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Tag: jonbenet ramsey indictment

  • JonBenet Ramsey: New Evidence Released

    We all know about the case of the murder of six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey of Boulder, Colorado. JonBenet’s beaten and strangled body was discovered in 1996 at her parents’ home. It was a day after Christmas, when she should have been enjoying the bike she got as a gift.

    That same day, her parents had called police to report her kidnapping. They said they found a note demanding a ransom of $118,000 for her return. She was then found dead in the basement of their home.

    Her parents, John and Patricia Ramsey lived under a cloud of suspicion, and in an ocean of unanswered questions. In October 1999, the 12 jurors who had convened for 13 months and poured over 30,000 pieces of evidence, all went home not one step closer to solving the case.

    That was before Wednesday, when a judge ordered the release of 18 pages sealed after the grand jury dispersed, according to CNN.

    Among the new evidence released on Friday are two pages about her mother and two pages about her father, according to an order from Judge J. Robert Lowenbach.

    Only documents signed by a foreman are being released, according to the judge’s order, which says the court can release only official documents. Lowenbach’s order Wednesday makes reference to the grand jury’s report. “It appears that the district attorney, presumably acting at the direction of the grand jury, prepared a series of possible charges regarding John Ramsey and Patricia Ramsey based on the fact that the child had died and that there was evidence that a sexual assault of the child occurred,” Lowenbach wrote.

    The Boulder Daily Camera, citing unidentified jurors and an assistant district attorney, said the grand jury voted to indict her parents on charges of child abuse resulting in death.

    Despite the grand jury’s vote, the district attorney said at the time that there was insufficient evidence to warrant filing charges, therefore, then-Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter did not sign the indictment. and it has remained sealed for years. The Daily Camera said the decision to unseal the indictment was in response to a lawsuit by its reporter and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

    John and Patricia have fought accusations continually since that fateful day, until Patricia died of Ovarian cancer in 2006.

    Even a few false leads have crept up over the years. In 2006, a breakthrough appeared certain with the arrest of John Mark Karr in Bangkok, Thailand. The 41-year-old teacher repeatedly said he loved the little girl and was with her the night she died. He insisted her death was an accident.

    But soon after his arrest and return to Colorado, prosecutors said DNA evidence proved he had nothing to do with her death. The district attorney decided not to charge him. Back to square one.

    Will the murder of the tiny beauty queen ever be solved?

    Image via youtube

  • JonBenet Ramsey: Boulder Reporter Sues DA

    The Daily Camera reports that reporter Charlie Brennan and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a lawsuit against Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett Wednesday. They are suing the Boulder County district attorney for the release of the secret 1999 grand jury indictment of JonBenet Ramsey’s parents, who were never prosecuted in the death of their daughter. Garnett has already refused to release the indictment twice.

    The Daily Camera said that two members of the grand jury confirmed they had voted to indict John and Patsy Ramsey on charges of child abuse resulting in death, but that then-D.A. Alex Hunter had refused to sign the document.

    “The plaintiffs believe… that the indictment is a criminal justice record that reflects official action by the grand jury, and accordingly that it is subject to mandatory disclosure upon request,” attorney Thomas B. Kelley wrote in the filing. “Alternatively, they argue the indictment should be disclosed to the public because such disclosure would serve the public interest in government transparency and not be contrary to the public interest nor cause undue adverse effect upon the privacy of the individual.”

    Tru TV reports that JonBenet Ramsey was found dead on December 26, 1996 in the basement of the Ramsey home after her mother, Patsy Ramsey, now deceased, called 911 to report her missing and told dispatch that they had found a ransom note. It was while the police were waiting for the call that they made several critical mistakes. They did not conduct a proper search of the house. The home was not sealed off and friends walked in and out at their leisure. No moves were made to protect any forensic evidence.

    The big picture of just how many mistakes Boulder police made became clear later that afternoon when a detective asked Fleet White, a friend of the Ramseys, to take John and search the house for “anything unusual.” They started in the basement. Later, during the documentary Who Killed JonBenet?, made by Channel Four in London, John Ramsey describes what they found:

    “As I was walking through the basement, I opened the door to a room and knew immediately that I’d found her because there was a white blanket — her eyes were closed, I feared the worse but yet — I’d found her.”

    The case went to Grand Jury in 1998, but in 1999, District Attorney Hunger announced that the investigation would be closed due to lack of evidence.
    However, In 2008, the Boulder District Attorney’s office announced that a DNA specimen taken from an unknown male’s blood left on JonBenet’s underwear had exonerated both John and Patsy Ramsey, as well as their now-adult son, Burke. Boulder police officially reopened the case in 2009.

    image via wikipedia

  • JonBenet Ramsey: Grand Jury Voted For Indictment

    JonBenet Ramsey, who was six years old when she was found dead in the basement of her home in 1996, captivated the world with her beauty-queen smile and heartbreaking story. Her parents, Patsy and John, were the first suspects in the case even though they’d reported JonBenet missing hours earlier and said they had found a ransom note in their home. Ultimately, they were cleared of any wrongdoing, but a story reported in an issue of Daily Camera earlier this year said that the grand jury actually voted to indict the parents on charges of child abuse resulting in death, but that it was ultimately never brought to light because District Attorney Alex Hunter refused to sign it. Now, the reporter who wrote the story–Charlie Brennan–is working with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in a lawsuit against new Boulder DA Stan Garnett to get the indictment released.

    “The plaintiffs believe… that the indictment is a criminal justice record that reflects official action by the grand jury, and accordingly that it is subject to mandatory disclosure upon request,” attorney Thomas B. Kelley wrote in the lawsuit. “Alternatively, they argue the indictment should be disclosed to the public because such disclosure would serve the public interest in government transparency and not be contrary to the public interest nor cause undue adverse effect upon the privacy of the individual.”

    It doesn’t look good for Brennan, however, as Garnett has already rejected the plea for the indictment to be made public twice.

    “We will respond to the motion in a pleading in court,” Garnett said Wednesday. “Protecting the integrity of the grand jury process is important to every district attorney.”

    Members of the Grand Jury told Brennan that former DA Alex Hunter refused to sign the indictment because of a lack of evidence.

    “I and my prosecution task force believe we do not have sufficient evidence to warrant the filing of charges against anyone who has been investigated at this time,” Hunter said.

    The jury felt differently, however.

    “This grand jury, in effect, came up with a compromise finding, ‘No, it’s not murder,’ but, ‘Yes, we think they were responsible’ for the death based on abuse,” ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams said.

    Patsy Ramsey died in 2006 of ovarian cancer; John reportedly lives in Atlanta. Both were exonerated in 2008 of any wrongdoing in JonBenet’s death.

    Image: JonBenet Ramsey, Wikimedia Commons