INFAMOUS: A Conversation with JonBenét Ramsey's Father

In November 2024, Ashley Flowers sat down with John Ramsey at his home for a one-on-one conversation about the murder of his daughter, JonBenét Ramsey. In the year since that interview, John has met with the Boulder Police Department and appeared in multiple media outlets, pushing for additional testing in his daughter’s case. Ashley has also continued meeting with people connected to the case, and hopes to one day soon have an update to share. Following Boulder Police’s most recent update on Dec. 12, 2025, it appears more testing is planned and efforts continue to solve the nearly 30-year mystery of who killed JonBenét. John's conversation with Ashley may give us a clue into what items they're looking at testing.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ashley Flowers?

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• 0:45Ashley Flowers?

  So if price was ever stopping you before, you're officially out of excuses. Remove the guesswork with Ladder and get a real coach in your ear telling you exactly what to do for every workout. No thinking, everything planned for you. If you have an iPhone, head to ladder.fit/crimejunkie and take a quick quiz to find your perfect ladder plan. Use my link and get a free seven-day trial with no credit card and $10 off your first month if you join. Hi, crime junkies. Today I have something a little different for you. A conversation about a cold case, but it's not between me and Britt. Anyone with a Crime Junkies social media algorithm knows that this month,

• 1:27Ashley Flowers?

  the Boulder PD released a public briefing on the JonBenet Ramsey case. Now, for those who haven't heard it or seen the video, let me get you up to speed.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Hello. My name is Stephen Redfern and I serve as the police chief for the city of Boulder, Colorado. I'm speaking on behalf of the Boulder Police Department, as I did this time last year, to give you an update about the ongoing investigation into the tragic murder of JonBenet Ramsey. JonBenet was murdered in December of 1996 and our officers responded to investigate. While I was not at the Boulder Police Department then, I've worked in policing for more than 25 years. And I want to assure the community that our agency is committed to doing everything we can to bring justice to JonBenet and hold her killer responsible. My direction to our department has been clear. Leave no stone unturned. Follow the leads wherever they go.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Engage with and use outside partners' resources and expertise and never stop working to bring justice in this case.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Last year, we gave you an update about a lot of the work that has been done to solve this crime, and those efforts have continued. This case remains a top priority for our department. This past year, our detectives have conducted several new interviews, as well as re-interviewed individuals based on tips that we've received. We've also collected new evidence and tested and retested other pieces of evidence to generate new leads. Techniques and technology constantly evolve. This is especially true with technology related to DNA testing. Detectives continue to consult with outside experts from across the country, as well as our state and federal partners, to strategize and explore all options when it comes to evidence testing.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  This will ensure we continue to use the most forensically sound and up-to-date methods in all aspects of the investigation as they become available. I have also met personally with the Ramsey family to let them know about some of this work. I've told them that we share the same goal: to find and bring John Benet's murderer to justice. Our detectives will not stop following up on every lead and every tip until that person or persons is found. While we cannot go into the specifics of who we interviewed, what we tested, and what we've learned without compromising this active investigation, we know it's important to share this update with our community, and that is why I'm speaking to you today.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  It is never too late for people with knowledge of this terrible crime to come forward, and I urge those responsible for this murder to contact us. Next year will be 30 years since John Benet was murdered in her own home. She should be with us here today, living a full and happy life with her family. Let me be clear: The Boulder Police Department will continue to work diligently to investigate this crime, follow up on every lead...

• 4:26Speaker 01

  And evaluate all technological advances that can help us solve this crime and bring JonBenet's killer or killers to justice.

• 4:35Ashley Flowers?

  Now, I too can't go into specifics about who I've interviewed and what I've learned. But since releasing our episode on JonBenet's case last year, I haven't stopped looking into the case. And I hate to be as painfully vague as the Boulder PD, but that's all I can say for now. Now Boulder PD hasn't said what evidence it is that they're looking at specifically. But last year, as part of my coverage on JonBenet, I got to sit down with her father, Jon Ramsey. And there were specific items that he wanted tested, which could be what Boulder's focused on now. Now, we released that conversation I had with him a year ago on YouTube, but because

• 5:16Ashley Flowers?

  most people consume our podcast in audio only, many of you haven't heard that conversation yet. So that is what I'm bringing you here today. In early November 2024, Jon Ramsey invited me into his home for a one-on-one conversation. Here's what happened.

• 5:34Ashley Flowers?

  To start, I feel like there is this perception that when you do kind of interviews, that they're very orchestrated, or there's this party line, and they're like, oh, Jon's so composed, or it's Jon's tales.

• 6:18Ashley Flowers?

  And we reached out to you. There is no off the record on it, like you told me.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  I've done a number of interviews over the years, and my main reason for engaging the media is to keep pressure on the police to do their job. And I've never wanted the questions in advance because I want to respond spontaneously. If I have a made up answer, then I think, what was my answer for this question? I'd rather just, you know, ask the question and I'll spontaneously respond. You know, and it could be, when did you stop beating your wife? You know, no boundaries in all the questions.

• 6:54Ashley Flowers?

  I got lots of questions.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so it's just, it's easier for me. It's almost like I don't have to prepare.

• 7:01Ashley Flowers?

  Ideal. Well, I did prepare for the both of us.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Okay, good.

• 7:06Ashley Flowers?

  John Fadé, she would be, we were talking about this earlier too, like she would be almost my age right now.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Yes, I realize that.

• 7:13Ashley Flowers?

  And what is that like? Like, what is she, when you picture her, she's stuck at six, I would imagine.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. She's still my little girl. And I can't imagine what she would be like as an adult.

• 7:27Ashley Flowers?

  Do you feel like you're ever stuck in 1996?

• 7:32Speaker 02

  No. I mean, I've learned two things. One, life's not easy all the time and life's not always fair. And it's like, okay, those are the game rules. Let's keep, keep at it. And one of the things I've noticed with families who have lost a child, and I've looked at this in some detail. I don't know what the percentage is. It's a majority percentage end up in a divorce. And for Patsy and I, we fortunately, what really got us up off the floor was the realization we have three other children now that need us desperately to be strong. They're hurt, they're crushed. They've lost, at their age, they shouldn't have to deal with the loss and death of a family member.

• 8:14Ashley Flowers?

  Do you feel like you're still in shock?

• 8:17Speaker 02

  You don't get over the murder, the loss of a child. You get, you move beyond it.

• 8:24Ashley Flowers?

  Did you ever give yourself time to have a pity party? Because if anyone deserves a pity party-

• 8:26Speaker 02

  You do, once in a while, yeah. Well, what was interesting was sometimes I'd be down and Patsy'd be up and we sort of could offset each other.

• 8:34Ashley Flowers?

  We'll get into, I think, you know, why they kind of looked at you guys as a whole. But even in looking at the family, I do feel like, at least initially, Patsy, like, bore the brunt of that.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  She did.

• 8:46Ashley Flowers?

  And for like, a long time, I even watched, um, something they did on Netflix a while ago called "The Casting JonBenet." And there's like, a line in there where the guy was like, "Oh, I bet she was probably a horrible bitch of a mother."

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Oh, she was a wonderful mother. An amazing mother.

• 9:00Ashley Flowers?

  And I don't know, why do you think they, like, they latched onto her so much? When I know that there was, if people want to have questions about what happened in the home, why is it her that everyone became fixated on?

• 9:11Speaker 02

  I don't know. Patsy was a very strong woman. Maybe didn't come across so good on television, I was told by people. But she was a wonderful mother. She was a wonderful stepmother. And I never heard her say anything negative about anybody. She was just a good person. And so for her to take the brunt of that assault is just so unfair. When we lost JonBenet, she got very focused on Burke. I mean, that was our goal, was try to give him as normal a childhood as we could possibly give him amidst all this chaos that was going around us.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  We did, we were afraid. Somebody had attacked our family. We don't know who it was. And we were frightened, quite frankly. And one of the challenges, how do, we wanted to keep Burke out of photography, out of video and pictures, so that people wouldn't know what he looked like. And so how do we get him from, we were living with friends when we were in Boulder, so he could finish his school year. How do we get him to school without being photographed? And it became a project, in a way, it was, it was diversion from grieving. We would send out a decoy car. Burke would be in another car, on the floor, in the backseat-

• 10:38Ashley Flowers?

  Just to go to school?

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, to go to school.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  And we get him to school, unphotographed, because we wanted to protect him.

• 10:48Ashley Flowers?

  What were the kids at school like to him?

• 10:49Speaker 02

  Well, the kids are wonderful.

• 10:51Ashley Flowers?

  Really?

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:52Ashley Flowers?

  I feel like that's the first time I've ever heard that. Normally, school-aged kids are awful.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Well, I say that, I mean, from my perspective, they seem like they really were great.

• 11:00Ashley Flowers?

  Did you guys have any moments with him where you, like, you're asking, I think about, like, kids, like, what are the things that the parents don't know? Like, what's happening?

• 11:09Speaker 02

  No. You know, you know your children.

• 11:11Ashley Flowers?

  And I'm not necessarily talking about, like, him doing something, but I'm saying, like, you know, they hang out together, they have the same group of friends. Like, was there someone that maybe she didn't tell mom and dad about, but she's going to tell her brother about, or her brother? Like, did you guys have any of those, like, moments with Burke to be like, like, help us analyze, help us figure this out?

• 11:29Speaker 02

  No, because we really just wanted him to be separated from it, from the chaos and the, we wanted him to have, to be normal. And that was very difficult, because being followed around by the media and going through the grocery store line and seeing your sister's picture on the front of the tabloid, it was difficult to give him a normal life.

• 11:52Ashley Flowers?

  Do you think he might still know something that he, like, doesn't even know he knows?

• 11:55Speaker 02

  No. Burke's a very solid person, despite all. And went to college, graduated, had a good job, ever since, well thought of by his employers and very, very disciplined, buys used cars and, you know, not, he's a good adult, he was a good son. If he knew anything, it would not be something he would thought is important.

