Original subtitles

Tonight, a first in the JonBenét Ramsey homicide case.

Her parents, John and Patsy, square off

against former Boulder Police detective, Steve Thomas.

We did this Larry King interview.

Some people said, "You shouldn't have."

But we did. We were trying to… put some sense into the discussion.

When did you come to the conclusion you came to?

And that conclusion is what?

My theory is that Patsy,

uh, in a violent confrontation with her daughter…

Accidentally killed her?

No, not…

A… Accidental, I hypothesize, uh, in the sense that it lacked motive.

What? Tell me exactly, step by step, how you envisioned…

I wasn't there. You were in the home.

You must have conjured something in your head

for you to come out and call me a murderer of my child.

Now I wanna hear, one through ten.

I think you wrote the ransom note.

When did I write this?

You tell me.

Before or after I killed her?

You're the one theorizing here. You tell me.

You were in the house that night.

Put together what you think happened that night.

I think there was a toileting issue

that has been dismissed.

Okay. Explain.

A bed-wetting or a toileting issue…

That caused Patsy to get mad at her daughter.

Absolutely.

Our child wet her bed, and we slaughtered her.

That is so preposterous.

You weren't there, John.

I was there. I know Patsy. I've lived with her for 20 years.

I know that she loved that child more than anything in the world.

Well, would you agree, Patsy, that almost none of it makes sense?

What was the guy doing?

It was an evil…

Why did the intruder do this?

Evil, evil person.

I don't know.

God knows. And the truth is going to prevail.

Grand jurors were escorted into the Boulder County Justice Center

by sheriff's deputies.

They had an audience of media from around the world

who have descended on Boulder.

After a year of looking over evidence

and hearing testimony, the grand jury has now made its decision.

Down in front.

Down in front, please.

Down in front.

Speak up!

Shout, please!

The grand jurors have done their work extraordinarily well,

bringing to bear all of their legal powers,

life experiences, and shrewdness.

Yet I must report to you

that I and my prosecution task force

believe we do not have sufficient evidence to warrant the filing of charges

against anyone who has been investigated at this time.

Thank you very much.

The case was not gonna move forward.

The Ramseys would indeed not be arrested, despite 13 months of investigation.

After it was announced that no charges would be filed in the case,

the parents of JonBenét Ramsey issued a statement.

They said they take no satisfaction in this result

because a child killer remains free and undetected.

The reason it didn't happen is

not only is it that there is no case against these two people,

they didn't kill JonBenét.

The only thing they ever did was love her.

And that is what has been revealed today.

Lou Smit, I spoke with him today,

he's never appeared on,

he said to me today, "This was a great day in legal history."

"Those people didn't do it."

Alex Hunter said that the Ramseys weren't going to be indicted

and that no charges would be filed.

Now, I was in my truck, and I started crying.

And, uh, it was, uh, it was really amazing.

I told my photographer,

key in on Michael Kane's face when the announcement's made.

And you could see Michael Kane's lower lip was quivering.

It looked like he was really upset.

There was a lot of disappointment, but it wasn't because of what the grand jury did

or didn't do or whatever.

It was a disappointment that I'd spent close to two years working on this thing

and couldn't come to a resolution.

I looked up at the justice center on the second floor,

and three of the lead police detectives were staring at us.

And I learned later that when Alex Hunter told them face-to-face

that he wasn't going to take this case on,

that they pounded the table and there was screaming and door slamming.

They were really, really upset.

There was a general mixture of disappointment and despair,

a feeling of disgrace, and that America had seen government at its worst.

Well, they had taken these huge steps in this investigation,

did their damnedest to bring charges against John and Patsy Ramsey,

and there was nothing there.

They absolutely wasted the resources of the state of Colorado.

They blew an opportunity

to use grand jury investigative powers to find the killer.

They… They missed it, just absolutely missed.

Do we even know if the grand jury voted?

Uh, we don't, I certainly don't, uh…

And I was trying to read between the lines as he spoke yesterday,

and I think he chose his words very carefully.

Alex Hunter could have announced that afternoon

that the grand jury has elected not to indict anybody.

He could have said the grand jury indicted somebody,

but we're not going to prosecute it.

