Original subtitles

The thing that I remember about her was that if I would frown,

she would look at me and say, "Dad, I don't like that face."

And I'd smile and she'd say, "That's better."

That's just the way she was.

She loved her daddy. She loved her daddy.

She was daddy's girl.

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

The day after Christmas 1996,

JonBenét Ramsey became a household name.

The story of the 6-year-old beauty queen

sparked a media frenzy that had journalists, attorneys,

police and the public poring over every detail

of one of the most bizarre crimes in recent history.

Nearly two years later, the investigation

was at a standstill.

Many thought the only way to get answers

was through a grand jury.

But like everything else about this story,

even that was complicated.

Take a look.

♪♪

It is a shocking story that spanned the globe,

the murder of a 6-year-old beauty queen

found dead in the basement of her Boulder home

the day after Christmas, 1996.

It was certainly a bizarre case from the beginning with a child

suddenly turning up dead inside the house

and no explanation for how it happened.

It's a story that's drawn everyone from the tabloids

to "The New York Times" to this mountainside town.

It's a story that intrigues, fascinates, even nauseates.

The murder of JonBenét started as a kidnapping,

and it started on the morning of Christmas.

The Ramseys woke up early that day

because they were supposed to go on a family trip.

John: We were to leave early that morning, fly to Michigan.

King: Morning after Christmas?

Morning after.

The first thing I remember is waking up,

getting dressed hurriedly,

putting a few things together to take on the plane.

This about what time?

It's early morning, before daylight.

You're up? Mm-hmm.

Then what happens?

Then I go down the spiral staircase,

and there on one of the runs of the stair

is the 3-page ransom note.

It said, "Mr. Ramsey, we have your daughter."

And I immediately ran back upstairs

and pushed open her door

and she was not in her bed, and I screamed for John.

The note said their 6-year-old daughter

had been kidnapped from her bedroom overnight

but would be returned in exchange for $118,000.

We thought we were dealing with a kidnapping.

King: Fearing the worst. Patsy: The police arrived.

Absolute-- you don't know whether you're going to see

your daughter in an hour,

in a day, in a year, in 10 years or never.

It's a horrible feeling.

And what are you doing, Patsy?

Are you waiting for a phone call from the kidnapper?

Is that what you -- Right, yes.

Costello: Hours go by and the kidnapper doesn't call,

but there's still a lot going on inside that house.

We had victims' advocates there.

We had uniformed police.

We had detectives.

People were in the kitchen making sandwiches.

I mean, it was -- there was -- it was chaos.

There were people fingerprinting.

There was fingerprint dust everywhere.

Evidence crews there. It was zoo-like.

A nightmare. It was a little zoo-like.

So around lunchtime, there was one detective left.

Her name was Linda Arndt,

and she notices that John Ramsey is restless.

It's my understanding that Linda Arndt

had pulled one of John's friends aside and said,

"John is pacing and he needs something to occupy his time.

I'm going to suggest that you search the house.

Would you go with him?"

John: We started in the basement,

and we were just looking,

and, uh, we have one room in the basement

that there are no windows in the -- that room.

When I opened the door and turned the light on...

♪♪

...she was down there. It was her.

Hill: John picked up his daughter's body

and carried her up the stairs,

and that's when the real questions began.

What transpired there when they found the body

changed the whole perspective of what we were looking at.

We were no longer looking at a straight kidnapping.

We were looking at now a homicide.

She was tortured.

A garrote was put around her neck twice

and pulled tight enough

that it left deep marks in her neck.

She was hit in the head with something.

They never were sure what it was,

but it was 8 1/2 inches long.

The injury she sustained, the skull injury,

was more like her being thrown against some larger object,

like the edge of a bathtub,

the rounded edge of a pedestal sink,

something like that.

This child had a cracked skull.

This child had sexual penetration,

choked, bruised.

This was sick.

Zesbaugh: It was like a game of "Clue."

Everybody involved could have

had something to do about this murder.

They were either involved in killing her

or in covering it up.

This investigation really got down to one thing --

was someone inside the house responsible

for the death of this little girl or did --

did someone break in?

Camerota: A lot of the detectives who were working this case

felt that the evidence pointed to an inside job.

Man: Although at first, the murder looked like

a botched kidnapping, the Ramseys were suspected.

There was, for example, no clear sign of forced entry,

no footprints in the snow.

I don't buy into the stranger theory

because of what I saw in that house.

