JonBenet Investigation Lives Online
Aug. 29, 2006 — -- The arrest of John Mark Karr as a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder launched a frenzy of renewed public and media focus on the 10-year-old unsolved murder. But there is one community that never lost its zeal for the saga, and its members make their home online.
A North Carolina housewife, a member of that online community who's been most enthralled with the case, has made the Ramsey investigation her passion for the past 10 years. She has asked that we use only her Internet screen name, "Jameson."
"I've been to the house. I've climbed through the window they say the killer came through. I've met the investigators," Jameson said. "I just don't think there's anyone out there that knows more about this case than I do, other than the investigators."
Jameson created a Web site and an online forum, www.jameson245.com, to discuss the JonBenet Ramsey murder within weeks of the killing. She built an extensive timeline that she had to delete from her Web site because she says it became too expensive to maintain.
At one point, she was even fingered as the killer by a college professor investigating the case because she had so much detailed information.
Jameson said it is hard to explain why she is so enraptured by the young beauty queen's murder.
"The minute I saw her face on TV, I knew this was a case I wasn't going to forget about," Jameson said. "Then I went online and saw the Ramsey lynch mob forming. And then when you're accused of committing the crime yourself, that keeps you interested."
Jameson says she was also attacked online by other forum members because she was a staunch defender of John and Patsy Ramsey, who some people accused of killing their daughter.
To this day she says she is in regular contact with investigators who actually call her to verify bits of information in the case, ask her about any leads. But how helpful are these online communities in helping to solve a crime?
Many in the law enforcement world are far from supportive.
Arnett Gaston, a criminologist and clinical psychologist at the University of Maryland, said the forums don't typically reach a wide audience, which doesn't usually lead to much of a problem in his opinion. But if they catch the attention of a wider audience, two things can happen, Gaston said.
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