The Torture of Patsy Ramsey

It’s been so long, and gone thru so many bizarre turns, that the JonBenet Ramsey case seems to have lost all reality and become pure entertainment, like a history-channel crime, where no one gets hurt anymore. But I think about the late Patsy Ramsey, and what she suffered. To lose your child in a brutal way, then to be accused of the crime, to be shadowed with questions for 10 years, to be struck down with ovarian cancer, and to die before the arrest, not to even have the opportunity for this possible public vindication, which is for the rest of us a cheap television movie—what a cruel, pitiable life. And this is a person who expressed forgiving statements near the end of her life! I admire her. I know there are people who believe that Karr’s arrest is another false lead in the case, and who won’t forget the weird ways that JonBenet’s parents made her act. Yes it was weird to turn a kid into a beauty queen, and so what, a lot of us are weird; and it all fades to nothing next to that mother’s suffering.