Slain Girl’s Parents Warn Boulder Residents of Danger to Children

BOULDER, Colo. —  The parents of a slain 6-year-old girl warned Boulder residents on Wednesday that “There’s someone out there,” and to be careful for their children.

“There is a killer on the loose,” Patricia Ramsey, JonBenet Ramsey’s mother, told CNN from Atlanta in a televised interview. “I don’t know who it is. I don’t know if it’s a he or a she. But if I were a resident of Boulder, I would tell my friends to keep your babies close to you. There’s someone out there.”

The parents said during the interview that the family will hire attorneys for counsel and private investigators to help police.

“Whatever they want. Whatever anyone wants, we will cooperate,” Mrs. Ramsey said.

The child’s body was found in the basement of the family’s expensive Boulder home about eight hours after her mother found a ransom note last Thursday.

The parents said they had nothing to do with the death and couldn’t believe their family and friends could.

“Our family is a loving family, a gentle family,” John B. Ramsey said.

Mrs. Ramsey told CNN about finding the note, its three pages placed across one of the steps in the home.

“It was addressed to John. It said ‘Mr. Ramsey’ and it said ‘We have your daughter’ and it just wasn’t registering. . . . “

John Ramsey said the note warned them not to call police, but after they checked their daughter’s room and their son’s room, they did.

“We were just frantic and I dialed the police 911 and she was trying to calm me down and I said my child had been kidnapped and she was trying to ask questions methodically and I’m just screaming ‘Send help! Send help!’ ” Mrs. Ramsey said.

Then, after a time, apparently set in the note, passed, he described what happened next.

“One of the detectives asked me and one of my friends who was there to go through every inch of the house and see if there was anything that was unusual or out of place,” John Ramsey said.

“I think he was asking us to do that more to give us something to do to occupy our mind, so we started in the basement.”

“We had one room in the basement that when I opened the door--there were no windows in the room--and I turned the light on and . . . it was her,” he said. “I hoped that she was still OK but I could tell that she probably wasn’t. I screamed and carried her upstairs.”

Boulder investigators continued their search for clues at the home, but remained tight-lipped in the bizarre murder case.

“I can say we have not closed the crime scene,” Boulder police spokeswoman Leslie Aaholm said.

The family moved from Atlanta to Boulder in 1991. Funeral services were held Tuesday in the Atlanta church where JonBenet was baptized and where her parents were married. The former Little Miss Colorado was buried wearing her beauty pageant crown.