I don't think anybody left the house.

Camerota: The most obvious point of entry

was this window in the basement,

and it was open, and police looked at it

and they thought that that would be the obvious point of entry.

However, there were cobwebs on this window,

and police concluded that these cobwebs

would have been disturbed, but, in fact, they were intact.

So somebody crawling down in there

could not have gotten down in there

without disturbing the cobwebs.

The police were obviously

looking at the Ramseys at this point

and then so was the rest of the world

because the media got ahold of these videotapes of JonBenét

in all of these beauty contests,

and that was a point of fascination.

They don't seem shook-up enough. They don't seem broke-up enough.

Just the whole situation seems really odd

because of, um, the way that her childhood was,

and I don't think it was normal at all.

I feel they should have questioned

the parents right away.

Why they didn't, I don't know.

Woman 2: Most of the American public knows your daughter

through glamour shots from pageants.

John: Yeah.

In hindsight, do you wish

that she had not participated in that?

Those were beautiful pictures.

I'm so happy that we have those pictures.

That's all that we have. Those were memories.

Yeah, that was -- that was just one very small

part of JonBenét's life. Yeah.

That was a few Sunday afternoons.

But you know the criticism I'm talking about.

I know, I know. People are accusing you

of dressing her up like a little adult.

Was there any inappropriate behavior going on at home?

Absolutely not. No.

Velez-Mitchell: The Ramseys were getting a lot of flak

for these beauty pageants

they had put their child into, but their friends were saying,

"Could they have killed their child?

Absolutely no way."

Griffin: I didn't find any criticism

with anything that they did.

They just really are warm, wonderful,

loving people who have gone through way more

than anybody should have ever had to face in their life.

This case was so polarizing

and so many people were really demanding

that there be a grand jury.

So when the district attorney finally said,

"Yes, we're going to convene a grand jury,"

phew, there was a lot of relief.

♪♪

For the next 13 months, the grand jury would hear

testimony highlighting every detail.

But the question -- what was fact, and what was fantasy?

The grand jury investigating the murder of JonBenét Ramsey

was chosen in May of last year,

but the panel didn't meet for the first time

until September 15, 1998.

The grand jury has been deciding

if there is probable cause to believe

someone has committed a crime.

The grand jury hearings in this JonBenét Ramsey case were,

of course, behind closed doors, but we have a pretty good idea

of the evidence that they heard in there.

Walker: I guess the thing that really jumps out at me

is the ransom note and how incongruous,

how just extraordinarily odd that thing is in the context

of what a real kidnapping should look like.

"Speaking to anyone about your situation, such as police,

FBI, et cetera, will result in your daughter being beheaded."

There were multiple references in there saying that, "Look.

If you call anybody, we're going to kill your daughter."

Camerota: "If we catch you talking to a stray dog,

she dies.

If you alert bank authorities, she dies."

Warning after warning that if he contacts anyone,

the daughter is going to be killed.

Yet Patsy Ramsey calls 911,

but she doesn't tell the police that the note says,

"They're going to kill JonBenét if I call the police."

I read it very fast.

I was out of my mind.

It said don't call the police, and I told Patsy,

"Call the police immediately."

I can't believe that a family

whose child has just been kidnapped

would not take pains to carefully read that note,

to make sure that they do nothing that results in harm

befalling their daughter.

There were some details in that note

and about the note that raised further suspicions.

"You will withdraw $118,000 from your account."

$118,000?

Which later we find out is the exact bonus

that John Ramsey got that year from his company,

Access Graphics,

so only a few people would have that information.

It wasn't just the amount of ransom

that was kind of suspicious.

It was the fact that this note was written on a page torn

from Patsy Ramsey's own notepad.

When you tear something, no two things are going to tear alike.

Even if you take two sheets of paper and tear them together,

they're going to have separate and distinct

tear patterns associated with them.

You put them back together and the puzzle fits.

Man: An alleged ransom note was written on a pad of paper

from inside the house, and some investigators

thought that the handwriting looked like Patsy's.

King: Would you agree

that whoever authored the ransom note

probably killed the child? John: I would agree.

I totally agree that whoever --

whoever wrote this ransom note killed our daughter.

Yes, I concur wholeheartedly.

From what we understand that the handwriting people

were able to eliminate John

as being the writer of that note

and were not totally able to eliminate Patsy.

They weren't -- they didn't say that she did wrote it.

