Chris Wolf was driving near his home in Boulder County in late January 1997 when he saw red lights flashing in his rearview mirror.
Police had already pulled him over a few days earlier, and he was in no mood for another drawn-out conversation over a minor traffic infraction.
‘Can’t you find something better to do?’ he told the cop as he wound down his window. ‘You people can’t even solve the Ramsey murder.’
Wolf made a joke, thinking it was harmless, but it turned out to have serious consequences. Little did he know, his girlfriend Jacqueline Dilson inadvertently pointed the finger at him in a murder case involving six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey.
The young pageant girl was brutally strangled and beaten to death in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado, on December 26. This tragic incident has captivated the nation for the past thirty years and remains unsolved.
As a media frenzy descended on the Ramsey mansion, Dilson was convinced she knew the culprit.
According to Jacqueline, Wolf was missing for several hours on Christmas night. She also mentioned waking up in the early hours and discovering him showering with his clothes covered in mud.
Citing a series of bizarre actions and obscene statements made about the Ramseys after the murder, Dilson told Boulder PD he should be investigated.
For Wolf, the traffic stop would mark the beginning of a nightmare that continues to haunt him 28 years on.
In truth, the stop was a ruse; Wolf was detained on trumped-up traffic charges, placed in handcuffs, and hauled to the Boulder Police station where two detectives were waiting for him in an interrogation room.
‘Tell us everything you know about JonBenét Ramsey,’ lead Boulder PD detective Steve Thomas told Wolf.
Wolf’s blood ran cold. He told Thomas he knew nothing about the murder and that police time would be better spent talking to someone who did, namely JonBenét’s parents John and Patsy, who were both by then under a torrent of public scrutiny.
‘That was a real shock,’ Wolf, 65, told Daily Mail in an exclusive sit-down interview where spoke publicly for the first time in 20 years.
‘I was outraged because I felt, like a lot of people did at the time, that I knew who the real suspects were – and it certainly wasn’t me.’
But things got worse for Wolf when he refused to supply police with handwriting and DNA samples to be compared with evidence recovered from the crime scene.
He was threatened with obstruction charges and had to be restrained in handcuffs after becoming aggressive when officers tried to take his picture.
‘At some point, I just started to panic,’ said Wolf. ‘It started to sink in that they’re trying to pin this murder on me.
‘And that was a terrifying situation to be in.’
POINTING THE FINGER
Wolf said he was terrified of being dragged into the Ramsey saga because he knew any insinuation that he was involved would ruin his career as a reporter.
He also had a prior criminal conviction for indecent exposure that he didn’t want to become public knowledge.
Wolf spent around an hour in a cell before he was eventually let go.
Though shaken by the experience, Wolf said he didn’t feel as though Boulder PD ever considered him a serious suspect.
He said they were simply adhering to the basic protocol of ruling out tips and loose leads while turning the heat up on their lead suspects: John and Patsy Ramsey.
That belief was ratified a few weeks later when Wolf went to the police station to ask to see his file and claims he was told by Commander John Eller that the department had ‘no interest’ in him.
But that wouldn’t be the end of his affiliations with the infamous cold case.
For years, his ex-girlfriend Dilson has continued to lobby investigators to re-examine him, believing her accusations were never taken seriously because Boulder PD was so laser-focused on the parents.
To make matters worse, the Ramseys also thrust Wolf into the spotlight as one of their leading suspects in their book, The Death of Innocence, in 2000.
John and Patsy rigorously denied killing their daughter and eventually ceased cooperating with police.
They insisted an intruder had broken into their sprawling multi-million dollar mansion, lured JonBenét from her bed, and murdered her while they slept in a possible act of retribution against John, whose computer company Access Graphics had just surpassed $1 billion in revenue.
Dilson, to this day, is convinced that Wolf was the intruder.
She told police that Wolf had been acting erratically and suspiciously before the murder, and, after the girl was found dead, would often erupt into expletive-laden broadsides about John Ramsey, Access Graphics, and his business ties with the arms dealer Lockheed Martin.
Speaking out publicly for the first time, Dilson renewed her accusations against Wolf to Daily Mail, painting him as an anti-war radical who harbored a deep-seated hatred for John Ramsey and Lockheed Martin.
Dilson sensationally claimed that Wolf believed John and Lockheed were complicit in the deaths of innocent women and children in war-torn third-world countries and allegedly murdered JonBenét as an act of political retribution.
In retort, Wolf vehemently denied any involvement in the Ramsey murder to Daily Mail, calling Dilson’s accusations absurd and the product of a deranged fantasy.
He also refuted holding any extremist political views, insisting his opinions about American foreign policy fell within the confines of the average Boulder liberal at the time.
‘I had absolutely nothing at all to do with the murder of JonBenét Ramsey,’ he defiantly stated.
‘I’m not a vigilante, and I would never take that kind of action based on some political beliefs that I had. I’d certainly never harm a child.
‘As far as Jackie – I don’t know exactly if she really believes all of this or not that she’s claiming about me. I think there’s a number of things going on.’