He didn't say either of those things.

We were left not knowing, well, what did they do?

A number of years down the road,

two sources of mine told me,

"You can't report this, but they indicted both John and Patsy Ramsey."

So I set out to contact grand jurors directly.

And multiple grand jurors confirmed for me

that's what happened.

In the end, the grand jury indicted,

not for murder, but for child abuse,

finding the Ramseys allowed JonBenét to be placed in a situation

which resulted in death.

As I understand it, the grand jurors didn't know who might have done what,

but felt that there was something that happened there.

The grand jury found John and Patsy Ramsey

had intent to hinder, delay, and prevent their daughter's killer

from being prosecuted.

What they believed was that the parents knew what had happened,

or should've known what happened,

or should have got her help and failed to do so.

That's what one grand juror said to me.

Was there evidence to indict John and Patsy Ramsey of a crime?

Based upon the evidence presented, I believe that's correct.

What the grand jury was telling us

was they found there was probable cause

for these people to be indicted.

But there's a long, long step between probable cause,

which is the lowest standard in the criminal justice system,

and proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that is the highest.

There's no way that I would have been able to say, beyond a reasonable doubt,

"This is the person."

And if you don't have reasonable likelihood of conviction,

you have a moral obligation.

You have a ethical obligation as a prosecutor

to not prosecute that case.

It would have been easy to bring charges.

But to have brought charges

when you didn't feel you could make your case,

would have been a horrible thing to do.

I feel… at peace,

and, to some extent… proud of the fact

that… I weathered… the storm

and did the right thing based on the evidence.

After the grand jury, we went back to Atlanta.

And by that time, we'd pretty much exhausted our life savings.

We sold our house, we sold assets to try to pay attorneys and investigators.

All we wanted was to find the killer.

As long as there is a killer at large

who has murdered our child,

our lives will never go on.

Someone killed this six-year-old child.

We know that, and we want them captured.

We knew that the police were not investigating the crime.

They'd already decided that it was Patsy or I,

and so we knew the police were not gonna follow up.

The grand jury has stopped.

No indictments, no charges, the case is dropped.

Nothing is being done on the case.

The Boulder Police Department has it,

but they are so convinced that the Ramseys did this

that it's just not being worked.

We were told by a person in the police department,

"Well, we're just waiting for John Ramsey to die,

so this thing will go away."

Quote.

A killer walks the streets of this country,

and we need to be looking for that person.

The whole purpose of engaging with the media

was to put pressure on the police.

We're not going away.

I'm gonna be hammering on you till I die

if you don't find this creature that did this to our daughter.

Lou Smit tells us that we can…

That's a detective, right?

Lou Smit is the only homicide investigator that's ever looked at this case.

And he says, definitively, that there is enough evidence

to find this man.

I don't know if I could solve it without the police,

and I'm sure I'm not gonna get that.

But I know that God has a plan, and, uh, I'm part of it,

and I'm just going to continue to work in it, as long as He needs me.

Lou Smit wanted that case solved.

And so he, on his own, continued to work the case.

JonBenét Ramsey.

Well, I think we're looking definitely at a pedophile,

a very specific one.

I'm pretty sure he's seen her at one of these pageants.

JonBenét Ramsey was a beautiful girl.

I can see where a pedophile would focus on her,

and I think that's kinda what we're looking at.

When you see the footage of her in her little cowboy suit going,

uh, "I want to be a cowboy's sweetheart," and all that,

I… I've never seen anything like it.

Very early on in this investigation,

police received information about an individual by the name of Gary Oliva.

He had sexually assaulted one of his neighbor's girls

while he lived in Oregon, and fled.

He ended up, uh, in Boulder, Colorado, and, uh, was a transient.

One of Gary Oliva's friends

indicated that Gary called him

and was distraught,

said that he had just hurt a little girl.

As a result of all that,

the Boulder Police Department took a hard look.

When police went to go find him in his tent,

uh, he had pictures of JonBenét.

Did you hurt or kill JonBenét Ramsey?

No.

No, I didn't.

I believe that she came to me after she was killed

and revealed herself to me.

