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hi crime junkies I'm your host Ashley flowers and I'm Brit and I am finally doing it going on tour we're doing that
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yes so yeah we actually are crime drinky tour Is For Real make sure you're in the
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fan club because if you want to buy tickets early fan club members will get first access that happens December 2nd
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go to our website y y I'm L all the things will be in the show notes that you need to know but that is not what
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I'm talking about that is not the thing that I'm talking about the thing that I'm doing is I'm officially doing the
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case that I swore I would never do the case that I think of as our crime junkie origin story Never Say Never right I
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know and like well I think for a long time I would just think that there was like nothing that I could really bring
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like this case has been done Seven Ways to Sunday I feel like there are less versions of the Bible than there are of
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books that have been written about this case by anyone who's even connected to the victim in any way possible and I am
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of course talking about John B Ramsey well and when you say crime junkie origin story it is like the case that
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made us crime junkies we were tabloid height when she was all over the tabloids oh yeah I always said that my
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mom and my grandma made me crime junkies I was into mystery novels but it was when we were were almost her age uh John
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Ramsey reminded me of that when I sat down with him we are her age and it was the first time I realized that these
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stories actually like happen in real life and it was to someone who was my age it looked like us it was it was
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scary so for a generation who didn't grow up tabloid height staring into the green eyes of a beauty queen in the
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making and for those of us who did but maybe only know this case at a surface level and you want to know how did we
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get here and what can we do now I got you I have dug deep I thought I knew everything about the jam Ramsey case
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because I grew up with it but I found out that what I knew was like the tip of the iceberg I have all the same
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questions that you do I even got to ask those questions to one of the people at the center of this case someone who has
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been dubbed a child killer by the media but says it is all a lie and that he and
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his family have been victimized twice once by an unknown killer and then again by the media I actually filmed my
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conversation with John Ramsay you guys can find that on the YouTube channel along with this episode and I promise
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you you are going to want to see it but first let me tell you the story not from
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any side I have no Theory I thought one thing when I was young another thing when I was older but what I realized
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when I actually dug in deep is that I never had a real understanding of the facts themselves and that is what I want
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to give everyone here today so if you were looking for a One-Stop shop to give you the case a layer deeper than you'll
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hear anywhere else this episode is for you this is the story story of John B [Music]
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Ramsey 911 emergency police what 55th Street what's going on there man we have a kidnapping
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hurry please explain to me what's going on okay there we have a there's a not left and our daughter's G A not was left
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and your daughter is gone how old is your daughter 6 years old she's gone 6 years
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[Applause] old how long ago was it I don't know I took it on the not and my daughter say
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who took her what does it say who I don't know it's there's a there's a ransom note here it's a ransom know it
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says sbtc Victory please okay what's your name are you the mother oh my God please I'm okay
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I'm sending an off over okay do you know how long she's been gone no I don't please we just got up and she right here
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oh my God please okay I am honey take a deep breath Hy Cy Cy that feels like the 911 call heard
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around the world by this point but when it first came into Boulder police on December 26th 1996 at 5:52 in the
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morning they had no clue how Infamous this call was going to become all they knew was that they had a report of a
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kidnapping in an upscale neighborhood of their safe little Community now py says
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that she made two more calls to friends of theirs after the 911 call the whites and the feres she was asking them to
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come over for support before she went to like Pace in front of their window now what in actuality was probably just a
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couple of minutes felt to her like hours and when the marked car pulled up at 555
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she says her heart sank because the ransom letter had said not to call police and that kidnappers were watching
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and if they saw police that they would hurt John Benet but it was too late now when officer French made it inside John
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immediately took him to where the three-page handwritten Ransom note was like splayed out on the wooden floor
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just off the kitchen near the stairs that py had found it on and Brit I'm going to have you would you mind
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actually reading it oh sure I put it in the folder for you the ransom note says Mr Ramsay
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listen carefully we are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction we respect your business
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but not the country that it serves at this time we have your daughter in our possession She is safe and unharmed and
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if you want her to see 1997 you must follow our instructions to the letter you will withdraw
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$118,000 from your account $100,000 will be in $100 bills and the remaining $8,000 in $20 bills make sure that you
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bring an adequate size attache to the bank when you get home you will put the money in a brown paper bag I will call
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you between 8: and 10: a.m. tomorrow to instruct you on delivery the delivery will be exhausting so I advise you to be
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rested if we monitor you getting the money early we might call you early to arrange an earlier delivery of the money
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and hence an earlier pickup of your daughter any deviation of my instructions will result in the
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immediate execution of your daughter you will also be denied her remains for a proper burial the two gentlemen watching
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over your daughter do not particularly like you so I advise you not to provoke them speaking to anyone about your
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situation such as police FBI Etc will result in your daughter being beheaded if we catch you talking to a stray dog
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she dies if you alert Bank Authorities she dies if the money is in any way marked or tampered with she dies you
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will be scanned for electronic devices and if any are found she dies you can try to deceive us but be warned that we
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are familiar with law enforcement countermeasures and tactics you stand a 99% chance of killing your daughter if
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you you try to outsmart us follow our instructions and you stand a 100% chance of getting her back you and your family
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are under constant scrutiny as well as the authorities don't try to grow a brain John you are not the only fat cat
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around so don't think that killing will be difficult don't underestimate us John
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use that good Southern common sense of yours it's up to you now John Victory sbtc so that's the letter that they're
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working with and what we know is the ramsy had an alarm system but they hadn't said it the night before or
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actually even in a long time not since it had gone off accidentally and scared the living pants off jean veneet and her
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older brother Burke who by the way is nine at this point and still asleep upstairs in his room according to Mom
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and Dad now they say that they had checked on him once when they realized that John B was missing but once they
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saw that he was okay they wanted to just let him sleep I like I'm assuming they probably just didn't want him to worry
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till they had a better idea of what was going on and like what they were going to do like once they knew that there was
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going to be help then they would worry about it so officer French does this quick skim of the house and I say quick
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but this puppy was over 6,000 I mean I've heard one place like 7,000 square feet had like 15 rooms four different
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floors if you include the basement but French does this quick look through he doesn't see anything that jumps out his
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report says that there were no signs of for Century or a struggle and obviously no signs of the missing six-year-old so
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he moved to instructing another officer Sergeant Reichenbach to control the scene and a I don't know when
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Reichenbach showed up but you'll see more people kind of start like flooding in and B controlling the scene is a
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loose term in this story and something Boulder police will get roasted for down the line because within 15 minutes of
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French's arrival those friends that py had called start showing up Priscilla and Fleet White had been their first
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call followed by John and Barbara Fernie and somehow the family priest gets contacted along the way and like one by
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one these people are showing up and they're there by like 7:13 now while John Ramsey made calls to
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try and line up that $118,000 that the kidnapper had asked for more and more people were showing up too so they had
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victim Advocates that came to the house there were finally some detectives that got there by like 8:10 that morning
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namely Linda art who was charged with managing the situ ation now what John told me that he didn't know at the time
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were that these weren't seasoned homicide or missing person's detectives what the detectives didn't know at the
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time was that this wasn't a missing person's case as the clock ticked every moment in the house was tense Burk
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Ramsey John B's 9-year-old brother had been woken up and removed from the home by this point their friend Fleet white
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who was one of the people paty had called come over he taken Burke back to their house and while py cried in one
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room with her friends by her side John was in another taking instructions from detective art about what to do if the
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kidnapper called and he's like going through the mail he told me to see if there's any other Communications from
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the kidnapper and he told me that he was in just like do do do mode like action mode he thought that if he kept his wits
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about him that's the say he always used if I keep my wits about me then if I'm smart like I could still actually get my
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I can figure this out right now plenty of people had been looking around the house without finding anything but John
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wanted to keep moving so at some point that morning exact time a little fuzzy TVD but at some point that morning he
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went down to the basement which this is a point that Boulder Police gets roasted
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on right like people are just all over the house contaminating the crap out of like what is actually a crime scene oh
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yeah they it's kind of wild they had blocked off John B room like 5 hours after detective French got to the house
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but everything else was like a free-for-all like have at it it seems like people were all over the place
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nothing was off limits except Jean B's room ex except a room right and there's nothing that stands out about her room
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right no I mean like so her covers were pulled back like someone had got her out
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of bed there's some stuff that becomes interesting a little bit later which I can get into but nothing that really
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stands out in there it looks like a room that a kid had just kind of truly gotten
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like plucked out from in the middle of the night so to get back to it though so John goes to the basement at some point
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that morning when he did his 1997 interview his best guest was like maybe it was sometime around or before 10:00
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a.m. but he goes down he doesn't report finding anything to detective AR or any of the other officers now no one made no
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of the time when 10:00 came and went and there was no communication from the kidnapper like they said in the note
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there were calls throughout the morning I mean at least three according to detective ARS report and each time JN
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would run to the phone he would answer the call but each time it was just some well-meaning friend checking in and like
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you word was spreading at this point now Linda AR kept paging for backup she had
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kicked a good number of people out of the house by this point officers the victim Advocates but all of the family
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friends were still there and it was a hard scen to control but page after page she was getting no response and when she
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tried to phone in she was told that everyone was in a meeting that's what she said in her Good Morning America
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interview so it's just she's not getting the help that she needs and as more time
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passed Linda AR felt like she needed to keep Jon's mind occupied by 12:30 she makes a note that he seems to be
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isolating himself and just kind of staring like so she's like I got to give him something to do so after a
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conversation with one of the family friends Fleet white she suggests to John that excluding John bonet's room he
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should check the house top to bottom see if there's anything even missing John took the instruction to heart but he
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decided inste to search bottom to top at 1: p.m. he went for the door to the basement with Fleet close behind him and
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within 5 minutes everything was chaos there was screams fleet was bounding up the stairs and Detective AR made it to
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the doorway in time to see Jon coming up the final few steps like holding John Benet by her waist her body was already
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stiff with rigor her head was turned to one side and her arms were above her head with some kind of like white string
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or cord rope kind of thing hanging from one of her wrists detective AR told John
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you like put John bade down by the front door she said that her lips were already
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blue like she knew she was dead but she still checks for a pulse anyway but she was cold the touch when she touches her
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so Linda AR moves John B's body to another spot on the first floor and JN asked to cover her up with a blanket
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which she let him do which is more contamination this is like the worst case scenario here because it's not even
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just the blanket like Jon held her at some point like he's like laying on the floor and when paty comes into the room
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she laid on top of her while she's crying pray like literally she's like praying to Jesus like asking him I think
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the line is like you raise Lazarus like please raise my baby so you to your point like you have all of this
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contamination happening but Linda aren't called 911 telling them like I need an ambulance I need a coroner like whatever
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like the delay is in getting people here like you have to get people here now she
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called again when they still hadn't come a few minutes later and then again after
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she saw an ambulance drive past the house so this is like the Murphy's Law of crime scenes everything that could go
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wrong was is going wrong but now it's time for everyone to get out Ramsay and Friends included so while a search
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warrant was being obtained for the house and John Benet was sent off for autopsy
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detectives tried to speak more with the family one detective was sent to go talk
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to Burke who basically just told him like everything in our house was normal like our parents Wen abusive there
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weren't any arguments on or leading up to Christmas day so like nothing meaningful from him and that evening
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Linda art and another detective went to speak with John Ramsay they were staying
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at a friend's house and by the time Linda got there there were even more people that had come to be with them
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they had more friends even the family doctor Dr buff was there and sometimes he's called The Family Doctor sometimes
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he's called nominees pediatrician it might be like a little bit of both he' given p a volume so Linda didn't see her
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when she came by but she did get to talk to John for about 40 minutes and it's worth noting that she talked to John
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during her time at the home as well like so she and others had gotten the initial
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story of the day like or days leading up to John's death and John points to this
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fact a lot when I talk to him because if you know this story you'll know that a big part of the narrative is the fact
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that the family they say they didn't cooperate they didn't talk to police for a long time but John points to this and
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he says look yes we did we talked to them in our home and in our friends home and that is true and it is also true
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that they stopped cooperating after that 40-minute meeting and here's why so according to John Ramsey he told me he
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had gotten a call within the first like day or two we're talking the 26th 27th from the person he told me who ran his
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HR at his company and they told him like Hey I have this inside source telling me
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that the police are looking at you and paty for this you need to lawyer up well advice taken because of the friends who
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were sitting alongside John Rams that evening when Linda had come during that like 40-minute conversation was a guy
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named Mike bam Mike was John Ramsay's corporate council at his company so when police had left that night like after
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that 40-minute thing they suggested a formal sit down with the ramies obviously tensions were high py was
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currently incapacitated and the majority of their interactions had been when they
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thought that JN B was a missing person like there was plenty more questions that needed to be asked by police which
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I agree with like at least everything that made it into the reports about the conversations they had in those early
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days when they were speaking it's pretty surface level I mean we get some like immediate people that they suspect does
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anything in the note stand out to them like who has keys to the house Etc but if they were going to find out who
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killed jeanan they were going to have to go a few layers deeper so Linda suggested like let's do this sit down at
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the station on the 28th but either in that moment or maybe later it's not totally clear from
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Linda's report it seems like Mike put the kabash on that and listen like we got a rule for a reason right like
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always get a lawyer but this is the beginning of a decades long battle between the Ramsay and I think police
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question mark But like who is behind what in this case as you'll come to see is pretty
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convoluted so the ramsy don't go talk to police on the 28th they do have a closed
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memorial service that day for Jean banet in Colorado before they leave town which
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I knew happened but it was that soon yes so John Ramsey says that they wanted to
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go back to Atlanta where their support system was I mean they had only just moved to Boulder like a handful of years
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before this like in ' 91 because his company had gotten bought out by locky or locky Martin now so he says that he
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still thought of Atlanta as home like they always had planned to move back and like that's where they were planning to
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bury Jean Benet in the same Cemetery as her older half sister who had died in a car accident a few years before and
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interestingly about um his company like that bought access Graphics luy John Raves about them like you'll see that in
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my sit down with him but one of the things that they did after Jean benet's death was they had offered John a
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company plane to take him to Atlanta so the company plane takes him to Atlanta 29th 30th goes by 31st is Jean B's
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funeral and then the first all media Hell Breaks Loose in a move that John Ramsey himself will later