A SENSATIONAL CLAIM
Dilson is on the verge of releasing a self-published book about Wolf and JonBenét, The Unheard Call, in which she outright names Wolf as the killer and chronicles their tumultuous relationship.
In the book, Dilson accuses Wolf of stalking and threatening her over a period of several years. She also claims he once tried to strangle her during a sexual encounter – all accusations Wolf denies.
When it comes to JonBenét, Dilson’s case against Wolf rests entirely on circumstantial evidence and anecdotal accounts.
The bulk of her suspicions stem from his odd behavior on Christmas 1996 and remarks he made in the hours, weeks, and months after JonBenét was found dead.
According to Dilson, Wolf vanished for several hours on Christmas Day and returned late in the evening in a ‘psychotic’ state.
Dilson said his bizarre behavior continued when he told her: ‘If you wake up in the middle of the night and I’m not here, I’m just driving around because I can’t sleep.’
At 5.30am the following morning, Dilson woke up to the sound of running water. She said Wolf eventually emerged from the shower and put back on the same clothes he’d been wearing the day before – but this time, they were covered in dirt.
Dilson said Wolf offered no explanation for why his clothes were dirty and left again to go to a coffee shop.
When he returned three hours later, Dilson said Wolf was rabidly ranting about ‘the motherf***er on the hill’ who was selling arms to third-world countries and deserved to die.
It was only later in the day that Dilson thought she knew who Wolf was talking about: John Ramsey.
That realization came after she sat down to watch the news with Wolf, and leading the program was the murder of a six-year-old girl who had been found dead in the basement of her family home in a well-to-do area of Boulder known as The Hill.
During the segment, Dilson said Wolf erupted again, accusing John Ramsey of sexually abusing his daughter and insisting John would soon be going to prison for killing her.
‘He’d been acting strangely for a while, but it was at that moment that I started to think something was inherently wrong here,’ Dilson told Daily Mail.
Wolf admitted to making numerous incendiary remarks about John Ramsey after JonBenét’s murder became public knowledge but questioned Dilson’s recollection of events that Christmas.
He admitted to leaving her home that day but claimed to have done so in the late afternoon, returning sometime after dark.
Wolf said he was a marijuana addict at the time and would often go out on long drives to aimlessly cruise around, listen to music, and get high – and that’s precisely what he did that day.
Once he returned to Dilson’s, he said he stayed there through the night.
Wolf could not recall whether or not his clothes were muddy the following morning but conceded they may have been dirty from ‘days of consecutive wear.’
He believes he first heard about the Ramsey case on the radio on the way to the coffee shop. The Ramseys did not call the police until 5:54 am.
For hours, the Ramsey case was believed to be a kidnapping before she was found dead by her father later that afternoon.
Wolf said the news that a little girl had been snatched from her bed left him feeling ‘agitated,’ which may have accounted for the erratic mood described by Dilson upon his return.
As for his purported remarks about John Ramsey, Wolf said it sounded like something he would have said, although he questioned Dilson’s timeline.
He explained: ‘I think I was pretty p***ed off by the whole thing.
‘I think I was commenting histrionically on the whole subject any number of times that day and a number of times after that.
‘But for all I know, I could’ve made those comments the day after, when it was no longer just a kidnapping, or when it was evident that she was actually dead.
‘I don’t know which one it was, and I’m pretty sure Jacque doesn’t know either.’
‘I’M NO KILLER’
In the months that followed, Dilson continued to meet with investigators and officials throughout Boulder, urging them to investigate and arrest Wolf, but her cries went largely unanswered.
She claimed to have remembered a series of odd remarks Wolf had made about the Ramseys before the murder and pointed to an article he’d written in 1995 for the Boulder Business Report about Access Graphics to try and prove premeditation.
Dilson’s campaign received a second wind in the summer of 1997 when the now-infamous Ramsey ransom note was released to the public for the first time.
The note – written on a legal pad belonging to Patsy Ramsey – included references to John Ramsey’s work, bizarre quotes seemingly lifted from action films, and a signature of a so-called foreign faction identifying themselves by the acronym SBTC.
The letter was discovered by Patsy, laid out on a staircase near JonBenét’s bedroom in the early hours of December 26, 1996.
JonBenét’s body was found later that day, swaddled in a white blanket in a storage room in their basement. Her wrists had been tied, duct tape covered her mouth, and a garrote fashioned from paintbrushes was wound around her neck.
Dilson was convinced the killer’s handwriting was Wolf’s and believed some of the political sentiments expressed in the document matched his beliefs.
She also believed she had cracked the code of what SBTC stood for: Santa Barbara Tennis Club, an allusion to a t-shirt her son had given to Wolf that Christmas.
Dilson alerted the Boulder PD and was told they’d ‘look into it.’ She handed in Wolf’s leather jacket to be tested for fibers, along with a handbook and journal of his to be compared with the ransom note
Lead Ramsey detective Steve Thomas later admitted in a deposition that he was unsure whether the items handed in by Dilson were ever tested, as investigators did not consider her a credible witness, court documents show
Wolf voluntarily provided investigators with DNA, fingerprints, and handwriting samples in February 1998, hoping to once and for all quash any lingering suspicions about him.
