Original subtitles

In Colorado, it has all the makings of a classic murder mystery.

A ransom note, a dead body, strange twists and turns.

But what makes this murder mystery so chilling is the victim,

a beautiful little girl.

JonBenét Ramsey is the Ziegfeld Follies!

It was a case that people couldn't stop talking about.

The way she was dressed, her charisma.

No one had seen anything like that before.

The fate of this six-year-old, who has now been seen across the country,

has drawn hundreds of journalists to town.

But with police and the family saying virtually nothing,

who killed JonBenét is as big a mystery as ever.

It was the morning after Christmas, 5:52 a.m.,

when her mother called 911

saying her little girl had been kidnapped out of her bed

and a ransom note left in the house.

There are so many pieces of the puzzle

that you can look at and… interpret one way or another.

Was there an intruder?

Or was the family involved?

I did not kill my daughter JonBenét.

What parent would ever strangle their own child?

Keep your babies close to you.

There is no evidence.

There is no motive. There is no evidence of bad character.

There is evidence of an intruder.

I say this over and over and over again.

Nobody wants to listen.

Some don't think it's ever gonna be solved.

Someone killed this six-year-old child.

We know that, and we want them captured.

If this case is ever going to be solved,

we might be looking at the best chance right now.

Whether or not they're involved in this, I don't know.

But I do know this, that that little girl had to mean an awful lot to them.

And… she did mean something in this world.

I just hope I can be of some use in…

bringing that killer or killers to justice.

Do you mind taking us through the day?

- You know, just the timeline?

Well, that, it-- it's hard, but, uh…

Eh…

We were planning to leave early that morning.

That was the day after Christmas.

We'd had a big Christmas at home, and-- and now we were gonna… leave early that--

on the 26th, and fly to Michigan to have a kind of a second Christmas

with my older kids who were working, and they were all going to meet us there.

And I was shaving, I guess, in the bathroom,

and I heard Patsy just scream.

And she'd gone downstairs to the kitchen and found this ransom note.

And, uh…

It was just, um… unbelievable.

Well, um…

I got up and… got dressed.

And, you know, it was very early.

Kind of not-- not daylight yet.

And, uh, we had a spiral staircase to the first floor,

and, uh, I just started downstairs

to… get coffee on, or whatever.

As I, you know, moved toward the end of the stair,

there were these pieces of paper lying on one of the runs of the stair.

As I kind of turned around, looked at it to see what it was,

and, uh, just…

started reading the first couple lines…

I can't remember exactly what the first few lines said,

but somewhere it said, "We have your daughter."

And it clicked, you know. "Your daughter."

And I just bounded back up the steps and threw her door open.

And she was not in her bed.

Mr. Ramsey, listen carefully!

We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction.

We respect your business but not the country that it serves.

At this time, we have your daughter in our possession.

She is safe and unharmed,

and if you want her to see 1997,

you must follow our instructions to the letter.

You will withdraw $118,000 from your account.

I will call you between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. tomorrow

to instruct you on delivery.

Any deviation of my instructions will result in the immediate execution

of your daughter.

Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as police, FBI, etc.,

will result in your daughter being beheaded.

If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies.

If you alert bank authorities, she dies.

If the money is in any way marked or tampered with, she dies.

Don't try to grow a brain, John.

You are not the only fat cat around.

So don't think that killing will be difficult.

It is up to you now, John.

Victory! S.B.T.C.

Patsy happened to be standing by the phone. I said, "Call the police."

I'm at 755 15th Street.

- What's going on there, ma'am? - We had a kidnapping. Hurry, please!

Explain to me what's going on. Okay?

There-- We have-- There's a note left, and our daughter's gone.

A note was left, your daughter is gone?

- Yes. - How long ago was this?

I don't know. I've just found the note.

Please.

What's your name? Are you--

Patsy Ramsey. I'm the mother. Oh my God!

I've told people, if you have kids,

and you've been in a shopping mall,

and your child disappears, even for a moment,

you get this punch to the stomach that's just severe.

"Where's my child?"

Just panic, for a moment. Then you find her, and it's over.

But it only lasts for a second. But this horrible… in your gut…

trauma, I guess, is how to explain it,

was the feeling I had that morning. "I gotta get my daughter back."

