What happened to JonBenét Ramsey? The details behind the child pageant star's murder — and why it remains a cold case

For nearly 30 years, the horrific case of JonBenét Ramsey has dominated headlines and captivated true crime fans. One of the most notorious cold cases of all time, the child beauty queen's bizarre disappearance and murder has inspired countless conspiracy theories.

Netflix's new documentary Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, directed by true-crime impresario Joe Berlinger, offers a different look at the decades-old crime, humanizing JonBenét's family members who were accused of being complicit in her death. Her family vehemently denied their involvement and were never charged.

The project even forced the director to interrogate his own beliefs about the infamous crime. “Back then I fell for it,” Berlinger told The Independent. “And I’m embarrassed that I fell for it, because I had just finished Paradise Lost, which is all about wrongful conviction — but I had a two-year-old daughter at home, and I kind of bought into the media hype. And I thought to myself, ‘Gee, my daughter, my two-year-old, is very cute, and I bet when she’s six, she’ll be really cute; I would never put her into a beauty pageant’ — and I had a bunch of judgment about that.”

Here's a look back at the JonBenét Ramsey case.

Who was JonBenét Ramsey?

JonBenét Ramsey was born August 6, 1990, to parents John and Patricia “Patsy" Ramsey.

The young girl made waves in local beauty pageants during her short life. When Patsy was 20, she had won the honor of Miss West Virginia back in 1977, and JonBenét later followed in her footsteps.

She won several pageants, including America's Royale Miss, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl, Little Miss Colorado, and National Tiny Miss Beauty. After JonBenét’s death, some accused John and especially Patsy of “living vicariously” through their daughter as controlling stage parents. But John told PEOPLE in 2024 that could not be further from the truth.

“JonBenét loved doing that stuff,” John said. At the time, he recalled, “Patsy had just recovered from stage four ovarian cancer and was grateful for every minute she'd been given to be alive. And I think she was trying to pack a lot of stuff into her mother-daughter relationship, knowing that she might not live.”

What happened to JonBenét Ramsey?

At 5:52 a.m. on Dec. 26, 1996, police were summoned to the Ramsey home in Boulder, Colo., with reports of a missing child. Patsy, who made the 911 call, told authorities she found a two-and-a-half-page ransom note on the staircase of their home. The letter demanded $118,000 for JonBenét’s safe return and attributed her kidnapping to “a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction.” The note was signed, “Victory! S.B.T.C.”

Authorities conducted a perfunctory search of the house, including the basement, where they looked for a possible escape route a criminal may have used. Officer Rick French found a door leading to a secured area of the basement, but since it was locked from the outside with a wooden latch, French decided it wouldn’t be a feasible exit and didn't attempt to open it.

Because investigators believed this was a kidnapping plot, JonBenét’s bedroom was the only area closed off to preserve evidence. The rest of the house was left open for the family and myriad authorities to wander through, potentially destroying countless pieces of evidence, per Newsweek.

When was JonBenèt's body discovered?

In the early afternoon of Dec. 26, Detective Linda Arndt assigned John and his friend Fleet White to conduct another search of the house to determine if anything seemed “amiss.” John and Fleet began their search in the basement and opened the locked door that French had bypassed earlier.

There, the two men found JonBenét’s body. She was wrapped in a white blanket with duct tape covering her mouth and nylon cords around her neck and wrists.

John, who was understandably distressed, grabbed his daughter’s body and ran with her upstairs. This compromised the crime scene's vital physical and forensic evidence.

What did JonBenét’s autopsy reveal?

JonBenét’s autopsy ruled her death a homicide, attributing it to "asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma." Essentially, she was strangled and then hit over the head with extreme force. Although there was no evidence of rape, the possibility of sexual assault could not be definitively ruled out.

What did the investigation into JonBenét's death reveal?

John, Patsy, and JonBenét’s elder brother Burke all sat with police for extensive questioning. The family also gave handwriting, hair, and blood samples to authorities. At first, the investigation zeroed in on John and Patsy but eventually considered many persons of interest.

But that didn’t stop the accusations targeting the parents. There was a great deal of debate surrounding the ransom note, which many felt was too pat and perhaps even a bit cliché.

