September 29, 2022 • 36 mins
Rasha and Yvette dig into one of the most famous true crime cases of all time: the murder of JonBenét Ramsey. But this week, we take a new spin, looking into the dangers of child beauty pageants.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of iHeartRadio and
Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
are solely those of the individuals participating in the show
and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV.
This podcast contains subject matter which may not be suitable
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Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Facing Evil from Tenderfoot
TV and iHeartRadio. We are your hosts. I'm Rosha Pecerrero.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
And I am her amazing sister eveg and Tela. Yes,
you are.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Pat on the back for you.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
You guys. I think I'm like, you know, here in
San Francisco, we've been having a heat wave, which doesn't
happen often, so I feel like I'm going a little
goofy like with each stroke or the normal. Yeah, a
little bit more than normal, Rush Trevor.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
It's not great, though, I'm told it's worse in other
parts of the country right now, like the South and
parts of Texas and Georgia and places like that. It's
like been hitting the hundreds already.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
So oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Relatively speaking, I guess mild like we've been in the
eighties or so.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well, here in Portland, it's a heat wave for us
and it's only in the seventies. So putting the lesbian
in the closet to record this podcast is not very nice,
but whatever, It's fine.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
And Rush you're you are actually in a closet where
I am.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I'm actually in a closet recording this right, literally but
not figuratively, because we know I'm out loud and proud. Well,
with all of that being said, Trevor, can you take
us through today's case.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
Twenty five years since the death of charm beauty queen
John Beard Ramsey, police are still not closer to funding
hekila me, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Okay? The young web.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
This bizarre ransom note we have your daughter found inside
the family home in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
I did not have anything to do with it. I
love that child with my whull of my heart and soul.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
John Benet Ramsay was a six year old child beauty
pageant competitor who was killed on Christmas of nineteen ninety six.
This became what was likely the biggest news story of
ninety six and ninety seven, and had since become one
of the most talked about and researched murder cases of
all time. The circumstances surrounding John Benay's death were mysterious.
(02:42):
John Beney lived with her parents and brother in Bolder, Colorado.
In the early morning hours of December twenty sixth her
parents called local police to say that she was missing.
They said someone had abducted her and left behind a
ransom note, But then later that morning, John Benney was
found strangled to death in the basement of their house.
(03:04):
Many thought that someone in the house was responsible and
that the note was just a fake to divert blame,
but others thought that because John Benet was so visible
as a child beauty pageant star, that some crazed fan
had broken in and killed her while they slept. However,
it was never solved. Her killer was never identified. There
(03:25):
was an attempt to investigate the family, but it never
went anywhere, and since then, true crime sleuths online have
famously dedicated countless hours to gathering additional information and exploring
multiple theories. And so, what actually happened to John Benney,
How was her life as a child beauty pageant star
(03:46):
a factor in her death? And why has the case
attracted so much attention in circles online and in pop culture.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I mean, to me, saying that this is a amous
case is really an understatement because this case right here
is probably this story was true crime before true crime
was a thing.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
This case permeated the media and was all over TV
newsstands at the time. You absolutely could not avoid it.
It was a huge, horrific, tragic, historical event. So why
that is, I mean, that's the question that we're here
to talk about today, right Like, why was everyone so obsessed?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah? And you know, I have to admit I was
a little bit skeptical of doing this case because, as
you just said, it's so overdone. It's such a huge
case and everybody knows about it. But for me, like
I really wanted to talk about it because when I
was sixteen and when I was twenty three, I was
(04:53):
in the pageant industry, so I was kind of obsessed,
you know when I heard it about this story of
this little girl, John Bennet, who's five years old, doing
pageant after pageant after pageant, and I know, for me,
it was hard, and I watched how mothers like were
(05:14):
obsessed with their children.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
So I don't think Mom was like that with you
per se right.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
No, Mom wasn't like that at all. But yeah, I guess,
you know, to put little girls in these beauty pageants
at that age, it just doesn't seem right to me.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I have to tell a little story to you, right,
because you're saying it. You know, it's kind of weird,
you know, for five year olds or six year olds
or just little, tiny, little people being in these pageants.
When I was pregnant with our daughter, I would tease
Vanna all the time because Toddler's and Tiara's was huge,
you know, the reality TV show and it had all
these girls like John Bennet that were on these reality shows.
(05:53):
So I used to be like, hey, babe, you know,
if we have a girl, we're gonna put her, you know,
in all these pageants. And She's like, oh, hell no,
we will get divorced.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Like yeah, she was nobody. No that is to the
to the L L L Yeah, nope.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
And I mean I think I look at this case differently,
becoming a mom. Like our child is now ten years old,
but back when this happened, I was a teenager. But
it's still captivated everybody and the biggest issue, especially doing
research for this case, that I feel that there is
just an overwhelming amount of misinformation out there and crazy
(06:32):
theories and just horrible takes on what actually happened to
little John Benet, and most of that, bystandard speculation, is
incredibly hurtful and disrespectful to the family. And I think,
you know, with Yvet and I, you know, being connected
to one of the most infamous unsolved murders in America, like,
we know how that can hurt, Like, we know how
(06:55):
misinformation happens, and it can just affect people.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
And I ramifications of that, Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I feel bad for the ramses, which we are going
to get more into. I think there's a lot of
well meaning people out there, but I think a lot
of times.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
It does a lot of harm. I mean, this case
still isn't solved.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah. I think part of that was, you know, around
this time, it was like late nineties and so Internet's
like just starting to be a thing, and I think
where we get a lot of misinformation these days is
through like unchecked sources on social media and the internet.
Back then, though, think about it, there wasn't really like
any checks and balances for like what was real, what
wasn't like it was kind of like the wild wild
(07:35):
West of the early internet days, you know, and so
like this was really like the first kind of test
case for like how people would like talk about something
like a true crime case in chat rooms, and so
we're completely unregulated and un checked for accuracy. So it's
not surprising to me that there is so much inaccuracy
(07:57):
and misinformation out there this case. I think a lot
of those like theories started back then and they've just
kind of like solidified over the years and have made
their way into things like murder Pedia and all these
things online now. So yeah, that certainly doesn't excuse the
issues that causes. It's just interesting to think about why
that is.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Yeah, I have to agree with you, But before we
get into it, I mean, I have to say that,
as we know, this is a super detailed case, right
compared to some of the other cases where we don't
have a whole lot of information, this one is I mean,
there's a ton of it out there. So what we're
going to do is we're going to have to split
this up into two parts. So this is going to
(08:36):
be part one and part two we're going to do
next week. So Trevor, let's get us started, and why
don't you tell us some of the background on the family.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, So about the Ramses. John Baney's parents were John
and Patsy Ramsey. Patsy herself was in fact a pageant girl.
She was actually crowned Miss West Virginia in nineteen seventy
and even participated in the Miss America competition shortly thereafter.
