"It's a greater mystery than what happened to JonBenét...." - Joe Berlinger is CJAF | Forensic Files

this episode contains mentions of graphic or sensitive material that may be triggering listener discretion is
[Music] advised hi everyone welcome back to the show made by the crime junkie Ashley
flowers for those who are crime junkie AF and I have something really exciting for you today especially if you're a fan
of true crime documentaries my next guest is considered a Pioneer in the social justice documentary space Making Waves
early on with his film's brothers keeper and HBO's Paradise Lost Trilogy which was like an OG True Crime dock for me
and it actually was a catalyst in the freeing of the West Memphis 3 after almost two decades in prison and he
recently released his newest docu series which I bet you have watched already Cold Case who killed Jean Benet Ramsey
on Netflix I am very excited to welcome Emmy winning and Academy Award nominated
director Joe Bur to Crime junkie AF High Hey so uh I'm big fan so it's about time
we finally have a have a tetet as they say I a big fan I'm so excited you're here and the timing is so perfect we
just covered John B Ramsay that case is my Roman Empire i' I've thought about it
constantly since I was I always say tabloid height yeah and her age so I kind of I would love to start there with
your most recent work I would love to know why that case and why now yeah well why now is actually I think the case can
be solved if the Boulder Police does certain DNA testing you know I got to know John Ramsey I got to know the work
of detective L Smith I'm lucky in life that I can pick and choose the things I want to do and I felt like this case you
know this poor family you know has been brutalized by an unfair inept process and I mean can
you imagine losing your child and for poor John Ramsey he actually lost a previous child yeah so can you imagine
you know you lose your 22-year-old daughter in a car wreck and John Benet they felt early on was there to kind of
try to bring them out of that tragedy she's then brutally murdered and then they're blamed for it and it's I just
can't think of another family that was so brutalized in a particular era of media that fascinates me that we can
talk about in a minute this was a particular era in the history of media that just created a
tsunami of Shame and when I looked at the case when I mentioned to friends hey I'm thinking about doing the John Benet
case invariably very smart people in my world who said oh isn't that the story where the parents you know killed their
daughter and so I just I just felt compelled to retell the story in part because you know Netflix does very well
with these kinds of stories so I knew it would get some attention uh but mainly because I think it can be solved you
know there's some very specific DNA work that needs to be done and despite the statement that the Boulder Police put
out the other day in reaction to the film there seems to be institutional reluctance to really do the right thing
despite a whole new crew is there in Boulder you know so I I I just I don't know I felt it was time to tell this
story let's stop there and I we talk more about the media because the I'm obsessed you know I'm a student of the
media as well as being a a maker of media so this particular era actually connects to us now and that's been a
longer concern of mine can you tell for our listeners who don't know what was the statement that they put out after
your documentary came out uh that basically the idea that the documentary implying that they aren't pursuing every
lead and doing everything that can can be done is false um and that they're doing
everything that can be done but the reality is the family they were promised uh regular updates you know uh the
Colorado Bureau of Investigation has a cold case review board the the ramsy had to petition the
governor of Colorado to actually make this case available to the cold case review board um and they made certain
recommendations to the the Boulder Police of things that they should do this was almost two years ago they
promised the family regular updates and maybe they're KN deep in DNA testing and
doing all the things they're supposed to be doing but it doesn't feel that way to
the family and there's been very little information concrete information conveyed to them so my my response back
was hey if you're doing DNA testing let the family know you know which is strange and then when that's what I met
with John he's like I I don't even know I don't expect to know like every step of
you know what they're doing and how they're doing it but he's like for me not even to know if they still have the
evidence is strange yeah and I think so as well exactly I mean look there's some
very specific DNA testing that needs to happen the F you know the first is there
were some items that were tested back in the day that should just be retested DNA
technology has advanced tremendously in the last 30 years there are items five or six items that were sent to the crime
lab back in the day that were never tested inexplicably those items need to be tested but the most important thing
in my opinion that needs to be done is that there is DNA in found back in 97 in the Underpants of John Benet she
had some blood from where she had been assaulted with a paint handle paintbrush handle her blood mixed with some
foreign unidentified male DNA that's the DNA that is the most interesting in this
case when when we say foreign we mean non-family member so John benet's DNA via her blood is mixed with an
unidentified male person and it's a very compromised sample because old technology and also
it's mixed with her blood so there is technology that can separate out those two DNA profiles and give us a much
better DNA profile so that we can take advantage or the family can take advantage of genealogical you know
investigative genetic geneology exactly and that as we know you know Green River
Killer Golden State killer I mean it's it's been a a massive positive tool in recent years on cold cases so let's get
that testing done you know and and if you feel like you can't talk to the Press about it then tell the family
what's going on they owe it because the massive [ __ ] of that crime scene of that investigation the leaking of false
stories to the press to smoke out the ramies police or behind which is kind of wild exactly all of that false
information that was leaked to the Press by the police to pressure the ramies to
confess to the crime which is absurd uh because of all that they've had a legacy of pain for multi multiple
