INFAMOUS: A Conversation with JonBenét Ramsey's Father

28:48He had said, John, would you allow me to do some things here that were necessary? When we did this timeout, we're not coming to the station. I said, yes, absolutely. So the next day, he's introducing me to my attorney. One attorney can't represent both parties. So Patsy had to have an attorney. We have these crime junkie roles, and one of ours is always get a lawyer. So, like, first of all, I would have done that day one. Yeah. And, you know. Our other is we always say, like, you don't ever know. You don't know everyone inside and out 100%. Yeah, that's true. But did you ever question, like, does she know something?

29:22Did you guys ever have a moment in private where you're like, or never, ever? Never, ever. Patsy has survived stage four ovarian cancer, was given the gift of life again for a while. which he was so thankful for. And, see, originally our attorney said, look, this is nuts that you even looked at as suspects, but this will get resolved in a couple months. So, you know, if you hire heart surgery, you better hire a good one. It's going to be expensive, but it's only going to last a couple months, and it lasted about three years. And we got to the point where we said, we're out of money. We can't keep paying.

30:11And they said, it doesn't matter. We're committed to getting this horrible wrong corrected. And so they worked on our behalf for several years for no charge. Oh, wow. But we're out of money. It didn't matter. When was that? Like, how long did it take to, like, burn through it?

30:36a couple of years, probably. Yeah. Yeah. Probably. What did they think about you guys doing CNN? Oh, that was, that was the mistake. We shouldn't have done that. Was that like, like, did they advise against it? Did they think? They strictly advised or that we never asked him. We were back in Atlanta for the funeral. Some of our Boulder friends were there and they say, Oh my God, you know, The media's going crazy. You've got to show them that you're normal people, and Boulder's a wonderful place. They're really focused on making Boulder not suffer a reputational damage. Nuts, but that was their focus.

31:15That's weird, though, right? Oh, totally weird. What was their goal? Like, to make Boulder look safe? Like, I don't think it makes Boulder look good because there's, I mean, you guys are saying there's a madman in Boulder. Yeah. Yeah, well, and of course, Boulder was like, the authorities, the mayor at the time said, nothing to worry about. There's no killer out there, because she'd been told by the police, us parents, we know it's parents, we just got to prove it.

31:46And it was weird. It was weird. But we shouldn't have been doing an interview like that. What did your lawyers say when they, like, because, I mean, did they just see you on TV one day? Because I think that's the thing people would be like, I don't understand. Like, John's a smart guy. He's consulting his lawyers for everything. How does his lawyers not know he's going on CNN? At that time, we'd been introduced to our lawyers, but we then immediately flew back to Atlanta for John Romney's funeral. We had not met with our lawyers. Oh, okay. It was a horrible mistake for several reasons. One, we were no shape to do an interview.

32:23There's no point in doing an interview. other than to satisfy our friends who are pressuring us to show us. Why did they want you on TV so bad? That's a part that never made sense. Well, they were concerned that the media was instantly piling on us as the killers, that that was horribly wrong and you need to show yourself and defend yourself. Why are your friends like, I mean, I appreciate that they care for you, but it's just like. Well, they don't know. They weren't any more expert at it than we were. And so we just reluctantly agreed to do it. But in retrospect, that shouldn't have happened.

33:06And our attorneys, well, in fact, from that point on, our attorneys said, no, you're not, we are not going to respond to the media accusations. You're not going to respond to them. We're going to defend you. In fact, they said, look, we will guarantee you one thing, money back guarantee, we'll destroy them in court. This will be a cakewalk if it gets to that point. But they said, we can't practice law in front of a CNN camera. That's not our job. We don't know how to do that. And they were frustrated by that because we were being accused in the court of public opinion, but they couldn't respond.

33:47Because there seems like there was this huge rift that I've not seen in such a stark way. I've seen it happen before, but between the DA's office and the police. And you had lawyers who I think they knew the DA, kind of grew up with them, worked with them. So I think that you guys obviously had an amicable relationship. They're the one you eventually go and talk to. Right. I don't know. What I was told, the police were like, oh, we know who did it. Go arrest them and prosecute them. And the DA says, well, show me the evidence. Well, we don't have that much evidence. We just know they did it. And so the DA wouldn't charge them.

34:25And the police took that as an offense. And apparently that happened a lot. That happened in our case. I feel like there was like this circle where it was a lot of that, where I kept hearing like the DAs like get the evidence. The police would say, and I don't know what's true, but the police would say, we're trying to get the evidence, but you're stalling us. Right. That's kind of what... Do you feel like that? And I don't know what advice you were getting or what was happening, but I do see moments where there are certain things where I think, like phone records. Like the police say they don't have phone records until like a year later.

35:03Oh, no. We gave them everything they asked for when they asked for it. Early on, we gave them phone records. We gave them credit card records, full access to our bank accounts, Everything. Everything they asked for. The only thing they asked for a year later, which they should have asked for in the beginning, was our clothing that we were wearing that morning. Because they found unidentified fibers. Pubic hairs were not identified. A year later, somebody said, oh, you should have asked for their clothing. Well, they finally did. And we had to show us a picture. I don't even remember what we were wearing.

35:36But we supplied. We gave them everything they asked for. When they asked for it. Handwriting samples. We had to write that horrible note right-handed and left-handed. So they had samples of our handwriting, which didn't match. So they wanted to arrest us on probable cause. They probably did this, so let's arrest them and beat a confession out of them. In fact, we were told by the DA two things later, years later. The whole police case was based on they didn't think we acted right that morning. And the strategy to solve the case was to bring intense pressure on Patsy and I so the innocent one would confess.

