It’s one of America’s most famous cold cases, and he thinks it can be solved.
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger helms the new three-part Netflix documentary, “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey.”
Premiering Monday, Nov. 25, the docuseries explores the famous tragic case of the 6-year-old beauty pageant star, who was murdered and sexually assaulted in her own home in 1996. Twenty-eight years later, the culprit still hasn’t been caught.
“I think a lot of the material that has been done in the past tries to have their cake and eat it, too,” Berlinger told The Post, referring to the slew of previous documentaries and TV specials about JonBenet Ramsey.
“Or worse, it comes to the wrong conclusion.”
The documentary covers how the local Boulder, Colorado police department mishandled the case, and how the subsequent media circus cast a cloud of suspicion on the Ramsey family that hangs over them nearly thirty years later.
In 2013, newly unsealed court papers revealed that JonBenet’s parents — mother Patsy, who died of cancer in 2006, and father John, 80, who is interviewed onscreen in the docuseries — were indicted for being complicit in her murder. The district attorney at the time, Alex Hunter, refused to sign the indictment papers and declined to prosecute, citing a lack of evidence.
“I am firmly convinced that the Ramsey family is innocent. And I am also firmly convinced that this case can be solved, if the Boulder Police Department finally does what it’s supposed to do,” said Berlinger.
Berlinger, who also co-directed the “Paradise Lost” documentary, which helped release the West Memphis Three from prison, pointed out that DNA technology has advanced today. So, he believes it’s not a lost cause to finally solve the JonBenet Ramsey case.
“There still seems to be this institutional lack of will to ultimately solve the case, because of what I believe was extreme mishandling at the outset,” he said.
“I don’t think there’s been a good comprehensive documentary series that has really analyzed this case that will also hopefully put a little pressure on the authorities to do the right thing.”
Berlinger noted that it wasn’t hard to get JonBenet’s father, John, to agree to appear in the documentary.
“John Ramsey agreed to sit down with us, did not ask to be paid, and was not paid – we don’t pay our subjects – and asked for no editorial input. No questions were off limits. To me, that is an 80-year-old guy who….wants to get that case solved. It’s just unthinkable that the family had anything to do with this.”
Berlinger said he believes that many “likely suspects” were ruled out at the time of the murder, because of the faulty DNA analysis at the time.
“I think all suspects now have to be put back on the table, including the Ramseys. And they would be the first ones to say, ‘sure, put this back on the table, but let’s do the DNA testing.’ This is not trial by television. I don’t want to do to people what was done to the Ramseys,” he added.
“We want the proper authorities to reinvestigate this case, and the potential suspects after the DNA is properly retested.”
As for who did it?
Berlinger said, “sadly, there are a lot of people in the world who are attracted to little girls, and can do horrible things to them. [An intruder] is a much more plausible scenario than the family having been involved, if you look at some of the basic facts in the case.”