John and Patsy met in Atlanta in nineteen seventy nine,
(09:09):
and then they got married the following year. In nineteen eighty,
John had his own software company, which is how he
made money, and that was pretty lucrative enough so that
Patsy got to just stay at home and mostly focused
on volunteer work. They had their first son together, named Burke,
in nineteen eighty seven, and then John Benet Ramsey came
(09:29):
around three years later on August sixth, nineteen ninety. Then
in nineteen ninety one, the Ramses moved all the way
over to Boulder, Colorado, which is where most of the
story takes place. So in Boulder they bought this massive,
fifteen room kind of fake tutor style house which also
featured a basement with a wine cellar like pulled out
(09:50):
all the stops. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
And I was also reading in a Pupil magazine article
that they were notorious for lavish living. You know, obviously
we can tell that they have a lot of money.
So they had you know, neighbors and all sorts of
people coming in and out of the house like nannies
and cleaners and gardeners all the time, right, because, like
you said earlier, it's a big house.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, it was. It was like a big production to
run the house.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah right.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I mean so that's already maybe a security risk because
they have people coming in and out so often. I
mean all of those people have access to the home,
they have keys. But also around nineteen ninety five, that's
when Patsy began signing John Beney up for child beauty pageants,
and little John Benet won a bunch of them. She
(10:39):
won Little Miss Colorado, America's Royal Miss, and National Tiny
Miss Beauty. I mean that's a lot, Like that's a
fact to fact, it's a lot. So anyhow, to my understanding,
it was Patsy's obsession having her daughter compete in these pageants,
so she always was hiring photographers, you know, and different
(11:03):
type of people coming in and out of the house,
and it really I mean, if you look closely at it,
it totally seems like Patsy was living or trying to
live vicariously through John Bennet.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Do you think that that's something you saw when you
were growing up in the pageant world, Like did you
see other mothers who were like kind of also vicariously
living through their daughters that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, I mean absolutely, because like I said, you know,
I was a teenager in one and then I was
twenty three in another, a young lady, and I would say,
and this is interesting, I saw more obsessed mothers in
the girls that were older. Oh really, Yeah, so I
(11:48):
saw it all. Yeah, and answer your question, Trevor, on
both ends of the spectrum, I saw mothers that were
you know, you could see them behind the stage, like
you know, doing the dance moves that you know they're
daughters were doing, whether it be a teenager or someone
who was twenty three. So yeah, it's a thing.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, And I think at least for us, like growing
up in Havaii, like I think the little Caky's, like
the little kids weren't so much involved in pageants like
John Benet was. I don't know if that came a
little bit later, you know, and then you know later
in the nineties. But needless to say, Patsy had John
Benay in everything. So when you're competing in pageants, you're
(12:29):
not only like competing for.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
You know, like little Miss Boulder or whatever.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Like there's so many photos and videos out there of
John Beney that are a little disturbing. I think that
would be the right shit.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I would say, very not a little. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah, And there's even a video that I know, like
now we would say it went viral, but at the
time that that wasn't a thing. But everyone saw that
video of John Beney dancing around kind of being flirtatious
and super provocative. Like she's six, she doesn't know that
like that someone's telling her to do that, you know, five,
I should say, five years old. Yeah, And of course
(13:03):
we've seen dozens of photos of her in heavy makeup.
I mean, she looked like a beautiful little drag queen,
right well, she.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Looked like if you think about she looked like her mom.
How Patsy wore a lot of makeup, you know what
I mean, So like that's what she was portraying onto
her daughter.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, so I like to think that the sort of
thing has gone out of style a little bit, or
at least out of fashion in recent years, just because yes,
I don't see as much of this anymore. It feels
like the very nineties thing. But you know, hopefully maybe
cases like John Benet turned people off of this. I
don't know that, right. So, meanwhile, things were pretty tough
(13:42):
on the Ramsey parents in the early nineties. On January
eighth of nineteen ninety two, Elizabeth, who was one of
John's daughters from his first marriage, died in a car
accident in Chicago, and then his father also died that year.
In nineteen ninety two, and then the following year, in
nineteen ninety three, Patsy was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and
(14:03):
by that point it had actually spread to her lymph
notes so she underwent chemotherapy, which, as you can imagine,
caused hair loss, nausea, months of illness, and fatigue. She
was able to beat it, however, and her cancer did
go into he remission in nineteen ninety five, So that
was good news and it seemed like things were looking
up for the Ramses. But then the following year, on
(14:26):
Christmas of nineteen ninety six, things went very, very wrong,
and we'll talk about that right after we take a
quick break.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
So let's talk about when things started to go terribly wrong.
A couple of things happened leading up to Christmas of
that year. On December sixth, nineteen ninety six, John Benet
participated in the Lights of Christmas Parade in Boulder, where
she appeared on a little Miss Colorado Parade float and
(15:00):
John Bennie's grandmother was there and she actually would later
say that some creeper, some creepy man kept approaching the
float and it made her and everyone very uncomfortable. So
that's one thing, right, And you know, I've done my
share of parades, you know, all Pride parades, but you
definitely you can see the creepers out there. Then on
(15:23):
December seventeenth, John Benet won Little Miss Christmas at a
Denver child beauty pageant. So we just need to keep
those two little events in mind as we continue talking
about the details.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And so on December twenty third, the Ramsays hosted a
Christmas party at their home with about thirty guests in attendance.
One weird thing is that a nine to one one
call was placed from their home around ten pm that night,
but it is later dismissed as a drunk guest making
the call. We don't have any record of that, so
(15:55):
hard to verify. It's just one of the things you'll
hear about online, right. Also important, there is a neighbor
by the name of Bill McReynolds who plays Santa Claus
at said party. And remember that name because Bill McReynolds
would initially become a suspect in John Beney's murder. Once again,
just hang on to them.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yes, yes, okay. So now it's Christmas Day and the
Ramses they go to a Christmas party hosted by their
family friend whose name is Fleet White, and they eventually
go home and John puts John, Benney and Burke to bed.
So at around ten pm they go in to check
(16:36):
on John Binney and they see that she's sound asleep,
and John claims that this is the last time that
he sees her alive, and then Patsy I guess she
goes to bed around ten thirty pm.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And then a couple hours later, just after midnight on
what's now December twenty sixth neighbor Scott Gibbons reported seeing
a light on in the Ramsey kitchen, and at two am,
neighbor Melody Stanton allegedly heard a scream from the Ramsays home.
