The JonBenet Ramsey Mystery has been all over the news for years, continuing to spark my interest, but I have never formed my own beliefs on the case, until now.
I have no doubts that the team of investigators that created the documentary are extremely qualified for the job, but I find it very upsetting that the case was re-investigated twenty years later and that the investigation team accused JonBenet’s brother, Burke, of killing her. From the part of the video watched in class, it was made clear that the police had cleared Burke of even being a suspect of the murder a couple months after the event happened. I myself find it hard to believe that Burke, being 9 years old at the time, had the capability to torture and murder his sister. He had no mental health issues, no criminal records as he grew up, and no signs of educational barriers. Even though I do not believe Burke was the murdered in this, the re-investigated case evidence did convince me that perhaps, the murder was intentional.
Because the case was re-investigated twenty years later, there was opportunity to use more high-tech devices to crack the mystery; one of those being the device used to try and enhance the 6 seconds of inaudible noise at the end of the 911 call made by JonBenet’s mother, Patsy. These next couple of quotes are what the investigators believe was said by John (father), Patsy, and Burke respectively.
“We are not speaking to you.”
“Oh, Jesus.” or “Holy, Jesus.” or “What did you do? Help me, Jesus.”
“What did you find.”
All of these are very haunting, but with such enhancements, quotes like these are bound to get a little out of context. The investigators found it strange that Patsy would even hang up the phone with one investigator saying, “The moment you hang up the phone, is the moment you give up hope.” For most 911 calls, the speaker stays on the phone in hopes to not lose the help.
The team of investigators also interviewed the dispatcher of the 911 call, Kim Archuleta. This was first time anyone had asked for her opinion on the case, and she was very emotional during the interview. Archuleta said that she had a “sunken feeling that something was not right” after the call had been disconnected. According to her, the conversation she had with Patsy seemed rehearsed, and when Patsy thought the call was disconnected (6 seconds of inaudible noise), Archuleta heard the tone in her voice change. Archuleta thought that she heard 2-3 different voices during this time and what she thought was Patsy saying, “We’ve called the police, now what?”
My question is why had no one thought to interview Archuleta during the first investigations; her evidence would have been more influential to the case not being twenty years down the road.
The next part of the investigation covered was the ransom note, heavily discussed by investigator, James Fitzgerald a linguistics expert. The quote that caught my attention the most was Fitzgerald saying “the whole thing [ransom note] could have been done in four lines.” This leads me to believe that whoever wrote the note was trying to hard make it seem real. The investigators also pointed out that the note had direct quotes taken from movies, and it was known that the Ramsey family had a high interest in movies with their collection of different memorabilia. Fitzgerald also pointed out the purposeful mistakes in language in the letter that make it easy to conclude that whoever wrote the letter was trying to disguise themselves as someone who was uneducated and possibly foreign. According to Fitzgerald, the note was also way to specific for a common ransom note. The investigators concluded that the note had writing linguistics of a well-educated thirty-year-old female.
With the parts of the case watched in class (the 911 call, the dispatcher interview, and the ransom note), I definitely made some of my own conclusions but I am still left with more questions. Could the Ramsey’s have written the ransom note? Why didn’t anyone interview the dispatcher (Archuleta) and why didn’t she come forward? Can investigators really use the enhancement on the call as evidence?
With the JonBenet case being the first one our class dived into, I am excited to see what the rest of the semester has in store for me.
Journalism & Law 