Think back real hard.

Just tell us what you absolutely remember.

My youngest son, Burke, was asleep.

Burke was nine years old. He was… a little boy.

Who was the first person you remember seeing that morning?\i}

- Mm… My mom. - Okay.

She was coming in to flip on my light.

Did she say something that you heard?

Just like, "Oh my gosh…"

I called our friends that we had had dinner with the night before,

and, um…

Just in a… "JonBenét's missing," you know, "Can you come over, help," you know.

And then I called another-- another couple, a close friend of ours, and, uh,

and they came right over.

I received a page to call the night shift patrol supervisor

who told me they'd responded to a reported, uh, kidnapping

of a six-year-old girl.

I knew initially this was a very rare case.

Kidnapping for ransom, we'd never had a case like this.

So, I got two detectives to respond.

The squad car came, and one officer came in, and…

I told him, "Hey, we found this note. Our daughter's missing."

"She didn't just run away?" I said, "No, she was six years old."

"It's cold out, it's dark, it's snowing. No, she didn't run away."

The detectives also spoke to Burke Ramsey,

and they made arrangements for Burke to go to a friend's house.

We wanted to get Burke out of this chaos.

Uh, and we said, you know, "JonBenét's been taken, but we're gonna get her back."

How was Dad sounding?

He was sounding like, you know, he wasn't going to…

uh, freak out, you know, he was trying… .

I was totally focused

on what have I got to do to get my daughter back.

I can get her back if I kept my wits about me

and kept focused.

At that point, the two detectives searched the house.

The Ramseys' house, it's kind of a deceiving house.

Outside, it doesn't look that big,

but when you go in, it-- it's very large inside.

It's a huge house.

It's over 6,500 square feet.

There are three levels,

with another level that the Ramseys converted into their master bedroom.

JonBenét's bedroom was almost on the opposite side of the house,

on a lower level.

It would have been difficult to hear anything from that location.

Then below that is the main living level.

Patsy found this ransom note on a circular staircase

that was near the kitchen.

And then, below that, you had the basement area,

where they basically stored things.

And there's an area referred to as the "train room,"

where Burke kept some toys.

Officers had searched the house,

didn't see any obvious crime scene, didn't find JonBenét.

I didn't go to the house until later on.

I went upstairs, looked at JonBenét's bedroom.

The bed wasn't made. It had been slept in, obviously.

I shut the door, sealed it,

specifically told Mr. Ramsey nobody goes in there.

And I'm thinking, this suspect could call at any time.

The police prepped me on, "When they call, ask to talk to JonBenét."

I made arrangements to get the money available.

I just remember feeling just helpless,

and because my whole life, I've tried to keep my children safe.

And suddenly I didn't know

where my child was, and I was just…

Just panic-stricken.

An officer had collected the actual ransom note.

And I asked Mr. Ramsey if he had a sample of his handwriting

and a sample of Mrs. Ramsey's handwriting.

So Mr. Ramsey handed me two notebook pads

and said, "This is my wife's. This is my notepad."

And so I went to the police department.

We have a forgery detective who is also a handwriting examiner,

so, I gave him the notepads. I said,

"Look at these, compare it with the ransom note, tell me what you think."

Bob Whitson handed me two notebooks,

and he said that John Ramsey had provided them to him

and that one notebook contained Patsy's handwriting,

and the other notebook contained John's handwriting.

I was going through the notebook that contained Patsy's handwriting,

and I came across an entire sheet of paper in the notebook still attached

with what appeared to be the initial ransom note.

It said, "Mr." and then like, maybe, the initial vertical stroke of an R.

It could have been like the first draft

of what had appeared to me to be the possible ransom note.

I was shocked to find that.

It appeared that the ransom note

was written from that notebook in the Ramsey household.

Detective Kithcart came in and showed me that information.

You could have heard a pin drop.

One of the FBI agents in the room,

I remember him saying, "You always have to look at the family."

Well, actually, I was off that day.

The phone rang, and it was one of the individuals from our field office,

not an agent, but one of the investigative clerks,

uh, just calling to notify me

that there had been a kidnapping reported in Boulder.

One of the first things you wanna do

is read what the demands of the alleged kidnappers are.

