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 her husband, John Ramsey, also contacted many friends, who immediately arrived to support the couple.
In addition to the responding officers, there were other people hanging around the Ramseys’ 5,000-square-foot home throughout the day until Jon discovered JonBenét’s body in the basement shortly after 1:30 p.m.
“All those people should have been removed from the scene. That was a crime scene mistake,” retired Boulder police detective Bob Whitson recalled in the Netflix documentary series “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey.” “But at the time it seemed like a legitimate kidnapping. So I thought this was a support system for the Ramsay family and let them stay.”
John said in the series that when he found her, he didn’t know she was dead and at first tried to untie her hands. Although the knot was too tight, he removed the duct tape covering his mouth and threw it on top of the blanket that was with the body.
He then carried her upstairs, where investigators said they found evidence collected from her body, the pajamas she was wearing, and the tape that had been contaminated.
“If the duct tape hadn’t been removed, there might have been some evidence left behind,” Whitson said in the series.
