I think anyone who has suffered the loss of a child knows that there’s just a lot of time spent with family and friends and clergy people we lost our daughter that’s the worst possible thing that could have happened to us anything that has happened in the aftermath pales by
Comparison we feel like there are at least two people on the face of this Earth that know who who did this and that is the Killer and someone that that person may have confided in welcome to episode three of the killing of John Benet Ramsey the final suspects I’m your host Danielle
Robe last time we heard how 23 years after the broken and abused body of six-year-old John B Ramy was discovered by her father in the basement of their Boulder Colorado Home the identity of for murder still baffles Law Enforcement Officers bottom line there’s still a killer out
There but also how armed with a list of remaining suspects from lead detective L SMI a new team of investigators journalists and private citizens are doing what the Boulder Police Department has yet to be able to do put aside any agenda other than finding answers for
The ramies it is this spreadsheet and a short list of 10 suspects that is now forming the basis of our new investigation Dylan Howard Doug lini Jameson and their team along with John and John Andrew Ramsey are determined to pick up what detective L Smith could not Finish it used to be when I’d wake up in the morning I had to get up quick because I’d lay in bed start thinking that was tough to start your day that way but I get reminded you know I have pictures of John Benet and Beth my other
Daughter on one desk and okay sometimes I look at that it makes me both happy and sad well you know for so long I think my father’s kind of bore the brunt of working with the media and putting himself out there and he’s gone to tremendous links to really to protect us
Kids so that we can have a semblance of a normal life um at the same time I’ve got vested interest in this um I’ve got young children myself um you know my life has been affected by this murder and you know I want the truth and that’s
Why I’m doing this I don’t have any aspirations to uh be ar just getting to the truth and this is this is a means to an end as I see it you know we were naive I mean py came from a small town in West Virginia I was born and raised
In Lincoln Nebraska we thought the world was a nice Place John Andrew along with sisters Elizabeth and Melinda lived with their mother in Atlanta their parents had divorced in 1978 and John married py in 1980 Burk Ramsey was born in 1987 and John Benet 3 years later even after John and paty’s moved to Boulder all the children remained close this is John
Andrew my dad’s company had merged with two others and the headquarters was in Boulder and then once uh access Graphics was sold to locky Martin my dad was promoted to you know CEO president and of course at that point made the move to full-time and Boulder but um you know
Coming from Atlanta Boulder was it was kind of a novelty right I mean I tell the story of going out there as a as a seventh grader with me and a buddy and we we had our bikes and we could ride our bikes everywhere I mean this was
Unthinkable in you know the sprawl of Atlanta you could walk to places is uh it was kind of this quaint small town or so we thought we didn’t pay attention to keeping our doors locked we thought we lived in a nice safe Community you know one of the things the police asked me
Early on do you know anybody that could have done this and I said I don’t know anybody that’s evil this is an evil horrible thing that a human being did to a child I don’t know anybody I’ve never met anybody that’s that evil John Andrew remembers John Benet
Some 14 years his Junior as a boisterous funloving kid yeah I mean I’m not going to say we were best buddies or anything but um as I remember her being really a tomboy I mean she had this older brother Burke who had a bunch of you know neighborhood
Buddies that played baseball and you know whatever Sports of the day and she just kind of hung out with them and I really saw her as as a tomboy but yeah she was a sweet fun kid I I think the some of this has been trumped up and really portrayed as this overwhelming
Personality but I guess I don’t remember that and I think of her as just a genuine sweet kid one of the things that I regret big time obviously is that we didn’t take our home security more seriously we thought we lived in a very peaceful Aussie and Harriet type of community our
House had an alarm system in the house we bought it but it was one that put out this exu iting noise and the theory behind that type of system was it drives you nuts and if somebody’s an intruder he just wants to get out of the house
Cuz his eard drums are breaking and so we never used it John B set it off once just punching buttons and it was horrible she said it makes my ears loud yeah that’s the idea so we never used it because it was a horrible system but on the morning after Christmas 1996 everything
Changed our plan that morning of the 26 was to get up early fly to Minneapolis meet John and my daughter Melinda and then go on up to Northern Michigan for like a second Christmas with the older kids and then they were going to go back
Home and we were going to take John B and work on a Disney cruise so it was the day after Christmas and I had spent Christmas with my sister Melinda and mother in Atlanta and day after Christmas we were flying to meet my dad and py and family
