Nearly 30 years after 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was found murdered in her family’s basement, the case still has no resolution — and Melissa McCarthy, who plays Patsy Ramsey in Netflix’s upcoming limited series, has made up her own mind about who wasn’t to blame. After stepping into the role, McCarthy says her gut tells her JonBenét’s family wasn’t responsible for the child’s 1996 death.
“My heart says no one in the family could have done that,” McCarthy, 56, told Variety. “I don’t have the ability, or probably the right, to say that, but that’s what my gut says. Which I probably am not supposed to say.”
McCarthy said she needed to settle on a belief while making “The Murder of JonBenét Ramsey,” which premieres Dec. 10. “I had to pick,” she said. “I had to have that for myself, if nothing else.”
Playing Patsy left McCarthy with a deep attachment to the woman at the center of the case. “This might sound nuts: I’m very fond of Patsy. I have so much compassion for them, what they went through, and go through currently,” she said. “That’s a bizarre thing to have a child’s trauma be like Wimbledon. It was a turning point, being able to watch something like that as sport.”
JonBenét was reported missing after a ransom note was found in her family’s Boulder, Colorado, home on Dec. 26, 1996. She was later found dead in the basement, and her death was ruled a homicide.
Her parents, Patsy and John Ramsey, faced intense scrutiny but were never charged in connection with their daughter’s death. In 2008, then-Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy told John that DNA evidence meant authorities didn’t consider his immediate family suspects. Lacy’s successor, Stan Garnett, said in 2016 that the evidence and the case’s complexity didn’t warrant exoneration.
The series presents the theories investigators considered while focusing on the people caught up in the case. “Showing the chaos of it is something that we’ve not seen,” McCarthy said. “It’s a new telling of it, because you’re like, ‘My God, is this really what was happening?’”
Clive Owen plays John Ramsey, while Emily Mitchell plays JonBenét and Angus Caldwell plays her brother, Burke. McCarthy said she wrote several letters to John and Burke before and during production but hasn’t sent them. She wanted to tell them, “I’m doing my best by her. I’m really trying to show who I felt she was.”
