The Reel Review
Nearly 30 years after her still unsolved murder, this Netflix true crime docuseries revisits the details surrounding the death of six-year-old beauty pageant queen JonBenét Ramsey, who was found strangled to death in the basement of the family’s sprawling estate in Boulder, Colorado the day after Christmas 1996.
For three decades the other three Ramsey family members who were living in that house – John, Patsy and then nine-year-old son Burke – have had their names dragged through the mud of public opinion. This documentary attempts to counter that, and for the most part succeeds, illustrating how Boulder Police, ill-equipped to handle a murder case, clung to a preconceived notion that the family did it, despite increasing evidence to the contrary. It also explores the complicit roll of the news media, which turned JonBenet’s love of pageants into a sleazy media circus, including a horrifying 1997 mock trial by Geraldo Rivera on his now defunct daytime talk show.
Told over three hour-long episodes with loads of archival footage, Oscar-nominated true crime filmmaker Joe Berlinger (the Paradise Lost trilogy) presents a pretty solid overview of the crime, including horrific details about how JonBenét was killed that will be shocking to those not already familiar with the case. It also reminds us that whoever killed JonBenét is either still at large, in prison for other crimes, or dead.
REEL FACTS
• It took 12 years for the Boulder District Attorney’s office to clear the Ramsey family in the slaying of JonBenét.
• Burke Ramsey, who now reportedly lives in Michigan, sued CBS for $750 million in 2016 after the network aired a two-part special that theorized that a nine-year-old Burke murdered his sister and that their parents covered it up. Burke, who has said he believes a pedophile from the pageant circuit committed the crime, settled the lawsuit with CBS in 2019.
• Joe Berlinger’s Paradise Lost trilogy documented the 20-year ordeal by three young Black men to clear their names, after being convicted of the murders of three eight-year-old boys despite there being no physical evidence linking them to the killings.
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