The murder of JonBenet Ramsey in 1996 drew international attention, and part of that intense media focus was on the Ramsey’s Northern Michigan getaway in Charlevoix.
Mary Beth Kur and Dennis Halverson were both assisting the Boulder, CO police in the investigation that also found its way to Charlevoix.
“Back then, you know, most of the three major networks were ABC, NBC, CBS. I was on all three of those news channels getting interviewed just about what I did.They were just they wanted a morsel of anything.I came home one day and the National Enquirer reporter was up at on my porch,” said Kur.
They were they were in local restaurants. They were approaching people trying to pay for information or story.
Halverson, who was police chief at the time, says his officers did what they could to give the Ramsey’s some privacy in the face of an international media firestorm.
“They were very aggressive, came into town and kind of looked over the top of the police department, pretty much came in thinking, you know, we’re up north. We can pretty much, you know, park and act and hide in bushes wherever we want. And they were doing all those things. Some of them, again, very aggressive,” said Halverson.
The media descended on Charlevoix again when John Mark Karr confessed to killing JonBenet.
It was later determined he was lying.
“Every time they issued a search warrant, or a few other times when significant rumors would come up nationally, it would spike that media reaction,” said Halverson.
That media reaction spiked again late in 20-24 as John Ramsey made another push to solve his daughter’s murder. While technology exists that could help investigators, both Kur and Halverson believe solving the murder of JonBenet remains a long shot.
“I’m not optimistic. You know, in any investigation, time is the enemy. And we’re talking decades now. I’m not optimistic for a successful prosecution here,” said Halverson.
“Any case can be solved. And with the technology that we have available that improves literally by the day with DNA, you see these cold cases all the time get solved there. There are problems, though, with the way that that scene was processed. I mean, I was a prosecutor for a long time and now I’ve been a defense attorney for a long time. And they should have cordoned that house off. They should have made everybody leave. They should have done the search themselves, in my opinion,” said Kur.
Still, amid all the speculation, media attention and theories, remains the unsolved murder of a six year old girl.
“On Christmas Day, I mean, six years old. And then, you know what kind of condition her body was found in. It’s just horrific. And as a parent, it was very scary and horrible and sad to see a child that was actually part of our community here be killed like that in her own house on Christmas Day. It was just horrific,” said Kur.
“Six months earlier, I was giving the victim an award for the way she had it decorated her bike. I don’t know if I’ve ever met a homicide, eventual homicide victim before. So, you know, that kind of that kind of struck me, you know, more than once,” said Halverson.