JonBenet's Dad: Police Disregarded Credible Theory

Nine months after 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was found sexually assaulted, bludgeoned, and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Colorado, a masked man entered a home two miles away and raped a 12-year-old girl who happened to attend the same dance studio as JonBenét. The intruder, scared away by the victim's mother, was never caught. "To me, it could easily have been the same person" who killed JonBenét, her father, 80-year-old John Ramsey, tells People in a new interview. He urges police to investigate possible links between the Dec. 25, 1996, and Sept. 14, 1997, crimes. At the time, he says, "the police blew it off as, 'No, it's not the same.'"

But "I think the method of operation was exactly the same," Ramsey says of the two crimes. He claims the family of the 12-year-old came home and set the burglar alarm, but "the killer was already in the house." Similarly, "I believe the killer was in the house when we came home, waited 'til we went to sleep," then attacked JonBenét. In 2022, the father of the 12-year-old told the Sun that the intruder left behind Camel Blue cigarette butts, the same brand found outside the Ramseys' home. He also claimed a private investigator had discovered one possible suspect in the rape had done work inside the Ramsey home. But Boulder police "were completely uninterested," he said.

"Even the father of the little girl said, 'On a scale of one to 10, I rate the police minus five,'" Ramsey tells People. He's speaking out ahead of Monday's release of the three-part Netflix docuseries Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?, which "goes in-depth into what John considers to be missteps made by authorities when investigating JonBenét's murder," per People. Ramsey—who was cleared as a suspect alongside his late wife Patsy in 2008—says he hopes that someone will bring forward new information and that police will use DNA advances to solve what People describes as "one of the most sensational murder cases of all time." (Police have said they have new persons of interest.)