JonBenet Patricia Ramsey, was a
6-year-old beauty queen found murdered in her home in Boulder, Colorado,
on December 26, 1996. The question still remains of who killed the
little girl who won titles including Little Miss Colorado, Little Miss
Charlevoix, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl, America's Royale
Miss and National Tiny Miss Beauty. On Friday, October 25, a judge in
Colorado ordered the release of 18 pages that were sealed after a grand
jury went home in 1999 without charges being filed in JonBenet's death.
(CNN) -- Previously sealed court documents released
Friday show that a Colorado grand jury voted in 1999 to indict the
parents of murdered 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey on charges of child abuse
resulting in death and being accessories to a crime.
The district attorney
decided that year, however, not to file charges against John and
Patricia Ramsey, saying there was insufficient evidence. In 2008, a new
district attorney said new DNA evidence cleared the parents and their
son in the death.
A Colorado court ordered
the release of the previously sealed court documents, putting new
attention on the unsolved 1996 death of JonBenet Ramsey, a girl who won
child beauty pageants and whose murder shocked the nation. The pages
were sealed in 1999, after the grand jury in the case dispersed without
charges being filed.
The court documents show how the grand jury sought to charge each parent with two identical counts.
2012: John Ramsey: From grief to grace
Grand jury: Ramseys partly responsible
The grand jury had
alleged that Patricia Paugh Ramsey, who died from ovarian cancer in
2006, and husband John Bennett Ramsey "did ... permit a child to be
unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the
child's life or health which resulted in the death of JonBenet Ramsey."
The grand jury also had
alleged that each parent "did ... render assistance to a person, with
intent to hinder, delay and prevent the discovery, detention,
apprehension, prosecution, conviction and punishment of such person for
the commission of a crime, knowing the person being assisted has
committed and was suspected of the crime of murder in the first degree
and child abuse resulting in death."
The documents provide no
further details on who that "person" was. The grand jury had accused the
couple of committing the offenses "on or between December 25 and
December 26, 1996." JonBenet was found murdered in the basement of the
family's Boulder home the day after Christmas 1996.
Ever since their daughter's murder, John Ramsey and his late wife maintained they had nothing to do with it.
Ramsey family wants all records opened
On Friday, an attorney
for John Ramsey and his family urged the district attorney to publicly
open "the entire grand jury record and not just 4 pages from an 18-month
investigation that produced volumes of testimony and exhibits."
The released indictments
"are nonsensical," said attorney L. Lin Wood. "They reveal nothing
about the evidence reviewed by the grand jury and are clearly the result
of a confused and compromised process. The Ramsey Family and the public
are entitled to the benefit of the full and complete record, not just a
historical footnote. Fairness dictates that result."
Wood, in a statement,
said the grand jury didn't have what was later to be "the conclusive
2008 DNA testing that led to the unequivocal, public exoneration of the
Ramsey Family by the Boulder District Attorney."
The murder case is now
considered "open," but it's a cold case that's not being actively
investigated, Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner said Friday. There are
no new leads.
Boulder County District
Attorney Stanley L. Garnett declined to issue an immediate statement
Friday, but a spokeswoman said a statement will be published as as op-ed
in Sunday's Boulder Daily Camera newspaper.
"This case is a Boulder
case and the district attorney answers to his constituency: the people
of Boulder County," spokeswoman Catherine Olguin said in a statement.
"Also, the issues surrounding the case are complex and nuanced and do
not readily lend themselves to a short sound bite."
Beckner, in a statement,
described Friday how "it was difficult to remain silent" about the
voided indictments "for so many years."
The killing may never be
solved, and the chief referred to past police conflict with prior
prosecutors who had "rejected" efforts to press charges in other cold
cases, he said.
"Investigators at the
time were disappointed in the then district attorney's decision not to
issue indictments," Beckner said. "Cases are rarely perfect and often
contain conflicting evidence. As a result, the opportunity to present
the entire case to a jury may be lost forever.
"While we believe at
this point it is unlikely there will ever be a prosecution, the Boulder
Police Department still holds out some hope that one day the district
attorney and the Boulder Police Department will be able to put together a
case worthy of presenting to a jury," Beckner said.
Legal analysts weigh in
One Denver legal analyst
who has been following the case for 17 years said Friday's revelation
was "another extraordinary event in this extraordinary case."
For a district attorney
not to endorse a grand jury's charge is "exceptionally rare," said
analyst Craig Silverman, who was chief deputy district attorney in
Denver for 16 years.
Silverman described the
past prosecutors' decisions in the case as sometimes "bizarre" and
"strange" and said "there was so much dissension" in the past between
Boulder police and prosecutors.
"Why would a D.A. have a
grand jury deliberate and vote if he is not going to pursue the charges
that they bring back?" Silverman said. "And did the grand jury come up
with those charges on their own? No way. One of the D.A.s had to provide
that verbiage."
