The details of the murder are still shocking today, nearly three decades later. On Dec. 26, 1996, the 6-year-old daughter of John and Patsy Ramsey, a well-to-do couple living in Boulder, Colorado, was found dead in the family’s basement. JonBenét Ramsey , an outgoing child who performed in local beauty pageants, had been bludgeoned and strangled.
It is a story I began covering for “48 Hours” in 1999 and will return to in “The Search for JonBenét’s Killer” airing Saturday, Dec. 21 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. The program is a look back at how we covered the case in 2002. It’s a television time capsule, allowing viewers to hear Patsy and John Ramsey talk about their daughter and how her death and the following investigation upended their lives.
Shortly before 6 a.m. on the morning after Christmas, Patsy Ramsey called 911. She had awakened, she later told police, to find her daughter missing and a two-and-a-half-page note left on the stairs demanding a $118,000 ransom.