Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey? All the Possible Suspects Investigated In the Pageant Queen's Unsolved Case

On the morning of Dec. 26, 1996, JonBenét Ramsey’s mother Patsy called the police to report that the 6-year-old was kidnapped. Hours later, the pageant princess was found dead in the basement of the family’s Boulder, Colo., home. She had been beaten and sexually assaulted, then strangled to death.

The Netflix docuseries Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?, which premiered on Nov. 25, examines the alleged failures of the Boulder Police Department in investigating the murder, as well as media misinformation coloring public opinion of the case. It also takes a close look at several suspects, including JonBenét’s parents Patsy and John Ramsey.

JonBenét’s parents became suspects almost immediately, with speculation that Patsy wrote the ransom note found in the home, in part because it demanded $118,000 — the amount of John’s bonus that year. Though a grand jury voted to indict Patsy and John for child abuse resulting in death and accessory to a crime in 1998, prosecutors declined to press charges against the couple due to a lack of evidence. In 2008, then-Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy released a statement publicly exonerating the pair, citing that DNA evidence cleared not just John and Patsy, but also JonBenét’s older brother, Burke Ramsey.

Despite more than 1,400 pieces of evidence reviewed, 140 individuals investigated and more than 50,000 pages of investigation documents generated, the murder remains unsolved to this day — though JonBenét’s father hopes that advancements in DNA technology will change that.

“Of the items sent to labs in the beginning, six or seven of them were returned untested,” John told PEOPLE in November 2024. “We don’t know why they were not tested, but they were not tested.”

John also told PEOPLE that he believes his daughter’s killer is a masked intruder who raped a 12-year-old girl in Boulder nine months after JonBenét’s murder. The man allegedly snuck inside the girl’s home while her family was asleep and raped the child, then fled after her mother scared him away. That man’s name has not been revealed publicly.

While the Ramseys were exonerated, several other suspects also gained notoriety due to the case. Here are several possible suspects who were investigated in the murder of JonBenét Ramsey — including two men who voluntarily confessed to killing her.

Michael Helgoth

Michael Helgoth owned a pair of Hi-Tec boots that appeared to match a print left at the crime scene, as well as a stun gun, ABC News reported, which investigators thought may have been used on JonBenét. Private investigator Ollie Gray, who Patsy and John hired to look into the case, believed Helgoth may have been a suspect and described him as a “hell-raiser.” Gray also alleged that Helgoth’s family owned a taped confession of his guilt.

Helgoth died by suicide in 1997, leading authorities to investigate elsewhere, and his DNA did not match what was collected from the murder scene.

Bill McReynolds

John Ramsey named retired journalism professor Bill McReynolds, who entertained locals as Santa Claus in the Ramseys’ home for several Christmas parties (and who The Denver Post reported treasured a vial of gold glitter that JonBenét gave him as a gift), as a suspect in JonBenét’s murder. McReynolds had dressed as Santa at the Ramseys’ home just days before JonBenét was killed.

McReynolds’ own daughter had been abducted 22 years before JonBenét’s death. After being implicated in the case, McReynolds moved out of Colorado. He died of a heart attack in September 2002 and was never charged with a crime.

“He really took the role as his life goal,” his wife Janet told The Boulder Daily Camera in 2002. “He loved being Santa, he loved little children, and then the Ramsey case destroyed that career and just devastated him. He loved that little girl. It was a very sad thing in his life because he genuinely loved children, and it was the happiest part of his life.”

Gary Oliva

John Ramsey believed Gary Oliva, a known sex offender who lived in Boulder at the time of the murder, killed his daughter, Westword reported. He recalled telling then-Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter that Oliva “must be the killer,” adding, “He was brought to our attention early on.”

Oliva had sexually assaulted a neighbor’s 7-year-old daughter in Oregon in 1991, then fled, eventually ending up as a transient in Boulder, per CBS News. According to Colorado Springs Police Department investigations commander Kurt Pillard, Oliva’s name came up early in the investigation after one of Oliva’s own friends said that Oliva was distraught after claiming that he “hurt a little girl.”

Detective Lou Smit previously told 48 Hours Investigates that Oliva attended a candlelight vigil for JonBenét on the one-year anniversary of her death, noting, “Many times, criminals do return to the scene. And that was on the anniversary. That puts him right there at the Ramsey house a year later.”

Smit also pointed out parallels between JonBenét’s strangulation with a garrote and Oliva’s attempt to strangle his own mother with a telephone cord, as well as Oliva’s proximity to the Ramsey home: He frequented other buildings in the area, about 10 houses away from the Ramsey’s mansion, where a local church fed homeless people.

When police searched Oliva’s tent, he had photos of JonBenét in his possession. Oliva initially denied killing JonBenét, but according to Pillard, later agreed to take credit for the slaying if it meant he could have “three square meals a day and a roof over his head.”

