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New York Jets star cornerback Sauce Gardner isn't planning on recruiting Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins ahead of his impending free agency. "PAY THE MAN," Gardner commented under an Instagram post from Higgins on Sunday, as the wideout is set to become a free agent at the end of the season. When a fan asked him to attempt to sway the Bengals receiver to come to New York, he declined. Gardner, who spent his college career at Cincinnati, previously advocated for the Jets to sign Higgins following the 2023 season. The 25-year-old eventually received the franchise tag from the Bengals, though. New York has its own wide receiver situation to deal with, as the future is uncertain for the team's current duo of Davante Adams and Garrett Wilson. Adams is under contract next season but his deal must be renegotiated due to a prohibitive base salary of a non-guaranteed $35.6 million (h/t ESPN's Rich Cimini ). If his contract isn't restructured, the six-time Pro Bowl receiver will be released. Wilson, the 2022 Offensive Rookie of the Year, will be eligible for an extension once the regular season comes to a close. NFL Network's Ian Rapoport reported on Sunday that Wilson has been "frustrated at the lack of looks" he's generated from Aaron Rodgers, clouding his long-term outlook with the team. Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow has expressed optimism that Higgins will re-sign with Cincinnati during the offseason. "Those discussions are ongoing," Burrow said on Dec. 9, per ESPN's Ben Baby . "I'm confident that I think we're going to do what it takes to bring Tee back. I know that I'm going to do what it takes to get him back and so is he. We've had those talks. Those are going to be offseason discussions. But I think we're excited about that opportunity." The former second-round pick has put together an impressive 2024 campaign, hauling in 69 receptions for 858 yards and a career-high 10 touchdowns in 11 games. Higgins should receive interest from multiple teams once he hits free agency, but don't expect Gardner to be part of the recruiting effort.
Meridian Mining UK Societas ( OTCMKTS:MRRDF – Get Free Report ) saw a significant drop in short interest in December. As of December 15th, there was short interest totalling 104,700 shares, a drop of 22.2% from the November 30th total of 134,500 shares. Based on an average trading volume of 27,400 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is currently 3.8 days. Meridian Mining UK Societas Stock Performance Meridian Mining UK Societas stock opened at C$0.27 on Friday. Meridian Mining UK Societas has a 12 month low of C$0.20 and a 12 month high of C$0.44. The stock’s 50 day simple moving average is C$0.31 and its two-hundred day simple moving average is C$0.31. About Meridian Mining UK Societas ( Get Free Report ) See Also Receive News & Ratings for Meridian Mining UK Societas Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Meridian Mining UK Societas and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .New Jersey fines firms $40K for sports betting violations
Despite significant success, harm reduction measures still controversial in AfricaNebraska holds on to beat Boston College 20-15 in the Pinstripe Bowl for its 1st bowl victory since 2015
Bhubaneswar: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bhubaneswar has organised its 12th and 13th Combined Convocation on 28th December 2024. Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, Hon’ble Union Minister of Education, Govt. of India graced the occasion as the Chief Guest and delivered the Convocation address. Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Advisor, Govt. of India; Dr. Ajit Kumar Mohanty, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary, Dept. of Atomic Energy, Govt. of India and Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Secretary, Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India were the Guests of Honour. Dr. Rajendra Prasad Singh, Chairman, Board of Governors (BoG), IIT Bhubaneswar presided over the Convocation. Prof. Shreepad Karmalkar, Director, IIT Bhubaneswar presented the Convocation report and awarded the degrees to the students. During this Convocation, the Institute conferred degrees on 1388 students for the academic years 2022-23 and 2023-24. Out of these students, 8% are PhD, 19% M.Tech, 14% M.Sc, 14% Dual degree (B.Tech and M.Tech) and 45% B.Tech. Speaking on the occasion, Hon’ble Minister Shri Pradhan said: “IIT Bhubaneswar should strive to become an institute of Knowledge, Research and