In the early morning hours of Dec. 26, 1996, JonBenét Ramsey was reported missing from her family’s sprawling Boulder, Colo., home.
Hours later, her father John Ramsey found his little girl’s body in the basement of the home. She had a garrote around her neck, and her skull was smashed from an apparent blow to the back of her head.
For the last 28 years, the case has gone frustratingly unsolved. The Boulder Police Department has named and cleared suspects, changed personnel and organized task forces that have failed to hold anyone accountable for the 6-year-old beauty queen’s murder.
Police have reviewed more than 1,400 pieces of evidence and interviewed 140 possible suspects and witnesses. There are more than 50,000 pages of documents in the Boulder Police Department archives — but no one has been brought to justice.
“Nothing’s off the table,” a Boulder police department source told The Post. “We’re open to any possibilities to solve the case.”
The case is now getting renewed interest with the Nov. 25 release of the Netflix docuseries “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?” The show examines the failures of the Boulder Police Department.
Here are some of the suspects who have been investigated throughout the last three decades.
The Ramsey Family
From the start, police have focused on the other people who were in the house: her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey and her 9-year-old brother Burke. At the start, Boulder police initially focused almost exclusively upon John and Patsy — and suspected that it was Patsy who wrote a ransom note found at the scene that demanded $118,000.
Then, for decades, the public has focused on Burke. Internet theorists speculate that he got into a fight with his sister over some pineapple she had eaten, and somehow accidentally hurt or killed her. Then, the theory claims, John and Patsy Ramsey covered up for their son by making it look like a home invasion.
But those theories don’t account for the presence of an unknown male’s DNA that was found on JonBenèt’s clothes. Within two weeks of the murder, DNA evidence seemed to indicate that someone else had been present at the time of the murder.
It was not until July 2008 — nearly a dozen years after JonBenét’s murder — that the Boulder District Attorney’s office announced that the Ramsey family members were no longer possible suspects in the case.
But the relief came too late for Patsy Ramsey, who died in 2006 from ovarian cancer. While some authorities questioned the public exoneration, the Boulder Police tells The Post that they are not actively looking into the Ramseys.
John Mark Karr
In 2002, John Mark Karr began communicating with an investigative journalist about the case — and seemingly knew details about the murder that were not public knowledge. By 2006, journalist Michael Tracey contacted authorities.
With Tracey’s help, Karr was tracked to Bangkok, where he was hiding to avoid unrelated child pornography charges in the US. He was extradited to Boulder and arrested. He confessed to murdering JonBenét, but the case against him soon fell apart: His DNA didn’t match the samples taken from the crime scene. His estranged wife also provided an alibi, saying he was in North Carolina on the day that JonBenét was killed.
But when Karr was released, not everyone agreed with the decision. The FBI questioned whether Karr was being set free too soon. “To me, he’s still the one who might have gotten away,” a Boulder police source tells the Post. “Something about the guy still seems fishy to me.”
In 2023, Karr spoke out publicly, saying that he was not crazy and not a liar — and doubling down on his claim that he was with JonBenét when she died. He also claimed he might be protecting someone. “I know the truth,” he said at the time, “but no one will listen.”
Gary Oliva
A convicted sex offender who lived in Boulder at the time of JonBenét’s murder, Oliva was fixated on the case, and even attended a candlelight vigil after the murder.
Oliva, who was a drifter at the time, had pictures of the little girl in his tent. He was frequently seen in the family’s neighborhood. He even told police that he was fascinated with the case.
Oliva’s behavior caught the attention of the Ramsey family. John Ramsey told authorities that Oliva “must be the killer.”
But there were problems with that theory: no physical evidence tied Oliva to the case. The DNA found at the scene was not a match and he was ruled out as the killer.
Oliva has spent the past 8 years in jail on child pornography and exploitation charges. He was released from prison earlier this year.
Oliva has acknowledged his obsession with JonBenét. In an interview obtained by “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?”, he said, “When you see the footage of her in her little cowboy suit going, ‘I want to be a cowboy’s sweetheart’ and all that, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
John Brewer Eustace
The investigation into the JonBenét went cross-country in 1997, after a 31-year-old drifter broke into a home in Charlotte, NC and kidnapped and raped a 2-year-old toddler. When police searched John Brewer Eustace’s belongings, they found a notebook of clippings about the Ramsey case.
But authorities soon ruled him out: he was working at the time of the murders, and his DNA didn’t match that found at the scene. Eustace is currently in prison for unrelated charges.
The Boulder Police investigator told The Post that Eustace was never a serious suspect, but they had to rule him out. “There was a point where we looked at anyone across the country who had committed violence against little girls. We needed to eliminate suspects.”
Michael Helgoth
An electrician in the area, Helgoth owned a pair of Hi-Tec boots that appeared to match a print left at the crime scene. He also owned a stun gun and detectives determined that JonBenét’s broken body showed marks from a similar device.
Helgoth also had a potential motive: he was embroiled in a property dispute with the Ramseys at the time. A private investigator hired by the Ramseys seemed to imply that authorities should focus on Helgoth.
The mystery deepened in 1997, when authorities said that they were closing in on a suspect. Two days later, Helgoth committed suicide, leading many to believe that he killed himself because charges were imminent.
But authorities told The Post that Helgoth was never a serious suspect, and his DNA did not match any that was collected at the murder scene.
