I'm sure a lot of you will remember the case of JonBenet Ramsey. This was a highly publicized case and is still unsolved. For those of you who are not familiar with the case JonBenet, she was a six year old girl who was found dead in the basement of her Colorado home. Most of the pictures that the media showed where pictures of her from beauty pageants. The parents had went out to a party and had come home and up JonBenet to bed around 9:30 PM. The next morning when the mother woke up she found a ransom note on the hallway floor. The police were called and an investigation started. The police who came to the house made a lot of mistakes. They failed to rope off the house, they allowed friends to come in and out of the house, there was no proper search of the house and they did not collect or protect any forensic evidence. John Ramsey the father is actually the one who found JonBenet in the basement of their home. The parents were the prime suspects, but there was no evidence to say that they committed the crime. Seven years after JonBenet tragic death, a sample of blood that was found in her underpants was sent to the FBI. The FBI are now running the sample through database to see if it matches any other crimes or criminals.
This is a very tragic case. The police that handled the case were inexperienced and made a lot of costly mistakes that maybe if had been avoided could have lead them to the killer. This is still an open case and many people hope that JonBenet's killer will finally be identified and brought to justice.
Below is a website that has different chapters regarding the story. This websites gives a very detailed description of the crime from the beginning to end and it also talks about new developments in the case.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/famous/ramsey/index_1.html
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Above is a picture of JonBenet. She was described by the media as a painted baby.
For me, the JonBenet Ramsey case had an impact on my psychological development growing up. I, like many kids my age, followed the case very closely through national news shows such as 20/20. This case brought child murders and kidnapping to nationwide attention. Children everywhere were getting the "Don't talk to strangers" lessons on a much larger scale. I remember specifically getting many of these talks, and I think this case played in my over-protective roll as an older brother (my brother being born shortly after this case). I bet there is more people in this class that can think back to this time period and remember how anxious parents and teachers were.
JonBenet is something I also grew up hearing a lot about. In 2006 when John Karr came into the picture the world was relieved to feel that the murderer of JonBenet had finally been caught. Here is an article that talks of John Karr and the many things that seemed strange when he confessed to her murder.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Jon-Benet-Ramsey-and-John-Mark-Karr&id=1385484
My personal belief is that this man, who was being searched for child pornography charges when he confessed to her murder, was simply obsessed with JonBenet's case. This case got a ton of media coverage and I quite frankly think this man got so obsessed with the case that he found a way to write himself into the story. He certainly recieved huge amounts of media coverage and is now still seen as a suspect to her murder by some due to the signiture on the ransom note reading "S.B.T.C" A high school class mate of Karr's said he wrote in his year book, "I shall be the conqueror." Which would be symbolized as "S.B.T.C"
After looking through the website and reading several chapters, I find it very upsetting that the police did such a poor job. In class, we learned all the steps that the police have to take during an investigation. It seems as if it is almost impossible for them to miss something when the police, investigators and CSI all go through the same types of procedures. It is really unsettling to know that someone got away with (so far) the murder of an innocent little girl. Hopefully the DNA testing can fix the mistakes that were made at the beginning of this investigation.
Till this day this tragic case still boggles my mind. In my eyes and from what we have leaned in PsyLaw class, the police, detectives, politicians, and FBI did not do their job what so ever.
It started with the police. I would think that they should just KNOW the basics of a crime scene...like securing it. It was clear that they let everyone and anyone walk amongst the house. It was assumed that they did not interview the Ramsey's in a way you would for a case like this. It was very clear that the police department of Boulder, Colorado put more of their personal views and thoughts into this case rather that facts and just simply doing their job.
It is the detectives that really bother me. It was like constant back and forth. I think their biggest mistake was not properly taking care of all the evidence. They as well had a hay-day on this case. While I was reading this I often wondered if they took picture of all the people that were around and at the Ramsey house the morning/day of the 911 call. In my own opinion I thought that it could have helped them. A year later when they started to interview everyone and anyone that was close to the Ramsey family and that had been with them the day before, the day of, and the day after. They could have gone back to that picture and crossed out the people that were interviewed seeing if anyone stood out.
It just amazed me on how long this case took to clear out John and Pat Ramsey. Almost 8 years that it took. They had the evidence that it was not them, but did not listen to it. In my opinion, a LOT of time was wasted.