John Bennett Ramsey
Encyclopedia
John Bennett Ramsey is the father of homicide
victim JonBenét Ramsey
. He was the first to discover JonBenét's body in the wine cellar of the Ramseys' 15-room home in Boulder, Colorado
, on December 25, 1996, just hours after her murder.
, to Mary Jane (née Bennett) and James Dudley "Jay" Ramsey. His net worth was reported at $6.4 million as of May 1, 1996. He graduated from Michigan State University
. A distinguished naval
officer, he holds a pilot's license and owns two planes. In 1989, late in his military career, he formed the Advanced Product Group, one of three companies that merged to become Access Graphics. After mandatory military retirement, he became president and chief executive officer of Access Graphics, a computer services company and a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin
. In 1996, Access Graphics grossed over $1 billion, and he was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. Immediately following the murder he was "temporarily replaced so the company did not have to bother him about business matters as he grieved
", according to Lockheed spokesman Evan McCollum. Ramsey soon left his job to move his family to Michigan
, where he joined another computer company. Access Graphics was later sold to General Electric
in 1997.
Ramsey's wife Patsy
died June 24, 2006 of ovarian cancer
. Ramsey's eldest daughter, Elizabeth Pasch Ramsey, from his first marriage died in a 1992 car accident at the age of 22.
Ramsey reportedly began dating Beth Holloway
, the mother of Natalee Holloway
, an Alabama
student who disappeared during a 2005 high school graduation trip to Aruba
. Ramsey met Holloway while attending a fundraiser after his wife's death. However, Ramsey downplayed their relationship, stating that they "developed a friendship of respect and admiration" out of common interests related to their children. The relationship did not last.
On July 21, 2011, John Ramsey married fashion designer Jan Rousseaux after meeting her at a wedding in Denver in 2009. Ramsey proposed to Rousseaux on February 14, 2011. They got married at a private ceremony in Charlevoix
, Michigan
. The wedding came 5 years after the death of Patsy Ramsey
, who died of ovarian cancer
in June 2006, and almost 15 years after the murder of his daughter, JonBenét Ramsey
. Her murder remains unsolved as of October 2011.
, in 1996. The Boulder police had little experience in that type of investigation. Regardless, the majority of them immediately thought that the Ramseys were guilty due to the lack of evidence found indicating that an intruder had broken inside the house, and that the Ramseys had been avoiding the police since the death of their daughter.
Boulder police dismissed the possibility that an intruder had somehow slipped inside the house and committed the murder because they could not find any evidence of anyone breaking in. Instead, District Attorney Alex Hunter leaked information to the media. Meanwhile, the Ramseys had themselves retained a public relations firm and repeatedly appeared on national television to plead their case while hiding from the police behind their lawyers.
Statements were given to the media by John Ramsey's ex-wife, brother, and sister-in-law. They categorically deny that John Ramsey is, or has ever been, a child abuse
r. To further defend the claims, John Ramsey's son, John Andrew, and elder daughter, Melinda, told interviewers that their father had always been a loving and gentle person who "cherished" his children and had never abused them in any way. Both children were interviewed as possible suspects in the murder but were later cleared.
Stephen Singular investigative journalist and author of the book Presumed Guilty — An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, The Media and the Culture of Pornography, suggests the existence of a connection of the murder to the industry of child pornography. He refers to consultations with cyber-crime specialists who believe that JonBenet, due to her beauty pageant experience, was the perfect kind of child who could be dragged into the world of child pornography and was a natural candidate to attract attention and pedophiles.
In 2004, investigators began to emphasize an intruder theory. Throughout the investigation, the Ramseys maintained their innocence.
Even after the false confession, extradition
, and later release of John Mark Karr
, JonBenét's murder remains unsolved. Charges have not been filed against anyone.
However, in July 2008 John and Patsy Ramsey were officially cleared of the death by the Boulder District Attorney's office, based on new DNA
evidence collected from JonBenet's clothing; this particular DNA analysis did not exist at the time of the killing.
