Review of Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?

I don’t want a lot of documentaries, but when I do, I tend to get pretty sucked into the world of the documentary or docuseries. Typically, if I have the time, I try to sit and watch them all the way through, especially if they’re released recently.

It helps that I run this blog, where I review a lot of movies, television, and books, as it helps motivate me to keep on top of the recent releases. If you like this review, feel free to check out some of my other posts. As I’ve been recently become unemployed, this blog has been a way to sustain myself as I look for new work.

It was the day before Thanksgiving 2024 I saw that Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey was added on Netflix. It shot straight up to the number one spot on the platform pretty easily, which was a sign to me that I should probably watch it.

I had no idea who JonBenét was before watching this. But the original true crime junkie in my household is my mother, who knew immediately who she was. While we were watching the nightly news, she would talk about the case when they mentioned the Netflix documentary had come out.

And because it was the day before a holiday, I decided to go all the way ahead and watch the three episodes in one shot.

Here’s my review! I don’t want to ramble in the introduction, as we have a lot of ground to cover within this docuseries! I was pretty heavily invested in it myself.

A documentary series focusing on the brief life and brutal death of JonBenét Ramsey.

This series is only three episodes, but throughout those three episodes, there’s a lot of speculation to be had. The victim in this case is JonBenét Ramsey, a six-year-old beauty queen whose parents noticed a ransom note for inside of their home one day.

Their nine-year-old son at the time didn’t notice anything happen, and when they saw she wasn’t on her bed, they immediately called the police (despite the note saying to do not do that). As we see in the documentary, the note itself was suspicious, as it was written on the notepad that the girl’s mother would write stuff down on.

What happened next is an absolute circus, as we see throughout each episode of the docuseries. They didn’t find where the girl’s body was at first at, but eventually she is found not too far in their basement. She was tied up, and father rips off the tape on her mouth. As the police say, that tape might’ve contained crucial evidence.

This docuseries presents itself through a series of different firsthand sources. We talk to the local police handing the case, as well the district and the father of JonBenét. Her mother, who is speculated to be a major suspect who killed her throughout the series, died of ovarian cancer almost twenty years ago.

The local police genuinely believed that the parents were involved with the killing. We get that perspective early on in the series, or at least until it’s introduced that there was foreign DNA all over JonBenét’s clothing. But first, the police and community suspected the parents.

A big reason was that JonBenét was pushed to be a beauty queen, including sexualizing her. The media also helped perpetrate rumors, as we see one openly dispelled by the journalist who published it in the documentary, and when JonBenét’s mother went out and said there was a killer on the streets, local residents openly disagreed with her. No one didn’t feel safe in the area, which didn’t help their case.

When the foreign DNA is found on their daughter, less skepticism was put on them, but people did genuinely believe that these two still killed their daughter. While her mother passed away from ovarian cancer not too longer after, the father and brother are still alive and grappling with what happened in their family.

Overall Thoughts

As someone who knew nothing about this going into it, I thought that this was a fascinating case. It does seem like the parents did it at first because that’s the framework we’re fed as an audience, but as it zooms out and looks at new evidence, it becomes clearer how this case hasn’t been solved yet.

I do think that this could have been shortened to a two hour documentary though. It felt like some of the same talking points were being brought up repeatedly, and I found by the third episode I was starting to lose interest and steam in this as a series.

Regardless, this case truly was a circus, and the media surely didn’t help. I think the documentary does a great job in conveying what a mess this was. We see a lot of these cases, but her being a young white beauty pageant girl surely escalates it.

Watch this if you’re interested and in need of something to do. I don’t think I’d return to it, but I’m glad I watched it overall.

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