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call a mistake he and py decide to go on CNN I feel like this is like the one of
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the most like famous parts of this case that you can like I can see that yeah now they haven't had a formal sit down
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with police but they have this sit down with the media and it rubs people all of
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the wrong ways gramy you found the note was a handwritten note three pages I didn't um I couldn't read the
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whole thing I I just gotten up we were on our it was the day after Christmas and we were going to go
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visiting and it was quite early in the morning and I gotten dressed and was on my way to the kitchen to make
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some coffee cofy and we have a back staircase from the bedroom areas and I always come down
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that staircase and I'm usually the first one down and the note was lying across the three pages across the Run of
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one of the stair treads and it was kind of dimly lit was very early in the morning and I started to read it and it
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was addressed to John it said Mr ramsy and it said we have your daughter and I you know it just was it
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just wasn't registering and I I may have gotten through another sentence I I we have your
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daughter and I I don't know if I got any further than that and I immediately ran back upstairs
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and pushed open her door and she was not in her bed and I screamed for John and John you've subsequently read
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the the note was there anything in there that struck you in any sense well no I mean I read it very fast I was
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out of my mind and uh it said don't call the police you know that type of thing and I
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told py to call the police immediately and and and uh I think I ran through the house a
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bit we went to check our son to her son's room sometimes she sleeps in here and uh we just were we were we were just
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frantic the police said a couple of days ago to assure other residents of Boulder
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there is no killer on the loose here you can be assure everything is under control you you believe it's someone
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outside your home there is a killer on the loose abely I don't know who it is I don't
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know if it's a he or a she but if I were a resident of Boulder I would tell my friends to
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keep okay keep your babies close to you there's someone out there you know America has just been hurt so deeply
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with the this the tragic things that have happened and the young woman who drove her children into the water
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and we don't know what happened with the OJ Simpson and I mean America is suffering because they they
00:24:14
have lost faith in the American family we are a Christian God fearing family we love our children we would do
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anything for our children so this interview that they did was actually a lot quicker than I had in my head I
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don't know why like growing up I thought this was like this like long special where they gave sit down yeah statements
00:24:48
about everything but I feel like the part that you heard about the note was like
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honestly the most detail that we got I think in total it ends up being like a I think I heard the CNN anchor like
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40-minute thing but there were other like little things here and there but mostly overall it was the ramy's
00:25:06
opportunity to let the public know that they were unhappy with the direction of the investigation they didn't think that
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the Boulder Police Department had the right resources allocated to the case and so they were going to be putting
00:25:20
together their own investigative team and offering up a reward so did you ask John why they agreed to do something
00:25:27
like this well just to be clear they didn't agree to like some incoming ask like John had a friend who knew the
00:25:34
president of CNN so they really made this interview happen oh but John said something this was one of the more
00:25:41
interesting parts of our interview like about why they decided to do this in the
00:25:46
first place and listen I have heard this guy talk a lot I've read his books I've
00:25:52
seen the interviews that he's done I mean his life story is drilled into him like word for word he has had a lifetime
00:26:00
of people probably asking him the same questions over and over and he gives the same answers over and over because he's
00:26:07
consistent and in the past what I've seen or read is that he talks about how his friends thought that they should go
00:26:13
on they should tell their version of events that they should defend themselves and what he told me still was
00:26:20
that his friends were the ones really pushing the interview but the reason behind why was
00:26:27
different hi crime junkies I'm your host Ashley flowers and I'm Brit and every week we
00:26:34
cover all kinds of True Crime cases from the most infamous to mysterious deaths and disappearances even cases you've
00:26:41
never heard anywhere else if you can't get enough of all things True Crime well you found your people and if you're like
00:26:48
us and want to make a real impact in these cases you're definitely a crime junkie so join us every Monday for new
00:26:55
episodes you can find crime junkie wherever you get your podcast casts okay so in our sitdown John Ramsay
00:27:04
told me that his friends wanted him to go on CNN to protect Boulder what does that even
00:27:12
mean great question I asked it and I didn't really get a totally clear answer and this is truly where when you're done
00:27:22
with the episode I'm telling people you have to go watch the interview with him it's on YouTube he just kept saying
00:27:28
Boulder was this weird place like this bubble where reality was like outside of it like I I'm like I know I'm not making
00:27:37
sense but like it didn't really make sense to me and I don't know it like in talking to them and like seeing stuff
00:27:43
that theyve done in the past it doesn't seem like they liked the place all that much I mean it was a far cry from the
00:27:49
conservative South where they'd come from either way I'm not sure that they nailed the assignment remember like paty
00:27:57
fully still did like a hide your kids hide your wife we've got a killer like roaming the streets kind of thing so
00:28:01
like wasn't all pro Boulder I've always wondered a little if she went like off book in that interview like you can kind
00:28:08
of tell she's still pretty medicated like yeah and listen like people have all of the thoughts on both parents but
00:28:16
lots of thoughts on py at the time and here's what I'll say I don't think that that interview is a fair one to
00:28:23
read into too much like behavior on camera wise just because I mean you're talking a
00:28:30
week out from when their daughter was murdered I don't know that I could even sit up straight like at that point like
00:28:36
if if it were me and so it might be one of the first times that py was upright I
00:28:41
mean she even said that like in those first few days she was so out of it that JN and like her friends were literally
00:28:47
having to feed her and to bathe her help her go to the bathroom so demeanor like in my mind like throw this
00:28:55
out the window but I do think we need to talk about the substance of that interview words matter especially when
00:29:02
we're going to get into some of the statements like the early statements from them about what happened on
00:29:07
December 25th and December 26th now like I said there wasn't a lot of substance in what we got but in what we got there
00:29:14
were the first signs of cracks at least compared to what's an officer French's report from the 26th and detective AR's
00:29:22
report which technically she actually hadn't written up yet when they go on CNN actually writes up hers a week from
00:29:30
that on January 8th so there's also you know how much is lost in her memory in that time between writing it so were
00:29:37
there a lot of inconsistencies in the little that we did get no so the only one that really pops out is when py was
00:29:47
talking about seeing the letter and then going to John B's room to see if she was
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there in some of the early reports there is a note that mentions her actually going and checking Jean B's room first
00:30:00
and then going down the stairs and finding the note but there are no follow-up questions like after this like interview
00:30:07
is over and despite what they seemingly told CNN like told the reporter CU at the time they're like yeah we are going
00:30:13
to go back to Boulder we're going to work with police like we're going to do anything we can to cooperate and help
00:30:17
find our daughter's killer but that doesn't actually happen Okay well why not I know so it's what eats people
00:30:26
alive no one can understand why they wouldn't just sit down with police and go through the facts that day
00:30:33
in the days leading up to it as well like the intimate details of their lives like there is so much that police just
00:30:41
don't know at this point and again I I will acknowledge I do see that that first day or two you know everyone's
00:30:48
still trying to figure out everything there but there's they did talk but there's this huge gap in what police
00:30:53
know about their lives from that and I get it like I shake them too and be like just like help them help you like even I
00:31:02
don't know if you remember poly class her story but her dad eventually speaks out about this and he's like I don't get
00:31:07
it like I did everything I could when my daughter was murdered I begged them to give me a polygraph so that they could
00:31:13
move Beyond me right but John will just tell you like till he is blue in the face that they were following the advice
00:31:21
of the lawyers that they had and why have these lawyers if you're not going to listen to them and by the way their
00:31:27
lawyer game has been upped by this point they're no longer just relying on Mike bam to give them some advice according
00:31:34
to John Mike connects him and py to a law firm that could handle more like criminal matters so the law firm is
00:31:40
called um Haden Morgan and Foreman who like by the way if you Google them like and you go to news like what pops up is
00:31:47
like interesting clientele um I was like oh okay but that's neither here nor there the point is that these new
00:31:53
lawyers are like the big guns they have big connection not just to the DA's office but to Colorado Politics as a
00:32:02
whole and so these lawyers pass and John each have their own by the way like they're each being looked at as a
00:32:09
suspect so they have to have their own lawyers their lawyers are basically like listen we know how this works the police
00:32:15
are narrowly focused in on you they are going to want to just like get you in a room and drill you until you break down
00:32:23
which is why you have a lawyer in the room with you but but you need to go into the room you need to be there you
00:32:31
need to be in the room and listen like I the lawyers always planned to be in the room but they were particular about
00:32:41
the conditions of getting in that room they wouldn't come to terms with police on on what that was like when I talked
00:32:46
to John he was like well they wanted us to come at like late at night and like we the their lawyers like they want you
00:32:53
to be tired they want you to be like they know we're not sleeping and they're setting you up for failure yeah and he's
00:32:57
like we offered to have them come in our home and they were like no only at the police station so they go back and forth
00:33:01
trying to like come to terms with the conditions of this interview and that doesn't happen like they don't agree to
00:33:07
something until April of 1997 that is when police get the first real opportunity to sit down and drill in and
00:33:16
then after that it would be another year before their next sit down that one didn't happen until June of 1998 and
00:33:21
then there is just one more in the year 2000 now in all of that time if it was a
00:33:28
media frenzy I mean in an era of tabloids Jean Benet reigned Supreme next in line only to a literal Almost Queen
00:33:39
Princess Diana like I don't know if you remember we talked about this being our origin story but it was all over all the
00:33:48
time you could not go to the grocery store everywhere and not see her face and it was all over the news even in a
00:33:53
time when like we weren't paying attention to news right and I think it like it gar so much attention because it
00:33:59
was this like Perfect Storm of Christmas time a beautiful child a rich family and
00:34:05
then I mean put the pageant stuff on top of all of that like there were not only
00:34:09
a plethora of images of Jean Benet like being sold to tabloids and newspapers and magazines because these
00:34:15
photographers had so much footage of her but the pictures they had of her were of
00:34:20
this little girl made to look like a young woman and people had a field day with it and even though there was plenty
00:34:28
of talk of people asking the questions of whether or not the pageantry put John Benet in the path of someone dangerous
00:34:35
which spoiler alert like yeah the conversations always kind of came back to the parents yeah but they made her do
00:34:42
those pageants which the family says is an inaccurate statement they're like no this is something she liked to do with
00:34:47
her mom like paty was a former Miss West Virginia but all of the tabloids were all about the family so like the family
00:34:55
was right in saying that they were out to get them yes but like which came first right like
00:35:02
it's a very Chicken and the Egg situation if they talked to the police and the police had cleared them would
00:35:07
there would there be the Tabloid that put them in the center of things or are they in the center of things it
00:35:12
definitely fed it like again I think that it started so ear like surprisingly early but yeah I think it definitely fed
00:35:21
the monster to be like they're not talking to police like oh they left Colorado and now they're in Georgia and
00:35:27
things don't get better like the more time that passed the more contentious things got not just between the Ramsay
00:35:33
and the police but also between the police and the DA's office like things are being leaked seemingly from Every
00:35:40
Witch Way I mean it was so bad that at one point her autopsy photos were leaked to the globe and those mother actually
00:35:47
plan to print those autopsy photos and it's like the police they had become convinced that the ramies were involved
00:35:56
and so it actually came out in a deposition at one point like years down the line that the police were giving
00:36:03
information to reporters to try and put external pressure on the ramsy hoping that they would crack like they couldn't
00:36:10
do the thing they wanted to do inside of the interrogation room so they were going to have the media do it so at this
00:36:15
point it sounds like police are relying on other details almost like not just we
00:36:20
don't like how the family is acting to support all these suspicions that they have
00:36:25
correct because like during this time like things are getting leaked like I said you you have the police department
00:36:31
things are coming out of the DA's office too the ramsy had their own team so like
00:36:36
who is leaking what like it is a messy messy game but let me actually give you a little bit of the lay of the land of
00:36:43
some of the stuff that we were learning in the time after Jean B's death I'm going to go into her autopsy I think
00:36:50
that's a big part of it but before I do that I think we just need to talk about some of the physical evidence at the
00:36:54
house some of the observations that were made because I think all of that like was informing police's opinion on the
00:37:01
situation very early on right so one of the big ones um one of the ones that the
00:37:06
ramsy say kind of like defines the case is that police just didn't like how they
00:37:11
were acting um Linda AR I'll talk about her probably a lot in this episode she was
00:37:17
the first detective there that day and she does this like one really Infamous interview with Good Morning America in
00:37:24
1999 and the interviewer asks her like how was John that morning and she just keeps saying cordial and she's like okay
00:37:31
but cordial what does that mean it's the only word she would say cordial cordial
00:37:35
so she didn't like how he was acting now John tells me he's like and told everyone like I was trying to keep my
00:37:41
wits about me like I don't like py was deeply upset like she was just in the room with her friend she's laying down
00:37:47
she's crying he's like I had to like go into aution like autopilot exactly which
00:37:53
which like I truly I understand a little bit I look at me and husband and we are
00:37:58
very different that way where I think Eric would be the one like in the chair crying laying on the floor and I'm going
00:38:03
to be like okay I've got to get the money I'm going to get this like I lining everything up to be like what can
00:38:08
I do to fix this situation I can't just sit here yeah John's a CEO of a company like I see him I see him going in that
00:38:15
way but the other thing that Linda talks about is that they're like in separate rooms the whole time so she just found
00:38:23
that strange and people have like weighed in over the years like put their own spin on it I don't like I don't know
00:38:30
that you could say one way or another if that means anything like I don't think people could say conclusively but she
00:38:34
just felt it was strange that like paty's in one room crying again JN is like over here in action mode but in
00:38:40
this giant house in a giant house but she I think she expected them to be like yeah a unit and comforting each other
00:38:47
but that's not what she saw that day which I think played into the beliefs that first day the other thing that gets
00:38:55
talked about a ton and that she really and I think officer FR and a lot of people there that day honed in on was
00:39:01
the fact that so JN had just been like freshly showered when uh like he had just gone out of the shower when P he
00:39:08
made that 911 call and so he he's fresh in the morning she has like fresh makeup
00:39:13
but she's also wearing the same clothes that she'd worn the night before so they
00:39:18
say it depends on who you talk to right like they thought it was really weird that at 5 something in the morning she's
00:39:22
got full hair and makeup but wearing the same clothes I I don't know what to make
00:39:28
of that I'll tell you like completely honestly I went to dinner with John ramsy and then interviewed him the next
00:39:33
day and I wore the exact same outfit like and not even intentionally I didn't realize it until later but like throwing
00:39:39
on the same thing to me is not a big deal everyone says oh well you know py was so into her image and like there's
00:39:44
no way she would have done that they were about to get on a flight to go to Michigan so maybe she was just like and
00:39:49
it was like the holidays like I would wear the same outfit um the makeup she says and she is
00:39:56
from the south she she was born in West Virginia they spent so much time in Atlanta she's like my mother drilled it
00:40:01
in me you do not leave the house like unless you're fully done up which I like I've met people like that too so but but
00:40:09
people will read in and be like she just never had the chance to go to bed that night and so like it was odd to the
00:40:15
people there that first morning now I also told you that First Responders they didn't notice any sign of forced entry
00:40:21
in their initial reports but there was a broken window in the basement which I don't get how that's just missed
00:40:32
um was not everyone did miss it I'm going to have to come back to that like when we get into people's like stories
00:40:37
and statements for now what we need to know is like the window was broken but it wasn't broken recently so there
00:40:43
wasn't glass all over and John had apparently broken it over the summer like he's like no that's why there's no
00:40:49
glass like I broke it when I got locked out of the house and they thought they had asked their housekeeper's husband or
00:40:55
something like that to fix it but there must have been some kind of confusion or
00:40:58
miscommunication the window didn't get fixed so I think they view it as like oh this is a you know I me it's the perfect
00:41:05
thing to like if someone were scoping out their house to say like here's a broken window you can easily get access
00:41:10
to the home but it wasn't something that was done necessarily by an intruder and
00:41:14
the other thing that they point to is there's also this hard shell suitcase that was supposed to have been right
00:41:20
under the window that they're thinking someone used to maybe get in or get out and then there
00:41:27
the note the ramsy to this point like more than the broken window they point to the
00:41:33
note as proof that Jean Benet was kidnapped they're basically like listen if it looks like a duck if it quacks
00:41:39
like a duck like it's probably a freaking duck like we have a ransom note we probably have a kidnapping but there
00:41:44
were things about this note that even really early on police were finding odd the first thing is like they end up
00:41:53
concluding that the note was written on paty's Note pad with a pen from inside the house like I guess John and py each
00:42:01
had like their own notebooks for phone messages or whatever but they determined that it was from P's one that the paper
00:42:09
came from and what's interesting is that the pad of paper and the pen were put back like like they were put away it
00:42:16
wasn't just like left out but they were like put back in different places now when they made this connection about it
00:42:21
being paty's notepad they also found out that there was a first attempt at writing the before the writer started
00:42:29
over so there is a page that starts out Mr and mrss and then there's like a line
00:42:33
like it's going to start Ramy but that's it like they call this um everyone calls
00:42:38
it the practice note but it just says Mr and Mrs R and then we know the final note is just addressed to Mr Ramsey
00:42:45
right now it's already a little sus that this thing was written with items inside
00:42:49
the house because I think what everyone starts thinking is like this person didn't come prepared like usually in
00:42:55
kidnapping cases you see them if they're going to leave a note that's like something they come with if you're going
00:42:59
to hold someone for ransom you should probably have the ransom note in is the thought and and if not when they look at
00:43:08
like the the sheer amount of words here two and a half pages I think I heard someone say it would take someone like
00:43:14
20 minutes to rate this thing they're like when would they have done that now the ramsy think that this person this
00:43:23
Intruder snuck into their house while they were at a Christmas dinner earlier that night was like sitting there laying
00:43:28
and wait for everyone to like go B go to bed and they said like oh we think it was written then which gives the person
00:43:35
like hours ample amount of time but it also like doesn't fit with a lot of like what we'll come to know if
00:43:43
the goal was to just like get her out of the house we know that she's found with
00:43:47
everything done to her inside the house so if you if you pre-wrote that note it like something about that doesn't add up
00:43:54
but then if you wrote the note afterwards that also doesn't make sense because why would you like hope that
00:43:59
there's a notebook and a pen readily available for you to and 20 minutes well and also like she's dead right like so
00:44:06
what was the point of the ransom note at for an intruder if they were going to leave her deceased in the basement and
00:44:14
Beyond like when the note was written the contents of the note were super weird to me so for starters it's like
00:44:22
really focused on John I don't know if like as you're reading it I know you've probably seen that not like bazillion
00:44:26
times like everything is about and his business and even his role in the business in the business and it's like
00:44:34
John make sure you get enough like sleep John make sure you do this John your daughter like which and and if it is
00:44:41
about JN in the business then like the you know the ramies have said there's like this sexual component to Jean B's
00:44:50
death that we're going to get into but like if it's about that then that part doesn't line up MH and then like I said
00:44:57
there's a lot of um in the note it mentions like make sure you get some sleep make sure you there's like this
00:45:02
weird sense of like like if you want her earlier just get the money earlier and we'll figure this out it's re yeah it's
00:45:08
really strange the way that it focuses on them and like again I don't know car is the right word but it's like it this
00:45:15
isn't it doesn't make sense like nothing about the notes makes sense and then there are all of these quote that when
00:45:22
people have like gone through and really like broken it down all of these quotes
00:45:26
from movies where kidnappings happened and so is this like is this a movie buff sure I mean surely someone's not like
00:45:34
going through and watching bunch of movies as they're writing this if they wrote this in the house in 20 minutes or
00:45:38
a couple hours whatever it is and finally no one knows what the sbtc is like there are theories out the wazo
00:45:49
about what it could be I've heard saved by the cross I've heard uh rumors that where uh John Ramsey was stationed in
00:45:58
the Navy in the Philippines that there was like some it's like some military faction acronym yeah which then they're
00:46:04
like oh is that foreign faction but like that's never been proven so people can have and honestly like again the stuff
00:46:11
people can come up with like is pretty wild lots of wild theories but in almost 30 years there is no conclusive proof
00:46:19
about what that is connected to and the other thing we don't know is this amount
00:46:25
of money it's so specific $118,000 not 100 not 150 and and like and split too in like different bills
00:46:38
and John was like I mean they were kind of loaded they could have asked for way more you could ask for and like I don't
00:46:45