The first thing that struck me about the note was the length.

It's quite unusual to see this, uh, magnum opus.

Your typical ransom notes are short and to the point.

The next thing that really jumps out at you is the $118,000.

A really odd number to ask for.

The 118,000 is a low figure, but it's also a very unusual figure

because, uh, it's-- it's just not typical of what you would expect to see.

You expect to see 200,000, 300,000, 250,000, a million, a half a million.

But not $118,000.

All of this, really, I mean, in aggregate,

uh, sort of indicated to me that-- that the note was essentially bogus.

It was not truly a kidnapping note.

Waiting several hours to get a call from the kidnapper was torture.

And then ten o'clock came and went and no call.

At one point, I said, "Have you closed the airport, or,

you know… something?"

And-- And they just looked at me and said, "Well, no."

And I was like, "Well, what are we doing here?" You know?

"What-- What's the plan of action?"

You're so frustrated, because you don't--

You want the whole world to just stop right there

so that you can go find this baby.

Mr. Ramsey was nervous, wanted to know what was going on.

So, the detective that was there said, "Why don't you just search the house again

and see if you find anything unusual?"

So, my friend and I went downstairs, went to the basement.

We call it the train room.

The kids had a train set up, an electric train set up.

And immediately I saw the window, one of the windows was open. And broken.

And there was a suitcase under the window.

And that suitcase shouldn't have been there.

It set there like it was a step,

because the window was a fairly high window.

You needed a ladder or steps or something to get up through.

I told my friend, "That suitcase shouldn't be there."

"That doesn't belong there. It wasn't put there by us."

I said, furthermore, "I came through that window myself last summer."

I had to break it to get in the house. I lost my key. Nobody was home.

I thought we had the glass fixed, apparently, we didn't.

But I said the window was wide open. And that looked fishy.

The next place we went was another room in the basement.

We called it the wine cellar, but there was no wine. It was an old coal room.

And immediately, her body was right there in front of me.

She had tape over her mouth, and her hands were tied behind her back.

And I immediately pulled the tape off.

I tried to untie her hands, but the knot was tied really tight.

I couldn't get it undone.

So, I just screamed, and I picked her up and carried her upstairs.

Just to try to get her help.

The detectives looked for a pulse.

Looked at me and said, "She's dead."

I just stared at her. I'm, like… You know, I couldn't comprehend that.

And I heard John scream.

And I said, "What?" You know, "What-- What is it?"

And… And Barbara, my friend,

just, you know, grabbed me and said, "No, just stay, just stay right here."

And I kept saying, "What? What? What is it? What is it?"

And, um…

Um…

And I think, um…

We walked into the living room, and…

And she was there, and…

John said, "She's…"

"She's gone."

The detectives who were at the Ramsey house

called dispatch saying that-- that JonBenét's body had been located.

There was a group of police investigators

that had gathered at the Boulder Police Department that morning.

When the word came in that JonBenét's body had been found,

a person inside that meeting told me

that one investigator hissed,

in kind of an undertone and a whisper to another one,

"I knew it. They killed their daughter."

We were pretty quickly escorted out of the house.

So, we went to stay at some friends' house who were there that morning.

They took us to their home.

And, um, from that point on, it was just…

You're in shock.

I thought JonBenét would be there.

I thought they found her.

Thought the family felt excited.

I don't know… if I was dreaming… and I started being real sad.

And they had told me that JonBenét was in heaven.

What did you do?

Started crying.

Past Santa Claus in his sleigh and a double row of candy canes,

deputy coroners brought the body of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey

from her upscale home.

The mother, Patsy Ramsey, dialed 911

telling police her daughter had been kidnapped.

But when police got here, they went inside the house,

and a short time later, they found the little girl's body.

I was called in on the Ramsey case when I was on vacation.

And my news director caught me at home.

And she said, "You need to get involved in this story, like, now."

Boulder police won't comment on her cause of death,

only saying that she wasn't shot or stabbed.

Any journalist knows the sense of adrenaline

that you feel when you are deployed

on what already, off the outset, smells like a big story.

I got to the Ramsey home the evening that the crime was reported.

There was no communication that evening

between law enforcement and the media outside,

until the time that they brought her body out,

which occurred just minutes, really, before my final deadline.

