JonBenét Ramsey's Father on "Confessed Killer" Gary Oliva's Release From Prison

When John Ramsey first became aware of Gary Oliva and his connection to his daughter's infamous murder case, he was convinced that Oliva — a convicted pedophile and longtime person of interest who allegedly confessed to killing JonBenét — was involved somehow.

"This must be the killer," John recalls telling then-Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter.

"He was brought to our attention early on," John adds, speaking to Westword this month after photographs emerged showing Oliva, who was released from Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility in Ordway in late January, enjoying his freedom in Denver.

According to John, Hunter "asked that we have the private investigators we hired look into Oliva because he felt the police were so fixated on me that they wouldn't follow up on Oliva."

For years after JonBenét's 1996 murder, when the six-year-old pageant queen was bludgeoned and strangled to death inside her family's home in Boulder, John and his late wife, Patsy Ramsey, along with their son Burke, were scrutinized and investigated over their possible involvement.

The family was all home that night and morning — December 26, 1996 — when JonBenét is believed to have been killed inside the residence, which is located in the 700 block of 15th Street. Her body was found in the basement by John; a handwritten ransom note was found on the main staircase by Patsy.

Oliva, who served eight years of a ten-year sentence for child pornography, has been described as a "homeless drifter" and pedophile who frequented Boulder in the 1990s and had known ties to the area where the Ramseys lived. He has made headlines for years as a person of interest in the JonBenét case after his connection was first reported on the popular CBS show 48 Hours Investigates in 2002.

Lou Smit, detective for the Boulder Police Department at the time, allegedly spotted Oliva at a candlelight vigil outside the Ramsey home on the first anniversary of JonBenét's murder inside the residence in December 1996. "Many times, criminals do return to the scene," Smit told CBS. "And that was on the anniversary. That puts him right there at the Ramsey house a year later."

Gary Oliva's Backstory

In 2002, Oliva was described by investigators as a 38-year-old sex offender and paranoid schizophrenic from Oregon who visited Boulder frequently, according to CBS. He had been convicted of assaulting a seven-year-old girl in Oregon and spent some time in prison there for that crime as well as attempted murder in a different case, with CBS reporting that he tried to strangle his mother with a telephone cord in 1991.

Oliva was described as a fugitive and "homeless drifter" back in December 1996 when JonBenét was murdered, and as possibly having been "less than a block away from the Ramseys' home," according to CBS.

Private investigators John Sanegustin and Ollie Gray reported that Oliva would allegedly stay and live at church-owned buildings located just ten houses away from the Ramsey residence. Smit told CBS that Oliva called an old high school classmate and friend after JonBenét's murder and said he had "done something horrible" and was unable to see him and his classmate's children again.

"He was sobbing on the phone," Michael Vail recalled in an interview for 48 Hours Investigates. "He was sobbing like you've never heard a grown man sob or cry before in your life. And I knew it was serious. I knew this was very serious."

According to Vail, Oliva said he was in Boulder at the time of the murder. The two of them had corresponded for years after graduating high school together, with Oliva allegedly sending Vail creepy audiotapes that revolved around an obsession with hurting and sexually assaulting young girls.

"It would turn my stomach," Vail told CBS in 2002.

Other red flags that stood out to Vail were Oliva's alleged interests in knots and art supplies; a broken paintbrush and knotted rope were used as a garrote to strangle JonBenét.

In December 2000, Oliva was arrested on the University of Colorado campus after he was caught entering a fine arts building after hours with a stun gun in his possession and a photo of JonBenét. Police said he also had news clippings about her murder case and a poem he wrote titled "Ode to JonBenét."

"The circumstantial information on Oliva was very compelling," John Ramsey remembers. "The fact that he confessed to his friend within hours of our finding JonBenét is significant. His friend seems very credible."

According to CBS and Smit, the Boulder Police didn't investigate Oliva in the months that followed JonBenét's death, despite getting an alleged phone tip from Vail. It wasn't until 2000, when Oliva was caught at CU, that he came onto the radar of the BPD and was questioned.

Ramsey tells Westword he was suspicious of Oliva from the start, but was advised by his PIs not to buy into him or Vail's story completely. He found out about Oliva's release from prison through news reports.

Thoughts on Oliva's Release

"[Investigators] said, 'Hold on. Don't do a Boulder Police on us and jump to conclusions,'" Ramsey says about Oliva's release. "So I won’t do that now."

Last year, as part of an investigative series by the U.S. Sun, Vail came forward with letters and other things that Oliva had sent him, with alleged confessions to JonBenét's murder and other ties to what happened.

The slain pageant queen's half-brother, John Andrew, threw cold water on the allegations in a July 2023 interview with Westword, saying: "We are looking for a very rare breed of pedophile. A sadistic pedophile. A creature so craven they gain pleasure by torturing and quite often killing young children. These guys sit at the very top of [a] large pile of shit birds. Based on Gary’s past actions, it does not seem he rises to that level."

In addition to being cleared by DNA evidence, Oliva himself has insisted that he never murdered or harmed JonBenét. Still, he was caught in 2016 with nearly 700 images of child pornography and photos of underage girls — 335 of which were related to JonBenét.

A copy of Oliva's parole agreement, which was published by the U.S. Sun, shows that he is required to participate in "intensive supervision" and mental health treatment until 2027. It's unclear where he is staying in the Mile High City, with the Sun only reporting that he was spotted at an "east Denver" motel. The Colorado Department of Corrections lists his current facility assignment as "P3 PAROLE - DENVER SOUTH METRO REGION."

Asked if his release had caught the attention of BPD investigators or if anything was being done with Oliva related to the decades-old cold case, department spokesperson Dionne Waugh wasn't able to share much.

"Because this is still an active and open homicide investigation, we are unable to answer specific questions about this case beyond what we’ve previously released in our news releases," she says. "We have been asked about specific suspects...and we’ve said that we cannot comment on whether someone is or is not a suspect, since this is open investigation."

Hopes for the JonBenét Cold Case

Late last year, Ramsey told Westword that he was heading into 2024 with more hope than ever before that authorities would be able to finally catch his daughter's killer following years of bad blood and spats with the BPD over its handling of the case and treatment of his family as suspects.

However, BPD Chief Maris Herold wound up leaving the department in mid-January, which Ramsey said "could be a setback." He's since softened up on having a new set of eyes looking at things, specifically new BPD Chief Stephen Redfearn.

"We believe that Chief Redfern deserves some time to try and correct the sins of the historically poor department leadership," Ramsey says. "I told him it’s really not fair of me to continue to criticize the BPD for the failures of the past 27 years. I want to give him some time to do the right thing."

Ramsey hopes that with the completion of last year's Cold Case Review, detectives can get the ball rolling on what he and his family feel needs to happen to bring someone to justice.

"We have asked for two things," Ramsey says. "Number one: the untested evidence taken from the crime scene be sampled for traces of the killer's DNA. We have DNA from an unidentified male as a result of 1997 and 2008 testing, but it would be desirable to use the latest technology available only in labs outside of the government to see if the current sample result can be refined. Two: with the latest DNA result, use the public DNA database to try and develop a link to a person living in Boulder on December 25, 1996. I am very confident that if this work is done, we can identify the killer of my daughter."