Abstract
A six-year-old girl who was a modeling prodigy died in her own home where she is supposed to be safest, on Christmas/Boxing day, 1996. A garrote is found around her neck and ruled as the cause of death. A ransom note is also allegedly found by her mother Patsy on the kitchen stairwell. Police undertake a major investigation which is still continuing 22 years later. On the other hand, media houses took up the story and ran with it for the 22 years that the case has been pending. This paper evaluates what happened to JonBenét and how media coverage affected how her case was investigated.
Introduction
JonBenét Patricia Ramsey an innocent and hapless six-year-old girl died a painful and gruesome death almost 22 years ago but no one has ever been made answerable for the crime. Due to the prominent nature of both the child and her parents, the media got involved in the incident from the start and is still involved 22 years later. Throughout the over 20 years, the media has never relented in reporting on the different aspects of the JonBenét Ramsey case (Freeman, 2016). The media coverage has always been divided with a segment of the media pushing the concept that an intruder killed JonBenét while the other segment pushes the idea about a family cover-up. As a prominent player in the case, it is incumbent upon the media to accept some blame in the investigative snafu that has resulted in the murderer of an innocent little girl to remain unpunished for over two decades.
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Description of the Crime in its Historical Setting
The JonBenét Ramsey case has a fairytale beginning and an ending so tragic that even the fairytale beginning was seemed to be considered an anathema, more so in the media. John Ramsey was a successful entrepreneur and among the earliest beneficiaries of the pecuniary success that came with the information technology industry (Fox, Van Sickel, & Steiger, 2007). After a divorce in the late 1970s, John would proceed to marry Patsy Ramsey, a model and settle with her in Boulder, Colorado where John’s company was headquartered. The family was blessed with inter alia a daughter, JonBenét Ramsey who followed her mother’s footsteps into modeling at a very tender age. An important aspect of the instant case lies in the fact that by the age of six years, JonBenét was a prominent child-model who had won several awards. According to available information, on the night of Boxing Day, 1996, Patsy realized that her daughter was missing. It is not very clear at what time this happened. As Patsy was looking for her daughter, she found a handwritten two-and-a-half page ransom note on her kitchen stairwell (Diamond, 2017). At exactly 5:52 am, MTS Patsy called 911 despite strict instructions to the contrary. The police made a prompt response and conducted a causal investigation to establish if there had been a break-in.
As the day progressed, the police asked John, JonBenét’s father, and Fleet White, his friend to look around and establish of anything seemed amiss in the house. It is during this search that John would find his daughter’s body behind a door on the basement (Herron, 2016). The child was clearly dead but before any crime scene analysis would be carried out, John moved JonBenét’s body to the sitting room. According to available records, the child was wrapped in a white blanket, had a blunt force trauma injury on her head and a garrote around her neck. An autopsy report would later reveal that the child died due to an asphyxiation, most probably due to strangulation using the garrote (Fox, Van Sickel, & Steiger, 2007). Any crime scene investigation was exponentially hampered by the fact that the house including the area where JonBenét’s body had been found, and the kitchen where the ransom note had been found was never preserved. The lack of proper crime-scene management is arguably one of the reasons why over 20 years later, the JonBenét Ramsey murder case is still open. However, available information shows that the garrote must have been made in the Ramsey house and from materials available inside the house including Patsy’s painting brush. Further, the ransom note must have been written inside the house on a writing pad that belonged to the Ramsey (Diamond, 2017).
A Theoretical Analysis of the Crime Event
A careful theoretical analysis of the instant crime event reveals either the perfect cover-up to an accidental death or a perfectly planned and executed murder as a crime of passion. Christmas is arguably the most celebrated holidays in America, more so among Christians. Based on the fact that JonBenét was buried at St. James Episcopal Cemetery in Marietta, Georgia, the Ramsey’s were definitively Christians (Fox, Van Sickel, & Steiger, 2007). It would thus be hard for a professional who is good enough to have planned a gruesome murder and get away with it, to strike on the night after Christmas when most people seldom sleep. Further, the intruder must not only have been able to move around the house to collect materials for use on the crime but also made a lot of noise without attracting any attention. Among the possible notable noises would be the blunt force hit on JonBenét’s head that fractured her skull and the dismantling of a paintbrush to make a garrote. Finally, the intruder’s patience and confidence must have been overwhelming since over and above taking the time to do all these acts, the intruder had time to write a draft and a final ransom note (Diamond, 2017).
