“3 Things” with Wendy & David
February 11, 2025
Join Wendy and David in this episode of The Murder Police Podcast, where they pilot a new concept called “3 Things”. They analyze the 2024 Netflix documentary Cold Case: JonBenét Ramsey and discuss three major aspects that stood out to them. The case, which remains one of America’s most infamous unsolved mysteries, continues to raise questions decades later.
Wendy and David break down the complexities of the case by sharing their individual top three observations, ranging from the peculiar ransom note and its connection to the Ramsey family to the bizarre layout of the house and the law enforcement missteps that may have hindered the investigation. Their discussion highlights how new insights from the documentary have reshaped their perspectives and reinforced the importance of staying objective in investigations.
The hosts also examine law enforcement’s handling of the case, including the premature release of critical details, biased narratives, and ethical concerns surrounding key investigators. They stress the impact of leaked information on public perception and how it may have compromised justice for JonBenét.
This episode encourages listener engagement, inviting the audience to reflect on the case and share their thoughts. Whether you’re a true crime enthusiast or new to the JonBenét Ramsey case, this discussion provides fresh insights into a case that has captivated the nation for decades.
True Crime, Family Loyalty, Small Town Mystery, Emotional Testimony, Family Bonds, Crime Investigation, Podcast Interview, Community Awareness, Unsolved Case, Foul Play, Family Grief, Crime Victims, Family Dynamics, Community Support, Seeking Justice, Crime Podcast
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Show Transcript
Please excuse AI generated errors
Wendy LyonsHost00:00
But my third thing was JonBenet was found this house, when you look at it on the documentary it was so much curves and nooks and crannies and this room was behind this room and the layout of the house was really bizarre.
David LyonsHost00:23
Three Things a Murder Police podcast production.
Wendy LyonsHost00:30
Warning the podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder and adult language. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast. I’m Wendy.
David LyonsHost01:03
And I’m David.
Wendy LyonsHost01:05
Well, david, you’ve come up with a new idea on us here. You know I was sitting there a couple of months ago watching the JonBenet Ramsey kind of documentary, recapping that cold case file, and you know that was a couple of months ago. A lot goes through this brain in the course of a couple of months and you sprang it on me that you wanted to talk about what three things stood out and I’m going to admit I had to go back and not rewatch, although I should have, but I really had to do some digging to give you three things.
David LyonsHost01:37
Well, what I want to try to do is we keep getting contacted by people on some of these cases that are big and anything from that one to the things in Bardstown, Kentucky, which is a very sensational case in and of itself and in their contemporary cases and they’re in the moment, and I’m a big believer that I don’t want to cover something that somebody else has covered so well already Jean Benet Ramsey threw the roof by some amazing documentaries and podcasts, and I use Bardstown because of those five murders there.
02:08
And the fact that Jessica Nolan and Shea McAllister, for example, produced that series called Bardstown that I don’t think anybody could hold accountable to. That said, I was thinking how could you and me start to engage more contemporary things? We’re a little late on the JonBenet Ramsey documentary, and that’s what we’re going to talk about, but how can we engage those things a little bit and maybe share our opinions with the audience and see what they think, too is to see if we’re vibing on the same thing. So what I came up with is from time to time, we’re going to take a contemporary issue and break it down with the goal of synthesizing something we’ve seen or watched. And for you and me individually, what are three things that stand out? And so that’s why I took on the JonBenet Ramsey thing. What we’re going to talk about is the 2024 documentary on Netflix called Code Case JonBenet Ramsey, which was an updated piece.
Wendy LyonsHost03:00
Yes.
David LyonsHost03:01
That really brought things forward and I know I learned a lot. I watched it with you and a couple of weeks ago I downloaded it and I was flying and I watched it again and made some notes.
Wendy LyonsHost03:11
That’s how you came up with your three things quicker than I did. You had a refresher, yeah.
David LyonsHost03:15
I did my homework that we were both supposed to do. I did homework, thank you, yeah, and over dinner 20 minutes ago.
Wendy LyonsHost03:23
But I did it.
David LyonsHost03:23
I did it over dinner 20 minutes ago, so, but I did it. I did it. So what I’d like to do is go through and each of us give our three things. And how do you want to do it? Do you want to give three things in a row, or do you want to do a one and me do a one or two?