• 12:32Ashley Flowers?

  That's what I'm saying, like, I wonder if there's something in there, like, even, so I know in the Dr. Phil, one of the things that came out was the idea that you used a flashlight to put him to sleep and that he came back down to play with a toy. Like, when he's down and people are sleeping, does he, has he ever talked, like, did he get the sense that someone else was in the home? Did he hear anything? I don't know, how, like, how long was he up?

• 12:54Speaker 02

  No, we've never asked him that. I don't know. I didn't know, frankly, that he got up again. I'm not sure he did. Again, that's fiction. There's so much fiction out.

• 13:06Ashley Flowers?

  Because it's just thrown out there. It's just Dr. Phil who says, "You got up to play the toy." And Burke says, "Yeah, I did. It was something that I wanted to put together." And then it kind of just like.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Well, you know, again, when we got home, John Menney'd fallen asleep.

• 13:19Ashley Flowers?

  I know you and Burke came.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  I put her to bed. Burke and I sat down and tried to put together one of his little toys for a little while, just because he wanted to. And then he went off to bed.

• 13:30Ashley Flowers?

  You're saying like that whatever, whatever Dr. Phil said and Burke said on the show, he didn't come back down?

• 13:36Speaker 02

  I didn't know that he came back down, if he did.

• 13:40Ashley Flowers?

  Does stuff like that make you want to be like, "Oh, my gosh, maybe there's something, like, maybe there's something he knows?"

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Burke would've said something, if something was weird, but he may have misunderstood the questions, too.

• 13:55Ashley Flowers?

  Do you think Burke regrets doing it?

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Well, probably. But, you know, the things that were interpreted by the internet crowd. Well, he's smiling. Burke talks with a smile. You know, just the way he is.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  You ask him, you know, what time it is, he'll smile.

• 14:12Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, they lit him up after that.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  I know. And that was very unfair.

• 14:17Ashley Flowers?

  Do you think there's like one thing that those people who will never believe you, like hone in on? Or like one thing you're like, "Man, if we would've done this thing differently."

• 14:29Speaker 02

  I don't think there's one thing, but

• 14:33Speaker 02

  you know, we were

• 14:36Speaker 02

  portrayed as very rich people. We didn't consider ourselves rich. We built a little computer business, sold our interests to Lockheed.

• 14:47Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, for like a pretty penny, though.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  But I got, that was more money than I ever thought I'd have in my life, you know? But we didn't, I still was working. I still figured I needed to have a paycheck coming in. But we were portrayed as, I was president of a company that had done a billion dollars. We were a distributor, like a grocery store. You gotta sell a lot of milk and eggs to make a little bit of money. And that was the kind of business we were in. So in our industry, that was not a huge business. But that was publicized a few weeks before John Menney was murdered in the local paper.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  But they perceive, therefore, I must be a billionaire. Well, that wasn't true. I was an employee of Lockheed. But people don't like rich people. And we were portrayed as super-rich, callous. Everybody knows rich people don't love their children kind of people. I think. I don't know. And then we got into this child beauty thing, which Patsy and John Maney had fun with it. And Patsy's philosophy with her kids was let them try anything they want to try. Patsy, when John Maney was, she'd been maybe four, I guess, was diagnosed, or maybe three, three or four, diagnosed with ovarian cancer, stage four, which has about a five-year life expectancy, and that's it.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  And Patsy was so distraught, she'd say, God, why did you give me these beautiful children if you're not going to let me be here to raise them? But she was a fighter, and she beat it. She was in her mission. For her was a huge gift that she could now perhaps look forward to being with her children when they go to college, get married, and have her grandkids. But I think, deep down, she knew that may not happen. And so she tried to cram a lot of mother-daughter stuff into their lives together. She was a natural. She loved performing.

• 16:43Ashley Flowers?

  She was a stunner, yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's just the way she was. And she'd put on little skits at home and make us interrupt our dinner and watch the skit that she and her friends put on. So it was just, that was her personality. And they had fun with it, but it wasn't an obsession. And of course, the media presented it as Patsy was this dominant mother who was living vicarious through her daughter, forcing him to do this stuff. That was nonsense. John Maney had fun with it and loved it.

• 17:12Ashley Flowers?

  If people say that you profited off of it, what's your response to them?

• 17:16Speaker 02

  You're joking. I lost my job. I was not employable. I had a company tell me, look, we'd like you to come work for us, but we can't afford to have our good name on the front of the National Enquirer, so we can't hire you. I was unemployed for, gosh, I don't know.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  I don't know, five, six, seven years.

• 17:42Speaker 02

  And I couldn't get a job. Lockheed was wonderful to me. At this time, you know, they were, it couldn't have been more wonderful to me during the time I was still working for them. But they were in the process, they wanted, they had acquired our company to try to diversify their business model. And after a couple of years, they decided, we can't do it. We don't think that way. We're, you know, military, industrial, government contractor. We can't, we don't know how to deal in the, in the consumer world. And so they were in the process of selling us and four or five other companies they'd bought to try to change their model.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  And they engaged a conversation, I guess, with GE. And GE was gonna buy us. It looked like. And I'm sure, and I don't fault them, they're a great company, but this Ramsey guy is a

• 18:44Ashley Flowers?

  Not a baggage.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Is a baggage. It's big baggage. We can't, this isn't gonna work. And I didn't work for another, gosh, I don't know, five or six years because I couldn't get a job. We were scraping by, basically. Selling assets, selling our home, just trying to create an income that way. But no, Chow Kai profited from this. This is, that's absurd.

• 19:10Ashley Flowers?

  I think people, I think people would just look at the books. I think they would say, oh,

• 19:16Speaker 02

  Well, the book, the first book, we did get a, what do we call it, an advance. And that kept us going for a while financially. By the time I wrote the second book, the whole book market had changed and The advances just weren't there. But I did that second book mostly to help people. Because I'd gone through this trauma of, of course, the loss of a child. My faith, you know, was really challenged. How could God let this happen to a child? And the book I wrote was really, I felt very compelled to try to help people. The journey I went through wasn't to make money at all.

• 19:57Ashley Flowers?

  A lot has had to have changed over 30 years. Like, when you think about, like, you're in it day one in the house. You think it's a kidnapping. How do you think differently now about the ransom note than you did day one?

• 20:10Speaker 02

  Well.

• 20:13Ashley Flowers?

  Like, at least I have to imagine, like, if it were me, I imagine that I've, like, picked this thing apart 10 ways to Sunday.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  It, um, it didn't make any sense, first of all.

• 20:24Ashley Flowers?

  I know in some of the interviews, they bring up for Patsy that this, it goes back to the note, and I think one of the reasons they keep those who believe she wrote it perpetuate the idea that she wrote it is because it seems like it's not a clear, like, answer or direction of, like, how much of the note she saw. Because, like, initially, she's, you know, it's like, our, your daughter, we have your daughter, and then she goes up and looks, but then she talks about later, um, looking out the window and seeing that it's a marked car and being concerned. And people will say, oh, how did you know that, you know, that was, that was later on in the note? People will say, oh, when she calls 911, how does she know how it's signed if she only saw the first page?

• 21:06Ashley Flowers?

  You know, 30 years ago.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know. You know, it was chaos that morning, and I really thought I could get John money back. I really did. We'd arranged, um, you know, I don't have $118,000 laying around, but a friend of mine, who was my banker, got my ATM limit on my Visa card.

• 21:31Ashley Flowers?

  Jacked up?

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Jacked up. And I gave that card to a friend, I don't know who it was, somebody that was there. I said, "Go get the money." And they came back and didn't get the money. And I was like, "Why didn't you get the money?" They're like, "Well, no, I don't need to do that yet." But, anyway.

• 21:51Ashley Flowers?

  Why 118? That's something that everyone's obsessed with.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, that there's... It meant something to the killer.

• 22:00Ashley Flowers?

  What do you think it means? It's like, I mean...

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Well, the only number that correlates that I know of is, my bonus that year from Lockheed was 118,000. And it was paid in January. Now we're in December. It was on my pay stub every...

• 22:23Ashley Flowers?

  Did you have those somewhere in the house?

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I'm sure laying around somewhere.

• 22:27Ashley Flowers?

  Did they ever find them?

• 22:29Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 22:30Ashley Flowers?

  So it comes back to somebody who's like... So clearly, I mean, clearly, they know, they know she's in the basement. They're not actually looking to get the money, but you think it was more of a message?

• 22:40Speaker 02

  I think it was a mix. I mean, why not a million? Why not 500? You know, what's... Why not a big number? I mean, that's a big number, but doable. And why 118? Why not 100? Why not 200? It meant something to somebody.

• 22:56Ashley Flowers?

  People will, they just pick it apart.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Oh, I know. It's crazy. It's, it's like, I was criticized for disturbing the crime scene when I found John Maney. "Oh, my God, he moved the body." If you're a parent, what would you do? You'd pick up your child. I was hoping, I was relieved I found her. Thank God. Took the tape off her mouth and tried to untie her wrists. I couldn't because they're tied so tightly. I didn't, I didn't see the groat. It was so deeply embedded in her throat. "Oh, he disturbed the crime scene." That, that's, that was wrong. It's like...

• 23:35Speaker 02

  That's laughable to even say something like that.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Of course you would.

• 23:42Ashley Flowers?

  And have you ever been back in?

• 23:43Speaker 02

  The house? No.

• 23:45Ashley Flowers?

  Would you ever go back?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  No. No. We couldn't. Initially, this wasn't even... A friend of ours

• 23:56Speaker 02

  helped us move. Back to bar stuff. And we moved to Atlanta, which was our home. That's where my my family was, that's where Patsy's family was. John Bonet was buried there, my oldest daughter was buried there, so... I was accused in the media of fleeing to Atlanta, but...