Innovation. Being graduates of IIT, they should make efforts towards becoming job creators rather than being job seekers. They should make themselves ready to be contributors in Industrial Revolution 4.0. The educational institutions and faculty members should work towards redefining the attitude and aptitude of the students towards entrepreneurship.” He stressed that the research of the country should move beyond academic publications and achieve global benchmarks in terms of innovation and entrepreneurial acumen. “IIT Bhubaneswar and its students should work towards boosting the start-up and entrepreneurial ecosystem to enhance the growth process of Odisha by 2036 and of the country by 2047,” he added. In his address, Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood said stressed on knowledge creation through research and innovation to become globally competitive. Collaborative partnerships between academia and industry, fostering a multi-disciplinary approach, funding and investment in groundbreaking research and cutting-edge infrastructure and a skilled and diverse workforce are imperative for the development of research ecosystem. He mentioned about the Anusandhan Research Foundation (ANRF) and its objective. Dr. Ajit Kumar Mohanty said that human knowledge and human competence is irreplaceable even in the age of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The youth of the country have the potential to innovate, and they should utilise this power towards the development of the country, he added. Addressing the gathering, Prof. Abhay Karandikar appreciated IIT Bhubaneswar for becoming a hub of cutting-edge research and innovation. He mentioned that while the country has taken a giant leap in the field of science and technology to make a mark in global map. India has become the 3rd largest in terms of start-up ecosystem in the world which showcases the innovation and entrepreneurial prowess of the country. The youth of the country should take the cue and work towards contributing in making India leader in the field of research and innovation. Speaking on the occasion, Prof. Shreepad Karmalkar, Director, IIT Bhubaneswar presented a detailed report on various efforts and achievements of IIT Bhubaneswar. He said, “Since its inception in the year 2008, IIT Bhubaneswar has traversed a long way. In recent years, it has aligned itself with the NEP 2020 initiative towards the Viksit Bharat @ 2047 vision. We are working with the motto: Follow no one, But learn from Everyone, and Acknowledge it too. Follow no one means Be Original, Learn from Everyone means Be open to feedback and criticism, and Acknowledge it too – means duly acknowledge others contributions in your achievements.” He shared the key milestones of IIT Bhubaneswar’s journey towards excellence in research, academics and entrepreneurship. Dr. Rajendra Prasad Singh, Chairman, Board of Governors (BoG) motivated the students and said that with its cutting-edge facilities and focus on innovation, the institute empowers graduates to lead in transformative technologies while upholding environmental sustainability and cultural values. He stressed upon finding simple solution to every complex problem. After the Convocation, Hon’ble Minister visited the ground breaking Industry-Academia Research and Innovation Center on Silicon Carbide and interacted with the semiconductor researchers. He also visited the Research and Entrepreneurship Park and interacted with the Start-ups incubated under IIT Bhubaneswar. During this Convocation, the Institute conferred degrees on 1388 students out of which 105 PhD, 269 M. Tech, 197 M.Sc, 192 Dual Degree (B. Tech & M. Tech), and 625 B. Tech for the academic years 2022-23 and 2023-24. It was a proud moment for the graduating students, their parents, the faculty and staff members and the administration of the institute. For the year 2022-23, the President of India Gold Medal was awarded to Shri Harsh Singh Jadon of the Computer Science and Engineering for the best academic performance among all the B.Tech students. For the year 2023-24, the President of India Gold Medal was awarded to Shri Arnav Kumar Behera of the Computer Science and Engineering. An Interaction Meeting on “Exploring Pathways and Prospects for the Future of Research in India” with Prof. Ajay Kumar Sood, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Secretary, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India was successfully organised by DST, ANRF and IIT Bhubaneswar today. The dignitaries addressed the queries of the faculties members, deans and Vice Chancellors from various institutes