know like I why 118 is so weird why not half a million a million dollar 10 million like or even lower at like a
00:46:53
round number of like $100,000 like the 18 it's 18 it's so weird throws me off so badly and it's
00:47:02
kind of almost like the sbtc thing where people are like oh it's a Bible verb like it's a proverb or something 118
00:47:09
like you can anything with like the number honestly 18 and it 118 people will like drill in on the thing that I
00:47:16
think most people believe or at least they think is like the most relevant information is that it comes out and and
00:47:24
John and py in the early days are like there's no significance to that number for us like we don't know what it is
00:47:30
Police end up finding out that John Ramsay's bonus uh that year for his company was
00:47:38
$118,000 that exact amount yeah and like some change like don't get me wrong but
00:47:41
like the lump sum the big number the weird $118,000 and he says yeah that it maybe
00:47:52
that's it he um the interesting thing is so I think what gets mixed up a lot like
00:47:56
for people is that they're like oh that was his Christmas bonus he got that in December like everyone must have known
00:48:02
it actually was issued to him he says in like January or February of 1996 so it had been the whole year but he said that
00:48:10
that bonus was like a line item on all of his pay stubs so if somebody were like going through documents in their
00:48:17
house like they would have seen that and I asked him I was like was there evidence of somebody who's like gone
00:48:21
through documents in your house and he said he says no but that doesn't mean that that didn't happen and it's kind of
00:48:26
like his best theory of if it's this number this might be how someone would have found that exact yeah specific
00:48:34
number the police would say well no one need to find it someone in your home probably yeah yeah so they have all this
00:48:43
weird stuff in the note and then they start getting handwriting samples from people in the family trying to find out
00:48:49
who wrote this they got a few actually from paty and everyone is ruled out except
00:48:57
py now' be very clear like they don't say it was her handwriting they just say that she can't be excluded or they can't
00:49:04
rule her out which is like a very important distinction well and the language itself felt like her if I'm
00:49:10
remembering like her interviews right like it's kind of Flowery over the top like they linked words like hence
00:49:18
and when I said that I was likeo that's a word like that's stuff that she would say though right not words like she
00:49:25
invented like lots of people know those words but there is this like strange juxtaposition in the writing where some
00:49:32
of the words are actually like spelled wrong and then you have words like atache with like the little like Mark
00:49:39
little accent over it yeah yeah and they're so they're like oh someone must have like spelled other words wrong
00:49:44
intentionally which kind of fed into this idea of oh this this this Ransom note isn't real like it was some kind of
00:49:51
staging of some sort but like fun fact like I also spelled the word atache wrong when I was wrting like this story
00:49:57
out so like I would be floored if you hadn't knowing you I was just going to say like so but I also like I know words
00:50:05
that are outside of my normal vocabulary and then like I can't there are some basic words I I can't spell right like
00:50:10
it's just not be like fooling anyone and I would also say that like you would be
00:50:14
able to tell the difference if you and I wrote complet like the same things because we would use completely
00:50:20
different words yeah to get back to it though um there are a lot of strange things about the not but there are other
00:50:27
random things around the house that if you really want to go down this Rabbit Hole like there's a baseball bat outside
00:50:35
um there's a rope in another bedroom of the house but the important thing is like none of it is forensically linked
00:50:43
to the crime at least not or hasn't been to the public so for the sake of keeping
00:50:48
people with me like we still got a lot a lot of room here like a lot of uh episode to go I want to move to the
00:50:55
autopsy so when jeanan is found she had what is described as a Gro likee device tied around her neck using white like
00:51:05
rope or cord or some kind of like substance and then the broken off handle of a paintbrush now Gat Gro whatever like
00:51:15
that is the word that gets used all the time it's the only reason I know what that is it's like synonymous with this
00:51:21
case but it actually isn't a GTH that got used I don't know if it matters but it feels like with
00:51:29
this case the devil is in the details so for accuracy's sake what they're act like at least when I was like looking it
00:51:35
up a garat is like some kind of like string cord rope chain whatever and then like two like handles on the end what
00:51:43
was actually used in John benet's case was a white cord that was tied around her neck it was fastened in the back and
00:51:53
it was fastened to that broken end of the paintbrush and I think the thinking was that or if
00:52:00
people are still trying to call it a gat is that maybe you could like twist the paintbrush and then that would tighten
00:52:06
it but investigators said that it was tied more like a noose than it was any kind of garat and particularly they've
00:52:14
made note that the knots weren't especially complicated now the brush itself is from inside the house like a
00:52:23
lot of the other stuff we're finding and we find out that it came came from paty's artart Supply so she had been
00:52:28
taking painting classes at the time at the local University so she had this little like carrier bucket thing full of
00:52:35
stuff like that now what wasn't obvious in the Ramsay house that morning that she was found but what would become
00:52:42
clear when her autopsy was done is that along with having this cord around her neck she also had suffered severe blunt
00:52:52
force trauma to her head like they're quite literally when you see the picture there's like a chunk of her skull that
00:52:59
is like caved in and then this like 8 in crack across her skull as well so I was
00:53:04
never really clear like which one of these things was her cause of death though um yeah so the autopsy report
00:53:13
says it was just a combination do do they know which one was first I don't know so I think like first
00:53:23
you need to know that the Rope around her neck is like if you see the pictures that got
00:53:29
released it's like embedded in there like I mean looks like somebody truly tied it so tight but it actually wasn't
00:53:37
tied really tight so like just like the bindings I mentioned that were loose on her wrist the cord I think initially
00:53:43
around her neck probably was as well because in the autopsy report there is a note that even though she's got the
00:53:51
external wounds there is no internal damage to her neck which you you would see if there was like severe
00:53:59
strangulation if that makes sense so it's possible that maybe her body like got swollen after death or like as she
00:54:09
was dying like and it made it look so much tighter but she was definitely alive when it happened yes so yes so she
00:54:17
definitely did get choked in some way because we have external signs of her being choked like so we've got abrasions
00:54:25
we've got peal hemorr on her neck and her eyes and her face which all that makes sense but I still don't I'm not
00:54:32
seeing what came first same like really the only two options are either she was being lightly choked but again the
00:54:41
choking was not the thing that was going to kill her because we don't see those internal injuries she was being lightly
00:54:45
choked and she either still has the cord around her neck or it's taken off and then she's hit and then it's put back on
00:54:51
or it's like I said it's just left on or she's hitting the head and then it is put on and if she's swelling that
00:55:01
caused the choking those those are really are only two options either way the hit in the head
00:55:07
was so severe that even the light choking whether it was someone doing it or just the cord being on it contributed
00:55:14
to her death in conjunction with the head wound so there seems to be a consensus from a a number of people that
00:55:23
the asphixiation happened like 45 minutes after after the hit and it really is like authorities who believe
00:55:29
this on the Ramsay Camp um they have this investigator Lou Smith who really reaches a different conclusion he thinks
00:55:37
she was hit in the head after she was choked and that the choking was done as part of a sexual act now I I mentioned
00:55:46
this briefly but when JN was bringing Jean banet upstairs like when he first found her in the basement there was some
00:55:53
of that like white cord same stuff that's around her neck is like around her wrist or like her hand just one of
00:55:58
them and he says that they like or they were like bound together but like I think it's only left on one and it's
00:56:04
pretty loose like the knots themselves were loose like a lot of people whove looked at this like it wouldn't have
00:56:10
actually like kept her hands together right so again the people who look at this like a staging they'll say this is
00:56:17
more proof that it wasn't to actually restrain her this was something done after the fact um but could the knots
00:56:24
have gotten loose another way we look at a scene that we know is so severely contaminated she wasn't left in the
00:56:30
place that she was found I don't know so she also had a piece of tape that was over her mouth and when John found her
00:56:36
he had actually ripped that off and he leaves it in the basement he brings her upstairs and it's left in the basement
00:56:43
along with the white blanket that was covering her and then one of the things that I never knew in this case was that
00:56:50
along with the white blanket there was a Barbie night gown and I don't know what
00:56:55
it means um like by all accounts it's not what she was wearing that evening it doesn't
00:57:01
seem like it was soil nobody NOS if it's like clean dirty like was it did they go
00:57:06
up to her room to get like where was it was it just like shuffled in maybe with the blanket that they brought down like
00:57:11
nobody knows it's just kind of this weird piece that I can't quite make sense of but there's a a Barbie uh night
00:57:16
gown down there too so the night gown I already said wasn't what she was wearing
00:57:19
what she was wearing was a white shirt with a silver star and she had worn that shirt to a Christmas dinner that they
00:57:25
went to the before that's where they were before they all came home and went to bed she was also wearing white Long
00:57:32
John pants and under those she was wearing a pair of underwear and this is like such a weird part of the case the
00:57:39
underwear that she was wearing was a size 12 which for like my non-kid people usually like the general rule is like
00:57:47
you can usually go size by age like obviously every kid's different but pretty close like May is six she wears
00:57:51
an eight yeah and and J was like a pretty average like height wa for her age so like a 6-year-old to be in 12
00:58:00
underwear they were the the they even said like when they when they were like taking off her clothes and doing her
00:58:04
autopsy like they were huge on her yeah and the other interesting thing is that her long johs and her underwear were
00:58:11
both stained with urine mostly on the front of the garments which indicates to me that she was probably laying face
00:58:21
down when her bladder was empty cuz I think it's especially important when you think about the fact that that cord was
00:58:26
tied around her neck was tied in the back did they find urine anywhere else in the house like if she was laying down
00:58:33
and I've seen the pictures of the underwear and the pants I mean they're saturated if she's laying down empties
00:58:40
her bladder that much to just like drench her clothes it should be somewhere there should be a little
00:58:47
puddle somewhere theoretically yes but I can't say for sure based on the stuff that we have I told you I mean a lot of
00:58:56
the stuff that we have is because stuff got leaked not because it doesn't like there isn't other stuff that like exists
00:59:03
I can tell you that the sheets that were on her bed were not stained there is some conjecture that maybe there was a
00:59:10
possible urine stain on the carpet outside of the wine Celler room that she's actually found in but I can't
00:59:15
source that to actual police documents I don't know if that's true and of course
00:59:21
Boulder Police Department the prosecutor's office like they wouldn't talk to us for this episode so so all in
00:59:27
all I don't actually know but it feels like we should be able to determine where in the house that happened and the
00:59:34
where that happened feels really important like if we can't find where that means that someone cleaned it up
00:59:43
right which adds like this whole other element to this all wrting really confusing case now the other things that
00:59:50
get discovered that are of Interest are the following in her autopsy so there was vaginal trauma but not from
00:59:59
penetration like there it was more like like uh an irritant or like the skin cells and what they found is I believe
01:00:07
there were traces of the actual the broken paintbrush what they determined is that that paintbrush had been
01:00:14
inserted interestingly though there's like that that they know happened like at the time of her death but the autopsy
01:00:23
also notes some wounds or some trauma that is more chronic and chronic doesn't mean it's happening for a very very very
01:00:32
long time over and over chronic means before like that so there's at least some evidence that 7 to 10 days before
01:00:39
her death something else happened but you can't say what like they like and anyone who tries to say
01:00:48
what like we we we do not know but there is some vaginal trauma to this young girl that happened 7 to 10 days before
01:00:56
her death so they're not sure if she was abused no one can say that like definitively definitively there have
01:01:05
been a number of experts who came in like the um when Boulder Police had this case they brought in a number I think it
01:01:12
was like five or six experts that said that based on what they saw from the autopsy report like they would
01:01:18
categorize that as abuse what we also find out in all this time it's not necessarily the autopsy but we find out
01:01:26
that Jean Benet had been having issues with soiling herself so she was I mean py still had like pull-ups in the house
01:01:35
she was still wetting the bed even soiling the bed and py would say like listen like that's
01:01:42
this happens kids have accidents she said that um her stepdaughter John one of John's from his previous marriage um
01:01:49
was did the same thing till she was like eight apparently Burke had the same things so paty was like the it's just
01:01:56
kids um but people who do want to say that she was abused will point to this as like more evidence of that but no
01:02:03
like there there is no definitive proof that she was being sexually abused for for like in the time leading
01:02:12
up to it like there's but there clearly something happened like like in the 7 to
01:02:17
10 days and this but we don't know what that is like it it's so much of this case you don't we will never know what
01:02:24
was happening in that house on that night or the days before or you know John was doing so many things outside of
01:02:31
the home too I also want to make it clear that if there was abuse which I think there's evidence of and it's
01:02:36
something that I talked to John about actually in our interview I was like it's I mean the proof is like it feels
01:02:43
like the proof is there like but that doesn't mean it has to be a family that's like right she came into contact
01:02:48
with so many people so I know I just like went on and on and on but the short answer is no there's no like proof she
01:02:54
was abused but a lot of expert who believe she had been to go back to the evidence so there
01:03:00
are some fibers that are found as well um they're found on the sticky side of the tape that was on her mouth they're
01:03:09
um some that are found like in the ligature like knots that we've got you know I don't know if was her her hands
01:03:15
or her neck but there's some found in the ligature and some that were on the white blanket as well and they are
01:03:23
consistent the police say with a jack that py was wearing the night of the 25th additionally there is one mention
01:03:33
of some black fibers that were found in her underwear that they say were consistent with a wool sweater of John's
01:03:42
but this is a super important caveat a this is only thrown out in paty's 2000 interview and we know like like the
01:03:51
person interviewing her says this we know that you can straight up lie in right so I don't know if this actually
01:03:58
is true cuz I like it's not anywhere else as fact I don't know if like the fibers were actually in the underwear I
01:04:04
don't know if if they were if they actually got tied to JN I have no idea and the family lawyer actually makes
01:04:12
note later on a different one he says that like just saying those things skews the picture because he's like a when you
01:04:20
talk about the coat fibers the shirt fibers um he's like how many other things did you try and test to match it
01:04:27
first of all and you're not even talking about all the other fibers that were found that aren't tied to anything there
01:04:33
weren't only these like two or three fibers there could be a lot in there and also people do laundry yeah and he's
01:04:39
like so to to just say those couple of things really skews the record as he says so you got a lot of the physical
01:04:46
evidence but like the thing I think everyone wants to talk about when we talk about this case there is foreign
01:04:52
DNA exactly we've got DNA under her nails her right and her left in her underwear and on the cord around her
01:05:02
neck we know John B was the main contributor in all of it in 1997 there was an indication of an unknown
01:05:11
contributor but the testing was super basic back then in '97 yeah it was so basic that what I can tell from like
01:05:19
what I've seen is that we're dealing with like n a that is off out of like multiple markers so they were like far
01:05:26
from a real profile that we could do anything with back then but one of the things that really frustrated the family
01:05:32
and made them feel like this was targeted against them is that no one was sharing that they were ruled out from
01:05:39
that in those early days which seems pretty significant so everyone's looking for an excuse of like it almost feels
01:05:45
like they were trying to like write it off like how can it still be them and not be this and instead of just being
01:05:50
like Oh like was there someone else in the house like all put your theory aside like the question is was there someone
01:05:59
else in the house and I think that's the question everyone should be asking and then the final thing that we have as far
01:06:05
as evidence at least that I'm going to get into is the pineapple I was waiting for you to get to the pineapple this the
01:06:13
pineapple so the pineapple there are remnants of pineapple found in her stomach if you know you know if you
01:06:21
don't that's why you have me but to understand why the pineapple becomes important like or why it's a big deal we
01:06:29
have to go backward a little bit so now that you have the physical evidence like
01:06:33
the stuff that we're working with most of which was getting again I just want to remind you getting leaked like little
01:06:38
bit by little bit to the public over weeks and months all during the time when the Rams
01:06:43
are lawyered up I want to go into the actual statements that we get so the stuff that police say that they were
01:06:50
told on December 26th the statements given to authorities by John and Pat y in the months after that fateful day and
01:06:58
even in the years that followed so there are two reports that have been leaked from First Responders
01:07:05
that I found one is from officer French he's the first guy that shows up at the house that morning and the other is from
01:07:11
detective Linda AR let's start with French since he was the first one who was there that day and so actually I
01:07:17
have if you wouldn't mind just like reading I think it's the report says I spoke with Mr and M
01:07:28
Ramsey while Burke continued to sleep Miss Ramsey told me that she had gone into John's room at about 5:45 hours to
01:07:36
wake her in preparation for a short family trip the family was to take later that day she found Jean B's room empty
01:07:43
and then discovered the note as she walked down the stairs she immediately called
01:07:48
police okay so then just go to the so there's like there's section I'm making it tight for every they told me they had
01:07:55
spent Christmas night with the redacted and that they arrived home at 2200 hours
01:08:01
Mr Ramsey said that Jean banet and Burke's bedrooms are separate and are located on the second floor of the
01:08:06
three-story house with the master bedroom on the top floor Jean Ban's bedroom has an access door to the second
01:08:12
floor porch which was locked and undamaged okay so if you wouldn't mind now I've got Linda
01:08:22
Arts okay Linda says officer French told me that when he arrived he met with paty
01:08:28
Ramsey Jean benet's mother paty was very upset and distraught and it was difficult for officer French to obtain
01:08:34
information from her officer French also spoke with John Ramsey Jean benet's father officer French learned that the
01:08:39
Ramsey family had been at a friend's house on the late afternoon and evening of December 25th Jean B and her brother
01:08:45
Burke went to bed shortly after the family returned home John Ramsay had read to Jean banet after she'd gone to
01:08:51
bed and before she went to sleep Jean Benet had last been seen wearing a red red turtleneck and white long underwear
01:08:58
paty woke up this morning and discovered the suspected Ransom note at the bottom
01:09:01
of the spiral staircase paty originally thought that the note may have been left
01:09:05
by the housekeeper officer French has been told that the Ramsey family had been planning to leave early this
01:09:11
morning from Michigan the Ramsey family has a home in upper Michigan after py discovered the note she went to Jean
01:09:16
bonet's bedroom paty discovered Jean Benet was missing okay so then go to the next part
01:09:21
where she talks about actually being a to speak with py I did ask py a few questions and was able to receive some
01:09:27
information the following is information I received from py py has gotten up on the morning of December 26th 1996 and
01:09:35
had gone downstairs from her bedroom to the kitchen py used the back I.E West stairway the back stairway consists of a
01:09:42
spiral staircase leading from just outside John benet's bedroom to the northwest corner of the first floor of
01:09:47
the house at the bottom of the spiral staircase py discovered a three-page handwritten note the note had been
01:09:54
written on legal pad siiz paper py said she originally thought the note might have been left by her housekeeper after
01:10:00
py looked at the note and read it she ran to Jean B's bedroom Jean banet was missing okay so it keeps going after
01:10:06
that just basically like repeating a lot of the stuff that we already know like they had an alarm but they didn't set
01:10:11
the alarm like kind of talks about their housekeeper a little bit who she had a key early on when Jean ban was still
01:10:18
just like a missing person police were asking about anyone who like had access to the house and then if you want to
01:10:23
keep going so Linda talks to John okay John Ramsey told me that he and his family had been at a dinner party held
01:10:30
at the redacted home on the afternoon and evening of December 25th 1996 John py Burke and
01:10:38
John Benet had returned home at approximately 2200 hours John told me that paty and Burke immediately went to
01:10:45
bed John had read a book to Jean banet tucked her into bed then John went to bed John said he went to bed at
01:10:52
approximately 2230 hours for anyone who whose mind doesn't work like mine 10 and
01:10:58
10:30 yeah I don't work in military time like I every time I'd be like backwards from
01:11:04
24 anyways so it keeps going I mean again for anyone who's like as deeply obsessed as I am like I'll have all this
01:11:11
info in the show notes so you can go like read the full thing for yourself but for now you have what you need to
01:11:15
know so that's what police have from the day of about like them getting home going to bed finding the note there's a
01:11:24
bunch more that they talk about like I don't want to give you the impression that the Ramsey only said like three
01:11:29
words to them like they answered all the questions that they had day of but police were expressly told to treat them
01:11:36
like victims in the early days not like suspects now you know after this Mike bam steps in tells John like listen I
01:11:43
want to help you out I want to put someone like in place because like you really need representation in a criminal
01:11:49
matter like this and you know he's like Jesus Mike bham Jesus Take the Wheel like go ahead
01:11:56
now we know that they don't sit down for a formal interview they leave for Atlanta and then they did that disaster
01:12:04
of an interview on CNN which if Jon's Insider Source was wrong about police like initially looking at them like they
01:12:13
definitely were now right because some of the stuff in that interview conflicted with the little information
01:12:20
that police already knew and again why even talk to CN then in the first place I don't get it to protect Boulder right
01:12:30
# protect Boulder and which is like when I'm sat down with John as soon as he told me that I was like but that's weird
01:12:37
right and he's like yeah no it's definitely weird but to protect Boulder I don't know anyway so you heard some of
01:12:41
the clips like they don't go into a ton of detail but they do say a couple of things that stick out and I thought that
01:12:47
maybe we could just like read like read it a little bit so um I'll just ask the interview questions and and I'll do
01:12:55
John's lines and if you want to do py sure Mrs ramsy you found the note was it a handwritten note three pages I didn't
01:13:03
I couldn't read the whole thing I had just gotten up we were on our it was the day after Christmas and we were going to
01:13:09
go visiting and it was quite early in the morning and I got dressed and was on my way to the kitchen to make some
01:13:14
coffee and we have a back staircase from the bedroom areas and I always come down
01:13:18
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
01:13:26
the stair trads and it was kind of dimly lit it was just very early in the morning and I started to read it and it
01:13:33
was addressed to John it said Mr Ramsay and it said we have your daughter and I you know it just was it just wasn't
01:13:41
registering and I I may have gotten through another sentence I can't we have your daughter and I don't know if I got
01:13:49
any further than that and I immediately ran back upstairs and pushed open her door and she was not in her bed and I
01:13:55
screamed for John John you subsequently read the note was there anything in there that struck you in any sense and
01:14:02
then John says well no I mean I read it very fast I was out of my mind and it said don't call the police you know that