decades they owe this family regular updates and and doing everything they can do to solve the
crime I know John and I mentioned this John's theory is like the only thing that makes sense to me is that they lost
it and they don't want to say that they lost it do you have a theory about what might be happening or what they could be
you know trying to like hide away from everyone because in my mind what I told him is I was like why wouldn't you to
your point no one's there anymore who was there in 1996 why wouldn't you want to be the department the detective the
chief of police who solves the Jean Benet Ramsey case it's a mystery to me it's a greater mystery than what
happened to John Benet why won't the police take action because it's so obvious they need to maybe they did lose
it I I don't know um I don't I don't have a theory you know but they owe this family that you know that
respect how long did you spend working on the documentary I think you know start to finish about two years um wow
yeah um you know the first part of it is you know first part of it is deciding if
I want to do it so like immersing myself seeing what my take is then hiring a team I had a great showrunner a guy
named Craig Denton and a great team Al together so um you know then we start figuring out the story you know the
story we want to tell getting access to people um and interesting joh you know like you you know John was just so
unguarded you know to to the conspiracy theorists out there who believe you know
still believe these guys are guilty here's a guy who's 80 years old who agreed to do this interview he he didn't
ask to be paid which I don't pay for interviews for my docs but it's become a very thorny issue in our business that
people ask for payment he didn't ask for payment which is usually the first conversation I have with people and then
tell them we don't pay and then some people drop off um he didn't ask for questions in advance he didn't ask for a
review of the content he just agreed to do it and to me a guy who's 80 who's still pounding the table in Boulder to
get testing done who's you know sitting down with you know my my reputation is like I'm a serious journalist so like he
had absolutely no fear of sitting down with me I mean it's just it's just illogical to think that the this these
guys are responsible for the crime was there anyone you wanted to get for the doc that you
couldn't um yeah detective Steve Thomas of course you know uh we we had a couple
of uh I should say Craig uh D Tron my showrunner had a couple of AU record conversations with him um he was you
know given all the litigation that it was pleasant conversation and but given the litigation around uh you know his
book uh he decided it was not for him um you know I'm God knows what he thinks after the show but right to me it's a
very truthful laying out of the case do you think so you you go through in depth
in the documentary a couple of different really compelling suspects that came up
along the way yeah do you think any of them are still viable or was the intention just to show like hey there
are these really important stories you might not have heard and that just like opens the door to what else is possible
well from an investigative standpoint I think anybody is still a suspect uh including the ramies by the way even
though I think it's absurd to think that they did it and they would be the first
people to tell you let's do new DNA testing and everyone needs to be put back on the table because the DNA was so
compromised in this case that I think people were ruled out who shouldn't have been necessarily doesn't and that's why
we spent so much time on episode three going through the people who you know have been ruled out because they were I
think ruled out for the wrong reasons some have aliis I'm not saying any of the people including John Mark Carr uh
are guilty but a much stronger case a much more logical case could have been made against them than the Ramsay uh cuz
I do believe you know if the ramies are guilty of anything it's I think they were a little naive about the dangers of
putting their daughter into that kind of beauty pageant environment because that
that pageant world is Rife with pedophiles unfortunately and so you know my theory is not it's not my exclusive
Theory obviously but I I I I think the killer came from the pedophile World associated with the pageants um but who
knows we need you know that's the problem with this case is just people I mean and like I get a headache looking
at these Reddit threads you know that I that I decided to check out after the show came out and people cursing me out
for you know I've been on that Forum yeah it's it's like are you are you kid don't you have better things to do like
I don't want to bite the hand of the people who like my shows but like on the other hand like if you think I mean look
the bottom line is you know people get lost in all these different theories and rabbit holes and you know the truth is
with any murder case if you or I were charged for something you could pick up the rock
underneath our lives and you would find lots of things that are hard to explain or unless you have the full story lots
of things sometimes can be incriminating when you don't have the full story in anybody's life so you have to focus on
the forensic evidence and to me like all these crazy ideas go away when you just
focus actually on one thing if you focus on the autopsy report which nobody has disputed and you understand that this
poor little girl was strangled to death while she was alive a garat was put around her
neck which is a sophisticated device that I certainly don't know how to make let alone a 9-year-old boy or or a
mother uh you know she was choked with a device that applies pressure to the neck and then they
release so you have a little bit of breathing we know this that she died this way uh yeah she also had a huge
crack to the skull and a big gash that I defy a a 9-year-old to be able to do but
let's just focus on the strangulation she di she was alive while she was being strangled we know that because she had
patial hemorrhaging in her eyes and in her heart that is classic strangulation and so to those who think
that the mother freaked out after a bed wedding incident and there's no evidence
of a wet bed but do we really think she had the presence of mind to go fashion a
gat put it around her neck torture her and we know she was tortured for a period of time because there are red
