Jugaba a ser una mujer adulta y glamorosa, con su expansiva melena rubia, sus facciones resaltadas con profuso maquillaje y sus vestidos de fiesta. Pero JonBenét Ramsey era apenas una niñita. A instancias de su madre, que la inscribía en cuanto concurso de belleza para niñas existiera en los Estados Unidos, la pequeña se había coronado, entre otras cosas, como Little Miss Colorado, America’s Royale Miss y National Tiny Miss Beauty.

The popularity of that celestial eye girl and lovely smile became bigger and bigger in the state of Colorado, where she lived, and throughout the country.Therefore, American public opinion entered shock when the little girl appeared lifeless in the basement of her own home on the day after Christmas 1996.She had been killed.I was only six years old.

Almost 24 years passed from that infamous event, but the homicide of the little girl was never resolved.Under the shadow of suspicion were her parents and even her older brother, who lived with her in the house of the town of Boulder, Colorado, where Jonbenét had her atrocious final.The magnifying glass on other suspects was also put on, but there was never a sufficiently firm track to catch anyone.

A kidnapping that was not

Jonbenét was born on August 6, 1990 in Atlanta, State of Georgia.His father was John, a wealthy businessman, president of the Computer Services Access Graphic.His mother, Patsy, had been a beauty queen of Virginia in her youth and took her daughter, still very small, on the way of this type of competitions.The family completed his older brother, Burke, who was three years older than his sister, and who, despite his brief nine years, would not escape the suspicions.

The tragedy reached the immense house on 15th Street in Boulder at some time after the Christmas dinner, which the Ramsey spent some friends home.The family returned home in that cold and snowy night, and they all retired to sleep.The next day they were going to fly to Michigan.But at about 5.30 in the morning, Patsy got out of his room and found a note on the ladder.

In a handwritten letter and with a three -page extension, the letter found on the steps said that a foreign band had kidnapped the little.They asked for their rescue about 118.000 dollars.The text also said that the family should not call the police if I wanted to find Jonbenét alive.But, desperate at the situation, Patsy called the local sheriff station.It was not yet six in the morning of that Thursday, December 26, 1996.

Two things then caught the researchers' attention to the note found on the stairs.The first, that the required money was just what the girl's dad had charged as the end of the year bonus.The person who wrote the note seemed to know this detail.

And the second striking instance was that the assumptions had written their letter to ask for rescue with papers and a pen of the Ramsey family itself.From this it was deduced that the kidnappers took the time to write the note inside the house, instead of performing their task of capturing the girl as quickly as possible.Something that was somewhat strange for the first investigators of the case.

Jonbenét's finding

The police arrived at the Ramseyinmediatrously.They returned again at noon, with the suggestion to review the house from top to bottom.Then, it was the child's own father who addressed the basement of the house.And there he found his daughter's body.

The girl was found lying on the ground, upside down.It was covered by a sheet, had an adhesive tape in the mouth, a nylon cord around the neck and wrists, and scratches and marks all over his body.

The media that registered what happened in the first moments of the finding pointed out then that the girl's father lifted the little boy on the floor and took her to a superior room.What for some was the act of a desperate father, for others, in the tsunami of theories that fell on the cause, was a overlapping way of destroying the crime scene.

In the first instance it was thought that the cause of Jonbenét's death had been suffocation.A medieval torture method called Garrote was used for this, which consists of pressing a rope around the neck spinning a piece of wood, which in this case was the handle of a brush.It was then determined that the girl had also suffered a strong blow to the head, with some blunt object, which caused a break in the skull of about 20 centimeters.The conclusion of the autopsy pointed out that the girl died from "asphyxiation of strangulation associated with a cranioecephalic trauma".

While at first, in addition, it was suspected that the girl had been abused, that is something that was never corroborated.Anyway, DNA samples were found in the intimate garments of the child, which would be decisive in future instances of the investigation.

Suspicions about family

In general, the Bouldersospecha police from the first moment that some member of the same Ramsey family, with the complicity of the rest, had been the author of the girl's crime, and there they directed all their theories.Meanwhile, independent investigators and, later, the prosecutor's office focused their hypotheses on the authorship of the murder by an intruder.As the most conclusive evidence of their theory, they exhibited a basement window that was open when the crime scene was inspected.