So again these are those nuggets, right. So her husband
(17:11):
said he then heard the sound of metal on concrete
sometime after she heard that scream. But it's important to
note that years later, Melody actually backtracked on those statements
on her own statements, stating she actually heard the noise
two nights prior, if at all. Which again, this is
kind of the start of all that misinformation when you
(17:34):
have witnesses recounting what they say.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
So, then at five thirty am that morning, John supposedly
wakes up. The family was actually scheduled to fly to Charlevoi, Michigan,
for a vacation later that day, so John's getting ready,
and then Patsy supposedly wakes up very shortly after John,
at roughly five point forty five am. Patsy heads downstairs
to the kitchen and she sees a note on the
(17:58):
backstairs leading to the kitchen. She picks it up and
realizes it's a handwritten ransom note. And here's what part
of the note said quote, you will withdraw one hundred
and eighteen thousand dollars from your account. One hundred thousand
will be in one hundred dollar bills and the remaining
eighteen thousand and twenty dollars bills end quote. So strangely enough,
(18:20):
that was the exact amount of John's Christmas bonus, that
one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars. The note also said
not to call police or they would harm jumpin a
in some way.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
This is the most bizarre ransom note like ever and
it was really long. It's really long, and you know
the way that they ended it signed Victory and the
initials SBTC. It doesn't make any sense. Like if I'm
thinking about this and they want one hundred dollars bills
(18:52):
and then they want eighteen thousand and twenty dollars, like
to me that that's weird. That's like someone who doesn't
have a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
To ask for hundreds and twenties. And it's also odd
that it's the exact number that John just got us
a you know, holiday bonus.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Right, So of course your mind goes to, like, okay, well,
it's obviously somebody that John worked with, right, or somebody
close to them that knew that he was getting this
exact amount. Also, Patsy reportedly screamed and ran up to
John Bennet's room, which was empty. She and John went
to check on their son Burke, and they claimed that
(19:30):
he was still asleep in bed. But at roughly five
fifty two am, Patsy called nine to one one, totally
ignoring the notes instructions not to call the police.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Here's a clip from that recording of that call. Poe's Street.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
What's going on?
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Them were kidding up to me? What's going on? Okay
from west and don't.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
How old is your home? How long ago was?
Speaker 4 (20:12):
I don't know? I took help them bunk.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
So between five point fifty two and five fifty nine am,
we know that Patsy calls family friends Fleet and Priscilla White,
and also John and Barbara Fernie. So at six am,
Boulder Police officers Karl Weitch and Rick French arrive at
the Ramsay home, and Detective Linda Aren't arrived shortly after them.
(20:35):
So Officer French was the first to search the home,
and he apparently paused by the very door that John
Bennet was later found behind, but he didn't end up
opening it.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
So here's something about that from the police report. French
said that he didn't check that door to the basement
because he was looking for other doors that a supposed
kidnapper most likely would have used. He also noted that
the door latch was on the wrong side for any
door that might lead outside, so he just went ahead
and walked right past it.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
And then when Detective Linda Aren't arrived, she reportedly failed
to secure the crime scene. And this I think is
a huge, huge mistake I think that she made. And
at ten thirty am, John Ramsey went missing for at
least an hour, and he was supposedly leaving the house
(21:26):
to pick up mail, but that was later determined that
this could not have been true because the family's mail
was delivered through a slot in the front door. However,
as a devil's advocate, I will say it was the
day after Christmas. Maybe he was going to pick up
a package at the post office. I don't know, but
leads to say where where are you, dude?
Speaker 1 (21:44):
It's a long time to disappear.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, that doesn't make sense. Yeah, okay, so get this
at one pm, Detective Aren't tells John Ramsey and his
friend Fleet White, who is not a police officer. Neither
of them are yeah, to do a top to bottom
search of the house like what. So then five minutes later,
(22:06):
John and Fleet they opened the door to the wine
cellar in the basement and they find John Benney's body.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah. So two weird things for me, obviously. One thing
is that it takes them so long to find the
body in a pretty like well traveled part of the
house I feel like, which is a wine cellar. The
other weird thing is of course that they like let
John Ramsey a freely roam around but be like find
the body. Yeah. It's almost like if you answered a
(22:37):
like domestic abuse call, like a ninety one one call,
and you show up and like the person's girlfriend is
either like hurt or killed, you don't just like let
that guy, like the boyfriend or whoever, like roam around
or maybe even go like help find the girlfriend that
you know he's possibly it's.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
A crime scene. Yeah, this is not a game. It's
this is a real life crime scene.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
So John and Fleet White they find John Bennet and
when they find her, her mouth is covered in duct
tape and her head is bludgeoned, and it looked like
she had also been strangled with a garat, which is
basically like a wire or a cord that you used
to choke people out. So John reportedly ripped off the
(23:21):
duct tape and he grabs her. He carries her upstairs
and he sets her down on the floor in front
of everybody, so it's not exactly clear why, but Detective
Aren't then picked up the body once again and moved
it to the living room and set it down near
the Christmas tree. And then Patsy, who's apparently too stunned
to hold herself up or even walk, kind of stumbles
(23:42):
over as friends like help her and carry her to
the body, and the police reports say that she then
throws herself also on top of John Bennet's body and
is sobbing over the body. So what we're seeing here
is a lot of potential contamination of evidense of John
Benny's body of the scene. I mean, things have been
(24:03):
moved around so much. The body's been touched and handled
by so many people already, and nobody's even examined it.
So that's a huge problem.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
But that just goes to show that that particular detective,
like she was in charge, she was the first one
on the scene. Like you don't have you know, normal people,
civilian so to speak, go in and do your work.
That just doesn't make sense. I mean, I do understand
the emotion of Patsy throwing herself over John Bennet, because
(24:31):
that is you know, that's her child, still like they
should have left her, you know where she was, Yeah,
being a mom. It makes me sick to think about it.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yeah, And I guess the last thing I'll say about
that is, you know a lot of people talk about
why this case hasn't been solved, and there are a
lot of things you can attribute to it, but I
think this moment right here is probably like number one.
Why we don't have much is because so much of
what we could have gleaned from this crime scene, it's
just like immediately ruined.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Completely contaminated. Yeah. Well, a few more crazy things happen
that day that are that we have to point out
these these little nuggets. At one pm, John Ramsey called
his pilot about their personal plane and he allegedly asked
the pilot to prepare the plane for the family to
(25:24):
go to Atlanta, but law enforcement put the kabash on
that and instructed the family not to leave town for
good reason. And so foot you right, and so the
Ramseys he the request and they end up going to
stay at a friend's house because their home is now
a crime scene.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Right, and they should not be leaving.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, there's a lot of things that shouldn't have happened
that day, Yeah they did.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Okay. So it's two thirty and the authorities are interviewing
little Burke now and he's saying that he slept through
the night and he doesn't recall anything. He didn't hear anything,
you didn't see anything. At ten forty five, John Bennet's
body was removed from the ramseys home and Detective Arnt.
(26:09):
We go back to Detective Art, who let everybody walk
around the house. Is the last to leave the house.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Of course, that's not really the end of this case,
but we do need to take another break, so we'll
talk about some of the things that came to light
after we come back.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Okay, So let's pick it back up on December twenty eighth.
