Warning: This article contains mention of sensitive topics, please proceed with caution.
The infamous case of JonBenét Ramsey is a mystery that still persists after almost three decades without a lead. The six-year-old child beauty queen’s body was discovered in the basement of the family home on December 26 1996, the same day she went missing. No culprit was ever found, although the case has received renewed interest since Netflix dropped a three-part documentary covering it.
While there are conflicting theories regarding whether she was murdered in her bedroom and then brought to the basement, or brought to the basement first and killed there, the one thing that’s clear is that JonBenét was murdered in the house, but by who? She was discovered by her father seven hours after she went missing, and a ransom note was found on the staircase. Evidently a tragedy took place in that home in the early hours of December 26, but what has happened to the house in the years since?
What we know about the Ramsey house
The Ramsey family bought their home in Boulder, Colorado, in 1991 for $500,000. The house has five bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms, as well as a top floor penthouse with two bathrooms and a kitchen, plus a separate catering kitchen. It’s a pretty big house that you’d expect to fetch a pretty penny on the property market, although that hasn’t exactly been the case.
Who lives in the house now?
The Ramsey family left the home after the horrific murder and sold it to an investor for $650,000, with the profits being donated to the JonBenét Ramsey Children’s Foundation. The property was bought by Carol Schuller Milner, daughter of prominent televangelist Robert Schuller, and her husband in 2004. When asked about her decision to purchase the house, Carol acknowledged its dark history but said that she was hoping to move past it.
“This thing that was just sitting there, just a constant reminder of something horrible that happened, and I’m just a believer in undoing stuff like that. It is a wonderful place to live. It is home.”
Although Carol and her husband initially seemed quite happy with the home, they put it up for sale in 2008, and again in 2009. In 2011 they tried again with the asking price being around $2.3 million, and again in 2014 for a lower price of $1.95 million. Last year, the house was listed on Zillow for $7 million, but was quickly removed. It popped back up once more in September, and disappeared in March 2024.
As you’d expect, selling a house where such a tragedy took place isn’t as easy as it seems. While the price may be a bit steep, specialists believe that the connection to the JonBenét Ramsey could be what’s turning potential buyers off of the idea of purchasing the property. Houses associated with murders and death typically end up demolished or turned into tourist attractions. While some are successfully remodeled and sold on, the Ramsey house seems incapable of shaking off the memories which occurred there almost 30 years ago, leaving the current owners stuck.