He later confessed, uh,

basically indicating that he would take credit

for the JonBenét Ramsey homicide

if the police would just guarantee

that he could have three square meals a day

and a roof over his head.

But his DNA did not match the evidence at the scene.

Uh, they could not confirm that he, in fact,

was the person that committed the crime.

JonBenét Ramsey is the Ziegfeld Follies!

When you dress your child up

and put that much makeup on her and you have that kind of clothing,

like Las Vegas showgirl clothing costumes,

you might inadvertently and innocently

attract someone, a sexual predator.

My name is Joyce Singular.

I've co-authored two books with my husband,

investigative journalist, Stephen Singular.

In the last week of 1996,

I heard about the JonBenét Ramsey case, mostly through my wife.

She was interested in it very quickly.

We lived in Denver, which was only 30 miles from Boulder.

We had a son who was three years old at the time.

And, of course, it was such a brutal crime

that we couldn't believe that a child could be… murdered like that.

We thought that if the Ramseys are guilty of something,

and it's hardly a crime,

I think they were guilty of being naive.

I think dressing her up the way they did

was capable of getting the attention of

and stimulating the wrong people.

When JonBenét was first killed,

my husband and I decided to start interviewing child beauty pageant mothers

who had been in the same circuit with JonBenét.

Some of the pageant mothers suspected

that some of the spectators that were coming to the pageants

weren't there… because they had children that were in the pageant.

They were just there… observing.

They also told us about photographers, particularly one photographer.

They told us the same story,

that the primary photographer for JonBenét

and for many of the little girls in this area, is a man named Randy Simons.

Simons sold some of his photos of JonBenét to a photo agency

which ended up being splashed all over the tabloids.

And a lot of the child beauty pageant mothers were angered over this.

This particular pageant mother said that in Simons' studio,

he had some borderline inappropriate photos on the wall.

Maybe not child pornography, but, you know,

young girls without tops on or…

you know, seemingly innocent,

but kind of sketchy or questionable.

And they were suspect of him.

You have a whole pattern of behavior

in which, at least to me, the questions scream out at you.

Pageant mothers told us,

shortly after the crime, he called some of them up,

saying, "I did not kill JonBenét, I did not kill JonBenét."

He was hysterical.

Well, nobody said he did. It… it… it raised some red flags.

I called Randy Simons several times.

He only picked up once.

And he… was skittish.

And he said, "I know more about this case, but I'm not gonna tell you."

And he didn't.

A year later, he was walking down the street naked,

and the police were called.

Again, he said to the police, "I did not kill JonBenét."

I mean, that's pretty strange.

We lost contact with Randy Simons,

until 2019 when we got a tip

that he had been arrested in Lane County, Oregon,

and he had been downloading child pornography

at a restaurant through their public Wi-Fi.

He was subsequently charged and indicted on 15 charges of child pornography,

and he was sentenced to ten years in jail.

But Randy Simons' DNA was not found at the crime scene.

Our killer could still be out there.

This killer could still be murdering even today,

and I think he's a very experienced guy.

You just don't graduate into killing a beauty queen on Christmas.

He made a garrote. He's got fantasies. He knew how to get into a house.

He wasn't afraid of being in the house. He's a high-risk criminal.

In March of 1997,

the Boulder Police got a call from North Carolina

about a man named John Brewer Eustace.

Boulder Police end up searching for clues halfway across the country

in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Investigators went south to review evidence against this man,

John Brewer Eustace.

He's charged with the rape and kidnap of a Charlotte child last month.

He was a drifter who had confessed to kidnapping a two-year-old.

And this was someone who actually broke into the house.

The Charlotte two-year-old was taken from this bedroom.

The window screen, pried open and tossed on the ground.

So when they went to his home,

they found a shrine to JonBenét.

Police in possibly four other cities

are looking at the Eustace confession and crime,

but the most famous case of all is JonBenét Ramsey.

The Boulder police came out, and,

unfortunately for them,

he had a rock-solid alibi for that night.

He worked in a factory,

and he had clocked in, and it covered the time period

in which JonBenét had died.

But it just shows you.

There are people out there who are capable of this kind of crime.

Look at child predators.

Look at people who would be attracted to JonBenét Ramsey.