01:14:08
type of thing and I told py call the police immediately and I think I ran through the house a bit we went to check
01:14:14
our son checked our son's room sometimes she sleeps in there and we just were we
01:14:19
were just frantic and then there's another section that I have here that I just want to read I'll read again for
01:14:25
John and you read for paty to those of you who may want to ask let me address it very directly I did not kill my
01:14:32
daughter John B there have also been innuendos that she has been or was sexually molested I can tell you that
01:14:39
those were the most hurtful innuendos to us as a family they are totally false John Benet and I had a very close
01:14:46
relationship I will miss her dearly for the rest of my life I'm appalled that anyone would think that John or I would
01:14:53
be involved in such a hi heinous crime but let me assure that I did not kill Jean Benet it did not have anything to
01:15:01
do with this I love that child with my whole of my heart and soul we feel like there are at least two people on the
01:15:08
face of this Earth that know who did this and that is the Killer and someone that that person may have confided in
01:15:15
the big thing that people took away from this were a couple of things one py says
01:15:21
that she only read the first line of the letter which is hard to understand because in the 911 call she tells the
01:15:29
operator how it is signed at the very end of the letter s sptc Victory and in one of the first reports she says that
01:15:36
she was nervous like remember when she was like standing at the window she was nervous about like the car pulling up
01:15:40
and being marked because the letter had said not to call the police but it doesn't quite make sense how she would
01:15:47
have known that if she only read the first like line or two she also talks about screaming for John and that that's
01:15:55
new didn't she say she called the police immediately or even in one version didn't she say she saw Jean B was not in
01:16:02
her bed before she even like saw the letter so yeah so that's what's in the report but I will say that when
01:16:08
detective arm was kind of I if you remember like that you read it in one of them she's kind of rehashing what French
01:16:14
told her it looks like in that version she saw the note first so some of the first reports might like something might
01:16:23
be getting Lost in Translation and we talked about like you know there's time in between there's the ramies basically
01:16:29
say like you know there's so much in the initial reports that are just like straight up wrong like everyone's
01:16:34
misremembering or saw things differently or heard things differently or like misinterpreted stuff so the other thing
01:16:41
that is interesting about what we learned from that little bit from CNN is that there is no excuse for the
01:16:48
pineapple that we know about everything they say is they like get home go to bed is no like snack
01:16:56
later and gred this is just like a a tidbit that we're getting but paty goes to bed Burke goes to bed Jong takes
01:17:02
Janet up reads to her puts her to bed all within like a half an hour yeah and we got like in some of that from the
01:17:08
early reports but it's we don't understand when that would have happened because they don't in in the time when
01:17:14
they're making their first statement they don't say like oh we got home and then this happened and so like there
01:17:18
it's just kind of left is a little bit of a mystery all of that to say that after they do this CNN thing police have
01:17:26
their antenna up and they really want to sit down with them once they come back there's something weird that
01:17:34
happens before they go back to Boulder cuz they will go back to Boulder like even though they never set foot in that
01:17:41
house again they have to go back so let me back up for a second remember how I told you that John's company gave them a
01:17:48
plane to use to go back to Atlanta yeah like the company plane okay yeah so I don't know who exactly was on it I don't
01:17:55
have the Manifest but in a 1998 interview with authorities paty says that there is some kind of quote unquote
01:18:03
like scuttlebutt confusion or something around Fleet white so apparently he was planning to get on the plane back but he
01:18:12
didn't and what she said I think I have like her I think it's important to read what she said paty says quote I picked
01:18:21
up on something that fleet was not acting right and they were going to keep him from going on the private plane back
01:18:27
to Atlanta well so I don't know what happened something happens he's not on the plane with the family to Atlanta but
01:18:37
I know he makes his way out to Atlanta somehow and then it sounds like he loses his ever loving mind something
01:18:47
happens but I like I I don't know what okay so Fleet and his wife are staying with John's brother Jeff it seems like
01:18:55
and according to py Fleet kind of flips out on Jeff like he at one point like grabs his collar gets upset about
01:19:03
something and then Jeff calls over to where John and passy are staying and they're like he's like fleet's coming do
01:19:10
you have a gun and py says that her and Burke and her mom like go to the basement they're like trying to stay
01:19:17
quiet and John and paty's dad go handle this thing upstairs handle what though I
01:19:25
don't I don't I'm not following what's happening me freaking either so everyone apparently comes out of this
01:19:33
fine I mean like physically I know whatever altercation they had like is is over with but I don't know what
01:19:41
happened whatever it was about begins to fracture the friendship between the whites and the ramies and has no one
01:19:50
asked John about this of course they have I asked John about this did I asked him and I'm telling you this is what I'm
01:19:56
saying to people go watch like in other places I've heard John say that fleet was upset that they did the CNN thing
01:20:04
but in an interview John eventually does in 1998 with L Smith he says that fleet
01:20:09
was the one who pushed him to do the CNN thing like the one who insisted on it he's the one who told him to go and like
01:20:15
protect Boulder well he no he doesn't say that in 1998 like that was something he said to me but what he says is that
01:20:23
Fleet told them to do it because of what the media was saying about them that they needed to defend themselves the
01:20:29
protect Boulder thing was again new to me I don't know what it means but defend themselves protect Boulder either way
01:20:36
Jon kind of chalks up whatever this meltdown is to trauma like Fleet obviously knew the family super well
01:20:43
they were at his house for Christmas dinner for goodness sakes he and his wife were called over by paty that
01:20:49
morning when they knew John B was missing it was traumatic for everyone and John says that Fleet just isn't cool
01:20:55
under pressure and fleet was one of the people who was like down there when he found her but that still doesn't answer
01:21:00
my question like what was he saying when he was flipping out so police do ask her
01:21:05
right like because she was there but when she's asked by police about this she the her only explanation cuz she
01:21:12
says she doesn't know but she just says I wasn't having that conversation like what I know and like
01:21:19
this this is a little hard for me to understand because I'm like but you're part of th this like family like
01:21:25
something is happening yeah and I it's hard for me to understand like you you're running to the basement staying
01:21:30
quiet and that like you ask no follow-up questions like after you came out of the
01:21:34
basement just like it's fine move on and like on one hand I'm like I don't buy it
01:21:39
for a second because that that's not how I would respond on the other I have seen
01:21:45
like more and more of I don't know the family Dynamic like truly know the family Dynamic I think there's like a
01:21:52
world that you and I grew up in where I we saw a lot of like um sub it's I'm like what are all the right words
01:22:00
submissive isn't necessarily the right like exact word but like the dad husbands they're handling it yeah
01:22:08
they're handling it and we don't need to worry about it and so we don't ask any questions so seemingly that could be
01:22:14
that could be what happened here because she's like that is not a conversation I
01:22:18
had and what does John say about this though like the guy who was actually in the conversation the conversation the
01:22:25
conversation with you Lui doesn't really ask him about the altercation or at least not what what became part of like
01:22:32
the transcript I tried to ask him but John says he doesn't remember he doesn't remember what the
01:22:44
exchange what what what words were said he also doesn't remember what Fleet flipped out about at the next
01:22:51
altercation they have when they get back to Boulder I'm sorry what is happening and how did
01:22:58
I not know any of this I know so like the media that we got served really has had its own take right everyone just
01:23:09
kind of talks about the things that fit their Theory the the police were doing it the da was doing it the ramsy do it
01:23:16
and I get it like I mean truly how far in are we right now like you literally can't talk about everything in this case
01:23:22
unless you had a 400 part minies even like this episode I don't feel like it's really going to cover it uh paging
01:23:28
deia the crime junkies need CRI yeah this the next season of counterclock is drama seriously though I told you I'm
01:23:36
trying to go a layer deeper I'm trying to show everyone that like to get to the bottom of who it is so much more
01:23:42
complicated than you think it is there's like so much more than I think people think that they know and truly like this
01:23:51
is not the end of the story but here is the main takeaway from today I don't think anyone should have a strong
01:23:57
opinion any way until you consume all of it m and that is really hard to do so like I again as we're going through this
01:24:06
keep an open mind even our episode won't be the end all Beall but I'll get back to the facts so
01:24:12
they come back to Boulder this is after the funeral I don't know who travels with who Priscilla and Fleet might even
01:24:19
leave early there's like this talk about how they didn't like how they were treated by everyone at Atlanta like they
01:24:25
were expecting them to act like things were fine or everything was just too formal like they were
01:24:30
grieving I don't know but eventually everyone goes back to Boulder oh um sorry just wait one more thing so um
01:24:37
it's a weird Fleet thing so before we go back to Boulder so when paty was telling
01:24:43
authorities about this Fleet altercation she said something that set off like truly like fire alarms in my head on
01:24:52
November 15th 2002 someone brutally attacked 61-year-old Nathaniel Jones outside of his home within days
01:24:59
investigators arrested five teenage boys who all confessed to the crime and one star witness sealed their faith but for
01:25:06
the past two decades those convicted still deny their involvement and now the key witness has recanted their testimony
01:25:13
in a case where fact and fiction are difficult to separate what story will you believe listen to counterclock
01:25:19
available now wherever you listen to podcasts okay so this is after flea is kept from getting on the plane but
01:25:27
before he flips out and P is like hiding in the basement or whatever so py says that when they're in Atlanta she sort of
01:25:36
remembers Priscilla white who fleet's wife standing in her mom's living room saying something like no and I actually
01:25:43
not something like I I think I have the quote she remember her saying something like well I know what's going on if you
01:25:50
would give me a few minutes of your time I could let you in on some things and py turns to her and she says
01:26:00
Priscilla how can you know so much I'm the mother of this child and I know nothing the person asking her or
01:26:06
interviewing her when she's like talking about this asks her what she was talking
01:26:10
about and paty's like I don't have a clue like you know I really wish I would have taken her up on the offer to like
01:26:17
see what she knew but but what we still have time here what did Priscilla know I don't know man we don't know our team
01:26:27
tried to reach out to the whites like nothing back maybe they would say that like they never even said that maybe
01:26:34
they would say that whatever they said was taken out of context maybe they would say what JN says and nobody
01:26:40
remembers and surely police talk to them at some point though right yeah oh yeah
01:26:45
and from everything that's been reported the whites were super Cooperative they wanted to help in any way that they
01:26:50
could you could help by telling us what you were saying to them when you were we're freaking out that seems like a
01:26:55
really good place to start I know and I like it had to have gotten asked and maybe there is a very vanilla answer but
01:27:03
Boulder P has been super tight lipped on the whites or honestly pretty much any other people that they interviewed who
01:27:09
weren't the Ramsay all the stuff that gets leaked are about the Ramsay everything has a slant like I mean it
01:27:17
seriously no matter what side you take things are slanted and I feel like I'm dealing like I have a thousand puzzle
01:27:23
pieces that I'm like trying to put together and I feel like I'm still missing like 30,000 like no matter how
01:27:28
much is with this case like we do not have all the information but I do think that part of
01:27:33
the reason that py never went back and like got the answers from Priscilla that we would want or like I might go and get
01:27:40
is because of this Rift that forms between the families because according to paty two more things happen and after
01:27:48
that I don't think they ever speak again so Priscilla says this thing fleet has this like meltdown they all go back to
01:27:55
Boulder and it's strange because py says this next thing she's like oh I wasn't really privy to it it's kind of like the
01:28:01
same thing I wasn't really privy to this but she is there when it happens it's not like she's even removed like she was
01:28:07
in the basement before so her and John are meeting with their priest father wall and they're at the church and the
01:28:15
three of them she says are like praying and Fleet white like bursts into the office eyes wide he gets on his knees
01:28:23
apparently has this business card and he's like literally like hanging over John and he's like you hang on again
01:28:29
I've got to get this right you know what this is John you know what this means John you know what I'm going to have to
01:28:36
do with this John I'm going to have to handle this my way John and py says he like keeps going on
01:28:45
and on and and like she's asking Fleet like what what it is that's in his hand and he hands her this business card and
01:28:51
it's for someone like a joury jist or she says like some journalist or something and there's a note on the back
01:29:01
she said she can't recall word for word what the note is but she says it's something to the effect of quote this is
01:29:07
her her quote in the interview Mr y there's been some question as to whether it was you or John Ramsey Who removed
01:29:14
the tape from John B's mouth you know and about the sequence of the basement Discovery because we had been talking
01:29:20
about this wait they've been talking about the basement discovery I don't know and like who had and when exactly I
01:29:28
don't know they don't ask her like she just kind of keeps going and they don't Circle back to this and she says that
01:29:37
Fleet basically says they're after him and his family now and that he's going to have to handle this his way like I
01:29:42
said so she says he's like manic at this point and then the story just kind of Fizzles like it's not clear how it
01:29:51
deescalate I know father R like jumps in at some point but I don't know how it ends I don't know what was said I don't
01:29:57
know what journalist it was like who gave the card who's asking these questions or like if that even was the
01:30:03
question well calling all Boulder journalists who gave a card to Fleet white the crime junkies kind of want to
01:30:10
know some things I have a laundry list of people that I want to talk to like any of them are welcome to hit me up
01:30:16
anytime after this episode so that was the one thing I told you there were two things so paty says that Fleet tries to
01:30:23
get FaceTime with them one more time so by this point when the ramies go back to
01:30:28
Boulder they kind of like hop around but they end up like settling in and moving
01:30:31
in with some of their friends the Steines who weirdly like John called acquaintances before all of this but I
01:30:40
don't know man like trauma bonding is real so like they become obviously much closer but paty says that Fleet goes to
01:30:47
Glenn Stein's office at Colorado University and demands to see the Ramsay again I don't know what's said I don't
01:30:56
know how it Fizzles de escalates whatever but like that's that and I want to be clear no one in the white family
01:31:03
was ever considered suspects by any Department by all accounts they've cooperated fully with the investigation
01:31:10
and they have even been staunch critics of how the case was handled and have they've actually fought legal battles
01:31:17
trying to get documents like release that they feel would further the case or would bring more light to the case
01:31:24
but for now in our story and with the ramies the whites are out the Steines are in they're the new besties and it's
01:31:32
interesting because it turns out what we learn when John and py finally do sit down with police in April 1997 and then
01:31:39
again in June of 98 and then more 2000 is that the Steines they may have been some of the last people to actually see
01:31:48
John Benet before she died we're like eight hours into this episode um do you want to finally get into more details
01:31:54
about like the days leading up to the 26th I'm going to I know please you need backstory no I know I I'm I'm loving all
01:32:01
of it it's so much so I'm going to start with the 23rd on December 23rd the ramsy hosted a
01:32:10
Christmas party with like all of their friends even like family members of these friends who were like in town
01:32:15
visiting so you got the whites we have the feres the Steines the barn Hills like all these kids it's is Big to do
01:32:23
they hire a Santa to make an appearance the kids like are decorating gingerbread
01:32:28
houses everything was Merry and bright at least we assume but there is one weird thing that happens that night on
01:32:37
the 23rd from the same house where 911 will be called in less than 72 hours someone
01:32:45
dials 911 on the 23rd on the 23rd according to an LA Times article the call was placed from the Rams at
01:32:54
6:48 p.m. but it was like a hang-up call dispatchers tried to call back a few minutes later nobody answered so then
01:33:01
police sent an officer to the house what happened great question I don't know the
01:33:07
officer who was dispatched never filed a report now I have heard that it was Fleet white who made that call and
01:33:15
there's like a number of like explanations around like going around like oh he was trying to like dial his
01:33:21
mom is said to have been in the hospital at the time he was trying to like call and get some medication for her and Mis
01:33:27
dialed or something like that I asked John specifically about it and he's again like does not remember he says so
01:33:33
file that whole thing under like WTF it's just like it's weird and it's one of those we talk about this all the time
01:33:39
like is it a coincidence that someone in that house calls 911 and then this happens or like are there no
01:33:45
coincidences right I don't know so the 24th nothing super notable happens they go to church they go out dinner they eat
01:33:54
this place called pasta Jays John knows the owner and then they go around and look at Christmas lights paty thinks
01:33:59
that maybe they might have gone to the whites at some point like they were by there they might have like stopped by
01:34:05
for a little bit but no big deal they all go home go to bed and then everyone wakes up the 25th on Christmas day like
01:34:10
the kids like any kids on Christmas day they wake up first they like go and get the parents we want to open presents
01:34:16
John B got a bike and this like life-size twin doll thing and Burk out a Nintendo 64 hello 1996
01:34:24
right um and they eat this big breakfast as a family that they make and then in the middle of the day everyone kind of
01:34:30
does their own thing so they were planning to leave early the next morning this would have been like the 26 right
01:34:36
yeah so they're planning to leave the 26 to go to charoy Michigan to spend Christmas with John's older kids from
01:34:42
another marriage they were planning on flying private so John was like going to go he's going to check on the plane make
01:34:47
sure everything's ready where's charoy uh so Michigan so for my for my Mitten people if you're
01:34:54
I think it's like here okay for my crime junkie people do you remember um the episode we did on North Fox
01:35:01
island of course remember the whole like trafficking ring like Father Sheldon whatever um so North Fox Island is like
01:35:09
Char is like the main little town that's like the closest yeah of like the like a
01:35:14
bay so now it's crime juning context that's that's where Char way is so it's not like on an it's on the mainland but
01:35:20
like it's still pretty hard to get to so like hence the private plane right so he's going to check the plane paty's
01:35:26
like finishing packing she's wrapping some gifts for all the kids to open in Michigan some neighborhood kids come
01:35:32
over at some point to play with Jean banet and Burke and everything's going well like in the evening they get ready
01:35:38
to go to the wh's house for a Christmas dinner paty wants her and John banet to match like black pants red shirt John B
01:35:46
is not into it she wants to wear this like sh shirt with a silver star six-year-old wins like if you have a
01:35:52
six-year-old that is so true yeah um and so they go to the whites they have crab
01:35:57
like that's really like the only like we know they eat crab for dinner so like it's interesting because not much has
01:36:04
been leaked about this party like I haven't there's no pictures I don't know what happens and like it's not a huge
01:36:11
party from my understanding it's like their family Christmas dinner that they had invited the ramies to like the year
01:36:16
before and then this year so it just became kind of this little tradition but it seems small and intimate ish so the
01:36:23
goes to his dinner then they leave but they make some stops first paty had gotten some gift baskets for other
01:36:29
friends so they go to the home of the Walkers first they drop off the gift basket py just like runs in while the
01:36:35
rest of the family stays in the car then they go to the Stein what I was talking
01:36:39
about they drop off a gift there paty goes in for like 10 to 15 minutes she can't really remember if Burke went in
01:36:45
with her but like he might have because he has a friend or the Steins have a kid
01:36:49
that's like his age so like it would make sense if he did John doesn't remember for sure who went in or not like nobody
01:36:56
remembers if if dominated they don't think so but whatever nothing notable they had one more shop they were
01:37:02
supposed to make another gift basket but it was getting late they had to get up early in the morning so they decided to
01:37:07
just go home now it's just a couple minute drive to their house from the Steins and when they get there they say
01:37:15
that John banet was already like zonked out so as they're giving these like longer statements to police this is
01:37:20
again where we get like no she was never awake and John read a story to her like
01:37:25
she was asleep is what they say John had to carry her up to her room he put her in the bed he took off her coat took off
01:37:33
her shoes um and then py took over from there and she said she changed her out of her pants like just put those long
01:37:39
johns on and the whole time she's like J was so tired that she didn't even wake up at all which I like I've heard people
01:37:48
like Rumble about yeah but I mean this literally happened to me yesterday May fell asleep in the car Justin fully
01:37:54
unbuckled her out of her seat carried her in laid her on her bed and she slept for another hour I fully like yeah
01:38:01
changed Josie the other day and she was like zoned so like especially you come from like a party with friends and stuff
01:38:06
like like kids can get it snaps them yeah but when does the big like size 12 underwear get put on her and all of this
01:38:15
I don't know it is so weird the underwear is like a big thing I can't explain because it seems like the
01:38:23
underwear was originally bought for another family member like a young girl in the family who would have been like a
01:38:29
size 12 I've heard that maybe it was wrapped up like as a gift to take with them like as a present in the basement
01:38:36
somewhere but then like oh maybe John B decided she wanted them there's never like a good clear answer on why she's
01:38:47
wearing them where they came from where they came from when they got on her any of that MH so
01:38:54
again question mark question mark so py put JN B down JN is downstairs with Berke cuz I guess he still wanted to
01:39:02
play a little bit he had this toy or something that he wanted to like put together dad was helping him with that
01:39:06
for a little while py finishes up some last minute things then she goes to bed she says she does her normal probably
01:39:13
does her normal routine like brush her teeth wash her face whatever and then when John went to bed he said she's
01:39:21
already there that she you know I don't know that she necessarily asleep but he's like we don't like have an
01:39:25
interaction she's down and I read for a little bit and then I fall asleep and then we didn't wake up until the morning
01:39:32
so the big differences here now are that John B is asleep when they get home whereas before we see an early reports
01:39:39
that she was awake that John read to her that's not the case anymore and the ramsy say and I've said this before like
01:39:47
everyone the day of misunderstood them they wrote their reports wrong that John didn't read Deon Benet that he read when
01:39:55
he went to bed um and again people would be like so everyone who wrote a report got it wrong and they say like I don't
01:40:02
know if information was flowing from one person to another right I was going to say but there's like a lot of like
01:40:07
transcription and using reports as references that may have that might have been happening yes they say they've
01:40:13
always been consistent that's not the case they don't know where they got that from now the next
01:40:20
morning JN is the first one up but like before the alarm arm he took a shower paty wakes up then while he's like in
01:40:27
the shower she throws on the same clothes we talked about this from the night before she puts on her makeup does
01:40:32
her hair and then she goes downstairs where she finds the note and then when she finds the note she calls for John
01:40:38
Burke is asleep the whole time and at some point John checked on him to make sure that he was there and okay but then
01:40:44
they they again leave him to sleep till they knew what to do so you already know