marks on her neck that sh that were caused most likely by her fingers trying to pry the garat a little loose so she
could breathe do we really think that a 9-year-old could do that do we really think that a mother who freaked out and
accidentally killed her daughter over a bed wedding incident could then stage this kind of a crime scene and choke
their daughter to death I mean it's just illogical so people go down these you know the undigested pineapple the this
the that the other look at how the girl died that's what people need to focus in
on you know did you one of the questions I as I was putting together my episode and you spent years longer in it than I
did did did they ever find the area where her bladder released cuz she was Face Down based on like the urine stains
on her underwear and her pants but did they did they ever find out where that happened like was there I know there was
nothing in her bed were there areas of the carpet like do they know not to my not to my knowledge yeah so strange yeah
so let's talk about the media you said that was a huge part for you yeah you know one of the things and we're going
to go off topic a little bit here one of the things that greatly concerns me and
has concerned me in fact I you know people don't often associate Blair which too with me they forget that I made that
which was a total cinematic dis disaster the wor the worst sequel in cinema history destroyed by
the Press but one of the themes of that film which a whole new generation now has discovered that film and and the
theme resonates and by the way just to defend myself a little bit the studio it was well documented back then that the
studios lost faith in my vision and totally recut the film and I disavowed that of the film before it's released so
that you know that do you have a secret cut somewhere I do well I do I do have a
director's cut that's at Lion's gate and I begged Lion's gay to release the director's cut but it's fallen on on
deaf air de ears but you know you know but I'll take responsibility for the movie whatever you know but it was
completely recut and the whole idea of the film was like turned into a meat grinder and if people go to my DVD extra
of Blair Witch 2 I I spend two hours dissecting how the studio [ __ ] up my film but the point is the theme of that
film which some audiences have rediscovered is that a dangerous thing is happening in media which is the
blurring of the line between fiction and reality between entertainment and news and at some point if we blur the line
enough so Blair wit posited we're not going to know the difference uh and this is where we find ourselves in media
today half the world or half this country wakes up and on you name the issue has a completely different version
of reality than what the other half believes you know we just went through an election where we know that people
don't just have disagreements they have completely opposing World Views and have
the opposite view on the truth of certain matters as the other half that's a scary place to be and I've always been
concerned about that and I think you can trace that all the way back you know you
had said that this was your foundational case to make you a a crime junkie this was this was the foundational case for
me that made me really nervous about where media was heading as as a student of media specifically this was the era
where there was the Advent of the 24-hour news cycle which was new you know OJ has News 247 that was new there
was an explosion in the number of cable networks you know all of a sudden there was 500 cable networks and most
importantly Network news presidents realized that news makes money there was once a time in media where there was a
sacran line dividing line between the news division of a network which was there as
a public service in exchange for an FCC license to deliver the news and then there was the other half of the network
the entertainment division that was intended to make money somewhere in the early 90s people realize wait news can
make money let's let's do as much news as we can let's blur the lines let's uh lower our journalistic standards and
this case was like the poster child for that false stories were leaked to the press that were
completely either completely untrue or big chunks of Truth were missing and reporters just ran with them and it
created this tsunami of attention I mean this nightly feeding of the monster had
to happen because now everybody was engaged and I think it's I think that it it it it basically created the rise of
opinion journalism and that's where we are today you know you watch MSNBC and then you click over to Fox for
the same story and there's literally two opposite versions of reality and and I think that's you know troubling and I
think I think it all started with OJ and the John Benet Ramsey case is there a way
back good question because social media certainly hasn't helped um I'm not smart enough to figure out
how we go back but uh I think I think opinion journalism and the elusiveness of the truth is the era in which we live
and you know it's why there's so much dysfunction in this country now and so is that what informed so much of your
work and the cases that you choose like are you drawn to these cases that you feel have been misrepresented or you're
just like hey let's let's play the game a little if this is what people want like I'll give you maybe a realer
version than you've gotten before this is something that fascinates me and interests me uh and I did a whole series
for peacock a couple of years ago called Shadowland which really embedded with people who just believe in conspiracy
theories so it's something that interests me but like when it comes to Crime you know it's funny like I'm
called The True Crime Pioneer whatever the whole True Crime that phrase gives me the willies a little bit because I
think of myself as a social justice filmmaker who has worked in the crime space you know most notably in wrongful
conviction um but true crime you know has this baggage that you know we're wallowing in
the misery of others as a piece of entertainment and I do object to that so because I don't think that's what I do I
don't think that's what you do but I think there's a lot of irresponsible True Crime out there that that just kind
of wallows in the misery of others and I think consumers of this product which is
my audience so you know I think sometimes people forget that there's like real victims on the other side of
things like this is this may be your your evening uh popcorn hang but you know for somebody else it's actually