, Time, Inc., The Fox News Channel, American Media, Inc., Star
, The Globe
, Court TV
and The New York Post. John and Patsy Ramsey were also sued in two separate defamation lawsuits arising from the publication of their book, The Death of Innocence, brought by two individuals named in the book as having been investigated by Boulder police as suspects in JonBenét's murder. The Ramseys were defended in those lawsuits by Lin Wood and three other Atlanta attorneys, James C. Rawls, Eric P. Schroeder, and S. Derek Bauer, who obtained dismissal of both lawsuits including an in-depth decision by U.S. District Court Judge Julie Carnes that "abundant evidence" in the murder case pointed to an intruder having committed the crime.
In November 2006, Rod Westmoreland, a friend of JonBenét Ramsey's father, filed a defamation suit against Keith Greer, who posted a message on an Internet forum using the pseudonym "undertheradar". Greer had accused Westmoreland of participating in the kidnapping and murder. Greer has defended his statement.
's House of Representatives
.
The Ramseys were also portrayed in the South Park
episode "Butters' Very Own Episode
"
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
victim JonBenét Ramsey
JonBenét Ramsey
JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was an American child beauty pageant contestant who was murdered in her home in Boulder, Colorado, in 1996. The six-year-old's body was found in the basement of the family home nearly eight hours after she was reported missing. She had been struck on the head and strangled...
. He was the first to discover JonBenét's body in the wine cellar of the Ramseys' 15-room home in Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
, on December 25, 1996, just hours after her murder.
Life and business
Ramsey was born in Lincoln, NebraskaLincoln, Nebraska
The City of Lincoln is the capital and the second-most populous city of the US state of Nebraska. Lincoln is also the county seat of Lancaster County and the home of the University of Nebraska. Lincoln's 2010 Census population was 258,379....
, to Mary Jane (née Bennett) and James Dudley "Jay" Ramsey. His net worth was reported at $6.4 million as of May 1, 1996. He graduated from Michigan State University
Michigan State University
Michigan State University is a public research university in East Lansing, Michigan, USA. Founded in 1855, it was the pioneer land-grant institution and served as a model for future land-grant colleges in the United States under the 1862 Morrill Act.MSU pioneered the studies of packaging,...
. A distinguished naval
Navy
A navy is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake- or ocean-borne combat operations and related functions...
officer, he holds a pilot's license and owns two planes. In 1989, late in his military career, he formed the Advanced Product Group, one of three companies that merged to become Access Graphics. After mandatory military retirement, he became president and chief executive officer of Access Graphics, a computer services company and a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin is an American global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington Metropolitan Area....
. In 1996, Access Graphics grossed over $1 billion, and he was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. Immediately following the murder he was "temporarily replaced so the company did not have to bother him about business matters as he grieved
Grief
Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...
", according to Lockheed spokesman Evan McCollum. Ramsey soon left his job to move his family to Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, where he joined another computer company. Access Graphics was later sold to General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
in 1997.
Ramsey's wife Patsy
Patsy Ramsey
Patricia Ann "Patsy" Ramsey was the mother of JonBenét Ramsey, a 6-year-old American beauty pageant contestant who was murdered on December 25, 1996.-Background:...
died June 24, 2006 of ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer is a cancerous growth arising from the ovary. Symptoms are frequently very subtle early on and may include: bloating, pelvic pain, difficulty eating and frequent urination, and are easily confused with other illnesses....
. Ramsey's eldest daughter, Elizabeth Pasch Ramsey, from his first marriage died in a 1992 car accident at the age of 22.
Ramsey reportedly began dating Beth Holloway
Beth Holloway
Elizabeth Ann Reynolds "Beth" Holloway, also previously known as Beth Twitty, is an American speech pathologist and motivational speaker. Holloway specializes in teaching special needs children in public schools...