So that day, the Ramseys go to the Boulder Police
station and Patsy, John, and Burke all give their hair,
blood and handwriting samples to the Bolder police. The next day,
the Ramses all fly to Atlanta, and on New Year's
(26:50):
Eve they hold John Benay's funeral in Marrietta, Georgia, with
over two hundred friends and family in attendance. John Benay
is laid to rest next to her half sister and
John's daughter, Elizabeth, who died in a car wreck in
nineteen ninety two. On January first, nineteen ninety seven, John
(27:11):
and Patsy did an interview for CNN, which I vividly remember.
Here's a short clip for us to listen to.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
When you return the Boulder, you will sit down with
the Bolder bullies. Absolutely absolutely. We want them to know
everything possible.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Everything to help them ever they want, whatever anyone wants,
we will collaborate. So throughout the interview, Patsy kept putting
forth the idea that a home invader was responsible for
the killing. She kept saying things like a killer is
on the loose, and she kept saying people in Boulder
(27:52):
should lock up their homes tight. I do remember her
repeating those two things several times in the interview.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
So, then the next day, on January second, a team
of investigators from Boulder fly to Atlanta to again question
the Ramseys, and apparently understandably, the investigators were very shocked
to see that the Ramseys went on TV to talk
about this, because a couple days earlier, they had claimed
to be too upset, too emotional to even talk to
(28:22):
the police about it, Like they were completely locked up,
you know, when police tried to talk to them, And
here they are, you know, maybe a week later, fully
opening up about it to the whole country, the whole world.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I wonder if the attorney told them to do it
to save face or something.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Possibly, right, Well, maybe the other thing is, like, you know,
they didn't want to talk to police, maybe they were
like faking being upset. Like the fact that they would
not be that upset a week later, only a week later, Yeah,
signifies that maybe they weren't actually that upset, or that
they're not as upset as they were leading on to
police earlier. So I don't know. But then on January third,
(28:58):
the Ramseys returned to Bolder Color and that same day,
investigators revealed that the ransom note was written on stationary
from within their own house.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Oh shit, right, So I mean, so of course the
investigators are now wondering, like, Okay, did the parents actually
write the note? Right right? Did they? Or did they not?
That is the question. So two months later, on March seventh,
they have an expert handwriting analysis revealed that John could
(29:33):
not have written this particular ransom note, but Patsy has
not been ruled out, so we still don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah, well either way. The next day, on March eighth,
investigators traveled to the Ramsey's vacation home in Michigan, and
there they try and find some unrehearsed writing samples that
they can use for more handwriting analysis. So the idea
there being that you know, you can fake your handwriting
if you're like under pressure, Like if you know cops
(30:04):
are trying to like check your handwriting, maybe you could
like do it differently to throw them off, right right right? Yeah,
maybe they would find again unrehearsed samples at this other house.
So then on April nineteenth, the Boulder District Attorney officially
named John and Patsy Ramsey as the prime suspects in
John Benney's murder. So they are really honing in now
(30:26):
on the parents as having done this.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
But apparently this does not phase the Ramses at all.
On April twenty seventh, they actually ran an ad in
the Daily Camera offering a reward of one hundred thousand
dollars for any information that can help with the investigation.
And on May second, the Ramsees finally address the accusations
against them in an interview with local news station News nine.
(30:50):
So we don't have the audio, but John said quote,
I did not kill my daughter. I will miss her
dearly for the rest of my life end quote, and
Patsy simply said, quote, I did not kill John Beney
end quote. The couple insisted the supposed killer would be found,
with Patsy saying quote, God knows who you are and
(31:11):
we will find you.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
So on July tenth, the Ramses purchased a new home
in Atlanta, and they actually ended up buying a home
not far from where John Beney was buried, and that's
in Marietta, so obviously they wanted to be close to
their little girl, right, So.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Real quick, let's talk about the autopsy. On July fourteenth
of nineteen ninety eight, John Beney's official autopsy report was unsealed,
and so the autopsy confirmed a deep ligature around the
victim's neck and another around the right wrist. There was
also evidence that she had been bound and strangled, and
it also says that blood and abrasions were found in
(31:53):
the girl's vaginal area, which is important. Also, she was
struck in the head violently enough to cause bleeding, and
there was an eight and a half inch fracture to
her skull, so this suggests she died by asphyxiation technically,
but she was also bludgeoned and possibly sexually assaulted.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
And I thought this detail was very weird because it
also turns out that that handle of that particular weapon
that was used to kill John Bennet, it was made
from one of the handles of Patsy's paint brushes, So
you know, this is the thing. Is somebody trying to
frame them or did they really do it right?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I don't know, but all my insides are all wrapped
in knots. Like Trevor, I I'm thankful that you can
read through that without like pausing, because I just knowing
what was done to little John Beney just breaks my heart.
So months go by without any you know, developments, But
on January fifteenth, nineteen ninety eight, the Ramses announced that
(32:56):
they were not going to cooperate anymore. They refused to
give any further interviews to the police until they themselves
were allowed to review the evidence again. Our March twelfth,
which is now fifteen months since the murder of little
John Benet, a grand jury is called, and by this
point the police investigation has not garnered enough evidence to
(33:17):
successfully convict anyone.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Right, so the date of the grand jury is set
for September fifteenth of nineteen ninety eight. But before that happens,
something else comes to light. On August twentieth, police realized
that Burke, who is John Benet's brother, can actually be
heard in the background of Patsy's initial nine to one
(33:41):
one call. So originally the Ramses had said that Burke
was asleep that morning when everything went down when they
were searching for John Benet, and that he didn't even
wake up until after the police showed up. But police
were able to enhance the audio of that nine to
one one call, and then they were a to pick
up Burke's voice supposedly in the background of the call.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
And so just one month later, the grand jury would
finally begin. And this is where evidence and more would
be revealed and explored. And this is where we're going
to pick up next week because, as we said, there
is so much to talk about in this case. We
want to talk about the evidence, the discrepancies in this
(34:28):
very very bizarre case, and then we're going to go
through some of the popular theories as to what happened.
And for this.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Episode, we're actually going to forego our usual EMUA, which
is our call for hope and healing, which we typically
like to do at the end of each episode, but
since this is a two parter, we are going to
leave you hanging, so you'll get the EMUA next week,
but we will leave you with this whole question what
(35:02):
actually happened to John Bina Ramsey. That will be our
focus point for next episode.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
So until next time. That is our show for today.
We'd love to hear what you thought about today's discussion
and we're really curious to think what you all thought
about this case, So please find us on social media
or Facing Evil Pod, or email us at Facingevilpod at
tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Until next time.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Aloha.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
The show is hosted by Russia, pacquerero in a Vetchintil,
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
of iHeartRadio with Producersver Young and Jesse Funk, Donald albright
In Payne Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV,
(36:07):
alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Claudia Dafrico. Original
music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on social
media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(36:30):
favorite shows
You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of iHeartRadio and
Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
are solely those of the individuals participating in the show
and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV.