One of the investigators came out, and they gave us

a name and an age of the victim.

Boom, that was it.

Police have not publicly identified any suspects.

Their official line remains that nobody has been ruled in,

and nobody has been ruled out.

Neighbors describe the young girl as beautiful and polite.

Her body was in the basement, out of sight, but not really hidden.

You're starting to do some research into who are the Ramseys.

Mr. Ramsey is president of Access Graphics,

a billion-dollar business in town.

I tried to reach anybody I could

with the Ramsey family, and I was unable to.

And the very few friends that I could find of theirs would not talk.

The couple does have another child, a son around ten years old.

At that time, we were anxious for any little bit of information we could find.

Hello, I'm Patsy Ramsey.

Daddy's not here, but this is JonBenét, she's four. Burke is seven.

And we'd like to welcome you to our home and wish you a very merry Christmas.

It's really important to remember that prior to Christmas Day of 1996,

we were just a regular family.

Whoo!

We weren't perfect, we were just a regular family

living a regular life.

When JonBenét was born, there were five of us.

So, I had two older sisters, my sister Beth, my sister Melinda,

from my dad's first marriage to my mom.

And then Burke and JonBenét were born. Burke is ten years younger than me,

and JonBenét is, I think, 13 years younger than me.

Were, of course, my dad's second marriage to Patsy.

Here come Burke and JonBenét.

- Coming flying down this hill. Yeah.

Whoo! All right! Great shot!

- Let's do it one more time. Okay. One more time.

Oh, Dad.

Hey, guys. Did we have fun, or did we have fun?

JonBenét.

Where's Burke? There's Burke.

- And Melinda.

I met Patsy through some friends.

I was divorced,

and my downstairs neighbors were friends of Patsy from West Virginia.

And she was 23, and I was 35, and…

I-- I-- She was nice, and…

But I thought, well, that's not dating material,

she's too young.

But then I got to know her a little bit, she's, like, she's pretty smart.

She's not a typical 23-year-old.

And so I asked her out for a date, we went out, it just felt right.

The rest was history.

I started out-- I'm kind of an independent entrepreneur

and started a little manufacturers' rep company,

where we represented electronic equipment.

And we were lucky, we were in the computer industry,

and it was growing like crazy.

We merged with two other companies. One was in Boulder.

So, we said, "Okay, let's move to Boulder, and we'll stay in Colorado for two years,

and we'll come back to Atlanta."

That was the plan.

We'd gotten a nice nest egg,

but it wasn't hundreds of millions of dollars.

It was more money than I ever thought I would ever have.

And, of course, then that all changed.

John Ramsey's daughter Beth, she was from his first marriage,

was killed in a car accident.

When we lost Beth, I obviously was just devastated.

She took better care of me than I probably took care of her.

And she-- she would always worry about what was Dad gonna do on Christmas

or, uh, Thanksgiving if we weren't together.

JonBenét was a year and a half old

when we lost John's daughter, Beth.

And even at that age…

And I know we've talked about this many times, that we felt like she was a gift…

given to us to help us through that time.

And you think, she was only a year and a half old,

she couldn't really know what has taken place here.

But she sensed, she would sense

our grief and our sadness.

And she just had a way of coming up to you and snuggling up.

She was just a very sensitive child that way.

Patsy knew for months something was wrong.

Her stomach was getting very distended.

Her mother took one look at her and said, "We're going to the hospital."

"Something is wrong."

Within 30 minutes,

they had taken an X-ray, found a huge tumor in her abdomen area,

and it was ovarian cancer.

She was a fighter. She wanted to live for her kids.

The children would come into my hospital room.

She would come up, and here's the bag hanging there with this blood in it.

She'd come up and squish it, you know.

"What was this?" You know. "Where's this going?"

And she'd follow it up, you know. "It's going in here."

"It's all right, Mommy," she'd say.

"It's alright, it won't hurt very long." You know.

She was like my little cheerleader.

It was brutal, and the program was very intense,

"almost-kill-you" chemotherapy.

She did that for a year, and they said, "You're cancer free. You're in remission."

And it was, for Pasty, a gift of life again.

This was my reason to live.

Hello?

Hello!