In 2002,

I was contacted by someone who knew my work on the Ramsey case

and wanted to talk.

His email name was Daxis. He was using the word Daxis.

No idea what that means.

He started to email me on a regular basis,

where he slowly started to say that he had killed JonBenét.

It was always a little unclear,

but it was kind of implied it was all part of a love affair.

That it was an accident.

I met Michael Tracey and talked about it,

and I was still skeptical,

because there was so much information just released,

uh, casually by the police.

It's another interesting twist with this case

that people decide that they want the notoriety, so they confess.

However, you still have to look into each and every one of those.

I said, "How come I don't know you're pulling this from the Internet

and feeding me what is out there already?"

And he said, "Ask John Ramsey

what JonBenét's nickname was for Nedra, her grandmother. And it will be this."

So I emailed John. "What was the nickname?"

It comes back, "Neddy."

It was right. It was correct.

Because John searched…

there was nowhere that that nickname was known in the public domain.

How did this person know that name?

I would share some emails with Lou Smit.

I said, "I've got this from this guy."

"I've no idea who this guy is, where he is."

"He could be next door. I have no idea."

And I always said to Lou, "Just tell me he's a nutcase, and we can end it."

And Lou said, "Can't. No can do, Michael. Got to keep at it."

During that period, Patsy was in remission from ovarian cancer.

But she'd go back every year to be checked.

Well, the eighth year, she went back and, uh, there's a little cancer here.

Yeah, it was… it was devastating, because we thought it was behind us.

- You lost your hair? - Yes. It's growing back.

My eyebrows are growing back.

It all comes out, but you know what? That's a very little thing to worry about.

When it comes back, it's more resistant to treatment,

and that's kind of where Patsy was at that point.

But eventually, it just… overwhelmed her,

and, uh, it got to a point

where one doctor recommended palliative care.

Just, let's just make her life comfortable, and, um…

we weren't ready f… ready to do that. We…

I wanted to… keep fighting. She wanted to keep fighting.

And then it got to a point where…

I was convinced it was hopeless.

And I… made the decision to stop,

at the doctor's recommendation,

to stop treatment, but I didn't tell Patsy.

The cancer had migrated to her brain, so she was not her normal self.

So she didn't know that… we'd given up.

She would ask me, "When's my next treatment?"

And I'd say… And I knew in my heart there was no next treatment.

That was hard.

The emails with Daxis went on for four years.

It was still a mystery as to who he was.

He apparently disguised his email chain very well.

And then in 2006, he started asking me

to get him in touch with Patsy to apologize for killing her daughter.

He was asking for contact information. And I was stalling.

He said in an email,

"Michael, I'll be in the house

before you give me that contact information, won't I?"

But I take this to be a possible threat.

There was now a new district attorney who had taken over the case.

Michael took it to her, and said, "Look, here's what's been going on."

"This person needs to be investigated."

So Mary launches the investigation to try and find this person,

which involved not just her office, it involved Homeland Security, ICE.

And then he asked, "Do you want to hear my voice?"

And so I said, "Sure."

This is Mike Tracey.

Hello, hey, Michael.

We taped, I believe, about 11 hours of conversation,

all of which were being listened in on by various intelligence agencies.

And that was a very, very dark experience.

So it's great to finally… to finally talk to you.

Yes. I must admit, I was a bit surprised

when you sent the phone number, you know?

Yes.

Why did you do that?

I don't know. I've lost… I've lost my senses.

At what point did you decide you had to tell me you killed her?

I never have said that I have.

It's heavily implied.

I know, and I can't say that. I just can't say that word, "kill."

What he was trying to do was to say

it was part of some kind of strange relationship.

And he's into erotic asphyxiation.

JonBenét and I had had a special experience

using what I call a special necklace.

And I'm always gonna use that term. I'm not gonna use any other term.

I hate to use the term asphyxia, and I won't use it.

The reasons people get off on watching it

is because it looks like someone who's dying,

because they lose consciousness, and then they start to convulse.

So it is a little erotic to watch.

Like, I watched her eyes close, then her body starts convulsing.

Her legs start to convulse, like she's dying.

