SEARCH FOR TRUTH
Who is JonBenét Ramsey’s half brother John Andrew and what has he said about his sibling’s murder?
JOHN Andrew is the half-brother of JonBenét Ramsey, a six-year-old girl who was murdered in her home on Christmas Day.
A new Netflix documentary, named Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, will explore the tragic details of her murder, which was never truly solved.
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Family life in Georgia
John Andrew is the older half-brother of JonBenét.
He was born in 1976 as the third child of John Bennett Ramsey and his first wife Lucinda Pasch.
He had two older sisters, Elizabeth, born in 1969, and Melinda, who arrived in 1971.
His parents divorced in 1978, when John Andrew was just two.
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Tragically, his eldest sister, Elizabeth, died in a car crash in 1992, nearly five years before her half-sister, JonBenét’s, death in 1996.
John Bennett married second wife Patsy in 1980, and the couple had two children together, Burke and JonBenet.
John Andrew has opened up about how close the family was, and said that JonBenét was “the kid that kept the conversation at the dinner table going”.
He added: "You know, she would go around and ask everybody how their day was and what they did and she was just an energetic and fun kid.”
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JonBenét was a child beauty pageant winner who had taken home titles including America’s Royale Miss, Little Miss Charlevoix, Little Miss Colorado, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl and National Tiny Miss Beauty.
The family originally lived in Atlanta, Georgia but eventually moved to Boulder County, Colorado.
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JonBenet’s tragic murder
John Andrew was 23 years old and was in Atlanta when JonBenét was murdered.
Unbeknownst to the family, she had been hidden in the basement of her family’s home on December 25, 1996.
Patricia “Patsy” Ramsey reported her daughter missing the next day when she discovered a two-and-a-half-page ransom note on her kitchen staircase which sparked a search for the missing six-year-old.
She was eventually found behind a basement door and her death was ruled to be a homicide.
Patsy and her husband, John, were seen as suspicious by the police because the monetary demand on the ransom note matched John’s work bonus.
The two-and-a-half-page note seemed suspicious too, because ransom notes are often much shorter.
By October 1997, over 1,600 people were listed as persons of interest in the case but the police continued to investigate lines of inquiry related to JonBenét’s parents.
John Andrew has been extremely critical of the way his family was treated during the investigation into his sister’s death.
He said: “We lost our sister and our daughter, a family member.
“We were victims, and the very people that we thought were gonna come in and protect us and help us were pointing the finger at us.”
John and Patsy were eventually exonerated by Mary Lacy, the Boulder County District attorney.
Burke, JonBenét’s younger brother, was also cleared of suspicion.
Patsy passed away from ovarian cancer in 2006 and was buried next to JonBenet.
Years later, in 2011, John remarried and his son shared that John Bennett is focused on “life today”.
The search for JonBenet’s killer continues
The other theory considered by the DA’s office and the police force, beyond their theory about JonBenét’s parents, was that the murder may have been committed by an intruder.
It was thought that a paedophile who attended child beauty pageants might have become obsessed with JonBenét and that they might have broken into the house.
There was an unidentified bootmark in the basement and two windows had been left open for Christmas light wires on the night that JonBenét died.
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Eventually, a man named Gary Howard Oliva was publicly named as a suspect in 2002 and was found to have been near the Ramsey home when JonBenet was murdered.
It was also reported that he wrote a poem named Ode to JonBenet and he made a phone call hours after JonBenét died in which he said “I just hurt a little girl”.
Oliva was arrested in 2016 and charged with two counts of attempted sexual exploitation of a child and one count of sexual exploitation of a child.
A Netflix documentary
On November 25, a Netflix documentary, which dives into the mysteries of JonBenét’s case, will land on the streaming platform.
The three-part series is directed by the Academy Award nominee Joe Berlinger.
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Netflix’s TuDum describes it as posing one critical question: Will Colorado authorities finally take the necessary actions to bring JonBenét Ramsey’s killer to justice and offer her family the peace they’ve long sought?
The show will also focus on the police’s continued line of inquiry which was centered on JonBenét’s parents which may have slowed down the investigation.
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