01:40:49
they call police even though the note says in the statement do not call police John tells her to call the scene isn't
01:40:56
preserved in any way and a little after 1:00 in the afternoon John finds John Benet in the wine seller where
01:41:02
presumably she had been all along what always baffles me is how had no one looked in this room this wine
01:41:10
seller like the whole day there were so many people in that house and they were everywhere except for Jan's room but
01:41:19
this is one of like the great Mysteries and it's potential another example of Murphy's Law or like Maybe not maybe
01:41:27
this is something that just doesn't make sense I don't know so officer French admits that when he went and looked
01:41:33
around the house like he saw that door but he saw that it was latch and he I don't know if it's cuz the latch was
01:41:40
high or like what about it that he was like oh this wouldn't make sense for a little girl to go through or something
01:41:46
he he just doesn't even open it and look which is just like bananas to me yeah now I've heard Fleet white say that he
01:41:55
even went down to the basement at some point that day and looked around he even o he opened the door so more than French
01:42:02
did he actually opened the door to the room that they end up finding John Benet in he opens it says he doesn't see
01:42:09
anything closes the door latches it back up the one thing I'll say is John says um or like his old interviews it's like
01:42:17
not clear he can't remember if he like turned on the light or if the light was or if it was off which I understand
01:42:22
right like in in that moment like that's not a detail I would remember so is it possible that that Fleet didn't turn it
01:42:31
on and also she's not like right in front when you open the door like it's to the side a little bit so if it's like
01:42:36
already kind of dark you open it up like oh no kid just like wandering around in
01:42:40
here because it was still a kidnapping right when fleet's going to look so no kid in here like just shut it I think
01:42:47
John could also just like naturally like bre like instinctively know where the switch is
01:42:52
cuz it's his house right and I think the other thing that sticks with me is I've
01:42:55
heard it before that he' made like a beine for this wine seller like is yes is that true yes and no so he does when
01:43:03
she says hey go look top to bottom he does go right for the basement I think he makes he goes to the broken window
01:43:10
first I think or at least like draws fleet's attention to the broken window and then he goes to the wine Celler but
01:43:16
it is pretty immediate and here's the other thing that I can't explain so remember how a year ago when we started
01:43:24
the story I told you that John that John went to the basement like at some point
01:43:28
that morning when he was looking around um so he says that he goes down this is like at before or right about like 10:00
01:43:38
a.m. so he says he goes down and he noticed the broken window and he said the the window was like unlatched and
01:43:45
open and he at first he says like slightly later reports it's like wide open but either way it's really strange
01:43:53
because like he says later what he did is he just like latched it back up and then I mean I told you he comes up to
01:43:59
the basement and he doesn't say anything he doesn't say the window's broken he doesn't say the window was
01:44:04
open which like if you're looking like your daughter is missing at that point if you're looking for like a a point of
01:44:10
entry or exit I it's it's notable it's notable um and I think that people wonder why he
01:44:18
wouldn't bring that up in that moment but again you do so so many things that don't make sense in the
01:44:26
middle of trauma now this window does end up becoming a huge part of the narrative later when the ramsy have to
01:44:34
go hire a team to look into the idea of an intruder because again they say that the police are only focused on them so
01:44:42
there are a lot of strange things happening in this case that the media latches on to this is how we got so many
01:44:50
of those wild tabloid stories which by the way like I don't know if you noticed I ordered a bunch of these like on eBay
01:44:58
just because like I wanted to like go back and get a sense of like what what what was tone yeah what was everyone
01:45:03
seeing um and it like kind of wild like we I definitely wasn't allowed to like buy these oh no we could see the covers
01:45:09
at the grocery store and that was it I could I think I showed you like I was looking at like the fashion in here cuz
01:45:14
we were never allowed to look inside the tablets I like I don't know what I it's
01:45:18
like when we the bye-bye birdie when my mom always taped over a part that she thought was too scandalous for us to
01:45:23
watch and we thought it was going to be so bad so much worse in our heads and we
01:45:27
watched it and it was just a dance scene that she had cut yeah that was it that was it so it's like a Side Story uh it's
01:45:34
so interesting because like the store there's like no meat there they have like this wild headline and then
01:45:41
like no they like two interesting lines and then like a bunch of nothing to back
01:45:46
it up like 17 different lines saying the exact same thing written slightly different just to back up the headline
01:45:53
truly headline only and all of the headlines were mom this Dad that and the towboys were freaking ruthless like they
01:46:03
were following them they were harassing them they said or Don told me that they had to like hide Burke on the floorboard
01:46:09
of the car just to like get him to school like is like is nothing off limits I mean I already told you about
01:46:18
her autopsy photos getting released earlier we talked about her like bed wedding and Stu that got
01:46:25
released because they ended up releasing her medical records like someone leaked
01:46:29
this girl's medical records to reporters in some way and I like I don't want to go into like every single visit or not
01:46:37
visit point is like people were coming out of the woodwork and anyone with pictures or stories were like trying to
01:46:45
just make a buck some of them were fabricated some of them were true and one of them that has become like a
01:46:52
central part of the story is the fact that John Benet was having toileting issues this information in particular I
01:46:59
feel like kind of becomes the Crux of detective Steve Thomas' theory he was very clear that he thought py was the
01:47:07
one who killed Jean Benet his idea was that Jean banet wet herself that night and everything else
01:47:16
was done to like stage a cover up he even wrote a book on his on the case and like his theory of it the ramsy ended up
01:47:25
suing him and his publisher over it they settle out of court detective aren't had
01:47:32
a different Theory like she very much was suspicious of John I think I brought up her Good Morning America interview
01:47:40
already from 1999 cordial statement yeah right right so I don't need to rehash the whole thing I'm going to link it out
01:47:46
it's going be all the source material it is interesting to watch cuz she looks like a woman who's joke or people like
01:47:54
throw out nasty things too and she doesn't give a motive maybe she doesn't know what the motive totally was but she
01:48:02
seems to straight up be perceived as like scared of John ramsy like she talks about this moment where like when he
01:48:10
brings her like John B's body up and they're both like over her and she's like I look at him and like in that
01:48:17
moment I just know and then she like tells him to go call 911 and she says she grabs her shoulder like her gun and
01:48:23
she counts her bullets because she didn't know if everyone would make it out if they alive or like or would be
01:48:30
alive when they come like First Responders she gets written off as a crazy lady like a lot of people call her
01:48:38
crazy like I think that's an easy out like when you're talking about a woman like we that's just something that I
01:48:44
think is just an easy thing to say like and really John in our interview like he
01:48:49
stressed that to me like just how crazy she was how like incompetent like but like here's another interesting
01:48:57
thing like but I asked him in the interview because I do know that later on py and Linda end up having some kind
01:49:05
of like at least cordial exchanges where Linda like goes and meets with paty for
01:49:10
like an hour like just the two of them so like they they must and I asked him because he was he
01:49:17
was still like she's so crazy she's so crazy and I was like but clearly there's some kind of relationship and at first
01:49:22
he was like well you know she was the detective I'm like no no no but like it was after she got taken off the case
01:49:27
what did they talk about and John says he doesn't know he was a part of the conversation
01:49:33
so that that answer probably died with paty I think John still like to me he still called her crazy and I think she
01:49:43
gets a lot of the flak for bungling the scene that first day but she actually ended up suing her Department saying
01:49:50
that she was they had kind of like an unofficial gag order from what I understand and she says she was kept
01:49:55
from defending herself like it wasn't all on her she says and it ruined her career and she does she kind of like
01:50:02
unceremoniously just like gets taken off the case she got harassed by question mark I don't really know I don't know if
01:50:10
anyone knows for sure she doesn't do interviews anymore there was a rumor she was writing a book but I haven't seen
01:50:17
like a peep about that so she probably saw what happened to Steve Thomas with his book and and her case against the
01:50:25
department ended up getting dismissed so there was like no winning for her to talk about this case like I couldn't
01:50:29
even reach her for like an off the record conversation so she's far removed from this now mhm moral of the story the
01:50:37
loud theories among law enforcement were family Centric and it seems like even they couldn't agree on who or why
01:50:45
because things were a mess many people were calling for a grand jury to be convened so so that they could decide
01:50:54
what is just tabloid fodder and what is real evidence like was there someone in the house responsible for something that
01:51:02
night or should we be out there looking for an intruder like the ramies have been saying all along and it takes
01:51:08
almost 2 years but the dam finally breaks in September of 1998 that is when a grand jury finally gets called but
01:51:19
before that gets going two very letters get published publicly one from Fleet white in anticipation of the grand jury
01:51:30
and then another from detective Steve Thomas who is like dunzo with this he resigns from the Department in like a
01:51:38
pretty dramatic way and listen the next part is going to be like just a little bit long but girl it's like it is spicy
01:51:47
and remember you guys like you signed up for this so I am going to edit each of these just a little bit um down for like
01:51:56
Clarity but I'm going to have links to the full thing in our show notes so you can go read them in full grab your
01:52:01
popcorn let's get comfy the first from detective Steve Thomas Chief Beckner on June 22nd I
01:52:11
submitted a letter to Chief Kobe requesting a leave of absence from the Boulder Police Department in response to
01:52:17
persistent speculation as to why I chose to leave the ramsy investigation this letter explains more fully those reasons
01:52:25
the primary reason I chose to leave is my belief that the District Attorney's Office continues to mishandle the ramsy
01:52:31
case I had been troubled for many months with many aspects of the investigation albeit an uphill battle of a case to
01:52:38
begin with it became a nearly impossible investigation because of the political alliances philosophical differences and
01:52:45
professional egos that blocked progress in more ways and on more occasions than I can detail in this memorandum on June
01:52:53
1st and 2nd 1998 we crunched 30,000 pages of Investigation to its Essence and put our cards on the table
01:53:01
delivering the case in a formal presentation to the district attorney's office we stood confident in our work
01:53:07
very shortly thereafter though the detectives who know this case better than anyone were advised by the district
01:53:12
attorney's office that we would not be participating as grand jury advisory Witnesses how were we expected to solve
01:53:19
this case when the District Attorney's office was crippling us with their positions I believe they were literally
01:53:26
facilitating The Escape of justice during this investigation consider the following during the investigation
01:53:33
detectives would discover collect and bring evidence to the district attorney's office only to have it samily
01:53:38
dismissed or rationalized as insignificant the most Elementary of investigative efforts such as obtaining
01:53:45
telephone and credit card records were met without support search warrants denied the significant opinions of
01:53:52
national experts were casually dismissed or ignored by the District Attorney's Office even the experienced FBI were
01:53:58
waved aside in a departure from protocol police reports physical evidence and investigative information we shared with
01:54:06
Ramsey defense attorneys all of this in the district attorney's office Spirit of
01:54:10
cooperation I served a search warrant only to find later defense attorneys were simply given copies of the evidence
01:54:16
that yielded an FBI agent whom I didn't even know quietly tipped me off about what the DA's office was doing behind
01:54:23
our backs conducting investigation the police department was wholly unaware of I was advised not to speak to certain
01:54:30
Witnesses and all but dissuaded from pursuing particular investigative efforts innocent people were not cleared
01:54:37
publicly or otherwise even when it was unmistakably the right thing to do as reputations and lives were destroyed
01:54:45
some in the district attorney's office to this day pursue weak defenseless and innocent people in Shameless tactics
01:54:52
that one couldn't believe more bizarre if it were made up I was told by one in the district attorney's office about
01:54:58
being unable to break a particular police officer from his Resolute accounts of events he had witnessed in
01:55:04
my opinion this was not trial preparation this was an attempt to derail months of hard work there is
01:55:11
evidence that was critical to the investigation that to this day has never been collected because neither search
01:55:16
warrants nor other means were supported to do so not to mention evidence which still sits today untested in the
01:55:23
laboratory as differences continue about how to proceed while investigative efforts were rebuffed my search warrant
01:55:30
affidavits in attempts to gather evidence in the murder investigation of a 6-year-old child were met with
01:55:35
refusals and instead the suggestion that we asked the permission of the Ramsay before proceeding and just before
01:55:43
conducting the ramsy interviews I thought it inconceivable I was being lectured on building trust these are but
01:55:50
a few of the many examples of what why I chose to leave having to convince to plead at times to a district attorney's
01:55:57
office to assist us in the murder of a little girl by way of the most basic of investigative request was simply absurd
01:56:05
I believe the District Attorney's office is Thoroughly compromised when we were told by one in the district attorney's
01:56:11
office months before we had even completed our investigation that this case is not prosecutable we shook our
01:56:18
heads in disbelief will there be a real attempt at Justice I may be among the last to find out it is my belief the
01:56:26
District Attorney's office has effectively crippled this case the time for intervention is now what I witnessed
01:56:32
for 2 years of my life was so fundamentally flawed it reduced me to tears everything the badge ever meant to
01:56:39
me was so foundationally shaken one should never have to sell one's Soul as a prerequisite to wear it on June 26th
01:56:47
after leaving the investigation for the last time and leaving the city of Boulder I wept as I drove home removing
01:56:54
my detective shield and placing it on the seat beside me later putting it on a desk drawer at home knowing I could
01:57:00
never put it back on at 36 years old I thought my life's passion as a police officer was carved in stone I realized
01:57:09
that although I may have to trade my badge for a carpenter's Hammer I will do so with a clear conscience it is with a
01:57:15
heavy heart that I offer my resignation from the Boulder Police Department in protest of this continuing travesty
01:57:21
Detective Steve Thomas number 638 detective division Boulder Police Department okay that was so much I and you I edit
01:57:34
it down yeah you see you you trimmed this up for like Clarity we only got the big Parts the important parts but I mean
01:57:42
I guess what I'm taking away from it is he's thinking that the police and the da
01:57:50
well he's Sayang so he like he was on Boulder he was on Boulder PD and he's basically highlighting the rift that I
01:57:56
think was kind of becoming evident like it very much felt like they were a little bit on different teams and I and
01:58:03
they tried like publicly to like be a united front but it was like it was pretty clear that's not what was
01:58:08
happening and you know one of the things I actually he kind of like touched on the search warrants and stuff um when I
01:58:14
was interviewing John I was like you know one of the things I heard was that like they didn't get your like cell
01:58:19
phone records and stuff like that he's like no no no like the second they asked for something we gave it to them and
01:58:24
it's like this is one of those things we like it's all true so it seems like the
01:58:29
the DA's office was delaying the PD in requesting those things like they weren't signing the search warrants they
01:58:36
were asking them not to go ask the family so there were times when maybe things weren't collected in a timely
01:58:42
manner but it wasn't because the Rams were withholding things it's because things weren't like flowing properly on
01:58:48
the law enforcement side yeah and like and at the same time not because law person didn't want it it's cuz they were
01:58:53
like being bureaucracy it like yeah like yes and maybe more yes and but why but why but why so the Ramsay have been
01:59:04
clear that they feel like no other suspects were investigated properly and if you read legal depositions or watch
01:59:12
any of the clips that have come out from them like again that letter from Steve Thomas is scathing his book is as well
01:59:21
but I like went through and I was like reading the deposition and watching some of the clips and there are times that in
01:59:27
my opinion Steve Thomas gets caught where like I do think there were areas pointed out where like they could have
01:59:34
done more investigating or ways that he he frames things in his book that I don't like when you're literally like on
01:59:41
the line legally maybe it's not as like strong as like you again framed it m and then I
01:59:48
also think we're very clear and that there is not a symbiotic relationship between the DA's office and the
01:59:55
police and the second letter I mentioned the fleet white letter I think it really
02:00:01
raises the question of why that was which is what we're saying but why so here you go again edit it down a little
02:00:09
bit but I'll link you the full to the people of Colorado in anticipation of receiving a subpoena to
02:00:17
appear before that grand jury we wish at this time to address matters concerning
02:00:22
the investigation which we feel are of great importance to the people of Colorado and the Boulder Community after
02:00:28
John Benet Ramsey was killed in Boulder nearly 20 months ago her parents John and paty Ramsey immediately hired
02:00:36
prominent Democrat criminal defense attorneys with the law firm of Haden Morgan and foran this firm and its
02:00:43
Partners have close professional political and personal ties to prosecutors the Denver and Boulder legal
02:00:49
and judicial communities state legisl s and high ranking members of Colorado government including Governor Roy RoR we
02:00:58
knew John Benet and her parents very well and have been closely involved in the investigation as Witnesses during
02:01:04
the past year we have also come to know and respect Mr Tomas and were saddened and discouraged by his departure from
02:01:10
the investigation we share Mr Thomas's view regarding the district attorney and his contention that overwhelming
02:01:17
pressure brought to bear on the district attorney and police leadership from various quarters has thwarted the
02:01:23
investigation and delayed Justice in the case while it is unlikely that the district attorney has been corrupted by
02:01:30
ramsy defense attorneys it is certain that the district attorney and his prosecutors have been greatly influenced
02:01:36
by their metro area district attorney advisers and by defense attorneys chummy persuasiveness and threats of reprisals
02:01:43
for anyone daring to jeopardize the civil rights of their victim clients indeed the district attorney and Ramsey
02:01:50
attorneys have simultaneously rebuked the police for focusing their investigation on the ramies when in fact
02:01:57
police were simply following evidence notwithstanding what the public has been led to believe Boulder Police leadership
02:02:03
and detectives have been under the effective control of the district attorney and his advisor since the early
02:02:09
days of the investigation in December 1997 we met with Governor RoR to request that the state intervene and appoint an
02:02:17
independent special prosecutor to take over the investigation and prosecution of the case citing the growing conflict
02:02:23
between police and prosecutors and the delay of any progress in the investigation we expressed our view that
02:02:29
Boulder authorities were incapable of Seeking Justice most developments in the case brought to the Public's attention
02:02:36
throughout 1997 should be regarded as well- publicized but clumsy attempts by the district attorney and police
02:02:43
leadership to look busy follow long task lists and clean up investigative files while the district attorney killed time
02:02:51
and spread out responsibility for the case on the other hand advances in the case since early this year have been
02:02:57
carefully planned to condition the public for a grand jury investigation the District Attorney's past indecision
02:03:03
and the need for police to ask him for a grand jury investigation were deliberate
02:03:08
attempts to mislead the public if based on nothing other than the District Attorney's repeated public statements
02:03:13
and leaks characterizing the case as not prosecutable there can be little doubt that absent a confession the people
02:03:20
running the investigation had long ago decided against filing charges in the case instead they manipulated public
02:03:27
opinion to favor the use of the grand jury there is compelling evidence however that their motivation for
02:03:32
presenting the case to a grand jury has little or nothing to do with obtaining new evidence grilling reluctant
02:03:39
Witnesses or returning an indictment and everything to do with sealing away facts
02:03:44
circumstances and evidence gathered in the investigation in a grand jury transcript it is our firm belief that
02:03:51
the district attorney and others intend to use the grand jury and its secrecy and attempt to protect their careers and
02:03:57
also serve the conflicting interests of powerful influential and threatening people who have something to hide or
02:04:04
protect or who simply don't want to be publicly linked to a dreadful murder investigation in direct response to Mr
02:04:11
Thomas's recent letter Governor RoR met on August 12th 1998 with District Attorneys Grant Ritter Peters and Thomas
02:04:20
later that day governor rer announced at a press conference that Hunter had told
02:04:24
him that the case was on track for a grand jury RoR said that it would be improper to appoint a special prosecutor
02:04:32
now but that to improve public confidence in the case he would make available to Hunter additional
02:04:37
prosecutorial expertise on August 13th 1998 the Rocky Mountain news offered an editorial entitled calling in the
02:04:45
calvalry in which the editor generally supported Governor romer's action but insightfully asked the obvious question
02:04:53
why has it taken so long for Hunter's office to present the case to a grand jury there is a relatively simple but
02:05:00
compelling answer to the question raised by the Rocky Mountain news editorial since very early in the case there has
02:05:06
been at least a tacit understanding among the district attorney police leadership those persons advising these
02:05:12
agencies and Ramsay defense attorneys that the case would be presented to a grand jury but not until the statutory
02:05:19
Boulder grand jury was convened in April ril 1998 this delay was deemed necessary by
02:05:25
some or all of these parties in order to take advantage of a new statute concerning grand jury reporting
02:05:31
procedures by law however this change in procedure would only apply to reports issued by grand juries convened after
02:05:38
October 1st 1997 in order to take advantage of the new statute a boulder grand jury would
02:05:44
have to wait until April 1998 the next convening of the statutory Boulder grand jury subsequent to October 1st 1997 in
02:05:53
order to accomplish this it was necessary for these people to stall and cynically rely on the Public's relative
02:05:59
ignorance of the statute and the purpose and general nature of grand juries speaking in favor of the bill before the
02:06:06
committee were District Attorneys Ritter Thomas and Grant all of these District Attorneys along with Jim Peters would be
02:06:14
named publicly as advisers to Alex Hunter on the Ramsay case the original intent of the Colorado district attorney
02:06:21
Council draft and that of Representative Kaufman was to make it easier for grand
02:06:25
juries to issue reports in cases where there is not an indictment returned but where in the public interest the grand
02:06:31
jury wishes to address allegations of misconduct by public employees falling short of criminal conduct the final bill
02:06:38
made it possible for a grand jury to address allegations of first and second degree murder and the two classes of
02:06:44
child abuse resulting in death the new statute would enable a boulder grand jury investigating the death of John Ben
02:06:51
Ramsey to publicly exonerate someone who' been alleged to have committed one of these crimes but only in the event an
02:06:57
indictment was not returned the bill was signed into law by Governor RoR on April
02:07:03
8th 1997 it is certain that Boulder County district attorney Alex Hunter the metro
02:07:09
area District Attorneys advising Mr Hunter the current leadership of the Boulder Police Department the three
02:07:16
attorneys advising the Boulder Police Department and Ramsey defense attorneys have known that to take advantage of the
02:07:23
new statute it would be necessary to delay a grand jury investigation of the Ramsey case until April
02:07:31
1998 the people of Colorado are entitled to be frustrated and angry with those public officials and other persons who
02:07:38
have brought this case to its current status we must be mindful however of the first cause of the investigation's
