JonBenét Ramsey Docuseries Director Slams 'Armchair Sleuths' Who Point Finger at Brother Burke: 'Callousness'

In the 2024 Netflix docuseries Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, JonBenét’s father John Ramsey and her brother John Andrew Ramsey spoke out about the still unsolved murder of the tiny beauty pageant winner.

However, JonBenét’s brother Burke, who was 9 years old when his sister was found murdered in the basement of their Boulder, Colo., home in Dec. 1996, and was accused of having something to do with her death, chose not to discuss the case, on account of his “past treatment by the media and online websleuths,” as mentioned in a statement at the end of the final episode. Burke and his family vehemently denied these allegations. Burke was never charged and maintained that an intruder killed his sister.

“I’ve done lots of true crime,” docuseries director Joe Berlinger told PEOPLE. “I’ve tried to be very responsible in my true crime. But you always have to remember there are people on the other side who are real victims of any story. The callousness with which people still point the finger at this family, still point the finger at the brother [Burke]. It’s absurd to think the brother was the killer for so many reasons. Even the investigators say it’s not the brother. We live in a society of armchair sleuths who dissect cases to death. Sometimes they’re helpful, and sometimes they’re really hurtful to both the investigative outcome and to the people that are just subjects of these terrible tragedies.”

Berlinger told Today.com that they didn’t “want to pressure Burke and he didn’t want to talk to us, and he just didn’t want to participate. So, we respected that.”   

Burke, he said, is “doing fine.”

For the most part, Burke, who is the son of John and Patsy Ramsey — who died from ovarian cancer in 2006 — has mostly remained private over the years.

However, the Purdue University graduate in computer and information technology was thrust into the spotlight in 2016 when CBS aired the docuseries, The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey.

In the docuseries, investigators theorized without firm evidence that Burke accidentally killed JonBenét, and his parents covered it up.

For more about John Ramsey’s fight to see JonBenét’s murder solved in his lifetime, subscribe now to PEOPLE or pick up the new issue of People, on newsstands next week.

The series cited, among other things, what some perceived as Burke’s outwardly emotionless demeanor during police questioning, which legal analyst Scott Robinson and the Boulder Police both told PEOPLE did not constitute evidence of his guilt.

“You won’t find any evidence because that’s not what happened,” Burke said of the allegations during a three-part Dr. Phil interview that aired after the CBS docuseries. He later added, “It blows my mind. What more evidence do you need that we didn’t do it?”

In the show, Burke said he decided to participate in an interview because: “I know people think I did it; that my parents did it.”

He said the media circus that surrounded his family in the years after his sister’s murder made him mistrustful of the spotlight. 

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“Seeing that as a little kid is just kind of a chaotic nightmare, so I was pretty skeptical of any sort of media, it just made me a very private person,” Burke said. “As to what I’m doing now, it’s the 20th anniversary and apparently still a lot of tension around it, I guess I kind of wanted to make it about remembering her and not just another news story.”

Burke and his family later filed a $150 million libel lawsuit against Dr. Werner Spitz, a forensic pathologist quoted in the docuseries, and a $750 million lawsuit against CBS for defamation.

CBS said in a statement to PEOPLE that they stood by their programming, and in January 2019, both parties reached an undisclosed settlement, per Reuters.

While Burke turned down the Netflix offer, his older brother John Andrew came to his defense in the series.

“It’s just simply not fair to him [Burke]. You look back at pictures of 9-year-old Burke … it’s just absolutely absurd to think, ‘Oh yeah, he could’ve killed his sister and delivered this level of violence,'” John Andrew said.