The father of JonBenét Ramsey , John, admitted that he has regrets about allowing his late wife to immerse his daughter deeper into the beauty industry .
He often contemplates whether he could've prevented her death if he had spoken up about his gripes. "I have five children, and she was always a little different in terms of her level of maturity for her age and she was very smart," remembered John, 79, who spoke with the US Sun. "All my kids are smart, but she was smart. We knew she would be something special in life we just weren't sure what."
JonBenét, at the young age of six, was found brutally strangled and beaten in the basement of her family's home in Colorado on December 26, 1996 after her parents discovered a ransom note. Today would have been the beauty queen's 33rd birthday. John often finds himself obsessing over the actions he could've taken to protect his daughter.
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The image of his daughter's lifeless body lying on the basement floor has never left John who said time has "pretty much" stopped since that day. Additionally, the majority of onlookers remember JonBenét as a six-year-old, coiffed-haired pageant queen whose makeup always hit the mark.
That wasn't the real JonBenét, John said. His daughter was somewhat of a tomboy who enjoyed a good hike and going out to the backyard to play with her older brother Burke. In the 27 years since his daughter's death, John has tortured himself by obsessing over the "what ifs." Maybe JonBenét would still be alive to celebrate her 33rd birthday if he'd never allowed her to compete in the pageants.
Moreover, maybe he could've better protected the six-year-old from creeps and criminals the beauty industry tends to attract. He wonders if he could've completely changed the trajectory of his life and his daughter's unfortunate fate. "I didn't like the costumes and stuff," confessed John, "but I didn't say anything because Patsy [JonBenét's mom] and JonBenét were having such a good time together. "I thought these pageants were just attended by moms and dads and grandparents, and so I didn't really worry about that exposure."
"But we later learned there were people attending these pageants that had no business being there: pedophiles. So that was not a good idea at all [...] but we were so naïve."
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JonBenét seemed to catch the pageant bug from her mother Patsy Ramsey, who was described as an extrovert who loved to perform, especially when it was on the stage of a beauty pageant. Patsy just enjoyed all the quality time she got to spend with her young daughter.
It was a precarious time as Patsy was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer when she was 36. JonBenet was just three-years-old at the time. However, nine months of chemotherapy followed by two surgeries seemingly sent the cancer into remission.
John claimed the pageants were one of the ways Patsy made lasting memories with her children after her diagnosis. "People accused Patsy of being a mother who was living vicariously through her daughter and dragging her to these pageants but that was absolutely not the case. It was the other way around: JonBenét loved to do it because she loved to perform and sing and dance," he said.
Within hours of the discovery of JonBenét body her parents were deemed primary suspects. It would be 12 years until their names were cleared when they were exonerated of any wrongdoing through DNA evidence in 2008. Sadly, it came too late for Patsy who died from ovarian cancer two years earlier.
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