across Odisha.Daily Post Nigeria Sabuwar kwamishiniyar mata a Kano ta fara tattara bayanan marasa karfi a jihar Home News Politics Metro Entertainment Sport Hausa Sabuwar kwamishiniyar mata a Kano ta fara tattara bayanan marasa karfi a jihar Published on December 23, 2024 By Nana Ismail Sabuwar Kwamishinan ma’aikatar mata, yara da masu bukata ta musamman a Kano, Hajiya Amina Abdullahi HOD ta gudanar da ziyarar duba ayyuka zuwa gidan yara na Tudun Maliki, Cibiyar Gyaran VVF ta Kwalli, da Gidan ajiye wadanda aka tsina a Unguwar Sheka. Manufar ziyarar ita ce tattara bayanai na gaskiya game da ci gaban da aka samu da kuma kalubalen da wadannan cibiyoyin ke fuskanta. Wannan bayani na cikin wani sanarwa daga Bintu Nuhu Yakasai, Daraktar yada labaran ma’aikatar. Sanarwar ta kara da cewa, a lokacin ziyarar, Kwamishiniyar ta nuna jajircewarta sosai wajen inganta abubuwan more rayuwa da ayyukan da wadannan cibiyoyin ke bayarwa. Ta yabawa muhimmancin rawar da suke takawa wajen tallafa wa al’ummomi masu rauni, ciki har da mata, yara, da kuma mutanen da ke da nakasa. A yayin ziyarar da ta kai Gidan Yara na Tudun Maliki, Kwamishiniyar ta nuna damuwa game da rashin ma’aikatan lafiya a asibitin da ke wajen. Hajiya Amina HOD ta roki a dauki matakin gaggawa wajen tura ma’aikatan lafiya domin tabbatar da lafiya da tsaron mazauna gidan. Kwamishinan ta kuma bayyana cewa tana la’akari da kafa wani cibiyar wasanni a cikin Gidan Yara na Tudun Maliki. Wannan shiri, a cewarta, zai samar da dama ga mazauna gidan don yin ayyuka daban-daban, don inganta rayuwarsu da kuma samar da yanayi na farin ciki. A yayin ziyarar Cibiyar Gyaran Kwalli, Kwamishinan ta yi alkawarin samar da kulawa mai inganci ga marasa lafiya na da ke fama da VVF. Related Topics: Jihar Kano Don't Miss Gwamnatin Kano, NDLEA za su yaƙi shaye-shaye You may like Sarkin Kano ya nemi a kawo karshen fadan daba Mutane biyu sun muta a hatsarin mota a jihar Kano Jihar Kano ta yi zarra a gasar Noma ta kasa ta 2024 Sabon kwamishinan ilimi na Kano ya kama aiki Gwamnatin Kano ta ware wa ma’aikatar jin kai biliyan uku Ba zamu lamunci karkatar da kudin al’umma ba – Majalisar dokokin Kano Advertise About Us Contact Us Privacy-Policy Terms Copyright © Daily Post Media Ltd
An energized SMU squad will carry a three-game winning streak against up-and-down Virginia in the Atlantic Coast Conference opener for each team on Saturday in Dallas. The game is the first for the Mustangs' basketball team as a member of one of the nation's perennial powerhouse leagues, but don't expect SMU (7-2) to wilt in the spotlight. The Mustangs lambasted Alabama State 101-72 on Tuesday in their most recent outing. Their two losses came against Butler on the road by 11 points and against Mississippi State at home by five. Kario Oquendo poured in a season-high 20 points to lead seven SMU scorers in double figures in the win over Alabama State. Matt Cross added 12 points and 10 rebounds for the Mustangs while Samet Yigitoglu and Chuck Harris scored 12 points apiece. Yohan Traore and B.J. Edwards each had 11 and Jerrell Colbert hit for 10. "I think it's finally getting to the point where we are starting to figure out how to play as a team," Oquendo said. "You can see it from game to game. We're getting better, and every practice, we're getting better. I believe the more games we play together, the more the things start coming together." SMU is second in scoring per game in the ACC (averaging 88.3 points) and assists per game (16.4). The Mustangs lead the ACC in rebound margin (plus-10.9), total rebound average (43.3 per game) and offensive rebounds (15.2 a game) -- all in all, an impressive start to their campaign. Boopie Miller is the SMU leader in scoring average (15.6 points per game) and assists (5.8), with Cross the top rebounder (7.5 per game). The Cavaliers (5-3) head to Dallas after an 87-69 loss at No. 13 Florida on Wednesday in the SEC/ACC Challenge. Elijah Saunders scored 19 points for Virginia while Isaac McKneely added 12 points -- all on 3-pointers. The Cavaliers, however, had no answer for the Florida defense, committing 15 turnovers that led to 20 points for the Gators. Virginia led 18-9 early but were down by four at halftime. They got to within a point after a deep basket by Saunders in the opening minute of the second half, but that was as close as the Cavaliers would come. "Overall, I was very, very pleased with the first half," Virginia interim coach Ron Sanchez said. "I think that we handled adversity well. This group is on its way of becoming who they're going to be. It's painful growth, but you grow nonetheless." McKneely leads the Cavaliers with 13.1 points per game, followed by Saunders at 10.3. Jacob Cofie is the top rebounder at 6.4 per game, while Andrew Rohde has a team-best average of three assists. The teams have met just once before, with the Cavaliers outlasting SMU 76-73 in the semifinals of the Corpus Christi Challenge on Nov. 29, 2013. --Field Level MediaGeorgia quarterback Carson Beck announces plan to enter NFL draft after season-ending elbow injuryBarcelona Rises: Thousands Demand Affordable Housing
