After Patsy Ramsey called 911 at 5:52 a.m. on Dec. 26, 1996, to report that her daughter JonBenét Ramsey had been kidnapped, she and husband John Ramsey also reached out to a number of their friends, who came right over to support the couple.
In turn, in addition to responding officers, there were people milling around the Ramseys’ 5,000-square-foot home all day before John found JonBenét’s body in the basement shortly after 1:30 p.m.
“I should have removed all those people from the scene, that was a crime scene mistake,” retired Boulder Police Detective Bob Whitson recalled in the Netflix docuseries Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey. “But, at the time, it looked like a legitimate kidnapping. So, I thought, Well, these are the support system for the Ramseys, and I let ’em stay.”
Not knowing she was dead when he found her, John said in the series he at first tried to untie the cord that bound her hands. The knots were too tight, he said, but he did remove a piece of duct tape that was covering her mouth and tossed it onto a blanket that had been with the body.
He then carried her upstairs, which, according to investigators, ensured that the evidence collected from her body, the pajamas she was wearing, the tape, etc., was contaminated.
“There may have been some evidence on the duct tape if that wasn’t removed,” Whitson said in the series.