The brother of slain Colorado beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey refused to talk to Netflix about his sister’s brutal murder in 1996 after he became a suspect in her murder at the age of nine.
The new Netflix docuseries ‘Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey’ investigates the unsolved murder of six-year-old beauty pageant princess who was found brutally beaten and strangled to death in the basement of her family Boulder, Colorado home, on December 26, 1996.
The case is one of the highest-profile mysteries in the US, with several theorists and sleuths being led to believe that her parents Patsy and John and older brother Burke may have had something to do with her death.
And while a bereaved John appears in the documentary, Burke is notably absent from the film.
A card at the end of the third and final episode says: ‘Citing his treatment by the media and online websleuths, Burke Ramsey declined our request for an interview’.
Speaking to TODAY, the film’s director Joe Berlinger said that ‘we didn’t want to pressure Burke and he didn’t want to talk to us, and he just didn’t want to participate. So we respected that’.
JonBenet, who was crowned Little Miss Colorado, was first reported missing after her family found a ransom note demanding $118,000 for the child’s return.
Her body was later found in the family’s basement and her death was ruled a homicide, but nobody was ever prosecuted and the case remains cold.
The brother of slain Colorado beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey refused to talk to Netflix about his sister’s brutal murder in 1996 after he became a suspect in her murder. Image shows JonBenet Ramsey (left) with her mother Patsy (center) and her older brother Burke (right) in 1993
Burke Ramsey is seen in a 2016 interview on Dr. Phil
JonBenet was found murdered in the basement of her family Boulder, Colorado home, on December 26, 1996
The district attorney at the time of JonBenet’s death said her parents were ‘under an umbrella of suspicion’ early on, as well as their son Burke, who was just nine at the time of her death.
Theorists believed that Burke might have killed his sister accidentally in a moment of rage, and his parents covered it up.
In 1998, a grand jury was convened and Burke was interviewed by police.
Jurors spent months analyzing evidence, but in 1999 the district attorney’s office determined there was not ‘sufficient evidence’ to bring any charges.
Burke, who was 12 at the time, was ruled out as a suspect that same year.
In 2006, Patsy died of ovarian cancer, and in 2008, tests on newly discovered DNA on the girl’s clothing pointed to the involvement of an ‘unexplained third party’ in her killing, and not her parents or brother.
That led former district attorney Mary Lacy to clear the Ramseys of any involvement, calling the couple ‘victims of this crime’.
At the time, Burke told KUSA-TV: ‘Certainly we are grateful that they acknowledged that we, based on that, certainly could not have been involved.’
The case is one of the highest-profile mysteries in the US, and remains a cold case
John and Patsy Ramsey, the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, meet with a small selected group of the local Colorado media after four months of silence in Boulder, Colorado on May 1, 1997. The couple were suspected of being involved in the murder of their daughter, but were later cleared due to DNA evidence
The site where 6 year old Jonbenet Ramsey was killed in Boulder, Colorado, 1996
The Ramsey family pictured together in December 1993
Theorists also believed that Burke might have killed his sister accidentally in a moment of rage, and his parents covered it up
‘But the most important thing is that we now have very, very solid evidence — and that’s always been my hope, at least in the recent past — that would lead us to the killer eventually.’
A decade later, Burke appeared on Dr Phil for his first public sit-down interview since his sister’s horrific murder.
He said he had chosen to speak out to ‘honor her memory by doing this interview’.
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Burke also spoke with the host about the rumors surrounding his and his parents’ involvement in his sister’s murder.
‘It blows my mind. What more evidence do you need that we didn’t do it?’, he said.
‘You won’t find any evidence because that’s not what happened’.
He also told Dr Phil how he suspected she was killed by a pedophile who stalked beauty pageants.
That same year, Burke sued CBS after it aired a two-part documentary in 2016 for the 20th anniversary of JonBenet’s death.
In the film, a panel of experts said it had formed the opinion that Burke struck JonBenet in the head with a heavy object and believed that John and Patsy then staged the crime scene to make it appear an intruder was the culprit.
Burke then sued CBS, the company that produced the documentary, and the experts who re-examined the case, seeking $250 million in compensatory damages and $500 million in punitive damages.
In 2019, the case was settled but terms were not disclosed.