“I tried to submit a tip on a suspect in the Jon Benet Ramsey case”

JonBenét Ramsay Murder Investigation Tipster – Columbus, Ohio – interview conducted April, 2015

A friend told me that if I was such a big fan of the true crime podcast I was listening to, I should talk to one of our mutual friends about an experience she had meeting a character she felt might have been involved with the murder of JonBenét Ramsey in 1996.

Six year-old JonBenét Ramsay disappeared on Christmas Day, 1996 from the Ramsey’s home in Boulder, Colorado. A ransom note was left at the scene. Her father recovered her body the next day in a cellar in the family’s home. After the ensuing media circus and what is widely considered a bungled investigation, no charges were ever filed against anyone for her murder. My friend told me she had an extended conversation with a man who said he was a friend of the family, and she felt it strange that he would not stop mentioning his connection to the case.

My friend isn’t sure what to think of her meeting – it was one of those situations where the feeling you get meeting someone is so strong that your intuition has to count for something, but what exactly she isn’t sure.

But she felt like she should say something and resolved to call a police tip line to discuss her meeting. Aside from the initial encounter, the other crazy thing about this story is the difficulty she had in talking to the authorities about it. My friend was ambivalent about trying to submit a tip in the first place and the hoops she had to jump through to do so made her experience frustrating in general. The story she relates is in part an exercise in intuition and the dark draw of true crime. The trouble she had in leaving a tip is astounding and speaks for the disorganization that afflicts even the most official organizations.

Of course, the individual in question here was never charged (or investigated, as far as we know) and so shouldn’t be considered a suspect or someone who got away with something terrible.

In the summer of 2013, I went back home to Syracuse, Indiana to be a waitress and live with my best friend for the summer before my last year of school. I was a waitress at an upscale restaurant on a lake. One morning towards the end of the summer I went in and I was writing down the drafts for the day. I was in the bar area, which I normally wasn’t because I wasn’t a bartender. There was a man sitting at the bar drinking, which I thought was weird because it was early, but people do that so whatever. I was standing there and he started talking to me. He asked me where I was from, if I was in school. He seemed like a normal guy, so I carried on a conversation with him. I don’t remember if I asked where he was from or if he just told me. He told me he was from Boulder, Colorado, and he immediately brought up JonBenét Ramsey. At the time, I didn’t know much about the case – I remembered seeing her on the cover of magazines and stuff like that, but I don’t know if I associated her face with the name. But I’m super into [true crime] so I started talking to him about it.

He started rambling and he told me that his wife was her piano teacher at the time she was murdered. Right away I started freaking out, like, woah, that’s wild. But I didn’t know enough about the case to ask specific questions. I didn’t even know enough about it to know if the person [responsible] got caught. He started talking about it openly to me, like how JonBenét was consistently over at their place and sometime her parents would come with her and sometimes not, and that she would holiday things for them to hang on their fridge. I asked him if he was friends with the Ramseys, and he said they were acquaintances, not super good friends, they were more so friends with the Whites, who were the Ramseys’s best friends. He started telling me all this detailed information about how the Whites knew more information than what they told the media, just really bizarre stuff like that. It seemed like he was saying, not that he was boasting, but he kept saying that he never got questioned even though he had direct contact with JonBenét, that nobody had investigated he or his wife or anything. It was weird that he was openly telling me all this information and then reiterating that they never got questioned. It’s been so long since it happened – it’s been twenty years now, which is another thing I thought was weird. The guy immediately made the connection between Boulder and JonBenét – why wouldn’t he say it’s so many miles from Denver or you ski there or something like that?

He made some comment that made me believe that he and his wife were divorced and he moved to Indiana, which I also thought was weird. I thought it seemed like a random place to move to from Colorado. A lot of people in Indiana want to move to Colorado, not the other way around. Maybe he moved for a job; I can’t remember what his purpose was for moving. But I watch so many crime shows that I started adding all these things up: he was alone, drinking, he got divorced, moved to Indiana, all this weird stuff.