36:24What did they mean by you didn't act right? So, like, what were the things that were bothering them? That's the interesting thing. I read that there was one detective there, this woman, who I don't know if she'd ever investigated a murder or not, probably. Linda Arndt, yeah. Linda Arndt. Because she came when it was still a kidnapping, right? Yeah. They went to the sheriff's office, got a book on how to deal with the kidnapping. They didn't know. And I read her report much later, and it was just nuts. but the things that she observed would say, yeah, that's not what you'd expect because of the way she wrote it.

37:02For example, she said, John, I observed him going casually through the mail waiting for this phone call from the kidnapper. I was looking for another communication for the kidnapper. We had a pile of mail that had come through the front door slot, laying on the floor. I was going through it to see if there's anything else from the kidnapper. She should have been doing that. But she interpreted it as casually going through the mail while waiting for a call to come in. She also said 10 o 'clock came and went. John didn't go nuts because we didn't get a call. The note said, I will call you at 10 o 'clock tomorrow.

37:40I didn't know if tomorrow was tomorrow or the day we were in. So when 10 o 'clock came and went, I thought, oh, my God, I got to wait another 24 hours for this call to come. so it wasn't a big surprise that he didn't call because it said tomorrow in the note what was the other thing it was just nuts oh what when when he found john bonnet there was he didn't cry there was no tears i can just people react differently than trauma but when i lost my daughter Beth in a car accident, JonBenet's older sister, I was mad. I didn't cry. I was mad. I was mad. Why did this happen? I was mad at God with Beth.

38:25And then with JonBenet, it was, and what I guess they didn't understand was when they're making these observations of our behavior. when I lost Beth, I got a call. It was over. I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't get her to the best medical treatment. I couldn't go by her side and come for her. It was over. It was done. She was gone. With Domine, it wasn't over. I could get her back. And I really thought I would, but I had to keep my wits about me. And I had to keep my head together and do whatever I could possibly do, not knowing what to do. Which is actually how I think I would respond to a traumatic situation is I'm very like jump in and act.

39:13Yeah. The thing that I think other people don't understand, this is the one that was hard for me, is like it's said over and over by Linda Arndt that you and Patsy are just like completely separated. What was your interpretation of that? Well, Patsy was literally sitting on the floor with a big bowl in front of her ready to throw up. Quite honestly, she was devastated. And so she was over there, that's fine, she's, that's okay. I was focused on trying to get JonBenet back. How do I get the money together? He wanted$118 ,000 in an attache case. How do I get the cash together? I was working on that.

39:58I gotta get my daughter back. That was my focus. Patsy's okay. She's got friends around her. She had friends around her. I got to get my daughter back. That was the other thing. Linda says in her interpretation of things that you disappear for an hour. That's not true. Yeah? No. I was looking out the window occasionally to see if I could see anything. But no, I didn't disappear for an hour. Linda Arnott was nuts. she on national television said well i knew he was guilty because i saw it in his eyes i thought well that's quite a talent but she was she was way in over her head and not i don't think she's playing with a full deck aside from that first day did you ever have like do other interviews with her or have much interaction with her none did she did her and Hatsy end up having a relationship with her?

40:54Well, you know, she was our savior. I mean, she came to help us. You call the police, you expect them to come to help. We trusted her initially before we'd seen this report, all these crazy observations. And so she was kind of our policeman personified. We didn't know any of these other people that had come involved from the police department, But Linda was there that morning when we had this horrible tragedy in our lives. So it's kind of a bonding in a way. So did they, like, even after that, her and Patsy had conversations afterwards? They had a few. Okay, yeah, I've heard that, but I didn't know.

41:32It seemed like you guys had such a bad experience with her that I was surprised. Well, at the time, we didn't know it was a bad experience.

41:41You know, you call the police, you think they know what they're doing. And that's you trust them totally. to do the right thing. And... Did Patsy ever tell you what they talked about? Because I think that's like a big mystery to people, is like why she seems so... I think, well, I think, I can't remember, it's been so long ago, but Patsy wanted to know who killed her daughter. And what are you doing? What's going on? You know, that was kind of the level of conversation, I'm pretty sure. Gary Oliva, did you want to talk about him? Oh, yeah, well, he was the lead that the DA gave us. They said the police won't follow up on this properly, but it's a significant lead.

42:26And it was back in the day. I remember reading this name in, like, the interviews you guys did back in, like, 98, when they were like, do you recognize this name? Do you recognize this name? Yeah. And Gary Oliva was on there. Yeah. And I say this circumstantially is very compelling. I know our guys looked at it, our investigators, and kind of confirmed the circumstantial information that was given to us and turned it over to the police. My memory is that they interviewed him but didn't kind of blew it off. I don't know if they did DNA testing, handwriting samples. I've seen some handwriting recently, more recently.

43:11I don't know if they just recently got collected or they're bringing it up again, but I've seen some handwriting samples that look promising. But I also think that handwriting 30 years later now, people look at it sometimes the way they do with like bite mark, which is like kind of junk science. Well, yeah, it's not admissible in court. Yeah. And so I don't even know if they would, the way that they felt so strongly about Patsy in 1996, I don't know that anyone would feel that way now. Well, again, it was wrong to feel that way back then. She was a 4.5 out of 5, which is pretty much no way. I think it was because it was her notepad pen.

43:52To your point, it was like that. Well, again, yeah, but so. It was in the house, and the person was in the house before we were. None of that. It was her paintbrush. That was a little, okay, sorry, we didn't have the paintbrush locked up. Yeah, it seems like there were these cultural shifts. I think there was that distinct moment in 2016 when everyone started looking at Burke, and that's become the big story now. That's absolutely insane. Burke was a 60-pound, 9-year-old little boy. This was a sexual assault, a violent assault. It's just, even the police immediately said no. So he was interviewed by a child psychologist, which I guess is normal, for two days early on.

