JonBenét Ramsey, 6, was found dead in the basement of the Ramsey family’s Boulder, Colorado home on December 26, 1996, along with a ransom note demanding $118,000.
According to autopsy findings disclosed in August 1997, JonBenét died from asphyxiation caused by strangling.
In their first national TV appearance on CNN a week after JonBenét’s passing, her parents, socialite Patricia Ramsey, the 1977 Miss West Virginia, and businessman John Ramsey, begged for the public’s assistance in locating their daughter: The killer is still at large, according to Patsy Ramsey.
The Ramseys were charged with “unlawfully, knowingly, recklessly and feloniously permitting a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat to the child’s life or health” after a grand jury investigation that began in October 1999 came to a conclusion without any indictments being issued.
But in 2008, Mary Lacy, the district attorney for Boulder County at the time, cleared the Ramseys after discovering that the DNA found on JonBenét’s pajamas matched that of an unidentified man.
