The Strangeness of the JonBenét Ransom Note
A Ransom Note That is Stranger than Fiction
The Day of the Ransom Note
It began with a piece of paper.
On the morning of December 26, 1996, Patsy Ramsey descended the back staircase of her family’s sprawling Tudor-style home at 15th Street in Boulder, Colorado, heading to make coffee. What she encountered at the bottom of those stairs would ignite one of the most bewildering and bitterly contested cold cases in American history — not the discovery of her daughter’s body, which would come hours later, but three handwritten pages that would consume investigators, linguists, handwriting analysts, and armchair detectives for nearly three decades.
The ransom note left inside the Ramsey home that Christmas morning is, by virtually every expert account, the strangest document of its kind ever recovered from a crime scene. It is too long, too literary, too knowing, and too bizarre to fit neatly into any conventional explanation. It is addressed to the wrong person, signed with initials no one has ever deciphered, and demands an amount of money so curiously specific that it immediately pointed investigators back toward the family it was supposedly targeting. It borrows dialogue from Hollywood films. It uses vocabulary more suited to a boardroom than a ransom demand. It was written with a pen found in the Ramsey home, on paper torn from a notepad found in the Ramsey home, and the notepad itself was found in plain sight, with what appeared to be a practice draft still impressed into its pages.
No kidnapper has ever been identified. No ransom was ever delivered. No exchange ever took place. And JonBenét Ramsey — six years old, a beauty pageant fixture, the younger daughter of a wealthy technology executive — was found dead in her own basement later that same morning, bludgeoned and strangled, with a cord fashioned from a broken paintbrush wrapped around her neck.
The letter that set everything in motion has never been conclusively attributed to any known individual. It remains, in the words of former federal prosecutor and presiding judge Julie E. Carnes, “an extremely important clue in the murder investigation” — and it remains unsolved.
This is an investigation into that letter.
What Patsy Found and When She Found It
The sequence of events in the early hours of December 26 has never been entirely consistent. Patsy Ramsey gave varying accounts of whether she checked her daughter’s room before or after finding the ransom note. In some versions, she noticed JonBenét missing from her bed first; in the more frequently repeated account, she encountered the note on the spiral back staircase before going upstairs. Either way, she called 911 at approximately 5:52 a.m.
The call itself became a subject of forensic scrutiny. The 911 dispatcher, Kimberly Archuleta — who had been under a gag order for years and was never called before the grand jury — later told investigators that Patsy’s frantic tone stopped abruptly at one point, as if a switch had been flipped. She described a moment toward the end of the call that sounded rehearsed. When investigators later slowed down the final six seconds of the recording, they believed they could hear multiple voices: Patsy saying “What did you do?”, John Ramsey saying “We’re not speaking to you,” and what sounded like a child’s voice asking “What did you find?” The Ramseys have denied these interpretations, and audio analysis remains contested.
When police arrived and Patsy directed them to the note, the scene it described was alarming in its specificity. The writer claimed to be holding JonBenét. The writer demanded $118,000. The writer promised a phone call between 8 and 10 a.m. The writer warned against contacting the FBI. None of it unfolded as described. The call never came. The money was never collected. And when John Ramsey and his friend Fleet White searched the basement that afternoon — reportedly at police direction — John found his daughter’s body in a small room, wrapped in a white blanket, with duct tape over her mouth and a cord around her neck.
No kidnapper had ever left the building.
Anatomy of an Anomaly
At roughly 370 words and spanning two and a half pages, the Ramsey ransom note is unlike virtually any genuine kidnapping demand on record. FBI agent Ron Walker, one of the first federal agents to analyze it, called it a “magnum opus” and said flatly that it was “essentially bogus.” He noted that real ransom notes are short, direct, and utilitarian — they deliver a demand and nothing else. This note does something entirely different.
It opens: “Mr. Ramsey, Listen carefully! We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We respect your bussiness but not the country that it serves. At this time we have your daughter in our posession. She is safe and unharmed and if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter.”
