Do you remember scary stories from your childhood that you haven't been able to shake off? I can think of just one—one that's haunted me for the past 20 years. It's the real-life story of JonBenét Ramsey, the six-year-old beauty pageant queen who was discovered murdered in her own home on Christmas morning of 1996. As far as true crime or media spectacles go, JonBenét's is the one I've followed most vigorously, the one that occupies the biggest residency in my mind. Now with the release of Kitty Green's new Netflix documentary Casting JonBenét, I find myself thinking about—and remembering what I thought about—the incident again.The American public was still grappling with the O.J. Simpson case from two years before, but I can only vaguely remember that one—I was too young to comprehend the politics involved or even have reference points for the celebrity status that made O.J.'s trial such a stranger-than-fiction tale. But the JonBenét Ramsey case I remember so vividly because she was my age—both of us born in 1990—and that fact alone shook me to my core, even though I didn't yet know or understand all that had happened.On Christmas morning, JonBenét's mother called 911 to report her daughter missing and a ransom note left behind asking for $118,000—it was two and a half pages long, which is unprecedented in length, and written at the scene, which is unprecedented in its lack of premeditation. After the cops arrived, it was JonBenét's father, John Ramsey, who found her body in the basement of her home hours later. She was hit over the head with a blunt object, which fractured her skull, then strangled to death an hour or two later. The police also found evidence of vaginal trauma and DNA left on her underwear. I knew only the very surface level of those facts, yet it truly dawned on me that I wasn't safe from such a horrifying thing happening to me. This could have been me, or any of my friends. And that thought would remain embedded in my mind when just six months later, my family moved to the American suburbs.Read more: The Importance of Recognizing the Murder of Women as a Hate CrimeI'll never forget JonBenét's face. It was everywhere—or perhaps I was actively seeking it. She was on TV and on magazine covers. I remember looking at her face, in all her blonde-and-blue-eyed glory, and finding it perfect and peculiar, but most of all haunting because it was a child's face that would never age, and also a face concealing its youth beneath six feet of makeup. I remember thinking she was such a beautiful specimen, and I even wished I was her—doll-like and adored—before mentally chastising myself for how fucked up that was.Finish reading this piece on Broadly.
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