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Jonbenet Ramsey murder story
Jonbenet Ramsey murder story
The Role of Evidence in the Criminal Justice System
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At 5:52 AM on December 26, 1996, Patsy Ramsey called 911 from her family’s Boulder, Colorado home. She frantically explained to the operator that her 6 year old daughter, JonBenét, was missing and a very bizarre, several page long ransom note demanding $118,000 was left. Patsy then attempted to hang up the phone, and walked away. Police arrived several minutes after the 911 call and began investigating what they thought was a kidnapping. They did a basic search of the house and closed off JonBenét’s bedroom to prevent any contamination, but did not seal any other room. Friends of the Ramseys came to the house soon after to support the family. 8 hours after the 911 call, and 3 hours after the ransom deadline, a detective asked John Ramsey, …show more content…
For starters, an analysis in CBS’s documentary, “The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey,” of the 911 call revealed very garbled words that were said after Patsy tried to hang up the phone. The conversation was something like this: “‘We’re not speaking to you’ —John Ramsey, JonBenét’s father. ‘What did you do?’ and/or ‘Help me, Jesus’ —Patsy Ramsey ‘What did you find?’ —Burke Ramsey, JonBenét’s brother.” (Millstein) This should have immediately warranted separate formal police interviews of the Ramsey parents, but instead they were allowed free reign of the house, even leaving John unaccounted for for 90 minutes during the preliminary searches. Friends of the family were also present, resulting in possible evidentiary contamination and destruction. But, possibly the most mishandled evidence was JonBenét’s body. When John Ramsey found her body, he picked her up and brought her upstairs immediately, lying her on the floor of the living room. After this, her body was moved several more times. Though this does not necessarily mean John Ramsey is guilty, it does display his notably odd behavior throughout the investigation. Finally, the Ramsey’s refusal to give a police interview was probably one of the more startling pieces of evidence in this case. Why wouldn’t you do what the police asked if it was in an effort to find your
The Jonbenet Ramsey case has remained unsolved for twenty years now, and I realize, it might not ever be solved, but I do have a theory. My theory involves three different things, the build up, the murder and the cover-up. In the end, I do not think that there was an intruder that broke in the house, the evidence just doesn’t add up to that. I feel as if somebody in the family killed her, and the Ramseys covered it up. If you go even deeper, John Ramsey could have compensated John Mark Karr to take the blame, and to get some of all of the post-murder weight off of his chest. In order to find who killed J.B.R., we have to look into the Ramseys’ lives first. We know that the Ramseys had money, a lot of it. And the odd amount of money in the ransom note just doesn’t make any
When conducting research for my project, I came across a website that contained a few primary sources regarding the Salem Witch Trials. One of these primary sources was the photo of a legal document explaining the death warrant and reasons for execution of a woman named Bridget Bishop. Bishop was claimed to be a witch in Salem during the year 1692, and the document explaining her significance involving witchcraft resides in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. My thesis for this primary source is that the judge and jury believed they were seeking justice by executing Bishop, a woman whose death was truthfully based on her differences as a person rather than actual crimes she committed.
On the night that Jessop’s body was found, the first snowfall of the season was challenging police to find any evidence related to the case at the scene. The police conducted their search ...
On May 21, 1980, Katherine Reitz Brow was stabbed over 30 times in her Ayer, Massachusetts home. There were bloodstains throughout the house and her purse, some jewelry and an envelope where she had been known to keep cash was missing. Investigators found hair, blood ladened fingerprints on the toaster and the kitchen faucet which was left running. A bloody paring knife which was perceived to be the murder weapon was found in the waste basket. Mr. Water’s became a suspect because he lived next to the victim with his girlfriend, Brenda Marsh. He also worked at a local diner that Ms. Brow frequented and employee’s revealed that she had been known to keep large amounts of cash in her home.