02:07:45
failure the refusal of John and paty Ramsey to cooperate fully and genuinely with those officially charged with the
02:07:53
responsibility of investigating the death of their daughter John Benet Fleet Russell white Jr and Priscilla brown
02:08:00
white August 17th 1998 Boulder Colorado okay what my my head is absolutely spinning I
02:08:13
can barely get my thoughts straight on this I know uh we obviously weren't reading Colorado newspapers in 1998 and
02:08:20
like this seems a little hard-hitting for like the grocery store tabloids when we were in like third grade so I think a
02:08:25
lot of people missed this mhm basically in a nutshell Fleet is saying that there's just mad corruption not so much
02:08:35
corruption but like conflict of interest so a bill was made with the intention of
02:08:39
clarifying the law so that there was more like transparency in the process for the public which would basically let
02:08:46
them issue certain reports from Grand dery proceedings but still keep like other parts of things confidential mhm
02:08:53
check but by the time it R through the system timing it like right after John B's death and with the help of people
02:09:01
providing advisement consultation or representation in her case it was like a little different different yeah if
02:09:09
because I know where this is going and I'll cut right to the chase one of the main things that it would allow them to
02:09:14
do is say that like oh the jury didn't indict which means there's no case my hands are tied
02:09:22
yeah Bingo and you do know where this is going so the grand jury is called lots of
02:09:28
witnesses we know some through reporting like who was going to court and whatnot
02:09:33
like I know detective Linda AR I know Burke I know the Ramsey's pilot the whites lots lots lots more big hits yeah
02:09:40
not Steve Thomas as we know from his letter not the Ramsay like John and paty though JN has always maintained that
02:09:48
they were more than willing to go to participate in any way necessary But ultimately they were not called and then
02:09:54
in October of 1999 their hearings come to an end and the district attorney makes this long
02:10:01
awaited announcement the boulder Grand Jury has completed its work and will not return
02:10:08
no charges have been filed the grand jurors have done their work extraordinarily well bringing to Bear
02:10:13
all of their legal Powers life experiences and shrewdness yet I must report to you that I and my prosecution
02:10:19
task force believe we do not have sufficient evidence to Warrant the filing of charges against anyone who has
02:10:25
been investigated at this time under Colorado law the proceedings of the grand jury are secret under no
02:10:31
circumstances will I or any of my advisers prosecutors the law enforcement officers working on the case or grand
02:10:38
jurors discuss the grand jury proceedings today or ever unless ordered by the court so basically everyone decided the
02:10:47
Ramsay had nothing to do with it because the grand jury didn't indict yes that was basically the implied
02:10:54
message to the public like hey no tabloid BS like these are the facts and these people decided that there would be
02:11:02
no charges is the implied message and did Linda AR ever speak out after that no so she did her Good Morning America
02:11:09
thing that I talked about she did that right before this happened so she did that interview in September and then
02:11:16
Alex Hunt made that announcement in October and the ramy's lawyers they made a statement about her
02:11:23
appearance that I found in the Denver Post um because they like comment on the timing sck your mug thank you so they
02:11:31
said quote we question the timing of this interview the statement from the Ramsey's attorney said the grand jury
02:11:37
will conclude its work in the next month there is no good reason why Miss AR could not have sought publicity after
02:11:43
the grand jury process was concluded end quote now after this is when momentum really really picks up I think for the
02:11:52
ramsy family who finally feels this small amount of vindication and they hope that maybe now investigators will
02:11:59
focus on looking for the Intruder that they say came into their home that they've been saying all along came into
02:12:05
their home a home which they sell and move away from to go back to Georgia and John told me that his company had this
02:12:15
relocation program where they would buy your house like and I've seen stuff like
02:12:19
this with like big organizations espe for like high up execs like they would buy it from you so that you can move
02:12:25
when they need you to move and not be like held up by this house or whatever so they buy it and then would sell it or
02:12:29
whatever but it's interesting cuz like the documentation around this is kind of weird so from the records that I pulled
02:12:35
from the assessor's office I see where the house was bought presumably by the ramsy in 1991 for
02:12:42
$500,000 then in December of 1997 so this is about a year after Jean Benet it looks like there is a transfer of the
02:12:49
deed but it is a $0 transfer so like no one bought it it was like me giving a house to you or something like that
02:12:56
there's no money Association from the assessor's office records and I can't see who it went to like they don't have
02:13:03
that publicly available on a transfer on records right then we see another transfer happen in February of 1998 for
02:13:13
$650,000 according to statements made to reporters Mike bam says that a group of
02:13:20
investors purchased the ramsy house from like this locky middleman thing but they
02:13:26
didn't purchase it under any like one person's name or or person's names M which again is like a totally normal
02:13:34
thing the LLC formed is named after the address so it's 755 15th Street LLC Mike
02:13:41
bam told the Daily Camera that this group of investors was composed of individuals assisting the ramsy family
02:13:49
what does that even mean I can't tell you because I looked up the the property records and then the business records so
02:13:59
I went and looked for 75515 Street LLC the company doesn't list individuals names under its member so instead it
02:14:07
lists group two partnership group four partnership and then there's a registered agent because you have to
02:14:14
have someone's name you a human there yeah you can't just like go company or company or LS whatever and the
02:14:21
registered agent is a woman named Anne bour and there's a listed address of 1900 15th Street in Boulder now
02:14:30
newspapers.com is not the end all be all like there is actually a distinct like lack of newspapers from Boulder Colorado
02:14:36
that I haven't been able to find there but when I look up the address I found one singular news article that popped up
02:14:43
and it's from The Daily Sentinel from February 6 1997 here thank you you are so prepared with this folder I love it
02:14:49
so prepared so it's this article about like the cost of the Ramsay investigation like what it's costing
02:14:56
like the police the city yeah and then towards the end it says Wednesday the Ramsey family announced the address to
02:15:03
mail contributions for a Children's Advocacy group founded in their daughter's memory donations may be sent
02:15:09
to the John Benet Ramsey Children's Foundation in care of the Colorado Business Bank of Boulder 19001 15th
02:15:16
Street Boulder 80302 and so then I got into this like weird rabbit hole with this bank because
02:15:23
then when I started looking up the bank I found this next article from the daily
02:15:28
Sentinal from January 13th 1997 and it says women's bank has changed its name to Colorado Business Bank a sign of the
02:15:38
progress women have made since the business was founded 20 years ago but in a piece then later that I saw
02:15:47
in like Denver library.org it says that the women's Bank sold in 1994 and that the name change happened in 1995 not
02:15:54
1997 when this article that I found was and according to the nice librarian at the Carnegie Library of local history in
02:16:01
Boulder Colorado um that address the 195th Street was listed for Colorado Business
02:16:08
Bank in their phone books in 1997 and 1998 but then it wasn't there anymore in 1999 and then I saw that like when I
02:16:17
look at the Colorado Business Bank it got bought by B Financial 2018 so it's not like it got bought and changed you
02:16:24
know back then in 99 when it disappears and it it all probably means nothing like I don't know who Ann Bor is it's
02:16:32
probably not weird that she with the house is tied to this like address where like they're doing like Foundation
02:16:41
donations because we know that the group who bought the house was like composed of like Ram people who were supporting
02:16:47
the ram it almost feels like um almost like an executive of a will type situation like a figure head for an
02:16:54
organization and a foundation or whatnot yeah so I don't know again she might have some connection I like tried
02:16:59
reaching out to people who might have like known her I hav't had any luck getting anyone to talk to me um but
02:17:05
let's go back to the house for a second so the statements made about the house at the time about this like mystery
02:17:11
purchase was that this group was going to hold onto the house for like TBD amount of time and then all of the
02:17:18
profits from the house are going to go to the jeanan Ramsey 's Foundation which by this point John and paty had set up
02:17:24
in memory of John Benet with the help of Mike B he's always there according to the Denver Post the foundation was
02:17:31
formed with the goal to like I think they said Gather funds to be used in the Education and Care of children all in
02:17:37
the memory of Jean Benet so do you know when the house sold I do so the house didn't sell until
02:17:46
2004 okay okay so this is a total aside but I just read a book it's called tell me everything the story of a private
02:17:57
investigation and it's about this private investigators like assistant who is investigating University of
02:18:05
Colorado and one of the people that she's investigating is like someone who is living in the ramsy house at the time
02:18:12
of the investigation which is like wait what year late 90s early 2000s so it's like in in this interim
02:18:20
period in this room period I think who odd and like he's not a person who should be able to necessarily afford a
02:18:29
6,000 square foot mansion the timing was just weird I wanted to mention it and we know that
02:18:35
there's no like transaction in that period so like someone must have been like renting it or letting him stay
02:18:42
there but I don't I I wish I could tell you who I but I don't know who I don't know who who was holding the property at
02:18:48
that point yeah weird just a just a thought just in aide just a weird thing you just like happen to read that book I
02:18:53
love literally like a month ago okay so to go back so I looked at the foundation
02:19:00
a little bit so we they say that they're going to hold the house for TBD amount of time maybe rent it out we don't know
02:19:05
and then they're going to donate the money from like the the proceeds of like whatever profit from the house to the
02:19:10
foundation I didn't find what I was expecting to find so the 990 forms for the organization they filed in 1998 1999
02:19:19
and 2000 and they don't show any huge transactions after 2000 I think they actually stopped filing and then the
02:19:25
foundation get shut down in 2003 shutting it down in 2003 meant that contributions from the sale of the house
02:19:31
in 2004 couldn't go there oh so I don't know where they went you would have to ask group two partners and group four
02:19:40
Partners if anyone knows who that is unfortunately we can't ask Ann Bor because she died in
02:19:46
2009 I so so again I see why maybe the house didn't go there I was also expecting
02:19:52
though to see money from the sale of John and paty's book so they wrote a book called The Death of
02:19:59
innocence and many of the statements that I have seen from them from their team from all these different people is
02:20:07
that the proceeds from the book were going to go towards two things so the Ramsay legal fees and the foundation now
02:20:15
per John it seems like their legal fees like bled them dry um at one point his lawyers represented him he said pro bono
02:20:23
because they couldn't afford to pay them anymore what I find interesting is that
02:20:26
the goal must have changed to be that two-prong Approach at some time because um when I when I sat down with John he
02:20:33
actually gave us this these box of like tapes and most of them are like pageant stuff or home movies like family
02:20:40
weddings whatever but actually one of those tapes appears to be of John and py practicing their book promotion
02:20:47
interviews with a media trainer which is very I did media training before I went
02:20:52
on the Today Show to talk about my book but this is where like again in this at least it seems like it started that the
02:20:58
money was going to only go to one place here take a lesson okay one that's it U you are you have written a a very
02:21:10
uh thorough and interesting book what do you intend to do uh with the prophets if that's not your personal
02:21:19
question and should I always wait for py to answer or should I just no just if I'm
02:21:25
looking at you okay well we've established a foundation in John B's name to honor her and to
02:21:32
leave a legacy for her and the profits from the book will go to the foundation Foundation is going to focus
02:21:41
on protecting children against predators is that I guess that's it then I don't know it just sort of
02:21:56
um leaves me hanging here I mean that's a very generous and and and good thing for you to do uh is it
02:22:05
um how would you know how to protect children against predators I mean how would you use the money to do that well
02:22:12
we've seen a number of flaws in our system as it relates to the murder of a child we are the the strongest most
02:22:22
powerful Nation on Earth and yet we don't respond with our might when one of our
02:22:29
children is murdered that's wrong we want to Advocate change you know would it be possible for
02:22:40
you to site some of the cases that you're talking about other than the wrong one of the best examples that I
02:22:46
that that we have learned about through all of this is is that when your child's
02:22:51
photograph is taken at school or at church or in any kind of activity dance recital piano recital that photograph
02:23:02
becomes the property of the photographer and he or she may publish that photograph at any time any place that
02:23:10
they so choose without your permission so for instance they own the copyrights well what danger can can happen if you
02:23:19
have a picture of your child photograph is is some place and and a a pedophile or someone who has reason to
02:23:28
want to zero in on that child and do harm to that child that is a bad thing so are you associating that with
02:23:36
with your own tragedy are you saying that there were so many photographs of Jean Benet because of the the work that
02:23:42
she did in in pageants that that could have incited some I'm saying that that is an example of one way that we need to
02:23:51
we do not need to put our children out there in newspaper articles in uh the photographs should be for family
02:24:01
memories not for um public releas well and and most important when a child is murdered in this country we
02:24:13
need to respond with the best we have to find the killer that does two things it
02:24:19
sends a message that we're not going to tolerate it and if you think about harming our child our children you
02:24:24
better think twice and secondly it ensures that we capture these Monsters uh before they kill
02:24:34
again I don't doubt that you have you know beneficent and and wonderful feelings about about doing this kind of
02:24:41
thing but how would you go about protecting a child against a ped against a perpetrator I would I would Advocate
02:24:49
that uh the murder of a child be the most serious offense uh in our society it should be a
02:24:58
federal crime to murder a child in this country and once found once the the murderer is found he should be
02:25:06
given he should be executed or given a s he should be he should be U put away forever that's the most horrible thing a
02:25:18
human being can do is to pray in a child okay what I'm getting at is I think it's
02:25:23
a wonderful and and and very generous thing to do to to donate the profits of your book to such a cause I don't know
02:25:31
how you're going to implement it and how you're going to make it happen I just wonder about they educational awareness
02:25:37
through legislation they're all have you done any of that yet no no okay um all right has Foundation already been
02:25:50
set up I mean I heard you say well we can offer rewards uh substantial rewards for information we can establish a a tip
02:25:58
Center information center we can establish databases that track known uh child sex
02:26:05
offenders uh we can put experts in place make experts available to local law enforcement we can
02:26:16
Advocate uh in the United States uh Congress that the murder of a child should be
02:26:24
mandated as a as a federal crime Federal resources should be put on U attacking that but so far you
02:26:33
haven't done anything like that no no nor has anyone else but we're going to try we're going to do the best we can
02:26:39
because it's a horrible flaw in our system we respond aggressively when a bank is
02:26:46
robbed the FBI comes in it's a federal crime it's it's major do we care more about our money
02:26:53
than we do our children so John and I when I talked to him we didn't get into where the house
02:27:02
money went during our conversation because if he sold it I'm not sure he's the person who has the answers that I'm
02:27:07
looking for we did get a little bit into John B's Legacy and what's happening in
02:27:12
place at the foundation I'm going to touch on that a little bit later I don't think the ramies were ever
02:27:19
planning to fund the whole Foundation themselves perhaps there weren't many contributions at most like I said I only
02:27:26
saw small transactions and at most there was like $112,000 that I saw like in the thing so
02:27:33
while starting the foundation was like a noble effort it perhaps wasn't the undertaking that they were ready for as
02:27:39
someone who started like a true 501c3 like it is a heck of a lot of work and like to keep it running to keep it
02:27:46
sustainable on its own it is like a massive undertaking so whatever they were planning I mean in that interview it's
02:27:54
like have you done this no like are you planning to do it yes like it that doesn't actually come to fruition so in
02:28:00
2003 the foundation goes defunct oh there's something 2003 was a weird year so the foundation goes defunct in 2003
02:28:08
and then something else happens and it's one of those other things that I had never known about
02:28:15
before when you think of New England you don't think of this I'm Kylie low I'm an
02:28:21
investigative journalist and Storyteller each week I share homicides and missing
02:28:26
persons cases from across the state of Main and greater New England this is my home these stories are my passion and
02:28:33
this podcast is my platform to help friends and families keep the memories of their loved ones alive long after the
02:28:39
attention Fades this is dark down [Music] east okay so here is a media release that was sent out on Wednesday June 4th
02:28:51
2003 that has been archived on bouldercolorado.gov the Boulder Police Department recently became aware that
02:28:58
someone was unlawfully sending emails using the name of Chief Beckner on April 25th 2003 Rocky Mountain news columnist
02:29:07
Charlie Brennan received an email titled as being from Chief Beckner complimenting Mr Brennan for a recent
02:29:13
column he had written on the John Benet Ramsey case according to embedded information within the message the email
02:29:20
was sent from an MSN Hotmail account Beckner BPD hotmail.com the email was then signed
02:29:27
off with regards Mark please see below message text from Chief Beckner sent Friday April 25th 2003 1:16 p.m. to
02:29:40
Brennan c@ rockymountain news.com subject great articles Charlie just want you to know I thought those
02:29:49
two articles you wrote today were excellent you got everything right as you always do thanks for all your
02:29:55
support eventually will be proven right regards Mark being skeptical of the message's authenticity Mr Brennan
02:30:03
telephoned Chief Beckner to ask him about the message Chief Beckner confirmed that he did not send the
02:30:09
message the chief was alarmed that someone was apparently using his title and name without authorization to
02:30:15
communicate about the John Benet Ramsey case with members of the media warrants were obtained and executed for MSN
02:30:22
Hotmail in California according to MSN Hotmail the Beckner BPD at hotmail.com account was established in 2000 the
02:30:32
account Creator provided information stating that the owner was Chief Beckner from Boulder Colorado and furthermore
02:30:38
provided an accurate birth year for the chief further investigation LED police to the Internet Protocol IP numbers from
02:30:46
where the suspect had been accessing the Beckner BPD hotmail.com account since early March 2003 all access to the
02:30:54
Beckner BPD hotmail.com account were from a single NETCOM now owned by EarthLink dialup account a search
02:31:02
warrant was obtained and executed for Earthlink in Georgia according to earthlink's records the account holder
02:31:08
that has been accessing the Beckner BPD hotmail.com email account is Susan B Stein
02:31:15
5760 Long Grove Drive Atlanta Georgia Susan Stein is known as a close friend of John and paty Ramsey and has been
02:31:23
interviewed as a witness in reference to the Ramsey investigation the search warrants also yielded other messages
02:31:29
that had been received by the Beckner BPD hotmail.com account a number of these messages indicate that the Beckner
02:31:36
BPD hotmail.com user had been attempting to convince others that he or she was Chief Mark Beckner others appeared to be
02:31:46
nonsensical please note that the investigators were able to confirm that the messages to and from Rocky Mountain
02:31:52
news reporter Charlie Brennan and Rita Johnson were received or sent by those individuals the other messages were not
02:31:59
confirmed as received or sent by those parties at the request of the Boulder police department members of the Georgia
02:32:06
Bureau of Investigation gbi went to miss Stein's residence in an attempt to interview her on June 3rd 2003 however
02:32:15
she refused to talk with the gbi agent Chief Mark Beckner is alarmed by the discovery that his name and position as
02:32:21
Boulder police chief has been used in an effort to communicate with others given
02:32:26
the history of the Ramsey case and the concerns we have had with information being distributed to the public often
02:32:32
times inaccurate information this discovery is disturbing stated Chief Beckner I want the media and public to
02:32:39
know that if they have received Communications from this email address purporting to be me that it is bogus my
02:32:45
official email address is public and is Beckner M Boulder col colorado.gov under Colorado law criminal
02:32:53
impersonation is a Class 6 felony and impersonating a police officer is a Class one misdemeanor the Boulder Police
02:33:00
Department and the Boulder County District Attorney's office have agreed to issue a letter to Susan Stein
02:33:06
advising her of the unlawful conduct and that the use of Chief beckner's name in
02:33:10
such a manner must cease immediately the Beckner BPD hotmail.com account has been
02:33:17
frozen by MSN Hotmail the boulder Police Department would like anyone receiving email messages from any reported member
02:33:24
of the Boulder Police Department to know that official email addresses use the member's last name and first initial
02:33:30
followed by bouldercolorado.gov if you are not sure that a message is legitimate please call
02:33:37
the department member to confirm that they did in fact send the message we are concerned that there could be other
02:33:43
messages out there reportedly from either me or other department members that are fake in an attempt to either
02:33:49
receive information or communicate false information stated Beckner on June 3rd 2003 gief Beckner did receive an email
02:33:57
from Susan Stein in which she apologized for using the Hotmail account describing
02:34:01
it as a sophomoric prank and apologizing for any distress she may have caused anyone with additional information is
02:34:08
encouraged to call Boulder police detective Jim mcferson at 303 441 3330 I'm sorry what was that isn't that
02:34:22
weird yeah but I I think I'm confused I thought the Stein lived in Boulder yes and no the Steines did live
02:34:34
in Boulder in 19 1996 they were the ones who the Rams stopped to give that present to they like the last stop on
02:34:40
Christmas they lived there for a little bit yep they lived at their house for a little bit after and someway somehow
02:34:49
some reason the Steines end up moving to Atlanta either at the same time as the Ramsay or after like the Ramsey move
02:34:57
back to Atlanta like the timing is unclear but they do like pick up their their family and their lives and move to
02:35:03
Atlanta I love you so much we've never moved together we've we've done a lot of moving we have never followed one
02:35:11
another no I love you too and it's it's interesting because as of Monday March 17th 1997
02:35:20
there is this time article that's published that day where the article is not like what matters like it's talking
02:35:26
about like the cost of tuition whatever and glenstein is quoted in that article like it the quote doesn't matter but
02:35:31
they give his title and he's the vice president for finance at the University of Colorado which is like a pretty sweet
02:35:37
gig to walk away from but still I mean I know people move before that the article
02:35:42
says that he was a senior budget official at Penn from like I think it was like 82 to 90 which
02:35:50
the sanduski ear the sanduski era yeah so lots of Reason To Leave right like so maybe he left Colorado to go to another
02:35:58
University like I I don't I don't have record of where he went after Colorado so I don't know well and again not to
02:36:05
reference this book but like the timing is interesting because the Scandal that the book was investigating was a sex
02:36:15
scandal at the University of Colorado he's not going though right no but it's happening at the University and
02:36:22
there's a cover up and there's money involved so maybe so the same way he could have been like it's just
02:36:27
interesting timing that's all yeah I was going to say so the same reason like I mean I can understand wanting to like
02:36:31
leave pen or something like all the reason to want to leave or like find a new like organiz yeah whatever so so
02:36:39
maybe that maybe that's why like I could never like I don't I didn't understand the timing of it but like maybe
02:36:44
something was going on at the University that he was ready to leave and moving to
02:36:48
a place where you already know people it's good to it is like when you when you think about like okay if my time
02:36:53
here is up like I'm going to pick up and leave we could go anywhere it's good to
02:36:58
go to a community where you have Community you have Community right you have some kind of like friend like
02:37:04
grounding you whatever it's so much easier to like integrate into a new life and maybe they thought about like going