He wasn’t drunk, I don’t think, it just seemed like he was casually drinking. He seemed like he was trying to impress me a little bit. I was at work but I wasn’t his waitress or anything, which is why I thought it was weird that he was spilling all this information to me when I was just a random person. Again, I didn’t know enough to ask specific questions.

He kind of creeped me out a little bit, but it wasn’t anything about his appearance that creeped me out. He seemed like a nice guy. He was a Caucasian male, with dark hair, a little chunky, no facial hair, no glasses – seemed like a pretty ordinary guy. I would guess he was somewhere in his late 40s, early 50s. He told me they hadn’t caught the person, and I remember thinking, ‘oh gosh, what if it was him?’ but then I said ‘no, you’re being stupid, there’s no way, but my mind was wandering.’ I remember mostly feeling kind of strange about the incident, mostly because I let my mind wander when it could have been nothing at all.

It wasn’t until later on that I learned more details about the case. A year later, I was listening to a documentary about JonBenét when I was at work. I learned they found Caucasian male DNA in three different locations around and on her when they found her. They thought someone who knew the family committed the crime because the ransom note asked for $118,000, which is almost exactly what Mr. Ramsey’s bonus was that year. And the way things added up, if the guy I met did it, all these puzzle pieces would fit together. He could know more information about them than a random predator. They believe the person snuck into the house when they were out to dinner and possibly hid under her bed until they got home and then used a stun gun or something. The Ramseys were over at their best friends the White’s for dinner that night – things like that, he could have known that information. So when I was watching the documentary, I was kind of freaking out a bit, like wait, should I report this? Not that it’s anything, but what if it is something? I know that with killers, a lot of times they’re narcissistic and they want to brag about what they did but not fully come out and say it.

The whole time I was watching the documentary, I was thinking, what if it was this guy I met? At the end of this documentary, this piano piece starts playing and the narrator said that this was the song that JonBenét mastered the week before she got murdered. And I was like, oh my god that’s creepy.

All of the pieces fell into place or at least took on more significance when you heard this piano piece playing at the end of this documentary, so what did you do then? What pushed you to treat that encounter with the seriousness you did?

I watch a lot of crime shows and I know that a lot of cold cases get solved by a random tip that comes through. I told my mom about it and told some people I work with about it, and they were like, hey, you have to report it! What if he’s the murderer? I was like crap, I’m too scared to report it. What if it’s nothing? But then I got thinking, well, there’s barely a chance that it’s anything, but if it is, I’d rather report it than not. I read they interviewed and took DNA of 140 friends and acquaintances, but no DNA matched. This guy never got questioned, never got his DNA taken – he told me that more than once.

The police admitted they messed up when they immediately pinned it on the parents. I think they neglected to look at anyone else. And this would be a person that would probably slip through the cracks – he wasn’t the piano teacher, it was his wife, but he would always be at their house and he had contact with her. So I figured I might as well report it. I know that if I were the parents and someone had a bizarre encounter with someone [connected to the family], even if it was nothing at all, there is a chance it could be something, so I’d want everyone to come forward.

Telling someone made me nervous. Every time I would think, this could be the guy, I’d backtrack and be like, no there’s no way, this is such a big case. It made me think I was a complete idiot for considering submitting a tip. I already have a problem dwelling on things and my mind wanders like crazy, so I was thinking, I’m probably just overthinking this. I don’t necessarily feel like this guy did it, but I felt weird about it and felt like I should at least say something, just so it’s not on my chest, so I’m not thinking about it.

I called a tip line I found on the Boulder Police Department’s website. I thought it would be specific to Boulder but it was a tip line for the whole United States. The guy I talked to had no idea who JonBenét Ramsey was. He was like, I’m not from Boulder, Colorado, and I’m like, yeah, neither am I but this is a huge unsolved case. I even tried to describe her to him, and he was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. He asked if I knew the person’s name. I said no. He asked if the guy [I talked to] admitted he did it, and I was like no. I was so stupid for calling because I didn’t know any of this information. He was asking me questions and took down the information; I was a little disoriented because I was confused as to why I was doing it if I didn’t even know his name.