However, police should have acknowledged that individuals can make mistakenly identify the wrong person, especially an individual who had just tragically witnessed his wife’s death, and that the positive identification can not be the only evidence used to confirm the identity of a suspect. In addition, a search was never conducted on Butler’s home to see if any evidence was there. Unless my memory fails me, police officers also did not perform a gun residue test on Butler to see if he had recently fired a gun. Regardless, police did not find any physical evidence, such as blood, on Butler’s clothes or body. In fact, there was no forensic investigation of evidence conducted at all. Mary Ann Stephen’s purse was later discovered in a trash can, but it wasn’t until after the acquittal of Brenton Butler that a fingerprint belonging to the real killer was found on her purse. Overall, the ethical issues involved in the Brenton Butler case are astounding. The best solution to resolve those issues is to thoroughly perform job duties with integrity. Investigators had to know that more evidence than just a positive identification made by one, rightly upset individual was not substantial enough to confirm the identity of the
Sue Grafton once stated: “Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right.” This is clearly the thought the Boulder Colorado police conceived in the case of little beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. As many have observed from the onslaught of media coverage, the day after Christmas 1996, six year old Jon Benet Ramsey was found buried under a white blanket, bound, beaten, and strangled to death in the wine cellar of their Boulder home. With such a strikingly rare and glamorous story of a six year old beauty queen dead, who was a part of a “perfect American upper-middle class family”, combined with a lack of a lead and ever mounting suspicion piling up against the parents it was no surprise to find that it was fuel to the media and soon stories sold and became a matter of competition between the press. So, like wildfire, this heart-breaking story spread, stretching across the nation, shattering the souls of the world. News broadcasts, magazine and newspaper articles, and television specials all shaped and molded peoples perceptions of this beautiful child’s murder, especially her parents, John and Pasty Ramsey’s involvement or lack there of. The police and FBI’s merciless quest to connect Jon Benet’s murder to her parents, seemed to cause the them to overlook important evidence, or at the very least dismiss suspicious findings that would otherwise send red flags to investigators. There are many contributors as to why this case remains unsolved including lack of investigative expertise, failure to protect valuable evidence, and focusing too much on the parents as suspects but, ultimately, the over involvement of...
Raising $500,000 from grants as well as corporate and private donors, she worked with police to get six detectives moved into Holly's House. Holly has spread the word by speaking to community groups, and police or social-service workers direct victims to Holly's House. There, immediately after an attack—or, in the case of children, sometimes years later—victims from Evansville and surrounding counties give their statements. Amy, an Indiana mom with two daughters she says were molested by a relative, tells how Holly helped put her girls at ease the day they gave their statements. "She plopped right down on the floor with them," recalls Amy, who says the relative has since been charged with child molestation. "She was a
On September 9th, 1993 at around two in the morning, 17 year old Christopher Simmons, 15 year old Charlie Benjamin and 16 year old John Tessmer met at the home of 29 year old Brian Moomey. Moomey drove the three teens to the house of 46 year old Shirley Crook. Tessmer refused to go with them and ended up going back to his house. Simmons and Benjamin went to the back of Shirley Crook’s house, found a window and cracked it open. When they reached though to unlock the back door and entered the house, Simmons turned on the hallway light. The light woke her and she yelled out, “Who’s there?” Simmons walked into her bedroom and told her to get out of bed and lay on the floor. They duct taped her mouth and eyes and wrapped an electrical cord around
The ransom note was photographed in the wrong place, the police did not immediately search the house, and friends and family were allowed to enter the home. Due to the holidays, the coroner arrived more than six hours from when he was called. It was not until 1:20 p.m., a thorough search was proposed and ordered to do by John Ramsey (Ramsland). Since the police allowed family and friends to enter the Ramsey’s home, it enabled various people to touch vital evidence and compromise the crime scene. If the police would have properly secured the crime scene and took affirmative action sooner clear evidence could have been obtained, directing them to the killer. Jonbenet was found in her own home by her father after several hours of “searching” which immediately led people to become suspicious. Most compelling evidence suggests that JonBenet was murdered several hours before she was found. The time frame of death indicates that JonBenet was “abducted” right after her parents put her to bed. Evidence suggests no sign of forced entry, as well as a lack of footprints in the snow surrounding the house. Whoever committed this crime must have been familiar with the layout of the house since the body was hidden in the wine cellar in the basement (Bardsley and Bellamy). With this information, clearly someone inside the house was in some way involved in the murder of JonBenet. To be more specific, all signs point to John
The events leading up to her murder were typical events for a family on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve night, the whole family attended a Christmas party at a friend’s house. They came home at about 9:30 PM and JonBenet was carried upstairs to her bedroom at 10:00 PM. This was the last time she was seen alive. The next morning at about 5:00 AM Patsy found a ransom note on the bottom of the staircase. The note described the kidnapping of JonBenet and demanded $180,000 or JonBenet would be killed. Patsy quickly went to JonBenet’s room and, just as the note had stated, she had been kidnapped. Patsy...
