In Colorado, it has all the makings of a classic murder mystery.
A ransom note, a dead body, strained twists and turns.
“For nearly 30 years, the murder of John Beney Ramsey has haunted America.”
Not just because she was a beautiful, six-year-old girl. Not just because she was found dead inside her own home, the day after Christmas, but because almost every piece of this case seems to point in two directions at once. Was there an intruder? Or was the fan in fob? I did not kill my daughter, John Beney.
What, parent would ever strangle their own child? Over the next five episodes, we will go back to the beginning of the John Beney Ramsey case. And we'll be back every day for the next eight weeks with many more cases.
This is true crime like you've never heard it before. This is NK confidential.
“There have been suspects, confessions, theories, explosive accusations, and more TV documentaries on”
John Beney Ramsey than we can count. But underneath all of that noise is the story of a six-year-old girl whose death became a national obsession. To much of America, John Beney first appeared, not as a child, but as a pageant image. Big hair, makeup, sequined costumes, a practice smile beneath the stage lights. Her mother Pazzy had been a pageant queen herself, Miss West Virginia, and John Beney was following in her footsteps. After her death, the video is
played over and over on a loop. John Beney waving from a parade float, John Beney singing in a sparkling outfit, those images fascinated the country. And in some ways distorted the case right from the start, because the pageant girl, America saw on TV was only one version of this little girl. She was also a kindergartener, a daughter, a little sister, a six-year-old kid who played with friends and loved to perform. She just had this effervescent personality, just like Pazzy.
I mean, just Tata here I am, you know. That Christmas, she asked her father for one more turn on her brand new bike. She wanted to keep writing her bike and as well we'll do a later. But of course, there wasn't a later. Within days of her killing, John Beney was no longer simply a murdered child. She'd become a symbol, the child beauty queen, the little girl in makeup, the face on every supermarket tabloid and television screen in America. And while the country
argued over her parents and her pageants and her family's private life, the most important fact
remained unchanged. Someone had killed her. Someone killed this six-year-old child. We know that. This is the story of a murdered child and the family, the police, the lawyers, and community forever changed by what happened inside that house. She did main shopping in this world. I'm Megan Kelly and this is MK Confidential. We wouldn't be celebrating America 250 if it wasn't for a strong foundation set by the framers.
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business bureau and countless BIF star reviews, consider having Birch gold help build your foundation with gold. Text MK to the number 989898. It's the day after Christmas, December 26th, 1996. It is a clear chili morning in Boulder, Colorado, less than four degrees outside. Candy Cain's line, the winding walkway to the Ramsey house at 75515th Street. It's a large brick, tutor-style home in a well-to-do neighborhood,
elegantly decorated for Christmas. John Ramsey is up before dawn, puttering around. You talked about that morning with CNN. We were planning to get up early
and fly to Michigan to meet my older kids for like a second, Christmas. Our normal routine
like that if we're going to go somewhere is let the kids stay in bed. And then when we're ready
To go, we get about, and then we go.
The Ramsey's private plane is prepped for the trip to Michigan loaded with presence.
“John's a tech entrepreneur and CEO worth seven million dollars. His company access graphics”
just cleared one billion dollars in annual profits. John met his wife Patsy in Atlanta back in 1979.
They married a year later. He hesitated at first due to their 13-year age gap, but he eventually asked the beauty queen out for a date and the rest is history. Patsy was a former Pagent Queen crowned Miss West Virginia in 1977. Their six-year-old daughter John Bene seems to be following in Patsy's footsteps, and is already active in child beauty Pagents. John had been married before Patsy. He was divorced and brought three kids into their marriage. When John Bene was born,
she had four siblings, two older sisters Beth and Melinda, and an older brother, John Andrew,
“all from John's first marriage, Patsy gave birth to John Bene's older brother Burke in 1987.”
Burke is nine years old at Christmas time, just one month shy of the big double-digit birthday. That night before bed, Burke asks his dad to help put together one of his new toys, John sits with him and the two build it together. The Ramsey family had already endured extraordinary loss. John's eldest daughter Beth died in a car accident a few years earlier. I spoke with John about this. I got a phone call from my brother and he said John Beth is gone. She's killed. And there's
nothing I could do. I couldn't get her to the best doctors. I couldn't rush her side. It was over. More of that conversation as we move deeper into this case. Shortly after Batsy accident, Patsy received a life-threatening diagnosis. She spoke with Barbara Walters about it on ABC back in 2000. I'm a cancer survivor of stage four cancer. John has lost a child in an automobile accident. That completely changes your outlook when you were standing on the brink of death with a terminal illness.
“Your priorities suddenly line up in a row and you know exactly what the important things are in life.”