• 24:16Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, so that's something that people talk about, is they say, oh... So, I mean, day one, you know, they find John Bonet, and within like, within the hour, John's on the phone saying, "I've got to get to Atlanta," and people say it was for a business meeting, like... What was that?

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Well, that's not quite the way it was.

• 24:34Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  There was so much misinformation out there.

• 24:37Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  It was hard to even combat any of it, but Atlanta was our home. We had a family cemetery plot.

• 24:46Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  That's where John Bonet was going to be buried. My oldest daughter was killed four years earlier in a car accident. She was buried there. That was our focus.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  To get John Bonet buried. Taken care of. Boulder was not our home. We had a house there, had a job there, but it wasn't home. Home was Atlanta.

• 25:06Ashley Flowers?

  Is home, you mean like you had a support system?

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we lived there for 30 years.

• 25:12Ashley Flowers?

  When you made that, uh, would you make the call? Because, did you, or you didn't make a call to...

• 25:18Speaker 02

  I don't remember how that evolved. No, I didn't, actually. I'd asked...

• 25:26Speaker 02

  One of the detectives. There's only one detective there that morning. Everybody else was on vacation. It was Christmas, day after Christmas. But there were lots of detectives, some police there. And I just, I can't remember what I said, but like, "I want to go home." And he said, "Yeah, that's fine, go." And Lockheed sent one of their airplanes out, which is wonderful.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, flew us back to Atlanta.

• 25:58Ashley Flowers?

  So...

• 25:59Speaker 02

  And took one of our little Burke's friends with him at the last minute.

• 26:02Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, really?

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:03Ashley Flowers?

  What friend came with him?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  I can't remember his name, but it's one of his buddies. And the mom, they were at the airport, seeing us off. And I forget how it came up, but can, whatever his name was, Taylor, could he come with us? And I'm like, "I'm sure he could, but I don't know that his mother would like that."

• 26:23Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, what would like...

• 26:24Speaker 02

  And his mother says, "Yes, that's great, wonderful."

• 26:27Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, wow.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  So Burke and Patsy and I and this little friend are on this Lockheed plane that flew us back to Atlanta. And that's as far as our planning had gotten. There was no planning. You're in shock. When we left the house that morning after we found John Monet, and never went back in that home. We were staying with friends. Sharon took us in. And a lot of our friends were there to support us.

• 26:54Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  And the police came several times. And we sat and talked to them.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  And when it started to not go so well, because we tossed to the police. We said, "My God, they're our saviors. We gotta, this is in their hands and we trust them." And I had gotten a call from one of the fellows I worked with. He said, "I got a call from inside the system. Get the best defense attorney he can get his hands on because they think he killed his daughter." This is like the next day. And I was like...

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Unbelievable. So anyway, but anyway, the police would come to the house and we'd talk to them as much as they wanted. They'd ask questions and we did the best to answer them. And then they showed, one of our friends that was there, bringing food and help, comforting stuff, was a former attorney with the district attorney's office. And he was kind of observing things, you know.

• 28:03Ashley Flowers?

  That's Mike?

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Mike, yeah. And the police were saying, well, we need you to come down to the station. You, please come here. We can't. We're, we're secure here. We're safe. Patsy's sedated in bed. She's not capable of getting dressed and going down to the station. You come here, please. Oh, no, we need you to come to the station. Why? And this, I think it was Linda Arndt, actually, now that I think about it. And then Mike stepped in and said, timeout. Because he knew the police department. He'd worked with them before. And he said, we'll get back to you. We're not coming down to the station today. We'll get back to you.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  And the next day, and I'd gotten that call, which I hadn't told anybody about, that I needed to get a defense attorney because the police thought I killed my daughter. This is the day after. They hadn't even looked at evidence or looked at our family history or anything. It was like, I had to be the father. It's always the evil father.

• 29:04Ashley Flowers?

  Were they thinking it was you?

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:07Ashley Flowers?

  So...

• 29:08Speaker 02

  This was Linda Arndt, I'm sure that...

• 29:09Ashley Flowers?

  So Linda thought it was you?

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:11Ashley Flowers?

  And then this idea of Patsy comes from someone else?

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Apparently.

• 29:14Ashley Flowers?

  Okay.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  And so our focus was to get Jean-Benay buried properly in our family cemetery in Atlanta, get back to our family for support. And we did that within days of this happening. And what we learned, this was part of what made us really mistrust the police, was we went back to Boulder to get Burke back in school after we buried Jean-Benay and to help the police, you know.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  And our attorneys, who Mike had brought in,

• 30:00Speaker 02

  on his own, he had said, John, would you allow me to do some things here that was necessary? When we did this timeout, we're not coming to the station. I said, yes, absolutely. So the next day, he's introducing me to my attorney. One attorney can't represent both parties. So Patsy had to have an attorney.

• 30:19Ashley Flowers?

  We have these crime junkie rules, and one of ours is always get a lawyer. So like, first of all, I would have done that day one.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know.

• 30:26Ashley Flowers?

  Our other is, we always say, like, you don't ever know, you don't know everyone inside and out 100%.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 30:32Ashley Flowers?

  But did you ever question, like, does she know, does she know something? Did you guys ever have a moment in private where you're like, or never, ever?

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Never, ever. Patsy has survived stage four ovarian cancer, was given the gift of life again, for a while, which she was so thankful for. And, see, originally,

• 30:59Speaker 02

  our attorney said, look, this is nuts that you even looked at as suspects. But this will get resolved in a couple of months. So, you know, if you hire heart surgery, you better hire a good one.

• 31:11Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  It's gonna be expensive, but it's only gonna last a couple of months. And it lasted about three years. And we got to the point where we said, we're out of money. We can't keep paying. And they said, it doesn't matter. We're committed to getting this horrible wrong corrected. And so they worked on our behalf for several years for no charge.

• 31:40Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, wow.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  But we were out of money, it didn't matter.

• 31:42Ashley Flowers?

  When was that? Like, how long did it take to, like, burn through it?

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Couple of years, probably.

• 31:50Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably.

• 31:53Ashley Flowers?

  What did they think about you guys doing CNN?

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Oh, that was...

• 31:59Speaker 02

  That was a mistake. We shouldn't have done that.

• 32:02Ashley Flowers?

  Was that like, like, did they advise against it? Did they think at the time?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  They strictly advised. Well, we never asked them. We were back in Atlanta for the funeral. Some of our Boulder friends were there and they say, "Oh, my God. You know, the media's going crazy. You've got to show them that you're normal people and Boulder's a wonderful place. They're really focused on making Boulder not suffer a reputational damage nuts." But that's, that was their focus.

• 32:28Ashley Flowers?

  That's weird, though, right?

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Oh, totally weird.

• 32:30Ashley Flowers?

  What was their goal? Like, to make Boulder look safe? Like, I don't think it makes Boulder look good because there's... I mean, you guys are saying there's a madman in Boulder.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and of course Boulder was like...

• 32:43Speaker 02

  They...

• 32:45Speaker 02

  The authorities, the mayor at the time said, "Nothing to worry about. There's no killer out there." Because she'd been told by the police, "Us parents, we know it's the parents. We just got to prove it." And, uh... It was weird. It was weird. But that... We shouldn't have been doing an interview like that.

• 33:08Ashley Flowers?

  What did your lawyers say when they like... Because, I mean, did they just see you on TV one day? Because I think that's the thing people will be like, "I don't understand. Like, John's a smart guy. He's consulting his lawyers for everything. How does his lawyer not know he's going on CNN?"

• 33:20Speaker 02

  At that time, we'd been introduced to our lawyers, but we then immediately flew back to Atlanta for John Maney's funeral. We'd never, had not met with our lawyers.

• 33:29Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, okay.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  It was a horrible mistake for several reasons. One, we were no shape to do an interview. There's no point in doing an interview other than to satisfy our friends who are pressuring us to show us.

• 33:43Ashley Flowers?

  Why did they want you on TV so bad? Like, that's a part that never made sense.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Well, they were concerned that the media was instantly piling on us as...

• 33:54Speaker 02

  The killers. That was horribly wrong and you need to show yourself and defend yourself.

• 34:02Ashley Flowers?

  Why are your friends like, I mean, I appreciate that they care for you, but it's just like.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Well, they don't know. They weren't any more expert at it than we were. And so we just reluctantly agreed to do it. But in retrospect, that shouldn't have happened. And our attorneys, well, in fact, from that point on, our attorney said, no, you're not. We are not going to respond to the media accusations. You're not going to respond to them. We're going to defend you. In fact, they said, look, we will guarantee you one thing. Money back guarantee. We'll destroy them in court. This will be a cakewalk if it gets to that point. But they said, we can't practice law in front of a CNN camera. That's not our job. We don't know how to do that.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  And they were frustrated by that because we were being accused in the court of public opinion, but they couldn't respond.

• 35:01Ashley Flowers?

  Because there seems like there was this huge rift that like I've not seen in such a stark way. I've seen it happen before, but between the DA's office and the police. And it's in, and you know, you had lawyers who I think knew, you know, they knew the DA kind of grew up with them, worked with them. Like, so I think that you guys obviously had an amicable relationship. They're the one you eventually go and talk to.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Right. I don't know. What I was told, the police were like, oh, we know who did it. Go arrest them and prosecute them. And the DA says, well, show me the evidence. Well, we don't have that much evidence. We just know they did it. And so the DA wouldn't charge them. And the police took that as an offense. And apparently that happened a lot. That happened in our case.

• 35:45Ashley Flowers?

  I feel like there was like this circle where it was a lot of that where I kept hearing like the DA's like, get the evidence. The police would say, and I don't know what's true, but the police would say, we're trying to get the evidence, but you're stalling us.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Right. Well, that's kind of what.

• 36:02Ashley Flowers?