From its opening lines the document is riddled with contradictions and anomalies that investigators have spent decades unpacking.
The Salutation. The note is addressed exclusively to “Mr. Ramsey,” deliberately excluding Patsy. Investigators found this notable, particularly as there was evidence on the notepad — impressions from writing above — of what appeared to be an earlier draft that had initially considered addressing it to “Mr. & Mrs.” The author apparently made a conscious decision to redirect the note solely to John. Some analysts argued this pointed toward someone who knew the family well enough to know that John was the primary financial decision-maker. Others suggested it implied an emotional dynamic — distancing Patsy, or targeting John specifically.
The Dollar Amount. The demand for exactly $118,000 has been one of the note’s most scrutinized features since day one. John Ramsey pointed out to the first officers on the scene that the figure was nearly identical to his Christmas bonus from Access Graphics, the technology distribution company he ran. Walker described the sum as deeply unusual. Legitimate ransom demands in kidnapping cases typically target round numbers in the hundreds of thousands or millions. Not $118,000. Not a figure that just happened to correspond, almost to the dollar, to the victim’s father’s most recent pay bonus.
There was a secondary theory as well. A former employee named Jeff Merrick had been in a dispute with Access Graphics and claimed the company owed him close to $118,000, though he had settled for roughly half that amount prior to the murder. Some investigators considered whether this figure pointed to a disgruntled insider rather than the family itself.
The Writing Materials. The note was written with a black felt-tip pen from the Ramsey household. The paper it was written on came from a notepad kept at Patsy’s desk. The notepad was left in plain sight; John Ramsey reportedly handed it over to police himself so they could compare Patsy’s handwriting to the note. The pen was found returned to the pen holder where it normally lived. An intruder had apparently entered the house, located writing materials, composed a multi-page letter over the course of at least 20 minutes, then carefully replaced the pen before either leaving the premises or remaining inside while the family slept — with their murdered daughter in the basement.
The Practice Draft. Among the most unsettling details uncovered in the investigation was the discovery of what appeared to be a practice or draft version of the ransom note. Investigators found impression marks on the notepad page beneath where the letter had been written, suggesting that an earlier version had been attempted and discarded — or at minimum, that the author had contemplated what to write before committing to the final text. This implied not an improvised, panicked note, but a composed, deliberate, premeditated document.
A Letter That Reveals Its Author
Forensic linguistics — the study of language as criminal evidence — has become one of the most contested battlegrounds in the Ramsey case. Multiple experts have analyzed the note’s word choices, grammatical patterns, spelling errors, and rhetorical structure, often reaching sharply different conclusions about what the text reveals.
Several features of the note have drawn particular attention.
The Misspellings. The writer misspells “business” as “bussiness” and “possession” as “posession,” while getting more challenging words like “attaché,” “deviation,” and “countermeasures” correct. Forensic linguistics expert James Fitzgerald assessed the misspellings as deliberate — a form of disguise designed to suggest an uneducated or non-native writer. The note’s vocabulary elsewhere — words like “hence,” “monitor,” “execution,” “scrutiny,” and “countermeasures” — suggests a writer of considerable education and sophistication.
The word “hence” drew particular attention. It’s a formal transition word, more suited to academic writing than criminal correspondence. Investigators later noted that a Christmas message posted by the Ramsey family on their church’s website used the exact phrase “and hence” — not just “hence,” but the specific and slightly unusual construction “and hence” — mirroring the note’s own phrasing.
Interestingly, the word “possession” was misspelled in the note with a single “s.” And according to researchers who examined Patsy Ramsey’s background, she had during her pageant years memorized lines from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a novel that contains a passage in which a character wonders, “I can’t remember how you spell ‘possession.’ Are there two s’s or —?” The misspelling may have been unconscious self-reference, or coincidence, or neither. It has never been definitively resolved.