Wendy LyonsHost03:34
And I mean I think we can back and forth, because I’m going to have an interjection on yours, or even a comment, good, good.
David LyonsHost03:39
Good and again, for the watchers and the listeners, let us know on anything you’re watching or listening, on what you think. My big thing is that I learned a lot from the documentary and it changed my mind about a few things, and we’re not going to get into guilt or innocence I’m so big about that right now but I know that there were three things that just struck me and they might surprise people. And there’s three things that struck, struck me and it might surprise people. And there’s three things that struck you. So you go first. What’s number one on your list of three?
Wendy LyonsHost04:11
I knew you were going to do this to me. Well, what stood out? I’ve got several things that really just both kind of grind my gears, if you will. I think the first that has always stood out since this came out was the odd amount of the ransom of 118,000. You know I’m very particular about things I don’t like. Odd things I don’t like. All I could think is why wasn’t it 120 or 115, but why 118? And that ransom within itself? You know there was a lot with that, and that’s one of my second things, but my first big thing was that amount at this saw or heard about it.
David LyonsHost05:06
That rang a bell too. If you remember the initial interviews with the fbi that went and everything they said the same thing.
Wendy LyonsHost05:09
It was just a skewy, weird number and it was in in part of my second thing ties in with that and I guess I should tell you what that is. So so it can fulfill the whole thing. It was an odd amount and that ransom note was really long, like unusually long, several, almost two or three pages I believe. But it was written on paper that belonged in the household. It had been started and redone and there was talks of the imprints on other pages and it just was very odd that that pad of paper belonged in the home and had right had things off on it that were well that the mom had written.
05:54
So you know, was it a coincidence that somebody broke in and wrote a ransom note while the whole family’s sleeping? And it’s this odd amount that, strangely enough, matched up up with the dad’s bonus amount for that year for his job, his Christmas bonus, I think it was. So it was the whole amount of the bonus. It was that it matched his bonus. I’m sorry, the amount of the ransom note.
06:20
So what I found odd was the two things combined the amount of the ransom and also the ransom itself was written on a pad of paper and with a pen that belonged in the home, and the note in a practice draft was found there. I didn’t know that.
David LyonsHost06:47
And that seemed so odd to me. There’s another benefit of the documentary, because I think most people knew that just watching and I’ll talk one of my things is going to be what we know and don’t know anyway, which is a little spooky. But there’s the value of a documentary again, where it’s been packed into three quick episodes that you can digest is that there you go as you find something else out that you weren’t aware of and that resonated with you enough to make that your number one and two. So you jumped ahead.
Wendy LyonsHost07:12
So there you go, very competitive, of course. Thank you, sir, thank you.
David LyonsHost07:18
But I think I share with that. Now, what’s that mean? What’s that mean If you looked at the documentary and you caught that just in a brief summary? What does that mean to you about the possibility of what happened?
Wendy LyonsHost07:32
Well, what it meant to me was I was just so surprised that this note had a practice draft and that it was written on a pad of paper that belonged in the home, and I think that struck me as odd, because who’s going to sit in the home and write a ransom note while the family’s there, like, aren’t you afraid they’re going to come down and see you, right? So then it made me think was it someone in the home? Wasn’t it someone in the home? Had they been, how did somebody get a hold of their pad of paper?
David LyonsHost08:05
I think that’s what’s confused everybody, and I think that’s one of the many things that, when you look at it, logically circles you back into the home, into the central nature of the home and everything. So I agree with you. I think that struck everybody and everybody’s wrestled with that for years. Is that bizarreness about the pad of the paper, the writing on it previously, the one that looks like a start with Mr and Mrs and then it goes on.
08:32
Good stuff. If that’s what you picked up. Well, let’s do this. Since you went one and two, go ahead and lay your number three.
Wendy LyonsHost08:38
All right. Number three I had learned this. I knew that JonBenet was found in the home, but maybe I just hadn’t followed it as closely as I did when this happened in 96. Maybe I just wasn’t a crime buff back then.
David LyonsHost08:54
Well, I would think too can I say this, and I think the listeners would agree too is that it’s like three decades old.
