Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, Documentaries, True Crime
Kya Buller
The director Netflix's latest true crime documentary, Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, has admitted that he initially 'fell for' a controversial theory surrounding the case.
The three-part documentary explores the tragic and mysterious death of six year old JonBenét on December 26th, 1996.
JonBenét's parents, John and Patsy, awoke to find their daughter missing and a ransom note demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Heartbreakingly, JonBenét's body was found in the basement of the family home in Boulder, Colorado.
A popular narrative peddled by the media at the time of JonBenét's death was committed at the hands of her own family - namely her parents, or even her nine year old brother.
John Berlinger, director of Cold Case, shared his regret of believing the theory.
He told the Independent: "Back then I fell for it. And I’m embarrassed that I fell for it."
The 63-year-old continued: "I had a two-year-old daughter at home, and I kind of bought into the media hype.
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“And I thought to myself, ‘Gee, my daughter, my two-year-old, is very cute, and I bet when she’s six, she’ll be really cute; I would never put her into a beauty pageant’ – and I had a bunch of judgment about that.”
The murderer of JonBenét has never been identified, which has led to a number of conspiracy theories and differentiating opinions on who could be to blame.
The belief that her parents may have been involved was rampant at the time of JonBenét's murder and still pervades today, despite having been cleared by DNA evidence.
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Berlinger continued: "Over time, as I became more familiar with the case, it became illogical."
The 'deep dive' that followed is what led to the making of his JonBenét documentary, which hears directly from her father.
JonBenét's mother passed away in 2006.
Colorado Springs detective Lou Smit worked on the case, and came to be of the opinion that JonBenét's parents had no involvment in her death - despite local police pushing the narrative that they were.
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Berlinger credits Smit's work as what led him to change his own mind. He reflected: "That’s when I had this ‘a-ha!’ moment.”
Smit held an 'insistence that an intruder could easily have crept into the house and waited to snatch JonBenét before the plan went horribly wrong.'
Berlinger expressed his hopes that the case will one day be solved once and for all.
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He said: "With the advances in DNA technology, I think this case can actually be solved.
"And so I will be honest and say one of my goals of this show is to pressure Boulder police to finally do the right thing … the Ramsey family has been pounding the table for several years for additional DNA testing.”
Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey is now streaming on Netflix.