Unpacking why the JonBenét Ramsey murder case has never been solved

After Patsy Ramsey called 911 at 5:52 a.m. on December 26, 1996 to report that her daughter JonBenét Ramsey had been kidnapped, she and the man John Ramsey also reached out to a number of their friends who came right over to support the couple.

Instead, in addition to responding officers, there were people painting around the Ramseys’ 5,000-square-foot home all day before John found JonBenét’s body in the basement shortly after 1 p.m. 1:30 p.m.

“I should have removed all those people from the scene, it was a crime scene error,” retired Boulder Police Detective Bob Whitson recalled in the Netflix docu-series Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey. “But at the time it looked like a legitimate kidnapping. So I thought, Well, this is the support system for the Ramseys, and I let them be.”

Not knowing she was dead when he found her, John said in the series that he first tried to untie the string that bound her hands. The knots were too tight, he said, but he removed a piece of duct tape covering her mouth and threw it on a blanket that had been lying with the body.

He then carried her upstairs, which investigators say ensured the evidence collected from her body, the pajamas she was wearing, the tape, etc., were contaminated.

“There may have been some evidence on the duct tape if it wasn’t removed,” Whitson said on the series.