The JonBenét Conspiracies: The Nightmare After Christmas — Ep. 1 | MK Confidential

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1:07For nearly 30 years, the murder of JonBenet 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 family in fob? I did not kill my daughter, JonBenet. What parent would ever strangle their own child? Over the next five episodes, we will go back to the beginning of the JonBenet 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.

1:48This is MK Confidential. there have been suspects confessions theories explosive accusations and more tv documentaries on john benet 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 benet 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 Patsy had been a pageant queen herself, Miss West Virginia, and JonBenet was following in her footsteps. After her death, the videos played over and over on a loop.

2:35JonBenet waving from a parade float, JonBenet 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 kindergartner, 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 Patsy. I mean, just, ta-da, here I am, you know. That Christmas, she asked her father for one more turn on her brand new bike. She wanted to keep riding her bike and I said, well, we'll do it later.

3:18And of course, there wasn't a later. Within days of her killing, JonBenet 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.

4:02She did mean something in this world. I'm Megan Kelly, and this is MK Confidential.

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5:20It's the day after Christmas, December 26th, 1996. It is a clear, chilly morning in Boulder, Colorado, less than four degrees outside. Candy canes line the winding walkway to the Ramsey house at 755 15th Street. It's a large brick Tudor-style home in a well-to-do neighborhood, elegantly decorated for Christmas. John Ramsey is up before dawn, puttering around. He 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. us. 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 them up and then we go.

6:08They might stay in their pajamas in the car. The Ramsey's private plane is prepped for the trip to Michigan, loaded with presents. John's a tech entrepreneur and CEO worth$7 million. His company, Access Graphics, just cleared$1 billion 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 pageant queen crowned Miss West Virginia in 1977. Their six-year-old daughter, John Benet, seems to be following in Patsy's footsteps and is already active in child beauty pageants.

6:55John had been married before Patsy. He was divorced and brought three kids into their marriage. When John Benet 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 Benet'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.

7:36John'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 to her side. It was over. More of that conversation as we move deeper into this case. Shortly after Beth's 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.

8:17When you are 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 time 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 Ramseys see themselves as fortunate, healthy again, financially secure, surrounded by family, and preparing for another Christmas celebration in Michigan.

9:04That 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'd gotten dressed and was on my way to the kitchen to make some coffee. And we have a back staircase from the bedroom areas. And I always come down that staircase, and I'm usually the first one down. And the note was lying across the three pages across the run of one of the stair treads. and it was kind of dimly lit. It was very early in the morning and I started to read it and it was addressed to John.

10:10Here's how John told it to me. You know, I was getting ready to get dressed and she screamed. I could tell from the scream it was something was very, very wrong And I ran down and she had this ransom note and, you know, it was just an unbelievable thing. 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.

11:02She 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. I can't remember exactly what the first few lines said, but somewhere it said, we have your daughter. And it clicked, you know, your daughter. And I just bounded back up the steps and threw her door open. And she was not in her bed. The note continues.

12:08If 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 beheaded. If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies. If you alert bank authorities, she dies.

12:49If 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 has taken her. And she was gone and we didn't know where she was.

13:32and 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 told Patsy to call the police call the police. Call 911. At 5.52 a.m., Patsy calls 911 from the Ramsey home landline. We have a kidnapping. All right, please. Explain to me what's going on, okay? There's a note left in our dog. He's on. Is it saying who took her?

14:17What? Is it saying who took her? I don't know. Oh, my God. Please. Patsy? Patsy? Patsy? Patsy?

14:32John's heart sank. You have this instinctive, just horrible feeling in your stomach that, you know, where's 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 the night before. And just kind of, you know, John Beney's missing, you know, can you come over or help, you know? and then I called another couple 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 Ramseys. Officer Rick French shuts off his engine in the pre-dawn dark.

15:18John 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 JonBenet, it wasn't over yet. I could get her back if I kept my wits 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.

16:01In 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. Police ask John and Patsy if John Benet could have just 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 Ramseys' friends arrive.

16:42Fleet 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 bagels and coffee. They all try to help the Ramseys, washing dishes, cleaning countertops, anything to help pass the time while waiting for the kidnappers' promised phone call. John talked about this moment with Barbara Walters back in 2000. People were making toast in the kitchen.

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19:09The first he's heard of this in 22 years on the force. He calls in the FBI. John takes Burke 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 at a department store or grocery store and you look around and the child's gone, it's a terrible feeling. I think all parents have experienced that. And that was the feeling we had. And it went on for until under one in the afternoon. From the road, the Ramseys is kind of a deceiving house.

19:52Outside, 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 Benet's bedroom is one level below near Burke's room 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 forensics 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.

20:35A phone call is 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 JonBenet's bedroom. It appears largely undisturbed. Her clothes and toys are there. The bed is not made and has clearly been slept in, but no JonBenet. He shuts her door, has officers seal it with yellow and black crime scene tape, and tells Jon Ramsey nobody goes in there. The police do not cordon off the rest of the house. Below all the bedrooms lies the main living level, the kitchen, dining areas, and the back spiral staircase the family uses every day.

21:20And then there's the basement, a maze of storage rooms, utility spaces, and passages. Burke 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. John provides two notepads, one with his writing, one with Patsy's. The Boulder PD handwriting expert, Detective Jeff Kithcart, finds something immediately interesting.

22:04Behind the obvious sample of Patsy's handwriting, one page of the notepad contains a partial phrase, Mr. and Mrs., followed by a black vertical line. To Kithcart, 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 a.m. 8 a.m. rolls around. 8.30. John paces the floor. 9 a.m. comes and goes. The mood in the house becomes increasingly tense.

22:5210 a.m. 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's the plan of action? You're so frustrated because you don't, I mean, you want the whole world to just stop right there so that you can go find this baby. It's now early afternoon. The forensics team and other officers have packed up and left. Detective Linda Arndt finds herself the only law enforcement officer at the house to control seven civilians. John and Patsy, four family friends, and the Ramseys' pastor, the Reverend Roll Hoverstock of St. John's Episcopal Church.

23:33These 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. Arndt 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 1 p.m., in an effort to keep John occupied, Arndt 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 amiss.

24:20We 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 call 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 coal cellar, dark, one door going in, no entrances from the outside.

25:05And I opened the door and, of course, immediately found JonBenet.

25:15I knew instantly, instantly what I'd found. I'd found my daughter. 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 Benet's wrists, but they're tied too tightly. So I just picked her up and carried her screaming. Actually, I was screaming upstairs to take her to help. Detective Arndt hears John scream from the basement and runs to meet him at the top of the stairs. She quickly tells him to put JonBenet'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.

26:00John stays close to JonBenet, repeating the phrase, my little angel, my little angel. The Ramsey's pastor sees JonBenet's body and begins praying aloud. Patsy heard Jon scream from the basement and her friends held her back. And I said, what? You know, what is it?

26:22And Barbara, my friend, just grabbed me and said, no, just stay. Just stay right here. And I kept saying, what, what, what is it, what is it? And, um, um,

26:42and I think, um, we walked into the living room and she was there and John said she's... Patsy throws her body over JonBenet's. I remember walking in and seeing her 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 Ra was there.