  Do you feel like that? And I don't know what advice you were getting or what was happening, but I do see moments where there are certain things where. I think like the like phone records, like the police say they don't have phone records till like a year later.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Oh, no, they we gave them everything they asked for when they asked for it. Early on, we gave them phone records, we gave them credit card records, full access to our bank accounts, everything, everything they asked for. The only thing they asked for a year later, which they should have asked for.

• 36:32Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  In the beginning, was our clothing that we were wearing that morning because they found unidentified fibers, pubic hairs that were not identified. A year later, somebody said, oh, you should have asked for their clothing. Well, they finally did, and we had to show us a picture. I didn't remember where. But we supplied, we gave them everything they asked for, when they asked for it. Handwriting samples, we had to write that horrible note, right-handed and left-handed.

• 36:58Ashley Flowers?

  Hmm.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  So they had samples of our handwriting, which didn't match. So they wanted to arrest us.

• 37:05Ashley Flowers?

  Okay.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Um, on probable cause, they probably did this, so let's arrest them and beat a confession out of them. In fact, we were told by the DA, two things later, years later, the whole police case was based on they didn't think we acted right that morning.

• 37:26Ashley Flowers?

  Hmm.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  And the strategy to solve the case was to bring intense pressure on Passy and I, so the innocent one would confess.

• 37:37Ashley Flowers?

  What did they mean by you didn't act right? So like, what were the things that were bothering them?

• 37:40Speaker 02

  That's the interesting thing. I read that there was one detective there, this woman, who, I don't know if she'd ever investigated a murder or not, probably.

• 37:49Ashley Flowers?

  Linda Arndt, yeah. Because she came when it was still a kidnapping, right?

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. They went to the sheriff's office, got a book on how to deal with kidnapping, they didn't know. And I read her report much later, and it was just nuts. But the things that she observed.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Would say, yeah, that's not what you'd expect because of the way she wrote it. For example, she said, John was, I observed him going casually through the mail, waiting for this phone call from the kidnapper. I was looking for another communication for the kidnapper. We had a pile of mail that had come through the front door slot, laying on the floor. I was going through it to see if there's anything else from the kidnapper. She should have been doing that. But she interpreted as casually going through the mail while waiting for a call to come in. She also said, 10 o'clock came and went. John didn't go nuts because the call didn't, we didn't get a call. The note said, I will call you at 10 o'clock tomorrow.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  I didn't know if tomorrow was tomorrow or the day we were in. So when 10 o'clock came and went, I thought, oh, my God, I gotta wait another 24 hours for this call to come. So it wasn't a big surprise that he didn't call because it said tomorrow in the note. What was the other thing? It was just nuts. Oh, when, when he found John Benet, he didn't cry. There was no tears. I can just, people react differently to trauma. But when I lost my daughter Beth in a car accident, John Benet's older sister, I was mad. I didn't cry. I was mad. I was mad. Why did this happen? I was mad at God with Beth.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  And then with John Benet, it was, and what I guess they didn't understand was when they're making these observations of our behavior. When I lost Beth, I got a call. It was over. I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't get her to the best medical treatment. I couldn't go by her side and comfort her. It was over. It was done. She was gone. With John Benet, it wasn't over. I could get her back. And I really thought I would, but I had to keep my wits about me and I had to. Keep my head together and do whatever I could possibly do.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Not knowing what to do, but.

• 40:21Ashley Flowers?

  Which is actually how I think I would respond to a traumatic situation is I'm very like jump in and act.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:27Ashley Flowers?

  The thing that I think other like people don't understand that this is the one that was hard for me is like it's said over and over by Linda Arndt that you and Patsy are just like completely separated. What was your interpretation of that?

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Well, Patsy was literally sitting on the floor with a big bowl in front of her, ready to throw up. Quite honestly, she was devastated. And so she was over there, that's fine, she's, it's okay. I was focused on trying to get JonBenet back. How do I get the money together? He wanted $118,000 in an attache case. How do I get the cash together? I was working on that.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  It's what I'm like, I gotta get my daughter back. That was my focus. Patsy's okay, she's.

• 41:16Ashley Flowers?

  She's got friends around her.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  She had friends around her.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  I gotta get my daughter back.

• 41:21Ashley Flowers?

  That was the other thing Linda says in her interpretation of things that you disappear for an hour.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  That's not true. No. I, I was looking out the window occasionally to see if I could see anything. But no, I didn't disappear for an hour. Linda Arndt was nuts. She on national television said, well, I knew he was guilty because I saw it in his eyes. I thought, well, that's quite a talent.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  But she was, she was way in over her head and not, I don't think she's playing with a full deck.

• 41:57Ashley Flowers?

  Aside from that first day, did you ever have like do other interviews with her or have much interaction with her?

• 42:03Speaker 02

  None.

• 42:04Ashley Flowers?

  Did she, did her and Patsy end up having a relationship with some kind of?

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Well, you know, she was our savior. I mean, she came to help us. You know, you call the police, you expect them to come to help. We trusted her initially before we'd seen this report and all these crazy observations.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  And so she was kind of our policeman personified. We didn't know any of these other people that come involved from the police department. But Linda was there that morning when we had this horrible tragedy in our lives. So it's kind of a bonding in a way.

• 42:39Ashley Flowers?

  So did they like, even after that, her and Patsy had conversations afterwards?

• 42:42Speaker 02

  They had a few.

• 42:43Ashley Flowers?

  Okay, yeah, I've heard that, but I didn't know. It seemed like you guys had such a bad experience with her that I was surprised.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Well, at the time, we didn't know it was a bad experience.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  You know, you call the police, you think they know what they're doing. And that you trust them totally to do the right thing. And.

• 43:06Ashley Flowers?

  Did Patsy ever tell you what they talked about? Because I think that's like a big mystery to people is like, why?

• 43:11Speaker 02

  I think, well, I think, I can't remember, it's been so long ago. But Patsy wanted to know who killed her daughter. And what are you doing? What's going on? What?

• 43:23Speaker 02

  You know, that was the kind of the level of conversation, I'm pretty sure.

• 43:27Ashley Flowers?

  Gary Oliva, did you want to talk about him?

• 43:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, he, well, he was the lead that the DA gave us. And said, the police won't follow up on this properly, but it's a significant lead.

• 43:39Ashley Flowers?

  And it was back in the day. I remember reading his name in like the 90, the interviews you guys did back in like 98, when they were like, do you recognize this name? Do you recognize this name?

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:49Ashley Flowers?

  And Gary Oliva was on there.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. And say the circumstantially is very compelling. I don't, I know the, our guys looked at it, our investigators, and kind of confirmed the circumstantial information that was given to us and turned it over to the police. We, my memory is that they interviewed him, but didn't, kind of blew it off.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  I don't know if they did DNA testing, handwriting samples.

• 44:21Ashley Flowers?

  I've seen some handwriting recently, more recently. I don't know if they just recently got collected or they're bringing it up again, but I've seen some handwriting samples that look promising, but I also think that handwriting 30 years later now, people look at it sometimes the way they do with like bite mark, which is like kind of junk science.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, it's not, it's not admissible in court.

• 44:42Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and so I don't even know if they would, the way that they felt so strongly about Patsy in 1996, I don't know that they would, anyone would feel that way now if we

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Well, again, it was wrong to feel that way back then, because she was 4.5 out of 5, which is pretty much no way, but.

• 45:02Ashley Flowers?

  I think it was because it was her notepad pen from, like, to your point, it was like.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  Well, again, yeah, but so, you know, it was in the house, the person was in the house before we were, and none of that, it was her paintbrush, that was a little, okay, sorry, we didn't have the paintbrush locked up.

• 45:21Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, it seems like there were these like cultural shifts. I think there was like that distinct moment in 2016 when everyone started looking at Burke, and that's become like the big story now.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  That's absolutely insane. Burke was a 60-pound, nine-year-old little boy. This is a sexual assault, a violent assault. It's just, even the police immediately said no. He was interviewed by a child psychologist, which I guess is normal, for two days early on, and they said no, absolutely no way. He wasn't aware of anything that happened, and certainly wasn't the killer. And so that's just absurd.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Foolishness.

• 46:12Ashley Flowers?

  What was your, what was your thinking that morning when you're getting him out of the home? Because I know he, you guys go to check on him, you think he's still sleeping. He, he says when he does his Dr. Phil that he's awake, but he's, you know, clear there's something going on. He's like, I'm not, I'm not messing with it. I just am like waiting till they come and get me. Why did you guys want him to not be in that, in that environment?

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Well, the police were there. It was craziness. He, he was a little boy. We wanted him safe and protected and, and he took some of his Christmas presents with him and went to stay with a friend in his house. It was a way to get him out of this nightmare into a safe place.

• 46:58Ashley Flowers?

  Did you guys feel like he was safe? I think that, was it hard? Because I think it would be hard for me to like, I like, I'm missing one child. Like, I don't know if you could get me to let go of the other one.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, no, we, we trusted our friends. They were good friends. Their son was Burke's age. They were buddies. They'd been friends for a long time. It was a safe place for him to go.

• 47:19Ashley Flowers?

  Did they have, because Fleet took him away, but then Fleet comes back, right? Did, was, but were his in-laws or something at the house? So there was like someone there with the kids? You know, 30 years ago.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know. You know, it was chaos that morning and I really thought I could get John Money back. I really did. And, but I'd never dealt with that or, you know, John Douglas, who's probably the premier crime profiler, started that whole FBI program, crime profiling. We spent some time with him over a period of time. And he, his profile of this was that.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  This was a fairly young person, twenties to thirties, fascinated with the movies because there's some movie quotes in the ransom note. And it was either very angry at you personally, John, or very jealous of you, John. This wasn't about JonBenet. That's John's assessment.

• 48:26Ashley Flowers?

  And you still believe that?

• 48:28Speaker 02

  I think that's part of it. I really do. But whoever did this is a monster.

