Video sleuth
By ERIN WIGGINS Colorado Daily Staff Writer

It will be eight years this Christmas since a six-year-old Boulder beauty queen was murdered, but that doesn't change the fact that a few people are still hoping to solve it.

CU-Boulder journalism professor Michael Tracey, who has followed the case for years, is releasing his third and final documentary on the JonBenet Ramsey murder, which will air nationally on CBS' "48 Hours" this Saturday.

Despite the fact that the still-unsolved Ramsey case has slipped off the national and local radar, Tracey said he thinks there may be enough new and old evidence to give the case another look.

"There were a number of really interesting suspects who were never investigated," Tracey said from his CU-Boulder office Thursday. "There were two known pedophiles living on 15th Street at the time of the murder that were never interviewed."

Tracey said there is key forensic evidence that one key suspect, Boulder 1997 suicide victim Michael Helgoth, may have also played a role.

"There was also a really interesting assault with a girl in September '97 that was never properly investigated with some remarkable similarities to JonBenet," he said. "The father makes a very, very powerful indictment in the way in which he was treated and the way in which the assault on his daughter was never investigated."

Tracey said these issues were never investigated properly because the Boulder police and the District Attorney's office - who declined to take part in his latest media venture - decided they should focus on the victim's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey.

Boulder Police spokeswoman Julie Brooks said the case is no longer under the jurisdiction of the police. She said since she has only been with the force a few months, she did not know of any documentary or refusal to comment by police.

Tracey said he has been working on the piece for about two years.

"We don't comment on (the Ramsey case) anymore," said Brooks.

Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner was under fire for some time on how police handled the Ramsey case, but in recent years, that scandal has died down. In 2003, a federal judge in Atlanta exonerated the Ramseys from the murder through DNA tests and the family now lives in Michigan. John Ramsey ran a failed campaign for that state's House of Representatives this past year.

Tracey said he thinks what happened to the Ramseys is unfair and said he thinks the case's overwhelming national media attention may have affected local law enforcement's ability to do its job. He said his first film in 1998 "took apart the media story" and claimed local and national news originations sensationalized flawed information.

"It had sex, it had death, it had a pretty girl, it had the American Dream gone wrong," he said. "It had a millionaire-billionaire father, the ex-beauty queen wife. ... It was just perfect in the terms of the kind of tabloid values we find in American journalism."

Tracey said while he doesn't expect any new arrests or public discourse over the issue, he said he is still hopeful. When the CBS News program "48 Hours" film visited the Pearl Street Mall on Dec. 1, most passersby were fairly uninspired when they saw that the cameras and news anchors were in town for such old news.

"This is just one last effort to really try and solve this crime," Tracey said. "Whoever did this, and I personally believe it's more than one person, is getting away with it."

You have to give credit to Tracey for being the first to take a stand and expose the media's part in condemning the Ramseys, and not giving up. If you look back at the early years, it was a field day for the media, many of who tromped all over the Ramseys constitutional rights.