their life and what happened to their life so anytime I do a project um you know I ask myself what what can I what's
the needle I can move forward what's the social Justice thing even you know my Ted Bundy stuff got a lot of you know
people were like oh God you're giving a platform to a serial killer you're an awful person you know because I actually
did both conversations with the Killer and the Zack Efron movie extremely Wicked which was just a whole bunch of
bizarre coincidences of how that came to be that I did two bundies at the same time which we can save for another day
but the whole reason I decided to go down this serial killer route particularly with Bundy is you know I
had two College age daughters at home Fork Thanksgiving a few years ago they were the prototypical Bundy um victim
you know young Collegiate women uh with long hair um and uh and they're both very
bright I know I sound like a proud father but one of them was just graduating from Columbia University the
other one was entering MIT and I said to them hey do you guys know who Ted Bundy
is I'm thinking about doing a show about Ted Bundy and both of them had no idea who he was and so I said hey so I said
hey ask your friends text you know so some very smart people were texted do you know who Ted Bundy is and very few
actually knew so for me the social justice reason or the compelling reason to you know not give a you know not to
put a serial killer on a pedestal or glorify all the things that I was accused of but as a cautionary tale I
felt really good about putting out you know as a cautionary tale a reminder that just because somebody is
charming good-looking and white doesn't mean you should trust them I mean all of
these you know Bundy's Mo was to you know go into a library with his cast or a beach cres you know and to get and to
appeal to young women to like can you help take my books to the car and then he would kill them you know so
everything I do whether it's literal wrongful conviction which has been a passion of mine um or whether it's Ted
Bundy I I ask myself what is the needle I can move and with John Benet I felt like yeah there's been a lot of stuff
out there but both but they first of all some of it like the 2016 CBS stuff that
accused Burke and was the subject of a defamation lawsuit is some of the most irresponsible storytelling you can ever
imagine so I felt that needed to be corrected but there hasn't been you know I haven't seen your thing so I I'll
include I'll include yours you know you know as as a good one but I haven't seen
it yet so but but there hadn't up until the point I decided to make my show there hadn't been like a very cleare
eyed dissection of this case and really separating the wheat from the chaff and focusing on what happened and I think
that's kind of my brand is like to kind of dispel stereotypes and to have this very cleare eyed analysis was it hard to
decide CU my episode ended up being three and a half hours was it hard to decide what to put in and what to leave
out cuz there's so much to that case there is and um this one I thought deserved for so it was it was
challenging um and I had to you know on the one hand you don't want to give oxygen to all the crazy ideas out there
about how this crime happened on the other hand by by omitting it um you know people then call you out for it like
it's like I mean yeah what do you wish you could what what was it what's the fourth episode give us the I I just
would have I just would have pulverized some of these other crazy ideas you know
we we just we give short shrift to the pineapple thing because it's just s such a ludicrous part of
again there are there are facts that in anybody's life or in any legal case that
are interesting and shouldn't be ignored for sure but you then have to it has to
be corroborated by the forensic evidence and again like some of the stuff just falls apart when you realize how John
Benet actually died you know um and you know the reason I wanted to do this case
too is as I really studied what you know there was this really interesting um in
our show which hasn't been seen before there are there are a few things that are new like we had this um this
deposition from Steve Thomas you know from his civil litigation in which he admits there was a strategy to smoke out
the parents by planting stories incriminating stories I mean that's an out that's that's a
mindboggling uh Revelation when you think that the police department was using the press to paint bad a bad image
of the parents I mean it's just it's it's it's an all-time low I think and what I saw in this case which I I saw
which I have seen in many of the wrongful conviction cases I have covered and most notably in West Memphis for
Paradise Lost is it's the same phenomenon you have a small town and Boulder is a relatively small town you
have a small town police force where not much crime bad crime happens uh this was the first and only
murder of 96 and and not just a regular murder a horrific bizarre murder so you have
small town police who are overwhelmed by a crime don't have the experience I mean
Steve Thomas I believe was in Narcotics you know before he went over to to take on this case so they're overwhelmed by
the crime the pressure to solve it they they lock into a early wrong idea in part because
of just they're not great cops and they can't move off that tunnel vision everything about that investigation was
can we confirm our theory that the parents did it and and explain away even the foreign DNA was they went to a
factory in China to see if it was a a worker which in and of itself is not a bad thing to do but just the general
mode was let's do everything we can to confirm our thesis as opposed to let's be open to all possibilities and that's
just classic and wrongful conviction the tunnel vision the confirmation bias uh the in inept Small Town police and when
I say inept you know I I mean for a murder I'm sure they're very good at the things that they're supposed to do in
Boulder but they weren't very good at at at this kind of a thing and they refused
outside help so you see this in wrongful conviction cases all the time I mean I I
believe 5% of the prison population is wrongfully convicted and it results and I'm not the only one it it results from
just ineptitude and tunnel vision and then the what's even worse you see prosecutors in wrongful conviction cases
routinely fighting tooth and nail when somebody wants to test DNA you know in a postconviction situation it's happened
in Damen eckel's case it's happened in many I mean like if you're a prosecutor and
