Posted on September 12, 2019 by Fearless Leader
I have always been fascinated by a good mystery. Naturally, when I recently found myself in Boulder, visiting the scene of one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in history seemed like a productive use of the afternoon. Google revealed that JonBenet’s house was about a 5-mile round trip, so I set off from my AirBNB in South Boulder and headed towards the CU campus.
Shortly after the university, I passed a run-down shopping plaza with an adjacent Starbucks. Fortified by an iced coffee, I proceeded another half a mile up Baseline Road, a bustling east-west street that starts at Flagstaff Mountain and cuts across the city. As I counted down the side streets, I noted a school on one corner and wondered if the beautiful little girl had played on that very playground. About a block from my destination, there was a house for sale, with flyers in a box out front. I grabbed one to use as my cover for my close scrutiny of the neighborhood and tried to look like I could afford the monthly payments on a $2 million house.
My extensive reading about the case had led me to a mental picture of a secluded mansion in an elite neighborhood. However, the house on the corner was a modest one-story brick house, and there was still a lot of traffic on Baseline. The houses did get a little fancier as I proceeded down the side street, until I arrived at my destination.
The stock photo of the house taken back in ’96 showed a brick house with a yard flanked by crime scene tape and Christmas decorations in juxtaposition. In real life today, the house appeared to be much closer to the street and the yard smaller. It was almost unrecognizable with its wrought iron fence, overgrown shrubbery, and bizarre statues. So many questions ran through my mind as I walked by. What was up with the landscaping? Where was JonBenet’s bedroom relative to the street? Did anyone currently use that basement room where her body lay for so many hours? A little research on Reddit that night provided many answers- the fence and shrubbery were to keep the looky-loos off the front lawn- her room was at the back- the basement room was permanently walled off. Of course, the key answer can’t be found on Reddit…what really happened inside those walls two decades ago?
