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'I PUT A TARGET ON OUR BACKS'
JonBenét Ramsey’s dad reveals regret over ‘boastful’ story published 5 days before murder which he fears enticed killer
JONBENÉT Ramsey's father fears he may have put a target on his family's back by bragging about the success of his company in a newspaper article published just days before his daughter's murder.
John Ramsey, now 79, was a high-flying businessman in the tech world back in the early '90s, having started a computer firm in the 1980s that would go on to become a billion-dollar company.
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His company, Access Graphics, was purchased by Lockheed Martin in 1991, and Ramsey became its president and chief executive.
By 1996, John's net worth was estimated to be around $6.4million, and his company appeared to be going from strength to strength.
So much so, that on December 21 of that year, an article appeared in the local newspaper, The Boulder Daily Camera, titled "Access Celebrates the $1 Billion Mark", to celebrate the company surpassing $1billion in revenue.
"A billion bucks. That's enough to make anybody celebrate," began the puff piece, written by Tom Locke.
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This story is part of an ongoing series of stories with John Ramsey for The U.S. Sun.
"So when Boulder-based computer distributor Access Graphics Inc. passed the $1 billion mark in 1996 revenues, it tossed a luncheon party at the Hotel Boulderado on Friday.
"A Dixieland jazz band made the rounds at Access' Boulder offices Friday morning to announce the celebration and later played at the Boulderado.
"John Ramsey, president of Access Graphics, thanked about 300 employees at the gathering and told them it couldn't have happened without them. The $1 billion in sales is about a 25 percent increase over the $800 million the company posted last year, and Ramsey foresees continued growth.
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"The next major milestone party, when the company reaches $2 billion in revenues, will come 'before the end of the decade, that's for sure,' he predicted."
Within five days of the article being published in the Daily Camera, tragedy struck.
John Ramsey and his wife Patsy woke up early on the morning of December 26, 1996, as the family had been due to travel out of the state for a vacation.
John was shaving in the bathroom when he heard Patsy let out a guttural scream from elsewhere in the home.
She had just found a ransom note on a back staircase, addressed to John and purported to have been written by a "foreign faction", that said JonBenét had been kidnapped, and a sum of $118,000 cash would be required to guarantee her safe return.
The oddly specific sum was almost identical to a deferred bonus acquired by John earlier that year.
In a state of shock and wracked with worry, John said that although the ransom note didn't make much sense to him at the time, he wasn't analyzing it in the moment and instead focused on securing the cash.
The purported kidnappers never contacted the Ramseys again, despite promising to call John "tomorrow" at 10am in the rambling, two-and-a-half page note.
JonBenét was later found dead by John in the basement of the family's Boulder, Colorado home some seven hours after the letter was discovered.
Her hands had been tied above her head and duct tape placed over her mouth. Her official cause of death was ruled to be asphyxia, in addition to a skull fracture.
Precisely what happened to the six-year-old beauty queen and why remains one of America's most enduring mysteries 26 years on.
For John, he believes his daughter was killed specifically to hurt him, perhaps by an aggrieved former colleague or someone who simply took a dislike to him and what he stood for.
And he fears the boastful article published in the Daily Camera may have been the final straw.
"That [article] was a huge mistake," reflected John, in an exclusive sit-down interview with The U.S. Sun.
"Our company had just crossed a threshold of sales and our PR person said they would call the newspaper and get publicity.
"I had a gut feeling it wasn't a good idea. You should always really listen to your gut feeling, but I didn't because I thought it would be nice for our employees and so that they could be proud of their company.
"And in this element of pride on my part, I wanted my neighbors to know, which is why pride is a bad idea and dangerous."
John believes there's a possibility the article, and its braggadocious nature, put a target on his family's back.
"Now did that attract attention to my family?" he asked.
"Possibly [...] I always look back and regret doing that."
BEING WATCHED
John believes his family may have been under surveillance for several weeks or even months preceding JonBenét's murder.
The haphazardly-written ransom note found by Patsy moments before she reported JonBenét missing bolsters his belief.