She stays in this sleep slumber for just a few seconds,

and she's, like, groggy.

She said, "What happened?"

And then I just tell her she went into a dream state, and that it was okay.

And I started to kiss her on her thighs,

and that was a… a real turning point for me,

because I was very close to what I'll call her "sex."

And that was the turning point, because it just made me a little bit crazy.

The worst part for me was I had to pretend it was all okay.

I couldn't be judgmental.

I just kind of knelt down in front of her,

and I said, "JonBenét, I want to make another necklace for you."

And it had some interesting… knots in it.

So I slowly apply the pressure on her neck with that second necklace.

And I just said, "Yes, sweetheart, go into the sweet dream."

At that point, her little body started to convulse and twitch a little bit.

And that's when I should've stopped, and I just kept holding pressure.

Because I was in a trance.

I just couldn't stop looking at her face, I couldn't stop kissing her,

and I just… I was just in the… in the throes of ecstasy with her.

And then all of a sudden, my gaze just was suddenly broken.

And I just thought, "Oh, my God. JonBenét, are you okay?"

And…

I knew she wasn't okay.

Because I knew that she wasn't breathing… and…

I just… And I just was terrified.

I… I said, "Oh God, I'm… I'm gonna have to finish this."

"I know what I have to do because I can't take the chance

that she could still be alive."

I thought to myself, "God, what if her brain is just… dying

and her body's still alive?"

I just didn't want to leave her in that state.

I just couldn't leave her like that.

And for some strange reason, I can't explain why,

I just said to myself, "Oh my God,

what if… what if blood comes out of her mouth when I… when I do this?"

I turn my flashlight off.

There was tape wrapped around the flashlight.

And I took a piece of that tape off that flashlight,

and I covered her mouth with it.

I just kinda…

…put the blanket over her, and I just kinda held it in place.

I just… threw that flashlight back,

and I said, "Forgive me, JonBenét."

And then… I did it.

Sorry.

Okay. Okay.

After one of the conversations, I went back home,

and I just started to sob.

Even now, it's rough.

I had enough… mind left to know that I had to gather all my stuff.

And I… in my mind I don't know if I gathered everything up.

I don't know if I left something.

But I… I had to go back to that window.

That's where I came in. That's where I had to go out.

I lifted the grate, I got out of the grate,

and I was just, like, "Oh God, I've left my little girl in that horrible state."

"She's in that little, tiny room, and worse than that, she's dead."

And, "God, what have I done?"

When the investigation began,

we had no idea who this guy was, where he was.

I'm Interpol's biggest nightmare because I know how to evade.

And law enforcement will run into the biggest brick wall

when they try to trace this phone number.

It leads to nobody.

I am not a fool. It leads to nobody.

The question was, how do you find him?

The DA's office people said,

"Look, this person was fascinated with Patsy, wanted to talk to Patsy."

I don't think that Patricia would deny a phone call with me.

They said, "Let's… milk that."

Patsy was in bed with cancer.

She was… in not-good shape.

So they set up a phone by Patsy's bed with a tap on it,

and she was prepared to talk to him.

Since she's dying, a phone call would be better than nothing.

But he never called.

Patsy was very sick.

She was in pain, very much in pain,

and we knew the end was near,

and I was, like, "God, please take her. Just take… get her home, get her…

relieve her pain."

I told Patsy, "It's okay, you know, if you go home."

And she did.

And I went outside and just…

I don't know, I realized I needed to tell Burke.

And here, poor Burke.

He'd graduated from high school, he was in college,

and to lose his mother, who loved him dearly.

He was, you know, a typical kid. He loved his mom.

So I woke him up.

He said, "It's Mom." And I said, "Yeah."

"She's gone."

That was hard.

Patsy Ramsey, the mother of little JonBenét Ramsey, has died.

She was 49 years old.

I don't know how long I'll live,

but I know that when I'm absent from the body,

I will be at home with the Lord.

And JonBenét and Beth and my mother, who has since passed away and…

The fun people are starting to be there.

So it's gonna be a glorious reunion.

We've been asked, it's really too bad

that Patsy passed away without knowing who killed her child.

And she knows now, I believe.

