Jon Benet Ramsey's dad John claims cops were unwilling to accept intruder theory, ignored trove of evidence
BOULDER, COLORADO: Jon Bennet Ramsey's father John Ramsey claims that Thomas Trujillo, one of the lead investigators in his daughter's murder case, refused for years to accept a "trove" of evidence that an intruder may have killed his daughter. He claimed that Trujillo was a roadblock in the murder investigation. Trujillo was recently removed from the position of head of the investigation unit and reassigned to head of night patrol for his misconduct in several cases which occurred between 2019 and 2022.
"Trujillo told them, 'if it's more of that intruder theory crap, I don't want to hear it.' That's unbelievable. [Trujillo] should have been out the door a long ago, because he was a roadblock," The Sun quoted John as saying, "I assumed the police knew what they were doing. You're in shock. You think, 'thank God, the police are here, they can help us, and it never dawned on me that they didn't know what they were doing, but it didn't take long for us to figure it out."
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Meanwhile, Trujillo was assigned to the case in 1997. One of his key responsibilities was conducting extensive, separate interviews with John and Patsy in April 1997. John also claimed, "Well, we know it from our experience. When Trujillo was put on this case as a homicide investigator, he'd previously been an auto theft investigator, and what does he know about investigating the murder of a child? Nothing. And he wouldn't have gained a whole lot of experience in 25 years because, thankfully, Boulder they don’t have many homicides. Trujillo] should've been dismissed then, not still here 26 years later when a police review board recommends termination for them."
The grieving father said, "We had a group of four or five detectives, retired guys who work on this case on their own, who are committed to Lou Smit, the original real detective on the case who [...] said the parents didn't do this, it was an intruder. And our group of detectives was looking through all the people of interest that Lou Smit had developed in the case - and he had a treasure trove of data. They were going to go through each person, get their DNA, and have it analyzed, and they wanted to share with the police what they had found so far."
Both John and her mother, Patsy Ramsey, believed that an intruder had broken into their home and killed the child in the early hours of December 26, 1996, attempting a kidnap. Smit, a veteran Colorado detective, somehow believed the theory. Therefore, he also came out of his retirement only to investigate the case for the District Attorney's office in early 1997. Smit through his investigation found that Ramseys are innocent. At this point, Smit compiled a huge database of evidence, potential suspects, and other information to find a suspect. He also believed that the killer could be a young White American with an enmity towards John. However, Smit died in 2010 after a long battle with cancer
He added, "Their whole strategy for solving this case [was], 'We know it was one of the parents, we just don't know which one but they were both in the house. They ignored unidentified male DNA [...] and they used the media to put pressure on us, releasing a lot of misleading information [...] in the hope that one of us would confess. Their whole case against us was that we apparently 'didn't act right that morning.' That was their whole case."
John claims, "I was told the forensic people that came in only spent a couple of hours in the house and told the DA they were done. He said, 'you can't be done. Get back into that house. I was told by a guy that was with a forensic lab, part of the police department, that [forensic investigators] will spend three days on a murder site like this one, looking for evidence. They were there for two hours. It's tragic."
John also said, "I've said all along, I'll never criticize the Boulder Police because they didn't know what they were doing, they didn't even have a homicide department [back in 1996], and that's a good thing for that community because it means they weren't recording daily homicides. I don't criticize them for not knowing what they're doing. I criticize them ferociously for turning down help that was offered to him in the very beginning from people that could have helped."
He added furiously, "The Boulder Police are fools and I can't expect them to have discernment, intuition, or good judgment - they're fools. Unfortunately, I can't keep them out of my life. But I'd like to and the only way I can do that is to get the crime solved or get the next steps to be taken [and have the case removed from their control]."
The 79- year-old father is still following up with the case and is currently campaigning to have the case removed from the Boulder PD from the investigation so that some fresh eyes can give a new perspective to the case. He also reached out to the Governor of Colorado, Jared Polis to instruct BPD to release DNA evidence to a state-of-the-art genealogy lab.