Ultimately we’re going to go to charl Michigan at the time we had a home uh but the plan was to meet Minneapolis so we were flying to Minneapolis uh got off the airplane and I can’t remember if someone handed me a note you know a flight attendant or
Somebody I think they pulled me aside and said you need to call call home essentially got a pay phone and and called my dad and he told me that J had been kidnapped and I think he I essentially we just made the split-second decision to fly to Denver at that
Point after py discovered the ransom note claiming John Benet had been kidnapped she called 911 the police responded and so began the initial agonizing wait for the family well I I describe the feeling to people it’s like when you’re in in a shopping center and you’ve got your
Small child with you and you’re looking through clothing and and you look around and they’re gone and you have this just just hit in the gut like my God where’s where where did she go where did he go and you start frantically looking and then you find them over in
The next aisle somewhere you know minutes later well I had that Panic hitting the gut feeling all morning what do I what have I got to do to get her back it’s cold out there it’s dark and I got to do whatever I’m capable of doing that’s what we call the
Police immediately obviously to get her back that was my whole Focus what up and I was but I was helpless I didn’t know what to do you know I was thinking we need to block the roads we need to get police at the airport I but the cops are
Here they know what they’re doing I you know I don’t know I don’t know what should be done but in retrospect they didn’t have a clue what they were doing and I should have I should have I don’t know how I would have escalated it but I should
Have called a friend in the governor’s office I should have done something to say look we got a major problem I need help call out the National Guard I don’t know but but I thought it would the kidnapp call you tomorrow at 10:00 and I didn’t know if tomorrow was
Tomorrow or the day we were in so at 10:00 came and went and and the police thought it was suspicious that didn’t fall to pieces when they didn’t call at 10: but I didn’t know if he met tomorrow at 10: plan my God if I got to wait 24
Hours so I didn’t know but the police observed that I didn’t let 10:00 come and go and I didn’t Crash and Burn as suspicious I was going to the mail and they thought that was bizarre I was looking for another communication from the kidnapper anything I was looking out the window
Looking is there anybody watching watch ing the house I was trying to do whatever I could to get my daughter back and I think the police watched too much grade C crime movies I should have been over tearing my hair out and ripping my clothes off and crying I was
Father I want to get her back what can I do you know this isn’t over when I lost my daughter Beth she was killed in a car accident I got a call my brother and said Beth is dead I couldn’t do anything I couldn’t get the best doctors for her
I couldn’t fly to her it was over this wasn’t over in my mind that morning I could do something to get my daughter back but I wasn’t sure what to Do finally at 1: p.m. one of the police officers detective Linda art asked John to have another look around the house to check if anything seemed to miss and then you find your daughter which is I can’t even imagine I can’t well it was it was at first a releas oh
My God I found her it was a just a flood of thankfulness and then I pretty quickly realized that she wasn’t alive and I just screamed and carried her upstairs and I didn’t you know I don’t know as John Andrew tells Doug lini he and sister Melinda arrived in Boulder to
A scene of horror so we I can’t exactly remember but somehow we got on an airplane to to Denver uh and and flew there um and arrived took a taxi cab from the the airport and arrived right as just after they had found the body they were
Walking out of the house so it’s was quite a quite a scene it had to be a very difficult flight for you yeah absolutely um and I remember being um scared too I didn’t know who had done this against our family and as I remember it we were getting out of the
Cab and Dad and py were coming out of the house presumably they just found Jan’s body and we were ushered into a car essentially or van my dad said to the fact that Shaman’s been is in heaven or been killed I mean py was just devastated I mean on the floor just
Devastated the police were there of course and uh I the thing I can remember is is Burke being brought in and just that just I mean that just he was a u he was a just a a 9-year-old you know smiling little boy and his uh his best friend his
Sister his little sister was was murdered and uh that was just devastating to me to see that cuz you know he had just had this look of Innocence on him walking in there kind of a big awkward smile kind of like oh I know this is this is not
Good all these people around me are crying my mother’s on the floor but you know he’s a 9-year-old just oh just awful the nightmare however was just beginning and as it turned out the investigation into who killed John Benet was to be defined from the start by a
Series of catastrophic blunders by the Boulder Police Department I met a forensics expert years later and he said it was bizarre what they didn’t do he said the first thing we do when a child is missing is we go through the house thoroughly were they hiding under a blanket where they