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AAP MLA Naresh Balyan detained by Delhi Police in 2023 extortion case following BJP's audio leakGeorgia quarterback Carson Beck on Saturday announced his plans to enter the NFL draft, five days after having season-ending elbow surgery . Beck, a fifth-year senior, made his NFL plans official on social media. Beck suffered a right elbow injury in the first half of the Bulldogs’ 22-19 overtime win over Texas in the Southeastern Conference championship game on Dec. 7 in Atlanta. Beck had surgery on Monday to repair his ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow. The procedure was performed by Dr. Neal ElAttrache in Los Angeles. Beck is expected to begin throwing next spring. He could have returned for a sixth season but instead will enter the NFL draft. Beck posted on Instagram: “The past five years at the University of Georgia have been nothing short of a dream come true and I will forever cherish the memories that have been made.” Gunner Stockton, who took over for Beck in the second half against Texas, will start for Georgia on Wednesday in the Sugar Bowl against Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals. Beck has started every game of the 2023 and 2024 seasons. He was 24-3 as a starter. Beck passed for 3,941 yards with 24 touchdowns and only six interceptions in 2023 but had more difficulties with turnovers this season as he passed for 28 touchdowns with 12 interceptions. He completed 7 of 13 passes for 56 yards before his injury in the SEC championship game. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football
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A FORMER Jersey doctor who is behind bars for a long history of financial crimes has been given extra prison time after trying to block authorities from recovering stolen money and spending thousands on expensive dinners and holidays while owing the taxpayer millions. Gerald Martin Smith, who was jailed earlier this year for obtaining a Covid loan with a fake name and using part of it to help pay off a £72m court order, has had 13 months added to his sentence. Smith, who was previously jailed for stealing millions from a software company, deliberately “obstructed” investigators from taking control of his properties in central London to help repay the millions he owes to taxpayers. Undated handout picture of Gerald Smith of Wentworth, Surrey, who was jailed for eight years after he stole £35m from a computer software company in Berkshire. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Wednesday November 14, 2007. The multi-millionaire businessman serving an eight-year prison sentence for fraud has been ordered to pay nearly £41 million. The Assets Recovery Agency (ARA) said it believed the confiscation order was the largest amount secured under criminal proceedings to date. See PA story CRIME Businessman. Photo credit should read: PA Wire...REF:CRIME Businessman 1.jpg.NOP. (39476488) The Serious Fraud Office, which oversees financial crime cases in the UK, uncovered Smith’s orchestration of a plan to conceal the ownership of a Bloomsbury property containing three apartments to avoid paying an £80m court order. The former doctor persuaded an old friend from medical school to transfer ownership of the property to a company registered in the British Virgin Islands that Smith secretly controlled. Smith also changed the locks and arranged for two tenants to occupy the flat to further obstruct the selling of the property that was required to recover stolen funds. Investigators also discovered that Smith continued to breach court-imposed spending restrictions by receiving regular financial support from his brother. Over a 19-month period, he spent over £53,000 dining at luxury London restaurants and enjoying holidays in Mallorca. Smith was jailed for eight years in 2006 for stealing £35m from a software company called Izodia. The theft caused the collapse of the stock market-listed company and shareholders lost all their investments. In 2007, the former doctor was ordered to pay a confiscation order of £41m – the largest order made in