A never-before-aired interview with JonBenet Ramsey’s parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, and the late Barbara Walters has resurfaced following the release of a new documentary about the 6-year-old pageant star’s 1996 murder.
JonBenet was found dead in the basement of her family’s Boulder, Colorado, home the day after Christmas 28 years ago, and the case remains unsolved to this day, despite ongoing public interest and a recent push from John Ramsey to re-test crime scene evidence for DNA using new technology.
“The ransom note has an odd figure — $118,000. That was a bonus that you had received,” Walters, then a host of ABC’s “20/20,” says in the interview, which was conducted in 2000 but never aired, according to ABC.
“Well, that was one of the theories that I came up with, that it was close to the net amount I’d received that year as a bonus,” John Ramsey told Walters. “One-eighteen means something to the killer. We know that. We believe that. Whether it’s tied to my bonus or something only the killer knows, we don’t know.”
In 1999, a grand jury indicted both John and his wife, Patsy Ramsey, for child abuse resulting in JonBenet’s death, but Alex Hunter, the district attorney at the time, refused to sign the indictment, citing a lack of evidence that would warrant criminal charges against the parents. Prosecutors eventually dropped their case against John and Patsy in 2006.
BPD said in a September statement that “Chief Redfearn has continued to have conversations with the Ramsey family, and there are no plans to change that.”