• 48:34Ashley Flowers?

  You believe that you're the why?

• 48:37Speaker 02

  I accept John Douglas's theory as credible. I really do. You know, two weeks before her murder, our company had achieved a billion dollars in sales for the year.

• 48:52Ashley Flowers?

  Right.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  And for us, that was a big deal. And I wouldn't even pay any attention. And our financial guy said, hey, we're going to hit a billion dollars. Holy mackerel, we need to have a party for our employees and make a big deal of it. And our marketing lady said, let's let the newspaper know. And I had this gut feeling, another lesson, pay attention to your gut feelings. I had this gut feeling, that's a bad idea. But I let them do it.

• 49:25Ashley Flowers?

  Why does, like, if it was about money and, like, your greed, and going back to a lot of things the note said, what do you think the way that they, the sexual component to this, and the way that they staged it, like, why, why that piece of it? If it goes back to being about you and about money, like, that's just not up.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  I know, it doesn't make sense. I agree, no. Well, whoever did this is, you know, crazy, demented human being.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 50:02Ashley Flowers?

  I know you guys have been extremely clear that there was no sexual abuse on your part, any family members' part.

• 50:09Speaker 02

  Our doctors could testify to that.

• 50:11Ashley Flowers?

  Well, that was my question. So I know that you guys have been clear. Do you think that she wasn't abused by anyone ever, even if there's some...

• 50:17Speaker 02

  We don't know that, for a fact. No, we don't. I mean, there's... We never suspected that, but we don't know that.

• 50:26Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, but most people don't, right?

• 50:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 50:28Ashley Flowers?

  But it's one in five girls are sexually assaulted.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  We don't know, for sure.

• 50:37Ashley Flowers?

  You know, did they ever look into, knowing John Douglas's profile, I know he's a 20 to 30, but his profile of this being a young, really unsophisticated person, did they take a really hard look at like the other kids in the neighborhood?

• 50:49Speaker 02

  No, they never did any neighborhood survey. They never went door to door, which is a huge mistake.

• 50:56Ashley Flowers?

  What's so wild to me is like they... They, like, the first officer, French, I think was his name, he goes to the room that John Bede's found, he just doesn't open the door. It's latched, so he's like, "No, thank you."

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:07Ashley Flowers?

  How does Fleet White open the door and not see?

• 51:10Speaker 02

  I don't know. If that's true, that's a huge red flag. She was right there. I mean, it...

• 51:17Ashley Flowers?

  Because you, like, the second you open the door, you see the...

• 51:20Speaker 02

  A microsecond.

• 51:23Ashley Flowers?

  Doesn't add up.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  No, it doesn't. And that's, again, you don't know if that's fiction or fact. There's so much fiction that was put out by the police.

• 51:31Ashley Flowers?

  Have you asked, like, I mean, so I know you guys don't have much of a relationship now, but like, are those some of the questions, like, the hard questions that like, I mean, again, I think my, like, this is my friend, that I'm gonna be like in their face. Tell me how this makes sense.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  What I think happened, first of all, I think the police took Fleet away from the home we were in that morning, or the day after. And he came back after a couple hours and was different. I think the police were leveraging Fleet to use him. You know, we have evidence that the family killed John Benet and you need to help us here. I don't know, but they said he was different when he came back from meeting with the police for two hours.

• 52:13Ashley Flowers?

  Because you guys have like a huge falling out, right?

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Well, it was just because it was bizarre. I mean, he came back to Atlanta to attend the funeral. And we made arrangements for our Boulder friends to stay with Atlanta friends in their homes. And our friends that we had that person stay with called, they didn't call us, but they called somebody that was helping us and say, we want him out of our house. He's bizarre or something screwy. And so we put him with my brother.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  My brother called me a day or so later and said, do you have a gun in the house? And I said, no. Well, Fleet is on his way to your house. We were with Patsy's parents. Something's wrong and...

• 53:09Ashley Flowers?

  What was he saying? Like, for your brother to say, do you have a gun? Like, that's scary.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  My brother is as passive a person as you ever want to meet.

• 53:18Ashley Flowers?

  So what does he say when he gets to you? Because I know in Patsy's deposition, she's like, I don't know, I was in the basement. Like, I'm not part of that conversation.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:25Ashley Flowers?

  And it seems like she never asked you. But like, what is that conversation?

• 53:28Speaker 02

  I don't remember. I honestly don't remember.

• 53:31Ashley Flowers?

  And then he comes one more time when you're back in Colorado. Like, comes at you, kind of again, like interrupts the meeting with you.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  We were with our priest or minister and he barged in.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  I think,

• 53:45Speaker 02

  I think it was just a hugely, at best, it was a hugely upsetting thing for Fleet to be in the periphery of all this.

• 53:57Ashley Flowers?

  At worst?

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know. I mean, I'd been with him a lot. And I have no doubt that the police used him. Probably said, "Well, John thinks you killed his daughter, and you gotta work with us here." Don't know that for a fact, but I wouldn't be surprised. I had, um, Fleet and I used to sail. Fleet was a really expert sailor, and I was not. And I bought the sail.

• 54:28Ashley Flowers?

  Were you in the Navy?

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that doesn't matter.

• 54:30Ashley Flowers?

  Okay.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  It's irrelevant.

• 54:33Ashley Flowers?

  Sure, sure.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Um, I think it was a sail, you know. I don't know, it was a couple of years later. I sent it back to him with the note and said, "Look, I don't know what the police told you. I'm sure they've probably told you things that weren't true, but I absolutely don't think you were involved in our daughter's murder." And I never heard back from him. But just, I knew him, I knew him well, I knew his kids.

• 55:01Ashley Flowers?

  How do you not, like, go, like, shake it out? Like, this is the part that I'm like, I like, so hard to understand, and I understand how people spiral. And then his wife, I heard, was telling Patsy, like, "I, you know, I need a couple of minutes. I might know something." But I'm just like, "God, is there something in there?" How do you, how do you feel you have to, like, what is it that, that, like, makes you not be, not be the Fleet who's, like, holding on to people's collars?

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. I've told people, "Look, if you were a male living in Boulder on the 26th, or 25th of December 1996, you're suspect in my book. I can't rule you out. I don't know. I'm so suspicious and frightened and bewildered. You're suspect in my book. I don't trust you."

• 55:52Ashley Flowers?

  What was the deal with the 23rd 911 call? And my favorite character, Fleet White?

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's weird stuff like that. Um, what was the deal? He...

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Somehow he dialed 911 from our home phone. And meant to dial something else. I can't remember. I don't remember if the police came, or they just called us back. But we said, "No, that was a mistake, I guess."

• 56:26Ashley Flowers?

  Did you ever ask him about it?

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Ask the fleet?

• 56:29Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  No. You know, early on, you know, I was just so crushed.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  I wished I would die. It was that hurt.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  People say, "Did you think about suicide?" Well, it crossed my mind, but that would impose more hurt on my children, and that's a dumb thing to do. But I would have been happy to die.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  I was so devastated. So you don't think about much else, I guess, other than your loss. And, you know, as I say, the fleet stuff was weird, but

• 57:14Speaker 02

  it didn't fit with who I knew as a person. I remember, he didn't react well under stress.

• 57:23Ashley Flowers?

  I remember reading this anecdote you had about assailing with him, and how he just kind of like froze, and you had to, you guys had to come get saved by someone.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Well, we'd gotten into really rough weather, and a line had got wrapped around our propeller as we were coming to port. We couldn't steer the boat. And we're getting blown into a big rock wall. And somebody, the weather was blowing like crazy. And we're like, "Okay, this is the end of the sailboat, you know. We're not gonna get killed, but that's gonna be the end of the boat. It crashes into that stone wall." And so he just acted very flustered and overwhelmed by difficulty. And so I sort of attributed some of his behavior to that.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 58:22Ashley Flowers?

  I know, I think I would just bulldoze through my life. I would like, I would probably ruin every relationship I had, like truly, like if something, I think it would, I think it would consume me because I think I would pick apart. And maybe this, these are the people who can survive it and the people who can't. Because I think I would, I would hunt down Fleet White and I would like, you know what I mean, and I would like, I would pick it apart, even if it was my own child and probably to the detriment of my child. Um, and I think that's what so many people, we think we know what we're gonna do in those situations.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  Well, but you can't

• 58:51Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  assume that. I mean, it's like getting hit by a speeding truck.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  It's so devastating emotionally.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  Uh, your system's in shock, I mean.

• 59:11Ashley Flowers?

  Have you had different theories over the 30 years? Or, or has it been pretty much the same? Or did it?

• 59:16Speaker 02

  I mean, John Douglas's theory, when he presented that to me, was sobering. It's like.

• 59:21Ashley Flowers?

  Who hates, who hates you that much? Like that.

• 59:23Speaker 02

  Well, that's what I said to John. I said, I don't, I've never, we had 700 employees. I knew most of them, but not all of them. We've had to fire some for different reasons. But since I was the president, and I guess conceivably, they could blame me for the loss of their job, let's say.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  But I, I said, I've never made anybody that bad. I can't imagine that. And he said, you may not even know them. They read about you in the paper. They observed your, you know, we were, Boulder's a very liberal, far-left community. And, um.

• 1:00:02Ashley Flowers?

  What's that mean?

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Well, very, um, it's described jokingly as 32 square miles surrounded by reality.

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  And we knew that going in. We were capitalists. We were businesses, capitalists. They're not really welcome here. It was a feeling we got.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  But, um, you know, who, who could do this to a child?

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  But anyway, John is very, has lots of.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Credit on his resume to being right.

• 1:00:42Ashley Flowers?

  Between him and your PIs, have you, over the years, come to at least your best working theory of what you think happened? Like, the order, what was staged?

