Murder of Jon Benet Ramsey - Essay Example

JonBenet Ramsey A little girl, her life barely begun and her own little world rent apart and made scandalous, her parents pressed about her death, the media becoming a force of nature as it tore everything connected to her apart. Who would have thought that the least painful thing she would do would be to die? One of the things that the media is excellent at is shifting the focus from tragedy to scandal in order to justify their continued presence in a matter that did not merit such hard pressed coverage. She was a little girl who died tragically at the hands of someone who treated her with disrespect and violence. The story of the investigation is clouded by the shadows of media that formed and shaped public’s knowledge and opinions, leading to more tragedy and sorrow that for quite some time, just never seemed to end. JonBenet Ramsey was six years old when in 1996 she went missing from her boulder Colorado home, only to be found eight hours after she was reported missing in the basement of her family. This tiny little girl became a cause, finding celebrity after death as her family was scrutinized, vilified, and sympathized with depending on the mood of the media that swarmed the investigation of her death. The child had been bludgeoned and strangled. The speculations about who killed her were first focused on her mother, her father, and her brother; although in 2008 they were all vindicated through DNA evidence (Pelisek). The story of the crime begins with JonBenet’s mother, Patricia, finding three yellow pieces of paper from which the first page informed her “Mr. Ramsey…we have your daughter” (Smith 3). The rest of the information included a request for $118,000, the same amount of a recent bonus that JonBenet’s father John had received and that they should not call the police. A threat was made against the child to encourage their cooperation with the kidnappers, that JonBenet would be beheaded if they failed to comply. The first thing that Patricia did was to call the police, at 5:52am December 26, and report her daughter as missing (Smith 4). The Boulder Police responded immediately, and the FBI followed quickly behind them, kidnapping being a federal offense and under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1995, the FBI had reported only a handful of kidnapping cases, but 22,000 homicides, so the investigation of a kidnapping was not a routine activity, even for the FBI (Smith 4). The Ramseys brought three people into the home as the authorities did their best to work the case. They called their minister, the family doctor, and a friend who was a lawyer. These three people arrived before the Boulder Police had arrived (Smith 5). During the time that the FBI was setting up for the encounter that John Ramsey would have with the kidnappers, the Boulder Police began to tour the home, finding the security system still on and with no tampering being evident. The perpetrator either knew the system intimately, or had the skills to circumvent the system (Smith 6). John Ramsey refused to let the police search the home without a warrant, but this may be more to do with the influence of his attorney friend, Fleet White, who may have for legal reasons been insisting that all be done with legal structures. The police suggested that Mr. Ramsey search his own house, and this is when he found his daughter, covered with a blanket, duct tape on her neck and mouth, and with a nylon cord around her neck which had a stick twisted in it to use as a garrote. The child’s head had been bashed in and there were clear signs that she had been sexually abused because of blood and bruising that was evident. On the 27th of December, the police asked the Ramseys to all give investigative samples in order to rule them out as suspects in the murder. Hair, nails, and fingerprints were all gathered in order to keep as reference towards any of the evidence that the authorities could discover. Samples of handwriting were taken in order to compare them to the notes found at the scene, all of which were revealed to be not related to the writing of the ransom notes. One of the problems in the investigation, according to lawyers for the Ramseys, they were interrogated and pushed to cooperate through withholding the child’s body from being released. JonBenet was released just in time for the funeral, but the push to continue interrogations were still being forwarded by investigators to her parents (Bairdsley and Bellamy). The first part of the investigation was focused on the parents. The family home is a very unusual place to find the victim of a kidnapping, thus it first appeared that some form of accidental death had happened and that the Ramseys were covering up what had really happened to their child. The District Attorney Alex Hunter was convinced that Patricia had killed her child over a bed-wetting incident. The Mayor of Boulder, Leslie Durgan, made a statement that there were no signs of breaking and entering into the home, one of the signs of this a lack of shoe prints in the snow outside. The police did note a broken window in the basement, but this went unreported, the media becoming a source of information that was incomplete and pressing the public to believe that the child’s parents were covering up an accidental death (Bairdsley and Bellamy). The investigation became part investigative skills, and part public pressure defined by the way in which the media was framing the possibilities. Lead investigator Steve Thomas, from the beginning, believed that the family had something to do with the murder and this might have lead to missing other crucial evidence (Pelisek). Two houses and the house in Boulder were searched seeking pornographic material, specific that which was pedophilia oriented, in order to find a link between the murder and John Ramsey. Once the focus had shifted from Patricia to John, the nature of the investigation and the media coverage changed. Mr. Ramsey was perceived as a pedophile that had killed his daughter as a part of his deviance. The report from the medical examiner’s office from Dr. Thomas stated the following, however:"From what is noted in the autopsy report, there is no evidence of injury to the anus, there is no evidence of injury to the skin around the vagina, the labia and there is no other indication of any healed scars in any of those areas. There is no other indication from the autopsy report at all that there are any other previous injuries that have healed in that particular area" (Bairdsley and Bellamy). Although the signs of abuse were there, the autopsy showed no signs, but neither the first evidence nor the autopsy was conclusive. The media, on the other hand, was spinning out of control. The child had been active in youth beauty pageants, leaving sexualized pictures and the trappings of created beauty, make-up, lashes, heels, and a great number of other more adult items well available to public scrutiny. At this time, beauty pageants for young children were being vilified for having been a part of the murder of this little girl. Through showing pictures of the girl that were both flirtatious and outright sexualized. The