02:37:09
to their friends who like who was who you know they've become really good friends clearly they were living to
02:37:15
together like they're going through such a hard time and maybe part of it was not
02:37:18
only for them to have Community but for for them to like support these new found
02:37:22
friends and the ramies still needed the support because even though they weren't
02:37:26
physically in Boulder like it didn't none of it stopped like the personal attacks didn't stop the being hounded by
02:37:33
the tabloids didn't stop like they followed them across the country no matter where they went I even found
02:37:39
actually one of the Tabloid articles it's by um these two guys David Wright and David Duffy it's from March 11th
02:37:46
1997 where someone had taken in the same plane as the Ramsay from one end of the
02:37:52
country to the other just to like report on their every move like who sat where who looked at who who didn't look at who
02:37:59
how were they interacting like who got off the plane where like they were all over them so I understand for the ramies
02:38:07
again Stein maybe they wanted to go support them the ramsy just needed to get out of there but they did the thing
02:38:13
I will say too is everyone's like oh they like how do you leave when this investigation is going on for your
02:38:17
daughter don't you want to be a part of that they did have boots on the ground on their behalf in Boulder so L SMI is
02:38:24
on their team by this point so he was an investigator who was originally brought
02:38:28
in by the DA's office to look at this case he ended up leaving because like the official capacity because he got so
02:38:35
frustrated he felt like everyone was so narrowly focused on the family that they
02:38:39
were like missing the bigger picture he felt like there wasn't enough being done
02:38:42
right and this dude straight up devoted his like life to John B Ramsey's case honestly his family Legacy to this case
02:38:49
because even after he died his family has like gone on to continue his work like they've picked up the torch they
02:38:58
were actually a part of this really actually interesting podcast I listened to called the killing of Jean Bonet
02:39:03
ramsy which I will link to admittedly I when it first came out I saw it and I avoided it and I think it's like so much
02:39:10
of this case where I'm like I already know like I cannot believe like why are we rehashing this and it was like you
02:39:14
know the pageant pictures of her but once I was like diving into it there was a ton I didn't know in that podcast
02:39:22
about potential suspects and about the work that L Smith has done to or he did his family did to like go
02:39:30
down those paths to vet things to like put an order of like who should we look at like you know we've got a limited
02:39:36
number of resources prior prioritization yes but anyway so L SMI is like all over
02:39:41
this case and I think he really gets people for the first time to think about what it would like if it's not the r not
02:39:49
just like oh it's not the ramies but really think about like okay if not them then who and how and why mhm now Lou
02:40:00
feels confident that the Intruder came through that basement window it was already broken so they could just like
02:40:06
reach in unlatch it open it up like he even demonstrates how easy it would be for someone to like slip down into the
02:40:13
window sell okay but what about the spider webs yeah I don't the spider webs do you like do you you want to just give
02:40:19
I like give him a quick uh breakdown of the spider webs there was like this great thing covering the area to get
02:40:25
into the window and there were like officers who said they saw spiderwebs on this great they said it had been there
02:40:32
for a while someone would have messed it up if the great had been moved to get into the window yeah I never really see
02:40:39
anything like to fully refute that I think maybe I heard once they said that maybe the webs weren't like as fresh as
02:40:46
they thought they were yeah like they were saying that um like if someone had like moved the great and then put it
02:40:52
back they would expect the spider webs to be more fresh looking yeah but they the interpretation you get from people
02:40:59
who are giving us the interpretation of this is that they had been there for a long time they were more like cobwebby I
02:41:06
don't know that means like there aren't any pictures we don't know what it looks
02:41:09
like they they didn't find her body for hours so also like maybe the Intruder was like the most lucky person on earth
02:41:17
like I I don't have enough information to like see for myself to like make my own opinion of this so you just have
02:41:26
these two sides right like the one saying like it is impossible for those spids to be there and for your theory to
02:41:33
be right L SMI being like it means nothing like the spiders me nothing this is probably how they got in and then
02:41:38
there's also like this third option where like maybe neither like John in early days like there and this is where
02:41:45
like the conflicting early reports will be like oh they say he told them that he
02:41:50
locked up that night but in all of John's statements afterwards he's like we left the doors I don't know if I
02:41:56
checked them like they were we leave the doors like partially unlocked like there
02:42:00
could have been other entry points for this person to come into our home and they also said lots of people had keys
02:42:05
or like keys were missing or floating around or this person had it or like we never got this key back so all that to
02:42:12
say in my mind though that was like very much lose Smith's theory is it had to do
02:42:16
with this window them dropping down them using this the suitcase to like get in and out the window is not the only
02:42:23
option it's not the only option if you are thinking about an intruder Theory so like I don't want to like die on that
02:42:29
hill or get so caught up in that that again you can't look at the bigger picture MH and there are some other
02:42:34
stuff that L points out that we haven't really got into yet and that is the cord
02:42:38
used on John B on her neck and her hands that is never sourced to anything in the
02:42:44
house we don't know where that cord came from same thing with the tape that was over her mouth like that never gets
02:42:51
sourced to anything in the house so in L Smith's mind that means that someone had
02:42:56
to have brought those things in MH or at or or taken them out if they were already in the house right versus like
02:43:06
the legal pad that was left there the pen the paintbrush things that were sourced in the house but also left in
02:43:12
the house right so I I don't know that you can say that they like didn't come from we just don't know there's nothing
02:43:17
there so they like took something with them is is what Lou is saying like or we would find them here M even if we step
02:43:23
away from the evidence in the home because truly like you could go back and forth back and forth back and debate
02:43:28
this till you're bleue in the face I told you it's there I don't want to argue about the meaning of it that's not
02:43:33
my job I want to get to the facts so in 2003 more DNA testing is done and from her
02:43:41
underwear guess what they get an unknown male profile DNA like before but this time it is enough for a full profile
02:43:52
good enough to put into codus which I don't know where I was like sleeping at the wheel before I was like deep in this
02:44:01
like hi I didn't even realize there was a codus profile on the Jean B Ram case uh neither did I there of course have
02:44:07
been no matches or we would have heard about that by now yeah it's just sitting in the database hopefully still is that
02:44:14
was actually one of my questions I wanted to ask Boulder PD cuz I have seen in other cas that we've worked where
02:44:22
like the the requirements have changed over the years and I've seen where like the DNA was in but then there was a a
02:44:28
change like an update and like not no longer eligible matches the criteria yeah so that's what as far as everything
02:44:34
I've read is that it's in kodes I wanted to ask them specifically that nothing had changed but in all that time no hits
02:44:42
so in later years additional testing is done by some other crime labs and even other like outside of the state agency
02:44:50
like bod bod's a big lab still to the state who's doing a ton of genealogy stuff a ton of advanced testing season
02:44:56
of Justice works a lot with them so bod comes in they do some more testing and they get an unidentified male profile
02:45:05
from her underwear and lots of people say here's like the caveat lots of people say this is from saliva and they
02:45:12
might have done an amales test um which can Amal can be found in saliva it can also be found in other things but it's
02:45:19
usually like the levels are so much higher in saliva so I don't know if that's where they like that comes from
02:45:25
of like we know it's s because it wasn't you know any other fluid that they've been able to like definitively link it
02:45:31
to and I can't get like too far or I like I'm afraid I'm going to say something wrong because that's it's
02:45:36
really technical so what I can go back to is what is very clear in my mind and what I do understand is that when they
02:45:44
do this testing they find more DNA so we know we've got the DNA in the underwear
02:45:49
but they also test like places on her Long John specifically I think places where they think if someone was going to
02:45:55
like pull down her pants pull upper pants and they're able to get touch DNA on the outsides on the left and the
02:46:02
right and on one side the unidentified male one profile that we have in the underwear can't be
02:46:12
excluded so we can't exclude exclude it on the other side it's too small that it
02:46:17
can't be included or or excluded okay so we don't know anything well it we know that it might match we
02:46:25
know that the the DNA and the underwear might match or it's at least consistent with the touch DNA on the outsides now I
02:46:33
think it's important to note there is this like note that the DNA might come from more than two contributors which
02:46:40
like actually makes reading the results like from my understanding even more complicated but I I keep coming back to
02:46:46
like the the word like consistent because I almost have to like retrain my brain because what I had always heard in
02:46:53
the public and from like statements and stuff is that we have a match we have the same DNA here here and here and it
02:47:01
is not a match in that you can say 100% these are like the exact same profiles it is cannot be excluded cannot be
02:47:08
included or excluded it's like consistent with or it's enough to be like in my mind probative like it's it's
02:47:13
still very interesting that we have unknown male profiles in all these places is
02:47:19
like it's but like but like let's be clear make sure we're using the right language now it is powerful enough of a
02:47:28
find that the boulder da at the time This Woman's name is Mary Lacy she actually sent the ramsy a letter of
02:47:35
apology she actually sent it to John Ramsay because by that time John told me that py had lost her battle with ovarian
02:47:43
cancer so once again this letter is slightly edited for clarity but this this is what she told John Ramsey via
02:47:50
letter July 9th 2008 Mr John Ramsay as you are aware since December 2002 the boulder District
02:47:59
Attorney's office has been the agency responsible for the investigation of the homicide of your daughter John Benet I
02:48:07
understand that the fact that we have not been able to identify the person who killed her is a great disappointment
02:48:11
that is a continuing hardship for you and your family however significant new evidence has recently been discovered
02:48:18
through the application of relatively new methods of DNA analysis this new scientific evidence convinces us that it
02:48:25
is appropriate given the circumstances of this case to state that we do not consider your immediate family including
02:48:31
you your wife paty and your son Burke to be under any suspicion in the commission
02:48:36
of this crime I wish we could have done so before Mrs Ramsey died we became aware last summer that some private
02:48:43
Laboratories were conducting a new methodology described as touch DNA one method of sampling for touch DNA is the
02:48:50
scraping method this is a process in which forensic scientists scrape places where there are no stains or other signs
02:48:57
of the possible presence of DNA to recover for analysis any genetic material that might nonetheless be
02:49:03
present we contracted with the Bodi Technology Group a highly reputable laboratory recommended To Us by several
02:49:10
law enforcement agencies to use the scraping method for touch DNA on the long johns that John Benet wore and that
02:49:16
were probably handled by the perpetrator during the course of of this crime the bod technology laboratory was able to
02:49:22
develop a profile from DNA recovered from the two sides of the long johns the previously identified profile from the
02:49:28
crotch of the underwear worn by John Benet at the time of the murder matched the DNA recovered from the long johns at
02:49:34
bod unexplained DNA on the victim of a crime is powerful evidence the match of male DNA on two separate items of
02:49:42
clothing worn by the victim at the time of the murder makes it clear to us that an unknown male handled these items
02:49:49
despite substantial efforts over the years to identify the source of this DNA there is no innocent explanation for its
02:49:56
incriminating Presence at three sites on these two different items of clothing that John Benet was wearing at the time
02:50:02
of her murder solving this crime remains our goal and its ultimate resolution will depend on more than just matching
02:50:08
DNA however given the history of the publicity surrounding this case I believe it is important and appropriate
02:50:14
to provide you with our opinion that your family was not responsible for this crime
02:50:19
based on the DNA results and our serious consideration of all the other evidence
02:50:23
we are comfortable that the profile now in codus is the profile of the perpetrator of this murder to the extent
02:50:30
that we may have contributed in any way to the public perception that you might have been involved in this crime I am
02:50:35
deeply sorry no innocent person should have to endure such an extensive trial in the court of public opinion
02:50:42
especially when public officials have not had sufficient evidence to initiate a trial in a court of law I have the
02:50:48
Great great respect for the way you and your family have handled this adversity I am aware that there will be those who
02:50:54
will choose to continue to differ with our conclusion but DNA is very often the most reliable forensic evidence we can
02:51:01
hope to find and we rely on it often to bring to Justice those who have committed crimes I am very comfortable
02:51:07
that our conclusion that this evidence has Vindicated your family is based firmly on all the evidence including the
02:51:13
reliable forensic DNA evidence that has been developed as a result of advances in that scientific field during this
02:51:19
investigation we intend in the future to treat you as the victims of this crime with the sympathy doe you because of the
02:51:25
horrific loss you suffered otherwise we will continue to refrain from publicly discussing the evidence in this case we
02:51:33
hope that we will one day obtain a DNA match from the cotus data bank that will lead to further evidence and to the
02:51:38
solution of this crime with recent legislative changes throughout the country the number of profiles available
02:51:44
for comparison in the cotus data bank is growing steadily law enforcement agencies are receiving increasing
02:51:51
numbers of cold hits on DNA profiles that have been in the system for many years we hope that one day soon we will
02:51:57
get a match to this perpetrator we will of course contact you immediately perhaps only then we will
02:52:04
begin to understand the psychopathy or motivation for this brutal in sensus crime respectfully Mary T Lacy district
02:52:12
attorney 20th Judicial District Boulder Colorado there's there's been a profile in codus for like 20
02:52:22
years with no hits no hits not a single one and you know there's an ABC News article saying that they checked that
02:52:31
profile against everyone in the family along with 200 other potential suspects as well and all of them have been
02:52:40
excluded from this profile in that same article actually Mary Lacy kind of gives her Theory which
02:52:47
I believe is is like close if not exact to what the ramsy subscribed to which is
02:52:52
that while they're out at the Christmas party or not the Christmas dinner at the
02:52:55
whites someone snuck into their home wrote that note like laid in wait they had plenty of time and when the ramies
02:53:04
got home they waited for everyone to go to bed so they could go upstairs where jany was sleeping and grab her L Smith
02:53:11
also strongly believed that a stun gun was used to subdue her I'm sure that like this Theory like of this theory has
02:53:19
become pretty popular yeah aren't there like two like little marks that are right next to each other on her back
02:53:25
that Lou said like look like they could be St gun marks or something yeah now so
02:53:31
there's the two marks there's no burn marks which I said to be really common with stun guns which is maybe why the
02:53:37
original pathologist just noted them as abrasions it was you know to go there's like a lot of back and forth with this
02:53:44
like was it was it a sun gun was it not loci's like confident so there's 's actually this point where it's
02:53:49
recommended to the ramsy like oh we should exume Jean Benet and have someone else look at her to to confirm that like
02:53:56
now that we've got this idea like would could someone else like look at this I I
02:54:01
don't even say with a more critical view but like with that in mind the ramies don't want to do that now keep in mind
02:54:07
this is happening like a lot closer too so like there's like it's not like we're
02:54:11
talking years so it would have been like useful timing wise something might have
02:54:15
been there yeah there's still a lot of value in it Lou Smith to be really on board with this like yes let's do an
02:54:21
exam let's get a second autopsy but I think it was Barbara Walters when John and paty went on um they were just
02:54:28
saying like we don't want to have her exed like it we just buried her like that is a lot of trauma yeah it's too
02:54:35
painful like we we want our daughter to rest in peace and in their in in their mind they're like you have the original
02:54:41
pathology report you have pictures of this like everything we need is here for Lou to even come to this conclusion like
02:54:47
we don't need to exume her so with the Intruder Theory I get the what and the how of the idea like I
02:54:59
I think it like lines up it makes sense there's elements to it that make sense but I guess that leaves us with like the
02:55:06
two major questions left which is who and why which one do you want first uh let's
02:55:13
go with why so there's no one so there are two routes with the Intruder theory that I
02:55:20
have heard the Ramsay Camp discuss one is like this idea that this was a pedophile some kind of sexual deviant
02:55:29
all around scary mother roaming the Suburban streets of Boulder don't get me wrong like scary mother is like every
02:55:38
brand of the person who did this but like around this Ser what they point to is the paintbrush being put in her the
02:55:46
choking around her neck and I would hear Lou say that he believed she was hit in the head after
02:55:53
she was choked I think I said that like so all of that that's that's one potential Avenue Theory why the other is
02:56:02
that it was someone who hated John ramsy like the note was clearly about John everything was addressed to him like
02:56:10
when I sat down with him he even talked more about this Theory I feel like than the other total like a lot like he just
02:56:17
kept saying like they seem to hate him but then the sexual stuff doesn't really make any
02:56:23
sense it's like for best friends because literally like I asked him that and he and he agrees he's like I'm was like
02:56:29
okay but John if they're like if they if this is about you and your business and
02:56:32
they don't like you why did they have to do you're saying all of the other stuff
02:56:37
like was sexual it's not a staging it was sexually motivated so like why that doesn't make sense and he's like no like
02:56:41
I can't like both things can't be true at the same time yeah but I think I think what they've said before what I
02:56:48
think I think he would say and what I know they've said before is like you can't make sense of someone like this MH
02:56:53
so no we said that before we've said that before yeah so like no this like doesn't make sense to us but does that
02:56:57
mean it couldn't have happened like that you gave us two possible y's but without
02:57:03
really landing on one how do you even get to who I think it makes your list really long like really
02:57:12
long I know as part of like their defense team the rams's actually h John Douglas like the father of the ba John
02:57:21
Douglas to consult on the case and he firmly believes in their innocence like I actually asked him for an interview he
02:57:28
couldn't because of some family things but he like told us in an email that he was never asked to provide a written
02:57:35
profile to either the Ramsey defense or the boulder py but he provided his analysis verbally to both he thinks the
02:57:41
boulder PD even recorded it but he said he could tell that even when they were like hearing him they still seem
02:57:49
squarely focused on the family but he firmly believes in the Rams he said and I actually he gave us a quote to make
02:57:58
his position extremely clear there are no words that can describe what a family goes through when
02:58:04
their child is a victim of a violent crime however what is profoundly even worse on top of that is to have your
02:58:11
child murdered and then be wrongfully accused or even convicted of killing your child the ramies are not murdered
02:58:18
MERS but victims they are victims of investigative incompetence as well as intentional and prejudicial news
02:58:25
coverage I've worked many cases where parents have killed a child but this is not one of those
02:58:32
cases end quote so to go back to the who if you know this case you've heard that Santa did it
02:58:44
Santa Santa yep the the Santa we're talking about is the Santa from the Ramsay's Christmas party on the 23rd
02:58:51
there were a lot of really odd things about him his family like just like circumstantial things you're like oh my
02:59:00
God like those things it all just like lined up in a very strange way there was even supposedly John Benet who was even
02:59:07
telling people that like Santa was going to make a special visit to her after Christmas which was like a thing that
02:59:13
everyone pointed to a lot there were pedophiles that were found with in the pageant circuit like there is one that
02:59:20
surfaces to the top of the list but not until years later but when this like one comes about
02:59:26
it kind of like proved what people were screaming all along like very scary people were close to Jean Benet and
02:59:31
other children throughout pageantry because it's actually like the guy who was like her photographer for
02:59:38
her pageant stuff ends up being like a prolific pedophile like he has like wild imagery out the wazu so that there's
02:59:47
that whole segment of things there was this guy named Gary Oliva who like early days was said to have confessed to
02:59:53
killing Shan Panet and listen people want to say that paty's uh like handwriting is like a
03:00:00
close and again she's the only one that couldn't be excluded but like I saw this
03:00:04
dude's like Gary's handwriting and it's like scary close to the ransom note there's another guy named John marar I
03:00:12
don't remember John marar he confessed to killing some too I remember those headlines yeah but like that's that
03:00:18
that's what I remember cuzz I remember thinking when I was younger that it got solved yeah like oh my God this could be
03:00:22
it yeah and it was it was huge I remember being so huge because he was like living out of the country at the
03:00:29
time and here's the thing I like bits and pieces from the headlines from like what I was seeing cuz we were a little
03:00:36
bit older at that time but I never knew the full story about John Mark carp until I saw the Netflix stock that's
03:00:43
coming out November 25th and like we actually got early screeners like how they got to him was wild and like I I
03:00:52
know I've said this a thousand times people are going to get tired of me saying it like when you're deep in a
03:00:55
case like I could point to you think there's going to be like one person who looks so good for it but then I'm like I
03:01:01
could tell you stories of like five people 10 people who if I only told you about them you'd be 100% behind that
03:01:08
that's how it is like that's how it is with like Santa with her like pageant photographer with John markar like it's
03:01:15
a they go in deep and it's it is so interesting it's stuff I never knew I don't actually want to like spoil all of
03:01:22
that because like the Netflix doc is going to be out really close to when we releasing this so I I encourage everyone
03:01:29
to just like go watch that for yourselves I mean I don't want to we already we've already been here for so
03:01:33
long I don't want to spend too much time because at the end of the day we also know that no one's DNA has matched the
03:01:40
profile they have not even the pedophile John Mark Carr Santa Santa like like not
03:01:46
even the 200 people I told you they compared DNA to whoever this was their D their ghost and
03:01:56
without a name and a face to associate with the crime it has left a lot of room for old rumors
03:02:05
to maybe like surface again or at least like there's Rumblings underneath and those Rumblings got very loud in 2013
03:02:14
when the Daily Camera started reporting that years after the grand jury convened remember
03:02:20
the grand jury back in 1999 okay yes so we're in 2013 so they start saying like maybe
03:02:27
things weren't as they seemed and maybe Alex Hunter's words when he did his press conference were carefully
03:02:38
chosen hi crime junk I'm your host Ashley flowers and I'm Brit and every week we cover all kinds of True Crime
03:02:45
cases from the most infamous to to mysterious deaths and disappearances even cases you've never heard anywhere
03:02:52
else if you can't get enough of all things True Crime well you found your people and if you're like us and want to
03:02:59
make a real impact in these cases you're definitely a crime junkie so join us every Monday for new episodes you can
03:03:05
find crime junkie wherever you get your podcasts jurors confirmed to the Daily Camera that there was actually an
03:03:15
indictment that came out of those proceedings back in 1999 so here's how this came about a
03:03:21
reporter named Charlie Brennan and the reporters committee for freedom of press filed a lawsuit to have the documents
03:03:28
from the proceeding unsealed they had been sealed like most grandury things like since
03:03:34
1999 okay so when that happens there are 18 pages that get sent to a judge to review to see which ones could be
03:03:41
