JonBenét Ramsey detective shared chilling theory about murderer after quitting case
A former detective who spent years investigating the murder of JonBenét Ramsey has revealed a harrowing theory nearly three decades after her death.
Ramsey, a six-year-old beauty contestant from Colorado, was killed on Boxing Day 1996 in what would become one of the US' most famous unsolved cases.
Now, former Boulder Colorado police detective Steve Thomas has shared the shocking bombshell that he believes the child was killed by her mother, Patsy Ramsey.
Thomas made the shocking claim in a new book called JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation, stating he believes Patsy strangled her daughter in a panic after accidentally causing a serious wound to the young girl's head.
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He also alleges that her father, John Ramsey, 'chose to protect his wife' when he discovered what had happened, rather than informing authorities.
Thomas claims Patsy had become frazzled due to 'an approaching 40th birthday, the busy holiday season, an exhausting Christmas day and an argument with JonBenét over a bed-wetting incident', which he says led to 'some sort of explosive encounter in the child's bathroom' resulting in a serious head wound.
He concluded that instead of getting help after her daughter fell unconscious, she panicked and wrote a note suggesting the child had been kidnapped, before facing a 'major problem of what to do with the body'.
That was, in his opinion, when the accidental injury led to murder. He says that on the way to placing her daughter in the basement, she realized the child was still alive.
"Only feet away was her paint tote,'' he wrote. ''She grabbed a paintbrush and broke it to fashion the garrote with some cord. Then she looped the cord around the girl's neck."
Thomas is the first person to have publicly made allegations against the Ramsey family, with Patsy's lawyer branding the claims 'fiction and utter nonsense'.
L. Lin Wood added that the former detective's theory 'is refuted in its entirety by medical evidence,' as per the New York Times.
Other officials involved in the investigation appear to disagree with Thomas' theory, too.
Both Patsy and John released a book last month, called Death of Innocence, in which they state they believe their daughter was killed by an intruder.
Thomas did admit in his own writings that veteran homicide detective Lou Smit, who also worked on the case, believes the intruder theory too, believing a stranger strangled the six-year-old 'in some sort of autoerotic fantasy,' before hiding her body in the basement where John found her the following morning.
Sadly, neither of these theories are likely to result in any kind of charges against Ramsey's potential killer, after Boulder district attorney Alex Hunter vetted the claims and dismissed a grand jury after 13 months without indicting anyone.
Meanwhile, Hunter said it 'is improper in my judgement for a cop to be talking about confidential information in an ongoing case'.
None of the accusations made by Thomas have been formally brought against the Ramsey family and are all based on his opinion.
Topics: Crime, True crime, US News
Emma Rosemurgey