Wendy LyonsHost09:00
Right.
David LyonsHost09:02
And the persistence of information is spilling out slowly, and I’m going to talk in a minute about how it came out and how it was handled. No, that’s true. I think that, uh, I had assumptions from it the year it happened.
Wendy LyonsHost09:15
Oh, yeah, I definitely had assumptions. Um, but my third thing was john bonnet was found. This house, when you look at it on the documentary it was so much curves and nooks and crannies and this room was behind this room and the layout of the house was really bizarre.
David LyonsHost09:37
That was a powerful thing in the documentary that I noticed. Yes, the 3D animation yeah, it’s like there’s rooms hidden behind rooms behind rooms, almost like the Winchester house, where everyone kept building staircases. Yes, that’s what I thought.
Wendy LyonsHost09:53
So I was thinking I knew she was found in the home. I was just thinking a standard in the basement of a home kind of like we have. Okay, it’s in the basement, but then you find out there’s this upper level and it branches off in a middle level. Anyways, she was found down in this little room in the basement and what I didn’t know was apparently the staircase that went down to. It was kind of not a typical staircase and all I could think was who’s navigating down a staircase carrying a child who’s probably not conscious at that point. That’s just a lot of ins and outs and through this room and around that room, and I know she was only six and so she wasn’t big, but that’s still seemingly cumbersome to carry a weight of a child who’s not conscious. Or maybe she was already dead at that point, I don’t know.
10:41
But the other thing that struck me odd was apparently this room you know it was cracked open a little the window to allow for the Christmas lights because you know she was found on Christmas day. So this room, the train room they called it, I guess it was a little playroom for the children or for Burke the brother that room apparently had like a wooden latch kind of system on it and I didn’t know that until this documentary and I found it. And I know this is kind of diving into the crime part and I know you don’t really want to do that, but I found it odd that just because that was latched, nobody went into it and then when everyone was done searching, the dad just goes down and does the latch and there she is, yep, and I thought I know that sometimes law enforcement you know they’re human, like the rest of us, they tend to overlook things. It can happen. But if you see a room with this wooden latch system, why would you not raise it up?
David LyonsHost11:46
well, you know, and we’ve talked about it and I agree is and I think that for sure they that there was a ball dropped right there is that the house wasn’t searched thoroughly and maybe because of some assumptions they made. But I don’t think that’s really I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t think that’s defendable is that it wasn’t searched thoroughly.
Wendy LyonsHost12:07
No, it definitely wasn’t.
David LyonsHost12:09
For whatever reason, it’s not going into the next door. And I shared with you, and I’ll share with everybody too, that when I was working, if we had, for example, a call of a missing child, I think I told you on the phone that in a leadership or supervision issue, I was really big about talking to the supervisors that responded to the scene and I always said that wherever the kid went missing from needed two to three independent, close searches of the home goes through the house and they look is we expected another officer or another pair of officers different than them to go through with a completely different set of eyes?
12:53
and looking and digging and to assume, based on what the size of the kid is, where could the kid be tucked away. And three times would be the magic on that, because I remember so many times where, on that maybe that second search is, a kid would be found asleep behind a couch or a sofa, just curled up in a ball and asleep. And the importance of that was is that if we don’t know that, what follows next is a pretty damn big deal, and that’s when the fire department is called. Here locally, the fire department would be called and we go into and then we hand the scene over to them and we go into a big search mode, which we’re willing to do. But back to that again.
Wendy LyonsHost13:35
That’s why we hit everything two and three times yes and that probably should have been done there, yeah, and I understand there were several people in that home, but then at that point the whole scene’s been compromised because they it’s been, kind of.
David LyonsHost13:47
It’s been potentially yes, I know that that word is used, but potentially it has been yeah well, and, and I think when it was over, then john the dad goes back down.
Wendy LyonsHost14:00
All I could think is was he just searching again and thought, oh, this door’s still locked, let me go look. But it’s like he went down and went right to the room. Well, that’s, one of the inferences that people make. That is kind of disturbing. Yes and right where she was covered up, I just thought it was. But above all that what struck me odd is how are you getting this child down, this cookie cutter botched up home and nobody hears.
