The following story contains discussion of child death.

In 1996, child pageant star JonBenét Ramsey was shockingly found dead in the basement of her family’s home. Despite strange circumstantial evidence against JonBenét's family, including a peculiar homemade ransom note, they were ruled out as suspects in 2004 after advancements in DNA testing.

Although her husband John Ramsey and son Burke are still searching for the truth, JonBenét’s mother Patsy died in 2006 due to complications from ovarian cancer. According to the Denver Post, Patsy had been fighting a stage 4 diagnosis for 13 years, even through grappling with public suspicion in her daughter's death.

JonBenét Ramsey is frozen in time as a child pageant queen, and it was her mother who encouraged the lifestyle. Patsy won the crown for Miss West Virginia in the 1970s, and in an ABC interview with Barbara Walters, she said that JonBenét's pageantry career “was the most wonderful time of my life.”

However, John Ramsey later said that “it's not a good idea to put your child on public display.” He described a parade in which JonBenét waved to the crowd from a convertible, and “Patsy's mother later told me that a strange man approached the car during the parade […] I think about these things now and it makes me cringe.”