44:43And they said, no, absolutely no way. He wasn't aware of anything that happened and certainly wasn't the killer. And so that's just absurd foolishness. What was your thinking that morning when you're getting him out of the home? because I know he, you guys go to check on him. You think he's still sleeping. He says when he does his Dr. Phil that he's awake, but he's, you know, clear there's something going on. He's like, I'm not messing with it. I just am like waiting until they come and get me. Why did you guys want him to not be in that environment? Well, the police were there. It was craziness.

45:26He was a little boy. We wanted him safe and protected. And he took some of his Christmas presents with him and went to stay with a friend in his house. It was a way to get him out of this nightmare into a safe place. Did you guys feel like he was safe? Was it hard? Because I think it would be hard for me to, like, I'm missing one child. Like, I don't know if you could get me to let go of the other one. Yeah, well, no, we trusted our friends. They were good friends. Their son was Burke's age. They were buddies. They'd been friends for a long time. It was a safe place for him to go. Did they have, because Fleet took him away, but then Fleet comes back, right?

46:11But were his in-laws or something at the house? So there was like someone there with the kids, you know, 30 years ago. Yeah, I don't know. You know, it was chaos that morning, and I really thought I could get John Bonet back. I really did. But I'd never dealt with that, or, you know, John Douglas, who's probably the premier crime profiler, started that whole FBI program, crime profiling. We spent some time with him over a period of time. And his profile of this was that this was a fairly young person, 20s to 30s, fascinated the movies because there's some movie quotes in the ransom note. And it was either very angry at you personally, John, or very jealous of you, John.

47:09This wasn't about JonBenet. That's John's assessment. And do you still believe that? I think that's part of it. I really do. But whoever did this is a monster. Do you believe that you're the Y? I accept John Douglas's theory as credible. I really do. You know, two weeks before her murder, our company had achieved a billion dollars in sales for the year. Right. And for us, that was a big deal. And I wasn't even paying attention. And our financial guy said, hey, we're going to hit a billion dollars. Holy mackerel, we need to have a party for our employees and make a big deal of it. And our marketing lady said, let's let the newspaper know.

48:01And I had this gut feeling, another lesson, pay attention to your gut feelings. I had this gut feeling, oh, it's a bad idea. But I let him do it. Why does, like, if it was about money and, like, your greed, Going back to a lot of things the note said, what do you think the way that they, the sexual component to this and the way that they staged it, like why that piece of it? If it goes back to being about you and about money, like that doesn't add up. No, it doesn't make sense. I agree. No. Well, whoever did this is, you know, crazy, demented human being. Yeah.

48:46I know. It doesn't make sense. I don't know. I know you guys have been extremely clear that there was no sexual abuse on your part, any family members' part. Our doctors could testify to that. Well, that was my question, so I know that you guys have been clear. Do you think that she wasn't abused by anyone ever, even if there's some... We don't know that for a fact. No, we don't. I mean, there's... We never suspected that, but we don't know that. I mean, but most people don't, right? No. But it's one in five girls. are sexually assaulted. We don't know. For sure. You know, did they ever look into, knowing John Douglas' profile, I know he's a 20 to 30, but his profile of this being a young, really unsophisticated person, did they take a really hard look at, like, the other kids in the neighborhood?

49:36No. They never did any neighborhood survey. They never went door to door, which is a huge mistake. What's so wild to me is, like, Like, the first officer, French I think was his name, he goes to the room that Jean Benet's found, and he just doesn't open the door. It's latched, so he's like, no, thank you. Right. How does Fleet White open the door and not see it? I don't know. If that's true, that's a huge red flag. She was right there. I mean, it— Because, like, the second you open the door, you see the white light. Oh, in a microsecond. Doesn't add up. No, it doesn't. And that's, again, you don't know if that's fiction or fact.

50:16There's so much fiction that was put out by the police. I mean, so I know you guys don't have much of a relationship now, but, like, are those some of the questions, like, the hard questions that, like, I mean, again, I think this is my friend that I'm going to be, like, in their face. Tell me how this makes sense. What I think happened, first of all, I think the police took Fleet away from the home we were in that morning, or the day after. And he came back after a couple hours and was different. I think the police were leveraging Fleet to use him. You know, we have evidence that the family killed JonBenet, and you need to help us here.

50:55I don't know, but they said he was different when he came back from meeting with the police for two hours. Because you guys have, like, a huge falling out, right? Well, it was just because it was bizarre. I mean, he came back to Atlanta to attend the funeral, and we made arrangements for our Boulder friends to stay with Atlanta friends in their homes. And our friends that we had that person stay with called, they didn't call us, but they called somebody that was helping us and said, we want him out of our house. He's bizarre, something screwy. and so we put him with my brother. My brother called me a day or so later and said, do you have a gun in the house?

51:45And I said, no. Well, Fleet is on his way to your house. We were with Patsy's parents. Something's wrong, and... What was he saying? For your brother to say, do you have a gun? That's scary. My brother is as passive a person he's ever wanted to meet. So what does he say when he gets to you? Because I know in Patsy's deposition, she's like, I don't know. I was in the basement. Like, I'm not part of that conversation. Yeah. And it seems like she never, like, asked you. But, like, what is that conversation? I don't remember. I honestly don't remember. And then he comes one more time when you're back in Colorado.