The Tone. Fitzgerald, who had previously worked on identifying the Unabomber, characterized the note’s language as “maternal.” It reads in places less like a criminal demand than a concerned caregiver issuing instructions. Phrases like “Make sure you bring an adequate size attaché” and “The delivery will be exhausting so I advise you to be rested” carry a strangely solicitous quality — not threatening so much as advisory. “Caregiver language,” some analysts have called it. Someone who talks to adults the way one talks to children.
The Tense. One of the most damning linguistic analyses focuses on the repeated phrase “she dies” rather than “she will die.” Four times the note uses this present-tense construction. Investigators and analysts have argued that this reflects knowledge, on the part of the author, that JonBenét was already dead when the note was written. A genuine kidnapper, holding a living child, would naturally use the conditional future: she will die. The simple present — she dies — is the language of someone describing a state already achieved, not a consequence yet to be enacted.
Statement analysis practitioners have also pointed to the passage in which the author says the two men are “watching over” JonBenét. A kidnapper would “watch” or “guard” or “keep” a hostage. To “watch over” implies the passive supervision of someone who cannot move — a body, or someone in a condition from which escape is not possible. These are subtle markers, but cumulatively, many analysts argue, they suggest the note was written after the murder, not before.
A Note Written From a Script
Perhaps no single element of the ransom note has attracted more attention from popular investigators and true crime analysts than its apparent reliance on film dialogue.
The note’s language parallels, sometimes almost verbatim, lines from at least three — and possibly as many as five — well-known films: Dirty Harry (1971), Speed (1994), Ransom (1996), Ruthless People (1986), and Escape from New York (1981).
The parallel with Dirty Harry is the most precise. In the film, the villain Scorpio taunts Inspector Harry Callahan: “If you talk to anyone, I don’t care if it’s a Pekingese pissing against a lamppost, the girl dies.” The note reads: “If we catch you talking to a stray dog, she dies.” The echo is unmistakable — the same conditional structure, the same canine metaphor, the same consequence. And in the film, as analysts have noted, the girl Scorpio supposedly has is already dead when he issues the threat. The same construct, the same tense, the same submerged truth.
From Speed: the villain Howard Payne tells the hero, “Do not attempt to grow a brain.” The ransom note tells John Ramsey: “Don’t try to grow a brain, John.” Word for word.
The film Ransom, starring Mel Gibson, had been released on November 8, 1996 — less than seven weeks before the murder. It was still in theaters across the country over Christmas. Its plot follows a wealthy man whose child is kidnapped and who must decide whether to pay or fight back. The note’s general framework — the exhausting delivery, the monetary demand, the warnings against police contact — tracks closely with the film’s scenario.
What does this tell us? Two very different things, depending on which theory you accept.
If an intruder wrote the note, the movie references suggest a particular personality: someone who consumed crime films and fantasized about scenarios of domination over the wealthy and powerful. Former FBI behavioral analysts have argued that the films referenced share a common thread — in each, the villain holds total power over a rich, prominent man, dictating terms from a position of control. The note may represent not just a cover story but a fantasy, the staging of a desired power dynamic.
If a family member wrote the note, the movie references serve a different purpose — misdirection. Including film dialogue makes the document look like the work of someone external and strange, someone whose knowledge of kidnapping comes from popular culture rather than from life in the Ramsey household.
The Ramseys’ own home, investigators noted, was decorated with movie posters. John Ramsey, a true crime reader whose nightstand reportedly held a copy of FBI profiler John Douglas’s book Mindhunter, was aware of the genre. He has consistently denied having seen the film Ransom despite its direct relevance to his daughter’s death.
Experts Divided for Three Decades
No aspect of the ransom note investigation has been more professionally explosive — or more thoroughly inconclusive — than the handwriting analysis.
Over the years, more than a dozen certified handwriting experts have examined the note and compared it to known samples of Patsy Ramsey’s handwriting. The results have been split, contested, and sometimes embarrassing for the experts involved.
