
JonBenét’s cause of death was determined to be strangulation with a makeshift garrote, a weapon that, in this case, involved a string wrapped around a piece of one of Patsy Ramsey’s paintbrushes. “As we looked at each other, I remember - and I wore a shoulder holster - tucking my gun right next to me and consciously counting I’ve got 18 bullets,” Arndt said, adding, “I didn’t know if we’d all be alive when people showed up.” Arndt confirmed to him that the child had died.Īrndt said the moment sparked fear in her that JonBenét’s father might have killed their daughter, and so she braced herself for a possible confrontation. John Ramsey said he brought his daughter upstairs and laid her on the floor, hoping she was alive. I tried to untie the cord that was around her arms and I couldn’t get the knot untied.” … I immediately knelt down over her, felt her cheek, took the tape off immediately off her mouth. I found my daughter,” John Ramsey told Walters in 2000. He found JonBenét in the basement, a part of the home that police had neglected to search. passed and there still wasn’t a call, Arndt said “there was no acknowledgment” from either of JonBenét’s parents that “the deadline imposed by the author of the ransom note come and gone.”Īrndt suggested that John Ramsey look around the house for any signs that his daughter’s belongings were out of place. JonBenét’s parents anxiously waited for the supposed kidnapper’s call with just one detective there: Linda Arndt.īut when 10 a.m. There could’ve been fingerprints there.”Īfter several hours, the police began to leave the Ramsey home.

There were some friends of Patsy’s that were helping her wipe up the kitchen. They were in the kitchen, they were in the living room. “People were streaming through that house. “The police did a terrible, terrible job securing that scene … and if you don’t secure the scene, you don’t get good evidence,” said Diane Dimond, an investigative reporter who covered the case. However, with the Ramseys’ friends showing up for moral support, they also contaminated the scene by moving about the house. Police arrived shortly after the 911 call and began investigating the scene for clues about the kidnapper. “You’ve just been dealt a horrible, crushing blow.” “You lose all perception of time, of place,” added Patsy Ramsey in 2000. JonBenét Ramsey was killed in her family's Colorado home in 1996. In a 911 call just before 6 a.m., her mother Patsy Ramsey was inconsolable as she told the dispatcher that her daughter was missing and that she’d found a ransom note at the bottom of her stairs.

JonBenét’s parents initially thought she had been kidnapped during the night. JonBenét is found dead in her parents' basement The child beauty queen had died sometime during the previous night but wasn’t found until hours later. Smit was called out of retirement to help the investigation three months after JonBenét was found dead in the basement of her parent’s Boulder, Colorado, home on the morning of Dec. “It was really important to him.”Īs part of their promise to keep the case alive, van der Woerd and Smit’s other granddaughter, Lexi Marra, created the podcast “The Victim’s Shoes,” where they discuss details of the case. “When he got sick with cancer … he knew that his time was limited and so, during that time, he just talked to others about not letting this case die,” said Cindy Marra, Smit’s daughter.
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