Burke Ramsey addressed the persistent theory that his late mom, Patsy Ramsey, killed his sister, JonBenét Ramsey, back in 1996, during the second installment of his interview with Dr. Phil McGraw, which aired Tuesday, September 13.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Burke, 29, told McGraw. “Not to say she never got upset, but nothing near laying a finger on us, let alone killing her child.”
He added that his mom never even spanked them. “Nothing of the sort,” he said. “Not even close.”
Burke was just 9 when JonBenét, then 6, was found murdered in the basement of the family’s house in Boulder, Colorado, on December 26, 1996. The young beauty queen had a cord around her neck and duct tape over her mouth. Autopsy results revealed that she was struck in the head and strangled to death. Hours before her body was found, Patsy found a ransom note that demanded $118,000 in exchange for JonBenét’s return.
It’s been nearly 20 years since JonBenét’s murder, and the case remains unsolved. For a long time, Patsy, who died at the age of 49 in 2006 from ovarian cancer, and her husband, John Ramsey, were suspects in the case. DNA results officially cleared them in 2008.
Burke has remained out of the spotlight for most of his life — until now. Speaking to McGraw about why he decided to finally break his silence, he said, “As to why I’m doing it now, it’s the 20th anniversary and apparently still a lot of attention around it, and I guess I kind of wanted to make it about remembering her and not just another news story.”
“For a long time, the media basically made our lives crazy. It’s hard to miss the cameras and news trucks in your front yard, and we’d go to the supermarket sometimes and there’d be a tabloid with my picture, JonBenét’s picture, plastered on the front, or they would follow us around,” he added. “Seeing that as a little kid is just kind of a chaotic nightmare, so I was pretty skeptical of any sort of media, like, it just made me a very private person.”
The third and final installment of McGraw’s interview with Burke airs on Monday, September 19.
Watch about JonBenét’s case in the video above.
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