The fundamental finding is this: John Ramsey was definitively eliminated as the note’s author. Patsy Ramsey was never conclusively eliminated.
Among the experts who examined the note:
Handwriting analyst Cina Wong spent three weeks in 2000 comparing the note to more than 100 samples of Patsy’s writing and found more than 200 similarities between the two. She concluded it was “highly probable” that Patsy wrote the note.
Colorado Bureau of Investigation examiner Chet Ubowski reportedly found 24 of 26 letters of the alphabet with matching characteristics between the note and Patsy’s writing samples — while stopping short of a definitive conclusion. He could not eliminate her.
Forensic document examiner Thomas C. “Doc” Miller concluded that Patsy Ramsey “probably wrote the note.”
On the other side, experts hired by the Ramsey defense team concluded that Patsy had not written the note. A U.S. Federal Court, in the civil suit Wolf v. Ramsey, ruled that Patsy had “almost certainly” not written it, citing what the court called “abundant evidence” of the family’s innocence.
The controversy was further complicated by Donald Foster, a Vassar professor who had achieved fame for identifying Ted Kaczynski as the Unabomber by analyzing his writing style. Foster examined the ransom note and concluded that it tied Patsy Ramsey to the document. His credibility was significantly damaged, however, when it emerged that six months before working with Boulder Police, he had written Patsy a personal letter in which he said he “absolutely and unequivocally” believed in her innocence. Foster was therefore walking into the investigation having already publicly staked out a position — and then reversing it.
The problem, as handwriting experts themselves have acknowledged, is that the note appears to have been written by someone actively attempting to disguise their handwriting. The script shifts in quality and consistency across the document — beginning in a careful, deliberate hand and loosening as it progresses, suggesting either growing confidence or waning concentration. Deliberate disguise renders handwriting comparison unreliable: you are no longer analyzing someone’s natural writing, but their performance of a different writing style.
Three Letters Nobody Has Decoded
The ransom note closes with a single flourish that has never been satisfactorily explained. After its final warnings, the note reads: “Victory! S.B.T.C.”
The meaning of “S.B.T.C.” remains one of the most debated puzzles in the entire case. Multiple theories have been proposed:
“Saved By The Cross” — The most frequently cited interpretation, particularly among those who believe the Ramsey family, which was deeply religious, wrote the note. This would frame the closing “Victory!” as a reference to victory over death and Satan through Christ, language consistent with evangelical Christian belief.
Subic Bay Training Center — John Ramsey served in the U.S. Navy and was stationed at Subic Bay in the Philippines. Some investigators have suggested that someone with knowledge of his military history used this acronym to signal insider knowledge — and potentially to implicate him.
University of Colorado connection — Private investigator Jason Jensen identified a physics research paper published by two University of Colorado professors in March 1996, nine months before the murder, that used the acronym “SBTC” in a technical context. Jensen theorized that the ransom note’s author may have been a student or associate of the university — which is located less than half a mile from the Ramsey home.
“Shall Be The Conqueror” — A theory proposed by some investigators, suggesting the author was fashioning a grandiose criminal persona.
The truth is that “S.B.T.C.” may stand for nothing at all — or it may stand for something that will only become clear when the author of the note is identified. It is a cipher that could unlock the case or could be a meaningless flourish. Either way, it remains one of the note’s most haunting features: a closing signature from someone who has never been found.
Evidence of Premeditation
One of the most significant and underreported physical details of the ransom note investigation is the apparent existence of a draft or practice version.
Boulder detectives examining the notepad from which the final ransom note pages had been torn found impressions in the pages beneath — the indentation marks left by heavy writing pressure from a page above. These impressions suggested that an earlier version of the note had been written and discarded, or that the writer had made preliminary notes or outlines before composing the final document.
The beginning of this practice draft appeared to address itself to “Mr. & Mrs.” Ramsey — suggesting the author had initially contemplated addressing both parents before deciding to focus exclusively on John.