CNN legal analyst
Jeffrey Toobin said the indictments merely show that a majority of the
grand jurors felt there was probable cause to charge the parents -- a
lower standard than proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
"It doesn't precisely
say that the grand jury thought they killed JonBenet," Toobin said.
"It's not precisely clear what they thought they did."
The grand jury in 1999 didn't have the DNA findings that emerged in 2008, Toobin said.
Winner of child pageants
As a little beauty
queen, JonBenet pranced across the stage and into America's heart 17
years ago. In heavy makeup, almost like a real-life doll, her images
captivated the nation with every strut, every twirl, every wave.
But even with the fame that followed her death, the question of who killed her remains unanswered.
An analysis of the girl's clothes showed the source of the DNA was not a family member, according to court documents.
Death of a beauty queen
On Christmas of 1996,
JonBenet received a gift bike. The next day, her parents called police
to report she had been kidnapped. The mother found a note demanding a
ransom of $118,000 for her return.
But later that day, JonBenet was found dead in the family basement.
Questions and
speculation reigned, and the country was riveted by the videotaped
performances of JonBenet and her big blonde hair at child beauty
pageants. Her parents lived under a cloud of suspicion. Were they
involved? Was there an intruder in the house that night?
Years went by. The innocent little girl remained forever 6.
In October 1999, grand
jurors assigned to the case went back home, sworn to silence. The eight
women and four men had convened regularly for 13 months. They heard from
dozens of witnesses, considered 30,000 pieces of evidence. All with one
question in mind: Who killed JonBenet?
They had nothing to show for their efforts. Or so it seemed.
New documents
On Wednesday -- 14 years
after the grand jury dispersed -- Judge J. Robert Lowenbach ordered the
release of four pages of sealed documents, as requested by local
journalists.
The indictment consists
of two pages about the mother and two pages about the father. Only the
documents signed by a foreman are being released, according to the
judge's order. But the foreman's signature is removed from the
documents.
In January, the Boulder
Daily Camera, citing unidentified jurors and an assistant district
attorney, said the grand jury voted to indict her parents on charges of
child abuse resulting in death. The newspaper and the Reporters
Committee for Freedom of the Press then successfully sued for the
documents' release.
Lowenbach's order Wednesday made reference to the grand jury's report.
"It appears that the
district attorney, presumably acting at the direction of the grand jury,
prepared a series of possible charges regarding John Ramsey and
Patricia Ramsey based on the fact that the child had died and that there
was evidence that a sexual assault of the child occurred," Lowenbach
wrote.
But then-Boulder County
District Attorney Alex Hunter said there was insufficient evidence to
warrant filing charges. He did not sign the indictment, according to the
Daily Camera. It had remained sealed until Friday.
The attorney for John Ramsey recently reasserted his client had no role in his daughter's death.
"I have known for years
that Boulder prosecutors did not file charges against John and Patsy
Ramsey because the evidence to prosecute them did not exist," Wood, the
Atlanta lawyer for John Ramsey, said this year.
'Killer on the loose'
Patsy Ramsey had always said her family was innocent.
"There's a killer on the
loose," she said a few days after her daughter's body was found. "I
don't know who it is. I don't know if it's a she or a he, but ...
there's someone out there."
In 2008, then-District
Attorney Mary Lacy wrote a letter to John Ramsey, saying that new DNA
evidence had cleared him, his wife and son. She formally apologized for
the cloud of suspicion the Ramseys lived under for years.
Last week, another attorney for John Ramsey wrote to District Attorney Garnett, requesting the documents be kept secret.
"Public release of the
allegations of an unprosecuted indictment only serves to further defame
(John Ramsey) and his late wife," wrote Harold Haddon.
Lowenbach denied the request. State law requires official actions by the grand jury to be released, the judge said.
False leads
The parents have always maintained that an intruder killed the little beauty queen.
In 2006, a breakthrough
appeared imminent with the arrest of John Mark Karr in Bangkok,
Thailand. The 41-year-old teacher repeatedly said he loved the little
girl and was with her the night she died. He insisted her death was an
accident.
But soon after his
arrest and return to Colorado, prosecutors said DNA evidence proved he
had nothing to do with her death. The district attorney decided not to
charge him.
More years went by. Investigations revealed new details, and with that came more suspicions.
Investigators say they
did not find any sign of forced entry into the family home in 1996. No
footprints in the snow outside the home, either.
A paintbrush from her
mother's hobby kit was used to tighten the rope that choked JonBenet,
according to investigators. And the alleged ransom letter came from a
notepad inside the house and made reference to little-known details
about the family's past finances.
Though the Ramseys were never named as suspects, they were the focus of the grand jury, which first convened in September 1998.
Today, the investigation stands almost where it started -- no arrests and no solid suspects.
The years have certainly
stood still for the little girl who was named after father John Bennett
Ramsey -- but pronounced in a French style, "Zhawn-Ben-AY."
To many, JonBenet is still the 6-year-old who paraded across television screens nationwide.
But she would have turned 23 this year.
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