, the mother of Natalee Holloway
Natalee Holloway
Natalee Ann Holloway disappeared on May 30, 2005, during a high school graduation trip to Aruba, a Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. An American student from Mountain Brook, Alabama, Holloway graduated from Mountain Brook High School on May 24, 2005, shortly before the trip...
, an Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
student who disappeared during a 2005 high school graduation trip to Aruba
Aruba
Aruba is a 33 km-long island of the Lesser Antilles in the southern Caribbean Sea, located 27 km north of the coast of Venezuela and 130 km east of Guajira Peninsula...
. Ramsey met Holloway while attending a fundraiser after his wife's death. However, Ramsey downplayed their relationship, stating that they "developed a friendship of respect and admiration" out of common interests related to their children. The relationship did not last.
On July 21, 2011, John Ramsey married fashion designer Jan Rousseaux after meeting her at a wedding in Denver in 2009. Ramsey proposed to Rousseaux on February 14, 2011. They got married at a private ceremony in Charlevoix
Charlevoix
The Charlevoix region, located in Quebec, includes parts of the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River and the Laurentian Mountains region of the Canadian Shield...
, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
. The wedding came 5 years after the death of Patsy Ramsey
Patsy Ramsey
Patricia Ann "Patsy" Ramsey was the mother of JonBenét Ramsey, a 6-year-old American beauty pageant contestant who was murdered on December 25, 1996.-Background:...
, who died of ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer is a cancerous growth arising from the ovary. Symptoms are frequently very subtle early on and may include: bloating, pelvic pain, difficulty eating and frequent urination, and are easily confused with other illnesses....
in June 2006, and almost 15 years after the murder of his daughter, JonBenét Ramsey
JonBenét Ramsey
JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was an American child beauty pageant contestant who was murdered in her home in Boulder, Colorado, in 1996. The six-year-old's body was found in the basement of the family home nearly eight hours after she was reported missing. She had been struck on the head and strangled...
. Her murder remains unsolved as of October 2011.
Case files
JonBenét's was the only murder in Boulder, ColoradoBoulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
, in 1996. The Boulder police had little experience in that type of investigation. Regardless, the majority of them immediately thought that the Ramseys were guilty due to the lack of evidence found indicating that an intruder had broken inside the house, and that the Ramseys had been avoiding the police since the death of their daughter.
Boulder police dismissed the possibility that an intruder had somehow slipped inside the house and committed the murder because they could not find any evidence of anyone breaking in. Instead, District Attorney Alex Hunter leaked information to the media. Meanwhile, the Ramseys had themselves retained a public relations firm and repeatedly appeared on national television to plead their case while hiding from the police behind their lawyers.
Statements were given to the media by John Ramsey's ex-wife, brother, and sister-in-law. They categorically deny that John Ramsey is, or has ever been, a child abuse
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
r. To further defend the claims, John Ramsey's son, John Andrew, and elder daughter, Melinda, told interviewers that their father had always been a loving and gentle person who "cherished" his children and had never abused them in any way. Both children were interviewed as possible suspects in the murder but were later cleared.
Stephen Singular investigative journalist and author of the book Presumed Guilty — An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, The Media and the Culture of Pornography, suggests the existence of a connection of the murder to the industry of child pornography. He refers to consultations with cyber-crime specialists who believe that JonBenet, due to her beauty pageant experience, was the perfect kind of child who could be dragged into the world of child pornography and was a natural candidate to attract attention and pedophiles.
In 2004, investigators began to emphasize an intruder theory. Throughout the investigation, the Ramseys maintained their innocence.
Even after the false confession, extradition
Extradition
Extradition is the official process whereby one nation or state surrenders a suspected or convicted criminal to another nation or state. Between nation states, extradition is regulated by treaties...