David LyonsHost14:26
I think that again, that was a powerful thing in that documentary, that when you watch the 3D animation of moving through that home, you feel the complexity.
Wendy LyonsHost14:38
Yeah, it was just almost very confusing to navigate through that. But yeah, that was. My third thing was how did no one hear her being carried down the stair?
David LyonsHost14:47
Yeah, there’s so much to all of this and again, I think just watching the documentary helps people. I was the same way for 30 years, bits and pieces here, bits and pieces there. Yeah, because it wasn’t.
Wendy LyonsHost14:59
I don’t think it was as pronounced back then as like crime and details are now. I think they dove into it a lot, or maybe I just wasn’t in tune to it back then. I would catch pieces of it on a tabloid.
David LyonsHost15:12
Yeah, and that’s where I want to go with. One of the problems with the case now is but should we have known that?
Wendy LyonsHost15:18
So that’s your three is the Is the amount on the note, I really have secretly a fourth. I’m extra, you know.
David LyonsHost15:24
Yeah.
Wendy LyonsHost15:26
It was the paintbrush Right, it was the paintbrush that it was. Seemingly three parts of it had been broken, and one of it was used as a grunt around her neck, and then the other one was still in the paint container, if you will a little toolbox or yeah, like a little craft box, that just that.
15:53
Who broke it? And we found two pieces. Third piece was never found and I didn’t even realize a paintbrush is what was used and not to infer her deceased mother. But it was the mom’s toolbox of paint brushes and that was you.
David LyonsHost16:12
I just found it odd that the paintbrush was broken in half and used because, you know, a lot of times, I think people that do these kind of things bring their own tools.
Wendy LyonsHost16:21
Yeah, I mean that’s. So why are you writing your note from their paper and why are you using a paintbrush and why did you break it into three pieces?
David LyonsHost16:29
Yep.
Wendy LyonsHost16:29
That was so odd to me.
David LyonsHost16:30
Yeah, there’s so many. That’s one of the countless things in this thing that’s odd.
Wendy LyonsHost16:35
Okay, let’s have yours.
David LyonsHost16:36
Yeah, because I’m going to stick with three.
Wendy LyonsHost16:37
All right.
David LyonsHost16:39
The first one that I noticed and again based on the documentary after 30 years like I said, I’d come up with some opinions before this one’s difficult but it’s not difficult is my real disappointment in some of the members of the police department in Boulder. And I refuse to use that white, that washing everybody thing, because it’s just not true it’s. I’ve had the opportunity to work with boulder people and and close to boulder, and it’s like anybody else. It’s made up of fantastic people. But back then, um, I I think some of the it was and it was just a couple people from. What the documentary revealed is how they dumped here we are, how they released information about the case and details about the case prematurely. We always talk and I counsel families now that we meet about why these things have to be held close to the chest, and here you had a couple people with that police department that were intentionally pumping a narrative out to a willing media, maybe complicit.
17:48
I think you had two things going on in the media. You had the tabloid thing that was going to eat up anything they could sensationalize. That’s not even really journalism. But you also had in the documentary they interviewed some decent journalists that were simply relying on sources, like they do, and they were being manipulated. And you look at the idea that those initial couple of investigators developed strong opinions and didn’t come off of them, and that’s. You’ve heard so many detectives that we sat down with. Rule one is you don’t do that. You’ve heard so many detectives who we sat down with. Rule one is you don’t do that. And what blew my mind is that I think over the years I had made loose opinions based on what happened on that BS. And to know that people in a police department created a kind of an ad campaign to prop their theory up and dumping it out on the media. It’s unethical. And the other thing too is that it can harm the hell out of a case.
Wendy LyonsHost18:45
Right.
David LyonsHost18:45
Because most of what was released we should know about sitting here today. So it was a sensationalism, it was an exploitation of a young lady that was there, and I’ll leave my number one with this that that’s what we always talk about, why you have to fight, to stay objective.
19:04
You have to stay in inquiry mode. You have to check your biases. You have to understand how do we say it? I think me and Schoonover say it over and over again that you have to make your theories fit your facts and not your facts fit your theories, and that was a thing. So the disinformation that was leaked maybe is a word for it super disappointing, unethical behavior and probably crashed on the case a little bit. That follows into my number two is specifically two of the investigators that they talk about in the documentary.
