Although the public will always wonder who killed JonBenét Ramsey, there are some people who will continually be haunted by this mystery, including her family and the law enforcement agents who worked on the case. One of those people is Tom Haney, who will be interviewed on Dateline NBC: Who Killed JonBenét?, the latest special about the the 6-year-old's unsolved murder. The former Denver Police Department detective is giving a rare interview to Dateline about his involvement in the investigation and though it won't solve the crime, it will definitely give some insight into the case when Who Killed JonBen é t ? airs on Friday, Sept. 9. Bustle has been unable to reach Haney at the time of publication, but will update with any future comments.
If you are an armchair detective trying to uncover the mystery of the murder of JonBenét, then fall 2016 is your season due to the amount of TV coverage the unsolved case is getting. While I mean no offense to armchair detectives since I can speculate with the best of them, the Deadline special will provide commentary from an actual detective. And what makes this detective's interview so particularly fascinating is the fact that Haney questioned JonBenét's mother, Patsy, about the crime in June 1998, as The Denver Post reported. Patsy Ramsey died in 2006 from ovarian cancer and though she and her husband John Bennet Ramsey faced public scrutiny about JonBenét's death, they have both maintained their innocence and were officially cleared of any involvement in the crime in 2008 due to DNA evidence. But 10 years prior to the couple being cleared and the Denver District Attorney issuing them a public apology for that scrutiny, Haney had interrogated Patsy about JonBenét's death.
In the above video, which is from the police tapes of the interrogation, Patsy is shown getting upset about Haney's questions about her having any alleged involvement in the murder of her child. On Dateline, Haney will have the opportunity to explain why he was questioning her like that and a preview clip from the special shows Haney saying how he was hoping to get "something spontaneous" from Patsy by asking her those questions.
Author Lawrence Schiller wrote about the Haney interview with Patsy in his 1999 book Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, and Newsweek published excerpts from the book. Schiller claimed in the book:
"When the case detectives viewed the tapes of the third day, they gave Haney four stars. He'd gotten to the real Patsy, they believed. She had exhibited the hard side of her persona. A side capable of bringing harm to her daughter. Still, it was almost impossible to believe that she'd gone from being a normal mother, which until then she had given every indication of being, to being a murderer that night. Haney had never been able to come up with a motive for the killing, and now, after three days of questioning, he had not been able to find a trigger that might have set Patsy off—if she was the killer."
It seems that there have been different interpretations of Haney's interrogation, which is why his interview on Dateline should be interesting (to say the least), as he'll be able to explain why he used those tactics when speaking to Patsy and how he interpreted her responses at the time.
Patsy is no longer able to defend herself, so as you watch Haney on Dateline, it's essential to remember that no matter what was said in that intense interrogation, JonBenét's mother was found to be innocent through DNA evidence 10 years later.
Image: NBC