I will see Patsy again, I have no doubt.

I don't know how that's gonna work or how it's gonna happen or what…

It's… It's too…

be… beyond my little brain to comprehend,

but I believe that that's a reality for us as humans.

I was there just before Patsy died.

I got to go to the hospital. I held her hand in the hospital.

And the… the last words that Patsy said to me

were, "Lou, I don't have much time left. Please catch this guy before I die."

Daxis, this is Mike Tracey.

Hey, Michael.

There's some really bad news. Patsy died.

Oh my God. Oh, my.

I know it's horrible.

I can never hear her say that she forgives me.

I can never hear her say she forgives me.

Can someone please give me just the satisfaction to know

that she at least wanted to have a connection with me?

But it wasn't possible.

That was the case!

Daxis knew that I had the last photo of JonBenét.

He emailed me and said, could I scan it for him and send it to him.

And it was suggested by an investigator that I should offer him the original.

So I suggested it, and he gave us a drop box, a UPS box in Bangkok.

Providing you with an address, even though I know that the address

is very far from me, is scaring the hell out of me.

Yeah.

The UPS store was put under surveillance,

and he told me about a mountain bike he'd bought, and described it.

I'm a bicyclist.

So why did you buy the bike?

Because I'm gonna take it to work with me.

You're gonna ride it to the school?

Yeah.

He turns up on his bike, picks it up,

and then he's under surveillance for about a week.

I now know that person to be… John Mark Karr.

By then, the Bangkok authorities found out

he was a child predator, and he was teaching elementary school.

In one of our conversations,

Karr described his classroom as one wall is all glass,

sort of looking in through the glass.

And there's a moment when he's got this little girl, young girl on his lap,

and a teacher comes in, and he pushes her away.

And that's when the Thai police said…

"We've gotta go in."

The murder of the six-year-old beauty pageant contestant JonBenét Ramsey

has captivated America for a decade.

Now, ten years on, a man has been arrested in Thailand.

41-year-old John Mark Karr,

brought into custody by Bangkok police on suspicion of premeditated murder.

I loved JonBenét, and she died accidentally.

Are you an innocent man?

No.

I was… I was with, uh, I was with JonBenét when she died.

Were there other people with you than her?

No.

Her death was an accident.

Who is John Mark Karr?

What was he doing in Thailand?

Since Karr was arrested, new details have come to light.

He had been an elementary school teacher

in a suburb of Atlanta for some time,

but is no longer working there.

Karr worked as a substitute teacher

at Hamilton Elementary for a few months,

just before JonBenét's murder.

But he was taken off the substitute list after complaints from parents.

Inappropriate, uh, language, and I won't say necessarily sexual,

just things that were not normal.

He is fixated on young girls. I think there's no question about that.

In 2001, he was arrested in Petaluma, California.

He'd been working there as a teacher, and he was found with child pornography.

He was charged, was heading for trial, and he left the country

and disappeared.

I've been running for ten fucking years,

and I'll be damned if anyone's gonna catch me now.

Since then, the 41-year-old seems to have found plenty of work abroad.

In resumes posted on the Internet,

Karr claims to have taught in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

More chilling, Karr worked briefly as an elementary school teacher

in at least two international schools in Bangkok, including an all-girls school.

Some legal observers are skeptical of Karr's story.

They have questions like,

why John Karr would even leave a ransom note

at the scene of JonBenét's murder.

It had been my plan all along to just take her.

And when I first arrived, I was very, um, confident and smug.

But when you walk into the bedroom of the parents,

you just get this feeling. It's almost like someone's watching you.

The gravity of the situation starts to hit,

and you're, like, well, how do I deal with these parents?

I wanted to give enough information

that will allow them to know I'll bring her back.

The way I would like to have written that note,

which would have been very polite and kind.

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey,

I have your lovely daughter, and I'll bring her back,

but not right now."

And I couldn't do that.

It would have led straight to me.

If I'd written it that way,

it would have led the authorities straight to my door.

I couldn't address that note to… and in any way to her mother.

I… I could have thought of doing it in the beginning, but I'd changed my mind.