you've put somebody on death row and you're by definition beyond all reasonable doubt you believe that this
is the killer why would you fight a post conviction attempt to test DNA I would if I was a prosecutor I'd say hey test
away let's make sure we're right and if I'm wrong I'll be the first to admit it that you know but people don't do that
and that's part of what's I think has been going on in Boulder for so long they just can't admit that they messed
this up so badly you know do you think they're worried about a lawsuit maybe um potentially I don't think
that's the motivating factor but I just you know I just think it's human nature to like you know you can't cover your
ass not admit you made a mistake you know do you think if they if the Rams would have been less white less rich
with less effective lawyers this would be in your mind a wrong ful conviction case could have been could have been but
I think some of those animating factors that you just cited are also why they kind of keyed in on them and why the
Press was so intrigued and and it just kind of fed on itself you know oh it was like a it was a total Catch 22 something
we talked about in our episode and like because if you if you don't hire the lawyers like what H like like our whole
we have a crime duy life role like always hire a lawyer never take a polygraph like you never can trust
anyone um and I do I think that they got the protection that like anyone would recommend then they're criticized for it
but like it's it's a mess yeah I mean people who question them get I mean they did initially cooperate and they were
advised get a lawyer lawyer up I mean like there are a lot of people sitting in prison for things they didn't do
because they didn't lawyer up that's the nature of of sometimes police work so you know to me it's not strange at all
that they lawyered up so let's talk about wrongful conviction a little and where that started for you we've never
covered the West Memphis 3 case do you have an elevator pitch for that case for people who don't know it that seems hard
to do oh uh well you know three teenagers in rural Arkansas are uh convicted of a devil worshipping
ritual killing of 38-year-old boys in the woods of you know off an interstate in Arkansas West Memphis Arkansas is
like I think 10 or 12 miles from Memphis Tennessee but a whole other world once you get into
Arkansas um the kids were kind of the local weirdos Damen Eckles dressed in black God forbid uh was very gothy uh
they were kind of trailer Poor trailer park kids um one of the kids Jesse Miss Kelly uh allegedly gave a confession but
his IQ is very low and it's it's a CL it's a classic false confession we later learn in an era where that concept was
hardly known and so uh these guys were well Daman was put on death row and um Jason Baldwin and Jesse Miss Kelly were
sentenced to life uh without parole um and we thought that they were innocent and uh filmed the filmed the trials and
uh and that's what's so wild you were there like very early days your documentary is how many people learned
about the West Memphis 3 how did you learn about it well interestingly the whole journey of uh Paradise Lost um
having made three films over two decades that ultimately really helped get them out of prison the irony is that we went
down to make a film about kids killing kids we thought that they were guilty uh we were there a week after the
arrest uh Sheil and Evans who run used to run documentaries at HBO and you know you know people forget that you
know I mean the documentary business has like exploded in the last 15 years or so
but in 1991 you know the only people who paid for documentaries were HBO and PBS you know
that's it those were the only games in town there was no such thing as docu series podcasts didn't exist you know I
mean if you wanted to make a Doc it's either going to PBS or you pray that you get the call from HBO that was it and we
got the call from HBO Bruce sinowski my film making partner back then and for many of my early films who sadly passed
away in 2015 he and I had made a film called Brothers Keeper which we made on credit cards about a rural fraer side
case but in this instance the the town thought he was innocent and ultimately he was acquitted and so it's a very we
call the film a heartwarming tale of murder that you know came out in '92 went to Sundance nobody every got great
reviews nobody wanted to release it CU who wants to see a film about smelly Old Farm brothers who all sleep in the same
bed together and one was accused of murdering the other so we even though we won the audience award at Sundance and
got great reviews no no distributor wanted it so we said hey we'll distribute it ourselves and it ended up
being a massive success I think it's one of the early films that helped push this
crime thing uh that's hap that's been happening for the last couple of decades um and it was you know it it it it
grossed like $2 million in Theatrical self-distribution in an era where tickets were $5 so it it it did it did
quite well anyway Sheila Evans of HBO who is the queen of documentary she has she in her era did as much to make
documentaries Comm commcial as anybody um we got the call from her she read this article where these three teenagers
had just been arrested and on a scale of 1 to 10 the chief detective was saying the evidence is an 11 so we went down to
West Memphis Arkansas a week after the arrests convinced we were making a film about kids killing kids you know how
could three teenagers be so disaffected with life that they would take three eight-year-olds out into the woods and
sacrifice them in a devil worshipping ritual because of course satanic Panic was big back then and you know so we
thought we were making a film about kids killing kids and for the first 3 months
of the project we mainly interacted with the families of the victims of course we
had nothing but sympathy for them their children had just been 8-year-olds had just been murdered in the most uh a
horrific way um and uh we had no reason to believe we weren't making a kids killing kids film until we finally
negotiated access to the West Memphis 3 of course they weren't called the West Memphis 3 back then they were these
rotten teenagers sitting in jail awaiting trial and we so this is around November of
'93 and we're doing our first sets of interviews with the West Memphis 3 and in particular you know Damien was hard
to judge because he was very cocky and and and he kind of enjoyed the attention and he liked to play with the media and