This podcast contains subject matter which may not be suitable
for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Facing Evil from Tenderfoot
TV and iHeartRadio. We are your hosts. I'm Rosha Pecerrero.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
And I am her amazing sister eveg and Tela. Yes,
you are.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Pat on the back for you.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
You guys. I think I'm like, you know, here in
San Francisco, we've been having a heat wave, which doesn't
happen often, so I feel like I'm going a little
goofy like with each stroke or the normal. Yeah, a
little bit more than normal, Rush Trevor.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
It's not great, though, I'm told it's worse in other
parts of the country right now, like the South and
parts of Texas and Georgia and places like that. It's
like been hitting the hundreds already.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
So oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Relatively speaking, I guess mild like we've been in the
eighties or so.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well, here in Portland, it's a heat wave for us
and it's only in the seventies. So putting the lesbian
in the closet to record this podcast is not very nice,
but whatever, It's fine.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
And Rush you're you are actually in a closet where
I am.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I'm actually in a closet recording this right, literally but
not figuratively, because we know I'm out loud and proud. Well,
with all of that being said, Trevor, can you take
us through today's case.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
Twenty five years since the death of charm beauty queen
John Beard Ramsey, police are still not closer to funding
hekila me, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Okay? The young web.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
This bizarre ransom note we have your daughter found inside
the family home in Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
I did not have anything to do with it. I
love that child with my whull of my heart and soul.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
John Benet Ramsay was a six year old child beauty
pageant competitor who was killed on Christmas of nineteen ninety six.
This became what was likely the biggest news story of
ninety six and ninety seven, and had since become one
of the most talked about and researched murder cases of
all time. The circumstances surrounding John Benay's death were mysterious.
(02:42):
John Beney lived with her parents and brother in Bolder, Colorado.
In the early morning hours of December twenty sixth her
parents called local police to say that she was missing.
They said someone had abducted her and left behind a
ransom note, But then later that morning, John Benney was
found strangled to death in the basement of their house.
(03:04):
Many thought that someone in the house was responsible and
that the note was just a fake to divert blame,
but others thought that because John Benet was so visible
as a child beauty pageant star, that some crazed fan
had broken in and killed her while they slept. However,
it was never solved. Her killer was never identified. There
(03:25):
was an attempt to investigate the family, but it never
went anywhere, and since then, true crime sleuths online have
famously dedicated countless hours to gathering additional information and exploring
multiple theories. And so, what actually happened to John Benney,
How was her life as a child beauty pageant star
(03:46):
a factor in her death? And why has the case
attracted so much attention in circles online and in pop culture.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I mean, to me, saying that this is a amous
case is really an understatement because this case right here
is probably this story was true crime before true crime
was a thing.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
This case permeated the media and was all over TV
newsstands at the time. You absolutely could not avoid it.
It was a huge, horrific, tragic, historical event. So why
that is, I mean, that's the question that we're here
to talk about today, right Like, why was everyone so obsessed?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah? And you know, I have to admit I was
a little bit skeptical of doing this case because, as
you just said, it's so overdone. It's such a huge
case and everybody knows about it. But for me, like
I really wanted to talk about it because when I
was sixteen and when I was twenty three, I was
(04:53):
in the pageant industry, so I was kind of obsessed,
you know when I heard it about this story of
this little girl, John Bennet, who's five years old, doing
pageant after pageant after pageant, and I know, for me,
it was hard, and I watched how mothers like were
(05:14):
obsessed with their children.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
So I don't think Mom was like that with you
per se right.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
No, Mom wasn't like that at all. But yeah, I guess,
you know, to put little girls in these beauty pageants
at that age, it just doesn't seem right to me.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
I have to tell a little story to you, right,
because you're saying it. You know, it's kind of weird,
you know, for five year olds or six year olds
or just little, tiny, little people being in these pageants.
When I was pregnant with our daughter, I would tease
Vanna all the time because Toddler's and Tiara's was huge,
you know, the reality TV show and it had all
these girls like John Bennet that were on these reality shows.
(05:53):
So I used to be like, hey, babe, you know,
if we have a girl, we're gonna put her, you know,
in all these pageants. And She's like, oh, hell no,
we will get divorced.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
Like yeah, she was nobody. No that is to the
to the L L L Yeah, nope.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
And I mean I think I look at this case differently,
becoming a mom. Like our child is now ten years old,
but back when this happened, I was a teenager. But
it's still captivated everybody and the biggest issue, especially doing
research for this case, that I feel that there is
just an overwhelming amount of misinformation out there and crazy
(06:32):
theories and just horrible takes on what actually happened to
little John Benet, and most of that, bystandard speculation, is
incredibly hurtful and disrespectful to the family. And I think,
you know, with Yvet and I, you know, being connected
to one of the most infamous unsolved murders in America, like,
we know how that can hurt, Like, we know how
(06:55):
misinformation happens, and it can just affect people.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
And I ramifications of that, Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I feel bad for the ramses, which we are going
to get more into. I think there's a lot of
well meaning people out there, but I think a lot
of times.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
It does a lot of harm. I mean, this case
still isn't solved.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah. I think part of that was, you know, around
this time, it was like late nineties and so Internet's
like just starting to be a thing, and I think
where we get a lot of misinformation these days is
through like unchecked sources on social media and the internet.
Back then, though, think about it, there wasn't really like
any checks and balances for like what was real, what
wasn't like it was kind of like the wild wild
(07:35):
West of the early internet days, you know, and so
like this was really like the first kind of test
case for like how people would like talk about something
like a true crime case in chat rooms, and so
we're completely unregulated and un checked for accuracy. So it's
not surprising to me that there is so much inaccuracy
(07:57):
and misinformation out there this case. I think a lot
of those like theories started back then and they've just
kind of like solidified over the years and have made
their way into things like murder Pedia and all these
things online now. So yeah, that certainly doesn't excuse the
issues that causes. It's just interesting to think about why
that is.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Yeah, I have to agree with you, But before we
get into it, I mean, I have to say that,
as we know, this is a super detailed case, right
compared to some of the other cases where we don't
have a whole lot of information, this one is I mean,
there's a ton of it out there. So what we're
going to do is we're going to have to split
this up into two parts. So this is going to
(08:36):
be part one and part two we're going to do
next week. So Trevor, let's get us started, and why
don't you tell us some of the background on the family.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, So about the Ramses. John Baney's parents were John
and Patsy Ramsey. Patsy herself was in fact a pageant girl.
She was actually crowned Miss West Virginia in nineteen seventy
and even participated in the Miss America competition shortly thereafter.