A law enforcement source tells CNN

that John Mark Karr was heard saying, while he was in custody,

that he doesn't understand how people could question

how he got into the Ramseys' home the night JonBenét Ramsey was murdered.

Karr blurted out,

"Everybody says I couldn't know my way around the house,

but I got in the house around five o'clock, and I stayed there all night."

"They," meaning the Ramseys, "didn't come back until ten o'clock."

Karr will be deported from Bangkok

and then ultimately moved to Boulder, Colorado.

When his picture was published in the media,

we had a little cottage up in northern Michigan,

and we had a housekeeper who'd come in

and clean it periodically and check on it.

And… she saw that picture and called us and said,

"That guy was in your garage… last summer."

"100% certain."

"The summer before JonBenét was killed, he wandered into your garage,

kind of a strange guy, asking questions."

And so I began to think, yeah, we were being stalked.

Did the Ramsey's know Karr? Did JonBenét know him?

We do know he was living in Atlanta,

where the Ramseys were when JonBenét was born,

but after that, the Ramseys moved out here to Boulder.

We don't know what happened to Mr. Karr.

When did you first relate to JonBenét, then?

When did you get that sense that…

I can't tell you that.

Okay.

I can't tell you that, I'm sorry.

But I'm not a stalker. I can tell you that.

Once back in the US, investigators are expected to take

more DNA samples from the murder suspect.

Investigators in Boulder should know the answer to a key question.

Is there a DNA match?

A match between DNA samples Karr has reportedly surrendered

and the DNA taken from under the victim's fingernails

and one article of clothing.

Of course, the media, "They've made an arrest. This is amazing."

And for me, it was a sobering experience in a way,

because now where the media was,

we had 40 cameras out in our front yard… wanting comments, and…

I was still skeptical, 'cause the DNA, we had to see if there was a match.

And, of course, there wasn't.

Breaking news tonight.

Confessed killer of JonBenét Ramsey walks after no DNA match.

Just in the last…

We found out that the DNA didn't match a couple of days later.

Insiders said he knew certain details about the brutal crime

only the killer could know, but officials at the Denver Crime Lab

say DNA proves he was not at the scene that dreadful December night.

And Karr was released.

John Mark Karr is a very strange guy,

but until we have a DNA match, we don't know who the killer is.

The DNA didn't match.

Allegedly.

Um…

Why do you say allegedly?

Well, I've got a… I think there's a problem with the DNA.

The DNA in this case has been problematic from the beginning,

many experts have told me,

and this goes back to the contamination of the crime scene.

The Boulder police made a lot of mistakes early on in this case.

I was always convinced that that may have made an important difference

in issues of contamination.

And in a crime scene, particularly one as contaminated as this,

it's problematic, I think, to take too much to the bank

based on any one DNA result.

What does that mean in terms of everyone who's given a DNA sample?

If the DNA is faulty, a lot of people could still be a suspect.

We've been in the practice of ruling people out

based on DNA.

And if we take what the police have said at face value,

and, you know, the reporting done by guys like Charlie Brennan,

who say that… the DNA in the case

isn't as valuable or significant… as we think,

then we've been ruling people out… for the wrong reasons.

Everybody should be back on the table.

The police have never ruled out John and Patsy based solely on this DNA.

So how do you rule anybody out based solely on this DNA?

You have to go deeper. You have to sort the DNA we have today

and make more sense of it.

The family of JonBenét Ramsey is petitioning Governor Jared Polis

to take new action to help find answers

in the case that has gone unsolved for more than 25 years.

What we're advocating for,

and we have been doing so for the last year or so, aggressively,

is we know there's five or six items that were taken from the crime scene,

sent into a lab for DNA sampling, and were not sampled.

So… we want those items sampled.

We want the items that have been sampled,

and tested, to be retested.

And then use the public genealogy database

to look for not only a match,

but a similar, uh, relative.

And that's been used very successfully

in the last, gosh, I don't know, three or four years

by police departments to find the killer of very old cold cases.

But we don't know what's being done.

I know that this… investigation someday will be solved.

I'm gonna do everything that I can still in this case to help solve it.

Lou had cancer,

and while he was involved with chemotherapy,

he was still meeting with some of his closest friends

and, uh, passing on information, uh, about this case.