19:38
Just the ineptness, and I’m going to say that I’ll be the first one to call out. We all make mistakes, we can miss things looking through a house, but there are certain things that in law enforcement or investigations that you can walk right past and it’s inept and stupid. And one of the things I got was the female detective doing a major network interview and making remarks about how I looked into the eyes of a killer and I knew this and I knew that and I didn’t know if I was going to have to shoot him and stuff. I’m talking about John Ramsey and the whole thing is to me. I watched it and it was delusional because they had not made a case yet and here they are on a major network. Here she is on a major network, almost like she just left the field go and you’re nowhere near that.
20:27
The unfairness that is to the family, because everybody’s innocent until they’re proven guilty, and I’m going to keep coming back to this we don’t name people or talk about those details on the cases. We meet families all the time where there are strong inferences as to what happened, but it’s not going to happen here because that’s not how you do it. And that was super disappointing. It was what we would call cringeworthy to watch that interview. And then the lead detective that we find out now maybe this was over the last 30 years and again I missed it had no death investigation experience and he was pushed up on it and at that time Boulder was blessed as a community not to have a lot of that going on. What a good thing. Right for the community. But that also means that you don’t have seasoned people or experienced people. And even him again, the.
21:20
The ridiculousness of writing a book, yes, indicting john ramsey or the family, and he later got sued and there was an undisclosed amount of money. Good, that’s what that should be, but it’s like for me when I look at things like that. That’s the law enforcement behavior that scars the entire industry and we just don’t need any of it. I remember watching some of the video from his civil suit deposition and he kept hammering back to the idea that was my hypothesis. And I kept thinking, well, good, as Ray would say, okay, buckaroo. Ray would say buckaroo. But I’d say good, you’ve got a hypothesis, Nobody needs to know about it except the people we’re investigating. Good, you’ve got a hypothesis, nobody needs to know about it except the people we’re investigating. And the one thing about your hypothesis is you have to accept the fact and really try to prove your own hypothesis. Wrong is how you do this. But he marches it out there like that’s his defense.
22:10
Well, that’s what I thought Great, I know that me and the people I work with and the murder cops I meet when I travel is we’ve all thought things in a case and been wrong. Meet when I travel is we’ve all thought things in a case and been wrong. The difference is we didn’t act on it because we waited to find out and we sure didn’t go out in the public eye and talk about that with anybody and write a book. Yeah, and write a book like celebrating a win they never had. So that’s related to number one, but it just bothered me and it’s that thing that brings justifiable criticism to the industry right.
22:42
Number three kind of ties those together. A little bit about where I think my heart’s broke. A little bit about the case Over the years between the intentional releases, then the battle between the DA and the police department Right, the fact they brought the retired detective in that he’s since passed that became an advocate, not for the Ramseys but he was really cool because he was an advocate for the truth. Because of these pieces of the case coming out that shouldn’t ever come out, that case for that little girl is going to remain extremely difficult to deal with.
23:19
And even if they do make an arrest one day, the battle for the prosecutors in court is going to be incredible. And that’s because all those details are out there and they tank, they just they taint everything and if I was a defense attorney I’m going to rack those up and I’m going to go after it and it’s been earned. The information we all know, the information we saw, most of that we really, in all candor, we shouldn’t know. We actually shouldn’t have known as much as we know about the note. We shouldn’t know about the paintbrush. We shouldn’t know about the pineapple bowl no-transcript.
Wendy LyonsHost24:13
You know, in cases in general, when you give out all those details, if something were to happen and they find the killer, or in the case of the John Mark Carr, I think his name was.
David LyonsHost24:24
That’s it. He was using some of that to his benefit because and he didn’t even kill her, but he- had gathered all this and made it fit that he had murdered her.
