A 59-year-old convicted sex offender currently imprisoned in Colorado is once again the focus of the investigation into the 1996 murder of child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey in Boulder.
Handwriting analysis by two experts has linked letters written from prison by Gary Oliva to the infamous ransom note written by Ramsey’s killer.
Handwriting experts Mozelle Martin and Dawn McCarty, who had been hired by private investigator Jason Jensen, both told The U.S. Sun that they had found “several significant similarities” between the handwriting of the ransom note and that of Oliva in his letters.
Jensen has been “independently probing” the circumstances around Ramsey’s death, the Sun reported, apparently without a paying client.
The two experts analyzed the handwriting samples independently, but came to similar conclusions.
“On a scale of 1 through 5 — with 1 being a definitive, identical match to the ransom note — both experts ranked Oliva at a 1.75,” the Sun reported.
“And you can’t make this up […] two separate sets of documents by two different authors that have the exact same spacing and all the consistent inconsistencies,” McCarty told the Sun, “how could that possibly be? There’s too many things that are just hard to ignore.
“That doesn’t mean to say he 100% wrote the ransom note,” she added, “but it does call for a serious and more thorough investigation into Gary Oliva.”
“I can’t say 100% that he did it,” Martin concurred, “I wasn’t there and I didn’t see who wrote it, so there’s no way to say for certain, but to me he certainly warrants further investigation.”
Both experts described for the Sun similarities in the ways certain letters were written on in the ransom note and Oliva’s letters.
“Consistency in these features, even when a writer attempts to disguise their handwriting, provides compelling evidence for further exploration,” McCarty wrote in a report of her analysis.
Oliva has also “routinely confessed” to the murder, according to the Sun.
Oliva wrote to Michael Vail, a friend from high school, multiple times from prison, stating that he had killed Ramsey “accidentally” on December 26, 1996.
He has also reportedly been obsessed with Ramsey, who died on Christmas Day when she was only six years old.
“I never loved anyone like I did JonBenét and yet I let her slip and her head bashed in half and I watched her die,” Oliva wrote, according to the Sun. “”It was an accident. Please believe me. She was not like the other kids.”
Oliva has never been charged in relation to the murder, but had reported “ties” to a home only 13 houses away from Ramsey’s at the time of her death.
He was also already a registered sex offender at the time, following a 1990 conviction for sexually abusing a 7-year-old, the Sun reported, and lived within two miles of Ramsey’s home.
Vail has previously said that Oliva called him the day after Ramsey died and said that he had “hurt a little girl” in Boulder.
I think he has found a way to be relevant and make a name for himself . And take a lot of heat off the family . I would look at who is putting money in his prison account . And track it to the donor and start asking them questions like why ? And where is the money being put on his account really coming from . After all he’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Mommy Did it
oh my gosh if only this man had been convicted before both parents died. so they would know that the world knew they hadnt done it. shame on people pointing their finger at the parents. if anything i thought the brother might have been jealous enough to do this but i didnt know all the circumstances. this man is admitting to it…so why not believe him. he is a sex offender…what gives in not believing someone who confesses and is known to be a sex offender and of little girls….this is such a sad sad thing…poor baby girl….and her poor family….
Hopefully somebody runs his papers and prison justice is played out.
For as many decades as this murder has gone unsolved, in EVERY single scenario which has played out in the legal system, the circumstantial evidence points to only one person, and one person only — the Mother. Read the dozens of private investigators, legal teams, detectives, and DA’s offices who have completed totally separate investigations. Every one points the evidence to the Mother.
For a long time, I think that is was the Mother, who killed her own daughter. They must have paid someone off to keep it quiet. When she she was on TV she never said my daughter, or my child. She kept calling her ‘that thing’. Never saw her cry.