so this isn’t actually the first time gary oliva has confessed to the murder, or the first time he’s been linked to the case, or even the first time a tabloid has reported this news. oliva was arrested for an unrelated incident in december 2000, four years after her murder, and found carrying a photo of her, a poem called “ode to jonbenet,” and a stun gun. it’s an odd, upsetting phenomenon, but a number of pedophiles, including john mark karr, have become obsessed with jonbenet and have falsely confessed to her murder in the years since she died. oliva’s DNA doesn’t match the samples found at the scene of the crime, and these letters (and the phone call he made to his friend after her murder had been publicly reported) aren’t actually the slam-dunk evidence that they appear to be. they’re fabrications made by an extremely mentally ill pedophile whose involvement in the case has already been investigated and deemed unworthy of further attention by police.
in 1999 a grand jury indicted jonbenet’s mother and father for child abuse resulting in death and accessory to first-degree murder, and the district attorney unilaterally declined to prosecute the case and bring the parents to trial. in the 2016 cbs documentary on the case, outside investigators found that it would have been all but impossible for an intruder (i.e., a pedophile like oliva) to have committed the crime. the most likely possibility is that jonbenet’s older brother, burke, who had a history of being violent with her and striking her with household objects like golf clubs, accidentally killed her during horseplay, and her parents subsequently made efforts to fabricate evidence (e.g., the bizarre ransom note) to obscure burke’s involvement in her death. the ramseys sued cbs for defamation two years ago, but the family recently settled the suit, likely because cbs’s lawyers had filed to subpoena tens of thousands of documents which may have implicated the ramseys had the case gone to court. the more u know.
(via novitiate2017)