But I told him anyway and he said he was going to pass the tip on to the police department in Boulder. I had a feeling he wasn’t going to do anything with it. It was kind of a weird conversation. He didn’t know who she was. It was just awkward. He did give me a number to call back in a few months to check up on the tip.

Afterwards I was pretty frustrated. I looked for a different number. I was getting worked up; I felt like I had to tell somebody about this. This is embarrassing, but I was like, ‘I have to take matters into my own hands,’ so I tried to connect with John Ramsey on LinkedIn, but he never accepted. You had to connect with them in order to send a message. I tried to connect with him and said I was a friend, but immediately afterwards I thought, this is so unprofessional and creepy. I had my mind made up – even if he does accept I’m not going to say anything. I’m not good with words or anything so I knew that if I tried to talk to him it would just end badly. So then I just let it go. But then a few weeks ago he viewed my profile.

Woah, really?

Yeah. And then I felt even dumber. He remarried and I think he moved to Vegas. He didn’t ever accept my connection, and I’m kind of glad. And then I felt bad because it’s probably a sensitive thing for him. Though I did see an interview with him where he said that for years he wasn’t ready to learn the truth, but as of a few years ago he’s been ready and wants to know. I felt like if I was a parent, I would want to know as much as possible.

But then I remembered the tip number they gave me and that I had never called back to check up on it. This was just a few weeks ago. I called the number back to check in on the tip. Some lady answered and said, this is a crime line for South Bend, Indiana. I was like, I found this number on the Boulder police department’s website and it was a tip line for the whole United States, not just one specific region. And she was like, that’s weird.

She went to the Boulder Police Department’s website and gave me the correct number I needed to call. I said sorry, I must have pushed a wrong button or something. So I called the correct number and the same lady answered again. I was like, I called the number that’s on the Boulder Police Department’s website. She said that’s so weird and gave me a different 800-number to call. I looked at my phone, and that’s the exact number I’m connected to. She said, that’s weird, that’s not our number at all. So there must have been some weird glitch in the phone system. She told me to call another number that’s on the same website. I hang up and call the number but it’s disconnected. I hang up again and call another number, but they told me it was for the county and that I need the number for the town of Boulder. They gave me the number to that tip line. I got an answering machine. I kept trying to call it and kept getting an answering machine. Finally I left a message with my name and number. I said it wasn’t an emergency but that it’s related to the JonBenét Ramsey case and I had some information that I wanted to share with them.

It’s been a couple of weeks and I haven’t heard anything back from them. I realize they probably get a billion tips all the time, but it’s just extremely difficult to get ahold of somebody. I did some more research last week to see if there was a specific tip line for JonBenét Ramsey. All I could find was a tip line for a detective, and the article [with the detective’s number] was posted August of 2014. I was like, oh that’s not that long ago – maybe he’s still assigned to the case. I called and left a message. I called again and talked to him last week. He said, sorry, I’m no longer assigned to that case, let me give you the number to the police department; they can either accept the tip or transfer you to the tip line. They transferred me and I got the [tip line] answering machine again. And that’s been it.

At this point, I don’t know if I care to pursue it anymore. I was frustrated I wasn’t able to talk to anyone. It surprised me how difficult it is to submit a tip. I don’t have that crazy of information, but if I did, I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone. Maybe this guy is the murderer but I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone because nobody is answering the phone. I don’t know who to call at this point. I’ve left my name and number and no one’s called me.

I feel a little frustrated because I get something in my head and have to go for it. I didn’t want to hit a dead end. I imagine all the people who try to submit something who aren’t sure of things or as persistent as I am – it would be so easy to give up after the first call.