Hiding in a closet were they playing some kind of game we look everywhere in the house first they didn’t do that but that’s the first thing you do if a child’s missing as this police work 101 didn’t happen you know the way our country is structured for the most part we have
18,000 police jurisdictions if a crime occurs in that jurisdiction that crime is a responsibility of the local police if they don’t ask for help help cannot be given and that certainly was a case in in Boulder are they expert in everything no uh are they wise enough to know
They’re not sometimes yes sometimes no in our case the answer was no they thought they could handle it they tend to be very territorial very protective of their cases and they want to not have help and it’s that’s unfortunate ego is getting in the way this is an expert on the John Benet
Ramsey case Jameson they turn down help immediately from the Denver Police who said you’ve had what one homicide in how many years we have unfortunately for Denver a much larger number and Denver said we have got the people that know how to do the crime scenes Let us help you and Boulder
Apparently said no it’s our case we you know don’t think we’re like mayber and unable to do anything we we’ll take care of our own and so Denver had to step back and let Boulder do their thing which they didn’t do very very well in hindsight yep well that’s the one thing
I will hold Boulder responsible for I I don’t criticize them because they had no experience I appreciate that they were working on it but they should have realized they didn’t have the the expertise the experience to deal with it they should have welcomed the help of Denver for example or the sheriff’s
Department or whomever and that’s what I will fault before that next day we went down to the police station and you know in my I’m a dumb 19-year-old kid and I don’t really connect the dots it’s an interrogation but that’s what it was at least in the
Police mind right so they separate me from my family for hours on end bring me into some you know windowless you know interrogation room and so I’m sitting there and I’m sure there’s a video of this somewhere out there in the in the world thinking that okay well here comes
The the best and brightest here comes the FBI you know CBI this is okay good we’re going to get to you know get to An Answer here and then walk Ron gosage and Steve Thomas from the Boulder Police they hand me their business cards and I
Look at it and one says auto theft and the other says narcotics and literally I just buried my head in my hands because I knew at that point we were screwed these guys had no business investigating a homicide so the hope of finding the suspect at that moment was
You know in Jeopardy at that day one one does auto theft one does narcotics yeah same thing happened to you py was pretty well gone I mean she was just devastated but I talked to them as you know answered any questions they had tried to and they said well we need you
To come down to the station and by then the media was outside and I said we’re not going to go down you know we why don’t you guys come here we talk to you as much as you want you please come here and this is a safe haven for us somebody
Out there killed our child we don’t know who they were we don’t want to go out in front of 20 TV cameras please come here we’ll talk to you for sure if the initial police operation had been defined by incompetence What followed appeared to be a campaign directed squarely against the ramies
Themselves they want no no we need you to come down this station we got papers down there well at that moment Mike minam who was a good friend was there delivering some food for the people that were there including us and he was a former assistant district attorney knew the Boulder
Police knew what they good at but they weren’t good at and he said time out time out I’m an attorney uh came over to me and said John would you allow me to do some things here that I think are necessary I said yeah of course and and Mike apparently then
Told police L AR that no they’re not going to come into the station you call me later they were trying to to get us and I had gotten a call that same day from a fellow that worked for me and he said John I got this message from
Somebody inside the system I won’t tell you who it was but they said tell John to get the best defense attorney he can get his hands on because they think he killed his daughter and they’re out to get him they being the police and I’m thinking holy mackerel
Unbelievable and so the I was sort of primed for Mike to say you need an attorney because I’ve gotten this call this warning well okay whatever and the next day he introduced us to two attorneys I said what do we need two attorneys for he said well one one attorney can’t
Represent both of you in Colorado wanted to sit down with the police do whatever we could to help move this forward and um so we went back to Atlanta buried John B and our family cemetery plot and uh said okay let’s go back to Boulder let’s get on with fighting the Killer
And they said not so fast and they pretty much said please TR out to get you they take DNA did they tell you right away the results of that no they did didn’t uh we saw the results several years later which said we’ve tested the family they’re excluded there’s no
Match but they kind of overlooked that little problem uh but we gave them everything they ever asked for period there’s nothing they asked for we didn’t give them we gave them our bank records we gave them our credit card records our phone records we gave them DNA we gave
