JonBenet Ramsey's Murder: John Ramsey 15 Years Later
The death of JonBenet Ramsey, the childhood beauty queen murdered in 1996, is still unresolved, but 15 years later her father, John Ramsey, is speaking out with his own theories about what happened that night.
"I think what happened, and it's I guess supported by evidence, is this person came into our home when we were out for dinner on Christmas night and then waited until we went to bed and took JonBenet from her room," John says.
John says he's unsure whether it was someone he knew, but says crime profilers have guessed that the killer is someone who was either angry at or jealous of John.
One fleeting suspect in JonBenet's murder was her brother Burke, who was only 9 at the time of her death. John Ramsey says in his new book, "The Other Side of Suffering," that Burke saw headlines accusing him of his sister's murder.
John says they tried to give Burke a sheltered, normal life, taking precautions by getting rid of their television, stopping newspaper deliveries to their home and hiring a psychologist for Burke.
Little did the Ramseys know that in addition to dealing with their daughter's death, they would also have to deal with a media frenzy of accusations. In a Gallop poll, John says that 70 percent of the population believed he and his wife, Patsy, were involved in their daughter's murder.
John, however, never believed the hype, saying that he didn't doubt his late wife Patsy's innocence "even for a nanosecond."
"The real blow… was the loss of our child," John says. "The rest of it was just kind of noise-level stuff. It was there, but that didn't hurt."
In the years after JonBenet's death, John Ramsey was not open to learning many of the details surrounding her murder. Now, however, he is ready to face whatever facts there are.
"I'm ready now. I obviously would like to know, what did we do wrong and what caused this person to focus on our family?" John says. "It's not going to bring JonBenet back, [but] it would be nice to have that element of closure."
Many people are unaware that John Ramsey lost another child four years prior to JonBenet's death, when his 22-year-old daughter Beth was killed in a car accident in 1992. Tragedy struck in John's life again 10 years after JonBenet's death, when his wife and JonBenet's mother, Patsy, passed away from ovarian cancer in 2006.
John says one of the most disconcerting parts of Patsy's death was the idea of his son Burke, who was 18 at the time of his mother's death, having to lead his life without his mother there by his side.
See the full interview with John Ramsey on Friday, March 16 on "Anderson."
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