Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Inside Edition / Netflix
Topics: Crime, True Crime, Netflix
Joe Harker
The father of JonBenét Ramsey said he had been given a letter from someone claiming she knows the identity of the person who murdered his daughter.
Six-year-old JonBenét was found dead in her family home on Boxing Day, 1996, having been strangled with a garrote and sexually assaulted.
The identity of her killer is still unknown, but the case received new attention in the wake of Netflix true crime documentary Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey.
Viewers found many parts of the documentary disturbing, including scenes from a mock trial put on by talk show host Geraldo Rivera which concluded by finding JonBenét's mother Patsy 'liable' for her daughter's death.
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Patsy Ramsey died in 2006, two years before her family had their name cleared and they received an apology for the way the investigation and media circus had pointed the finger of suspicion towards them.
Now there has been a new development as John Ramsey said he'd been contacted by someone claiming to know who the murderer is.
According to the Daily Mail, Ramsey received a letter from a woman claiming that her ex-husband murdered his daughter, but his attempts to contact her for further information have been difficult.
He told them: "Based on all this publicity, recently I got a letter from a lady saying, 'My ex-husband’s the killer, and I’ve kept this inside for as long as I can – please, please call me'.
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"We reached out to her, but she didn’t answer the phone, so I don’t know. We’ve shared at this point with a private investigator."
If the letter turns out to be a hoax then it would not be the first time the cold case had received what seemed like a suspect only to have hopes dashed.
The investigation has encountered previous false confessions, including from someone who claimed that he would turn himself in but needed money to afford the plane tickets for his family, and another man who confessed and was extradited before DNA evidence was found not to match.
Joe Berlinger, who directed the Netflix documentary, said that he for a time 'fell' for the theory on JonBenét's death that she had been killed by her family, who were in the house at the time of her death.
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However, he later admitted he was 'embarrassed that I fell for it' and said that the theory was 'illogical', and the girl's parents were exonerated later after it transpired that the family DNA was not shared with prosecutors for months.
The local district attorney offered an apology to the Ramsey family in 2008, saying: "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."