On Jan. 9. 1997, less than two weeks after JonBenét’s disappearance, The New York Times reported that JonBenét’s mother had located a “draft” of the ransom note "written on paper from a legal pad found inside the Ramsey home."

A Sept. 1997 report by the Colorado Bureau of Investigations determined that “there are indications that the author of the ransom note is Patricia Ramsey, but the evidence falls short to support that definitive conclusion."

Were John and Patsy Ramsey accused of JonBenét’s murder?

Many Boulder law enforcement officials believed they had the necessary cause to charge John and Patsy with murder. "Early on, they looked into this crazy idea that the parents were responsible," Berlinger lamented to ABC News. "They get tunnel vision, so they're not looking to investigate all possibilities."

In 1998, a Colorado grand jury spent over a year hearing testimony and viewing all of the evidence collected to date. The jury indictment accused the Ramseys of two counts of child abuse resulting in JonBenét’s death, stating that they "did unlawfully, knowingly, recklessly and feloniously permit a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the child's life or health." 

One juror spoke to ABC's 20/20 on the condition of anonymity. “I saw that there was a little girl dressed up with, in my opinion, a sexual persona, and it disgusted me,” he said of JonBenét’s pageant wear.

The grand jury recommended charges for John and Patsy, but prosecutors decided not to move forward with the case, believing they did not have sufficient evidence to convict.

In 2008, then-Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy issued a statement exonerating John and Patsy of any criminal wrongdoing in JonBenét’s murder. Part of her reasoning was due to DNA evidence, not available in 1999, which was later found on a pair of JonBenét’s long johns. Lacy believes this DNA belongs to JonBenét’s real killer.

“The DNA was not available to the grand jury in 1999,” Lin Wood, the Ramseys’ attorney, told The Denver Post. “What we have here is a release of a sliver of the evidence that the grand jury looked at and reviewed. It’s just based on incomplete evidence.”

What happened to JonBenét Ramsey's parents after the grand jury indictment?

Despite prosecutors choosing not to charge John and Patsy, public speculation continued to torment them and Burke.

In 2003, Patsy’s ovarian cancer returned. She was first diagnosed in 1993 and later went into remission. “I wanted her to keep fighting, she wanted to keep fighting,” John recalls in Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey. Patsy had remained determined to catch her daughter’s killer up until the end.

In her final years, she had a heart-to-heart conversation with Detective Lou Smit, who always believed a random intruder murdered JonBenét, not a member of her family. “The last words she said to me were, ‘Lou, I don’t have much time left. Please catch this guy before I die,’” Smit says in an interview clip featured in the documentary.

Patsy Ramsey died on June 24, 2006, at age 49 with John at her bedside. She was buried in a grave next to JonBenét near her family home in Marietta, Ga. In the documentary, John called the return of his wife’s cancer and her subsequent death “devastating” for himself and Burke.

Was JonBenét’s murderer ever caught or charged? 

JonBenét’s murder remains unsolved, though a variety of suspects have cropped up throughout the years. Though official investigations have moved on, many armchair sleuths remain suspicious of John, Patsy, and Burke’s alleged involvement in the crime. They were never charged and vehemently denied their involvement.

The JonBenét case is still open and considered active.

What are the most recent updates in the JonBenét Ramsey case?

In 2006, a criminal named John Mark Karr was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, where he confessed to drugging, sexually assaulting, and killing JonBenét Ramsey. However, there was no DNA match found for Karr, so no charges were brought forth.

Burke Ramsey appeared on a 2016 episode of Dr. Phil to share how his sister’s murder had impacted his childhood and present life. The same year, Burke filed a defamation suit against CBS after the broadcaster's documentary, The Case of JonBenét Ramsey, accused then-9-year-old Burke of murdering his sister in a fit of rage. According to Reuters, the case was settled for an undisclosed amount in 2019.

The Netflix documentary concludes with John theorizing that something about the DNA evidence may be incorrect. He is asking for those samples to be retested, along with testing other pieces of evidence for the first time. John is hopeful that those results could be crosschecked with other databases to produce the largest list of suspects possible.

Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey is streaming on Netflix