Them hair samples we gave them pubic care samples we gave them it seemed like volumes of handwriting samples they had us rewrite that horrible note with our right hand and then with our left hand I probably wrote that note which is very painful six seven times so they could
Then look at my handwriting and make a judgment as whether I repot the note or not so we did everything they asked well yeah I mean so you know day one we go down to the police station because why wouldn’t you um and yeah I gave handwriting samples and blood
Samples and hair samples and pubic hair samples which is a you know it’s a pretty traumatic experience and I’m sure we gave fingerprints and all sorts of stuff but um thing you would anybody would do in that situation that’s what we did they did not fess up that there
Was foreign male DNA in multiple locations on J’s body for a long time but yeah of course eventually they compare my sample and of course it doesn’t match and none of your families match none of families matched yeah they were not dealing with good cops we’re dealing with cops that want to
Convict us of Murder The Strain on The Grieving family was almost unbearable so what happens to your brain during this period John your daughters you just lost a daughter and you’re dealing with I mean your family’s a wreck understandably yeah you know you and you’re you’re in shock I mean you
Don’t know it necessarily but you’re in shock and um you’re absolutely not capable of making good decisions and I write that in my book I said if you take one thing out of this book take this do not make big decisions after a tragedy and I’m not talking about the next month
I’m talking about a couple years give your friend your checkbook don’t sell your house don’t move to you know just park it everything park it your job park it Park your F you know cuz you’re not capable of making the decision you’re really not you’re in a horrible deep
Shock and I was and uh but you don’t necessarily recognize it having lost their daughter and sister in the most brutal way possible the ramsy soon realized that things would only get worse when did you start thinking wait a minute there’s something wrong here yeah
I mean obviously I knew where I was I was thousands of miles away in Atlanta Georgia with my family and friends and but yeah I think probably the the moment I got a I was basically my dad hired a a lawyer for me and my sister Melinda
Because the police had had made a concerted effort to to basically dangle me out into the to the press as a potential suspect and they did it on purpose we now know you know their their intent there was they knew didn’t have anything to do with it but their intent
Was to put public pressure on my dad py to see if they would would would break um but yeah that’s that’s dishonest and just awful I mean these guys were young inexperienced and in a tornado of public scrutiny and I can understand that that’s hard and you know police by Nature are
Their fraternity right it’s a Brotherhood and as I see it what these guys did is they circled the wagons and they Protected Their Own and they fought viciously to protect their their own and their reputation and I don’t agree with that I would like to think if I was in
Their shoes I would have realized that I was outgunned and didn’t have the experience to to solve this and to reach out for help in 1997 with their case floundering Boulder PD brought in legendary retired detective Lou Smith who with hundreds of successful homicide investigations under
His belt was seen as the man to finally Crack the Case a year later he was forced to resign again after presenting to the department his absolute conviction that an intruder was responsible for John benet’s murder undeterred he continued to work the case under his own steam until his death 9 years
Ago did you ever get to meet L Smith I did a couple times the first time I met L Smith they brought me in or he asked to talk to me I didn’t about what he said what do you know about stun guns I said well I don’t know anything about
Stun guns you know and I to be frank at the time I was pretty um distrustful and bitter towards the police and I kind of flew into that Collective but yeah over time you know learning of his reputation and just seeing his work you know that a
Man of integrity would just def follow the truth I mean that’s hard to do in in that environment where there’s a lot of public pressure everything was being leaked to the media the world over to kind of stand on your principles it’s hard to do he used to tell me I’m going
To get this guy I’m going to get him and he’d gotten a lot of criminals in his career that’s what it was reputation was founded on solved over 100 cold cases it’s amazing and detective Smith did not work alone who was Oli gray Oli gray was a retired homicide detective from
California also been a judge for a number of years and quite a career in law enforcement was retired in Colorado Springs and got interested in this case uh early on and did quite a bit of work on it he and Lou worked pretty closely together they both lived in Colorado
Springs paie knew a lot about the case and say both he and Lou were long time homicide detectives and had lots of experience and kind of real life columbos basically how did you first get involved with James we became aware of Jameson she was reported to have a very Det detailed
Timeline of information online about our case and it was very accurate very nonbiased one way or the other wasn’t trying to convince people we were guilty or innocent it was just the facts she had a good reputation for her website of being very accurate in this data well
