John Andrew says he’s spoken to labs and scientists who are familiar with the case and “all (are) willing to help. The documentary ends with hope that new DNA technologies will help solve the case once and for all, giving Ramsey’s family some closure and validating Smit’s hard work. “Hopefully, police departments can learn what was done wrong,” his father adds. “What the police did to our family is a massive miscarriage of justice, and it needs to be documented, it’s history, it’s the unfortunate truth.
We’re reliving a trauma… but it’s a lever we pull to apply pressure to the police to do the right thing.” John Andrew echoes the sentiment: “There’s no upside in doing these documentaries for my dad and I personally it’s painful. We’re hoping somebody will come forward with some information that will be helpful.” John hopes the documentary will “keep the case alive. “That’s where big egos get in the way of what should be done right,” he says. John Ramsey says he doesn’t fault the Boulder Police Department for their lack of experience in solving homicides but does fault them for refusing help from people who “knew what they were doing at the time,” including the FBI and people like Smit. "But they never admitted that and struggled with that for years and spent millions of taxpayers' dollars trying to prove otherwise." And the evidence they were finding was, unfortunately for them, contradictory to their conclusion," he says. “The police drew a conclusion immediately that day, the next day and then tried to find the evidence to prove it. “The death of JonBenét took away my desire to live for a while the actions of the police took away my ability to live normally and that, to some extent, continued for a long time in the way we were treated and assaulted,” he says.Ĭontrary to what some may think, John Ramsey says he felt “uplifted by our fellow humans in public." Instead, he and his wife “were getting crucified by” the police. John Ramsey admits he didn’t watch the whole film, realizing it would be too painful – “It’s just hard to revisit that for me, quite frankly,” he says – but spoke to a major theme of the film: how the police misjudged him and Patsy. He was quite a person … a legend in Colorado for what he’d accomplished in his career.” (The detective died in 2010.) “I was not aware of the audiotapes… It’s a real asset to solving this case, still,” John Ramsey says, adding that hearing Smit’s voice again gave him a “nice warm feeling. Smit’s audiotapes were also new to both John Ramsey and John Andrew Ramsey as they watched the film. “Lou was a true victims’ advocate, and that’s all you can ask for.” “If he had thought for a moment that Dad or (his late wife) Patsy were capable of this murder, he would have pursued them to the end of this Earth,” he says. JonBenét’s brother John Andrew Ramsey, who also appears in the documentary, says Smit’s dedication was to JonBenét, not to the Ramsey family.
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How to watch: Discovery+ streaming service goes live with new '90 Day' series and shows from Chip and Joanna Gaines In an interview with USA TODAY, JonBenét's father John Ramsey, who appears in the documentary along with Smit's daughter, son and others connected to the investigation, said he was “grateful (Smit) was brought into the case” but only knew him by reputation, which included solving more than 200 homicide cases. Smit’s voice is heard in previously unreleased audiotapes as he works tirelessly to find evidence and uncover the truth, even as others on the case worked against him. 26, 1996, unfolds through the narration of Lou Smit, a Colorado Springs, Colorado, homicide detective who came out of retirement to help with the case and kept an audio diary. In "JonBenét Ramsey: What Really Happened?” (now streaming on the new Discovery+), the journey to find the truth about the 6-year-old, who was murdered on Dec. Twenty-four years after JonBenét Ramsey’s death, her family still has questions – and a new documentary aims to reignite the search for answers to the still-unsolved case.