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CBN.com – Scott Ross interviewed Patsy and John Ramsey in 2000. Read how faith helped the family through their daughter’s death and Patsy’s ovarian cancer.
SCOTT: What is the worst part of this, Patsy, having your daughter murdered or being accused of her murder?
PATSY: Oh for heavens sake, having my daughter murdered, is there any question?
JOHN: By far it's not having JonBenet with us.
SCOTT: I don't know if it's a real question or a rhetorical question. Patsy, you were in your 4th stage of ovarian cancer. How long was it before JonBenet's death?
PATSY: It was diagnosed in 92, July of 92.
SCOTT: Okay. Ninety-six percent of people who come to that stage of cancer die. You lived. Now if I understand correctly, you believe you were supernaturally healed by God.
PATSY: Yes, I do.
SCOTT: Is there documentation to go along with that?
PATSY: Yes there is. As a matter of fact I just received a letter from my original oncologist here in Atlanta. He unequivocally believes, knowing where I was and where I am now, there was divine intervention. That was in writing.
SCOTT: So God with foresight with forethought, heals Patsy Ramsey so she could murder her daughter?
PATSY: Our God does not work that way. I believe that our God sees things that we don't see and understands things that we do not understand. What man has meant for evil, He will use the good. He has saved me for some reason. I remember praying on my knees when I had cancer, "God why did you give me two children when you are going to take me away from them and not be able to raise them?"
SCOTT: Did you understand God was a healing God?
PATSY: I did not know about that. I have read it for years, and years, and years about Jesus healing the lepers and all kinds of healing taking place but I really didn't understand it.
SCOTT: It was more of an historical fact.
PATSY: Right, it wasn't real. But our rector in Colorado really explained to me that Christ died on the cross for our salvation. That the trip to the cross, when he was carrying and walking to Calvary and taking the lashing -- that was borne for our healing. It says right in the Bible, "By his stripes, I am healed."
SCOTT: So your rector told you. Episcopal rector.
PATSY: Yes. We had a healing service, anointing of holy oil, laying on of hands, this was on a Tuesday afternoon and at that time I had just been back from a session of chemotherapy from the National Cancer Institute. It was my second treatment. On Thursday of that week I took a CT scan and there was no sign of the disease.
SCOTT: How many days from the time you were prayed for and the time you took the test?
PATSY: Two. From that day forward there was never any sign of the disease.
SCOTT: How many years has it been?
PATSY: It will be eight years from diagnosis.
SCOTT: You're clean.
PATSY: Yes, I am. I am healed. Divinely healed by God and chemo.
SCOTT: How is your son Burke? How old is your son?
PATSY: He is 13 .
SCOTT: How is he doing?
PATSY: Well he is a typical 13-year-old.
JOHN: We worry about Burke longer term. We had him spend time with a child specialist. Kids have ways to bury this and it's black and white and they put it aside. Where it is going to affect Burke probably more so is when he is 40 years old and that's when we worry about it, long term.
SCOTT: When he is what?
JOHN: Forty. When he's older.
PATSY: Perhaps when he has a family of his own or when he has a child of his own or when he is able to put together what could have happened. Why was he not taken and she was? All of those questions.
SCOTT: Did he ever accuse you, did he ever distance from you?
PATSY: Oh, no never.
SCOTT: I don't trust Mom and Dad anymore -- they are murderers?
PATSY: No.
JOHN: We were a loving family. We loved our children. We were a typical American family. The other thing that has happened to us that ought to be an offense to the average, typical American family is that we have been accused of all of these horrible things. We love our children. We would do anything for them, as would most American families, and yet the media has assaulted us and in effect the American family.
SCOTT: Are you bitter, angry, cynical?
PATSY: On days it's yes, yes, yes. Just like normal, you have a good day or a bad, you have a good hour, a bad hour. We were at the beach on vacation and I see all these little families running around playing, little blondes, cute little beach clothes and having fun and frolicking, you know, and I'm bitter because that was taken away from us. I should be enjoying my children -- both of them. You know, that is hard.
SCOTT: Are you able to laugh, is there humor, is there joy in your life?
PATSY: There is a difference between happiness and joy. We have moments of joy. Will I ever be truly happy again, probably not. Not until I'm with all those -- my grandmothers, my great aunts, my grandfathers and my JonBenet -- then I will be truly happy again. Then I will be with the God of the universe, who knows truth and who knows justice. But will I ever be truly happy again, probably not.
SCOTT: How are you living that day by day?
PATSY: I am living just fine. I am not…
SCOTT: What do you mean you live just fine? You can't say that. You know that's a soundbite. Someone will take that and say "I live just fine?"
PATSY: People say, how can you do this, how can you do this? I have a 13-year-old son, I have two wonderful parents, we have a new grandbaby, I have a wonderful husband, wonderful friends and I have a God that knows the truth. I have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be remorseful over except that I miss my child everyday, every minute of the day.
SCOTT: Did JonBenet understand anything about God?
PATSY: Very much!
JOHN: She was … (starts to cry) … amazing.
PATSY: She was a participant in the Episcopal church, where I learned about the healing. That was called Cathechesis of the Good Shepherd. And it was a learning environment like the Montesorri style of learning, it was for preschoolers. JonBenet took it when she was about 5 or 6 years old. It was an environment where they learned about the Last Supper. They had a little mustard seed where they would learn about faith. They had a little corner of the room where they learned about baptism and christening, and JonBenet's christening gown was a part of that display. They learned about David and they learned about the Apostles. They polished the silver chalice, and they learned about the colors of Advent and Lent and all of that.
They learned about prayer, and they would have a prayer time in a prayer circle. I have this vivid recollection, this picture in my mind of JonBenet, blowing out this candle. She is kneeling in front of the pint-size altar, blowing out her candle and watching the smoke rise. She would tell me that that is her prayer going up to heaven. She was very spiritual.