the filmmakers and you know but Jason was this sweet kid who while I'm interviewing him I'm
looking at his tiny little wrist and imagining him wielding a 10-in serrated hunting knife which is what the
prosecution was alleging and that he had castrated one of the little boys so I'm
thinking about that horrible image while he's while he's talking to me thinking you know something's not I just don't
think this this one plus one was not equaling two like I can't say a light bulb went off and I said oh my God
they're Innocent but something just didn't seem right so I remember calling up Sheil and Evans who had commissioned
the film uh this was our big break our big first HBO film and I remember saying to her with a lot of trepidation and
fear that she was going to kill the project cuz she was so intent on I want a kids killing kids film that was the
mission and so I remember saying to her you know uh we're not so sure these guys
are guilty it's just not adding up but you know just want you to know that we're going to go down some other lanes
and to her great credit she said well well if they're innocent that sounds even better stick with it so we did
stick with it and we never imagined it would actually go to trial because there was literally no forensic evidence at
the crime scene connecting them to the crime there was no blood at the crime scene there was just so many problems
that I did not yet H have the dimmer view of the justice system that I was going to say you still believed in I
used to be like that I believed in the justice system until Paradise Lost You know cuz actually Brothers Keeper was
somebody being you know brought you know brought into the system who is everyone
thought was innocent and ultimately he got acquitted because of all the support the town brought to the table so that
was a positive view of the justice system even though somebody was wrongfully arrested here you know this
is this was my baptism um and I just I just couldn't imagine it would go to trial because we were seeing so many
holes in the case and yet it goes to trial and I witnessed to this day I haven't witnessed anything
like it it was like no evidence at the crime scene of you know no real evidence of murder no blood at the crime scene
but the fact that Damian Eckles liked Stephen King novels the fact that he liked Metallica which started my long
time relationship with Metallica was over this film because you know Metallica lyrics were actually
introduced into the trial as evidence that these guys are killers which is absurd on it's offensive like anybody's
taste in music should not be a factor in whether or not they're they're a killer
and if you and Metallica lyrics had nothing to do with with uh devil worshiping they're anti-authoritarian
but they're not devil there is a branch of heavy metal that's you know satanic oriented and it's not music I like or
listen to but Metallica is in a class by itself and has nothing to do with Satanism and so it's just it it just
that was the trial Metallica lyrics you know he he liked antton Le you know I mean but where's the evidence like
where's the it feels like you're in like an alternate universe when you like are
watching it actually like happen you're like surely everyone sees what I'm seeing like exact it's not going to end
that way exactly and then there's a you know the final scene of Paradise Lost you you see Damen Eckles and by the way
we put that camera everywhere I still can't believe the access we got I mean people really should see that F it's a
great example unbelievable it's a great example of pure Cinema ver which is so much harder to pull off these days cuz
people are so camera aware and like it's like are you really getting authenticity
in some of these verit situations but this this was just pure ver when I say Cinema ver that's a style of film making
but where you just observe and uh I'm just amazed where we put the cameras and we were in that room as they were being
chained up and being sent off to death row well Daman to death row Jason life without parole and I Bruce and I and
cameraman Bob richond were just like emotionally gut punch we just couldn't believe what we had witnessed we
couldn't believe these guys were were falsely convicted and that's when the light bulb went off or the calling or
whatever I think my film making up to that point was much just much more about the Aesthetics of documentary and how
can we make documentary more narrative feeling and how can we give them how can we take them out of PBS style talking
head historical and make them you know just more commercially I mean it was my interest in documentary up until this
moment was much more the Aesthetics of film making not any social justice thing but I realized we were sitting on a pile
of footage that shows these guys that hopefully will show that these guys have been wrongfully convicted and it just
became our mission uh you know and the first film came out and I thought that was going to blow the doors off the
prison you know prison cell but the state of Arkansas just put up a note on their website saying hey HBO is an
entertainment company this is a work of fiction ignore it basically so we made a
second film we made made a third film and finally uh they were let out of prison it took a long time and a lot of
work 18 years and and look when I said you know the real heroes are the investigators Lori Davis daman's wife
who like kind of corraled all sorts of resources um Peter Jackson played a big hand in in uh paying for forensic uh
research you know like the films get a lot of credit you know and of course I like some of that cuz if it wasn't for
us Damian himself Damen himself said has said he would have been dead but it's the people who got these guys out of
prison are all the hero the you know the pro bono lawyers the investigate you know so but these films were definitely
a catalyst for getting these guys out of prison you know oh absolutely absolutely
are you still like in touch with them are are you CU I know they're still pushing for testing it it's unbelievable
that that case is kind of in the same position it's crazy it's again it's like I think it I think it should be illegal
for a prosecutor to block DNA testing in a postconviction situation you know obviously West you know it's complicated
you know your listeners would have to like go do a deeper dive they were they were not technically exonerated they
were they were released on an Alfred plea which means they agreed to they agreed they stood up in public and said