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  Oh, I think, I think the person came into our home

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  when we were gone that evening, went out for dinner, was there when we got home,

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  and waited for us to go to bed. That same scenario happened about nine months later in the same neighborhood with a little friend of Jean-Benay's. Fortunately, the mother interrupted it. But to me, they're very potentially the same person. Police blew it off. It's the same.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  But I know the father of that second little girl absolutely felt there's a lot of similarities. They knew that the killer was in the house, or the, fortunately, the child wasn't killed, but they came home saying that we did set the burger alarm, went to bed. So the killer had, the bad guy had to be in the house

• 1:01:49Ashley Flowers?

  Waiting.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  when they got home.

• 1:01:50Ashley Flowers?

  So you think he's, he's in the house waiting?

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:54Ashley Flowers?

  And then what?

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  And then we went to bed, and we believe that as to experts, that a stun gun was used to silence Jean-Benay. She was taken down the basement.

• 1:02:06Ashley Flowers?

  So you think that he went up to her room first, got her there?

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:10Ashley Flowers?

  And then, and then took her to the basement?

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  That's, yeah.

• 1:02:14Ashley Flowers?

  And do you have any, and I know this is like a little bit of detail, details I know you've lived with for a long time. Do, do they have any ideas about what the intention was? Like, what, some of the sex activity, some of the choking?

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  You know, the Lou Smith, this detective that was retired, brought out of retirement, legendary detective in Colorado, solved over 200 homicides. Amazing man.

• 1:02:39Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  Was brought in by the DA because I think the DA suspected the police had it kind of messed up. Lou spent a couple of months looking at the evidence and very conclusively, in his mind, said, no, there's lots of evidence of an intruder. His theory was it was a kidnapping gone wrong, based on the evidence.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  And I've always thought those two conflicted.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  Between John Douglas's theory and Lou's, but somebody pointed out to me, well, no, they don't necessarily conflict.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  And I was like, yeah, you're right.

• 1:03:17Ashley Flowers?

  Do they think that the person wrote the note while that he's in the house waiting for you guys to come home?

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  John Douglas said, nobody could write a three-page ransom note after murdering a child.

• 1:03:28Ashley Flowers?

  Okay, so that's done earlier.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  You know, their war brain is going crazy. And he said, that note was written before.

• 1:03:36Ashley Flowers?

  Where do you assume it went wrong? So if he wrote this note to get her out, like, why does he take her to the basement, you think?

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  Well, there was, I don't know. I mean,

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  the, um, she was sexually assaulted, apparently.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  There was a suitcase.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  The so-called detective that was there that day said, well, go look through the house, see if you see anything unusual. And I reported to her that I went to the basement. There was a suitcase standing up on, you know, on its bottom, under a window, and the window was open. I said, that suitcase shouldn't be there. It looks like it may have been a step to get out of the house. And apparently, they found,

• 1:04:28Speaker 02

  and I don't know this for a fact, but I, there's so much information out there, you don't know what's right and what's wrong. But they apparently found fibers from JonBenet's clothing in the suitcase, along with a doll or something. And Lou's theory was they may have tried to get her out of the house in the suitcase. And it went wrong, and it didn't work. I don't know.

• 1:04:52Ashley Flowers?

  When you first saw the window, because you had gone down initially, you said when you first saw the window, you didn't think to mention it.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  No, no. I did, bitterly, yeah.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, uh, the window was open. And it had a pane broken in it, and then the suitcase propped up underneath. And I told Linda Arnt, the detective, I said, look, that suitcase should not be there.

• 1:05:18Ashley Flowers?

  And you told her this before they, you guys found JonBenet?

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. I said, maybe that window was broken by me, I don't know, but it shouldn't have been open, and that suitcase shouldn't have been there. And...

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  And of course, the police came out and nobody, a human couldn't get through that window. Well, I did it. Lou Smith did it.

• 1:05:38Ashley Flowers?

  I saw Lou Smith.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  It's crazy. Just, they were so focused on convicting Patsy or me that nothing else mattered. And then in January, they had sent some evidence in for DNA sampling, and the report came back, middle of January, we've recovered unidentified male DNA from Jean Monet's clothing. Does not match anyone in the family. John, Patsy, and Burke are excluded.

• 1:06:09Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, the first one, I think, that they found, it was, it was from a blood spot in the underwear, and it was, it was her, it was her blood, but it was what they determined, at least based on enzymes, like saliva within the blood spot. Those are the first things that they tested and ruled the family out.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Right. Well, the police kept that a secret from the DA for six months because it conflicted with their conclusion. It's like, holy crap, what do we got to do about this? Because it's the first question the defense attorney would ask is, whose DNA is that? Oh, we don't know. But it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter. Male DNA found in a sexual assault case is a huge clue. And to discount it is absurd.

• 1:06:55Ashley Flowers?

  And they do eventually go back and get another sample that they put into CODIS from it. They get a large enough profile to put in CODIS, right?

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Right. They actually, the first sample was CODIS qualified as well. A new DA came in and set up her own investigative unit on this case, took the case away from the police. They didn't position it that way. And the media was like, oh, we want fresh eyes. No, they, I believe she took it away from the police, brought Lou Smith back in, who had left because he was disgusted with the direction it was going.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  And they started to investigate it again, and she did additional DNA testing.

• 1:07:36Ashley Flowers?

  And this is like in 2008?

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that supported the earlier DNA sampling, that it was unidentified male DNA, had no explanation. Police tried very hard to explain it away. They even tried to get the county to pay for them to go to China.

• 1:07:53Ashley Flowers?

  I followed that one.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  They wanted to go to China.

• 1:07:55Ashley Flowers?

  Right.

• 1:07:56Speaker 02

  And start sampling.

• 1:07:57Ashley Flowers?

  But then they, when they really honed in on, oh no, this isn't just like everywhere in the underwear, it's just in the blood spots, and we're, we're showing these enzymes that show up in high levels with saliva.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and I don't know, I, I did learn a little bit about DNA, and it's complicated.

• 1:08:13Ashley Flowers?

  It's very complicated.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  Really complicated.

• 1:08:15Ashley Flowers?

  2008, they do touch DNA on the side of her long john pants, basically saying like, we think that whoever would have pulled her pants down might have done it here. They get two profiles, one from each side. They're not nearly as big as the one that went into CODIS, but they say they're consistent with that one.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:33Ashley Flowers?

  And I heard the same thing, where they're saying like, in no other case have I seen where you see this much DNA of someone else, and we're not looking for someone else.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:41Ashley Flowers?

  When they ended up testing the nylon rope that was around her neck.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  I don't know if they ever did, I don't know that.

• 1:08:48Ashley Flowers?

  They tested the rope.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:08:50Ashley Flowers?

  But not the wooden handle itself.

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:08:54Ashley Flowers?

  And the rope came back with an unknown sample.

• 1:08:56Speaker 02

  I didn't know that.

• 1:08:57Ashley Flowers?

  But it didn't match the other ones. And I don't know what that means, like, has anyone ever considered?

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  Well, Lou Smith, and he, Lou told me, first of all, Lou said, I'll get this guy, John, I'll get him. And he has a track record.

• 1:09:10Ashley Flowers?

  Of getting him.

• 1:09:11Speaker 02

  Of getting him. And sadly, he died of cancer. He believed there were more than one person involved. But he also said, look, there's things I know that only the killer knows, and I'm not going to tell you what those are, I'm not going to tell anybody, but.

• 1:09:28Ashley Flowers?

  Did it die with him?

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  It may have, I'm not sure. Lou had an extensive database of information that now, some of his former homicide detective colleagues have formed a group to finish Lou's work.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Lou said, "This is a DNA case. It'll be solved by DNA."

• 1:09:52Ashley Flowers?

  Have you ever asked to see all of his materials? I mean, at one time, you were paying him.

• 1:09:56Speaker 02

  Well, it's huge. Pardon?

• 1:09:58Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, one time, you were paying Lou, right?

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  No. Lou would... I tried to buy Lou an ice cream cone one day. He wouldn't let me do it. He was that honorable. No, I didn't pay him.

• 1:10:11Ashley Flowers?

  So you never asked to see his stuff? Like, I couldn't help it. I would want to.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  Well, it was voluminous.

• 1:10:16Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  And the group that took over, and they're doing it on their own. They've taken Lou's list, and they're starting to go down the list and get DNA.

• 1:10:27Ashley Flowers?

  Check the DNA.

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  And that costs money. And so they've raised money over time to pay for the DNA testing. But they're not... any of their expenses or anything. It's all on their own, and I'm so grateful for that. You know, Lou felt that he had a good enough sample early on, that that is the killer's DNA. You need nine markers out of 15 to be submittable to the database, the federal database. You probably know a lot more about this than I do, but...

• 1:10:58Ashley Flowers?

  I'm learning.

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  They determined that these 15 particular markers, it's like 100% match. 15 out of billions. And we had nine of 15. And nine was the threshold at which they would admit it to the COVID database as good enough.

• 1:11:19Ashley Flowers?

  I wonder if it's still in there? Because I know back in the 90s, the database was less. It was lower at nine. And then I... over the years, I believe they've raised it to be like 13.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 1:11:32Ashley Flowers?

  And I've seen other cases where it... Because it no longer meets the new standard, it drops out, and people didn't even realize that it's not in there anymore.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  That's very possible. I don't know.

• 1:11:42Ashley Flowers?

  Be interesting. It's something I'll need to look into.

• 1:11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't know. I didn't know that they raised the threshold, but...

• 1:11:48Ashley Flowers?

  Do you know, did they ever test the... John Benny's bathroom, someone had gone to the bathroom and not flushed. Did they ever test that? Do you know?

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 1:11:56Ashley Flowers?

  Seems like a... like, perfect sample for DNA. And I don't know if they tested and it was hers or...

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  Well, you know, the forensics people only spent two hours in our house. After JonBenet was found, looking for evidence. The DA said, get your you-know-what back in there. Two hours is not enough. So they went back. I don't know how long they spent when they went back. They did find, you know, they recovered the evidence, some evidence and a palm print that didn't match anybody on the door going into that room where JonBenet was found.