John elaborated on that when we spoke. Patsy didn't say it, but I know she was trying to pack a lot of mother daughter tied into what she maybe felt was a limited lifetime. Patsy underwent a grueling course of experimental chemotherapy. At a time when few women successfully fought off ovarian cancer, she beat the odds and went into remission. By Christmas of 1996, the Ramsey's see themselves as fortunate. Healthy again financially secure, surrounded by family and preparing for another Christmas celebration
in Michigan. That is the life they believed that they were waking up to. But downstairs on a narrow back staircase near the kitchen, three sheets of lined white legal paper are waiting. Patsy spoke with CNN a week after the murder. It was quite early in the morning and I had gotten dressed and was on my
way to a kitchen to make some coffee and we had a back staircase from the bedroom areas and I always
come down that staircase and then usually the first one down and the note was lying across the three pages across the run of one of the stair trips and it was kind of dimly lit. It was very early in the morning and I started to read it and it was a dress to John. Here's how John told it to me. You know, I was getting ready to get dressed and she screamed and I could tell from the screen it was something very, very wrong and I ran down and she had this ransom note and it was just a
unbelievable day. The ransom note is incredibly long one of the longest in the history of kidnapping. Mr. Ramsey, listen carefully with an exclamation point. We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We respect your business business is misspelled but not the country that it serves. At this time we have your daughter in our possession, also misspelled. She is safe and unharmed and if you want her to see 1997 you must follow our instructions to the letter.
Patsy's reaction was one of sheer panic.
but somewhere it's said we have your daughter and it clicked, you know, your daughter and I just
“downed it back up the steps and threw her door open and she was not in her bed.”
The note continues, you will withdraw $118,000 from your account. $100,000 will be in $100 bills and the remaining $18,000 in $20 bills. Make sure that you bring an adequate size attest shade to the bank. When you get home you will put the money in a brown paper bag. I will call you between 8 and 10 a.m. tomorrow to instruct you on delivery. The delivery will be exhausting so I advise you to be rested. If we monitor you getting the money early we might call
you early to arrange an earlier delivery of the money and hence an earlier pickup of your daughter.
Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution of your daughter.
“You will also be denied her remains for proper burial. The two gentlemen watching over your”
daughter do not particularly like you so I advise you not to provoke them. Speaking to anyone about your situation such as police, FBI, etc. will result in your daughter being ahead. If we catch you talking to a stray dog she dies. If you alert bank authorities she dies. If the money is in any way marked or tampered with she dies you will be scanned for electronic devices and if any are found she dies. You can try to deceive us but be warned that we are
familiar with law enforcement countermeasures and tactics. You stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if you try to outsmart us. Follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of
“getting her back. You and your family are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities.”
That was the worst moment. It was suddenly realizing that someone had your daughter your child and his taken her and she was gone and we didn't know where she was and it was dark. It was cold outside. Don't try to grow a brain, John. You are not the only fat cat around so don't think that killing will be difficult. Don't underestimate us, John. Use that good southern common sense of yours. It is up to you now, John. The note is signed victory with an exclamation point and then the
letters SBTC. Just don't pass it. Call it please call it please call 911. I 552 AM Patsy calls 911 from the Ramsey home landline. We were kidnapped. It's all right. It's fine. Can you let the client out of there? John's heart sank. You have this instinctive, just horrible feeling in your stomach that wears my child. After hanging up with 911, Patsy calls two couples who are close to the family and asks them to come over. I called our friends that we had had dinner with not before
and just didn't, you know, just ominous and missing, you know, can you come over or help, you know, and then I called another couple of close friend of ours and they came right over.
Within minutes of the 911 call, the first boulder PD officer pulls up in front of the Ramsey's.
Officer Rick French shuts off his engine in the pre-dawn dark. John and Patsy meet him at the front door and tell him what's happening. They show him the ransom note which now lays on the wooden floor outside the kitchen. Their son Burke is still sleeping upstairs. Officer French later describes Patsy as visibly shaken and frantic while John seems calm and under control. That morning with John and A, it wasn't over yet. I could get her back if I kept my
whistle about me and focused on getting her back to whatever I could possibly do. I didn't, I was focused on getting her back and I felt I could get her back. Officer French conducts a quick search of the house looking for a possible exit route the kidnapper might have used. In the basement, he comes to a door secured with a makeshift latch. He stops in front of the door and studies it. He stops, but does not open it. He will later defend that decision by saying
He did not think it was a way out of the home.
run away from home, but John is adamant she's six years old, it is dark and it's freezing
“cold outside. No, she did not just run away. John and Patsy are thinking we need to close the roads.”
