Investigation Continues in JonBenet Ramsey Case 20 Years Later

A private investigator involved in the probe of the 1996 murder of of JonBenet Ramsey said that there remains a suspect who has yet to be fully investigated. 

Ollie Gray, who had been one of the original investigators on the case, said on the Today show that a man who had committed suicide shortly after the murder may have been involved. 

Gray says he’s still doing work on the case to this day, without pay. 

“There are probably three or four people who should have been investigated earlier and still need to be investigated,” Gray said.

“The latest development in this particular case as far as I’m concerned is Michael Helgoth. He was basically a hellraiser.”

The murder of Ramsey, in December of 1996, remains unsolved to this day. 

A secret 1999 grand jury indictment would have charged Patsy and John Ramsey, the parents of JonBenet, with child abuse leading to murder, grand jury members told a Boulder Daily Camera Report. Here the Patsy and John give a press conference on May 24, 2000, after polygraph examinations concluded that the couple was not "attempting deception" when they denied killing their 6-year-old daughter. (AP Photo/Ric Feld)

Helgoth worked at an auto salvage yard and died two days after a local attorney announced in January of 1997 that the list of suspects had been narrowed down. 

For years, the main suspects were Ramsey’s parents, but that was ruled out by DNA evidence. A confession by John Mark Karr in 2006 likewise proved to be a false trail. 

The JonBenet Ramsey indictment that was voted on in secret by a grand jury in 1999 but never prosecuted is being sought by a Boulder Daily Camera reporter and a reporting rights group. In this 1999 file photo, a Boulder Police detective walks to the home of John and Patricia Ramsey in Boulder, Colo., on Friday, Jan. 3, 1997, as investigators sifted through evidence in the home in which the couple's 6-year-old daughter was found murdered on Dec. 26, 1996. The case has never been solved. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Gray says that he believes Helgoth had recorded a confession before his death. 

“I don’t think Mike did all this by himself. I think there was more than one or two people involved,” Gray said.

The Boulder Police Department said that two investigators are still assigned to the case, and that they receive information on a regular basis.