24:33
The conventional false confessor yes, you know, I’ve me and the people I worked with we watched that more than once is that somebody would come in and people would argue why in the world would you do that? There’s a ton of reasons you would do that, but that’s where I was going to finish with is the proof in the pudding here is John Mark Carr, because of him simply catching the news and the things coming out over like a four-year email and phone conversation with a smart professor in Colorado. I’m watching the interview. The guy’s as straight as an arrow to me and he’s intelligent. But it armed John Mark Carr with enough to make this very believable. And the thing is again, it takes everybody for for that ride.
Wendy LyonsHost25:20
It takes the family for that right and in the end it’s on him well and also you know, like, like, we’ve watched and read it many times before and I’m sure you experienced. If you release details and some of those you may want to hold for the real killer, because he may say something about a paintbrush and that you don’t want to hold it.
David LyonsHost25:43
You have to hold it and yes, and again they told everything that, that exactly. And I know that frustrates people because we all want to know no, no. But the goal here is I got to keep saying it the truth and the justice from the truth, and everybody that comes from the truth and everybody that comes into the system, that’s what they’re looking for. So the false confession of that guy and the exploitation of that again, that little girl’s death, and that’s what that is. It’s a sick exploitation of that.
26:10
It is another reason why investigators don’t share, and they don’t share publicly and this is awful sometimes to families, but they don’t share to the don’t share publicly and this is awful sometimes to families, but they don’t share to the families all the time. And again, I saw false confessions. I saw somebody in the business get fired almost right in front of me one time. I’m not going to go into detail on that, because they shared information that made it back to a victim’s family. That was actually pretty disgusting. That didn’t need to be known at the time. And, and back to your point, it was such intimate detail. They’re really close to the.
26:42
I’m just going to use the, the, the, the triangulation mechanism that was used. It was like that. That. That when that went out, is the immediately shock that we had, was this could really be a problem just because it went airborne. So again, that’s, that’s my three, I think it for for me again, um, when I’m not, I’m recommending the documentary I think, yeah, it was a good, well-made documentary, I got the impression that the producers, uh and I may be wrong on this we’re trying to right somes.
27:16
It was almost like maybe a media mea culpa in a good way, of saying hey, let’s look back at this thing and see where the problems were. And they identified that. Good For me. It helped me because, again, I’m like you, I have a hard time leaving the central location of that house for where the answer might be, but that’s kind of where it’s at. But at the same time it was a good reminder to stay objective, that there are some alternative theories out there.
27:47
They looked at a handful of other people and DNA eliminated them, and that’s the last thing I’ll leave. I’ll throw kind of a halfway number four and we’ll close on this because I think people are thinking about it. When I said the word DNA, john Ramsey has asked for testing of the samples they have left and I guess the trick bag on that is yes, it would be great to have them tested with modern methods, but you’d have to really look at how big your sample is and what the risk is. And in this day and age where DNA in 30 years has gone at a light speed record of change, you have to think what will it be in five years, and so I guess the question now is if you have a limited sample, do?
Wendy LyonsHost28:30
we roll. Yeah, do you compromise it?
David LyonsHost28:31
Yeah, well, you destroy it once you’re done. So do you make an attempt now? Or are we truly in the long game and do you see science on the wings? That would take it even further, because I really believe that a good DNA thing would go into genetics and familial DNA and that would start to whittle things down quickly. But if the DNA is truly related to a perpetrator, that’s a whole other ball of wax that comes up with. So well, good deal, I think. Hopefully, people listening and watching. Maybe we stirred your imagination and again, you can comment on YouTube or any of our social media things and Facebook, instagram, anywhere you find us, and let us know what you think. But if you like it, we may do this. I think we need to stay on top of some contemporary things like this and generate some more conversation about the case.
Wendy LyonsHost29:27
I agree.
David LyonsHost29:28
Well, I’ll say good evening. But we are married and live together. So we’ll say that several more times tonight and goodbye to our audience.
Wendy LyonsHost29:36
Thanks, as always, always, for watching Murder Police Podcast.
David LyonsHost29:41
The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims, so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at MurderPolicePodcastcom, where you will find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters and a link to the official Murder Police Podcast merch store where you can purchase a huge variety of Murder Police Podcast swag. We are also on Facebook, instagram and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us five stars and a written review. On Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your podcasts, make sure you set your player to automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop, and please tell your friends Lock it down.
30:41
Judy.
00:00 / 30:43