Word: jonbenets
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...murder of any child prompts disbelief and heartbreak, but the glamorous trappings behind the death of JonBenet Ramsey, 6, underscored how hideously inappropriate such tragedies are. She was a toddler turned beauty queen--Little Miss Colorado of 1995, among other titles--and a child of wealth and privilege. Her father John, 53, is president of Access Graphics, a high-tech, billion-dollar-a-year branch of Lockheed Martin; her mother Patricia, 39, widely known as Patsy, is a former Miss West Virginia (1977) and is active in social and charitable circles. The little girl's strangled body was discovered...
...suggests that the culprit has already been tagged as an insider familiar with the Ramsey house. But that category obviously includes John and Patsy Ramsey. Other troubling questions arose as details surrounding the murder surfaced. The only people at home at the Ramseys' on Christmas night were the parents, JonBenet and her brother Burke, 9. The next morning Patsy Ramsey called 911 to report that her daughter was missing and that she had found a ransom note on a stairway demanding $118,000 for JonBenet's safe return. That sum, when it became public knowledge, struck many as awfully small...
...afternoon of the same day, when no ransom calls had been received, John and a friend began to search the premises. When they found JonBenet's body, duct tape across her mouth and throat and, according to some reports, a cord around her neck, John carried his dead daughter up from the basement, away from the possible crime scene...
...good deal of this information came from the Ramseys during a New Year's Day interview on CNN in Atlanta, where they had gone for JonBenet's funeral at the Peachtree Presbyterian Church, site of her baptism. By then, both parents had hired attorneys (and subsequently a media adviser). Why? John answered that a friend "suggested it would be foolish not to have knowledgeable counsel." Patsy dramatically contradicted statements that Boulder parents had nothing to worry about. "There is a killer on the loose," she said. The parents also announced the offer of a $50,000 reward for discovery...
...court of public opinion. Such before-the-evidence perceptions overshadow the loss of a precious child. Bill McReynolds, a retired journalism professor at the University of Colorado, has played Santa Claus for the past three years at the Ramseys' Christmas party for neighborhood kids. He remembers how JonBenet gave him a vial of stardust for his beard this season. "JonBenet believed in Santa Claus," he says. "I don't think there was a doubt in her mind." Three days later, she was gone...