SCOTT: Looking at JonBenet, the little girl in that outfit parading there seems to be an exploitation of a child?
PATSY: It wasn't. It was absolutely not. It was something that she and I enjoyed doing together not unlike hundreds of mothers and daughters across this country that do it every weekend of the world. I was driving this weekend to a friend's house and pulled up at a stoplight and in the car next to me were all these pageant clothes hanging there, and I knew where this mother and child had been this afternoon. This wasn't a novelty.
JOHN: We had a very simple approach to our children, we wanted them to try different things and be very good at one thing whatever it was. So we let our kids do a lot of different things. JonBenet took violin lessons, she was going to take rock climbing lessons, she took piano lessons, she took French, she took acting lessons. JonBenet was a performer. If there was a microphone it was in her hand and she was singing and dancing or doing something that was just her genes.
SCOTT: The latest little deal to come out, it hit the press a few days ago, was the fact that you have now gone to a psychic?
JOHN: Not true.
SCOTT: Well … I have the article right here …
JOHN: Read it in the paper has to be true! Let me dispel your image of that.
SCOTT: There it is. You put out a $100,000 reward to find this guy, and it's on your website.
JOHN: Our investigators control the web site. They put that picture on there. We did not contact a psychic as has been reported. The sketch that appeared on the web site that our investigators use was provided by Dorthy Allison on a television program a year or so ago. Our objective is to keep this alive in the public's mind, in hopes that the one lead that we are waiting for will come through.
SCOTT: So you allowed it to be used?
JOHN: We don't control the web site. The information that was put on there was put on there by our investigators, what they think is appropriate.
SCOTT: The reason why I raise the question because you claim to be Christians and you know, or I hope you know or have been taught, biblically, God doesn't look with whole lot of kindness on psychics or their practices.
PATSY & JOHN: Right. I know.
SCOTT: It's considered to be witchcraft ...
PATSY: Demonic.
SCOTT: And demonic. Now that might not make a lot of psychics happy, but I'm sorry, get over it. But that is what you have been accused of now and there is a distortion again?
PATSY: People look constantly for things to accuse the Ramseys about. This is just another one. Suffice to say -- the investigators, this was their doing -- they had the sketch.
JOHN: One of the reasons we are here today is to keep the pot stirred up.
SCOTT: You want to keep the pot stirred up?
JOHN: Absolutely.
SCOTT: Don't you want to go in a cave and hide out?
JOHN: Are you kidding, there are times we want to do that, but we want to find the killer. We are going to get one phone call that is going to lead us to the killer. This is not going to come now from clever detective work, it is going to come from the public. Someone out there knows who did this --they are going to call. We want to let them know where to call. We want to let them know we are still interested. When we get that call we got him.
SCOTT: There's a killer on the loose out there.
JOHN: Absolutely.
PATSY: Every time the phone rings I think this is the call.
JOHN: But if not in our lifetime, ultimately that creature would have to stand before the God of the universe and be accountable. That is the only justice that really counts. And we take comfort in that.
SCOTT: What mistake, if any, would you take responsibility for over the course of this investigation that you look back and say, "Whoa, we should never have done that."
PATSY: I think that is really hard to say right now because it is still underway. Every day, every hour we are in a position to make a decision as best we can along the way for 3 years we tried to make the best decisions, you know, each time we had to make a decision.
JOHN: It has been very difficult for us to keep silent while all these accusations were being leveled at us, every day, every hour, for 3 years, but we were trying to respect the justice system. There was an active investigation going on. We wanted the police to not be hampered by a media circus. It turns out they fueled a lot of it themselves. When the grand jury was over we felt like we were able to speak out then.
SCOTT: Sometimes don't you want to grab someone and say, "What I am telling you it's true. I am not lying. I didn't kill anybody!"
PATSY: You can't do that, but that's what you want to do. You want to stand up and say, "Listen to me." But we found out a long time ago that you can't. It doesn't do any good.
JOHN: You can not convince a cynic of anything. America is getting to be kind of -- at least the media system is a pretty cynical operation.
SCOTT: The bottom line, below the bottom line, people will ask me, "O.K., you've come out of this, confidentially, what do you think? There is also a side not only as a journalist, but being an ordained minister in the church, to say to other pastors, if they ask me, "Would you recommend to let these people come to my church?"
JOHN: Let me ask you this? What if we were murderers? Would we be denied access to a church? I hope not.
PATSY: That's the people who need to be there. Aren't we "preaching to the choir" as they say.
SCOTT: Well, they still say that.
JOHN: That is a problem we Christians have in our churches.
PATSY: We need to welcome everyone.
JOHN: We think it's a club we belong to because we are all good and we are better than most. Jesus addressed the worst of the worst in his society.
SCOTT: And you're still sitting here living and breathing and there's a future and a hope?
PATSY: What's the alternative? Our hope is in Jesus Christ. God promised us that this life will not be without trouble. We have had our fair share of trouble and then some. But, we are just passing through here aren't we? Isn't that what we have been learning?
JOHN: If we believed this life was all there was and when its over, its over, it's a sick, cruel joke and I don't want any part of it.
SCOTT: For people who watch this who pray -- who believe in prayer as you now do -- how would you ask people to pray for you throughout the world?
JOHN: I would ask people to pray that God puts such remorse in the killer's heart that he will come forward and confess.
UPDATE: Patsy Ramsey lost her battle with cancer in June of 2006.
We are asking The 700 Club viewers and CBN.com users to join us in praying for the Lord to reign down justice and righteousness in this case and reveal the truth.
Scott Ross welcomes your feedback.
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