criminal proceedings at the time. Smith did not pay any of the stolen money back following his release, and he told the court in 2019 that he was too poor to pay back what he owed – despite visiting numerous luxury destinations and using a private jet for more than 100 trips in a single year. In 2022, Mr Smith avoided jail after what was described as “lavish” spending of frozen assets at bars, restaurants and wine merchants. He was instead handed an eight-month suspended sentence. Mr Smith’s criminal record dates back to 1993, when he was jailed for two years for taking £2m from the pension fund of Farr Group, a construction company. Serious Fraud Office director Nick Ephgrave said: “We are determined to prevent criminals benefiting from their crime, and wherever assets are hidden or obstructed, we will go after them. “This sentence should serve as a warning to Mr Smith and those assisting him that we won’t stop in our recovery and enforcement of court orders against him.”Notre Dame's Danny Nelson scores twice, defending champ US beats Latvia 5-1 in world junior hockeyThree decades after JonBenét Ramsey’s death, her murder remains officially unsolved. But the Little Miss Colorado’s demise lingers as the archetypal crime mystery. Sleuths continue to hash out theories: in bustling and competing Reddit communities, on podcasts and network documentaries . The speculation broadly falls into two opposing camps: Was the murder an inside job by someone in the family, like parents John and Patsy or even older brother Burke? Or did an outside intruder somehow pierce the sanctity of their upscale Boulder home? The case was perplexing from the moment Patsy found a ransom note the morning of December 26, 1996. “Listen carefully,” began the three-page letter. It went on to blame a “foreign faction” for her daughter’s disappearance and requested $118,000 from her husband, Access Graphics CEO John, for her safe return. The onetime Miss West Virginia called 911 in a panic. The note, the FBI later said, felt like it was staged rather than written by a stranger actually seeking ransom after a kidnapping. The suspicion ramped up when John found JonBenét’s body later that day, bound and strangled with a garrote in a small room practically hidden in the home’s basement. Still, the case would not have mushroomed into a frenzy without the sudden flood of footage of JonBenét’s child beauty contests. Before Toddlers & Tiaras turned pageant moms into pop archetypes, the subculture was mostly hidden from view. The eerie footage of the little girl parading around in teased hair and heavy makeup played on an endless loop on 24/7 cable television as broadcasters debated the case nonstop. The parents’ insulation with lawyers and spokespeople only heightened suspicions. The theories proliferated. Eventually, in 1998, a grand jury was convened to hear charges against the Ramseys, but as far as most people remember, nothing came of it. Without a trial to sift through fact and fiction, a content boom took over: books, scripted TV movies, documentaries, and the then-emerging landscape of true-crime message boards and forums. The cycle continues. Reddit has replaced message boards and Usenet forums. Theories have zoomed in on specific family members. And a new scripted series is forthcoming on Paramount+ , starring Melissa McCarthy as Patsy and Clive Owen as John. Netflix’s Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey, directed by Joe Berlinger, doesn’t really offer a new take. The three-part documentary series makes the case for an intruder, but it does so by focusing on police and prosecutorial missteps, a current trend in true-crime content. Berlinger directed 1996’s Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills , which centered on three teenagers — known as the West Memphis Three — convicted of murdering four boys. The documentary examined the moral panic incited by violent murders of children, and his work was widely credited with helping free the teens. Cold Case asks many of the same questions about agendas and power that Paradise Lost did. The filmmakers have the cooperation of John, who remarried after Patsy’s death from ovarian cancer in 2006 and now lives in Utah. Paula Woodward, a journalist who wrote two books about the case with his cooperation, is also a major talking head. But unlike the West Memphis Three, the affluent Ramseys were not unsophisticated, working-poor teens in rural America. And in trying to make a simplistic case for railroading, the documentary skips over cultural nuances that could make for a more definitive account of the story. Cold Case