Let me make it very clear.

But they said that they couldn't say that she didn't write it.

Camerota: Patsy's natural writing

did not look like the ransom note,

and we learned that experts said

that it is very hard to disguise your handwriting.

It's possible, but it's really hard to do.

But there was -- there was another piece of evidence

that the grand jury heard that related right back to Patsy.

Man 2: The rope used to choke JonBenét was tightened

with a paintbrush from her mother's hobby kit.

If you believe Patsy Ramsey did this to her daughter, JonBenét,

you have to believe that Patsy took a cord,

put it around her neck,

then broke a paintbrush into three pieces,

took one of those pieces and secured it to the cord,

making what's commonly known as a garrote,

and then pulled that cord very hard and strangled her.

I'm absolutely convinced that it was a sadistic psychopath

that did this, not Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey.

Camerota: The grand jury heard

all of the really horrible details of the autopsy,

and one detail in there really stood out.

Woman 3: JonBenét had pineapple that had been recently ingested

or eaten before she died.

The interesting thing about the pineapple,

there wasn't any pineapple served at the Christmas party

where they had been the night before,

and then the Ramseys claimed

JonBenét was asleep when she got home.

And they put her right to bed, and she never woke up,

and yet it's my understanding

there was pineapple on the kitchen table in a bowl,

so that piece of evidence, for instance,

may be important if you think somebody lied to the police

about what was given to them or what happened with JonBenét.

Police found another potential inconsistency

in the Ramsey story related to that 911 call.

Dispatcher: What's going on there, ma'am?

Patsy: We have a kidnapping.

Velez-Mitchell: The Ramseys had always claimed

that their son, Burke,

had been asleep at the time of the 911 call,

but then police discovered a clue

that showed that the son, Burke, might have been awake.

Take a deep breath, please. Hurry, hurry, hurry.

Patsy, Patsy, Patsy, Patsy, Patsy?

There were a few seconds at the end of the 911 call

where Patsy thought she had hung up...

...but the police had it in hand,

and they thought they heard the sound of another voice.

We do know, based on an evaluation of the 911 tape,

that Burke's voice is on there saying, "What did you say?"

Or "What did he say?" Or something to that nature.

This is after, of course,

Ramseys denied that Burke was even awake.

He was asleep.

Police also say digital enhancement

indicates that Burke was awake

and asking questions when you called 911.

Well, some police claim they think they hear that.

We would challenge the police to release that tape.

Make it all public. Let's make it public.

We'd like to hear that tape. We've never heard it.

That is not our recollection

of what happened that morning.

If that was Burke's voice on the 911 call,

meaning he was awake,

why wouldn't the Ramseys just admit that?

And that led to speculation about Burke's involvement.

Remember, he was only 9 years old at the time.

Woman 4: I have heard some votes for the younger child,

the little boy who was in the house, too,

as possible -- an accident.

But I just don't --

I mean, if we're going to throw out who is in the house --

I remember that becoming talk-show fodder,

that maybe this little boy had either accidentally

or on purpose hit JonBenét over the head

and then this was a cleanup job, essentially,

by the family so that their little boy

wouldn't be in trouble with the law.

We know that one of the last people to testify

before the grand jury was JonBenét's older brother,

Burke Ramsey.

As anybody been cleared, cleared?

Well, Burke has been. Burke has been.

There's no doubt Burke did not do it, right?

That's definitive. Absolutely.

So way back at the beginning of this case,

when tabloids said otherwise, they got sued,

and I believe they settled, paying large amounts of money.

Burke Ramsey has nothing to do with this case.

People wanted to know if the Ramseys were lying

or they were covering something up

or were they the victims of some psychopathic killer,

and the truth was nobody knew.

None of it makes sense.

It just simply doesn't.

This case have too many questions, but few answers.

It was up to the grand jury to decide.

Certainly no easy task.

And then finally, finally, we got our answer.

There has apparently been a major development

in the grand jury investigation

in the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.

How is it exactly that you think that I killed my daughter?

-What's the motive? -I just cannot understand that.

I want to hear it from start to finish.

There has apparently been a major development

in the grand jury investigation

of the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.

Woman 5: D.A. Alex Hunter we see now walking down,

surrounded by cameras and microphones

on his way to the podium to hold a news conference.

When Alex Hunter announced

what he was going to do about the grand jury's decision,

it was a beautiful, spectacular Colorado day.