‘I was tired of being suspected of this, and I wanted to do whatever I could to cooperate,’ Wolf reflected of the decision.
‘[Boulder PD] were pitching it to me as, like, “We don’t think you’re guilty of this, but there are people who do think that, and we need to satisfy their questions regarding you.”
‘That made me more willing to cooperate, and I did supply everything they asked me for.’
LOVE ENDURES ALL
Wolf said he last spoke to Boulder PD in 2001, before he left Colorado for California, and claimed he was told by investigators they were ‘not interested’ in him as a suspect.
Boulder PD has never officially publicly cleared Wolf, but in 2011, then-Police Chief Mark Beckner made assurances that he had been thoroughly investigated.
Beckner’s comments were prompted after Dilson took out a paid advertisement in the Boulder Camera, comparing the Ramsey ransom note to a reconstructed version she’d composed using excerpts of Wolf’s handwriting lifted from his journals.
In the ad, Dilson called for Wolf to be re-investigated and claimed a handwriting expert from the Forensic Document Laboratory had ‘confirmed’ Wolf was the note’s likely author.
Beckner responded by insisting Wolf’s handwriting had been analyzed by a Colorado Bureau of Investigation handwriting expert who found he had not written the note.
For Wolf, Dilson’s repeated accusations over the last 30 years have been difficult to deal with.
‘It’s shocking to me that so many people would even think that I could be responsible for something like that, and that’s been a pretty tough burden to bear,’ admitted Wolf.
‘I would never have any motivation to do anything like that, and I never did do anything like that.’
Wolf said he has suffered from depression because of his negative associations with the case and often finds himself paranoid that those around him know of Dilson’s accusations and believe them to be true.
But none of that is in his control, and Wolf said he takes comfort in the fact he knows he did not kill JonBenét.
As for why Dilson continues to accuse him, Wolf said it’s complicated.
Dilson told Daily Mail she was sexually abused as a child.
Wolf believes that because of her own trauma, Dilson developed a psychological attachment to the Ramsey case that has developed into a fixation.
He added that he hadn’t always been the best boyfriend to Dilson, and the pair was in the process of breaking up when JonBenét was murdered, and he may have accidentally ‘scorned’ her.
He theorized: ‘I loved her, and she was good to me, and she was a good girlfriend, but it wasn’t working. The main reason it wasn’t working was because I was incapable of really making a good living, and I couldn’t do anything for her that I wanted to, and she was dissatisfied with that.
‘From there, a lot of other things started to not work very well. We were breaking up, and I think she was angry with me and resentful toward me about wanting to leave her.
‘And I think somewhere she conflated me wanting to break up with her with JonBenét being murdered.’
Incredibly, despite her allegations, Wolf says he still loves and misses Dilson and believes her to be his one true soulmate.
For Dilson, who is married, the feelings do not appear mutual.
‘I’m still scared to death of Chris,’ she shared. ‘I sleep with a gun next to my bed.
‘Trying to hold him accountable has taken up the last 30 years of my life.
‘I want him behind bars […] I want this nightmare to finally be over.’
ANSWERS REMAIN ILLUSIVE
The JonBenét Ramsey mystery continues to endure with no immediate end in sight.
To this day, Wolf is one of only two people to have been detained in connection with JonBenét’s death.
The second was John Mark Carr, a child sex offender who falsely confessed to the slaying in 2006.
John and Patsy Ramsey remained the leading suspects in the case for more than a decade.
In September 1998, a grand jury was convened to investigate the case.
The grand jury voted to indict John and Patsy on charges of child abuse resulting in death and being accessories to a crime, but Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter declined to move forward with an indictment, citing a lack of evidence.
Then, in 2008, then-District Attorney Mary Lacy wrote a letter to John, saying new DNA evidence had cleared him, Patsy, and their son Burke of any wrongdoing.
Lacy formally apologized for the cloud of suspicion the Ramseys lived under for years.
Lacy’s somewhat controversial vindication came too late for Patsy Ramsey, who died from ovarian cancer in 2006 at the age of 49.
Despite the lack of progress in the case, John, now 81, remains optimistic that his daughter’s murder will one day be solved.
John believes the key to unraveling the mystery lies in a small amount of unidentified male DNA found underneath his daughter’s fingernails and in her underwear.
Speaking last year about the evidence against a different suspect, convicted pedophile Gary Oliva, John said he believed whoever killed his daughter is probably not one of the 140 suspects already looked at by police.
Wolf does not share John Ramsey’s optimism.
With so many years having passed and so little evidence to go on, Wolf expects JonBenét’s murder will remain forever unsolved – forever associating him with the case as a consequence, however tangential.
‘I don’t think it’s going to be solved because too many mistakes were made [by police] in the early hours […] in preserving the crime scene, which they didn’t do.
‘I have my own suspicions about who was responsible for this heinous crime, and they’re a lot of the same suspicions that a lot of people have.’
John Ramsey has not returned a request for comment.
