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Three decades after JonBenetRamseys death, her murder remains officially unsolved.
But the Little Miss Colorados demise lingers as the archetypal crime mystery.
Sleuths continue to hash out theories: inbustling andcompetingReddit communities, onpodcastsandnetworkdocumentaries.
Or did an outside intruder somehow pierce the sanctity of their upscale Boulder home?
The case was perplexing from the moment Patsy found a ransom note the morning of December 26, 1996.
Listen carefully, began the three-page letter.
The onetime Miss West Virginia called 911 in a panic.
BeforeToddlers & Tiarasturned pageant moms into pop archetypes, the subculture was mostly hidden from view.
The parents insulation with lawyers and spokespeople only heightened suspicions.
Reddit has replaced message boards and Usenet forums.
Theories have zoomed in on specific family members.
And a new scripted series isforthcoming on Paramount+, starring Melissa McCarthy as Patsy and Clive Owen as John.
NetflixsCold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey,directed by Joe Berlinger, doesnt really offer a new take.
Cold Caseasks many of the same questions about agendas and power thatParadise Lostdid.
But unlike the West Memphis Three, the affluent Ramseys were not unsophisticated, working-poor teens in rural America.
Cold Casestarts with the confusion at the Ramsey home on the day after the murder.
The police officers involved in the investigation did not talk to Berlinger.
But in the docuseries, John claims cops and reporters promoted misinformation.
She later gave an infamous interview saying a nonverbal exchange with John led to her conclusion.
Officers viewed him and Patsy as victims of a kidnapping, not potential suspects.
Cops didnt seal off the home like a crime scene.
That wasnt because the police suspected the Ramseys, but rather, the opposite: because they didnt.
Still, the series claims that law enforcement painted the Ramseys in a bad light.
Still, the FBI agreed an intruder was unlikely and suggested examining the family first.
The police pursued leads that JonBenet might have been sexually abused.
But the police soon moved on from John to Patsy.
Detective Steve Thomas settled on the theory that Patsy had murdered her daughter.
He believed that with her 40th birthday approaching, she snapped due to a bed-wetting.
Its telling that Thomass theory was ultimately the one that took off.
He had more power in the department than Arndt, who thought Patsy was innocent.
John and Patsy gave DNA samples in 1996 butrefused to come to police headquartersfor anofficial interrogation.
Instead, in an earlyJanuary 1997 interview on CNN, a subdued Patsy declared a killer on the loose.
In April,they finally went to police headquarters.
Did their class entitlement contribute to confusion between them and friends and police?
By framing them unilaterally as underdogs, the documentary leaves that question unanswered.
The series instead focuses on the more extreme examples of the medias witch hunt at the time.
Detective Thomas was out of step with Boulders liberal culture.
District Attorney Alex Hunter didnt accept Thomass claims about Patsy.
Smit later claimed the Ramseys were people of faith and couldnt have murdered their daughter.
Arndts work with women survivors shaped how she viewed Patsy as a victim and John as a perpetrator.
Thomass dislike of Patsy bordered on misogynist confusion about women snapping at 40.
Smits bonding with them over religion was equally unprofessional.
Hunter ultimately sent the case to a grand jury in 1998, and both Thomas andSmit testified.
The grand jury voted to indict the Ramseys for child endangerment.
Both Thomas and Smit resigned in protest.
Its unclear if the Ramseys knew the grand jury voted to indict them.
They wrote a best-selling book about their alleged persecution by police,TheDeath of Innocence.
Michael Tracey, a communications professor, made a documentary with them about the supposed media witch hunt.
He reappears inCold Caseas a talking head.
The last episode investigates old leads about potential suspects from the pageant circuit that never went anywhere.
Cold Caseseems confused about the fact that this case is, in some ways, an exception.
How could they not?
Thats what you were told by the media, by the police, he says.
(That attorney hassince beendisbarred.)
John ran for a congressional seat as a Republican and wrote two more books claiming innocence.
This raises its own questions.
Is there a gendered element involved in cases where victims become suspects?
Most parents and mothers without the Ramsey resources would have been easily railroaded.
A film from that same year, the faux docudramaCasting JonBenet,took a different route.
It was a subtle unpacking of how the Boulder community made sense of the murder over time.
And ultimately, the case remains compelling as gothic-spectacle sleuth bait.
But it wont be enough to put the speculation to rest.