With the intruder version as outlined above being so improbable that it is substantively absurd, the only logical explanation was that the crime was an ill-advised effort to cover-up an assumed accidental death. The words ‘ill-advised’ and ‘assumed’ are used since JonBenét died from the cover-up, the effort, and not the accidental head blunt-object trauma. Hypothetically, the Ramsey’s may have had too much fun on Christmas day which ended in someone hitting JonBenét on the head, most probably by accident. With a fractured skull, everyone must have assumed that the little girl was dead (Fox, Van Sickel, & Steiger, 2007). As any rich man in America would want to do, the Ramsey’s may have contacted their lawyer before anyone else then the lawyer may have contacted a professional fixer. The professional fixer may have been the assumed intruder whose DNA has been used to vindicate the Ramsey’s. Any effective professional fixer’s DNA would also not be in any government database. It is the fixer, in the process of covering up the accidental death who may have killed poor JonBenét with a garrote made from her own mother’s paintbrush. To further the cover-up, the garrote was left prominently visible on the body and a ransom note was written (Diamond, 2017). With 1996 being the year when America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response (AMBER) alert came into being, the fixer must have correctly assumed that everyone will be focused on finding an allegedly kidnapped JonBenét to focus on crime scene preservation (Herron, 2016). Law enforcement followed the script to the letter (Fox, Van Sickel, & Steiger, 2007). The cover-up version is the most plausible theoretical explanation for the crime event.
Media Involvement in the Case
When it comes to media coverage, JonBenét can be said to have become a victim of the infamous O.J. Simpson case. After months of following the Simpson case, the media must have been desperate for some new crime-based case when the JonBenét case came along (Freeman, 2016). The media extensively reported about the case as and when it happened. The media would then follow up the case during the pendency of the investigations which lasted for years. Even when the investigations ended and the matter became a cold case, the media still continued to follow it up and has done so to date: “ Every year, the US media promise “A chilling new discovery” and “Latest twist”,…….. ” (Freeman, 2016). The media has reported what happened as part of the news. It has also given an in-depth analysis of different perspectives of the case, including drawing conclusions on who killed JonBenét. The media has also been involved in the development of documentaries, analysis, and voluminous content about the Ramsey’s, the case, the investigators, the friends, and anything remotely associated with the case. Finally, the media has heavily and in great details reported on JonBenét’s career as a model with some blaming it for her murder (Freeman, 2016).
Impact of Media Involvement
Murder cases in America must be proven to the level of beyond any reasonable doubt and before a jury made up of the peers of the defendant (Stevenson & Najdowski, 2018). Media involvement right from the time the case begun created so many theories and alternative sets of facts that it would have been impossible to find a fair and unbiased jury to try the case had anyone been indicted for the murder. Secondly, democracy has penetrated the criminal justice system in America since most leaders in the department are elected officials. When the media sows ideas in the minds of the community, the community puts pressure on the elected officials such as District Attorneys, State Attorney General’s judges, and Police Chiefs (Stevenson & Najdowski, 2018). Media reports in the murder of JonBenét thus had an indirect effect on how the case was investigated and who would be indicted for the crime as most leaders were answerable to the electorate. Had a person being rightfully convicted for killing JonBenét, the media would definitely have claimed credit. By extension, therefore, the media should also accept blame for the failure to find JonBenét’s killers (Fox, Van Sickel, & Steiger, 2007).
Conclusion
An innocent child died and the killer has remained unpunished for a variety of reasons including the nature of media coverage. The murder has been covered as a news subject, books have been written about it and a number of documentaries crafted and aired with regard to the subject. It is extremely uncommon for a murder that was apparently discovered the same day it happened then investigated extensively to remain not only unsolved but also absolutely mysterious for years. This begs the question of who may have been involved in a cover-up if at all, or how the truth could remain obscured for so long when so many professionals are seeking to uncover it. The nature of media coverage and its impact has played a role in the failure to apprehend the killers.
References
Diamond, S. A., Ph.D. (2017). Who Killed JonBenet? Part 2: The Ransom Note. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/201702/who-killed-jonbenet-part-2-the-ransom-note
Fox, R. L., Van Sickel, R. W. & Steiger, T. L. (2007). Tabloid Justice . Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner.
Freeman, H. (2016, December 11). JonBenét Ramsey: The brutal child murder that still haunts America. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/11/jonbenet-ramsey-the-brutal-child-that-still-haunts-america
Giroux, H. A. (1998). Stealing innocence. The Children's Culture Reader , 265
Herron, A. D. (2016). A multiple case study of memorial crime control legislation and the disconnect between legislative and empirical success (Doctoral dissertation)
Stevenson, M., & Najdowski, C. (2018). Criminal juries in the 21 st Century: A case-study introduction to contemporary issues.