That started barely early on and she has maintained it over the years she was very careful about making sure it was accurate and and correct she put it on her site at that point I was pretty well known as being a supporter of the Intruder Theory
I had made some enemies the ramies were aware of my existence I became worried that somebody might pretend to be me to gain their trust and hurt them and I felt I had to stop that so I met with them and when I came out here to
Again I came out here several times then and each time I would meet with L Smith just a wonderful guy and he introduced me to Ali gray and he introduced me to several other people that were working on the case after L Smith’s death he left all
His case files to his daughter Cindy Mara as well as his master spreadsheet detailing every suspect for the murder of John Benet he developed this database of people of interest in our case had come in as tips and and each each name had a a column as to what had been done if
Anything on this tip was it followed up on was DNA taken fingerprints taken you know that kind of thing very extensive database very thorough and when he died he left that as a legacy and Cindy Mara his daughter has taken up that database and move forward
On doing what Lou would have done had he lived so yeah that’s a it’s really a gift he left because you know as a family here we have we have nothing else you know uh the police haven’t shared any really any information with us so
The work that Lou did is is what we’ve got it is this spreadsheet and a final short list of 10 suspects that is now forming the basis of our new investig a Doug lini Jameson and their team along with John and John Andrew Ramsey are determined to finally finish what
Detective Smith started and they formed this team and they’ve kept very low profile but they are basically taking lose extensive database of information on this case and methodically going through each name each lead and either eliminating it or pursuing it and they’re eliminating it based on getting
DNA because we have foreign male DNA always have had in this case and L felt it was going to be solved by fighting a DNA match so they’re going through and getting DNA from each of these people uh and either taking them off the list because the DNA didn’t match or if
There’s some connection then pursuing it further and they’re going from the top down but they do believe that the name of the Killer is in that list they’re very convinced of that is there still evidence that should be tested for DNA I mean one we have the Killer’s DNA
Let’s start there so that’s hugely important and we’ll ultimately solve this crime and two yes there are additional items that should be tested you know given today’s new technology for additional samples and then three yeah I mean the you know Advent of using genealogy to identify killer is hugely
Promising and that technology will only get better right I mean from where we were in 1996 to where we are today has been just Leaps and Bounds an improvement in the DNA technology so in my mind if it’s not today it’s tomorrow we’re going to crack this I’m absolutely
Confident in that well L Smith told me that early on that there was foreign DNA under her fingernails he said she got a piece of it I think Lou believed this was going to be solved by DNA period part of the challenge with our cases just the volume of information and over
Time that’s gone by the the there’s no one in the police department that really understands this case anymore they’re not new people the same people that were there and didn’t solve this in 22 years are the same people in charge now well I think in terms of moving it
Forward if we can get the Boulder Police to test the evidence that hadn’t been tested for DNA we understand that there were five pieces sent in for testing to the DNA lab only one or two were tested the other three I assume were returned back to the police evidence files we can
Take those three pieces have them tested see what DNA is on there the Rope the the tape you know these things that the killer obviously had to touch I mean this is a in my mind a simple process of just working through the list collecting DNA and you’re your
Intera this isn’t uh this isn’t rocket science at this point I believe we have the name of the killer on lose list and we need to now put in the effort to track down these individuals collect their DNA and Rule it in or out next time on the killing of John B
Ramsey the final suspects there was a person who had committed suicide and they were looking at that person because he had a stun gun and he had Hightech shoes I can tell you I’ve been through a lot of suicide deaths and I’ve never seen anybody shoot themselves down in their lower left
Torso the killing of John Benet the final suspects is hosted by me Danielle robe executive produced by Dylan Howard and Matt Sprout and is a production of Broad and water Studios and Endeavor audio executive producers also include Tom Freestone Doug lini Susan Bennett James Robertson and Andy tillet the
Series is written by Dominic utton reporting by Doug Montero the series is mixed and engineered by Shan kravit and Sam Ada there is so much more to this story and you don’t want to miss anything I can assure you subscribe to the killing of John Benet the final suspects wherever you get [Applause]
Podcasts if you have any information that could help our investigators and the ramies identify John B’s killer please help us at tips Justice forj ben.com
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