Blue skies and hordes and hordes of media,

and he got up to the podium and he thanked the grand jury.

The grand jurors have done their work extraordinarily well.

But at this time, he was not going to indict either John

or Patsy Ramsey.

I and my prosecution task force

believe we do not have sufficient evidence

to warrant the filing of charges against anyone

who has been investigated at this time.

Grant: This is not a happy day.

Yesterday was not a happy day.

There is no satisfaction here in Boulder.

There was no smoking gun in this case.

You know, we didn't have a gun with Patsy's fingerprints on it,

or we didn't have a knife with John's fingerprints on it.

We didn't have anything like that.

Zesbaugh: I think there was a collective feeling of, "Oh, no.

This thing is never going to be solved.

If the D.A. doesn't think there's enough evidence there

to go after someone

and get a conviction in this case, this case is lost.

We're never going to know who murdered this little girl."

You know, it's been a mess from the day one,

so it looks like it's going to stay a mess.

It's probably just -- just going to wither away.

This leaves a very bad taste

in everybody's mouth in this town right now.

Within 6 months, the Ramseys came out with a book

telling their story.

It's a great pleasure to welcome the Ramseys

to this edition of "Larry King Live."

It is a live appearance.

Their book is "The Death of Innocence," just published.

They are the co-authors.

Camerota: And this other guy, Steve Thomas,

who had been a detective on the case,

came out with his book,

and his book was all about how the Ramseys were guilty.

Steve Thomas resigned from the Boulder police department,

claiming, "we have failed a little girl named JonBenét."

Now Thomas has written a book on the case,

"JonBenét: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation."

Then a couple of months later, in May of 2000,

the Ramseys go head-to-head

with this Steve Thomas on "Larry King."

Patsy, you could have been arrested in this case.

I wish I had been and then we would have

had a free and fair trial

and you would have met your Waterloo, Mr. Thomas.

Are you saying that you -- you would have --

Let her answer the question, John.

Let me ask you this question, Steve.

You have assaulted my wife.

Why won't you let your wife answer the question?

Because you have assaulted her.

You've called her a murderer.

How is it exactly that you think that I killed my daughter?

What's the motive? I just cannot understand that.

I want to hear it from start to finish.

Patsy, I wasn't there. Tell me exactly...

You were home that night, and apparently you say you --

Tell me what happened, Mr. Thomas.

You can't -- you can't say for certainty.

You were in the house, right?

Yes, I most certainly was. Am I -- am I assuming right?

Answer my question, please.

King: Certainly he wasn't there.

He has a theory. He has to have a theory.

He has accused us of murder.

What is your theory?

Thomas: And you've heard the theory.

I've -- I've offered a hypothesis.

I have not heard the theory. Please answer my question.

I think there was a toileting issue

that night that has been dismissed and underplayed.

King: Okay, a toileting -- explain.

A -- a bed-wetting or a toileting issue.

That caused Patsy get mad at her daughter?

Absolutely.

-Steve Thomas, you are so -- -So in other words,

she killed her daughter in a rage

over the bed-wetting and then garroted her?

It was, like, great television, I guess, but --

but there's a dead kid here in this story.

I mean, it's a terrible tragedy, and we got this circus going on.

Man 3: The address of what was the Ramsey home in Boulder

has been changed.

The family has moved to Atlanta.

But one thing has not changed in 5 years.

JonBenét's killer remains at large.

For many years in the 2000s,

the case just wasn't going anywhere.

There were just dead ends.

Then in 2006,

the case suddenly became headline news all over again.

King: The latest tragic turn

in the most sensational child murder mystery of our time --

JonBenét Ramsey's mother, Patsy Ramsey,

laid to rest yesterday after losing her

13-year battle with cancer.

Woodward: She started with ovarian cancer.

She became free of that.

It resurfaced as abdominal cancer and spread to her brain,

and she ultimately died of brain cancer.

Zesbaugh: I think if you're one of those people

that believe that Patsy Ramsey was somehow involved

with either the murder or the cover-up of her daughter,

that when she died, that secret died with her.

Woodward: I do remember when she died,

that one of the district attorneys

who was with a group of police officers said,

"Well, we're kind of feeling that it goes full circle.

She got what she deserved."

I said, "You know, that's a really horrible thing to say.

You don't know if she killed her daughter."

And then within weeks of Patsy's death,

there was a huge break in the case.

Breaking news tonight.