52:21Like, comes at you kind of, again, like, interrupts a meeting with you. We were with our priest or minister, and he barged in. And I think it was just a hugely, at best, it was a hugely upsetting thing for Fleet to be in the periphery of all this. At worst?

52:47Well, I don't know. I mean, I'd been with him a lot, and I have no doubt that the police used him. Probably said, well, John thinks you killed his daughter, and you've got to work with us here. Don't know that for a fact, but I wouldn't be surprised. I had, Fleet and I used to sail. Fleet was a really expert sailor, and I was not. And I bought the sailor. Were you in the Navy? Yeah. That doesn't matter. Okay. It's irrelevant. Sure, sure. I think it was a sale. I don't know, just a couple years later, I sent it back to him with a note and said, look, I don't know what the police told you. I'm sure they've probably told you things that weren't true, but I absolutely don't think you were involved in our daughter's murder.

53:41And I never heard back from him. But I knew him. I knew him well. I knew his kids. how do you not like go like like like shake it out like this is the part that as i'm like i like so hard to understand and i understand when people spiral and then his wife i heard was telling patsy like i you know i need a couple minutes i might know something but i'm just like god there's is there something in there how do you how do you feel like you have to like what is it that like makes you not be be not be the fleet who's like holding on to people's callers. Yeah. I've told people, look, if you were a male living in Boulder on the 26th or 25th of December, 1996, you're a suspect in my book.

54:27I can't rule you out. I don't know. I'm so suspicious and frightened and bewildered. You're a suspect in my book. I don't trust you. What was the deal with the 23rd 911 call in my favorite character, Fleet White? Yeah, there's weird stuff like that. What was the deal? He, somehow he dialed 911 from our home phone and meant to dial something else. I can't remember. I don't remember if the police came or they just called us back. But we said, no, that was a mistake, I guess. Did you ever ask him about it? Asked Flea? Yeah. No. You know, early on, you know, I was just so crushed. I wished I would die.

55:27Was that hurt? People said, do you think about suicide? Well, it crossed my mind, but that would impose more hurt on my children. That's a dumb thing to do. But I would have been happy to die. I was so devastated. So you don't think about much else, I guess, other than your loss. And... You know, as I say, the fleet stuff was weird, but it didn't fit with who I knew as a person. I remember he didn't react well under stress. I remember reading the anecdote you had about a sailing with him and how he just kind of like froze and you had to come get saved by someone. Well, we got into really rough weather, and a line had got wrapped around our propeller as we were coming to port.

56:29We couldn't steer the boat, and we were getting blown into a big rock wall.

56:38and somebody's weather would blow like crazy. And we're like, okay, this is the end of the sailboat. You know, we're not going to get killed, but that's going to be the end of the boat. It crashes into that stone wall. And so he just acted very flustered and overwhelmed by difficulty. And so I sort of attributed some of his behavior to that. I don't know. I know. I think I would just bulldoze through my life. I would probably ruin every relationship I had, like truly. Like if something, I think it would consume me because I think I would pick apart. And maybe these are the people who can survive it and the people who can't.

57:22Because I think I would hunt down Fleet White and I would like, you know what I mean? And I would like, I would pick it apart, even if it was my own child and probably to the detriment of my child. And I think that's what so many people, we think we know what we're going to do in those situations. Well, but you can't assume that. I mean, it's like getting hit by a speeding truck. It's so devastating emotionally. Your system's in shock. I mean... Have you had different theories over the 30 years or has it been pretty much the same or did it? I mean, John Douglas's theory when he presented that to me was sobering.

58:07It's like. Who hates you that much? Well, that's what I said to John. I said, I don't, I've never, we had 700 employees. I knew most of them, but not all of them. We've had to fire some for different reasons. But since I was the president, I guess conceivably they could blame me for the loss of their job, let's say. but I said I've never made anybody that bad I can't imagine that he said you may not even know him they read about you the paper they observed your you know we were boulders a very uh liberal far left community and um what's that mean well very um it's described jokingly as 32 square miles surrounded by reality.

59:00And we knew that going in. We were capitalists. We were businesses, capitalists. They're not really welcome here. It was the feeling we got.

59:15But, you know, who could do this to a child? But anyway, John has lots of credit on his resume to being right. Between him and your PIs, have you over the years come to at least your best working theory of what you think happened? Like the order, what was stated? Oh, I think the person came into our home when we were gone that evening, went out for dinner, was there when we got home, and waited for us to go to bed. That same scenario happened about nine months later in the same neighborhood with a little friend of John Bonet's. Fortunately, the mother interrupted it. But to me, they were very potentially the same person.

1:00:06Police blew it off. It was the same. But I know the father of that second little girl absolutely felt there's a lot of similarities. They knew that the killer was in the house, or fortunately the child wasn't killed. But they came home, same that we did, set the murder alarm, went to bed. So the killer had, the bad guy had to be in the house when they got home. So you think he's in the house waiting? Mm-hmm. And then what? And then we went to bed, and we believe that, as to experts, that a stun gun was used to silence JonBenet. She was taken down the basement. So you think that he went up to her room first, got her there?

1:00:56Mm-hmm. And then took her to the basement? That's, yeah. And do you have any, and I know this is a little bit of detail, details I know you've lived with for a long time, Do they have any ideas about what the intention was? Like what some of the sexual activity, some of the choking was to cover something up? Well, you know, Lou Smith, this detective that was brought out of retirement, legendary detective in Colorado, solved over 200 homicides, amazing man, was brought in by the DA because I think the DA suspected the police had it kind of messed up. But Luce spent a couple months looking at the evidence and very conclusively, in his mind, said, no, there's lots of evidence of an intruder.

