The shocking murder of JonBenet Ramsey in Colorado on Christmas Day in 1996 shocked the world – but almost 30 years on, it’s a mystery that still remains unsolved.
On the morning of Boxing Day, 1996, JonBenét’s mum and dad awoke unable to find their daughter anywhere in their home.
Later that day, she was finally discovered covered with a blanket in a basement storage room, with her wrists tied and duct tape across her mouth. Around her neck was a garotte, which had been tightened with paintbrushes. While initial investigations focused on the girl’s parents – John and Patsy Ramsey – it later moved onto two other suspects.
Robert Wolf, known as Chris, was one of only two suspects to be detained by police in relation to the case. His ex-partner Jacqueline Dilson has maintained her belief that it was Wolf who murdered JonBenét at her home.
She recalled how her ex-lover vanished from their home in Colorado for a few hours on Christmas Day in 1996 and acted strangely when he returned, which led her to believe he must’ve been the person who killed the six-year-old pageant queen.
Wolf has maintained his innocence throughout the investigation and in 2011 police said he had been thoroughly investigated as a suspect.
Jacqueline explained how she awoke on Boxing Day to find her boyfriend showering and a pile of clothes that were stained with mud on the floor. When she questioned him about where he’d been, he became aggressive.
She also claims he became angry when JonBenét’s death made the news and said he wanted the little girl’s father to die, accusing him of sexually abusing her.
Jacqueline handed over Wolf’s clothes to authorities for DNA testing and gave them handwriting samples to be checked against a ransom note left on a staircase near JonBenét’s body.
While police said that they had thoroughly investigated him and he had been cleared of involvement, Jacqueline isn’t convinced. She has written a book detailing her experience, hoping it could lead police to look into him again.
In the book, The Unheard Call, Wolf is presented as a radical with anti-capitalist views. He held a grudge against John Ramsey for being tied to arms producer Lockheed Martin. She claims that Wolf’s motive was an act of revenge against what he saw as John’s role in slaughtering innocent women and children in conflicts across the world.
She claims he returned on Boxing Day morning screaming about the “motherf***er on the hill with his computer systems that are killing women and children in third-world countries”. The Hill was a nickname for the well-off area of Boulder in which the Ramseys lived. At this point, details of the murder had not yet been broadcast.
In the following days, Jacqueline claims Wolf became obsessed with news coverage of the case, and would curse the media for the lack of information available. But it was a statement a few days after Christmas that chilled her to the bone. She recalled him saying: “You know, me and OJ [Simpson] have a lot in common. We get away with everything.”
The only other suspect detained in relation to the case was John Mark Karr, who falsely confessed to the shocking murder in 2006. However, DNA evidence at the scene did not belong to him and he was released and the case remains unsolved.
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