hey we are not guilty but we can see how the state has enough evidence to convict
us if there was a new trial so we accept the Judgment of the Court even though we
protest test it and in exchange the death sentence got commuted to time served and that's how that's how they
got out of prison so they're they're not officially exonerated in fact when Paradise loss 3 came out which
documented their release uh and also you know it was that was I that was you know
very popular film it you know so it was invited to all sorts of film festivals and nominated for an Oscar over there
there sound like I'm dropping names but but it was a film that it was film that got around and the point I'm trying to
make in my Babble is that you know I took Jason Baldwin to the Berlin Film Festival to Toronto Damien came to a
couple of festivals like I was I took them around and every time we crossed the border there was a huge riger roll
you know at at Customs they're still felons yeah they're convicted felons convicted child murders you can't bring
that person into the country so that shadow linger lingers over them to this day and so that's why you know they they
need this DNA testing and their names need to be clear but of course like in Boulder people just don't want to admit
they authorities just can't seem to admit that they made a mistake although this is what I don't get going back to
Boulder it's a new police chief it's a new regime that's what I'm saying they do admit that it was incredibly [ __ ]
up you know as to how they got here so like why the continued opusc is is troubling you know maybe you're right I
hadn't even thought that they lost the evidence but maybe you're right maybe well John's the one that posed that to
me I it's totally possible I don't know there's a lot of weird stuff at play in that case like politically that I
haven't totally been able to wrap my head around but I'm like a little convinced it must be part of the reason
I don't know yeah no it's it's an interesting Theory but you know I'm hoping the pressure now is loud enough
that they you know they're either going to have to come clean or going to have to do the testing you know is this
something like paradise loss where you would continue to follow and maybe release that fourth episode or is this
something that you you're like okay I've done what I can do it's time to walk away from it um honestly Paradise Lost 2
was a struggle that was uh advocacy in search of a film it's actually not a very good film the second one um but we
felt that we had to keep banging the drum because the first film came out and Arkansas didn't pay attention to it and
while it attracted a lot of celebrities you know Eddie veter came into the fold Johnny Depp came into the fold Natalie
Ms a whole chorus of well-known people raised money and started advocating but it was kind of slow and I didn't quite
realize the power of all that at the time so all we knew is our film came out and we were getting lots of pats on the
back in fact I not to be falsely humble but um you know I actually felt embarrassed sometimes going up and
getting a prize like cuz the film won a lot of prizes you know that's what I was
joking about before but but you know like it's now 3 years after the convictions Damian's on his third year
of death row and I'm giving some speech thanking people for my Emy and I'm thinking well wait a second the film
didn't actually do anything you know like the film didn't achieve its objective it's
great that it's getting recognized creatively but like these guys are still in prison and nobody seems to care so we
made the second film which I think is not a great film I mean it's good on a certain level it tells
the story of Kathy bachan and and the and the West Memphis 3 support group that sprung up and their part of the
storytelling is good but it it lacked a present tense unfolding kind of narrative you know
which is you know that Cinema ver unfolding thing is what I was you know hoping for um and the third film we made
to to continue to shine a light not cuz we wanted to keep making films so that's
my long way of saying I generally like to be done with a subject and move on and that's the wonderful thing about
this kind of a career is just dipping into Worlds you never could imagine dipping into and learning so much and
then moving on to the next thing but if if I feel like additional pressure is needed if the case is still stuck in a
year if doing another show would help I certainly would what world are you planning on dipping your toe
next uh good question um you you know as much as I love the crime stuff um it's it's it's almost become too popular and
like that's all Netflix wants from me is what's your next crime show Joe uh and I'd really like to do another music film
so you know or something that's a little more life affirming but I you know you haven't picked it yet though I haven't
and and and actually I don't like to say what I'm doing just cuz I don't want to
jinx it or whatever but uh but I'm trying to get a a project in the music space off the ground you know I just
need I I need a pallet cleanser from all this I was going to ask you death and destruction especially like a a child
murder case is really really tough how long did it take you or is it taking you to kind of like get out of that world
and and to like wash that away yeah and then I want to ask you the same how you deal with it when you cover all these
stories but um you know early on in my career I had a an epiphany which was during the editing of uh Paradise Lost
so it's 94 I have a you know 10-month-old or 11-month-old child in a crib in her Nursery beautiful daughter
who's now 30 uh and I remember that there was a particular day where we were going
through horrible autopsy photos uh police crime scene footage remember the film opens with this
horrible police crime scene footage which at the time was quite bold choice that people like I was going to those
one of the things I was going to ask that was like that was a bold choice and people kind of freaked out about it but
it was intentional because I wanted to show we wanted to show just how horrific the crime was so that you could
understand how the town could have fallen for this Collective delusion of satanic Panic you you needed to
understand the fear that people must have had that was my reason but but you know and back in those days we were
still editing on a steenbeck you know linear editing digital editing didn't exist yet so everything took longer so I
was you know looking at horrible images that nobody should look at you know deciding what few