released and what needed to stay sealed to protect like what a grand jury is and
03:03:46
in total four four of those 18 Pages were released to the public count 7 on or about December 25th
03:03:55
and December 26th 1996 in Boulder County Colorado John Bennett Ramsey did unlawfully knowingly and feloniously
03:04:04
render assistance to a person with intent to hinder delay and prevent the discovery detention apprehension
03:04:11
prosecution conviction and Punishment of such person for the commission of a crime knowing the person being assisted
03:04:19
has committed and was suspected of the crime of Murder in the first degree and child abuse resulting in death as to
03:04:26
count seven accessory to a crime a true bill signature redacted no true bill count 4 a on or between December 25th
03:04:37
and December 26th 1996 in Boulder County Colorado John Bennett Ramsey did unlawfully knowingly recklessly and
03:04:46
feloniously permit a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the child's
03:04:53
life or health which resulted in the death of Jean Benet Ramsey a child under the age of 16 asked account 4 a child
03:05:01
abuse resulting in death a true bill signature redacted no true bill count 4 a on or between December 25th and
03:05:12
December 26th 1996 in Boulder County Colorado Patricia Paul Ramsey did unlawfully knowingly recklessly and
03:05:20
feloniously permit a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the child's
03:05:27
life or health which resulted in the death of Jean Bay Ramsey a child under the age of 16 asked to count 4 a child
03:05:35
abuse resulting in death a true bill signature redacted count 7 on or about December
03:05:44
25th and December 26th 1996 in Boulder County Colorado Patricia Paul Ramsey did unlawfully knowingly and feloniously
03:05:54
render assistance to a person with intent to hinder delay and prevent the discovery detention apprehension
03:06:01
prosecution conviction and Punishment of such person for the commission of a crime knowing the person being assisted
03:06:09
has committed and was suspected of the crime of Murder in the first degree and child abuse resulting in death as to
03:06:17
count accessory to a crime a true bill signature redacted no true bill I don't know what the other counts were or why
03:06:27
they weren't unsealed but whoa like I mean how did the da get away with saying that they
03:06:36
didn't get an indictment because he didn't say that what he said and I'm going to it's important because like it
03:06:44
yeah the wording is specific on this line it is here so he said quote the boulder Grand Jury
03:06:51
has completed its work and will not return no charges have been filed the grand jurors have done their work
03:07:00
extraordinarily well bringing to Bear all of their legal Powers life experiences and shrewdness yet I must
03:07:08
report to you that I and my prosecution task force believe we do not have sufficient evidence to Warrant the
03:07:14
filing of charges against anyone who has been investigating at this time blah blah blah blah so it's
03:07:21
careful wording like he was going to say he stopped himself and this became a legal dust up
03:07:30
because some said by law he was required to sign the indictment and then if he wanted to move to dismiss the charges he
03:07:39
could have but just not signing them wasn't a thing he should have been able to do now other analysts say that the
03:07:46
law was more ambiguous I don't know I don't know if your head's hurting but mine is like and
03:07:52
listen the burden of proof to indict versus convict is like completely different mad different so indicting
03:07:59
just means like hey there's like the abundance of evidence says that something probably happened but when you
03:08:04
go to trial you have to be you to prove that it actually did buttoned up Beyond A Reasonable Doubt so I get an
03:08:11
indictment that doesn't necessarily lead to a trial but like other things in this
03:08:16
case it is the way that it was handled that just feels so shady so after this comes out the internet enters their Burk
03:08:28
era and here is where I like I do roll my eyes a little bit you guys like just because like it cannot be everyone I
03:08:36
feel like it can't be it can't be mom did it like because of a wedding accident and dad did it because like
03:08:43
she's getting molested and Burke did it because she ate the pine like it cannot be all of the things it can't be Santa
03:08:50
and a foreign faction and John Mark Carr like it feels a little like the world kind of just like latches onto a theory
03:08:58
for a while and if that doesn't go anywhere or they get bored they like pick a new thing but it's not things
03:09:05
like all of these are real people who I say again cannot all be guilty or all murdering her so I don't think we have
03:09:14
the right to say that we know what happened when we just straight up do not know what
03:09:21
happened but at this point in our story like the world is coming for Burke and maybe I I think a small part of it like
03:09:29
that at least like spawns this this isn't like a brand new idea but like the way the certain indictments that they
03:09:35
did release those counts they were ones about assisting about placing her In Harm's Way like not actually like
03:09:44
indicting you for murder yourself and so I think it gets people being like okay well if it wasn't them like who
03:09:51
would they be assisting who would they be protecting and the only other person that we know of in that home was her
03:09:57
9-year-old brother and this reaches like Peak crazy in 2016 when two things happen one Burke goes on Dr Phil and two
03:10:09
CBS releases this like ridiculous special reinvestigating the case do you remember that I remember both of these
03:10:14
things yes so like I hate to ruin TV for everyone they legit did zero reinvestigating it was basically just
03:10:20
like one of the books that had been written forever ago just like rehashed they were all just like sitting around a
03:10:25
table getting paid but they say that in this like reinvestigation they have this
03:10:30
like revolutionary theory that Burke was up that night eating pineapple John B tried to maybe like eat some he got mad
03:10:38
whacked her in the head with the flashlight and then like everything was staged to cover up for
03:10:43
him the pineapple we're finally at we're at the pineapple we're at the pineapple
03:10:48
okay so we know there's pineapple in her stomach that cannot be explained by any
03:10:53
version of any events that we've gotten every single story does not include pineapple agree I could spiral 4 days
03:11:02
here because without a doubt there is more to what happened that night that we just do not know like that like this is
03:11:10
the one thing I can point to to be like we don't have the full story right now it could be that she just got up and got
03:11:15
it herself or that someone else gave it to her it could be that someone in the house that could be someone in the house
03:11:21
it could be someone not in the house but she did not go right to bed and then die
03:11:28
like she ate pineapple pineapple we can all agree on that so there is a bowl of what looks like pineapple and condensed
03:11:36
milk next to a glass of tea on the table that was photographed by police like at
03:11:40
the house that day like when they're processing the scene when they fingerprint these things it's PSY and
03:11:46
burk's prints on the bowl and Burks prins on the tea neither claims to have gotten like gotten that out or eaten it
03:11:52
that night py suggests that maybe when they had everyone over like someone got that out like the morning of um because
03:12:00
she doesn't know where it came from I like I don't know why like this is like stuff in their home like I don't get
03:12:06
like too hung up on paty's Prince being on a bowl maybe unless like L they housekeeper put everything away but I
03:12:13
think about like unloading the dishwasher yeah or getting something out for Burke like
03:12:18
but they say but but yeah okay so we see this in a in an image we think that like
03:12:24
okay it could be the pineapple sheet it also might not be the pineapple sheet like you know what I mean it's it also
03:12:28
could just be someone else's pineapple yeah and then we still don't know where the pineapple in her stomach came from
03:12:34
but there's also a MAG light found on the counter in the house which has it's been theorized that it could be the
03:12:41
murder weapon but there's like zero forensic evidence on that Maglite to actually support that it's the murder
03:12:46
weapon no one knows why the light was taken out no one knows where it came from even they don't even know if it was
03:12:51
the ramsy at all but in the CBS thing they are sure that Burke hit John Bonet with this flashlight or some flashlight
03:13:00
and it must be true because they show another 9-year-old team kid hitting Aon with it it is yeah it's like awful 10
03:13:08
out of 10 detective in here guys so so that that's going to come out in 2016 before that comes out John Ramsey
03:13:17
gets a call he has a new lawyer by this point he has cozied up with a guy um who
03:13:23
who like they become or he or at least he's like with him legally for a long time he's his name is Lynn wood he's
03:13:29
also another fun Google if you have him in it Lynn has been representing John as
03:13:34
John and paty and like the family has been like suing the tablets who publish really defamatory things about the
03:13:40
family well Lynn wood knows Phil mcra AKA Dr Phil and so Dr pH supposedly according to John like gives them a call
03:13:50
and it's like hey heads up CBS the network that I'm on is about to do this show where they take aim at Burke like
03:13:56
you should you Burke should come on my show and like say your peace and Burke does and the world just eats that kid
03:14:09
alive yeah I remember watching this and it almost being painful to watch and then watching
03:14:17
happens after it was like even worse and I I feel like bad empathy for him because
03:14:28
like he's already going through a lot in his life and then to be on camera it changes
03:14:34
so much of like who you are how you react like what you say and he didn't like and keep in mind he didn't grow up
03:14:41
on camera no he was like sequestered is like the best word I can think of like we didn't see Burke in tabloids we
03:14:49
didn't see Burke on the news John said that something they were really intentional about they wanted him to try
03:14:54
and have like as much of a normal life as they could so they would really protect him they moved to Atlanta for a
03:14:59
while they end up moving um from Atlanta back to charlot boy so he like grows up
03:15:03
in this like small Michigan town and so so he's not used to a camera like it it does it comes off awkward it comes off
03:15:11
weird it's a little uncomfortable but like pick any number of reasons why that is and there's been like theorizing out
03:15:18
the woo but like someone's not guilty of something because they smile too much like right I'm sorry no no and I'm sure
03:15:26
the way that we saw like John and paty prep for their interviews I'm sure there was some prep here and like listen Dr
03:15:35
Phil was like throwing softballs like that's the one thing I will say and Burke got his point across like he says
03:15:40
he doesn't know what happened to his sister he certainly wasn't involved he said his parents were good parents and
03:15:47
that this is all a media circus that has like kind of ruined his family's life and I say all that like so there's
03:15:54
like so many things that I'm just like this interview means nothing he's like doing the best he can but then he says
03:15:58
this one thing that like I I'm like did I miss like what did I hear that right and I I like I actually just want to
03:16:06
play the clip for like it's better than me saying it I think your dad had said he used the flashlight that night to put
03:16:15
you to bed and then you snuck downstairs to play yeah I had some toy that I wanted
03:16:21
to put together I remember being downstairs after everyone was kind of in bed and want to get this thing out did
03:16:27
you use the flashlight so you wouldn't be seen I don't remember I just remember being
03:16:34
downstairs I remember this toy did you hit your sister over the head with a baseball bat or a flashlight absolutely
03:16:43
not this is not a version of any story we've heard ever ever heard and I asked John
03:16:51
specifically about this because in my mind I'm like oh my God this is like if Burke is
03:16:58
downstairs when all this H like did he hear something did he see something and I asked John about this and again I go
03:17:05
back to like I know John and py did media training like I did they just like throw
03:17:11
Burke to the wolves like without it like and and Dr Phil says that John's the one
03:17:16
that told him this so I asked John about it and at first John John was like oh no
03:17:23
like that's so much has gotten misreported that's not real and I said no John like Dr Phil says you told him
03:17:30
this and then Burke responds and agrees and says yes I was downstairs and John just said like I
03:17:36
didn't know that so I asked him you know in our interview I was like I know people have talked to Brook like they
03:17:44
had a lot of child psychologists at the time trying to like you have to you have
03:17:48
to handle that really sense he's nine yeah I know those people were talking to him but did at any point you and paty
03:17:55
have conversations with him and like John like immediately shut it down he's like no there's no way he did this and
03:17:59
I'm like actually that's not what I'm saying I I know like when we were when we were young like we grew up with
03:18:06
siblings I'm like if if we if now there's a world where he's downstairs even if he wasn't say that all that was
03:18:14
like Dr Phil weird slip up there in my mind things that like kids see a relationship and a bond that like
03:18:22
siblings have and you don't necessarily like put the weight in them as a kid yeah and like like there are things like
03:18:28
I knew about my siblings or like I the I saw them in a different way than my parents saw them I saw the way that we
03:18:32
interacted with other people differently than my parents saw like also kids are like a tune to things like we like that
03:18:37
you notice so much yeah especially when like so many people are ignoring you as a kid like you just pick up on a lot
03:18:43
that I asked him I was like like there could be something he knows that he doesn't even know he knows if you've
03:18:48
never talked to him in all these years and John said that like he's confident that Burke would have told him if there
03:18:55
were something so I mean I think that you're like how do you how do you balance that of like trying to do right
03:19:00
by your one kid trying to get Justice for the other one and I think what he he is trusting that Burke would tell him
03:19:06
something if there was something to tell or if he if you know years and years and
03:19:10
years down the line if something comes to him like he's going to come for it it's his sister he he loved her the same
03:19:15
way the rest of his family would of so after that CBS special so Dr Phil then there's a CBS special Lynn wood
03:19:24
represents Burke in a $750 million lawsuit against CBS and in the suit they lay out what they what they call the
03:19:32
statement of fact and I will say they do try to correct the record here so on I mean there's like n like when they
03:19:40
statement a fact they like list these different things in number 29 it says that Burke exercised his
03:19:46
right a reasonable response by granting one interview to Dr Phil McGrath in which he denied any involvement in John
03:19:52
B's murder so I I actually think like there like there was a legal strategy even coming
03:19:59
into this because he would have either I believe if I'm understanding it right had to have give statement to CBS in
03:20:05
some way like in response to like the claims they were making or have like publicly stated it and he had never done
03:20:10
interviews before so he had to give an interview to someone so I think that was part of the reason he came forward when
03:20:15
Dr Phil gave him up call mhm like he needed some statement out there saying like he had nothing to do with his
03:20:21
sister's death now the other thing is it's number 130 and 131 it says that Burke was not awakened during the night
03:20:29
and Burke did not leave his bedroom during the night so unless those facts were challenged which I don't believe they
03:20:37
were because they ended up settling that kind of becomes the de facto record so even though we have Burke on
03:20:45
Dr Phil saying he went downstairs we have this like legal document where they're saying that the fact is he
03:20:50
didn't wake up and he didn't go downstairs and on paper that's I think the law right but I wish we could talk
03:20:58
to ask him yeah cuz I'm with you like I'm not saying he did anything but there is just so much yeah that my siblings
03:21:07
would do that I would do that they knew about that our parents just didn't see like it's as kids you kind of live in
03:21:14
your own world like yeah below the the line of sight of your parents in a certain
03:21:20
way I think if there's something to say that he can say he'll say it um I know he's met with investigators like so it's
03:21:28
not like he hasn't even like talked to police he did he's met with child psychologists you know we shared when we
03:21:33
met with John like we shared our information and obviously told him like if if Burke is open to talking I know he
03:21:38
doesn't do interviews um and John said you know he's an adult if he wants to do it like he will but we haven't heard
03:21:44
from him so I don't know to get back to your question of like how do you get to the
03:21:50
who I think you just start you've got to just start shipping away at this case I
03:21:54
think that's what certainly Lou Smith was doing with his work it's what his family continues to do again I'm going
03:22:00
to link to the podcast that I mentioned I think it's interesting they kind of go
03:22:03
person by person that they were actually like going out there and collecting DNA
03:22:08
samples from these people ruling them out one by one suspects that like I had never heard of and not even just the
03:22:13
usuals that I mentioned like Santa and John Mar Carr like Lou left this list behind that people like made up of
03:22:20
people he thought were worth looking into and in the order he thought that they should be looked into and so that's
03:22:27
what they're working off of but you I mean like you have to wonder if the name of Jean B's killer is even on even on
03:22:34
that list I know or if like has the other question I have is like has the DNA led us astray because there was this
03:22:41
thing that recently happened in Colorado that has me like all kinds of nervous for this case so in 2023 it came to
03:22:49
light that an analyst at the CBI lab this woman named yavon Missy Woods she was manipulating the DNA testing process
03:22:57
like this this investigation is still ongoing as of this recording in November 2024 so far they have found that she
03:23:05
omitted material facts in official Criminal Justice Records and tampered with DNA testing by altering or omitting
03:23:11
some test results from the case File so far they have't found any evidence that she falsified any DNA matches like thank
03:23:21
God so far but that is all from cases that she worked between 2008 and 2023 now they have to go back and look
03:23:31
at paper records from 1994 to 2008 so she was there the whole time of Jean B's case yeah and listen not all of the DNA
03:23:43
testing was done by like state agency like the longdong stuff came from bod but there was definitely some pretty
03:23:51
critical work that came out of the crime lab in the state which has me shook because if this is a DNA case like L
03:23:59
Smith and the ramsy say what do we do if the DNA was wrong this is not the answer that anyone
03:24:08
wants to hear but you have to start all over you have to I don't know if you can
03:24:16
now okay here here's two things so I'll say I asked John about this and he says that he's been told by like the people
03:24:24
who give him information over he's been told that confidently Missy Woods didn't
03:24:29
work on the Ramsey case like so he feels confident that the results have not been
03:24:34
skewed by whatever she was doing I I mean like in my mind the investigation is still on going so like
03:24:40
I don't know but he he told me he is confident he has been told that does not like
03:24:47
it's not applicable here like we don't have to worry about it but if we have to start all over like the good news is
03:24:52
like there's even better forms of testing right like you think about all the genealogy stuff that's being done oh
03:24:57
yeah now there's no mention of utilizing this technology to assist with the case
03:25:02
yet and John Ramsey said in my interview with him that he's afraid cuz he's trying to find out where the evidence is
03:25:09
like what can we do now right like starting over or not starting over like there's just new testing that needs to
03:25:14
be done yeah and he doesn't can't get a straight answer he says about if the evidence is secure where it is so he
03:25:21
doesn't know like his biggest fear is maybe someone lost it or maybe they're protecting someone # protect
03:25:30
Boulder I don't think anyone's looking out for Boulder anymore um but everyone says that they're committed to looking
03:25:37
out for John Benet I'll say that there was a cold case review um this team was brought in and like recently like 2023
03:25:45
they're said to made recommendations about how to move the case forward what those were if they're being acted on
03:25:52
unclear to me we did like I said we reached out to the DA's office and the boulder PD um surpris uh I've had
03:26:01
nothing juicy from them so obviously they declined my offer but they did give us
03:26:06
statements so the DA's office Pio said quote the murder of Jean Benet Ramsey was a tragedy our office has
03:26:13
successfully prosecuted Cold Case homicides and many other murder cases our office appreciates the continued
03:26:19
collaboration with cdps CBI the FBI and the Boulder Police Department as with any Cold Case homicide the overarching
03:26:28
goal is to look at the facts and evidence with fresh eyes and an open mind armed with the latest developments
03:26:34
in forensic science the presentation to the cold case review team generated helpful recommendations our office is
03:26:41
continuing to work with federal state and local agencies to make progress on this tragic case end
03:26:47
quote Boulder PD gave us this statement the killing of Jean Benet was an unspeakable crime and this tragedy has
03:26:55
never left our hearts Boulder police chief Steve Redfern said we are committed to following up on every lead
03:27:02
and we are continuing to work with DNA experts and our law enforcement Partners around the country until this tragic
03:27:08
case is solved this investigation will always be a priority for the Boulder Police Department because this is an
03:27:14
open and ongoing investigation the Boulder Police Department is unable to give any interviews or comment on
03:27:20
specific aspects of this crime we continue to investigate and encourage anyone with information to contact
03:27:26
detectives at Boulders mostwanted at bouldercolorado.gov or by calling the Boulder Police tip line at 303 4411
03:27:37
[Music] 974 as for John Ramsey he says that he is fighting for his daughter in the last
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few years he recently started doing more interviews and his eldest son John Andrew has even gotten really involved
03:27:53
as well and they're both featured in the new documentary on Netflix they are pushing for authorities to do more
03:28:00
testing they've met with athum Labs themselves they feel that genealogy could be the thing that this case has
03:28:06
been waiting for if the evidence is still there and John hasn't gotten an answer about that
03:28:13
yet and that is where he asks for crime junkies help like I think it is something that no matter where you come
03:28:21
out on this case like this is something we can all get behind because there is unknown DNA there and we have to find
03:28:30
out who that belongs to because there is no world where anyone could be prosecuted in this case without that DNA
03:28:38
being explained now John also says that he encourages people to write to their Congressman about something called the
03:28:44
victim's families rights act it was signed into law federally by Joe Biden in 2021 but JN says that it needs to be
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passed in each state and what this would do is it would allow family or families
03:28:57
of loved ones to request a federal review of their loved ones case after it's been cold for 3 years this is
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something that he says that he wishes he would have had so I mean I asked him if
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he's going to be pushing for this in Colorado he's moved out of state now but again the case is still there um
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but he says that he doesn't have connections in Colorado anymore now John says that he has heard
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that they're just waiting for him to die so that this case will go away but if I
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believe one thing about this case it's that it's not going away anytime soon we are not going away we talked more about
03:29:38
John B's Legacy and like other stuff he's attempted to do in the past to like get things moving and there's a big
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chunk of our interview that is around that so I would encourage people to go go watch that now that you're done with
03:29:50
this and you are done with this so like if you have made it till the end thank you for being a crime junkie um you guys
03:29:58
really being a crime junkie means more than just the headlines and there is still so much more to this case I would
03:30:05
encourage you to go check out the Netflix documentary it's dropping on November 25th 2024 it is called Cold
03:30:11
Case who killed Jean Benet and you can go right now to our YouTube if you're listening you could watch this episode
03:30:17
or you can go check out the interview that I have with John Ramsey it's available right
03:30:31
now did I I didn't tell you so when I was when I was there for the interview yeah I um I'm walking back from dinner
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to my hotel and I like I see this restaurant and I'm like wait pasta past why why do I know pasta shut up I'm like
03:30:49
why do I know pasta JS and I'm like oh my God Ashley you've been living in the job Ramsey case like that's where they
03:30:53
had dinner on Christmas Eve yeah they're friends with with pasta J and I was like
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that's so strange and so I'm like Googling I'm like I didn't know it was a franchise it's not a franchise it's it's
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literally in Boulder and then where John lives and so the next day he said something about um I can't remember what
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it was but he's like oh yeah my friend owns pasta JS and I was like yeah I was going to ask you about that I saw it
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last night and he's like oh yeah and by the way Mike bam owns the hotel that you
03:31:19
were staying [Laughter] at we did it we did it