1:01:43His theory was it was a kidnapping gone wrong based on the evidence. And I've always thought those two conflicted between John Douglas's theory and Luce's. But somebody pointed out to me, well, no, they don't necessarily conflict. And it's like, yeah, you're right. Do they think that the person wrote the note while he's in the house waiting for you guys to come home? John Douglas said nobody could write a three-page ransom note after murdering a child. Okay, so that's done earlier. You know, their war brain is going crazy. And he said that note was written before. Where do you assume it went wrong?

1:02:24So if he wrote this note to get her out, like, why does he take her to the basement, you think? Well, there was, I don't know. I mean, she was sexually assaulted, apparently.

1:02:42There was a suitcase. The so-called detective that was there that day said, well, go look through the house, see if you see anything unusual. And I reported to her that I went to the basement. there was a suitcase standing up on, you know, on its bottom under a window, and the window was open. They said, that suitcase shouldn't be there. It looks like it may have been a step to get out of the house. And apparently they found, and I don't know this for a fact, but there's so much information out there, you don't know what's right and what's wrong, but they apparently found fibers from John Bonet's clothing in the suitcase along with a doll or something.

1:03:30And Lou's theory was they may have tried to get her out of the house in the suitcase, and it went wrong, and it didn't work. I don't know. When you first saw the window, because you had gone down initially, but you said when you first saw the window, you didn't think to mention it. No, no. You did? I did, basically, yeah. Yeah, the window was open. Uh-huh. And it had a pain broken in it, and the suitcase propped up underneath. And I told Linda Ornth, the detective, I said, look, that suitcase should not be there. And you told her this before, you guys found JonBenet? Yeah. I said, maybe that window's broken by me.

1:04:11I don't know, but it shouldn't have been open, and that suitcase shouldn't have been there. and and of course the police came out and said well nobody a human couldn't get through that window I did it, Lou Smith did it I saw Lou Smith it's crazy they were so focused on convicting Patsy or me that nothing else mattered and then in January they had sent some evidence in for DNA sampling and the report came back middle of January we've recovered unidentified male DNA from John Manet's clothing does not match anyone in the family. John, Patsy, and Burke are excluded. Yeah, the first one I think that they found, it was from a blood spot in the underwear, and it was her blood, but it was what they determined, at least based on enzymes like saliva within the blood spot.

1:05:10Those are the first things that they tested and ruled the family out. Right. Well, the police kept that a secret from the DA for six months because it conflicted with their conclusion. It's like, holy crap, what do we got to do about this? Because that's the first question the defense attorney would ask is, whose DNA is that? Oh, we don't know, but it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter. Male DNA found in a sexual assault case is a huge clue, and to discount it is absurd. And they do eventually go back and get another sample that they put into CODIS from it. They get a large enough profile to put in CODIS, right?

1:05:50Right. They actually had the first sample was CODIS qualified as well. A new DA came in and set up her own investigative unit on this case, took the case away from the police. They didn't position it that way in the media. It was like, oh, we want fresh eyes. No, I believe she took it away from the police, brought Lou Smith back in. who had left because he was disgusted with the direction it was going. And they started to investigate it again. And she did additional DNA testing. This was like in 2008? Yeah. And that supported the earlier DNA sampling, that it was an unidentified male DNA and had no explanation.

1:06:34Police tried very hard to explain it away. They even tried to get the county to pay for them to go to China. I followed that one. They wanted to go to China. and start sampling. But then when they really honed in on, oh, no, this isn't just like everywhere in the underwear. It's just in the blood spots, and we're showing these enzymes that show up in high levels with saliva. Yeah. Well, and I don't know. I did learn a little bit about DNA, and it's complicated. It's very complicated. Really complicated. In 2008, they do touch DNA on the side of her long john pants, basically saying, like, we think that whoever would have pulled her pants down might have done it here.

1:07:12They get two profiles, one from each side. They're not nearly as big as the one that went into CODIS, but they say they're consistent with that one. Right. And I heard the same thing where they're saying, like, in no other case have I seen where you see this much DNA of someone else and we're not looking for someone else. Right. When they ended up testing the nylon rope that was around her neck. I don't know if they ever did. I don't know that. They tested the rope. Okay. But not the wooden handle itself. And the rope came back with an unknown sample. I didn't know that. But it didn't match the other ones.

1:07:47And I don't know what that means. Like, has anyone ever considered that this? Well, Lou Smith, and Lou told me, first of all, Lou said, I'll get this guy, John. I'll get him. And he has a track record. Of getting him. Of getting him. And sadly, he died of cancer. He believed there were more than one person involved. involved but he also said look there's things i know that only the killer knows and i'm not going to tell you what those are i'm not telling anybody but did it die with him it may have i'm not sure um lou had an extensive database of information that um now some of his former homicide detective of colleagues have formed a group to finish Lou's work.

1:08:35Lou said, this is a DNA case. It'll be solved by DNA. Have you ever asked to see all of his materials? I mean, at one time you were paying him. Well, it's huge. Pardon? I mean, at one time you were paying Lou, right? No. I tried to buy Lou an ice cream cone one day. He wouldn't let me do it. He was that honorable. No, I didn't pay him. So you never asked to see his stuff? I couldn't help it. I would want to. Well, it was voluminous. Yeah. And the group that took over, and they're doing it on their own, they've taken Lou's list, and they're starting to go down the list and get DNA. And that costs money.