starts with the confusion at the Ramsey home on the day after the murder. The police officers involved in the investigation did not talk to Berlinger. But in the docuseries, John claims cops and reporters promoted misinformation. John points out that after his discovery of JonBenét’s body, Linda Arndt, a detective on the scene, became convinced he did it. She later gave an infamous interview saying a nonverbal exchange with John led to her conclusion. But John, CEO of a company that reached $1 billion in sales that year, was treated deferentially by police from the start. Officers viewed him and Patsy as victims of a kidnapping, not potential suspects. Cops didn’t seal off the home like a crime scene. Instead, they called in victim advocates, and the Ramseys called friends from the neighborhood to their home for emotional support. Arguably, the scene was hopelessly contaminated and any conclusive answers that could have emerged almost certainly died that day. That wasn’t because the police suspected the Ramseys, but rather, the opposite: because they didn’t. Still, the series claims that law enforcement painted the Ramseys in a bad light. Cops said there were no footsteps in the snow to indicate an intruder when, according to John, it hadn’t snowed. He claims police leaked that John had flown back to their second home in Atlanta with JonBenét’s casket in his plane when, in fact, he had done no such thing. Still, the FBI agreed an intruder was unlikely and suggested examining the family first. The police pursued leads that JonBenét might have been sexually abused. The series takes issue with the consideration of evidence that JonBenét’s bed-wetting was getting worse at the time of the murder, and this can be a sign of sexual abuse. In the series, John shrugs as he dismisses the police’s consultation with former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur, an expert on incest, who cautioned police that a “normal,” image-conscious father and family wasn’t evidence of a lack of abuse. But the police soon moved on from John to Patsy. Detective Steve Thomas settled on the theory that Patsy had murdered her daughter. He believed that with her 40th birthday approaching, she snapped due to a bed-wetting. It’s telling that Thomas’s theory was ultimately the one that took off. He had more power in the department than Arndt, who thought Patsy was innocent. True-crime cases are always a mix of human interest and forensics, as evidenced by the series’s focus on the media’s portrayals of the Ramseys as unsympathetic. Still, Cold Case never quite acknowledges how, early on, even intimate friends of both Ramseys found their lack of cooperation with police unethical. John and Patsy gave DNA samples in 1996 but refused to come to police headquarters for an official interrogation . Instead, in an early January 1997 interview on CNN , a subdued Patsy declared a “killer on the loose.” In April, they finally went to police headquarters . Did their class entitlement contribute to confusion between them and friends and police? By framing them unilaterally as underdogs, the documentary leaves that question unanswered. The series instead focuses on the more extreme examples of the media’s witch hunt at the time. On the talk show Geraldo, a mock trial took place and a so-called expert claimed a video of JonBenét swinging a trumpet was evidence of sexual abuse; one panelist called her a “tarted-up miniature-dwarf hooker.” Cold Case ’s binary understanding of the battle lines limits its insight. According to Lawrence Schiller’s massive 2000 book about the investigation, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town , the Boulder DA had a liberal culture, emphasizing community policing and plea bargaining instead of going to trial. Detective Thomas was out of step with Boulder’s liberal culture. District Attorney Alex Hunter didn’t accept Thomas’s claims about Patsy. In 1998, Hunter brought in detective Lou Smit because Smit had solved one case involving a murder and abduction. Smit later claimed the Ramseys were people of faith and couldn’t have murdered their daughter. He offered an unproven “stun gun” theory, claiming that two marks on JonBenét’s skin were about the size of a stun gun used to keep her quiet, which would point to an intruder. The documentary re-platforms these claims, and the series presents Smit, uncritically, as the “Sherlock Holmes of his time.” But Smit’s police work, as much as Arndt’s and Thomas’s, comes off as heavily influenced by their personal biases. Arndt’s work with women survivors shaped how she viewed Patsy as a victim and John