After a decade-long investigation,

an arrest in the JonBenét Ramsey murder case.

Welcome back to "How It Really Happened."

It's no secret that most police investigators believed

Patsy Ramsey was involved in her daughter's death.

So when she died in August of 2006,

they likely assumed the case would die with her.

But just 7 weeks after Patsy's death,

a new suspect emerged seemingly out of the blue,

and the focus of the police investigation

shifted back to the intruder theory.

Breaking news tonight.

After a decade-long investigation,

an arrest in the JonBenét Ramsey murder case.

Lacy: John Mark Karr, 41 years old,

was arrested for the murder of JonBenét Ramsey

yesterday morning at approximately 6:00 a.m.

in Bangkok, Thailand.

John: It's a day we have been waiting for for 10 years,

and I hope this is a first major step

in really drawing this to a conclusion.

Woman 6: A stunning confession

from the man arrested in Thailand

for the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.

I was with JonBenét when she died.

Her death was an accident.

So here was this guy. He was a teacher.

He was in Thailand, and he surfaces out of the blue

and confesses to the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.

When we saw that picture, that first picture

of John Mark Karr, my initial reaction was,

"Well, that's not what I expected."

He was a slight man, a petite man,

sort of delicate features,

not what you would think about when you're thinking --

worried about the boogeyman breaking into your house

and this intruder theory.

He wasn't the intruder that I had in my mind.

Mainly what we know about this guy is that we don't know much.

His name didn't come up in the beginning

of all these investigations.

He's a bit of a blank page to everybody out there,

even those of us who have covered this case

very, very closely.

Prendergast: Karr was a guy who had been obsessed

with the JonBenét case for many years,

so much so that I think some of his relatives

thought he was writing a book about it.

I loved JonBenét, and she died accidentally.

So the Boulder district attorney

has this guy arrested in Thailand,

John Mark Karr, flies him back to the U.S.

for questioning.

Woman 7: With immigration and customs enforcement agents

at his side, murder suspect John Mark Karr

made the 15-hour journey from Bangkok

to Los Angeles Sunday aboard a Thai Airways jet.

He's going to be fingerprinted and photographed.

We will make his mug shot available.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

So the district attorney is very optimistic

that they have finally found JonBenét's killer,

but there were others connected to the case

who were more skeptical.

There was still a huge faction of the American public

that believed the family was somehow involved.

This felt like it tied it up

with a bow a little bit too neatly for people, I think.

Bob Grant, what do you make of all of this?

Larry, it's another bizarre turn in a bizarre case.

I'm withholding judgment

until I see the results of the DNA test.

I think that tells the story.

I always knew that whatever this guy had to say

wasn't going to hold water

unless he was the source of that DNA in the panties.

There was a tiny amount of unidentified DNA

on the waistband of JonBenét Ramsey's long johns.

Physical evidence is what's going to rule the day.

Physical evidence is what's going to close this case.

Hill: If the DNA on JonBenét's waistband

was a match with John Mark Karr,

well, then, police have their killer.

The D.A. tests this little teeny bit of DNA

that was found on JonBenét's waistband

against John Mark Karr's DNA,

waiting for the big connection

and found that they didn't match.

So after all of the drama and all the effort

that went into arresting this guy,

they then concluded he didn't do it.

Woman 8: Court documents show investigators were unable

to place Karr in Boulder at the time of the murder,

his family claiming he was with them in Georgia

and most importantly, Karr's DNA

just tested at Denver's crime lab

was not a match to the DNA found on JonBenét.

PRENDERGAST: I think he may have welcomed

a lot of the attention.

I don't know why someone would confess to a crime

they didn't commit

unless they just basically wanted to be famous or infamous.

I can't speak to his motives,

but he was still confessing after the D.A.'s office

had pretty much satisfied itself that he wasn't the guy.

He wanted his, as Andy Warhol said, 15 minutes of fame.

This is a terrible way to go about getting it.

Grant: Turned out he was just a nutcase

who needed a ride back from Thailand

and got one at the expense of the state.

Man 4: With that, Karr becomes simply a man

obsessed with the murder of JonBenét Ramsey

who fabricated a story and tried to transplant himself into it.

As for the case, it remains unsolved.

John Mark Karr walks free.

What was the Colorado district attorney thinking?

Prendergast: She said he was a credible suspect,

and I don't think he was ever a credible suspect.