, and later release of John Mark Karr
John Mark Karr
Alexis Valoran Reich is an American male-to-female transgender person formerly known as John Mark Karr who in 2006 falsely confessed to the unsolved murder of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey. She has, on other occasions, faced a number of other criminal charges.-Childhood:Karr was born in Conyers,...
, JonBenét's murder remains unsolved. Charges have not been filed against anyone.
However, in July 2008 John and Patsy Ramsey were officially cleared of the death by the Boulder District Attorney's office, based on new DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
evidence collected from JonBenet's clothing; this particular DNA analysis did not exist at the time of the killing.
Defamation lawsuits
Several defamation lawsuits have ensued since JonBenét's murder. L. Lin Wood. was the plaintiff's lead attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey and their son Burke, and has prosecuted defamation claims on their behalf against St. Martin's PressSt. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in the Flatiron Building in New York City. Currently, St. Martin's Press is one of the United States' largest publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under eight imprints, which include St. Martin's Press , St...
, Time, Inc., The Fox News Channel, American Media, Inc., Star
Star (magazine)
Star is an American celebrity tabloid magazine.-History:Star was founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1974 as competition to the tabloid National Enquirer with its headquarters in New York City. In the late 1980s it moved its offices to Tarrytown, NY and in 1990 Murdoch sold the magazine to The Enquirers...
, The Globe
The Globe (tabloid)
Globe is a supermarket tabloid first published North America on November 10, 1954 in Montreal, Canada as Midnight by Joe Azaria and John Vader and became the chief competitor to the National Enquirer during the 1960s. In 1978 it changed its name to the Midnight Globe after its publisher, Globe...
, Court TV
Court TV
truTV is an American cable television network owned by Turner Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Time Warner. The network launched as Court TV in 1991, changing to truTV in 2008...
and The New York Post. John and Patsy Ramsey were also sued in two separate defamation lawsuits arising from the publication of their book, The Death of Innocence, brought by two individuals named in the book as having been investigated by Boulder police as suspects in JonBenét's murder. The Ramseys were defended in those lawsuits by Lin Wood and three other Atlanta attorneys, James C. Rawls, Eric P. Schroeder, and S. Derek Bauer, who obtained dismissal of both lawsuits including an in-depth decision by U.S. District Court Judge Julie Carnes that "abundant evidence" in the murder case pointed to an intruder having committed the crime.
In November 2006, Rod Westmoreland, a friend of JonBenét Ramsey's father, filed a defamation suit against Keith Greer, who posted a message on an Internet forum using the pseudonym "undertheradar". Greer had accused Westmoreland of participating in the kidnapping and murder. Greer has defended his statement.
Politics
In 2004 and 2008, Ramsey unsuccessfully campaigned for a seat in MichiganMichigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
's House of Representatives
Michigan State House of Representatives
The Michigan House of Representatives is the lower house of the Michigan Legislature. There are 110 members, each of whom is elected from constituencies having approximately 77,000 to 91,000 residents, based on population figures from the 2000 federal U.S. Census.Members are elected in...
.
Fictional portrayals
- Ramsey was portrayed by Ronny CoxRonny CoxDaniel Ronald "Ronny" Cox is an American character actor, singer-songwriter and guitarist.-Personal life:Cox, the third of five children, was born in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, the son of Lounette and Bob P. Cox, a carpenter who also worked at a dairy. He grew up in Portales, New Mexico...
in the 2000 miniseriesMiniseriesA miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
Perfect Murder, Perfect TownPerfect Murder, Perfect TownPerfect Murder, Perfect Town is a 2000 American television miniseries directed by Lawrence Schiller. The teleplay by Tom Topor is based on Schiller's book of the same title....
.
The Ramseys were also portrayed in the South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
episode "Butters' Very Own Episode
Butters' Very Own Episode
"Butters' Very Own Episode" is the fourteenth and final episode of the fifth season of the animated television series South Park, and the 79th episode of the series overall. "Butters' Very Own Episode" originally aired in the United States on Comedy Central on December 12, 2001...
"