• Six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey's unsolved 1996 murder is the subject of a new Netflix docuseries.
• Director Joe Berlinger explained why he thinks the public and the media got the case all wrong.
• Berlinger told BI that he wants the project to push the Boulder police department to reinvestigate.

The widespread cultural fascination with true crime isn't a mystery to Joe Berlinger, the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning documentarian behind Netflix's new docuseries "Cold Case: Who killed JonBenét Ramsey."

"People like to be armchair detectives and solve crimes," he told Business Insider. "People like to stare into the abyss of evil to make them feel better about their own lives."

People also like a good story. And the unsolved murder of a 6-year-old pageant queen has all the trappings of one.

The daughter of John and Patsy Ramsey, a wealthy couple in Boulder, Colorado, was found dead the day after Christmas in 1996, her skull fractured and a garrote used to strangle her still embedded in her neck. Despite several false confessions over the years, no one was ever charged in her death.

Berlinger was the father of a 2-year-old daughter himself when he first heard about the case. Back then, he "believed in all that media hype" that suggested a member of JonBenét's own family (John, Patsy, or her then 9-year-old brother Burke) had killed her and staged the scene to look like a kidnapping.

Though these theories still persist over 15 years after a previous Boulder DA administration formally cleared the Ramseys of suspicion, Berlinger now says he knows better — and he wants his Netflix series to help push the Boulder PD to reinvestigate the case.

JonBenét Ramsey's unsolved murder has transfixed Americans for almost three decades

The JonBenét case has been covered ad nauseam in made-for-TV movies, podcasts, and documentaries in the almost three decades since her death incited a media frenzy in 1996. (Paramount+ even has an upcoming scripted series about it in the works, starring Melissa McCarthy and Clive Owen as Patsy and John.)

But once Berlinger did a deep dive into the case, he knew his documentary would have something different to say.

"People have gotten it so wrong," Berlinger said. "I can't think of another family that's been so brutalized so unfairly by the media."

At the time, coverage of the initial investigation focused heavily on the Ramsey family as prime suspects. The police stated that John and Patsy Ramsey were under "an umbrella of suspicion," and Thomas G. Koby, the Boulder Police Chief at the time, initially told the Boulder community that his team believed it was "a one-time occurrence" and not the work of a serial killer — which many interpreted to mean the police thought the parents did it.

Steve Thomas, another prominent investigator, later wrote (and eventually settled a lawsuit over) a book theorizing that Patsy Ramsey had flown into a rage and killed JonBenét after a bed-wetting incident. Before that, he'd accused Patsy of being the murderer to her face during a 2000 "Larry King Live" interview.

Members of the media also contributed to the widely held view that the Ramseys were guilty. Some, like journalist Charlie Brennan, who participated in the Netflix docuseries, reported on information from investigative sources that painted the family in an unfavorable or suspicious light. Some of those stories ended up being wholly false, like one debunked report that John Ramsey flew a private jet to his daughter's funeral in Atlanta.

Berlinger said he has "a lot of respect" for Brennan agreeing to participate in the docuseries, and noted that other journalists who were more firmly in the "Ramseys Did It" camp opted not to speak to him. So, too, did the case's original investigators. "We had a long talk with Steve Thomas and he ultimately decided it wasn't in his interest," Berlinger told BI.

The docuseries focuses more on debunking than revealing to make the case that the family wasn't involved in JonBenét's death.

It recounts how the initial investigation into the case was faulty — the responding Boulder police officers didn't lock down the scene, potential evidence was compromised, certain items were never DNA tested — something the current Boulder police chief acknowledges.

It also prominently features the perspective of Lou Smit, a famous Colorado police detective called out of retirement to work on the case, who resigned after concluding that an intruder killed JonBenét and the investigation had wrongly focused on the Ramseys.

Berlinger hopes his documentary can help police finally solve the JonBenét case

Berlinger has experience working on stories about wrongful convictions, and even contributing to some of those being overturned (like the West Memphis Three, a trio of teenagers convicted of child murders depicted in his "Paradise Lost" films).

The Ramseys were never technically convicted of anything. (It was revealed in 2013 that a grand jury had voted to indict John and Patsy on counts of child abuse, but the then-DA refused to sign the documents.) But the documentarian is still astounded at how virulently people insist they're guilty.

"When I dare to look at Reddit message boards to see what people are thinking, it just boggles my mind," he told BI.

Berlinger is adamant that the family can still be vindicated, and that the real perpetrator can be identified through DNA analysis.

"A year ago, recommendations were made by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation on what steps to take and they haven't taken those steps as far as we know," Berlinger told BI. "Maybe they're doing it but they're being awfully mum, and they're not very communicative with the Ramsey family either."

Berlinger said the goal of his documentary is to raise questions so that professionals can investigate. For instance, he said that his choice in the documentary to highlight all of the pedophiles who were at one point suspected of killing JonBenét was meant to prompt questions about whether the killer could have been one of them.

"There is a large universe, sadly, of sick people who do this kind of thing," he said. "And it makes the Ramsey story even more implausible."

The docuseries also makes a point to question the validity of the existing DNA evidence and push the Boulder PD to test previously untested items found at the crime scene. With new DNA testing, the doc suggests, there's a chance the perpetrator could finally be identified, either through the existing criminal database or by finding a close family match thanks to the recent boom in commercialized genealogical testing.

This "start from scratch" DNA testing approach would mean that every suspect previously ruled out based on that potentially faulty original DNA evidence would need to be reconsidered. That, more than anything, feels to the director like proof of John Ramsey's innocence: Why would he push for new testing, knowing that it could expose him if he were the culprit?

"John Ramsey, who's 80, is still pounding the table for an answer and wants to move this case forward, and wants, before he dies, to solve the crime. That is not the action of a guilty person," Berlinger said. "John would be the first to tell you that everyone, including the Ramseys, needs to be put back on the table when new DNA testing has been executed."

"There are concrete things that can be done. There's an opportunity to right a wrong here and to solve this crime through DNA technology," he added.

Soon after the release of Berlinger's docuseries in November, the Boulder PD released its annual update about their investigation slightly earlier than usual, citing the "increased attention" as the reason for the early drop.

"The killing of JonBenét was an unspeakable crime and this tragedy has never left our hearts," Boulder police chief Steve Redfearn said. "We are committed to following up on every lead and we are continuing to work with DNA experts and our law enforcement partners around the country until this tragic case is solved. This investigation will always be a priority for the Boulder Police Department."

The statement continued, "The assertion that there is viable evidence and leads we are not pursuing — to include DNA testing — is completely false."

In response, Berlinger and the filmmaking team told The Hollywood Reporter that nothing would make them happier than to learn the Boulder PD was pursuing all the recommendations made by the Cold Case review team, and urged the investigators to share their progress with the Ramsey family.

"We wish the BPD great success in finding the killer of JonBenét Ramsey and urge them to collaborate with all outside entities, including private forensic labs, who have offered to assist them in solving this horrific crime," Berlinger and his team's statement reads.

"Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey" is now streaming on Netflix.