The similarities are as eerie as the differences are stark.
As I read The Post’s coverage last week of the trial of Aaron Thompson, charged with 60 counts in the death of his daughter, Aarone, it was hard not to think of another little girl who wouldn’t live to see her 7th birthday.
JonBenet Ramsey was named after her father, John Bennet Ramsey, just as Aarone was named after hers.
John Ramsey called police on Dec. 26, 1996, to report his 6-year- old missing. He would find her that day in the basement, beaten and strangled with a garotte.
Aaron Thompson called police in November 2005 to report his daughter missing. She also would have been 6 years old at the time, but police now suspect she had been dead for two years.
JonBenet’s parents and Aarone’s father and his live-in girlfriend, Shelley Lowe, were considered persons of interest in both cases, and there was a perception, rooted in reality, that neither was interested in talking to police.
JonBenet’s mother, Patsy, was considered to be under “an umbrella of suspicion” until she died of cancer in 2006. Some whispered she took a secret to her grave.
Shelley Lowe also died in 2006 — six months after the police investigation began. In opening statements last week, the defense implied she did take a secret to her grave. Thompson’s attorney argued that Aaron didn’t kill Aarone but suggested that Lowe did. “Shelley Lowe was a tyrant,” she said. “. . . Shelley Lowe had something terrible to hide.”
Aarone, inexplicably, was allowed to vanish before our eyes. Her family could produce only one photo of her. The image was cloudy, her eyes shut.
How could this be the only photo of this child?
Beauty pageant footage of JonBenet strutting in evening gowns and cowgirl costumes played on every channel on an endless loop for weeks.
Aarone was never even enrolled in school, much less a pageant.
When police showed up to Aarone’s house, they found only seven mattresses for the other seven kids living there. Aarone didn’t even have a toothbrush.
JonBenet’s bedroom had two beds just for her.
It was JonBenet’s death, not Aarone’s, that got the national networks buzzing. But it’s Aarone who might get some justice.
Short of a signed confession, it’s hard to imagine any resolution to the sensational case of Little Miss Colorado, the national whodunit of the late 1990s.
Former Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacey cleared John and Patsy Ramsey of any wrongdoing last summer. She claimed new DNA tests point to an “unexplained third party” as the culprit.
If an outsider is ever charged — remember Lacey’s John Mark Karr debacle of three years ago? — it wouldn’t be hard to sow the seeds of reasonable doubt in at least one juror’s mind. A pile of evidence still points to the possibility a family member killed JonBenet.
Remember the ransom note, written on a notepad from inside the home, that quotes a family joke and asks for $118,000 — the same amount as Ramsey’s bonus that year? Experts could never conclude that Patsy didn’t write it.
Yet there’s also exculpatory evidence that backs the intruder theory, including the unexplained and unknown DNA found in JonBenet’s underpants.
Sadly, there are thousands of young souls out there still seeking justice in cases that continue to confound police.
At least Aarone, who apparently didn’t have much in life, is getting her day in court, regardless of the outcome. JonBenet, who would have turned 19 earlier this month, still deserves hers.
Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com