I had these two children, this wonderful husband,

and nobody was going to raise these two children

the way I wanted it done.

I'm gonna be there.

- Hello? - Here's JonBenét. Hello.

Anybody interested in the Ramsey case

needs to read the cause of death in the autopsy report.

It's critical.

According to the autopsy, whoever killed JonBenét

took white olefin cord, tied her wrists together…

took the same cord and made

what's commonly known as a garrote or a ligature.

A garrote is used not to immediately strangle the victim,

but it's more of a controlling mechanism.

You can-- You can apply pressure to the neck and release it.

Apply pressure to the neck and release it.

There was an artist's style paintbrush

that was actually found in Mrs. Ramsey's paint supplies,

that were kept in the basement.

That paintbrush was broken into three pieces.

The handle of that was taken off and secured at the end of this garrote.

There was some complexity as to

how the garrote was put together.

This knot was tied by somebody who understood how a garrote is made.

We believe JonBenét was alive when this was being done,

because she had hair tangled in this knot.

It's consistent with somebody either holding her down

or putting their foot to hold her down and tie this knot.

The garrote was left embedded in her throat.

I never saw the garrote.

It was so embedded in her throat, I didn't see it.

She also had a very distinct red mark below her throat

consistent with her fingerprints,

like, as she was trying to relieve pressure on the cord

that was wrapped around her neck.

This garrote was deep into her neck.

That's what everyone including the police thought killed her.

Well, when they got her to the autopsy table

and opened up, you know, her brain,

they realized she'd been hit over the head.

She was hit in the head

with a blow that left an eight-inch crack in her skull.

Part of her skull caved in.

Boulder Police Department found two items that they thought might be

involved with the-- the injury to JonBenét's head.

There was the Ramsey's baseball bat that was found outside the Ramsey's house.

There was also the Ramsey's Maglite flashlight

that was left in the kitchen.

But there was no physical evidence on the flashlight

or on the bat.

The coroner who performed the autopsy on JonBenét

said the cause of death was for two reasons.

Either the garrote and strangulation or the blow to the head.

He said he did not name either one

because he could not determine which happened first.

That they were as close to simultaneous as he could figure.

There were also microscopic fibers from the paintbrush handle

that were found in her vaginal area,

indicating she was sexually assaulted with the paintbrush handle.

Such fury, such anger.

She was tortured, and she was murdered.

In Colorado it has all the makings of a classic murder mystery,

a ransom note, a dead body, strange twist and turns.

It received national news attention almost right away.

One of the biggest driving factors

were the sheer number of pictures and videotapes of JonBenét.

She's captivating from the get-go.

If you look at the pictures of this little girl, she was star quality.

For TV and tabloids

and everybody to tell the story, you need pictures.

And the Ramsey case became immediate fodder,

because JonBenét Ramsey was in child beauty pageants.

JonBenét Ramsey is the Ziegfeld Follies!

ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN, for the whole month of January,

led with the Ramsey case.

And the child beauty pageant photographs and video were in them.

There was a very professional, almost adult,

and frankly somewhat sexual look to them.

The videos that I've seen of JonBenét,

it-- it seems she doesn't seem like a child at all.

She seems like a tiny woman.

And there's something very, sort of, s-- sexually aware about her.

The shots we've seen of this little six-year-old child

- are like… They're sexy!

…uh, tarted-up, miniature dwarf hooker.

The Ramseys were very harshly judged as delinquent parents,

as parents who forced their daughter into these beauty pageants.

It paints a very, uh, startling picture of what this girl's lifestyle,

what her activities, sanctioned by her parents, were.

Let's talk a little about the pageants.

When they saw the pageant videos, that what they saw was a sexualized child.

How do you react to that?

That was a sick mind looking from that vantage point.

It was not happening that way.

Okay, so… Whoops! What is your favorite animal at the zoo?

The monkeys, because they laugh and stuff and hang around.

They laugh and hang around. That sums it up pretty good.

Go, Jess, go!

Go, JonBenét!

These were little girls that were on a little stage

performing in front of parents and grandparents,

probably never more than 20 or 30 parents, mothers and fathers

of other daughters that were in the program.

It was not, you know, cut-throat competition,

it was just "let them perform to their little hearts'… desire."

