Who Is JonBenét Ramsey's Dad John And What Happened To Him?

The odd circumstances of 6-year-old childhood beauty pageant contestant JonBenét Ramsey's death continue to puzzle investigators, her loved ones, and true crime fans all over the world decades later. On the morning after Christmas 1996, Patsy Ramsey awoke to find a ransom note on a staircase in their home, demanding $118,000 in exchange for her young daughter's life. She called the police shortly afterward, and they began investigating JonBenét's disappearance as a kidnapping. 

However, just a few hours later, John Ramsey discovered his daughter's body in the basement. During her autopsy, coroners found "a deep ligature around the victim's neck and another around the right wrist — evidence she was bound and strangled," per Biography. She had also been beaten and possibly also sexually assaulted. Although no semen was found on her body, unidentified male DNA was discovered on her clothes, beneath her fingernails, and on the garrote that had been used to strangle her. 

As JonBenét's case started gaining media attention, Boulder police reassured residents that her death wasn't at the hands of a serial killer. However, her parents didn't share the same sentiment. During a January 1997 CNN interview, Patsy warned residents that "there is a killer on the loose" and urged them to keep a watchful eye on their kids, per The Independent. Then, in April 1997, Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter confirmed that John and Patsy were under suspicion themselves. Although the couple vehemently denied any involvement in their daughter's murder, critics never quite believed them. 

Linda Ardnt, the first officer who arrived at the Ramsey house after the 911 call, believed that John and Patsy Ramsey were behaving rather unusually in the hours leading up to the discovery of JonBenét Ramsey's body. Speaking to ABC News in 1999, Ardnt recalled how Patsy and John had no reaction when they didn't receive a call from the kidnapper at 10 a.m., as the ransom note promised. Eventually, the police officer told John and his friend, Fleet White, to do another check of the house to see if they noticed anything out of place. According to her, John wasted no time in heading straight to the basement, where he found JonBenét's body. Although both men were under strict instructions not to move anything, John still carried his daughter's body away from the crime scene and upstairs. 

Likewise, he also affected the evidence by pulling some tape off JonBenét's mouth and placing a blanket over her. Meanwhile, an insider revealed to Vanity Fair that John didn't even tear up after seeing his daughter's body and only "started to moan while peering around to see who was looking at him" once they were upstairs. Additionally, the Ramsey family was under further suspicion after investigators discovered that the ransom note was likely penned inside their home. Ultimately though, John was cleared of any suspicion because his handwriting didn't match. Moreover, his DNA notably didn't match with that found on his daughter's body either.

Although evidence ruled John Ramsey out as a suspect in JonBenét Ramsey's murder, some people still weren't convinced that he had nothing to do with the crime. In fact, in 1999, a grand jury strived to indict John and Patsy Ramsey for apparently causing their child's death through abuse and being accessories to a crime. However, the district attorney reckoned there wasn't a strong enough case against the parents to move forward with filing charges. During a 2024 chat with People, John shared how he felt about people viewing him as a top suspect all these decades later, reasoning, "Once your reputation is tarnished, rightly or wrongly, it never goes back to pure white." He continued, "That's just life. And it doesn't bother me." John also proclaimed that all the negativity paled in comparison to the outpouring of love and support he had received over the years. 

Meanwhile, in another People interview, he detailed his speculation about the identity of his daughter's killer. John believes that the perpetrator was the same man who had sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl about nine months after JonBenét's death. "I think the method of operation was exactly the same," he explained. "I believe the killer was in the house when we came home, waited 'til we went to sleep." John's theory seems plausible because the 12-year-old lived near them and even went to the same dance class as JonBenét. However, the police brushed off his theory because they couldn't see enough similarities.

During a 2024 appearance on "Today," John Ramsey confidently argued that the identity of JonBenét Ramsey's murderer wouldn't remain a mystery forever. "I believe it can be solved if police accept help from outside their system. That's been their flaw for 25 years," John asserted. He went on to discuss his grapples with law enforcement: "For years, in my judgment, the police department had very poor leadership; they wanted us to stay out of their way." John also noted that the investigator who was in charge of JonBenét's case didn't have much knowledge of how to deal with a murder investigation since they were primarily dealing with auto-theft cases. However, the investigator could've better served them if they had sought help from experienced professionals. 

Notably, in his 2024 People interview, John claimed that the officer who took charge of their case was also likely responsible for finding the person who sexually assaulted the 12-year-old girl in their neighborhood but the girl's parents were equally dissatisfied with the way the police handled their case. Meanwhile, when he appeared on "True Crime News" in 2024, John claimed that the Boulder police hadn't even tested the DNA present on the garrote that was used to kill his daughter. Given all this, it's unsurprising that he told the "Today" hosts that he wanted to remain in the public eye to "pressure" law enforcement into taking the right steps toward solving JonBenét's murder.

It's worth noting that the ransom note from JonBenét Ramsey's supposed murderer was directed towards John Ramsey. It reportedly warned, "We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We do respect your [business] but not the country that it serves," per The Independent. While it's unclear what the "business" in question was, John was actually running a successful company at the time and had earned a bonus of $118,000 for Christmas, which was the exact sum that the kidnappers demanded.  

In 1988, he started building his company, Advanced Product Group, and eventually merged it with two other companies, CAD Distributors and CAD Sources, to create Access Graphics. Although John sold the company to Lockheed Martin in 1991, he remained on as president and got to see it garner $1 billion in sales just a few days before JonBenét's murder in December 1996. Ultimately, John stepped down from his role when General Electric Co. acquired Access Graphics for $2.8 billion in 1997. 

His wildly successful business even earned John the title of the Chamber of Commerce's Entrepreneur of the Year in 1995. Decades before becoming a businessman, he graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University in 1966. Then, John went on to serve in the navy as a civil engineer for a couple of years before returning to MSU for his Masters of Business Administration degree in 1971.

John Ramsey tied the knot with Lucinda Pasch in 1966, and they welcomed three children before parting ways in 1978. He married his second wife, JonBenét Ramsey's mother, Patsy Ramsey, in 1980, and they remained together until she passed away from ovarian cancer in 2006. Patsy and John are also parents to Burke Ramsey, who was only nine at the time of his sister's murder. While John was attending a friend's wedding around 2009, his path crossed with that of Jan Rousseaux's, and they quickly became friends.

However, their friendship blossomed into a romantic connection in 2010, and they tied the knot the following year. John is the stepfather to her two daughters, Jessica and Juliette, and a step-grandfather to their own children. During Rousseaux's appearance in the 2016 documentary, "The Killing of JonBenét: Her Father Speaks," she reaffirmed that she never had any doubt Patsy and John had nothing to do with their daughter's murder, recalling, "I remember clearly that I saw a tabloid of them in a grocery store," per People. 

She added, "I was shocked [...] I thought, 'Look at Patsy. She's normal. She loved that child. John is normal. These are stable people. They had no history, before or after.'" Years before Jan entered his life, John briefly tried his hand at politics by vying for a spot in Michigan's House of Representatives, during the 2004 Republican primary. Although he earned 24.3% of the vote, John ultimately lost. Another interesting fact about him is that he hired outspoken Donald Trump ally, attorney Lin Wood, for his daughter's case.