as a perpetrator. Thomas’s dislike of Patsy bordered on misogynist confusion about women snapping at 40. Smit’s bonding with them over religion was equally unprofessional. Hunter ultimately sent the case to a grand jury in 1998, and both Thomas and Smit testified . The grand jury voted to indict the Ramseys for child endangerment. In his 1999 announcement after the grand jury concluded its work, DA Hunter said there was insufficient evidence for prosecution. He arguably protected the Ramseys by not airing out the grand jury’s decision — seemingly, per Schiller’s book, to protect himself from the political fallout either way. Both Thomas and Smit resigned in protest. It’s unclear if the Ramseys knew the grand jury voted to indict them. The world was in the dark about this development until a judge forced the release of the charging documents in 2013. Instead, the Ramseys were very active non-suspects. They wrote a best-selling book about their alleged persecution by police, The Death of Innocence . Michael Tracey, a communications professor, made a documentary with them about the supposed media witch hunt. He reappears in Cold Case as a talking head. The last episode investigates old leads about potential suspects from the pageant circuit that never went anywhere. But the most revealing aspect of the final episode is how much the series seems to be in the dark about the police or FBI theories. Early on, the series makes the point that DNA evidence found on JonBenét — on items of clothing and under her fingernails —pointed away from the family and that the police hid the information. But by the end, the docuseries admits that it’s still unclear whether that genetic material, which might just be degraded touch DNA, can exonerate or implicate anyone at all. Cold Case seems confused about the fact that this case is, in some ways, an exception. Many elements of the case — from the length of the ransom note and the improbability of a stranger kidnapping for ransom to the discovery of an alleged kidnapping victim in her own home — make it a difficult case to universalize. In 2008, Mary Lacy, the new Boulder district attorney, took the unusual, unprecedented step of apologizing to the Ramseys and seemingly exonerating them. “I’d get letters from people for years that say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’” John says in the documentary. How could they not? “That’s what you were told by the media, by the police,” he says. The series’s portrait of John, now a remarried grandfather, bears no trace of the litigious figure who hired Trump attorney L. Lin Wood early on to sue media outlets for libel. (That attorney has since been disbarred .) John ran for a congressional seat as a Republican and wrote two more books claiming innocence. John’s domination of the narrative — both in the docuseries and in his books — has helped occlude the fact that it was the “Patsy did it” theory that allowed the case to even land before a grand jury. This raises its own questions. Is there a gendered element involved in cases where victims become suspects? Most parents — and mothers — without the Ramsey resources would have been easily railroaded. It might be too much to expect this docuseries to offer some kind of wider context or patterns about the limitations of police or their relationship with district attorneys, and none is provided. Instead, in trying to present John’s perspective as the objective truth, Cold Case unintentionally highlights the fraught nature of all the legal and forensic facts in this case. In some ways, the series functions best as a corrective to some of the more irresponsible instances of platformed conspiracies — for instance, the 2017 CBS special that accused Burke of killing his sister, which he denies. A film from that same year, the faux docudrama Casting JonBenet, took a different route. Interviewing actors from the Boulder area for a supposed casting for a scripted series about the Ramseys, the film brought out their speculations and direct connections to the case. It was a subtle unpacking of how the Boulder community made sense of the murder over time. And ultimately, the case remains compelling as gothic-spectacle sleuth bait. For those who think the Ramseys did it, the case speaks to the idea that evil is within, that money and power can cover up abuse within families. For those who believe in an intruder, the story confirms the notion that evil lurks outside. Cold Case presents that latter story in its most coherent form yet. But it won’t be enough to put the speculation to rest.
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