most unpleasant

In a series of articles by Amy Lee from Chicagoland this morning, commemorating the brutal killing of little Jaclyn Dowaliby, the similarities to the abduction, murder and botched investigation of JonBenet Ramsey's murder is clearly memorialized.


Just like JonBenet's case, from the moment Jaclyn was discovered missing from her bed, the investigation was mismanaged by law enforcement and persecution of the parents ensued. Mrs. Dowaliby was arrested and found not guilty but after being convicted, jailed then released after 18 months, Jaclyn's father David cannot be tried again under the double jeopardy rule.


The Ramsey's have been cleared of guilt due to even more crime scene DNA discoveries in 2008. I often wonder if it would have been some kind strategic advantage for initiating a real investigation if either of the Ramseys were to have been arrested shortly after JonBenet's murder early in 1997. Later that same year, once the discovery was made that law enforcement was withholding critical DNA evidence, when combined with lack of other evidence either Ramsey would have been swiftly acquitted. Had that happened the business of actually looking for JonBenet's killer could have begun years ago and the case could have been investigated properly. Just as is now being done today in the heinous and unsolved murder of three year old Riley Fox, also kidnapped from her bed in the middle of the night while her family slept nearby.

What we can learn from these cases is invaluable if we are willing to pay attention. Ask any of these parents that have suffered the imaginable. While they pursue and yearn for an answer to the question of who murdered their child and why, their concern for derailing similar persecution of innocent victims, and how this impedes a real investigation to find the killer, will be bubbling right under the surface --

Unsettling ending
Published in the Southtown Star
BY AMY LEE

"...Jaclyn's horrific abduction and murder occurred eight years before child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, 6, was found dead under eerily similar circumstances in her Boulder, Colo., home.

In both the cases, a broken basement window became pivotal to the police investigation. In both cases, investigators did not immediately secure the homes to glean evidence and prevent contamination. In both cases, a media frenzy ensued when police fingered the parents and the parents shied from the press and hired lawyers.

"At the time this was a very rare occurrence. No one raced in and accused the parents. The police work was consistent with the times...This was the end of an era when people left keys in their cars, their doors unlocked and windows open at night to sleep."

More in the series by Amy Lee:

Justice for Jaclyn?


Did mentally ill uncle do it?


DNA not likely to solve case