doIt could start out like a traditional Christmas TV movie, as syrupy as eggnog. An alley lined with giant candy canes leads to an opulent house. Above the fireplace is a photograph of the youngest daughter, JonBenét, a petite blonde dressed as a cowgirl, winner of numerous beauty pageants when she was 6 years old. It is the morning of December 26, 1996 in a wealthy family in the town of Boulder, Colorado.
The rest has been told hundreds of times for almost thirty years, on television, in the press, in books, movies, documentaries: an empty child’s bed, a ransom note found at the bottom of the stairs, the 911 call from a panicked mother… The local police summarily search the 600 square meter house. The father who ends up finding the little girl’s inert body in a corner of the basement and takes her upstairs, thus destroying the crime scene.
This story, which so fascinated the United States (Joyce Carol Oates was greatly inspired by it for her book Little sister my love)is the subject of a new documentary on Netflix (Unsolved case. Who killed the minimiss?). But, for the first time, most of the protagonists testify before the cameras: police officers, prosecutors, journalists, lawyers, but also John Ramsey, the victim’s father. Patsy, the mother, died of ovarian cancer in 2006. Using numerous archive images, the three-episode series analyzes the police, legal and also media failures of this unsolved infanticide.
mock trial
“All journalists know that we feel a special emotion when we send them to cover an issue that promises to be of such magnitude”says one of the former special correspondents of a regional newspaper. That same night, television crews and photographers camped in front of the scene of the tragedy. And there they will take turns for years.
The autopsy could not determine whether JonBenét Ramsey died from asphyxiation due to being strangled with a tourniquet (made from her mother’s broken paintbrush) or from the violent blow she received on the head with an unidentified object. But one thing is certain: the girl was raped and DNA was found. It does not belong to any family member, but to a man whose identity remains unknown to this day. However, very quickly, and despite the broken basement window, the intruder theory is ruled out. Parents are in the police’s crosshairs. Who will use the press to convince public opinion, with leaks and false information.
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