"I just know that they had us under surveillance," said John of his daughter's killer.
"The one point that really caught my attention was the ransom note that was left on the back stairway on the second floor.
"We used that stairway 95 percent of the time, even though there was a main stairway - a more normal stairway.
"Why wouldn't they have left it there?
"If you didn't know our patterns, you wouldn't assume that we would come down that spiral staircase. So that was always an issue to be thought about."
The ransom note has long been the centerpiece of the JonBenét mystery.
For years, suspicions lingered that Patsy had authored the note.
Both John and Patsy voluntarily supplied handwriting samples to police and neither was found to be a match.
John believes whoever wrote the note had been inside his home before, either by invitation or by breaking in while the family was out of town.
He also believes they were inside for several hours before they returned home on Christmas night, giving them ample time to write the ransom note and prepare for the attack.
John said it's his belief that JonBenét's attacker targeted her and plotted to kidnap her for some time. He also thinks that she was killed during a kidnapping gone wrong.
We spent quite a lot of time with John Douglas, who set up the FBI profiling program," said John.
"And after he really studied the case, he said, 'This is not about JonBenét, this is someone who is angry at you, very angry at you, John, or very jealous of you.'
"I said I can't imagine that I could've made anyone that mad or angry at me, and he told me I might not even know them. They might just not like who I am."
John Douglas and another investigator, Lou Smit, both told the Ramseys they believe the letter was written before JonBenét's death.
"Anyone who had committed this could not have then sat down and written a three-page ransom note out," John Ramsey said of the investigators' opinions.
"Their emotions would be intense and he said this was written before the murder.
"Whether or not it was supposed to end in a murder or sexual assault I don't know, but the note was written before the event."
PILLAR TO PARIAH
In the months after JonBenét's murder, as suspicions towards John and Patsy began to mount, the couple, who were once considered pillars of the local Boulder community became pariahs.
John eventually lost his job at the helm of Access Graphics and his wealth plunged after spending much of his life savings defending his reputation after accusations of involvement in his daughter's death continued to be leveled against him and Patsy.
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John said he used to tell friends that his daughter's killer prevented him a desire to live for a while because the pain of losing JonBenét was so profound.
The police, meanwhile, prevented him from living, he says, because he'd lost his job and his entire life savings because of the suspicion they treated him with - forever tarnishing his reputation.
"They eliminated my ability to go on and live," John said of the police.
"They prevented me from going on and living my life."
John and Patsy Ramsey were both exonerated of any wrongdoing by the DA's office in 2008 - two years after Patsy died from ovarian cancer.
JonBenét's older brother Burke, who was nine at the time of the murder, was never formally considered a suspect despite rampant speculation.
Having just turned 79, John is worried that he's running out of time to get answers about who killed JonBenét.
He is once again campaigning to have the case removed from the jurisdiction of Boulder PD so that fresh eyes can look over the case and better resources applied to the investigation before time for him runs out.
He also recently appealed to the Governor of Colorado Jared Polis to instruct BPD to release any DNA evidence they have to a state-of-the-art genealogy lab.
Citing the success genealogy DNA has had in cracking other once decades-old cold cases - such as the Golden State Killer - John believes this is the best and potentially only way to once-and-for-all identify the assailant.
But for years, Boulder PD has been reluctant to involve outside agencies in its probe into JonBenét's murder.
The department has previously said it has been in discussions with private DNA labs and pledged to consult with the Colorado Cold Case Review Team in 2023.
However, for John, BPD is not going far enough - and he believes there may be a more troubling reason to explain why the department is seemingly unwilling to accept outside help: they may have lost or misplaced key evidence.
GLARING PARALLELS
The murder of JonBenét Ramsey remains one the most famous cold cases in US history.
John is urging investigators to take a look at an attack on another young girl that happened in Boulder months after his daughter's murder, which he believes could be connected.
The existence of the attack was unearthed by The U.S. Sun in an exclusive report last month.
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To read more about that report, click here.
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