• 1:12:30Ashley Flowers?

  Didn't match anyone? I thought it was, I thought they saw Patsy's and JonBenet's, but Patsy was, I know, wrapping presents in that room and stuff like that.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  Well, we'd go in and out of that room. It was a storage room. We call it the wine cellar, but there wasn't.

• 1:12:41Ashley Flowers?

  Was no wine?

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  No wine. It was just an old coal cellar.

• 1:12:44Ashley Flowers?

  I don't think I realized that there were, was an unidentified print.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  As far as I know, that's still unidentified, as there was in the same case nine months later, unidentified palm print. Did they check them? No.

• 1:12:58Ashley Flowers?

  You're talking about in the, in the other case?

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  The very similar JonBenet.

• 1:13:02Ashley Flowers?

  I think in the reporting, they call her Amy.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. They blew that off as similar. Because as the police chief said, there's so many quotes I could give you that they said were just nuts. First it was, well, we didn't treat JonBenet's abduction as a crime scene. We thought it was a kidnapping.

• 1:13:19Ashley Flowers?

  It's a crime.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  It's a crime, I'm sorry.

• 1:13:21Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  On the little girl, the police chief came out and said, well, they're not the same because the second little girl wasn't killed.

• 1:13:27Ashley Flowers?

  Because her mom walked in.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  And mom interrupted it. It's just nuts we're dealing with. And that's a real fundamental problem with our system. That little Boulder, Colorado Police Department is an island of authority. People can't come on that island and help unless they're invited. And Boulder Police never invited anybody to come in and help. Lots of it was offered, but that's the fundamental problem with our system.

• 1:13:53Ashley Flowers?

  Would that be your hope with JonBenet's case?

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:13:56Ashley Flowers?

  Like, in a perfect world, who would you want to take over?

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  Well, you know, early on, we didn't care who had it. We just wanted it out of the police hands because we knew they were, A, focused on us and B, incompetent. Give it to the Sheriff's Department. Give it to, we didn't care. Just get it out of their hands because they're not capable. We would like the evidence to be turned over to the FBI. And let the FBI run with the evidence, do some additional DNA testing.

• 1:14:22Ashley Flowers?

  So where do you think the evidence is? Do they still have it? What do you, what do you think is still, can be tested? What can we pull this?

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Well, we were told, we, we know from looking at reports and stuff, early on in January 97, there were a number of items sent into a lab.

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  Some were returned untested. Don't know why. Whether it's a cost issue or they had a sample, they did get a sample of what they tested. Maybe they decided that's good enough. I don't know. We want those other items tested. We want the items that had previously been tested 15 years ago, most recently, retested, developing a different, this new format that's needed to do the genealogy research. That's what we're asking. So we, as far as we know, there's items that are crime scene evidence that was taken from the crime scene, sent to a lab, and was never tested.

• 1:15:20Ashley Flowers?

  It seems pretty straightforward. Like, what do you, what do you feel is? Because to me, on the outside, I'm like, why wouldn't Boulder want to solve its biggest case?

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  The only, there's only two logical reasons. One is they've lost the evidence, which I hope isn't true. Or two, they're protecting somebody that is very, that's a silly number two. But I can't think of any other reason.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  They've lost the evidence.

• 1:15:50Ashley Flowers?

  Do you feel like, I mean, you're somebody who has like amazing connections and you have, and you know, political pull, like, do you feel like there's anything that you can do? Or you like, you've tried it all? Like where?

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  We've tried a lot. We've, we petitioned the Attorney General in Colorado. We petitioned the governor, this is early on, to meet with us, and they wouldn't meet with us.

• 1:16:12Ashley Flowers?

  You think this would be a great case for someone to, I mean, if they're gonna at least work the system, to solve the JonBenet Ramsey case?

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  Well, you'd think so. And I've told, Boulder's had five police chiefs since this happened.

• 1:16:25Ashley Flowers?

  Have you met with the newest one yet?

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Ashley Flowers?

  Does he say anything about whether they have the evidence, don't have the evidence? Are you waiting?

• 1:16:32Speaker 02

  I've never challenged him on, have you lost it?

• 1:16:34Ashley Flowers?

  Ah, what do you mean, John?

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  Well, I've got another meeting coming up.

• 1:16:38Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  Well, the first meeting, I was trying to be a nice guy and not jump all over him. He was a new guy at his job, I liked him. We had a nice conversation. It was like, I need to...

• 1:16:49Ashley Flowers?

  What does he say? Where does he say it stands?

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  Well, he says, "There's things happening I can't tell you about, and I think DNA testing isn't there yet. We want to wait." And I totally disagree with the last comment. We're going to ask the hard question. Have you... And you didn't lose it. You're the new guy.

• 1:17:08Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  It's not your fault. But is the evidence still in your possession? Where is it?

• 1:17:15Ashley Flowers?

  And if it's not there, what does that make you think?

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  Well, it confirms my opinion that the Boulder Police was a pretty dysfunctional organization for years, frankly.

• 1:17:31Ashley Flowers?

  That means it's just over for you guys?

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  Well, it's a huge thing, yeah, if that's the case. Because we have the technology, in my opinion, privately to do testing that I think, I really believe, has a good chance of leading to the answer.

• 1:17:51Ashley Flowers?

  Do you think it's someone, whether you recognize them or not, someone that would have had some kind of interaction with your daughter before?

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I think the person had been in our house before. No question. We have this car guy, Mark Carr. We've had two people that said, "Well, I saw that guy around you. I know it's him." Our house, we had a lady that would come into our little house up in Michigan and clean it once in a while before we got there. And she called after he became public and said, "That guy was in your garage."

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  This past summer.

• 1:18:37Ashley Flowers?

  How do you make sense of that if the DNA?

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:18:43Ashley Flowers?

  Does that make you go back and question the DNA?

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  Well, I asked Lou that question. I said, do you believe that this is the killer's DNA? For sure. He said, yes, I believe that.

• 1:18:52Ashley Flowers?

  Okay.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  So, okay. Based on that, well, the other thing she said was I, when I was in your home that day, somebody had been staying in John Mady's room. There was a suitcase open and obviously somebody was staying. I thought you'd given someone permission to stay in your home. Didn't think about it. When this guy came out, she said, I saw him in your garage. And then she told us about somebody staying in her home. I said, no, we didn't give him any permission to stay in our home. And why would they have picked John Mady's room? If you're gonna, if you're gonna squat in a house, you wouldn't have picked that room. It's second floor, way in the back. You couldn't get out of there easily if you were caught.

• 1:19:39Ashley Flowers?

  I think new testing is gonna be important. I don't know if you have thoughts or feelings on, have you seen all the stuff that's been happening with like the Colorado State lab?

• 1:19:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Ashley Flowers?

  Do you have any concerns? So, Missy Woods, I believe is her name. She's been accused of like falsifying, I mean, like 600 and some cases between like 2008 and 23. They're looking at even older cases. Are you, is this something that you've talked to anyone in authority about? Like, do you have concern that it affects the testing that you guys had done?

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  We were told, our attorneys looked into it. At least they're, they're still working on the case for us at, for free. They don't charge us. They're so committed to getting this righted. They said she did not, she was not involved in our testing.

• 1:20:24Ashley Flowers?

  That's good.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  Back then. It's like, okay.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  So, that's the information we have.

• 1:20:31Ashley Flowers?

  That's really good. What's it gonna take to do new testing?

• 1:20:36Speaker 02

  Well, what we want, we were told probably years ago now, it's been over a year. At that time, we met with, just accidentally met the head of the FBI region there. And he said, "Look, the government, we, the FBI, certainly not Boulder, not CBI, do not have the latest DNA technology, yet."

• 1:21:00Ashley Flowers?

  And who said that?

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  The chief of police.

• 1:21:02Ashley Flowers?

  Because they got a new one, right? Or is this the last one?

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  The current one.

• 1:21:04Ashley Flowers?

  The current one?

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. Get the evidence into their hands. And let's see what they come up with. They have also the ability to do the genealogy research, create this family tree.

• 1:21:16Ashley Flowers?

  Yep. Even to give you, I mean, the phenotyping that they can do to answer the question of, "Okay, we know it's a male profile, but is it a white man?"

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:21:24Ashley Flowers?

  Is it not?

• 1:21:25Speaker 02

  I don't know what else to do. But if they don't do that, then that's unacceptable. That's ridiculous. It's there, can be done. We've had, I've offered to pay for it. I don't know what the issue is, I really don't, to why they won't do all that can be done.

• 1:21:43Ashley Flowers?

  I'll have to ask some questions of them.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. That'd be, we're gonna get a little more hard-nosed in our next meeting. First question be, "Do you have the evidence? Be honest. Have you lost it? Where is it? Who has it?"

• 1:22:00Ashley Flowers?

  Sounds like a good next step.

• 1:22:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Right now, in my mind, that's the key question. Why? Where is it? If you're not gonna test it, why? It's baffling. Absolutely baffling to me.

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  And, you know, maybe it's down to, police departments don't like to admit they've been wrong, or they screwed up, and I can't believe that with the new police chief. I mean, he didn't cause that problem. He didn't mess it up.

• 1:22:28Ashley Flowers?

  Do you think they're afraid of opening themselves up to litigation?

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  Possibly. Very possibly.

• 1:22:36Ashley Flowers?

  Do you think you would sue them?

• 1:22:37Speaker 02

  I don't know. I looked, I explored that early on, because we were, again, told, they knew it was, they knew it was one of the parents, had to be one of the parents, always the parents. And that's a flawed conclusion.

• 1:22:48Ashley Flowers?

  There's no one theory that makes everything make sense.