♪ I wanna hear those coyotes howlin' ♪

♪ As the sun sinks in the… ♪

Unless you're there, unless you've been to one, and seen--

It's almost like a home movie that you took of your children

at the swimming pool,

and it ends up on national television as pornographic material.

Congratulations to all.

Congratulations to you, JonBenét.

Patsy was in a beauty pageant when she was in college

and ran for Miss West Virginia.

And time after time, she would say, "Mommy, when can I do that?"

I felt that Patsy was probably particularly anxious

to do those things with JonBenét

'cause quite frankly, she had cancer in remission

and didn't know if she would be here when JonBenét was 16 and 18.

- She's never said that. I never said that. - Well, John's right.

After I… had-- had cancer, you know, I thought, well, maybe--

You know, I may never live to see her do a lot of things.

Since her murder, no arrests have been made,

but people have been talking about the tragedy.

Who they suspect, how the police have handled the investigation.

The police department started realizing right away

that they should've been doing a lot of things differently.

The police have come under criticism,

and other police departments said

they would've done the investigation differently.

Do you have any concerns though

of how the police handled the investigation from the beginning?

I mean, not searching the house, suggesting to the dad he search the house,

and then he finds the body…

I have no reason to question the police at all in their investigation.

Boulder Police did not have

a track record of handling many homicides

for the simple reason that there were not many homicides to investigate.

I believe that the death of JonBenét was the first homicide in Boulder that year,

and there were five days left in the year when it happened.

Is it fair to question the Boulder Police Department's

experience and ability to investigate a homicide?

I don't think so. Just because you have one homicide in a year,

I think is actually a sign of remarkable strength in a community.

That lack of experience, procedurally,

created a lot of problems in the crime scene.

Tom, quite a bit of information has come out

about the police, um, investigation the morning of December 26th.

Did police search the house

after the 911 call but before the body was found?

They, uh, did a preliminary search of the house.

And remember this is a very big house.

Did they look in the room where, uh, John Ramsey

said the girl's body was or did they not?

It doesn't appear that they got down.

That room was down

in, uh, a part of the basement that doesn't appear that they got to.

One of the cops did not open the door where JonBenét was lying.

Major mistake, and I believe he lives with that to this day.

Another procedure question.

Why was the Ramsey house not sealed off as a crime scene

until several hours after the kidnapping was reported?

They'd called their friends over.

So, you've got a house full of people, people are washing dishes.

You've got bagels everywhere, and orange juice and coffee?

The Boulder Police didn't consider that a crime scene.

I should have removed all those people from the scene.

That was a crime scene mistake.

But at the time, it looked like a legitimate kidnapping,

so I thought, "Well, these are the support system for the Ramseys,"

and I-- I let 'em stay.

And why didn't police discover six-year-old JonBenét's body

instead of her father,

since they were in the house several hours before she was found?

You never have somebody outside of law enforcement doing a search.

Right? The role of law enforcement is to gather the facts.

John Ramsey found his daughter's body in the basement

and carried it upstairs,

effectively destroying the crime scene.

When Mr. Ramsey discovered her body,

he pulled the duct tape off of her mouth,

threw it down on the blanket that was there.

There may have been some evidence on the duct tape if that wasn't removed.

Was there a concern now at all that some evidence,

some crucial evidence that could link, uh, establish, pretty firmly in court,

who the killer was, might have been lost

in those first, uh, initial minutes of discovery or not?

That can be speculated on,

but, uh, all indications are that we did not lose anything.

Police attention on the Ramseys as suspects

I know began on day one.

And it began based on a variety of different things.

And many of these things we wouldn't learn about for some time.

I know who killed JonBenét.

There's no doubt in my mind who killed JonBenét.

When the Boulder detective, Linda Arndt,

did her first interview on television,

she said that she felt she was face-to-face with the killer.

His face was just inches from mine.

And we had… a non-verbal exchange that I will never forget.

We didn't act right in the eyes of this so-called detective

that was there that day.

How did he strike you?

Cordial.

Distraught?

Cordial.

The classic one was, "John was casually going through the mail."

"Not 'acting right.'"

I remember seeing John in the kitchen,

looking through his mail, and I… I made a note.