1:09:18And so they've raised money over time to pay for the DNA testing, but not any of their expenses or anything. It's all on their own. And I'm so grateful for that. You know, Lou felt that he had a good enough sample early on that that is the killer's DNA. You need nine markers out of 15 to be submittable to the database, the federal database. You probably know a lot more about this than I do, but... I'm learning. They determined that these 15 particular markers, it's like 100 % match. 15 out of billions. and we had nine of 15 and nine was this the threshold at which they would admit it to the covid database is good enough i wonder if it's still in there because i know back in the 90s the database was less it was lower at nine and then i over the years i believe they've raised it to be like 13 and i've seen other cases where it because it no longer meets the new standard it drops out and people didn't even realize that it's not that's very possible i don't know be interesting it's something i'll need to look into yeah i don't know i didn't know that they raised the threshold but do you know did they ever test the john bennie's bathroom someone had gone to the bathroom and not flushed did they ever test that do you know i don't know seems like a like perfect sample for dna and i don't know if they tested and it was hers or well you know the The forensics people only spent two hours in our house after John Bonet was found looking for evidence.

1:10:57The DA said, get your, you know what, back in there. Two hours is not enough. So they went back. I don't know how long they spent when they went back. They did find, you know, they recovered the evidence, some evidence, and a palm print that didn't match anybody on the door going into that room where John Bonet was found. Didn't match anyone? I thought they saw Patsy's and JonBenet's, but Patsy was, I know, wrapping presents in that room and stuff like that. Well, we'd go in and out of that room. It was a storage room. We called it the wine cellar, but there wasn't. With no wine. No wine. It was just an old coal cellar.

1:11:31I don't think I realized that there was an unidentified print. As far as I know, that's still unidentified, as there was in the same case nine months later, unidentified palm print. Did they check them? No. You're talking about in the other case? in the same neighborhood. Very similar to Jaminet. I think in the reporting, they call her Amy. Yeah. They blew that off as similar. Because as the police chief said, there's so many quotes I could give you that they said were just nuts. First of all, we didn't treat Jaminet's abduction as a crime scene. We thought it was a kidnapping. That's a crime.

1:12:07It's a crime. I'm sorry. Yeah. On the little girl, the police chief came out and said, well, they're not the same because the second little girl wasn't killed. Because her mom walked in. Her mom interrupted her. It's just nuts we're dealing with. And that's a real fundamental problem with our system. That little Boulder, Colorado Police Department is an island of authority. People can't come on that island and help unless they're invited. And Boulder Police never invited anybody to come in and help. Lots of it was offered, but that's the fundamental problem with our system. Would that be your hope with Jean Bonnet's case?

1:12:43Sure. In a perfect world, who would you want to take over? Well, you know, early on, we didn't care who had it. We just wanted it out of the police hands because we knew they were, A, focused on us and B, incompetent. Give it to the Sheriff's Department. Give it to—we didn't care. Just get it out of their hands because they're not capable. We would like the evidence to be turned over to the FBI and let the FBI run with the evidence, do some additional DNA testing. So where do you think the evidence is? Do they still have it? What do you think still can be tested? What can we pull this out from?

1:13:18Well, we were told, we know from looking at reports and stuff early on in January of 1997, there were a number of items sent into a lab. Some were returned untested. Don't know why. Whether it's a cost issue or they had a sample. They did get a sample of what they tested. Maybe they decided that's good enough. I don't know. We want those other items tested. We want the items that had previously been tested 15 years ago, most recently, retested, developing this new format that's needed to do the genealogy research. That's what we're asking. So as far as we know, there's items that are crime scene of evidence that was taken from the crime scene, sent to a lab, but was never tested.

1:14:07It seems pretty straightforward. What do you feel is, because to me, on the outside, I'm like, Why wouldn't Boulder want to solve its biggest case? There's only two logical reasons. One is they've lost the evidence, which I hope isn't true. Or two, they're protecting somebody that is very, that's a silly number two. But I can't think of any other reason. They've lost the evidence. Do you feel like, I mean, you're somebody who has like amazing connections and, you know, political pull, like, do you feel like there's anything that you can do? Or are you, like, you've tried it all? We've tried a lot.

1:14:52We've petitioned the attorney general in Colorado. We've petitioned the governor, this is early on, to meet with us, and they wouldn't meet with us. Do you think this would be a great case for someone to, I mean, if they're going to at least work the system, do you solve the JonBenet Ramsey case? Well, you'd think so. And I've told, Bowler's had five police chiefs since this happened. Have you met with the newest one yet? Yeah. Does he say anything about whether they have the evidence, don't have the evidence? Are you waiting? I've never challenged him on, have you lost it? What do you mean, John?

1:15:23Well, I've got another meeting coming up. Yeah. Well, the first meeting, I was trying to be a nice guy and not jump all over him. He was a new guy at his job. I liked him. We had a nice conversation. It was like, I need to. What does he say? Where does he say it stands? Well, he says there's things happening I can't tell you about, and I think DNA testing isn't there yet. We want to wait. And I totally disagree with the last comment. We're going to ask the hard question. Have you, and you didn't lose it. You're the new guy. It's not your fault. But is the evidence still in your possession? Where is it?

1:16:02And if it's not there, what does that make you think? Well, it confirms my opinion that the Boulder Police was a pretty dysfunctional organization for years, frankly. Does that mean it's just over for you guys? Well, that's a huge thing, yeah, if that's the case, because we have the technology, in my opinion, privately to do testing that I think, I really believe, has a good chance of leading to the answer. Do you think it's someone, whether you recognize them or not, someone that would have had some kind of interaction with your daughter before? Well, I think the person had been in our house before.