The presence of a practice draft matters enormously for several reasons. It means the note was not written in a panicked moment — it was planned, composed, revised, and refined. It means the author spent significant time in the Ramsey home constructing the document, not just jotting it down. And it raises the question of what happened to the pages on which the earlier draft was written. No discarded draft was recovered.
The timing this implies is staggering. The note took experts in subsequent testing at least 21 minutes to copy — and that was without having to think about what to write. The complete process of drafting, revising, and writing the final version would have taken considerably longer. Whoever wrote the ransom note spent at minimum half an hour inside the Ramsey home with pen and paper, composing a literary kidnapping demand while a six-year-old girl was dead in the basement.
The Grand Jury, the DNA, and the Question of Exoneration
In 1999, a Boulder County grand jury returned indictments against both John and Patsy Ramsey — but District Attorney Alex Hunter refused to sign them, concluding that the evidence was insufficient for prosecution. The grand jury’s votes were sealed and not publicly revealed until 2013, when court documents were released showing that jurors had voted to indict both parents on charges of child abuse resulting in death and accessory to a crime after the fact.
The accessory charge explicitly stated that the Ramseys had rendered assistance to a person — presumably the killer — with intent to hinder or delay the investigation.
The situation was transformed in 2008 when DNA evidence led Boulder police to formally clear the Ramsey family. DNA recovered from JonBenét’s underwear and from under her fingernails matched an unknown male — someone unrelated to any member of the Ramsey family or their known associates. The Boulder District Attorney’s office wrote to John Ramsey to tell him the family had been exonerated.
John Ramsey has since argued that new DNA technology — touch DNA analysis, investigative genetic genealogy, and advanced lab techniques not available in the 1990s — could potentially identify whose DNA was left at the scene. He has repeatedly called on Boulder police to submit evidence for advanced testing, arguing that the case can be solved if the investigation is expanded. “If it stays in the hands of the Boulder Police, it will not be solved, period,” he told reporters. “If they accept help... it will be solved.”
The ransom note itself is among the items Ramsey has called for advanced DNA testing. Even if the author disguised their handwriting, they could not disguise whatever genetic material they left behind in touching the paper.
The Convicted Pedophile Who Claims He Did It
Among the many individuals who have been suspected of JonBenét’s murder over the years, one name has received renewed forensic scrutiny: Gary Oliva, a convicted sex offender currently imprisoned on child pornography charges.
Oliva was living in Boulder at the time of JonBenét’s murder and was arrested in 2000 in possession of a photo of JonBenét when police stopped him for an unrelated offense. In a series of jailhouse letters to a former high school acquaintance, Oliva repeatedly claimed to have killed JonBenét accidentally — that he had not meant to harm her, that it had been an accident, and that he was consumed by guilt.
In 2023, two independent forensic handwriting experts — Mozelle Martin and Dawn McCarty — were commissioned by private investigator Jason Jensen to compare Oliva’s handwriting with the Ramsey ransom note. Working independently, both experts identified significant similarities between Oliva’s known writing and the note. On a scale of one to five, with one representing a definitive identical match, both experts rated Oliva at 1.75 — placing him solidly in the “most likely” range.
McCarty highlighted consistent anomalies in the lowercase letter “a,” noting that both Oliva’s writing and the ransom note featured a flattened top rather than a traditional curve. Martin focused on slant variations, pressure patterns, spacing, and letter sizing.
“These findings suggest a compelling argument for the further investigation of Mr. Oliva’s potential role as the author of the ransom note,” McCarty wrote. “With that said, it is my professional opinion that it is entirely plausible that Mr. Oliva authored the letter.”
Martin stated: “I can’t say 100% that he did it — I wasn’t there and I didn’t see who wrote it — but to me he certainly warrants further investigation.”
Oliva has never been formally charged in connection with JonBenét’s murder. The jailhouse confessions, while striking, are not legally admissible on their own, and the handwriting analysis is expert opinion rather than confirmed forensic evidence. Boulder Police have not publicly acknowledged the Oliva handwriting analysis as a significant development.
