Dr. Werner Spitz, the investigator who suggested that JonBenét Ramsey’s older brother Burke was responsible for her 1996 death, filed court documents in response to Burke’s $150 million defamation lawsuit.
Spitz, who appeared in the CBS docuseries The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey, filed papers in a Michigan court on Wednesday, November 30, arguing that the lawsuit should be dismissed because he was only exercising his First Amendment rights to speculate about the high-profile case.
“After 20 years, the death of JonBenét Ramsey remains one of our nation’s most widely discussed and debated unresolved crimes,” the documents read, according to E! News. “The First Amendment gives Dr. Spitz the ‘breathing room’ to express his point of view about it, just as it grants every other American citizen with a hypothesis.”
On the television docuseries (which aired on September 18 and 19), a team of experts led by retired FBI agent Jim Clemente and behavioral analyst Laura Richards concluded that the 6-year-old pageant queen was most likely killed by her brother, Burke, after he allegedly got angry and hit his sister in the head with a flashlight, breaking her skull.
Ramsey, now 29, sat down with Dr. Phil for an interview shortly after the the series aired, saying point-blank, “Look at the evidence or the lack thereof.”
Asked about the theory that Burke’s parents covered up what happened with a fabricated ransom note and elaborate story, Burke denied that this is what happened. “I don’t know what to say to that because I know that’s not what happened,” he told the talk show host. “There’s been a few people that said that’s not even physically possible for a 9-year-old to do that.”
In October, Burke and his legal team filed a $150 million defamation lawsuit against Spitz, accusing the German forensic pathologist, who has worked on a number of high-profile cases including the assassination of JFK, of “having a disturbing history of making false statements related to the brutal murder of young girls.”