I was looking for another communication from the kidnapper.

Mail had come through our mail-slot on the door, front door,

and there's a pile of letters.

I was looking for-- Is there another communication?

She interpreted that as, "He's just casually looking through the mail."

"Therefore, he's guilty."

Linda Arndt was the only police officer in the house at the time

when they found the body.

She told me she just suggested to John Ramsey,

"Why don't you search the house," to give 'em something to do.

This detective, "Why don't you and your friend go through the house,

see if you see anything unusual?"

Linda Arndt told me that John Ramsey went right into the basement,

right to the room where the body was, and found it immediately.

And I think that there was a sense that that was just--

If you're gonna say, "search the house,"

that was just an odd first room to go search,

and then coincidentally the body is there.

The logical place to start is the basement.

That's where the easiest access would be to the house.

She said John Ramsey looked at her, and she said she saw in his eyes.

And she just said the look in his eyes scared her

and made her fear for her own safety.

I remember, and I wore a shoulder holster,

tucking my… gun right next to me

and consciously counting, "I've got 18 bullets."

'Cause I didn't know if we'd all be alive when people showed up.

"I saw it in John's eyes. I knew he was the killer."

It's crazy.

And, uh… But that's how it got started.

I knew what happened.

I don't know if it was that day or the next, I got a--

And I wasn't taking calls, we could hardly function.

But our friends got a call, and they said,

"This is a fella that works with you. He said he needs to talk to you."

So I answered the phone, and it was one of our, uh, employees.

He said,

"I was told by someone inside the system… to get this message to you."

"They believe you killed your daughter."

"You need to get the best defense attorney you can get your hands on."

And I was just shocked.

The father, John Ramsey, has hired a well-known criminal lawyer,

and a Denver newspaper reports he will not talk to police.

They hired lawyers immediately.

And that just seemed weird.

Here this family has a little girl murdered in their home,

and they're having lawyers talk to the cops.

I think there was a sense that, perhaps, there was a reason they were doing that.

The average American thinking of their child being killed

would say, "What you got against talking to the police?"

"You should want this solved."

All we saw was that the Ramseys weren't talking to anyone.

Why aren't they on the police department's doorstep

offering up anything they can, any little piece of information they can?

Why are they running?

Those parents still have not sat down

and formally been interviewed by the police about their own child's murder.

- That's right. - What do people in Boulder think?

Well, I think there's a growing concern around here that that's the case.

I don't think the Boulder Police have treated them any differently.

They're trying to get them,

it's just that they have this team that's protecting them at this point.

We met with our new attorneys,

and they said, "You've got to be careful talking with the police."

We're like, "We don't have anything to hide."

"They've gotta see that and understand that."

But our attorneys told us, "You don't understand how this works."

Um…

"There's innocent people in prison today

because their defense attorneys let them talk to the police."

We gave the police everything they asked for.

Blood samples, DNA samples, whatever they asked for.

Records, all our credit cards, anything they asked for, we gave.

The doors of Atlanta's Peachtree Presbyterian Church

opened hundreds of times this morning.

Family and friends of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey

came by to pay final respects to the Marietta native.

JonBenét was gonna be buried in Atlanta, next to my oldest daughter.

I can tell you that the heart of God is broken

by the tragic death of JonBenét Ramsey.

As the service ended, the Ramseys walked to their child's casket

and kneeled before it.

When we were under attack, so to speak, by the media and the police,

it didn't matter.

We'd lost our child.

I mean, I would've been happy to die, quite frankly, to-- to relieve the pain.

I really didn't get on the street until they were in Atlanta,

for the burial.

We were starting to get, um, statements from a PR firm

instead of from the Ramseys or their attorneys themselves.

And it smelled a little funny. And we were like, "What is going on?"

We were, uh, in Atlanta for JonBenét's funeral,

and our friends in Boulder were absolutely insistent

that we go in front of the media.

"You've got to do it."

"You're starting to be accused of murder, and you've got to defend yourself."

I'm like, "Okay."

Why did you decide you wanted to talk now?

Well… We've been, um… pretty isolated, totally isolated

for the last five days, and, uh…

But we've sensed from our friends that, uh,

this tragedy has touched not just ourselves and our friends,

but… …many people.