Oliva admitted to being fascinated with JonBenét in footage in Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?, saying, “When you see the footage of her in her little cowboy suit going, ‘I want to be a cowboy’s sweetheart’ and all that, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Despite his offer to confess to the slaying and his fixation on JonBenét, Oliva’s DNA didn’t match the DNA found at the crime scene, so authorities ruled him out as a suspect.

In 2016, Oliva was charged with sexually exploiting a child after child pornography was found in his Google email account, per The Boulder Daily Camera reported. He was released from prison in early 2024.

Randy Simons

Photographer Randy Simons, who snapped several now-famous photos of JonBenét, told PEOPLE shortly after the murder, “Patsy was your normal mom who absolutely loved her kid. She had the opportunity to spend a huge amount of time with JonBenét, and they were just really close … [They were] the perfect mother and the perfect daughter.”

While Simons was moved by Patsy and JonBenét’s relationship, others found Simons unsettling. In Cold Case, investigative journalists Joyce and Stephen Singular spoke to other mothers whose daughters were in JonBenét’s pageant circuit, recalling that some of the mothers suspected that there were “observers” at the pageants who didn’t have children competing. The mothers also singled out Simons, who sold images of the slain pageant contestant to photo agencies after her death.

According to the Singulars, one of the mothers said that Simons had “borderline inappropriate” photos of young girls on the walls of his studio, but specified that the images weren’t pornographic. According to Joyce, several of the mothers said that after the murder, Simons called them insisting he hadn’t killed JonBenét, even though no one had even considered him as a suspect at that time.

In 1998, Simons was arrested and placed on a psychiatric hold, according to The Boulder Daily Camera. In the Netflix docuseries, it was revealed that Simons was seen walking naked in public. At the time, he again insisted to police that he hadn’t killed JonBenét.

In 2019, Simons was arrested in Oregon for downloading child pornography in a restaurant through their public wifi, KVAL reported. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Despite the pageant mothers’ suspicions of Simons, his DNA wasn’t found at the crime scene, and he was never charged in connection with JonBenét’s death.

John Brewer Eustace

Investigators for JonBenét’s case briefly traveled to Charlotte, N.C., to look into the possibility of John Brewer Eustace being her killer. He broke into a Charlotte home and kidnapped a 2-year-old child. When police searched Eustace’s home, he reportedly had a shrine to JonBenét. However, he had a “rock solid alibi” for the night of JonBenét’s murder and was at work in a factory at the time of the slaying, Stephen Singular said in Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?.

John Mark Karr

From 2002 to 2006, John Mark Karr communicated with investigative reporter and journalism professor Michael Tracey. Karr claimed in emails and phone calls, using the alias “Daxis,” that he sexually abused JonBenét more than once before accidentally killing her.

While Tracey was initially skeptical about the legitimacy of “Daxis,” Karr knew JonBenét’s nickname for her grandmother, which was never reported anywhere, as well as other details of the slaying that weren’t made public. After Karr appeared to threaten to go to the Ramseys’ home, Tracey turned over his contact with “Daxis” to then-Boulder D.A. Lacy.

Working with investigators and Lacy, Tracey began recording phone calls with “Daxis,” who explicitly detailed sexually abusing JonBenét, calling the garrote a “special necklace” for erotic asphyxiation. He said that during his final assault on JonBenét, he accidentally choked her to the point where he believed she was brain dead, after which he took a piece of tape from his flashlight, put it over her mouth, covered her with a blanket, and bludgeoned her with the flashlight. While he detailed the abuse and the fatal attack, he refused to say he actually killed her.

Karr requested to speak with Patsy to apologize, knowing she was dying from ovarian cancer. Investigators set up a phone tap by Patsy’s bedside, but Daxis never called her before she died in June 2006. Tracey then offered “Daxis” the last original, printed photo of JonBenét, and “Daxis” agreed to retrieve it from a UPS location in Bangkok. It was when Daxis picked the photo up that authorities learned that “Daxis” was substitute teacher Karr, who was arrested for possession of child pornography in California in 2001 and left the country before he could be apprehended, per The Spokesman-Review.

Karr was extradited to Boulder and arrested upon confessing to murdering JonBenét, but the case against him collapsed: Despite all the details he knew of the murder and his own confession to committing it, however, Karr’s DNA didn’t match that which was at the crime scene. Further, his own family says he was home with them when JonBenét was killed. Charges against Karr were dropped.

Several people close to the case, including Tracey, The Boulder Daily Camera investigative reporter Charlie Brennan and Special Deputy District Attorney Mitch Morrissey claimed that because the crime scene had been “contaminated” and compromised early on in the investigation, Karr shouldn’t necessarily be ruled out entirely.

Additionally, an attorney for the Ramsey family previously claimed Karr used to live near the Ramsey’s home in Georgia. In Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?, John Ramsey recalled that their housekeeper in Michigan told him she was “100% certain” that Karr was in their Michigan home asking questions, leading John to believe he was stalking the family. Karr denied stalking the family in audio recordings played in the documentary.

In May 2024, Karr claimed to live “a very covert life outside the U.S.,” according to Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?, and hasn’t been convicted of any crimes against children.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.