1:16:49No question. We have this Carr guy, Mark Carr. We've had two people that said, well, I saw that guy around you. I know it's him. We had a lady that would come into our little house up in Michigan and clean it once in a while before we got there. And she called after he became public and said, that guy was in your garage this past summer. How do you make sense of that if the DNA? Well, I don't know. I don't know. Does that make you go back and question the DNA? Well, I asked Lou that question. I said, do you believe that this is the killer's DNA for sure? He said, yes, I believe that. Okay. So, okay.

1:17:42Based on that, well, the other thing she said was, when I was in your home that day, somebody had been staying in John Bonetti's room. There was a suitcase open, and obviously somebody was saying, I thought you'd given someone permission to stay in your home. Didn't think of it. When this guy came out, she said, I saw him in your garage, and then she told us about somebody staying in her home. I said, no, we didn't get permission to stay in our home. And why would they have picked John Mayne's room? If you're going to squat in a house, you wouldn't have picked that room. It's second floor, way in the back.

1:18:22You couldn't get out of there easily if you were caught. I think new testing is going to be important. I don't know if you have thoughts or feelings on, have you seen all the stuff that's been happening with the Colorado State Lab? Yeah. Do you have any concerns? And so Missy Woods, I believe is her name, she's been accused of, like, falsifying, I mean, like, 600 and some cases between, like, 2008 and 23. They're looking at even older cases. Is this something that you've talked to anyone in authority about? Like, do you have concern that it affects the testing that you guys had done? We were told, our attorneys looked into it, and they're still working on the case for us for free.

1:19:04They don't charge us. they're so committed to getting this right. They said she did not, she was not involved in our testing back then. It's like, okay. So that's the information we have. That's really good. What's it going to take to do new testing? Well, what we want, we were told probably a year or so ago now, it's been over a year. At that time, we met with, just accidentally met the head of the FBI region there. And he said, look, the government, we, the FBI, certainly not Boulder, not CBI, do not have the latest DNA technology yet. And who said that? The chief of police. Because they've got a new one, right?

1:19:50Or is this the last one? Oh, the current one. The current one. Yeah. Get the evidence into their hands. And let's see what they come up with. They have also the ability to do the genealogy research, create this family tree. Even to give you, I mean, the phenotyping that they can do to answer the question of, okay, we know it's a male profile, but is it a white man? Right. Is it not? I don't know what else to do. But if they don't do that, then that's unacceptable. It's ridiculous. It's there. It can be done. We've had, I've offered to pay for it. I don't know what the issue is. I really don't know why they won't do all that can be done.

1:20:30I'll have to ask some questions of them. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to get a little more hard-nosed in our next meeting. First question would be, do you have the evidence? Be honest. Have you lost it? Where is it? Who has it? Sounds like a good next step. Yeah. Right now, in my mind, that's the key question. Why? Where is it? If you're not going to test it, why? It's baffling, absolutely baffling to me. And, you know, maybe it's down to police departments don't like to admit they've been wrong or they screwed up. And I can't believe that with the new police chief. I mean, he didn't cause that problem.

1:21:13He didn't mess it up. Do you think they're afraid of opening themselves up to litigation? Possibly. Very possibly. Do you think you would sue them? I don't know. I explored that early on because we were, again, told they knew it was one of the parents, had to be one of the parents, always the parents. And that's a flawed conclusion. There's no one theory that makes everything make sense. No, not really. I don't know. Lou said this is a DNA case. It'll be solved by DNA, period. And that's why this testing is so important. I don't know. You know, we used, I mean, I used to, Patsy, when we'd travel, Carrie took, always packed a blue dress, dark blue dress that she was going to wear at the press conference when John Manet's killer was found.

1:22:09We were hopeful, confident that that would happen. And she eventually quit packing the blue dress. somebody asked me the day do you think jambonet's killer would be found in your lifetime i'm not so confident now at all i think eventually they will be caught or identified but maybe not in my lifetime given the fact that there's no movement in the government to do the right thing. If they do it, I think there's a, I don't know, pretty good possibility that we could find the killer. Now the killer may be dead, maybe, who knows, but this forensic genealogy research is amazing. And eventually that won't be available because the privacy advocates will fuss.

1:23:08They're already fussing, but so far so good. So you can't wait on that forever because eventually the police will not have access to that. My DNA is in the public database. I just paid my$25 to see who my relatives were. But did you submit it to GEDmatch? That's a different thing. No, I don't know about that. What's that? So this is my advocacy. I always tell people. So like certain, like Ancestry and 23andMe, they're no longer available to law enforcement. So people actually— Oh, I didn't know that. I know. Most people don't. And so you actually have to download your results and submit it to GEDmatch.

1:23:50GEDmatch is the one that law enforcement can access. So there actually is this big issue where people think they've done it, and they actually haven't, which could build up the database in a really meaningful way. Wow, I didn't know that. I thought those were still available. Yeah. That's a big problem. Yeah. What's it called? Jet? Jet match. G-E-V. Jet match. Okay. Do you feel like you'll always have the indictment kind of hanging over you until there's someone else who's indicted? Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's always going to be, it's an unknown. Can they, is there any, like, does that mean anything now?

1:24:30Like, could somebody say, oh, we have this indictment from 30 years ago. We can still go charge John. Or would they have to get a new grand jury indictment? Like, I don't know how scary a balluming thing that is. Yeah, I don't know. The grand jury, as I'm told, you can convict a ham sandwich in a grand jury. It's a one-sided argument. Right. It's easy to get an indictment. It is. It's just the prosecution's case. But you guys weren't asked to even speak at that. I offered to do that. Yeah. And they didn't ask me or subpoena me. My children were interviewed by the grand jury. Burke was interviewed.