Why are they doing interviews with CNN

if they're not going to do a formal interview,

sit down with Boulder Police

if they want to find the killer of their child?

If anyone knows anything, please, please help us.

For the safety of all the children…

…we have to find out who did this.

I remember watching it

and thinking about how medicated Patsy was during that interview.

She was slurring her words. She was very emotional.

You believe it's someone outside your home.

There is a killer on the loose.

Absolutely.

I don't know who it is. I don't know if it's a he or a she,

but if I were a resident of Boulder,

I would tell my friends to keep…

It's okay.

Keep your babies close to you. There's someone out there.

Patsy Ramsey said in that interview on CNN,

"There's a murderer on the loose."

That remark landed sort of awkwardly in the local community.

Living in this town, as I do,

I can say there's no sense among the community

or the people who I talk to, who I see in my off hours,

that we have any reason to be, uh, afraid of a person or persons unknown.

In Boulder, the city's mayor,

having heard Mrs. Ramsey's warning the day before,

tries to downplay any alarm.

There was no visible sign of forced entry.

Uh, the body was found in a place where people are saying

someone had to know the house.

So there isn't a crazed killer on the loose

wandering the streets of Boulder.

The mayor comes out and says it's not like there's somebody

wandering the streets of Boulder looking to strangle our children.

How does she know? How does anybody know? Nobody knows who the killer is.

I think you would assume that she had information from the police

that led her to feel comfortable saying that there was not a killer on the loose,

and that the police knew who the killer was.

And the implication from that clearly would be

that it was somebody connected with the family.

Neighbors here in the exclusive Chautauqua Park area

appear to be very familiar with Wednesday night's

nationally televised interview with the girl's parents.

There are very different reactions to mother Patsy Ramsey's warning

that there's a killer on the loose.

- I don't like-- - She sounded phony to me.

She's been on the stage plenty.

Friends and family of a murdered six-year-old

mourned the girl at a memorial service in Boulder, Colorado, today.

They must've been getting advice to get out and show your face.

And so they had an orchestrated appearance

the Sunday after they got back from JonBenét burial.

It was the first time since returning to town

that John and Patsy Ramsey have been seen.

It didn't seem sincere to me, and it was almost like a performance.

Patsy had on huge black sunglasses, I'll never forget it,

and wearing black and being as appealing as she always was.

Thanking people, shaking hands, hugging.

Parishioners shielded the parents from reporters,

but a media handler they've hired arranged for one camera to take close-ups.

I don't remember because we were in shock, frankly.

But I do remember our minister standing up

and saying, "We need to show John and Patsy support,

so let's line the sidewalk as they walk out."

And that's what they did.

And I think that the media thought that was staged by us,

which was absolutely false.

In Boulder, Colorado, sources say soon-to-be-completed DNA testing

may point to the killer of child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey.

What it will tell, I don't know.

Um, hopefully, it will move the case forward.

Family spokesman, Pat Korten, agrees.

"We're anxious for that material to come back," he says,

"because we believe strongly it will enable the police

to take the family off the potential suspect list."

On January 15th of 1997,

the Colorado Bureau of Investigation came out with a DNA report.

The DNA report talked about some DNA samples

that had been taken from JonBenét's fingernails.

There's also some DNA that had been taken from her underwear.

They compared those items to the DNA profiles

of John and Patsy and Burke and literally a litany of people.

None of that DNA matched anybody in the family.

They were told in January by their lab,

"We tested the DNA. There is unidentified male DNA,

which excludes the parents and the son, Burke."

They were told in January.

They kept that secret from the media and from the district attorney for months.

Police in Boulder, Colorado, have confirmed

they have received the results of DNA tests

in the murder of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey.

However, they would not say what, if anything, the test revealed.

The January 15th DNA analysis

by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation

was never, ever leaked.

The Boulder district attorney didn't know about it.

They kept that secret because it conflicted

with their conclusion that we were the killers.

They had great foreign DNA evidence that pointed somewhere else.

We have DNA in her underwear…

and under her fingernails that don't match anybody in the family.

And there is absolutely zero innocent explanation

for foreign DNA to end up on a six-year-old's underwear.

There's no innocent explanation.

So whose DNA is that?