I usually avoid documentaries about unsolved crimes. They're always the same dead-end corridors: one suspect, then another, discarded as quickly as they enter the scene. But 'Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey' caught me by surprise - perhaps because it starts poorly but ends up being interesting. JonBenét was just six years old when she was found dead in the basement of her own home. From minute one, the investigation pointed the finger at the parents, John and Patsy, and the case became less about a search for justice and more of a media spectacle.
At first, I had the impression that the documentary opens as if it had bought the police's version hook, line, and sinker: the certainty that the Ramseys were guilty, sold as truth in every gesture, every silence, every lawyer hired. The mere presence of defense became proof; grief was interpreted as acting. Even when it's mentioned that the DNA found didn't match the family, the narrative insists on circling the same ring, as if only one possibility existed. There was a moment when I feared I was watching a film that had chosen its culprits before even looking at the evidence.
But gradually, the tone changes, and what emerges is far more interesting: a portrait of the toxic relationship between the police and the media. There was pressure for a "quick culprit," the mantra that all abuse crimes happen within the home, and the selective leaks that turned every hypothesis into a spectacle. The perversion reached the point where a TV show staged a trial, complete with a psychologist making wildly inappropriate and speculative insinuations about a six-year-old child to justify an abuse accusation against the parents. It is this kind of collusion, displayed without shame, that not only stalled the investigation but almost destroyed a family. Without lawyers, John and Patsy could have traded their home's basement for a jail cell.
By the time the tide of public opinion finally turns, it's already too late. The son, still a child, was accused on national television of being the perpetrator; Patsy, battling cancer, became the target of books describing her as a murderer. All this while they were trying to grieve their daughter - a grief constantly hijacked by the need to defend themselves. The documentary then slips into the part that interests me the least: the parade of discarded suspects. But at least it introduces us to figures worth remembering, like Lou Smit, the investigator who defended the theory of an intruder. Amid so many versions and vanities, he seems like the only one willing to look at the evidence instead of the cameras.
In the end, the mystery remains unsolved, as the title promises. But perhaps that's precisely the point: Who Killed JonBenét doesn't work because of the answer it doesn't provide, but because of the question it raises - to what extent are the police and media capable of manufacturing a truth? The doc isn't perfect, but it shines when it shows that, in certain cases, justice fails not for lack of evidence, but due to an excess of narratives. The crime may have remained without a culprit, but the Ramseys' reputation was condemned in the court of public opinion. And in that invisible tribunal, there is no appeal.