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  No, not really. I don't know. Lou said, "This is a DNA case. It'll be solved by DNA, period." And, uh, that's why this testing is so important.

• 1:23:03Speaker 02

  I don't know, you know, we used, I mean, I used to, Patsy, when we'd travel, carry, took, always packed a blue dress, dark blue dress, that she was gonna wear at the press conference when Chabotmane's killer was found. We were hopeful, confident that that would happen. And she eventually quit packing the blue dress. Somebody asked me the other day, "Do you think Chabotmane's killer would be found in your lifetime?" I'm not so confident now, at all. I think eventually, they will be caught, or identified.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  But maybe not in my lifetime. Given the fact that there's no movement in the government to do the right thing. If they do it, I think there's a, I don't know, pretty good possibility that we could find the killer. Really, now the killer may be dead, maybe, who knows? But this forensic genealogy research is amazing. And eventually, that won't be available, because the privacy advocates will fuss. They're already fussing, but so far, so good, you know? But, so that can't, you can't wait on that forever, because eventually, you won't have, the police will not have access to that.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  My, my DNA is in the public database. I just paid my $25 to see who my relatives were. So it's my.

• 1:24:42Ashley Flowers?

  But did you submit it to Gedmatch? That's a difference.

• 1:24:45Speaker 02

  No, I don't know what that, what's that?

• 1:24:46Ashley Flowers?

  So, this is my, this is my advocacy, I always tell people. So like, certain, like Ancestry and 23 and me, they're no longer available to law enforcement. So people actually.

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:24:57Ashley Flowers?

  I know. Most people don't. And so, you actually have to download your results and submit it to Gedmatch. Gedmatch is the one that law enforcement can access. So there, there actually is this big issue where people think they've done it, and they actually haven't, which would, which could build up the database in a really meaningful way. So, and I'm listening.

• 1:25:15Speaker 02

  I didn't know that. I thought those were still available. That's a big problem. What's it called, Ged?

• 1:25:22Ashley Flowers?

  Gedmatch, G E D, Gedmatch.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:25:26Ashley Flowers?

  Do you feel like you'll always have the indictment kind of hanging over you until there's someone else who's indicted?

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's always gonna be, it's an unknown.

• 1:25:40Ashley Flowers?

  Can they, is there any, like, does that mean anything now? Like, could somebody say, oh, we have this indictment from 30 years ago, we can still go charge John, or would they have to get a new grand jury indictment? Like, I don't know how scary of a looming thing that is.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. The, um, grand jury, as I'm told, you can convict a ham sandwich in a grand jury. It's a one-sided argument.

• 1:26:01Ashley Flowers?

  Right.

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  It's easy to get an indictment.

• 1:26:04Ashley Flowers?

  It is, it's just the prosecution's case. But you guys weren't asked to even speak at that, were you?

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  I offered to do that.

• 1:26:10Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:11Speaker 02

  And they didn't ask me or subpoena me. My children were interviewed by the, by the grand jury. Burke was interviewed. Melinda, my daughter, who was pregnant at the time, was brought into Colorado to be interviewed by the grand jury. So their attorneys were present with them.

• 1:26:28Ashley Flowers?

  It's strange, it's so strange, they would interview everyone but you.

• 1:26:31Speaker 02

  I know. And I offered myself. Let me know. And I think they were afraid that...

• 1:26:39Ashley Flowers?

  I think people think it's calculated. Like, I think that's the thing that nobody's like saying, or people, you know, in the depths of the inner are saying is like, it feels like there's someone pulling the strings.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  We had no rights. Police, the only right, the only requirement they had was to talk to us once a year on our case, by law, they had to do that.

• 1:27:02Speaker 02

  First time we asked for that meeting, they said, oh, Jesus, we don't know how to do this exactly, you're a suspect and you're a victim. This homicide victims' family rights act gives families like us the right...

• 1:27:18Speaker 02

  Under law to get the case out of the police hands if they're not doing their job. Or they haven't done their job.

• 1:27:25Ashley Flowers?

  What I read is that if after three years it's still a cold case, you can submit to have a federal review.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I'd thought about that a bit, like this law, this federal law. That could be Jean Benet's law. If it advanced the cause, it'd be good. But I'm not looking for that kind of memorialization of her. But you want to be sure your home is safe, as safe as it could be for your family.

• 1:27:55Speaker 02

  We were foolish, naive. We thought we lived in a safe community. We didn't check the door a lot. So we didn't set the alarm. Who in the world would come into the house when we're there? If they came in or were gone, steal the silverware? Okay, whatever. Never, ever thought someone would come into our home when we're there and take our child from our bed. But it happens. And your home's got to be a sanctuary, a safe sanctuary, as safe as you can make it.

• 1:28:24Ashley Flowers?

  Are you doing anything to get this Victims' Families Rights Act pushed through to Colorado?

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  Well, I just found out about it.

• 1:28:30Ashley Flowers?

  Okay.

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  And I've, yeah, I've got to do that. If that's the one thing, if anything could, I've always said, what can we do to change the system? The system's screwed up, big time.

• 1:28:44Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  I don't know how to fix it. These 18,000 little independent jurisdictions of authority, with no higher authority, no ability to bring in the big guns when a child's murdered.

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  It's stupid. Makes no sense. But what can I do to affect it? And I, early on, I was advocating DNA testing for anyone arrested for felony. It's always come back to how do you? How do you make these little islands of authority like Boulder able or willing to accept the power of our country to solve cases like ours? The murder of a child? And so then I was, I got to thinking, well, let's make the murder of a child a federal offense, just like a bank robbery. That seemed very logical.

• 1:29:38Ashley Flowers?

  Did you make any headway with it?

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  Well, I met with the Department of Justice and they said, well, that's going to be a tough sell because we don't have, the federal government doesn't have that lexus, I think he called it, to have even that authority to try to do that, to overstep state law.

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  He said, that's going to be a tough.

• 1:30:01Ashley Flowers?

  So now this is your new mission?

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  So my new mission, I learned about this just recently, and I'm retired now, so I got the time to do it, is I met, again, a Department of Justice, federal Department of Justice fellow that pushed the federal government to enact a homicide victims' family rights act.

• 1:30:24Ashley Flowers?

  Are you going to focus that, because I know Biden signed it into law in 2021 federally, but to your point, not in a state.

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:30:30Ashley Flowers?

  Are you going to focus on Colorado?

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  Well, what it gets down to, and the DOJ fellow said, look, it's easy, it's boilerplate, here's the law, Mr. Senator, state senator, put your name at the top, vote on it, you're done. That's all you got to do, it's real simple. Colorado would be a tough sell, I think, because politicians don't want to be involved in a case. It's like a tar baby. If I touch it, I'm tainted. The media will come, the media's been brutal.

• 1:31:08Ashley Flowers?

  Would you advocate for it in another state?

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:31:12Speaker 02

  And I say, I literally just found out about this recently and I've got to do it. But I think that's a purpose I could advocate and get behind and maybe make it, maybe make a difference. But it's going to take, like, I don't know any politicians in Colorado.

• 1:31:34Speaker 02

  They probably know me, but I don't know them. But, and maybe that's a good place to start.

• 1:31:39Ashley Flowers?

  What do you think Chambonay's legacy is?

• 1:31:46Speaker 02

  She was kind of the spark plug of her family. I mean, and, uh,

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  my minister told me early on, he said, "Look, memories for a while are gonna bring pain, but eventually they'll bring joy." And to a large extent, I found that, that you've been able to get past the pain period and memories make you smile. And, uh, I still get tugged, my heart gets tugged when I see a little girl hanging under her dad's hands, walking down the street. Uh, you know, that hurts. But, uh, I remember the neat things about Chambonay, the fun things. You know, I believe that she's in heaven. I don't understand heaven.

• 1:32:35Speaker 02

  I don't have a, my brain isn't capable of comprehending what that is. But, you know, I, I did get one reassurance that life wasn't over for her in that respect. She had won this little medal in one of her little contests, beauty contests. And I used to tell her, "Look, it doesn't matter if you're the prettiest or whatever. Your little talent makes, is what you should concentrate on." And she was a singer and always with vigor, but sometimes all key. It wasn't, but she was, you know, boom.

• 1:33:19Speaker 02

  And she had, her last little event was a couple of weeks before she died, and I was late to get there.

• 1:33:31Speaker 02

  But I always tried to go to watch her little talent thing. And she came running up to me and said, "Dad, dad, I won this for you." And it was a medal, and it was all talent winner. And she gave me that little medal, and I wore it around my neck. And when she died...

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  In my mind, I wanted to get that medal back. It was in her house. But I didn't tell anybody. I just, in my mind, that's the one thing I wanted, John Manay, is that I can keep physically. And Pam, Patsy's sister, went to her house, I don't know, a week later, to get us some clothes, because we just left, we didn't have any clothes to wear or anything. And she said, I went to the house, please, you're kind of rude, but I felt drawn to go into John Manay's room. And I felt like I should bring you this. And she opened her hand, it was a medal.

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  And her room was full of stuff, you know? How she would bring this little, round, about the size of a silver dollar medal, and feel like, I felt like I should bring this to you. And I just, I could have cried, because it was like, John Manay knew I wanted that somehow. So, there's more to life than we see here.

• 1:34:57Ashley Flowers?

  Thank you, John.

• 1:34:58Speaker 02

  You're welcome, Ashley.

• 1:34:59Ashley Flowers?

  I'll make sure, the stuff that we talked about, again, the legislation that you're doing, the petition to get the DNA, so I'm sure everyone has the information for that. And I think everyone is going to have an eye on Boulder.

• 1:35:12Speaker 02

  Well, that's the objective.

• 1:35:13Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  These boys, this isn't going to go away. We're going to be your worst nightmare until you do your job.

• 1:35:21Ashley Flowers?

  All eyes on Boulder.

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:36:03Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

• 1:36:12Speaker 03

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir. And that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.