The cute blond kid with the frilly name found brutally murdered in her family’s wealthy Colorado suburb on Dec. 26, 1996, is getting one more primetime special in the 20th year since her death. On Friday, NBC’s “Dateline” will air a two-hour report at 9 p.m. ET on the still-unsolved case titled “Who Killed JonBenét?”
This brings the total number of upcoming specials on the 6-year-old beauty pageant queen’s sensational death to five, and the number of titles to four. NBC’s special shares a name with a Lifetime TV movie reportedly in the works.
The “Dateline” episode will offer the first TV interviews with three people close to the case ― the 911 operator who took an emergency call from JonBenét’s mother and two Colorado police detectives ― along with “crucial case documents that have never before been made public,” according to the trailer above.
Investigators determined that JonBenét had been hit on the head and strangled before her father found his daughter’s body in the basement of the family home. Media suspicion quickly turned to both her parents, John Bennett Ramsey and Patsy Ramsey, along with her then-9-year-old brother, Burke. At the time, the district attorney for Boulder, Colorado, did not issue any charges. In 2009, the case was reopened, but it remains unsolved.
In the viewing public’s ongoing love affair with true crime, the JonBenét Ramsey case is a particularly infatuating one. This week’s “Dateline” special joins a handful of other projects that include:
• “JonBenét: An American Murder Mystery,” Investigation Discovery’s three-night special premiering on Sept. 12.
• “The Case Of: JonBenét Ramsey,” CBS’s six-hour docuseries that will include original interviews, airing between Sept. 18 and Sept. 25.
• “Who Killed JonBenét?” an upcoming Lifetime TV movie that will include theories on the young girl’s murder.
• “Casting JonBenét,” a feature film now in production that is said to be part documentary, part narrative.
“Dateline NBC: Who Killed JonBenét?” will air Friday, Sept. 9, at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.
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