minutes was going to make it into the film and I remember driving home with these images on my brain and I walked
into my daughter's nursery and I picked up my newborn my first child I guess I'm
I don't know 30 years old 31 something like that uh 32 uh and I'm looking at my beautiful
sweet young 10-month-old child and flashing on some of the worst images of of horror inflicted on a child you could
ever imagine and I really I was I like I was moved to tears to because I felt like this project was robbing me of my
fatherly innocence and I don't want to be thinking about these gross images while I'm holding my child and it really
was a very powerful moment and so from that day on I've just somehow compartmentalized things and I made a
promise to myself that when I walk in that door I leave the work behind and I've I've basically have kept that
promise to myself but it is hard to deal with the subject matter it really is how
do you deal with it I I've I've always said I think that the the way that there will be like you
know people who work in law enforcement for their entire careers or people who work in very dark SE S I think some
people are built to do it that doesn't mean it's easy um but I think I was someone who's like I can I'm built to
like live in case files and in in some dark stuff that doesn't mean like I don't take it home um I think that the
only thing that it keeps me going if all I was doing was consuming this day in and day out I don't think I could get up
in the morning the world does feel too dark and the justice system is broken and there's so much wrong with the world
I think the key thing that keeps me go going is our mission behind everything and being like if if I wasn't here doing
this like things would be worse we're at least making things better even if it's
for like a single victim or or their family or like the action is what helps otherwise if I felt like we nothing was
happening like it would be completely overwhelming yeah that's that's great and then super important I mean you hit
the nail on the head having a sense of mission and I think that's what distinguishes good True Crime from bad
bad True Crime stuff that's just wallowing in the misery of others without any social justice message
without any reason for being I think that's where the genre you know needs to take a good cold look in the mirror but
if you're trying to advance Justice or Advance a cause or change laws then then it's it's a fertile area you know do you
feel like you've seen the True Crime space change in for the good or do you feel like you keep seeing it getting
worse and worse and there's just like a couple good apples there's more than a couple of good apples but there's a lot
of really bad stuff out there I'm sorry there's a lot of there's just the tone of stuff certainly and the Integrity of
the reporting you know even previous coverage of this case it's like you're having it both ways like I was very
clear in my structure of the show episode one like I didn't want people to leave oh gee maybe they did do it let's
debate it let's like let's have our cake and eat it too episode one was the case
against the Ramsay as as people experienced it episode two is well wait a second it's not what you think and
then episode three is these are possible new suspects but you can't walk away from my show thinking that I have any
lingering belief that the Ramsay had anything to do with it so I think that's where some of the past storytelling has
been super irresponsible and where irresponsibility in general you know like have a firm reportorial point of
view and deliver the goods if you're going to take on somebody's real life story it's not just a piece of
entertainment you know if it's a scripted thing do whatever you want but I mean not scripted of a real life story
if it's a fictional thing and it's scripted do you know that's the place to like play with people's heads or
whatever but when you have somebody's story in your hand whose real life has been defined by a tragedy you have a
moral obligation to do right by that story and I don't see that standard in a lot of the the new the the the stuff
that's out there well you're setting a new standard I love it for you well thank you so much I appreciate
I know you're dealing with a back injury right now so I appreciate you sitting for this long worries good so wonderful
I'm such a fan of your work same here same here thank you thank you so everyone if you haven't already again
I'm guarantee my audience has but feel free to do it again go watch Cold Case who killed John B Ramsey currently
streaming on Netflix and you haven't listened already like we did a crime Junkie episode on it as well and we did
a bonus interview with John Ramsey that you can watch on our YouTube channel don't forget to follow this show add it
to your library and don't forget to follow crime junkie we will be back thank you very much Joe oh thank you it
was fun appreciate it crime

Ashley Flowers sits down with director & producer Joe Berlinger. Joe directed the recent documentary "Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey."

Joe and Ashley discuss whether or not the case can be solved, how JonBenét's murder was instrumental in their relationship to true crime, and whether or not the Ramseys should be suspects.

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Crime Junkie AF is hosted by Ashley Flowers.

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Brief Summary

Joe Berlinger discusses the JonBenet Ramsey case and the importance of responsible true crime storytelling.

Key points

The JonBenét Ramsey Case. Director Joe Bur discusses his new documentary on the infamous case and its unresolved mysteries.
A Family's Pain. The emotional toll on the Ramsey family after the murder of JonBenét.
Media's Role in Crime. Exploring how media shaped public perception of the JonBenét Ramsey case.
The Misery of True Crime. Exploring the ethical implications of true crime storytelling and its impact on real victims.
The Bundy Connection. A personal reflection on the decision to cover Ted Bundy due to family connections.
The West Memphis 3 Case. A deep dive into the wrongful conviction of three teenagers in Arkansas and the flawed investigation.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I just felt compelled to retell the story.

Joe Bur explains his motivation for revisiting the JonBenét Ramsey case.

2:59WatchDec 27, 2024

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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