I visited him in hospice, and he was still talking about the JonBenét Ramsey case.

I mean, this was somebody who literally took it to his grave.

He wanted that case solved.

He wanted to make sure that his legacy would live on.

That's why the Smit family continues to look into this case.

We could have the killer… arrested, convicted, in prison,

and there'd still be five to 10% of the population

that thinks we're guilty.

And that's not surprising, based on what they were told.

I'd get letters from people for years that say, "Oh, I'm so sorry."

"I thought you were guilty, and I was wrong, and I'm so sorry."

And I wrote back and said,

"How could you believe anything else?"

"That's what you were told by the media, by the police."

A former lead detective in the JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation

says he thinks Patsy Ramsey killed her daughter.

Hello, and welcome to you, Steve.

Thank you.

Police officers shouldn't be writing books about an ongoing case.

It's just totally unprofessional.

What we need to do is a complete reinvestigation,

starting right from scratch.

We thought it would be good if we actually brought in

a child who was about ten years old to actually do the demonstration with him.

He probably woulda been upset about her trying to

snag a piece of pineapple.

Out of anger, he may have struck her with that flashlight.

Burke did sue CBS, and that was… was settled.

Um, but, you know, damage was done.

And unfortunately, this delusional idea has… has really caught fire.

The true crime world has really subscribed to this absurd theory

that Burke killed JonBenét.

It's incredibly hurtful and wrong.

We did write a letter for Burke because the press was going wild.

You know, "Burke's the killer." We thought, this is crazy.

He didn't write that note. We know he didn't use the garrote.

This is nuts. So we did write all that saying, "We cleared him."

Hmm.

These are some little boots that JonBenét used to wear, cowboy boots.

These were pageant boots.

Pageant boots.

She wore those for "Cowboy's Sweetheart." She sang that.

I remarried five years after Patsy died.

JonBenét feels like one of our little grandchildren.

She's like frozen at age six.

Cannot even imagine her as an adult.

So we just remember her as one of the little kids. And…

This is kind of a collection of our grandkids.

Yeah, all the grandkids.

This is her little Bible.

She's been very supportive, loves my children dearly,

treats them like they were hers.

We met at a wedding in Denver.

I was fairly familiar with the case, but I hadn't studied it in depth

and did not know that it was still very big.

So that made me seriously reconsider when we were dating.

Is this a cloud that I wanted to live under?

And, um, because I love John, I am up for it.

JonBenét took tap dancing lessons.

She took piano lessons. She loved to perform.

She was always putting on little skits with her friends, you know, at home.

They'd dress up and, "We got a play for you."

"Pay attention."

John has been through hell and high water.

He is stalwart… and strong. He's unflappable.

A friend of Beth, my oldest daughter, who was killed in a car accident,

one afternoon, in Chicago, at Beth's funeral,

came up to me and said, "Mr. Ramsey,

if I died, I would not want my parents to be sad."

That was a real meaningful comment to me,

that I know Beth wouldn't want us to be sad.

JonBenét wouldn't want us to be sad.

You know, the insanity, it was just… it was wrong.

And I'm sure she would be upset that her parents were accused of… this.

Uh, she knew she was loved. I told her this almost every day.

I do still do with my adult children. I talk to them. They know they're loved.

And, um, JonBenét was very proud to be named after her dad.

She used to tell kids, "JonBenét, well, that's…"

"That came from my dad's name. I'm named after my dad."

And she… Yeah… That was just, I don't know, just…

I don't know. I know she'd be sad for her family,

because she cared about her family.

JonBenét colored that.

It's signed up on top, JonBenét.

Our minister in Atlanta said, "Look,

at first, memories are gonna bring pain."

"But eventually, they'll bring joy."

And I found that to be true.

It takes a while, it takes a long while

for the pain to go away.

But then the memory of JonBenét is joyful.

And, uh…

That's where you're at now.

That's where I'm at.

Yoo-hoo. Hello.

JonBenét.

You always fall back to… sadness and what you've lost.

But, uh…

I'm glad she was in my life for six years.

Ooh!

That's great. Tell Dad what you got.

What'd you get there?