Written After the Murder
Among the conclusions upon which FBI investigators and behavioral analysts most broadly agree is this: the ransom note was almost certainly written after JonBenét was already dead.
Retired FBI profiler Gregg McCrary stated directly: “It’s my opinion that the ransom note was written after the homicide occurred and was an element of staging.”
The evidence supporting this interpretation is multilayered. The present-tense “she dies” rather than “she will die.” The author’s crossed-out word “delivery” — initially writing that he would “deliver” JonBenét to her parents, then changing it to “pick-up” — suggesting that the writer caught himself making an error inconsistent with a genuine kidnapper. The use of “watching over” rather than “watching,” implying someone already not requiring active supervision. The fact that no call ever came. The fact that the body was in the house the entire time.
If the note was written after the murder, the entire kidnapping scenario it describes was a fabrication — a staging element designed to buy time, misdirect investigators, and transform a homicide inside the family home into an apparent abduction gone wrong.
This does not, however, require that a family member wrote it. An intruder who killed JonBenét and then — for reasons of psychology, sadism, or practical misdirection — chose to write a ransom note before leaving the scene is also consistent with the evidence. Such behavior has precedents in criminal history: killers who return to crime scenes, killers who contact victims’ families, killers who leave behind elaborate false trails.
What the staging theory does establish is that whoever wrote the note was calm enough, organized enough, and sufficiently familiar with the Ramsey household to locate writing materials, draft a multi-page document, produce a final version, and exit — or remain hidden — without anyone being the wiser.
Unsolved, But Not Forgotten
Nearly 30 years after that December morning in Boulder, the ransom note remains as contested as it was the day it was found.
Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in 2006, taking whatever she knew to her grave. John Ramsey continues to advocate for new forensic testing. Burke Ramsey, who was nine years old at the time of his sister’s murder, gave his first public interview in 2016 and later successfully sued CBS after a documentary alleged his involvement — a lawsuit settled confidentially. The unidentified male DNA recovered from the scene has never been matched to any known individual.
The Boulder Police Department, whose original handling of the case drew widespread criticism for contaminating the crime scene, discarding physical evidence, and conducting a flawed early investigation, has remained guarded about sharing evidence with outside researchers.
The ransom note — three pages of felt-tip pen on Patsy Ramsey’s notepaper — sits at the center of it all. Every theory about who killed JonBenét Ramsey flows through that document. If an intruder wrote it, it suggests a sophisticated, premeditated crime by someone who had done significant research on the Ramsey family and harbored a fantasy of controlling them. If a family member wrote it, it suggests a cover-up of extraordinary emotional and psychological complexity. If a pedophile like Gary Oliva wrote it while hiding in the house after killing JonBenét, it suggests a level of criminal audacity that strains belief — but has not been disproved.
What is not in dispute is the letter’s singular status in American criminal history. No ransom note has been analyzed more exhaustively. No piece of handwriting has been examined by more experts. No three pages of paper have generated more theories, more lawsuits, more documentaries, or more sleepless nights among investigators.
And yet, the writer has never been identified. The signature — “Victory! S.B.T.C.” — remains unexplained. JonBenét Ramsey remains unavenged.
The letter that derailed everything sits in an evidence room in Boulder, waiting for science to catch up to the truth.
This article is part of TheColdCases.com’s ongoing investigation into America’s most significant unsolved homicides. If you have information relevant to the JonBenét Ramsey case, contact the Boulder Police Department’s tip line or the FBI’s Denver field office.
Sources consulted: CBS News; Oxygen True Crime; Wikipedia (Killing of JonBenét Ramsey); Psychology Today; Statement Analysis; Rolling Stone; The U.S. Sun; 9News Denver; NZ Herald; Bustle; Your Tango; The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey (CBS, 2016); Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey? (Netflix, 2024).
Does a felt tip really leave an impression on a page underneath?
I had the same feeling, reading this.