In the case of the accusations towards the family, it was the police that used to filter information that later reached the covers of the tabloids, in general in a sensationalist way and pointing to the scandal.The ingredient of the girl as a beauty queen and with an alleged premature sexualization fed even more media butcher shop in relation to this case.

Thus, for example, public opinion received the information that the girl had been murdered by her mother, who, tired of her little boy from the bed -something that was never checked -hit her in an attack of anger, and theaccidentally killed.Then, according to these transcended that were first flat, Patsy tried to cover up his crime with the simulation of a kidnapping.To do this, he wrote the rescue note and embarked his whole family on the concealment of the crime.

However, various graphologists established that the letter of the letter asked for money for the girl's life did not belong to Patsy.And neither Jonbenét's father.

Another of those indicated as suspicious by the murder was the girl's father, basically for having removed the body of the crime scene. Se llegó a decir incluso que abusaba de ella, algo que fue descartado por los patólogos forenses que tuvieron oportunidad de acceder a los resultados de la autopsia de la niña, como lo muestra el documental de la señal A&E, El asesinato de JonBenét, la verdad revelada.

And neither does the beauty queen's older brother managed to escape suspicions.It was said that he was jealous of his sister since he was born because he robbed the attention of the parents.It was pointed out that the night of the crime had fought because she took a portion of fruit that he was eating and that he, choleric, hit her with a flashlight in the head and caused death.

Indeed, a flashlight appeared on the crime scene, but they could not find in it any proof that it would have been used as a weapon.

Although Jonbenétnunca's relatives were formally accused of crime, only in July 2008, the Boulder County District Prosecutor, Mary Lacy, said, through a letter to the girl's father, that no one from the family circle ofThe little girl was already suspected of crime.He assured that the three were innocent, and apologized for so many years of having had them under the mantle of doubt.

The prosecutor's evidence to apologize to the family were scientific: DNA found in the child's underwear did not correspond to someone from their family environment.With this, the theory that the homicide had been committed by an intruder took greater credibility and became the only possible.

Unfortunately, Patsy could not receive this letter of exoneration.He had died in 1996 because of ovarian cancer he suffered for many years.

More suspicious and a strange theory

With the passage of time, more suspicious joined the list.A couple of them did even self -incriminating.In 2006, John Mark Karr, a school ex-school, confessed through an e-mail to a Colorado teacher who had killed the girl in a "love game that went wrong".Karar was arrested in Thailand, where he lived, but his authors.

The other self -inculpulted that was discarded by the non -compatible genetic samples was called Gary Oliva.This is a Boulder resident with causes for sexual abuse, who was found in his backpack cuts from a magazine with little Jonbenét in an arrest for a drug issue in 2000.An Oliva high school partner assured that he called him immediately after the child's crime and confessed, with anguish: "I have hurt a girl.I hurt a girl ".

In 2016, Oliva wrote another letter to his former partner in which he declared himself again as the author of the crime, according to the British newspaper Daily Mail.But science exonerated him from this murder.

It was also suspected of the town's dad, Bill McReynolds, who died a few years ago, who had a good relationship with the girl, and of which he confessed admirer, according to the local media Denver Post.A family keys, and an electrician in litigation with the Ramsey close the list of those who were once related to crime, but without any consistent evidence that put them or near the bench of the defendants.

And among so many and varied theories, the case of the little girl also did not escape from urban myths.The Dove Johnson youtuber uploaded a video, reproduced millions of times, in which he assured that the little beauty queen had not died, but that her parents had delivered her to make her an elite superstar.The once Little Miss Colorado, according to this striking conjecture, would today be nothing less than the pop singer and brand new mother, Katy Perry.On its own, the date of birth of the song star -1984, six years before Jonbenét- throws this conspiracy hypothesis by land.But the legend is already installed.

Jonbenét's remains are found in the Atlanta cemetery, the city where he was born, along with his mother Patsy.Almost 24 years of the fateful Christmas night passed in which someone took their lives.And still, his crime, one of the most resonant of the 1990s, continues to be unpunished.