You know, there should have been some effort to determine

whether he was even in Colorado when this happened.

Mr. Karr.

It was a tremendous embarrassment

for the Boulder D.A.'s office.

Tremendous, and the person at the time

who was in charge was Mary Lacy.

It was a huge, huge gaffe on her part.

Now, to her credit, I will say this.

She held, I think, the mother of all news conferences

and stayed and answered, you know, every question once,

you know, she realized she was wrong.

I want to make it absolutely clear up front.

The decisions were mine.

The responsibility is mine,

and I should be held accountable for all decisions in this case.

Last night as I was preparing to leave,

I received a telephone call from a gentleman in Longmont.

He said, "You should be tarred and feathered

and run out of town."

And it's not just one.

There were a lot of calls like that.

After the John Mark Karr fiasco,

the story went quiet for a few years.

In 2008, the case was back in the news

when new technology was used to retest the clothes

that JonBenét Ramsey was wearing the night she was murdered.

Grace: Tonight newly discovered DNA evidence emerges

by use of a new and highly sensitive DNA procedure

called touch DNA.

Will it finally crack the murder case

of 6-year-old Colorado beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey?

The DNA profile that we obtained

is attributed to an unknown male.

Man 9: Newly discovered DNA evidence does not match

any Ramsey family member.

Velez-Mitchell: That same district attorney

who arrested John Mark Karr

also gave a lot more weight than her critics did

to new DNA testing, and based on that,

she formally exonerated the entire Ramsey family.

Man 9: The Boulder D.A. has released a letter

officially clearing the Ramsey family of any involvement

in the December 1996 death of the 6-year-old.

The DNA from the male did not match anyone

in law enforcement DNA databases.

Velez-Mitchell: "This new scientific evidence convinces us

that it is appropriate,

given the circumstances of this case,

to state that we do not consider your immediate family,

including you, your wife, Patsy, and your son, Burke,

to be under any suspicion in the commission of this crime."

I look at it as a congratulatory letter to the Ramseys.

"Congratulations! You're off the hook."

So good day for John Ramsey, good day for Patsy,

that they have a prosecutor now on record

as saying that the prosecutor believes

that there is physical evidence that someone else did it

and that the parents weren't involved.

Hill: What Mary Lacy did next was,

she actually apologized to the Ramsey family

for them ever being considered suspects.

"To the extent that we may have contributed

in any way to the public perception

that you might have been involved in this crime,

I am deeply sorry.

No innocent person should have to endure

such an extensive trial in the court of public opinion."

There are a lot of people who question whether this touch DNA

was enough to clear these people,

much less apologize to them.

I was unimpressed with the decision to write the letter,

and I was unimpressed with the letter,

and from what I know about touch DNA,

it simply is not reliable enough

to support the kind of decision

that was made by District Attorney Lacy.

Woodward: Those who did not like it that she had written

that letter said,

"Hey, if it is proven to be the Ramseys,

you've written a letter of apology.

How are we going to take this to court?"

I think the case had many more serious problems

than that letter.

Camerota: So that was it.

After a dozen years of being under the microscope,

then the entire Ramsey family was in the clear,

but that was about to change in a big way.

Bombshell tonight in the last hours.

We get proof.

A Colorado grand jury votes to indict JonBenét's parents,

John and Patsy Ramsey.

Camerota: After the Ramsey family was officially cleared

by this district attorney, then the case goes cold again.

And then in 2013,

this local news reporter gets a tip,

and he finds out that the grand jury decision

14 years earlier was not what it seemed.

Zesbaugh: So a reporter on the case, Charlie Brennan,

said, "I want to see the records.

I want to see what the grand jury did in secret,"

because he had been hearing from grand jurors

who said they did decide to indict in the case.

Costello: So that reporter, Charlie Brennan,

he wanted to get ahold of the grand jury's decision,

but to do that, he had to sue the D.A.'s office.

Zesbaugh: And I don't think most of us could believe it.

He won, and they unsealed those grand jury records in 2013,

and we got to see the indictment for ourselves.

It was quite illuminating.

This morning, we have new details

in the case of JonBenét Ramsey.

A local paper, "The Boulder Daily Camera,"

reports that a grand jury voted

to indict John and Patsy Ramsey

for abuse that led to JonBenét's death.

Woman 10: But the district attorney declined to prosecute.

Costello: So what that means is the grand jury

decides to indict the Ramseys,

but the D.A. discards their decision

and decides not to proceed.

