OPINION:
Joe Berlinger’s new Netflix documentary on the killing of JonBenet Ramsey is sure to become a favorite of villains eager to learn how to use slick production to distort the truth. The narrative is shameless propaganda and meretricious fiction designed to smear honest police officers who took on the Colorado establishment to get justice for a slain little girl.
For decades, the Boulder Police Department has been a scapegoat because the complexities of the case are easy to misrepresent and because Colorado law prohibits investigators from revealing evidence during an ongoing criminal investigation — preventing officers from defending themselves.
JonBenet was a 6-year-old beauty queen who was found dead in her home on Dec. 26, 1996, with blunt force trauma to her head and a white nylon cord around her neck, which caused asphyxiation.
With his vitriolic attacks against police officers, particularly lead detective Steve Thomas, Mr. Berlinger seems intent on exacting a perverse form of revenge against law enforcement consistent with his past criticism of the American justice system and his view that many innocent people are incarcerated.
Mr. Berlinger’s social justice activism notwithstanding, the officers working on the JonBenet Ramsey case were guided by the evidence. They were brave enough to ignore enormous pressure to essentially let this case disappear.
It is intellectually dishonest to portray the Boulder police as incompetent for focusing on the Ramseys when parents are commonly involved when children are killed in their home. Parents such as Mark Klaas, whose daughter was murdered in 1993, are often questioned first. Unlike Mr. Klaas, who hounded police to solve his daughter’s case, the Ramseys hired a public relations firm. They waited four months to meet with detectives after intense negotiations with their defense attorneys.
Their lawyers, hired within a day after JonBenet was killed, demanded that the interview be no longer than an hour, that John and Patsy Ramsey be interviewed together and that any statements they made to police previously be provided before the interview.
The documentary’s thesis, that an intruder killed JonBenet, partially relies on unidentified foreign DNA found on the body but ignores the fact that many experts have assessed the biological material is so minuscule and degraded that it is most likely unrelated to the crime.
A 2½-page ransom note left in the Ramsey home is a crucial piece of evidence. Several experts believe that Patsy Ramsey wrote the note, including Chet Ubowski, a handwriting expert with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and FBI linguistics expert James Fitzgerald, who helped identify Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. The FBI also assessed that an intruder would never write such a lengthy ransom note nor waste time writing practice notes — all of which were drafted in the Ramsey home on a pad that belonged to Patsy.
There is also a 911 call that raises questions about the original version of events provided to police. The Ramseys told authorities that their 9-year-old son, Burke, was asleep when they called 911, and that he didn’t wake up until 7 a.m. Yet an enhanced audio recording of the call — omitted by Netflix — reveals a childlike voice in the background apparently saying, “What did you find?” to which John replied, “We’re not talking to you.” Patsy then said: “What did you do? Help me, Jesus.”
These comments were made after Patsy thought she had hung up, unaware that the dispatcher remained on the line.
JonBenet was also a chronic bed-wetter, and according to the autopsy, there were indications that her hymen was exposed — both of which suggest she might have endured ongoing sexual abuse.
The Ramseys have said they put JonBenet and Burke straight to bed when they came home from a Christmas party around 9:30 p.m. The autopsy, however, found undigested pineapple in JonBenet’s digestive tract that would have been consumed at around midnight.
A bowl of pineapple in the Ramsey home that had Burke and Patsy Ramsey’s fingerprints on it was found by police. Fibers from Patsy Ramsey’s clothing matched fibers found on the duct tape on JonBenet’s mouth.
I do not know who killed JonBenet Ramsey, and I would be ecstatic if anyone suspecting any of JonBenet’s family members involved is proved wrong. Still, police should not be accused of maliciously targeting the Ramseys or ignoring evidence for investigating family members.
Lou Smit, a special investigator deputized by the Boulder County district attorney, believed the Ramseys were innocent. He suspected that an intruder attacked JonBenet with a stun gun as part of an attempted kidnapping. This theory has been debunked by experts, including another DA investigator, James Kolar, who not only demonstrated that stun-gun marks don’t match JonBenet’s bruises but also that they more closely resembled some items found in the Ramsey household.
In August 1998, Mr. Thomas, the lead detective, issued a stinging letter of resignation, asserting that conflicts of interest between the Boulder DA and the Ramseys’ defense attorneys were hindering the investigation.
Shortly thereafter, prosecutors convened a grand jury. Smit testified and presented his theory of the case to a grand jury that in 1999 voted to indict the Ramseys on two counts of child abuse resulting in death — an inconvenient truth that Mr. Berlinger should have taken into deeper consideration.
While consistently failing to present a fair depiction of the investigation in the documentary, this glaring omission reveals a stunning display of malice for Mr. Thomas and the other detectives who selflessly devoted themselves to getting justice for JonBenet.
Ron Walker, former FBI Denver supervisory agent, was the first federal agent on the scene. While he has said that the police made mistakes, he asserts that their primary error was not being tougher by separating and interviewing the Ramseys from the beginning.
No investigation is perfect, but the Boulder police worked hard to solve this case and continue to do so because their loyalty is to the slain little girl — where it belongs.
• Nicholas Chamberas is a public affairs strategist based in New York.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.