John and Patsy met in Atlanta in nineteen seventy nine,
(09:09):
and then they got married the following year. In nineteen eighty,
John had his own software company, which is how he
made money, and that was pretty lucrative enough so that
Patsy got to just stay at home and mostly focused
on volunteer work. They had their first son together, named Burke,
in nineteen eighty seven, and then John Benet Ramsey came
(09:29):
around three years later on August sixth, nineteen ninety. Then
in nineteen ninety one, the Ramses moved all the way
over to Boulder, Colorado, which is where most of the
story takes place. So in Boulder they bought this massive,
fifteen room kind of fake tutor style house which also
featured a basement with a wine cellar like pulled out
(09:50):
all the stops. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
And I was also reading in a Pupil magazine article
that they were notorious for lavish living. You know, obviously
we can tell that they have a lot of money.
So they had you know, neighbors and all sorts of
people coming in and out of the house like nannies
and cleaners and gardeners all the time, right, because, like
you said earlier, it's a big house.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, it was. It was like a big production to
run the house.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah right.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
I mean so that's already maybe a security risk because
they have people coming in and out so often. I
mean all of those people have access to the home,
they have keys. But also around nineteen ninety five, that's
when Patsy began signing John Beney up for child beauty pageants,
and little John Benet won a bunch of them. She
(10:39):
won Little Miss Colorado, America's Royal Miss, and National Tiny
Miss Beauty. I mean that's a lot, Like that's a
fact to fact, it's a lot. So anyhow, to my understanding,
it was Patsy's obsession having her daughter compete in these pageants,
so she always was hiring photographers, you know, and different
(11:03):
type of people coming in and out of the house,
and it really I mean, if you look closely at it,
it totally seems like Patsy was living or trying to
live vicariously through John Bennet.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Do you think that that's something you saw when you
were growing up in the pageant world, Like did you
see other mothers who were like kind of also vicariously
living through their daughters that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, I mean absolutely, because like I said, you know,
I was a teenager in one and then I was
twenty three in another, a young lady, and I would say,
and this is interesting, I saw more obsessed mothers in
the girls that were older. Oh really, Yeah, so I
(11:48):
saw it all. Yeah, and answer your question, Trevor, on
both ends of the spectrum, I saw mothers that were
you know, you could see them behind the stage, like
you know, doing the dance moves that you know they're
daughters were doing, whether it be a teenager or someone
who was twenty three. So yeah, it's a thing.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, And I think at least for us, like growing
up in Havaii, like I think the little Caky's, like
the little kids weren't so much involved in pageants like
John Benet was. I don't know if that came a
little bit later, you know, and then you know later
in the nineties. But needless to say, Patsy had John
Benay in everything. So when you're competing in pageants, you're
(12:29):
not only like competing for.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
You know, like little Miss Boulder or whatever.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Like there's so many photos and videos out there of
John Beney that are a little disturbing. I think that
would be the right shit.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
I would say, very not a little. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah, And there's even a video that I know, like
now we would say it went viral, but at the
time that that wasn't a thing. But everyone saw that
video of John Beney dancing around kind of being flirtatious
and super provocative. Like she's six, she doesn't know that
like that someone's telling her to do that, you know, five,
I should say, five years old. Yeah, And of course
(13:03):
we've seen dozens of photos of her in heavy makeup.
I mean, she looked like a beautiful little drag queen,
right well, she.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Looked like if you think about she looked like her mom.
How Patsy wore a lot of makeup, you know what
I mean, So like that's what she was portraying onto
her daughter.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, so I like to think that the sort of
thing has gone out of style a little bit, or
at least out of fashion in recent years, just because yes,
I don't see as much of this anymore. It feels
like the very nineties thing. But you know, hopefully maybe
cases like John Benet turned people off of this. I
don't know that, right. So, meanwhile, things were pretty tough
(13:42):
on the Ramsey parents in the early nineties. On January
eighth of nineteen ninety two, Elizabeth, who was one of
John's daughters from his first marriage, died in a car
accident in Chicago, and then his father also died that year.
In nineteen ninety two, and then the following year, in
nineteen ninety three, Patsy was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and
(14:03):
by that point it had actually spread to her lymph
notes so she underwent chemotherapy, which, as you can imagine,
caused hair loss, nausea, months of illness, and fatigue. She
was able to beat it, however, and her cancer did
go into he remission in nineteen ninety five, So that
was good news and it seemed like things were looking
up for the Ramses. But then the following year, on
(14:26):
Christmas of nineteen ninety six, things went very, very wrong,
and we'll talk about that right after we take a
quick break.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
So let's talk about when things started to go terribly wrong.
A couple of things happened leading up to Christmas of
that year. On December sixth, nineteen ninety six, John Benet
participated in the Lights of Christmas Parade in Boulder, where
she appeared on a little Miss Colorado Parade float and
(15:00):
John Bennie's grandmother was there and she actually would later
say that some creeper, some creepy man kept approaching the
float and it made her and everyone very uncomfortable. So
that's one thing, right, And you know, I've done my
share of parades, you know, all Pride parades, but you
definitely you can see the creepers out there. Then on
(15:23):
December seventeenth, John Benet won Little Miss Christmas at a
Denver child beauty pageant. So we just need to keep
those two little events in mind as we continue talking
about the details.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
And so on December twenty third, the Ramsays hosted a
Christmas party at their home with about thirty guests in attendance.
One weird thing is that a nine to one one
call was placed from their home around ten pm that night,
but it is later dismissed as a drunk guest making
the call. We don't have any record of that, so
(15:55):
hard to verify. It's just one of the things you'll
hear about online, right. Also important, there is a neighbor
by the name of Bill McReynolds who plays Santa Claus
at said party. And remember that name because Bill McReynolds
would initially become a suspect in John Beney's murder. Once again,
just hang on to them.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yes, yes, okay. So now it's Christmas Day and the
Ramses they go to a Christmas party hosted by their
family friend whose name is Fleet White, and they eventually
go home and John puts John, Benney and Burke to bed.
So at around ten pm they go in to check
(16:36):
on John Binney and they see that she's sound asleep,
and John claims that this is the last time that
he sees her alive, and then Patsy I guess she
goes to bed around ten thirty pm.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
And then a couple hours later, just after midnight on
what's now December twenty sixth neighbor Scott Gibbons reported seeing
a light on in the Ramsey kitchen, and at two am,
neighbor Melody Stanton allegedly heard a scream from the Ramsays home.
