their precious daughter in that awful garrote if they were just trying to cover for a family member? And, as someone already said, I do seem to remember there was unidentified DNA found on her panties. The police said no one could have crawled through that basement window, but others have shown it was quite possible.

The brother is definitely different, but that doesn’t mean he is a murderer.

As the mother of a young adult on the spectrum that’s what I think .

I think this and the Maddy McCann case will always be a mystery.

The parents were conpletely exonerated. My gut feeling was always the brother, but I believe he was ruled out as well.

In all honesty the exoneration of the parents was just another bungling of the police/DA - it should never have happened. Lacy was incompetent. 

I watched that 20/20 as well. For the most part it concentrated on Lou Smit’s research and his family’s. I tend to believe it’s mostly what Lou Smit asserted.

- Jon Benet was tasered, garroted, bludgeoned, strangled and sexually assaulted.
- DNA matching no family member was found on the child’s nails and panties.
- I do not believe it was a family member.
- I believe the failures of responding police officers made the case unsolvable.
- Lou Smit found (and proved possible) evidence of forced entry through a basement window. I think the whole cobweb theory is totally subjective.

I think she was killed by a man who knew the family, maybe had even been in their home in the past, he became obsessed with Jon Benet and decided to take her - when the abduction didn't go according to plan, he had to kill her and get out of there.

I do not believe that anyone in the family had anything to do with it - the facts do not add up to that. When you read opinions by FBI agents who have dealt with serial killers and child murderers the opinion of those experts is that parents do not kill their children in this way, and that otherwise kind loving parents would not be capable of 'staging' a scene like this either, nor do previously normal parents bash in the skull in of a child who wets the bed. Jon Benet had NO signs of other or ongoing abuse. When people who have seen all sorts of horrific crimes say that it wasn't the family...then I'm inclined to agree with them.


This is the main issue - there were inexperienced police on that day who had no expertise in dealing with a case like this and they screwed it up in every way possible.

Did you read the autopsy results?
So you are saying the brother hit her harder than intended, and killed her accidentally, so then one or both of her perfectly normal parents, proceeded to get a paintbrush and some cord and garroted her - and twisted the cord hard enough to break the brush handle, then they used that brush handle to penetrate their daughter sexually (before she was dead), then they duct taped her mouth shut, they potentially stun gunned her, and then left her in the basement with her hands over her head.
In what world does all of that make sense to cover up an accident? No parent does that to a child they loved - and there is no evidence that either of them were in any way abusive or not good parents. She was a normal child, well fed and the analysis of the autopsy concluded that she had not suffered any physical or sexual abuse prior to the night of her murder.

The head injury probably didn't kill her (the strangulation did), so she would have still been alive when the parents had to do all of the other stuff to 'cover up'
John Douglas from the FBI serial killer unit says he has never seen a parent kill a child in that way.

Also if the parents did it to cover up...wouldn't they be keen to lead the police to her body? They wouldn't have all those people over to the house for hours knowing she was dead in the basement.

This idea of a sibling killing another one and the parents staging an elaborate cover up is the stuff of fiction - when has it ever happened in real life?

Yes it is...because it doesn't happen. That child would have to me a monster *if* he was able to do all of those things, but there's no way he'd be able to garrote her in the way it was done. That would take an adult.

An autopsy is just facts, the only conclusion drawn in an autopsy is the cause of death. I just mentioned facts, not any conclusions.