When John Ramsey wakes each morning his first thought is of his murdered daughter, JonBenét.
It was John who found the 6-year-old’s lifeless body in the basement of the family home in Boulder, Colorado on December 26, 1996. Duct tape was over her mouth and a cord wrapped around her neck.
For John, his wife Patsy and their son Burke, life was never the same.
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John says time has stood still over the last two and a half decades. Since losing JonBenét, he no longer allows himself to feel carefree or happy.
“I met a mother who lost a child, and she told me, ‘You know, I feel like I have a hole in my heart, and it won’t heal,’” John shared. “And it doesn’t, you don’t get over it.
“You move on but you’re a different person … I saw a little girl who was about JonBenét’s age holding her dad’s hand walking down the street the other day, and that put a lump in my throat.”
Now, 26 years on from JonBenét’s death, John is still desperate for answers about what happened to his little girl – and why.
Suspicions initially fell to the family; John was accused of being a child molester who staged JonBenét’s kidnapping and murder to cover up the unfounded accusations of abuse. It was also alleged Patsy had killed her daughter in a blind rage in the middle of the night upon discovering her daughter had wet the bed.
Even Burke, who was 9 at the time, was targeted with claims he had murdered his sister in a fit of jealousy and his parents helped hide it.
John and Patsy were both exonerated of any wrongdoing in 2008 – two years after Patsy died from ovarian cancer. Burke was never formally considered a suspect despite rampant speculation. John said the accusations against him and Patsy didn’t bother them.
“I’d already been hurt as deeply as I could be hurt, so to call me the murderer of my child was just noise-level stuff; it didn’t bother me,” he said.
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“You can’t hurt us anymore, but go ahead and try. We’re as hurt and as low and down as we could possibly be emotionally, and the only thing that got us up off the floor was the realisation that we have other children that need us now more than ever to be strong parents.”
So they focused on protecting Burke from the media storm.
“We couldn’t go into a supermarket without seeing our names or faces on the cover [of newspapers and magazines], one of which was ‘Brother Did It’.
John, who recently celebrated his 79th birthday, is worried that he’s running out of time to get answers.
He is once again campaigning to have the case removed from the jurisdiction of Boulder Police Department so that fresh eyes can look over the case.
John is also urging investigators to look at an attack on another young girl that happened in Boulder months after his daughter’s murder, which he believes could be connected.
The existence of the attack was unearthed by The U.S. Sun in December 2022.
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The girl’s father claims a masked man dressed in black broke into his home on September 14, 1997, and snuck into his then-12-year-old daughter’s room, where he covered her mouth with his hand and sexually assaulted her.
JonBenét, who lived just couple of minutes’ drive away, had been killed nearly nine months earlier. The two girls went to the same dance studio, the father said.
The incident was avoided only because the girl’s mother heard voices, and came into the room to investigate, prompting the man to run.
Camel Blue cigarette butts were found outside both homes and the second father says he begged local police to investigate. Neither case has been solved.
