The Archives

1997

On Christmas Day 1996, child beauty pageant queen Jonbenét Ramsey disappeared from her Boulder, Colorado, home. A lengthy ransom note was left in her bedroom, but eight hours later her father found her body in the basement; she had been strangled and bludgeoned. Her death transfixed millions of Americans, wrote Jerry Adler, with both “the grisly nature of the murder and the novelty of putting mascara on the lashes of a 6-year-old.” Her parents—briefly suspected—were exonerated by DNA evidence. Decades later, Ramsey’s murder remains unsolved.