Man 5: The grand jury said both of the girl's parents,

John and Patsy...

This was explosive because it totally contradicted

what Alex Hunter, the D.A. at the time,

had actually told people back in 1999.

I and my prosecution task force

believe we do not have sufficient evidence

to warrant the filing of charges against anyone

who has been investigated at this time.

Hill: Alex Hunter essentially

decided to veto the grand jury's decision.

Now, prosecutors do have that option,

but the issue here is a lot of people

felt he hadn't been entirely up-front.

The public was misled.

We were told that the grand jury met for all these months

and there was no indictment, but, in fact, the grand jury

had wanted to file charges in this case.

That was something that was kept away from the public

for more than a decade.

Zesbaugh: Yeah. It'd be fascinating to know

what they found out

because the grand jury interviewed so many people.

The judge took a look at it

and decided only to release 4 pages of some 18 pages

because they were the ones with the basic charges on them

and the ones that were signed by the grand jury foreman.

So what was in those 14 pages that wasn't released

when all this other information was released

about the grand jury meeting?

I wonder if we'll ever see that.

It would be fascinating.

What else don't we know?

I mean, where's the rest of these pages

that went with this, where the grand jury explained,

you know, what the reasoning was behind these charges,

what the specific acts that were committed

that led to these charges?

And we don't have those, to this day.

I'm not particularly happy that the entire thing

was not disclosed.

We're not going to get a judge

to order the rest of those pages released,

at least not before I retire.

Cabell: Again, it's a mystery at this point.

Do you truly think the perpetrator will be found?

Yes.

There was one other person in the house that night

besides Patsy and John and JonBenét,

and that is JonBenét's older brother, Burke,

who was then 9 years old.

He was officially cleared in 2008.

And he has never gone public,

which has led to a lot of speculation

about what he saw and what he knew that night.

Robinson: Even if Burke were to have some miraculous memory

that could lead to the arrest of a suspect,

that information would be so dated

and so questionable that most criminal defense attorneys

would have a heyday with it at trial.

It's very problematic to be using information

that would be so stale from an individual

who did not remember it before.

The colder the case gets, the colder the trail gets.

Burke finally broke his silence

just before the 20th anniversary of his sister's death.

He decided that he would do a sit-down on the --

Dr. Phil's TV show.

Did you hit your sister over the head

with a baseball bat or a flashlight?

Absolutely not.

If someone in your house did,

do you think you would have heard it?

Probably, yeah.

Prendergast: You know, everybody has got a theory.

There's the Burke group, the John group,

the Patsy group, the intruder group,

and they all feel very passionately

that they're right and everybody else is wrong.

This isn't rocket science here.

So you think she was disciplining the child.

It got out of hand?

My guess is, yeah, there was some sort of explosive encounter

between mother and daughter that resulted in this child dead.

To those of you who may want to ask,

let me address very directly.

I did not kill my daughter, JonBenét.

There have also been innuendos

that she has been or was sexually molested.

They are totally false.

I am appalled that anyone would think that John

or I would be involved

in such a hideous, heinous crime,

but let me assure you that I did not kill JonBenét.

♪♪

Prendergast: I think from the very start, there was a sense,

"This case might just become a cold case."

And it -- it has become, you know,

the mother of all cold cases at this point.

The prospect that we're ever going to see a, you know,

a legal resolution of this case

I think is very, very dim at this point.

Zesbaugh: Had you asked me then,

"Will this be a story in 20 years?"

I would have laughed and said, "Absolutely not.

There will be an arrest in this case and probably quickly."

No one could have foreseen what happened

over the next 20 years.

I wouldn't be surprised if we never know

what actually happened in that basement,

and it will always stay a whodunit.

Woodward: This is a little girl

who should be in her mid-20s right now,

and we're all dancing around about JonBenét

and trying to figure out what happened.

And what happened is she's dead,

and nobody knows who did it, and nobody's solved the case.

HLN did reach out to the Boulder county D.A.'s office

with a freedom of information request

for the rest of the grand jury findings,

but a representative denied our request,

saying they'd would be in contempt of court

if they released the additional pages.

Today, the murder of JonBenét Ramsey

is officially considered a cold case.

The Boulder PD has detectives assigned to it,

and they do follow leads when they get them.

But so far, they have only been dead ends.

Let's hope that some day,

there will be justice for JonBenét Ramsey.

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching.