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Presumed Guilty: An Investigation into the Jon Benet Ramsey Case, the Media, and the Culture of Pornography
Describes the handling of the JonBenet Ramsey murder case by the police and the media
241 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1999
62 people are currently reading
238 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Schiller
41 books22 followersThe ubiquitous Lawrence Schiller was born in 1936 in Brooklyn, and grew up in San Diego. After graduating from Pepperdine College, he went to work for Life magazine and the Saturday Evening Post as a photojournalist. His photographic abilities, both technical and artistic, laid the foundation for what has become nothing less than an astonishing career.
Schiller first made his name by photographing popular culture icons such as Sophia Loren, Richard Nixon, Timothy Leary, O.J. Simpson, James Earl Jones, Barbara Streisand, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Joe DiMaggio, and Clint Eastwood, just to name a few.
He moved easily through contrasting public worlds, developing stories for Life magazine while shooting nude photographs for Hugh Heffner and Playboy magazine. Schiller was always at the forefront, and always at the right place at the right time, experiencing historical events and developing relationships that would launch his career onto a path of success in a variety of mediums.
He published his first book, LSD, in 1966. Since then he has published eleven books, including W. Eugene Smith's Minamata and Norman Mailer's Marilyn. He collaborated with Albert Goldman on Ladies and Gentleman, Lenny Bruce and with Norman Mailer on The Executioner's Song and Oswald's Tale. He has directed seven motion pictures and mini-series for television.
From 1996 through 2002, Mr. Schiller published four books that became national bestsellers: American Tragedy, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, Into the Mirror, and Cape May Court House. All made the New York Times Bestseller List. American Tragedy, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town and Into the Mirror were made into television mini-series for CBS. Mr. Schiller produced and directed each of the motion pictures.
Other motion picture credits are: Double Jeopardy, The Plot to Kill Hitler, The Executioner's Song, Peter the Great, Murder: By Reason of Insanity, Her Life As a Man, The Patricia Neal Story, Child Bride of Short Creek, Marilyn, The Untold Story, The Winds of Kitty Hawk, Hey, I'm Alive, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, and The Man Who Skied Down Everest.
Lawrence Schiller's projects have won countless awards, including seven Emmys and an Oscar for his work over the years. He is a consultant to NBC News and has recently written for The New Yorker and George magazines.
Schiller's haunting and beautiful portfolio of photographs of Marilyn Monroe is from the last professional photo session of the sex goddess, while making Something's Got to Give in 1962. She was fired from the movie and was dead two months later. Almost a half a century has passed since May 1962, and still these astonishing, daring, and beautifully crafted photographs—never available as limited editions, until now—continue to captivate and enthrall us.
His collection of images chronicling America in the 1960s is an important document of our time. With daring forthrightness, a decade of turmoil, creativity and entertainment is unrolled before our eyes. Schiller's uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time, affords us the privilege of surveying all of this history, captured with succinct and powerful images that have defined and continue to define the national conversation.
Schiller first made his name by photographing popular culture icons such as Sophia Loren, Richard Nixon, Timothy Leary, O.J. Simpson, James Earl Jones, Barbara Streisand, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Joe DiMaggio, and Clint Eastwood, just to name a few.
He moved easily through contrasting public worlds, developing stories for Life magazine while shooting nude photographs for Hugh Heffner and Playboy magazine. Schiller was always at the forefront, and always at the right place at the right time, experiencing historical events and developing relationships that would launch his career onto a path of success in a variety of mediums.
He published his first book, LSD, in 1966. Since then he has published eleven books, including W. Eugene Smith's Minamata and Norman Mailer's Marilyn. He collaborated with Albert Goldman on Ladies and Gentleman, Lenny Bruce and with Norman Mailer on The Executioner's Song and Oswald's Tale. He has directed seven motion pictures and mini-series for television.
From 1996 through 2002, Mr. Schiller published four books that became national bestsellers: American Tragedy, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, Into the Mirror, and Cape May Court House. All made the New York Times Bestseller List. American Tragedy, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town and Into the Mirror were made into television mini-series for CBS. Mr. Schiller produced and directed each of the motion pictures.
Other motion picture credits are: Double Jeopardy, The Plot to Kill Hitler, The Executioner's Song, Peter the Great, Murder: By Reason of Insanity, Her Life As a Man, The Patricia Neal Story, Child Bride of Short Creek, Marilyn, The Untold Story, The Winds of Kitty Hawk, Hey, I'm Alive, The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, and The Man Who Skied Down Everest.
Lawrence Schiller's projects have won countless awards, including seven Emmys and an Oscar for his work over the years. He is a consultant to NBC News and has recently written for The New Yorker and George magazines.
Schiller's haunting and beautiful portfolio of photographs of Marilyn Monroe is from the last professional photo session of the sex goddess, while making Something's Got to Give in 1962. She was fired from the movie and was dead two months later. Almost a half a century has passed since May 1962, and still these astonishing, daring, and beautifully crafted photographs—never available as limited editions, until now—continue to captivate and enthrall us.
His collection of images chronicling America in the 1960s is an important document of our time. With daring forthrightness, a decade of turmoil, creativity and entertainment is unrolled before our eyes. Schiller's uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time, affords us the privilege of surveying all of this history, captured with succinct and powerful images that have defined and continue to define the national conversation.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
September 27, 2016
Follow the facts. Keep asking questions—and keep asking questions. Without a concrete answer to the death of JonBenet Ramsey, obviously, questions remain. As Stephen and Joyce Singular put it in "Presumed Guilty," some murders just won’t leave you alone. And as they make painfully clear in this updated version of their 1999 book, there are still questions to be asked—still work that could be done.
I’m no expert on the case. But the Singulars do two things simultaneously—and they do them well. First, they look closely at the human behaviors of those immediately involved. Second, they widen the lens and look at the bigger picture. It’s very hard to read this book and not come to the same general conclusion—that the answer to this case lies in the troubling sublayers and dark underground of child beauty pageants and sick underground tunnels to child pornographers.
The murder alone is puzzling enough. The police work and prosecutorial efforts that followed were worse. As the Singulars write, “the case remains a world-class conundrum. The murder of JonBenet is the only example in the annals of American homicide where a body and a ransom note were found in the same location. Somehow, some way, there is logic behind that, but Boulder’s legal system was never able to explain what it was. Or perhaps it did, a long time ago, but we’ve never fully understood what this means.”
In the years following the murder, the Singulars write, their questions ran head-long into either “pervasive fear” or “absolute silence.”
Looking back, they write: “The most potent aspect of the Ramsey phenomenon was the stillness around it -- from the family and its legal team, from Boulder cops and the D.A.’s office, from parts of the media, and in the very uneasy quiet that clung to the crime, even as the authorities tried to put it behind them. Presumed Guilty suggested that there were powerful reasons for this silence and the effort to bury the murder, rather than solve it. The book stood alone in speculating that there were more than the two ironclad scenarios the media and the police had laid out for the child’s death from the very beginning: either the Ramseys did it and were totally guilty or an intruder had come into their home and killed the girl, leaving the Ramseys completely innocent. A huge gap lay in between these poles and Presumed Guilty explored that space.”
As recent television news shows make clear, that space still remains. The Boulder police (in a videotaped message to the community at large, recorded in anticipation of the huge media onslaught coming with the two-decade anniversary) maintain they are actively pursuing leads to this day. I hope so. Perhaps they should start by reading this book; the Singulars lay out some compelling places to start.
It also suggests what we all largely suspect to the case—that deals were struck, that money and wealth got the privileged kid-glove treatment it thinks it deserves. Nothing else explains the actions of Boulder law enforcement in the days, weeks, and months following the murder.
In the updated version (I did not read the original), the Singulars take readers along for the ride. The book takes each thread and unspools it in a very conversational style.
These two get very close to the main players in the case; as independent journalists they brought information forward to Alex Hunter and others, with mixed results. The book becomes a series of interviews and conversations with those around the Ramseys—and a series of reactions by the authorities to what is brought forward. What did they find? See above. Pervasive fear and/or absolute silence. I won’t go blow by blow with each encounter, but the Pam Griffin conversation here certainly suggests there is more work to be done. (Griffin was the seamstress for JonBenet’s pageant attire and knew Patsy Ramsey very well.)
"Presumed Guilty" is a fascinating book, well worth a read; it’s brisk. The book concedes that it has only identified the what for the case, not the who. Until there is an answer, isn’t it a good idea to be open to all possibilities? And follow the facts—not the noise.
I’m no expert on the case. But the Singulars do two things simultaneously—and they do them well. First, they look closely at the human behaviors of those immediately involved. Second, they widen the lens and look at the bigger picture. It’s very hard to read this book and not come to the same general conclusion—that the answer to this case lies in the troubling sublayers and dark underground of child beauty pageants and sick underground tunnels to child pornographers.
The murder alone is puzzling enough. The police work and prosecutorial efforts that followed were worse. As the Singulars write, “the case remains a world-class conundrum. The murder of JonBenet is the only example in the annals of American homicide where a body and a ransom note were found in the same location. Somehow, some way, there is logic behind that, but Boulder’s legal system was never able to explain what it was. Or perhaps it did, a long time ago, but we’ve never fully understood what this means.”
In the years following the murder, the Singulars write, their questions ran head-long into either “pervasive fear” or “absolute silence.”
Looking back, they write: “The most potent aspect of the Ramsey phenomenon was the stillness around it -- from the family and its legal team, from Boulder cops and the D.A.’s office, from parts of the media, and in the very uneasy quiet that clung to the crime, even as the authorities tried to put it behind them. Presumed Guilty suggested that there were powerful reasons for this silence and the effort to bury the murder, rather than solve it. The book stood alone in speculating that there were more than the two ironclad scenarios the media and the police had laid out for the child’s death from the very beginning: either the Ramseys did it and were totally guilty or an intruder had come into their home and killed the girl, leaving the Ramseys completely innocent. A huge gap lay in between these poles and Presumed Guilty explored that space.”
As recent television news shows make clear, that space still remains. The Boulder police (in a videotaped message to the community at large, recorded in anticipation of the huge media onslaught coming with the two-decade anniversary) maintain they are actively pursuing leads to this day. I hope so. Perhaps they should start by reading this book; the Singulars lay out some compelling places to start.
It also suggests what we all largely suspect to the case—that deals were struck, that money and wealth got the privileged kid-glove treatment it thinks it deserves. Nothing else explains the actions of Boulder law enforcement in the days, weeks, and months following the murder.
In the updated version (I did not read the original), the Singulars take readers along for the ride. The book takes each thread and unspools it in a very conversational style.
These two get very close to the main players in the case; as independent journalists they brought information forward to Alex Hunter and others, with mixed results. The book becomes a series of interviews and conversations with those around the Ramseys—and a series of reactions by the authorities to what is brought forward. What did they find? See above. Pervasive fear and/or absolute silence. I won’t go blow by blow with each encounter, but the Pam Griffin conversation here certainly suggests there is more work to be done. (Griffin was the seamstress for JonBenet’s pageant attire and knew Patsy Ramsey very well.)
"Presumed Guilty" is a fascinating book, well worth a read; it’s brisk. The book concedes that it has only identified the what for the case, not the who. Until there is an answer, isn’t it a good idea to be open to all possibilities? And follow the facts—not the noise.
August 8, 2014
This book lacks on actual facts. The writing is alright, but when I picked this book up, I had the intention on reading about her and what happened to her, not about the authors journey to find information and uncover clues on forty other cases that had nothing to do with her at all. A disappointment and a waste of my time.
February 27, 2021
Wow I think that’s the closest to the real truth!
I can’t believe that so much was not talked about! I’m almost glad I didn’t have a girl.. but then exploitation of children needs to be taken way more seriously!
I can’t believe that so much was not talked about! I’m almost glad I didn’t have a girl.. but then exploitation of children needs to be taken way more seriously!
September 18, 2017
I saw the author and his wife live recently and was convinced of his perspective until I read Steve Thomas's book who was an actual detective on the case and had access to all of the evidence unless the DA didn't share it. These cops would not have sacrificed their lives and marriages to go after an innocent family if that is not where the evidence led. They also chased down thousands of other leads and did not just ignore anything pointing away from Patsy.
November 12, 2016
Over-Looked & Alternate-3rd Angle To An Unsolved 20-Year Old Cold Mysterious Murder! Stephen Singular Presents Materials In A Well Written & Research Book With A 3rd Theory
Very Insightful Perception By Author!
Author Is Objective & Brilliant Mind!
Very Insightful Perception By Author!
Author Is Objective & Brilliant Mind!
May 22, 2017
This book is kind of a mess. Singular indicates at the outset that he'll be dealing with the JonBenet Ramsey case from a more or less sociological perspective, looking at how the sexual exploitation of young girls is being mainstreamed into American culture (the book was published all the way back in 1999), but then he more or less just presents his work on the case as an investigative journalist. Sure, he raises the child pornography issue, and he does reflect on the ethics of showing little girls off on stage even in the supposed "good, clean fun" atmosphere of child beauty pageants, but he never examines these things in anything approaching systematic analysis or research.
Instead, he provides an often repetitive, sometimes rambling account of his adventures shuttling theories between the Boulder, Colorado police department and the Boulder D.A.'s office. The fact that he's a decent writer (for a journalist) eases some of the ennui produced by this approach, but doesn't eradicate it. He does talk about some of the hard evidence (what little was available to the public in the years immediately following the case), and he does talk about the weirdness of the case and its myriad inconsistencies, but in the end we have just another true crime book about a horrifying case instead of a philosophical or at least thoughtful treatment of the core issues underlying it.
To be fair, Singular does try to raise these. As the title suggests, he talks about the way media and law enforcement focused nearly exclusively on John and Patsy Ramsey as the perpetrators of their daughter's death, and how this amounted to an assumption of guilt rather than one of innocent before proven guilty. But he basically drops this angle early on, and doesn't go back to it. In fact, the theory he eventually floats to Detective Sergeant Tom Wickman places an extraordinary weight of culpability (though not direct guilt) on John Ramsey's shoulders. So, the title and the somewhat lurid subtitle ("An Investigation Into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, the Media, and the Culture of Pornography") end up as little more than a bait-and-switch. We go in thinking we're going to get cultural analysis, and we get one man's attempts to crack a case no one else would.
The hint that this might be the case is actually lurking in the Prologue, where Singular manages to draw a line of comparison between the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski scandal and the JonBenet Ramsey case. He uses the fascination of the media with Ken Starr's massive tome detailing Clinton's sexcapades with Lewinski, along with the fetishization of young girls in beauty pageants such as those JonBenet participated in, to point out that Americans in the late 20th century were puritanically horrified by the sexual misconduct on view even as they were massively titillated by it. This is a good and fair point. Unfortunately, Singular fails to ever follow through on its promise. Not only that, but he contradicts himself and tips his hand politically in this section in a way that suggests he isn't overly concerned with pursuing this angle very far. When he didn't, I wasn't surprised.
Still, Presumed Guilty raises plenty of interesting questions and manages to sift a lot of the media-generated dross surrounding the Ramsey case in a way that brings some degree of clarity to the circumstances of the child's death and its subsequent investigation, though no conclusive answers. It's also a fascinating time-capsule and oddly nostalgic read for someone like me who followed the case as it initially unfolded—one realizes just how much the media obscured the truth, and how little truth was actually there to be obscured. If the information Singular presents is true and accurate, it seems that at least one of the Ramsey parents was involved, but probably not the actual perpetrator of the crime. That's not what I read the book to learn (I was more interested in emerging theories of Internet crimes in the early days of the Web), but it was interesting nonetheless.
Instead, he provides an often repetitive, sometimes rambling account of his adventures shuttling theories between the Boulder, Colorado police department and the Boulder D.A.'s office. The fact that he's a decent writer (for a journalist) eases some of the ennui produced by this approach, but doesn't eradicate it. He does talk about some of the hard evidence (what little was available to the public in the years immediately following the case), and he does talk about the weirdness of the case and its myriad inconsistencies, but in the end we have just another true crime book about a horrifying case instead of a philosophical or at least thoughtful treatment of the core issues underlying it.
To be fair, Singular does try to raise these. As the title suggests, he talks about the way media and law enforcement focused nearly exclusively on John and Patsy Ramsey as the perpetrators of their daughter's death, and how this amounted to an assumption of guilt rather than one of innocent before proven guilty. But he basically drops this angle early on, and doesn't go back to it. In fact, the theory he eventually floats to Detective Sergeant Tom Wickman places an extraordinary weight of culpability (though not direct guilt) on John Ramsey's shoulders. So, the title and the somewhat lurid subtitle ("An Investigation Into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, the Media, and the Culture of Pornography") end up as little more than a bait-and-switch. We go in thinking we're going to get cultural analysis, and we get one man's attempts to crack a case no one else would.
The hint that this might be the case is actually lurking in the Prologue, where Singular manages to draw a line of comparison between the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski scandal and the JonBenet Ramsey case. He uses the fascination of the media with Ken Starr's massive tome detailing Clinton's sexcapades with Lewinski, along with the fetishization of young girls in beauty pageants such as those JonBenet participated in, to point out that Americans in the late 20th century were puritanically horrified by the sexual misconduct on view even as they were massively titillated by it. This is a good and fair point. Unfortunately, Singular fails to ever follow through on its promise. Not only that, but he contradicts himself and tips his hand politically in this section in a way that suggests he isn't overly concerned with pursuing this angle very far. When he didn't, I wasn't surprised.
Still, Presumed Guilty raises plenty of interesting questions and manages to sift a lot of the media-generated dross surrounding the Ramsey case in a way that brings some degree of clarity to the circumstances of the child's death and its subsequent investigation, though no conclusive answers. It's also a fascinating time-capsule and oddly nostalgic read for someone like me who followed the case as it initially unfolded—one realizes just how much the media obscured the truth, and how little truth was actually there to be obscured. If the information Singular presents is true and accurate, it seems that at least one of the Ramsey parents was involved, but probably not the actual perpetrator of the crime. That's not what I read the book to learn (I was more interested in emerging theories of Internet crimes in the early days of the Web), but it was interesting nonetheless.
November 19, 2010
I am reading this book for a Research Project for one of my classes. It is kind of chilling.
September 15, 2019
“Making mistakes is inevitable in law enforcement. A far greater sin is the unwillingness to learn from the past.”
“The mind cannot accept and the heart refuses to grasp the death of one so young, who is suddenly taken from us by cruelty and malice by some unworthy person. When a child is lost, one feels that part of the future is gone.”
“Years after JonBenet was killed, her father said that he’d never realized the kinds of situations and people that he and Patsy had been exposing their daughter to — until it was too late. It was the closest he’d ever come to taking any responsibility for the murder.”
Not as good as James Kolar’s Foreign Faction but what I liked about it was that it was a completely different point of view and way of looking at things. Whereas Kolar’s book was lengthy with what happened, timelines, major players, and evidence, Singular’s book was more of the journey as a journalist and the effects of the Internet, pageants, and the pornography industry in the late 90’s; his lack of focus on the evidence made this both refreshing and a bit underwhelming. If this was the first book of JonBenet Ramsey you read, you would be missing a lot of information on what happened leading up as well as the tragedy itself. But what it did really well was explore a forgotten side of the tragedy with implied theories that only an experienced journalist could pull off. Most observers usually lie in one of two camps: a family member(s) was involved in the murder and cover-up (i.e. the ransom note) or an outside intruder was involved in both. Singular proposes the possibility that an outsider murdered JonBenet (someone involved in either pageants, child pornographry, photographers, or even someone higher up in Denver society; and that the Ramseys were involved in the cover-up to either protect their actions or to not risk anything else happening to their family. Far-fetched? Probably, but the writing flows and the amount of possible suspects makes it an intriguing read. Despite not having some of the basic information and not even showing the ransom note in full, it did have good information such as conversations with Pam Griffin, Patsy Ramsey’s friend and seamstress who made JonBenet’s dresses and was with Patsy following the murder for some interesting conversations; and the photographer who shot the last infamous JonBenet pic who acted strangely after the murder and was later arrested for child pornographry. While my conclusion is often that the family did it, there has always been things that haven’t added up completely. And maybe that’s why this case still intrigues this nation: a child beauty queen found dead in her own house with a 2 1/2 page ransom note seemingly written by one or both of the parents and where none of the clues conclusively point to a singular killer. And that is definitely the sad fact in this case as justice will probably never be seen in this lifetime. Between Kolar’s book and this book, I would say they are both must-reads on the subject and point to one absolute certainty: the BPD and DA both handled things incredibly poorly and as a result, the case may never be solved.
“The mind cannot accept and the heart refuses to grasp the death of one so young, who is suddenly taken from us by cruelty and malice by some unworthy person. When a child is lost, one feels that part of the future is gone.”
“Years after JonBenet was killed, her father said that he’d never realized the kinds of situations and people that he and Patsy had been exposing their daughter to — until it was too late. It was the closest he’d ever come to taking any responsibility for the murder.”
Not as good as James Kolar’s Foreign Faction but what I liked about it was that it was a completely different point of view and way of looking at things. Whereas Kolar’s book was lengthy with what happened, timelines, major players, and evidence, Singular’s book was more of the journey as a journalist and the effects of the Internet, pageants, and the pornography industry in the late 90’s; his lack of focus on the evidence made this both refreshing and a bit underwhelming. If this was the first book of JonBenet Ramsey you read, you would be missing a lot of information on what happened leading up as well as the tragedy itself. But what it did really well was explore a forgotten side of the tragedy with implied theories that only an experienced journalist could pull off. Most observers usually lie in one of two camps: a family member(s) was involved in the murder and cover-up (i.e. the ransom note) or an outside intruder was involved in both. Singular proposes the possibility that an outsider murdered JonBenet (someone involved in either pageants, child pornographry, photographers, or even someone higher up in Denver society; and that the Ramseys were involved in the cover-up to either protect their actions or to not risk anything else happening to their family. Far-fetched? Probably, but the writing flows and the amount of possible suspects makes it an intriguing read. Despite not having some of the basic information and not even showing the ransom note in full, it did have good information such as conversations with Pam Griffin, Patsy Ramsey’s friend and seamstress who made JonBenet’s dresses and was with Patsy following the murder for some interesting conversations; and the photographer who shot the last infamous JonBenet pic who acted strangely after the murder and was later arrested for child pornographry. While my conclusion is often that the family did it, there has always been things that haven’t added up completely. And maybe that’s why this case still intrigues this nation: a child beauty queen found dead in her own house with a 2 1/2 page ransom note seemingly written by one or both of the parents and where none of the clues conclusively point to a singular killer. And that is definitely the sad fact in this case as justice will probably never be seen in this lifetime. Between Kolar’s book and this book, I would say they are both must-reads on the subject and point to one absolute certainty: the BPD and DA both handled things incredibly poorly and as a result, the case may never be solved.
January 15, 2020
The best, even the only serious account of this horrible crime
I watched all documentaries and media about murdering the innocent Jonbenet, and it was a waste of time and money, I respect Presumed Guilty and it’s enlightening perspective, Jon Ramsey and Patsy Ramsey is a unique representation of selfishness and I am sad for them, their magnificent life was destroyed forever and they were meaningless after losing Jonbenet and this help me finally to see and understand their misery, they should search and fight for justice for their girl and for protection of other children, The DAs were hypocrites and incompetent and they should read this book, I never blame police as the district attorneys were that mediocre, I wonder why the DA didn’t lead the investigation since the stupid 911 Patsy call, great book
I watched all documentaries and media about murdering the innocent Jonbenet, and it was a waste of time and money, I respect Presumed Guilty and it’s enlightening perspective, Jon Ramsey and Patsy Ramsey is a unique representation of selfishness and I am sad for them, their magnificent life was destroyed forever and they were meaningless after losing Jonbenet and this help me finally to see and understand their misery, they should search and fight for justice for their girl and for protection of other children, The DAs were hypocrites and incompetent and they should read this book, I never blame police as the district attorneys were that mediocre, I wonder why the DA didn’t lead the investigation since the stupid 911 Patsy call, great book
August 30, 2019
A disappointment
This is a strange little book that sheds almost no light on the JonBenét Ramsey case. Singular seems obsessed with somehow tying JonBenét's death in with some international child pornography ring, but never gives us anything beyond his obsession. He has a little of the usual fun with the media, even bringing Princess Di's death into it, but adds nothing new. The "culture" of pornography is addressed only in the most oblique and cursorily way. I had the sense that Singular went to Boulder, Colorado thinking he might uncover something for a book, failed and came up with this mishmash, and had a deadline to meet.