So again these are those nuggets, right. So her husband
(17:11):
said he then heard the sound of metal on concrete
sometime after she heard that scream. But it's important to
note that years later, Melody actually backtracked on those statements
on her own statements, stating she actually heard the noise
two nights prior, if at all. Which again, this is
kind of the start of all that misinformation when you
(17:34):
have witnesses recounting what they say.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
So, then at five thirty am that morning, John supposedly
wakes up. The family was actually scheduled to fly to Charlevoi, Michigan,
for a vacation later that day, so John's getting ready,
and then Patsy supposedly wakes up very shortly after John,
at roughly five point forty five am. Patsy heads downstairs
to the kitchen and she sees a note on the
(17:58):
backstairs leading to the kitchen. She picks it up and
realizes it's a handwritten ransom note. And here's what part
of the note said quote, you will withdraw one hundred
and eighteen thousand dollars from your account. One hundred thousand
will be in one hundred dollar bills and the remaining
eighteen thousand and twenty dollars bills end quote. So strangely enough,
(18:20):
that was the exact amount of John's Christmas bonus, that
one hundred and eighteen thousand dollars. The note also said
not to call police or they would harm jumpin a
in some way.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
This is the most bizarre ransom note like ever and
it was really long. It's really long, and you know
the way that they ended it signed Victory and the
initials SBTC. It doesn't make any sense. Like if I'm
thinking about this and they want one hundred dollars bills
(18:52):
and then they want eighteen thousand and twenty dollars, like
to me that that's weird. That's like someone who doesn't
have a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
To ask for hundreds and twenties. And it's also odd
that it's the exact number that John just got us
a you know, holiday bonus.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Right, So of course your mind goes to, like, okay, well,
it's obviously somebody that John worked with, right, or somebody
close to them that knew that he was getting this
exact amount. Also, Patsy reportedly screamed and ran up to
John Bennet's room, which was empty. She and John went
to check on their son Burke, and they claimed that
(19:30):
he was still asleep in bed. But at roughly five
fifty two am, Patsy called nine to one one, totally
ignoring the notes instructions not to call the police.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Here's a clip from that recording of that call. Poe's Street.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
What's going on?
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Them were kidding up to me? What's going on? Okay
from west and don't.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
How old is your home? How long ago was?
Speaker 4 (20:12):
I don't know? I took help them bunk.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
So between five point fifty two and five fifty nine am,
we know that Patsy calls family friends Fleet and Priscilla White,
and also John and Barbara Fernie. So at six am,
Boulder Police officers Karl Weitch and Rick French arrive at
the Ramsay home, and Detective Linda Aren't arrived shortly after them.
(20:35):
So Officer French was the first to search the home,
and he apparently paused by the very door that John
Bennet was later found behind, but he didn't end up
opening it.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
So here's something about that from the police report. French
said that he didn't check that door to the basement
because he was looking for other doors that a supposed
kidnapper most likely would have used. He also noted that
the door latch was on the wrong side for any
door that might lead outside, so he just went ahead
and walked right past it.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
And then when Detective Linda Aren't arrived, she reportedly failed
to secure the crime scene. And this I think is
a huge, huge mistake I think that she made. And
at ten thirty am, John Ramsey went missing for at
least an hour, and he was supposedly leaving the house
(21:26):
to pick up mail, but that was later determined that
this could not have been true because the family's mail
was delivered through a slot in the front door. However,
as a devil's advocate, I will say it was the
day after Christmas. Maybe he was going to pick up
a package at the post office. I don't know, but
leads to say where where are you, dude?
Speaker 1 (21:44):
It's a long time to disappear.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, that doesn't make sense. Yeah, okay, so get this
at one pm, Detective Aren't tells John Ramsey and his
friend Fleet White, who is not a police officer. Neither
of them are yeah, to do a top to bottom
search of the house like what. So then five minutes later,
(22:06):
John and Fleet they opened the door to the wine
cellar in the basement and they find John Benney's body.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah. So two weird things for me, obviously. One thing
is that it takes them so long to find the
body in a pretty like well traveled part of the
house I feel like, which is a wine cellar. The
other weird thing is of course that they like let
John Ramsey a freely roam around but be like find
the body. Yeah. It's almost like if you answered a
(22:37):
like domestic abuse call, like a ninety one one call,
and you show up and like the person's girlfriend is
either like hurt or killed, you don't just like let
that guy, like the boyfriend or whoever, like roam around
or maybe even go like help find the girlfriend that
you know he's possibly it's.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
A crime scene. Yeah, this is not a game. It's
this is a real life crime scene.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
So John and Fleet White they find John Bennet and
when they find her, her mouth is covered in duct
tape and her head is bludgeoned, and it looked like
she had also been strangled with a garat, which is
basically like a wire or a cord that you used
to choke people out. So John reportedly ripped off the
(23:21):
duct tape and he grabs her. He carries her upstairs
and he sets her down on the floor in front
of everybody, so it's not exactly clear why, but Detective
Aren't then picked up the body once again and moved
it to the living room and set it down near
the Christmas tree. And then Patsy, who's apparently too stunned
to hold herself up or even walk, kind of stumbles
(23:42):
over as friends like help her and carry her to
the body, and the police reports say that she then
throws herself also on top of John Bennet's body and
is sobbing over the body. So what we're seeing here
is a lot of potential contamination of evidense of John
Benny's body of the scene. I mean, things have been
(24:03):
moved around so much. The body's been touched and handled
by so many people already, and nobody's even examined it.
So that's a huge problem.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
But that just goes to show that that particular detective,
like she was in charge, she was the first one
on the scene. Like you don't have you know, normal people,
civilian so to speak, go in and do your work.
That just doesn't make sense. I mean, I do understand
the emotion of Patsy throwing herself over John Bennet, because
(24:31):
that is you know, that's her child, still like they
should have left her, you know where she was, Yeah,
being a mom. It makes me sick to think about it.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Yeah, And I guess the last thing I'll say about
that is, you know a lot of people talk about
why this case hasn't been solved, and there are a
lot of things you can attribute to it, but I
think this moment right here is probably like number one.
Why we don't have much is because so much of
what we could have gleaned from this crime scene, it's
just like immediately ruined.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Completely contaminated. Yeah. Well, a few more crazy things happen
that day that are that we have to point out
these these little nuggets. At one pm, John Ramsey called
his pilot about their personal plane and he allegedly asked
the pilot to prepare the plane for the family to
(25:24):
go to Atlanta, but law enforcement put the kabash on
that and instructed the family not to leave town for
good reason. And so foot you right, and so the
Ramseys he the request and they end up going to
stay at a friend's house because their home is now
a crime scene.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Right, and they should not be leaving.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, there's a lot of things that shouldn't have happened
that day, Yeah they did.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Okay. So it's two thirty and the authorities are interviewing
little Burke now and he's saying that he slept through
the night and he doesn't recall anything. He didn't hear anything,
you didn't see anything. At ten forty five, John Bennet's
body was removed from the ramseys home and Detective Arnt.
(26:09):
We go back to Detective Art, who let everybody walk
around the house. Is the last to leave the house.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Of course, that's not really the end of this case,
but we do need to take another break, so we'll
talk about some of the things that came to light
after we come back.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Okay, So let's pick it back up on December twenty eighth.