1:25:07Melinda, my daughter, who was pregnant at the time, was brought into Colorado to be interviewed by the grand jury. So their attorneys were present with them. It's so strange they would interview everyone but you. I know. And I offered myself, let me know. And I think they were afraid that. I think people think it's calculated. Like, I think that's the thing that nobody's like saying or people, you know, in the depths of the internet are saying is like, it feels like there's someone pulling the strings. We had no rights. Police, the only requirement they had was to talk to us once a year on our case.

1:25:46By law, they had to do that. First time we asked for that meeting, they said, well, geez, we don't know how to do this exactly. You're a suspect and you're a victim. this Homicide Victims Family Rights Act gives families like us the right under law to get the case out of the police hands if they're not doing their job or they haven't done their job. What I read is that if after three years it's still a cold case you can submit to have a federal review. Yeah well I'd thought about that a bit of like this law, this federal law. That could be JonBenet's law. If it advanced the cause, it'd be good.

1:26:30But I'm not looking for that kind of memorialization of her. But you want to be sure your home is safe, as safe as it could be for your family. We were foolish, naive. We thought we lived in a safe community. We didn't check the door locks. We didn't set the alarm. Who in the world to come into the house when we're there. If they came in and we're gone, steal the silverware. Okay, whatever. Never, ever thought someone would come into our home when we're there and take our child from our bed. But it happens. And your home's got to be a sanctuary. A safe sanctuary. Safe as you can make it. Are you doing anything to get this Victims' Families Rights Act pushed through to Colorado?

1:27:16Well, I just found out about it. Okay. And I've got to do that. That's the one thing. If anything, I've always said, what can we do to change the system? The system's screwed up big time. I don't know how to fix it. These 18 ,000 little independent jurisdictions of authority with no higher authority, no ability to bring in the big guns when a child's murdered. It's stupid. It makes no sense. But what can I do to affect it? And early on, I was advocating DNA testing for anyone arrested for a felony. It's always come back to how do you make these little islands of authority, like Boulder, able or willing to accept the power of our country to solve cases like ours, the murder of a child.

1:28:14and so I then I was I got to thinking well let's make the murder of a child a federal offense just like a bank robbery that seemed very logical did you make any headway with it well I met with the Department of Justice and they said well that's going to be a tough sell because we don't have the federal government doesn't have that lexus I think he called it to have even that authority to try to do that, to overstep state law. He said that's going to be a tough road. So now this is your new mission? So my new mission, I learned about this just recently, and I'm retired now so I've got the time to do it, is I met, again, a Department of Justice fellow that pushed the federal government to enact a Homicide Victims Family Rights Act.

1:29:11Are you going to focus that? Because I know Biden signed it into law in 2021 federally, but to your point, not in a state. Yeah. Are you going to focus on Colorado or Jamani's? Well, what it gets down to, and the DOJ fellow said, look, it's easy. It's boilerplate. Here's the law. Mr. Senator, state senator, put your name at the top, vote on it, you're done. That's all I got to do. It's real simple. Colorado would be a tough sell, I think, because politicians don't want to be involved in our case. It's like a tar baby. If I touch it, I'm tainted. The media has been brutal. Would you advocate for it in another state?

1:29:57Sure. And I say I literally just found out about this recently, and I've got to do it. but I think that's a purpose I could advocate and get behind and maybe make a difference. But it's going to take, like, I don't know any politicians in Colorado.

1:30:21They probably know me, but I don't know them. And maybe that's a good place to start. What do you think Jambani's legacy is?

1:30:33she was kind of the spark plug in her family i mean and uh you know my minister told me early on he said look memories for a while are going to bring pain but eventually they'll bring joy and to a large extent i found that that you've been able to get past the pain period and memories make you smile and I still get tugged my heart gets tugged when I see a little girl hanging under her dad's hands walking down the street you know that hurts but I remember the deep things about John Monnet the fun things you know I believe that she's in heaven I don't understand heaven. I don't have a, my brain isn't capable of comprehending what that is.

1:31:27But, you know, I did get one reassurance that life wasn't over for her in that respect. She had won this little medal in one of her little contests, beauty contests. And I used to tell her, look, it doesn't matter if you're the prettiest or whatever. Your little talent is what you should concentrate on. And she was a singer and always with vigor, but sometimes all key. But she was, you know, boom. And her last little event was a couple weeks before she died. And I was late to get there. but I always tried to go to watch her little talent thing. And she came running up to me and said, Dad, Dad, I won this for you.

1:32:25And it was a medal, and it was all talent winner. And she gave me that little medal, and I wore it around my neck. And when she died, in my mind, I wanted to get that medal back. It was in her house. But I didn't tell anybody. I just, in my mind, that's the one thing I want at John Bonet's, that I can keep physically.

1:32:55And Pam, Patsy's sister, went to her house a week later to get us some clothes because we just laughed. We didn't have any clothes to wear or anything. And she said, I went to the house. Please, you're kind of rude. But I felt drawn to go into John Bonet's room. and I felt like I should bring you this. And she opened her hand. It was a medal. And her room was full of stuff, you know, how she would bring this little round, about the size of a silver dollar medal and feel like I felt like I should bring this to you. And I just, I could have cried because it was like John Manet knew I wanted that somehow.

1:33:39Oh. So there's more to life than we see here. Thank you, John. Well, you're welcome, Ashley. I'll make sure the stuff that we talked about, again, the legislation that you're doing, the petition to get the DNA sent. I'm sure everyone has the information for that. And I think everyone is going to have an eye on Boulder. Well, that's the objective. These boys just isn't going to go away. We're going to be your worst nightmare until you do your job. All eyes on Boulder. Yep.

1:34:50Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck would approve.