The Casey Anthony case was one that captured the heart of thousands and made it to the headline of national TV talk shows, newspapers, radio stations and social media networks for months. The root of the case was due to a clash between the parental responsibilities, the expectations that went with being a parent, and the life that Casey Anthony wanted to have. The case was in respect to the discovering the cause of Casey’s two-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie Anthony’s, death; however the emphasis was placed on Casey and her futile lies, which resulted in a public outcry. The purpose of this essay is to delve into the public atmosphere and inquire about why the media and social media collectively attacked the case by uncovering the content of the case, the charges that were laid, and later dismissed, the “performers” of the trial and the publics reaction. It will further discuss how it defies universal ideologies and how the media represents this. The discussion of the complexities of the case and its connotations will incorporate Stuart Hall’s Representation and the Media, Robert Hariman’s Performing the Laws, What is Ideology by Terry Eagleton, The Body of the Condemned by Michael Foucault, and a number of news articles, which will reveal disparate ideas of representation in the media, and the role of the performers of the law and their effect on the understanding of the case.
After reading this story, I most certainly do believe that it is possible for crimes just as terrible as this one to occur without justice being found. There isn’t any way to guarantee that all crime scenes ever will be uncontaminated and sometimes the issues with the crime scene cane make the evidence there unable to be used, which will strongly hinder a case, just like in this case with Jonbenét Ramsey. I don’t think it is selling out the rights of the victim because as humans there is only so much that we are able to
Patty Hearst was a normal 19 year old girl, living in an apartment with her fiance and attending university in Berkeley, California, until one day her life, and the lives of everyone around her changed forever. On the evening of February 4, 1974, some members of the left-wing radical group called the Symbionese Liberation Army barged into Hearst’s home armed with guns, and beat up her fiance before kidnapping Hearst and bringing her to their house where she was kept blindfolded in a closet for 59 days. While locked in the closet, Patty Hearst was verbally and sexually abused and she was denied the use of even a toilet or toothbrush if she didn’t tell them that she agreed with the group’s ideas and beliefs. It is believed that while being locked in the closet like this, Patty was being brainwashed by the SLA and that she may have even developed Stockholm Syndrome, a condition in which a person who was kidnapped starts to empathise with their captor, and even starts defending them. This is how the Symbionese Liberation Army convinced Patty Hearst to join their group. They released an audio tape to the public in which Patty Hearst said she was changing her name to Tania and that she had decided to join the SLA. She then helped the SLA rob a bank and steal an ammunition belt from a sports store. After this, she started travelling around the country with two members of the SLA named John and Emily Harris, to try avoid being captured by the police. During this time, the police found a house where some members of the SLA were hiding out. Attempts to make the SLA members surrender ended up in a massive gunfight, ultimately ending up in the deaths of 6 SLA members. The FBI eventually found and arrested Patty Hearst on September 18, 1975. T...
The Cheri Jo Bates murder would have been believed to have been committed by a spurned lover, were it not for a bizarre twist occurring almost a month after the murder. On November 29, 1966 an anonymous letter was sent to both the Riverside Police and the Riverside Enterprise, a local newspaper. The letter, entitles “The Confession”...
Andrea Yates was born on July 2nd, 1964 in Houston, Texas, and she was raised in the Houston area (Denno, 2003). Her father was a retired auto shop teacher who died of Alzheimer’s disease shortly before the murders of Yates’s children, and her mother Jutta Karin was a home maker (Denno, 2003). Andrea was the youngest of five, and was a high achiever; and in high school she was captain of the swim team, a National Honor Society member, and valedictorian of her 1982 graduating class (Denno, 2003). She continued her education at a two year nursing programming at the University of Houston, then she went to the University of Texas School of Nursing in Houston graduating in 1986 (Denno, 2003, p.7). During the years from 1986 to 1994 she was employed