SHOCKING link between JonBenet Ramsey murder and another ‘botched’ case as cop suspended for shoddy probes
BOULDER, COLORADO: A shocking analogy is revealed between JonBenet Ramsey's case and a lousy probe into an attack on another young girl that happened just months after the child beauty queen's infamous unsolved murder. Two of the lead investigators in both cases have been accused of a botched investigation, in which one of the officers is reportedly placed on a Performance Improvement Plan after an internal probe revealed that a number of unspecified cases had not been properly investigated between 2019 and 2022.
JonBenet Ramsey was just six-years-old when she was discovered beaten and strangled to death in the basement of her parent's ritzy Boulder, Colorado mansion on December 26, 1996. Just over nine months later, a 12-year-old girl who attended the same dance school as the child beauty queen was attacked by a man in the middle of the night on September 14, 1997. The girl, whose name is not revealed, was sexually assaulted by her perpetrator clad in all black for several terrorizing minutes.
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However, the sickening attack was interrupted by the girl's mom who burst into the room wielding a can of mace after she overheard whispers and other strange noises coming from her daughter's room, reported The Sun. The perpetrator pushed the girl's mom and fled on foot via a second-floor window. Both the suspects in the alarming case were never caught. The detectives in the cases were identified as Linda Arndt and Thomas Trujillo. Earlier this week, Trujillo, the head of BPD's Investigations Unit, was reassigned to night patrol and received a three-day suspension without pay.
The 36-year-old veteran of the force was placed on a Performance Improvement Plan. Four other officers in BPD's investigations division were also cited for misconduct and all five officers were recommended to be terminated. At the time of JonBenet's murder, Trujillo was the officer responsible for interviewing her parents John and Pasty Ramsey, when they finally agreed to interview with police in April 1997. And Arndt was removed from the Ramsey case by then-Police Chief Tom Koby in May 1997 after widespread criticism and ridicule of the way she handled the investigation and failed to properly secure the crime scene. After taking an extended period of medical leave, citing "physical exhaustion and strain," Arndt was then assigned to the 12-year-old girl's case on September 17, three days after the attack.
During the girl's probe, her parents were the first to suggest that they believed the attack was linked to JonBenet's case. However, Ardnt profusely refused to take their insights on their daughter's case. In a 1999 interview with 'Good Morning America', shortly after she resigned from Boulder PD, Arndt claimed she feared John Ramsey was going to kill her after JonBenet's body was found. Lin Wood, Ramsey's lawyer said Ardnt was "one of the best examples of what is wrong with the Boulder Police Department's investigation of the JonBenet Ramsey case," reported CNN. "Linda Arndt has no homicide investigation experience, and that's one of the major problems with this police investigation. It's been handled by inexperienced, biased investigators, who, I believe, are clearly incapable of solving the crime."
The girl's father further revealed the department was "dismissive" of any potential parallels and hostile towards any suggestions made by them. He claimed authorities were so fixated on John and Patsy Ramsey being JonBenet's killers at the time. "They were completely uninterested," he charged. "They didn't care about my daughter's case and they didn't even really care about the Ramsey case. I'd contact them regularly, asking if they'd looked into this or that and they'd just lie to me," reported The Sun. "We asked to see some mugshots of sex offenders in the area to see if [girl] or my wife recognized anyone but we were told that wouldn't be any good."
"We asked them to send someone over to make a composite sketch of the suspect using my wife's eyewitness description but they refused. The Denver Police Department even offered to help them out with the case but they said they had it covered and they knew what they were doing. [And] they wouldn't hear anything about this being linked to JonBenet," he continued. The girl's dad believes that both of the girls may have been stalked and targeted by their attacker or attackers from the dance studio both children attended. He said the dance studio was an open place where anybody could come and go, stating "If you were someone who wanted to sit and watch young girls dance, that would've been a good place to do it."
After being dismayed by the department the girl's dad hired a private investigator Pete Peterson. During Peterson's probe, he discovered a collection of Camel Blue cigarette butts outside of the family's home. The stubbings of the same cigarettes were discovered in an alleyway next to the Ramsey home during her murder. Peterson and the girl's father tried to get Boulder PD to test the cigarette butts for DNA but they reportedly refused. Even after 25 years of unsolved cases, the girl's dad believes if the BPD had taken his daughter's case seriously they could have solved the heinous murder of JonBenet too.