We need to deploy roadblocks close the airport, but they assume the police know what they're doing. The Ramsey's friends arrive, fleet and Priscilla White, John and Barbara Fernie. The women take the nearly hysterical Patsy into the sunroom, victim advocates arrive at the house as well, bringing Bakels and coffee. They all try to help the Ramsey's washing dishes, cleaning countertops, anything to help pass the time while waiting for the kidnappers promised phone call.
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pay for by super sure insurance agency, LLC, a licensed insurance agency. An officer orders the home phone line to be tapped and traced. Sergeant Robert Witzen pulls up to the Ramsey house. He parks and quickly reads the ransom note. He thinks about the unusual nature of a child being held for ransom. The first, he's heard of this in 22 years on the force. He calls in the FBI. John takes birth to a nearby
friend's house. He phones a banker friend who raises his credit limit to $118,000, the exact amount of the ransom and they wait hours go by but no word from the kidnappers. If you're with your child and you're a department store grocery store and you look around and the child's gone,
“it's terrible feeling, I think all parents have experienced that and that was feeling we had it”
and how it went on for called under one of the afternoon. From the road, the Ramsey's is kind of a deceiving house. Outside, it doesn't look that big but inside it's huge. The house sprawls across more than 6,500 square feet with multiple floors, additions, staircases, narrow hallways and rooms that do not connect in any obvious way. John and Patsy had converted the top floor into their master suite. John Beneath's bedroom is one level below near Berksroom and almost across the house
from her parents. A sound in the middle of the night would be nearly impossible to hear. Soon more police arrive, including detectives and a forensic team, they dust the house for fingerprints and search for other clues but find no obvious signs of a struggle and no clear crime scene. A phone calls made and police put a canine unit with a tracking dog on standby.
The dog is never called to the house. Sergeant Robert Whitson goes upstairs and looks in
John Beneath's bedroom. It appears largely undisturbed. Her clothes and toys are there, the bed is not made and is clearly Ben Sleptin but no John Beneath. He shuts her door as officers seal it with yellow and black crime scene tape and tells John Ramsey nobody goes in there. The police do not coordinate off the rest of the house. Below all the bedrooms lies the main living level, the kitchen, dining areas and the backspiral staircase the family uses every day and then there's the
basement, a maze of storage rooms, utility spaces and passages. Berk keeps an electric train set in the basement in what's known as the train room nearby is a small windowless storage room the family calls the wine cellar even though no wine is kept there. This is the room officer French passed in his early morning search without opening the door. Officers ask for handwriting samples from
John and Patsy to compare to the ransom note.
patsies. The Boulder PD handwriting expert detective Jeff Kifkart find something immediately interesting. Behind the obvious sample of Patsy's handwriting one page of the no pad contains a partial phrase Mr and Mrs followed by a black vertical line. To Kifkart this line looks very much like the
beginnings of an R and like this page is the first draft of the ransom note. Suddenly it seems the
ransom note was written inside the Ramsey home using the family's very own scribble pad. The ransom note had promised that the kidnapper or kidnappers would call between 8 and 10 AM. 8 AM rolls around 8 30 John paces the floor 9 AM comes and goes the mood in the house becomes increasingly tense 10 AM and still nothing. Patsy sits with her friends in the sunroom.
“At one point I said well what are we doing here you know what what's the plan of action?”
You're so frustrated because you don't I mean you want the whole world to stop right there so
that you come go find this baby it's now early afternoon the forensics team and other officers have packed up and left detective Linda art finds herself the only law enforcement officer at the house to control seven civilians John and Patsy for family friends and the Ramsey's pastor the reverend rule hoverstock of St. John's Episcopal Church. These people have been in and all over the house you've got bagels everywhere orange juice coffee people preparing food and drinks throughout the day
cleaning up the place John paces around the living room and Patsy sits virtually motionless in a chair
“aren't calls for police backup to help control the scene but no one arrives she expressed her”
frustration to ABC in 1999. Both times I was told everybody's in a meeting they got your message and that was it. Around one PM in an effort to keep John occupied aren't pulls him and one of his friends aside she tells them to conduct a top to bottom search of the house to see if anything is a miss. We went to the basement which to me was a logical place to
start third floor you couldn't get into the third floor from outside so we went to the basement and
went into what we called the train room where the kids had a train set up and there was an open window and a suitcase propped up under the window as if it were to be a step and I told my friend
“I said that suitcase should not be there that's way out of place we wouldn't have put it there. The”
only other room in that basement was this we called it a wine cellar but it was an old cool cellar, no interest from the outside and I opened the door and of course immediately found John Bene. John beneath body lies in a pile covered with a white blanket there's duct tape over her mouth. John pulls the tape off and throws it aside his friend bolts up the stairs yelling for someone to call 911 John tries to loosen the bindings on John Bene's wrists but they're tied
too tightly. So I just picked her up and carried her screaming access, screaming to upstairs to take her to help. Detective Art here's John's scream from the basement and runs to meet him at the top of the stairs she quickly tells him to put John Bene's body down then she moves it next to the Christmas tree and he asked if she was dead and I said yes she's dead. John stays close to John Bene repeating the phrase "my little angel, my little angel,
the Ramsey's pastor sees John Bene's body and begins praying aloud." Patsy heard John scream from the basement and her friends held her back and I said what you know what what is and and Barbara my friend just you know grabbed me and said no just stay just just there I hear. I can't say what what is it what is it and we walked into the living room and she was there
John said she's passy throws her body over John Bene's.
