JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation by Steve Thomas- 4 Stars

[Joi]

I actually hadn't heard of JonBenet Ramsey until last year, when an influx of media coverage- documentaries, made for TV movies, articles, whatnot came out at the 20 year anniversary of her death. I get sucked into these kinds of true crime stories, and I became semi-obsessed with the JonBenet case for a short while. This seemed to be the highest regarded book covering the case, and even though I haven't read others- I think I can safely say this is THE book to read if you're interested in JonBenet.

For those who don't know- JonBenet Ramsey was a 6 year old beauty pageant "queen" who was reported kidnapped the day after Christmas with a ransom letter left inside her home for her parents to find. Once found, the police came and turns out JonBenet's dead body was in their basement the entire time. The big controversy of this case is how it was handled by the police department, and the speculation of the parents being the murderers. This family is oozing with money and used their privileged to their advantage to drive the investigation how they wanted it to be- and avoiding cooperation and involvement with the local police detectives and FBI on the case- instead hiring their own private lawyers dubbed 'Team Ramsey".

I'm starting to believe the best true crime books are written by someone involved in the case personally. This was written by Steve Thomas, the 30-some year old former Boulder Police Department Detective- and yes he was there from the beginning. Now I do think this book was biased- but I happen to be on the side of the bias. The first portion of the book chronicles the events that happened leading up to the murder, the night of, and immediately after. This was super detailed (almost too detailed) so it read extremely quickly.

The book slowed down when it was more the police activity of trying to figure out the case- and honestly their lack of progress was frustrating. Both for Steve Thomas trying to find justice for JonBenet, as well as for the reader. He admits what the Boulder PD did wrong, and how the system is corrupt. It's obvious that there were repercussions from the "revealing" of this. Sometimes it felt like the author was standing on a soapbox saying how wrong things were, and how if done better would have ended better. This got repetitive.

Overall, I personally think the mother, Patsy accidentally killed JonBenet- then the father John helped her cover it up. I'd be interesting to read the book written by the family to see the opposite side of things- but this book filled my JonBenet quota, and I think I'm done with this case.