Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey and not-so-great expectations
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
The murder of JonBenét Ramsey on Christmas night, 1996.
The story
My esteemed colleague Daniel Fienberg referred to Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey as "schlocky" on Bluesky the other day, and while that's not exactly my issue with it, I agree with Fienberg re: audiences saying "nah" to Netflix's three-parter – it's not worth your time.
But it's not because it's badly made. Joe Berlinger directs, so you can assume a level of competence. The thing is…Joe Berlinger directs, so you can also assume a level of complacence as far as innovative production, and sure enough, the AV clichés start rolling out without delay: pyramids of vintage TVs and VCRs, playing contemporary news footage; tableaux lingering on the ransom note (which is read aloud by half a dozen different voice actors, so at least that choice is interesting); pan-and-scans of stacks of tabloid covers.
Predictable b-roll from Cold Case. (Netflix)
There's nothing per se wrong with a formulaic approach, but a case this exhaustively covered calls for a fresh perspective. Casting JonBenét has its detractors, but at least director Kitty Green tried to say something else about the tragedy and what the coverage of it said – and still says – about the American criminal-justice and media complexes.
You won't get that here. You'll get footage you haven't seen before, of Patsy Ramsey talking to a documentarian and of Patsy and John's wedding; you'll get excellent access, because it's Berlinger and it's a Netflix joint and almost everyone will agree to participate; you'll get the customary self-regarding interview with Berlinger about the project in which he drive-bys other properties and filmmakers. But Cold Case isn't going do anything new with those materials and interviews, because Berlinger is a traditionalist (and kind of a gatekeeper) – and again, that's fine.
But here in 2024, if you have seldom-seen interviews from the aughts, and Boulder reporters and law enforcement talking-heads, and all the other docs and commentary about the case going back decades, why not make that material work another way? Why not create a production-office crazy-wall timeline of the case, add some color-coding for various elements (movements of the family; Boulder PD drama; evidence collection and handling), and see if there isn't a narrower newer way to put the story together that broadens the collective thinking about the case?
After watching 2 of the 3 eps, at least I didn't spot Matt Lauer in the contemporary footage, thank god. (Netflix)
"The Ramseys were unfairly maligned," "advances in testing could help close the case" – we know all that. Anyone who clicks on Cold Case likely is familiar with the broad strokes and doesn't need a file review, either. Either tell us something that's else, or rearrange all the somethings we already know to make a pattern we haven't seen.
We've joked a lot around here about starting a rumble with Joe Berlinger, but I don't actually need that to happen; Berlinger is a hall-of-famer, rightly so, and he's going to do what he does in the documentary space, which is fine – I don't need him to go avant-garde. Cold Case: JonBenét is perfectly fine for newcomers to the story. I also didn't watch the last episode yet, so maybe there's a new theory of the case here, which, great. But if there isn't a new theory of the case, and there isn't a new presentation of the facts of the case, when the director is a name in the field and has all the tools to re-imagine how we talk about said case, it's hard not to see the series as a missed opportunity above all.
I watched all three episodes last night and they are well done. I have honestly read (in the not-so-recent past) all the books on this case and had come away favorably impressed with Steve Thomas; not so much with Lou Smit. This documentary balanced the scales a little bit, showing me how highly respected Smit was and exposing some of the flaws in Thomas’ thinking. What was truly interesting is what the BBC (apparently) put together regarding the miasma that is true crime media coverage. I’d like to see a documentary that takes us from the days of the penny dreadfuls to today, examining the changes - for better or worse - in the coverage. The other piece that was interesting about part three was the grand jury investigation, who did/didn’t get to testify, what the results of the grand jury were…and why the DA chose not to prosecute. The heavy divide between the law portion and the order portion were very clearly laid out in ways that are more visible in a format that is (in theory) more even handed than any of the books about the case. Of course, I headed to Reddit afterwards to see what I was missing, and what had been left out of Berlinger’s opus. There’s a lot. Yes, it’s safe to say that we all want the DNA tested/retested and I hope this Netflix documentary will help push that happening. But there’s still no answer to that ransom note, or why a clear start to the note was still apparent on a different page of the notepad used, or how someone unfamiliar with the layout of the home could have found their way to that basement. TL;DR I still have questions, let’s test the DNA.
Crime Junkie released a 3+ hour long episode about this case the other day, and there was an interview with John Ramsey. People are so angry about it, and about this series, because both evidently exonerate the Ramsey family from her murder and from previous abuse of the child. I don't have an opinion either way. I've given up thinking any conclusions can be drawn, given the shitty investigation.