So that day, the Ramseys go to the Boulder Police
station and Patsy, John, and Burke all give their hair,
blood and handwriting samples to the Bolder police. The next day,
the Ramses all fly to Atlanta, and on New Year's
(26:50):
Eve they hold John Benay's funeral in Marrietta, Georgia, with
over two hundred friends and family in attendance. John Benay
is laid to rest next to her half sister and
John's daughter, Elizabeth, who died in a car wreck in
nineteen ninety two. On January first, nineteen ninety seven, John
(27:11):
and Patsy did an interview for CNN, which I vividly remember.
Here's a short clip for us to listen to.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
When you return the Boulder, you will sit down with
the Bolder bullies. Absolutely absolutely. We want them to know
everything possible.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Everything to help them ever they want, whatever anyone wants,
we will collaborate. So throughout the interview, Patsy kept putting
forth the idea that a home invader was responsible for
the killing. She kept saying things like a killer is
on the loose, and she kept saying people in Boulder
(27:52):
should lock up their homes tight. I do remember her
repeating those two things several times in the interview.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
So, then the next day, on January second, a team
of investigators from Boulder fly to Atlanta to again question
the Ramseys, and apparently understandably, the investigators were very shocked
to see that the Ramseys went on TV to talk
about this, because a couple days earlier, they had claimed
to be too upset, too emotional to even talk to
(28:22):
the police about it, Like they were completely locked up,
you know, when police tried to talk to them, And
here they are, you know, maybe a week later, fully
opening up about it to the whole country, the whole world.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I wonder if the attorney told them to do it
to save face or something.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Possibly, right, Well, maybe the other thing is, like, you know,
they didn't want to talk to police, maybe they were
like faking being upset. Like the fact that they would
not be that upset a week later, only a week later, Yeah,
signifies that maybe they weren't actually that upset, or that
they're not as upset as they were leading on to
police earlier. So I don't know. But then on January third,
(28:58):
the Ramseys returned to Bolder Color and that same day,
investigators revealed that the ransom note was written on stationary
from within their own house.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Oh shit, right, So I mean, so of course the
investigators are now wondering, like, Okay, did the parents actually
write the note? Right right? Did they? Or did they not?
That is the question. So two months later, on March seventh,
they have an expert handwriting analysis revealed that John could
(29:33):
not have written this particular ransom note, but Patsy has
not been ruled out, so we still don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Yeah, well either way. The next day, on March eighth,
investigators traveled to the Ramsey's vacation home in Michigan, and
there they try and find some unrehearsed writing samples that
they can use for more handwriting analysis. So the idea
there being that you know, you can fake your handwriting
if you're like under pressure, Like if you know cops
(30:04):
are trying to like check your handwriting, maybe you could
like do it differently to throw them off, right right right? Yeah,
maybe they would find again unrehearsed samples at this other house.
So then on April nineteenth, the Boulder District Attorney officially
named John and Patsy Ramsey as the prime suspects in
John Benney's murder. So they are really honing in now
(30:26):
on the parents as having done this.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
But apparently this does not phase the Ramses at all.
On April twenty seventh, they actually ran an ad in
the Daily Camera offering a reward of one hundred thousand
dollars for any information that can help with the investigation.
And on May second, the Ramsees finally address the accusations
against them in an interview with local news station News nine.
(30:50):
So we don't have the audio, but John said quote,
I did not kill my daughter. I will miss her
dearly for the rest of my life end quote, and
Patsy simply said, quote, I did not kill John Beney
end quote. The couple insisted the supposed killer would be found,
with Patsy saying quote, God knows who you are and
(31:11):
we will find you.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
So on July tenth, the Ramses purchased a new home
in Atlanta, and they actually ended up buying a home
not far from where John Beney was buried, and that's
in Marietta, so obviously they wanted to be close to
their little girl, right, So.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Real quick, let's talk about the autopsy. On July fourteenth
of nineteen ninety eight, John Beney's official autopsy report was unsealed,
and so the autopsy confirmed a deep ligature around the
victim's neck and another around the right wrist. There was
also evidence that she had been bound and strangled, and
it also says that blood and abrasions were found in
(31:53):
the girl's vaginal area, which is important. Also, she was
struck in the head violently enough to cause bleeding, and
there was an eight and a half inch fracture to
her skull, so this suggests she died by asphyxiation technically,
but she was also bludgeoned and possibly sexually assaulted.
Speaker 3 (32:10):
And I thought this detail was very weird because it
also turns out that that handle of that particular weapon
that was used to kill John Bennet, it was made
from one of the handles of Patsy's paint brushes, So
you know, this is the thing. Is somebody trying to
frame them or did they really do it right?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I don't know, but all my insides are all wrapped
in knots. Like Trevor, I I'm thankful that you can
read through that without like pausing, because I just knowing
what was done to little John Beney just breaks my heart.
So months go by without any you know, developments, But
on January fifteenth, nineteen ninety eight, the Ramses announced that
(32:56):
they were not going to cooperate anymore. They refused to
give any further interviews to the police until they themselves
were allowed to review the evidence again. Our March twelfth,
which is now fifteen months since the murder of little
John Benet, a grand jury is called, and by this
point the police investigation has not garnered enough evidence to
(33:17):
successfully convict anyone.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Right, so the date of the grand jury is set
for September fifteenth of nineteen ninety eight. But before that happens,
something else comes to light. On August twentieth, police realized
that Burke, who is John Benet's brother, can actually be
heard in the background of Patsy's initial nine to one
(33:41):
one call. So originally the Ramses had said that Burke
was asleep that morning when everything went down when they
were searching for John Benet, and that he didn't even
wake up until after the police showed up. But police
were able to enhance the audio of that nine to
one one call, and then they were a to pick
up Burke's voice supposedly in the background of the call.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
And so just one month later, the grand jury would
finally begin. And this is where evidence and more would
be revealed and explored. And this is where we're going
to pick up next week because, as we said, there
is so much to talk about in this case. We
want to talk about the evidence, the discrepancies in this
(34:28):
very very bizarre case, and then we're going to go
through some of the popular theories as to what happened.
And for this.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Episode, we're actually going to forego our usual EMUA, which
is our call for hope and healing, which we typically
like to do at the end of each episode, but
since this is a two parter, we are going to
leave you hanging, so you'll get the EMUA next week,
but we will leave you with this whole question what
(35:02):
actually happened to John Bina Ramsey. That will be our
focus point for next episode.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
So until next time. That is our show for today.
We'd love to hear what you thought about today's discussion
and we're really curious to think what you all thought
about this case, So please find us on social media
or Facing Evil Pod, or email us at Facingevilpod at
tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Until next time.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Aloha.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
The show is hosted by Russia, pacquerero in a Vetchintil,
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
of iHeartRadio with Producersver Young and Jesse Funk, Donald albright
In Payne Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV,
(36:07):
alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Claudia Dafrico. Original
music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on social
media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(36:30):
favorite shows
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