--Dennis Littrell, author of the sensational mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”
This is a strange little book that sheds almost no light on the JonBenét Ramsey case. Singular seems obsessed with somehow tying JonBenét's death in with some international child pornography ring, but never gives us anything beyond his obsession. He has a little of the usual fun with the media, even bringing Princess Di's death into it, but adds nothing new. The "culture" of pornography is addressed only in the most oblique and cursorily way. I had the sense that Singular went to Boulder, Colorado thinking he might uncover something for a book, failed and came up with this mishmash, and had a deadline to meet.
--Dennis Littrell, author of the sensational mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”
August 25, 2023
I appreciate that the author took a different focus on this case instead of simply regurgitating all the same facts we all know. In fact, I learned a few new facts I had not known before (e.g. the kite string, the specifics of White’s behavior the day of, that the police were present for six hours the day of the conflict in Atlanta). Some of the wording, however, in parts seemed to excuse pedophilia as normal behavior which was off-putting to say the least. For that reason and the fact that it seemed to lack a conclusion (What did Pam Griffin find from her search?), I only gave it three stars, but it was an interesting read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 22, 2023
I don't know, sure, whatever. I'm not really a JonBenet truther or whatever and this book does a good job explaining the case and presenting an interesting angle on the whole thing.
The book was fine, I don't know. Not that this is the author's fault but I when I finished the book I just kind of shrugged my shoulders, said "Neat!" then moved on with my life. I basically do that with any JonBenet theory because we're never going to know what happened unless someone credibly confesses or we invent some sort of "view her last few minutes" technology and I'd rather devote that brain capacity to taxes or remembering how to drive. The focus on the media's & public's treatment of the family is probably the most interesting part. Really cool that it's only gotten worse and more decentralized with the internet. If you really want to drive yourself insane, browse the JonBenet subreddit for a few minutes.
The book was fine, I don't know. Not that this is the author's fault but I when I finished the book I just kind of shrugged my shoulders, said "Neat!" then moved on with my life. I basically do that with any JonBenet theory because we're never going to know what happened unless someone credibly confesses or we invent some sort of "view her last few minutes" technology and I'd rather devote that brain capacity to taxes or remembering how to drive. The focus on the media's & public's treatment of the family is probably the most interesting part. Really cool that it's only gotten worse and more decentralized with the internet. If you really want to drive yourself insane, browse the JonBenet subreddit for a few minutes.
June 1, 2017
I think I agree with the author's theory. Unfortunately the book is just not well-written in terms of laying out the facts of his investigation in a clear manner. Also, the actual events leading up to the murder including at least publicly disclosed autopsy information are excluded. For that reason, it's hard for me to say I'm a100% on board with this theory. He's left a lot out.
August 13, 2018
Good read
This book brought forth some interesting information I haven't read anywhere like the poems and the world of child pornography. Its tragic how less has been done to solve this child's murder and how most efforts have gone on fighting ego battles or fixating on the Ramseys.
This book brought forth some interesting information I haven't read anywhere like the poems and the world of child pornography. Its tragic how less has been done to solve this child's murder and how most efforts have gone on fighting ego battles or fixating on the Ramseys.
April 3, 2018
The author raised some sorta interesting (though purely speculative) ideas and managed to get through the entire book without JonBenét's name correctly even once. I won't say it adds absolutely nothing of value, but it's probably not worth the bandwidth I expended to read it.
March 19, 2020
Wow what a book it’s such a shame that this little girl had been taken so soon and young I just wish they would find out who did it. The parents have been accused but they didn’t do it. I would recommend this book for people who like crime.
January 22, 2025
Significant perspective on the JBR case
Singular doggedly explores the child pornography culture which could be a major factor in this case. I happily recommend this book.
Singular doggedly explores the child pornography culture which could be a major factor in this case. I happily recommend this book.
April 18, 2025
Muckraking dressed up as serious investigative journalism Yet another theory based on no evidence whatsoever.
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June 21, 2025He brings some very interesting points, but the book lacks information to back it up.
October 4, 2013
Very interesting theory on what might have happened to JonBenet Ramsey.
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