JonBenet Investigators Say They'll Name Suspect as 911 Operator Questions Family's Call
Investigators reexamining the JonBenét Ramsey murder case have identified who they believe is behind her death, as the 911 operator who took the now-famous call reporting the little girl’s disappearance said it seemed rehearsed.
Retired FBI agent James Fitzgerald, an expert in forensic linguistics who played a key role in identifying Ted Kaczynski as the Unabomber, believes the ransom note left in the Ramsey family’s Boulder, Colorado, home revealed the most about JonBenét’s killer or killers, he told Yahoo TV.
Fitzgerald and his colleagues had worked to solve the mystery of who killed the 6-year-old child beauty queen since she was found dead on the day after Christmas in 1996.
“… [I] was the main guy in the FBI looking at the note,” Fitzgerald told Yahoo TV, saying he re-assumed that role when he and fellow investigators both new and from the original case looked back into it this year.
Their findings were filmed for CBS’s special, The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey, which premiered Sunday.
Read: JonBenet Ramsey's Brother Tells Dr. Phil Her Funeral Was 'Traumatizing' for Him
The three-page letter demanding $118,000 and claimed to have been written by a “group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction” was not from an “authentic kidnapper,” but instead was part of a staged crime scene, Fitzgerald said.
“The person who was writing this was truly out of his or her element, in terms of trying to be a real criminal or a real kidnapper,” said Fitzgerald, who has been an advisor on TV shows like Criminal Minds and Sleepy Hollow.
After reexamining the case using new technologies and law enforcement expertise, the group is confident they know who killed JonBenét, he said.
“We feel very firm in rendering an opinion within the last 15 minutes of the show,” Fitzgerald said, noting that identifying the little girl’s murderer will be the closest thing to justice in the nearly 20-year-old case.
“If we as a species, as human beings, can’t protect the youngest and the most innocent among us, then we fail,” he said. “Short of protecting them, when something bad does happen to them, death or an assault of some sort, then we owe it to that victim, and we owe it to every other child or innocent victim out there, to bring justice.”
The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey also depicts the 911 operator who answered Patsy Ramsey’s phone call pleading for help to find her daughter believed the call to be rehearsed.
"I just remember having that sunken feeling, like something wasn't right,” Kim Archuleta said. The problem was, if you hear the frantic [tone] in her voice when she's speaking to me, where she couldn't even answer my questions, it immediately stopped."
After Patsy Ramsey attempted to end the phone call, she allegedly could be heard saying, “Okay, we’ve called the police, now what?” Archuleta said.
Read: 20 Years After Her Death, JonBenet Ramsey's Pageant Friends Open Up About 'Fun-Loving Kid'
Archuleta said she was never contacted to testify during the 1999 grand jury proceedings against Patsy and John Ramsey, but believed the information she could’ve provided may have “really turned the case around.”
Investigators featured in the special analyzing the 911 call believed they heard an adult male say, “We’re not speaking to you,” an adult female ask, “What did you?” and a “smaller voice,” ask, “What did you find?”
None of the Ramseys — including JonBenét's then-9-year-old brother, Burke — were ever charged in the killing and they have always maintained their innocence.
Patsy Ramsey died in 2006 from ovarian cancer, two years before she, John and Burke were officially cleared by then-District Attorney Mary Lacy, who wrote that DNA evidence pointed elsewhere.
The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey concludes September 19 at 9 p.m.
Watch: Boulder Police: We Will Not Give Up On Finding Justice for JonBenet Ramsey
