Ten years ago, I was in grad school, living in an apartment, working two jobs, dating the man who would later become my husband. At the time, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the JonBenet Ramsey case. Sure, it was scary and weird and sad, but I didn’t have children of my own. I couldn’t relate. So like the rest of America, I figured the parents did it.

Patsy Ramsey died a few weeks ago, and I was surprised by the fact that I had no reaction at all to the news. I stood somewhere between “If she did it, good riddance to a murderous mother” and “If she didn’t do it, then I’m glad she gets to be with her daughter again.” When they arrested this new suspect on Wednesday, though, my feelings changed radically. Good heavens! What if everyone has been wrong all along?! What does it say about Americans? What does it say about our media? What does it say about our investigative forces and our justice system? Why were we so ready to convict the Ramseys?

Let’s start with little JonBenet. An absolutely gorgeous child, she looked like an angel. The idea that someone would kill such a lovely, innocent girl was almost too disturbing to face. Americans wanted to hold someone responsible. We needed a villain. The police couldn’t give us one, so the media did, and we were ready to believe JonBenet was her parents’ victim.
For many of us, JonBenet seemed like a victim of her parents even before she was killed. Her name was a combination of her father’s and mother’s: John Bennet Patricia=JonBenet Patricia. There was something pretentious about it that made many Americans wrinkle their noses.

And then there was that whole beauty pageant thing. You couldn’t (and still can’t) see a news story about JonBenet’s murder without at least one shot of her in a pageant. Now people who don’t put their children in these pageants really do not understand it. Painting your little girl up like a Singapore prostitute, dressing her in fussy costumes and parading her in front of a panel of judges seems cruel to a lot of parents. And if you ever saw that show on A&E that followed the beauty pageant stage moms, you can’t help but imagine Patsy Ramsey berating her daughter for smearing her mascara or failing to turn properly on the catwalk. JonBenet may have enjoyed it; it may have been her idea, but it ’s hard to imagine a six-year-old being able to make that kind of decision on her own. So in the court of public opinion, the Ramseys were seen as pretentious parents who used their beautiful child to further their own social status.

Which brings us to John and Patsy themselves. Victims of a hideous crime that robbed them of their darling little girl. But these are not easy people to feel sorry for: a wealthy CEO and a former Miss West Virginia living in a “starter castle” in an affluent Denver suburb with a vacation home in Michigan. In my mind, John Ramsey is always in his gray suit with the sensible tie, perfectly shaven with his thinning hair neatly combed. Patsy is always in a smart-looking black dress, black designer sunglasses, flawless lipstick. Maybe they are just of a different social class, but to most of us, they looked too good to be grieving. It was kind of like trying to feel sorry for Barbie and Ken with their Dream House, Corvette and constant smiles.

But these people had lost their child! For anyone to lose a child is horrific, but to have her murdered in your own house while you are at home is a nightmare. At the same time, the circumstances made it that much harder for us to sympathize and believe they were innocent. How on earth could someone break into a huge house in a nice neighborhood, assault and kill a child without waking anyone, lay her body in the wine cellar and write a ransom note before anyone noticed? How could a dead child lay in her parents’ home for 8 hours before anyone found her? It seemed implausible to most people because most of us don’t live in a mansion with a wine cellar.
Then there’s the media which took this thing and ran with it. We blame the media for a lo t of things these days. It’s easier to blame them than to accept responsibility ourselves, but you have to admit, this case got a ridiculous amount of coverage. A beautiful little girl from an affluent neighborhood found dead in her own home had everything the news companies look for: pretty white victim, lots of money, bizarre circumstances. With no likely suspects to vilify during lots of cable airtime, the media went to the next best thing- the parents. It is difficult to separate our perceptions of John and Patsy Ramsey from the media’s depictions of them. Journalists and photographers made decisions about what to show us; we saw only what the media chose to let us see. For all we know, John and Patsy did get hysterical, messy, and overwraught. The media just did not show us that.

Americans as a whole are jaded. Most of us know that the large majority of murders are committed by family members. And of course, we had seen it before, and we’ve seen it since. When JonBenet was killed in 1996, Americans were only one year removed from the Susan Smith case. Remember Susan? The distraught mother who sobbed on TV that her children had been kidnapped during a carjacking? Just nine days later, we learned that there was no black carjacker. Susan herself had drowned her two children in a lake. And more recently, Scott Peterson, the handsome husband of pregnant Laci Peterson, feigned innocence and helped search parties look for his wife and child before authorities became suspicious and arrested him. Americans don’t trust anyone, least of all the those closest to a murder victim.

So now we have the arrest of someone other than John or Patsy Ramsey, and suddenly I have to question my own reaction to this case. Was I too eager to believe the media? Was I too anxious to identify a killer and tuck this nasty story safely away where I wouldn’t have to confront the horror anymore? Or was I, so ready to empathize with the poor, too ready to condemn the rich?