lying there in front of the Christmas tree. I knelt down over her and just laid my body on her body
and my cheek against her cheek and it was cold and father Raw was there and he started
“saying the last write I believe and I just could have saying no no you know ask God”
ask God to answer. Detective Art asks John to call 911 and then calls it herself she declares a code black in other words a murder the ambulance arrives about 15 minutes later law enforcement and the forensics team rush back to the Ramsey house though moving the body twice presents a unique challenge for evidence collection officers hurry to clear the scene so John and Patsy relocate to a friend's house in South Boulder we're actually out of the house
pretty quickly and we never went back in that home that was the last time we were in that home.
Past Santa Claus in his sleigh and a double row of candy canes deputy coroners brought the
“body of six-year-old John Bene Ramsey from her upscale home so when inside this house had made a”
911 call saying that little John the nay had been kidnapped well when police got here they went inside the house and the short time later they found the little girl's body. The Boulder County coroner arrives at the Ramsey home around 8 p.m. on December 26th. His examination is short lasting about 10 minutes but several things become clear right away. According to the autopsy whoever killed John Bene took white olefin cord and tied her wrists together
the person used the same cord to make what's commonly known as a garot or a ligature to strangle John Bene. A garot is a brutally simple mechanism it uses a cord around the neck
“and some kind of handle to twist that cord tighter the more it's twisted the more pressure it puts”
on the neck cutting off air and blood flow it's similar to a turnic it but with a deadly purpose. Police say the knot on this garot was tied by someone who understood how a garot is made and the fact that her hair and her gold cross necklace are tangled in it suggests that John Bene was alive when it happened. John Bene also has very distinct red marks below her throat that match the shape of her own fingers. It looks like she tried to claw on the cord wrapped around her neck as it choked the very life out of her.
The cord is wrapped around John Bene's neck so tightly that it has caught a deep furrow into the skin. It was so deeply embedded in her skin that it's seen. The cord is nodded and attached to a broken stick at the back of John Bene's neck that broken stick was part of a paintbrush handle from Patsy's art supplies stored in the basement near the room where John Bene's body was found. The coroner performs John Bene's full autopsy the following morning at 8.15am. He lists
two causes of death either strangulation or a blow to the head. He can't determine which happened
first but either would have killed her. There are also microscopic fibers of the paintbrush handle
from the garot found in John Bene's vagina as well as signs of injury to the interior tissue this leads investigators to believe John Bene was sexually assaulted with the paintbrush handle. The tiny blood vessels inside John Bene's eyelids had burst and investigators find surprisingly little bleeding from the massive wound to her head. There's an 8 inch crack in her skull attributed to blunt force trauma. Putting those two facts together some experts believe
the strangulation happened first meaning that by the time she was struck in the head her heart may have already stopped or was barely pumping. Boulder Police find two items that they think might be involved in the head injury a baseball bat found outside the Ramsey's house and a maglite flashlight found in the kitchen but there is no physical evidence on either one no useful fingerprints no DNA nothing. It's two weeks after the murder and Boulder Chief of Police
Tom Kobe holds a town hall to answer reporter's questions about the ongoing investigation.
John Bene's death was the first murder reported in Boulder for 1996 and it ha...
five days left in the year. That lack of homicide experience matters as there have been major
mistakes that the crime scene mistakes that cannot be undone. Did police search the house
after the 911 call but before the body was found? They did a preliminary search of the house
“and remember this is a very big house. Did they look in the room where the John Ramsey said”
the girl's body was or did they not? It doesn't appear that they got down. That room was
down and a part of the basement that doesn't appear that they got to. But one person has zero doubt in her mind about who the killer is, Boulder Detective Linda Aren't. And John Ling down opposite me and his face was just inches from mine and we had a non-verbal
“exchanged bet. I will never forget. As we looked at each other, I remember and I wore shoulder”
holster. Talking my gun right next to me and consciously counting I've got 18 bullets because I didn't know if we'd all be alive when people showed up. I knew what happened.
“You were afraid because you that the killer was still in the house.”
I knew it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And she's not the only one. Join me tomorrow for the next chapter in our story on MK Confidential.