nature of the pageant circuit was to take little girls and make them into miniaturized women, their faces, hair, and clothing designed with the intent of getting them attention. This was translated by the media into a condemnation of the parents who had lost their child, and as a way of creating a motivation that would blame the parents and point the finger at them. Although much of the information was incomplete or inaccurate, the media used what they could of this child’s life to focus blame on the family for the events that caused her death. Additionally, the sexualized nature of her participation in the pageants helped to create an environment that supposed her father to be pedophilic. During the investigation, a number of affidavits were collected. Among them were those from John Ramsey’s ex-wife and family who stated they had never seen any evidence of child abuse from John. An investigation was launched in which the Ramseys’ son and JonBenet’s brother was analyzed with a two way window while a psychologist interviewed him, showing further evidence that there was no signs of abuse by John to be used as evidence that he murdered his child (Bairdsley and Bellamy). According to Pelisek, Stan Garnet, the District Attorney who took office in 2009, took a new look at the investigation, re-interviewing Burke, the now grown brother of JonBenet, in order to find more leads to the case. The case, according to Garnet, had been bungled from the beginning, the first problem occurring as the crime scene was contaminated by all the people who were in the house at the beginning. The biggest lead to the case broke in 2008 when DNA evidence in JonBenet’s underpants showed that an unknown male had left blood stains. This unknown male exonerated the Ramseys, putting to rest the idea that they had participated in their child’s death. Unfortunately, the family had already been torn apart, with Patricia having died in 2006 of ovarian cancer. One of the outcomes of such a high profile case is that those who feel the need to be a part of the frenzy will insert themselves into the case. Because of the high level of media coverage, over 600 people were interviewed, with 64 experts used and hundreds of suspects were considered. The authorities received about 4,000 letters and over 700 tips have been given to the police, many of which were from those who knew nothing constructive about the events. One of the mentally ill people who inserted themselves into the case was John Mark Karr who confessed to the murder. Although he was not found to be the perpetrator, he was tested against the DNA evidence, and his innocence to the crime was proven along with the Ramseys (Pelisek). The 2009 investigation was begun because an advisory committee was put together in order to gain new perspective on the case. The committee came to conclusion that the best alternative was to begin an entirely new investigation lead by a cooperative effort between the Boulder Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office. Police Chief Mark Beckner released no new information, but also indicated that the original investigation had not been done properly (Huff Post Denver). Although the police had done their best to manage a media circus, the leaks from the department, the out of hand statements made by the mayor as she tried to calm a riled up public and the tug of war that resulted between the District Attorney’s Office and the Boulder Police Department as they vied for investigative control created an environment that was really not conducive to solving the crime. The JonBenet Ramsey case was never solved. The child was put through a media ringer in which she was characterized as a little girl who was sexual and inappropriate. Her parents were accused of the crime of killing their child, their lives never the same as neither one of them ever went back into the house where their little girl had died (Bairdsley and Bellamy). Her mother died never knowing who had taken the life of her child, a girl who would have been 16 when her mother died. The media took leaks as truths, creating a world of scandal and perversion around this child. In the end, this was a family who suffered a loss and investigators should have looked at other options rather than the easiest point of view. In spending all that time trying to make the family fit the evidence, it is clear from the DNA evidence that they had nothing to do with the crime. In the end, what is left is a tragic end to a life that never got a good enough beginning, made more tragic by never knowing what happened to this child. Works Cited Bairdsley, Marilyn and Patrick Bellamy. Murder of JonBenet Ramsey. Turner/Warner Inc, 2012. Web. 21 April 2012. Huff Post Denver. JonBenet Ramsey Investigators Conduction Additional Interviews. Huff Post Denver. 2 October 2010. Web. 20 April 2012. Pelisek, Christine. New Questions in JonBenet’s Murder. The Daily Beast. 3 October 2010. Web. 21 April 2012. Smith, Carlton. Death of a Little Princess: The Tragic Story of the Murder of Jonbene?t Ramsey. New York, N.Y: St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1997. Print. Investigative Terms Interrogation: In defining interrogation, it is necessary to provide the difference between interrogation and interview. The interview is defined by an interaction intended to gain truthful knowledge and data to use in an investigation, where an interrogation is a face-to-face interaction with the intention of gaining a confession to activities associated with the crime. Shuy, Roger W. The Language of Confession, Interrogation and Deception. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1998. Print. Physical Evidence: Police and forensic investigators take everything that might allow for a piece of the truth to come forward. This can include hairs, fibers, fingerprints, and any number of tangible items from which a piece of the puzzle is revealed. Lee, Henry C, and Howard A. Harris. Physical Evidence in Forensic Science. Tucson: Lawyers & Judges Pub. Co, 2000. Print. Autopsy: The autopsy is conducted to see what can be discovered from an examination of the body, both the exterior and the interior. The body is opened, the fluids are taken, and measurements are made in order to make determinations based upon known science and what is presented from a body. Komar, Debra A, and Jane E. Buikstra. Forensic Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print. Search Warrant: “A preferred mechanism for authorizing and conducting searches and seizures, although there are several exceptions to the warrant requirement” (Ferdico, Fradella and Totten 185). An authority figure must apply to a judge and present sufficient evidence that there is cause to make the search. Ferdico, John N, Henry F. Fradella, and Christopher D. Totten. Criminal Procedure for the Criminal Justice Professional. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Print. Affidavit: An affidavit is a statement that is made by someone who has sworn an oath to the court that what they say within the document is true. Del, Carmen R. V. Criminal Procedure: Law and Practice. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006. Print. Read More