Who Killed JonBenét? Friend Of Pedophile Who Confessed Says Look At Him Again

Michael Vail carries a heavy burden. He likens it to lugging around a backpack full of rocks that he’d like to finally be free of after 29 years.

For whatever reasons, fate put him in the path of a man he believes to be at the center of one of America’s most notorious unsolved murders.

It was a crime that captured national and international headlines in 1996, when the day after Christmas, 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was found murdered in the basement of her family home in Boulder, Colorado.  

The young girl and budding beauty queen had been strangled with a makeshift garrote device and was likely also sexually assaulted.

Over the nearly 30-year investigation, many suspects — including JonBenét’s parents, John and Patsy, and brother Burke — have been in the spotlight, with dueling theories about whether the girl was killed by a family member or an outside intruder.

Vail, a retired music publicist and song writer living in California, believes his childhood friend, Gary Oliva, killed the girl. He believes that because Oliva, a convicted pedophile, told him he did.

The First Call

The first confession came during a frantic phone call from Oliva in Boulder the night of the crime where he admitted to hurting a little girl. 

Oliva, now 60, further confessed to killing JonBenét in letters and jailhouse phone calls to Vail over the past decade, Vail says. Still, it hasn’t been enough to convince police to take a closer look at him, despite intense scrutiny of Oliva as a person of interest over the years.

More so, Vail says Oliva is not upset by his efforts to implicate him of the crime because he feels bad for roping him into the confessions and appreciates Vail’s “spreading the gospel” of JonBenét.

Citing an open and ongoing investigation, the Boulder Police Department told Cowboy State Daily it was unable to grant interviews or comment on any specific aspects of the crime.

However, in a 2019 statement following an interview Vail did with The Daily Mail, the department seemingly ruled Oliva out, saying they were aware of Oliva’s confessions and have investigated his potential involvement.

More Evidence

Vail, however, continues to make his case. 

He’s joined ranks with Utah-based private investigator Jason Jensen, who is the co-founder of the Cold Case Coalition, a national nonprofit that provides volunteer assistance to law enforcement and families on unsolved cold case.

Vail and Jensen are convinced that Oliva is the culprit based on evidence they’ve uncovered, which includes matching Oliva’s handwriting to that of the rambling two-and-a-half-page ransom note left by the murderer and Oliva’s own actions and words.

They further believe that Oliva’s confessions to Vail are strong testimonial evidence, as is his myopic obsession with JonBenét, who he considers “a saint.” 

They question the integrity of the DNA evidence collected from the little girl’s clothing and from underneath her fingernails that so far has not matched any of the suspects, including Oliva.

Others, too, have noted problems with the DNA samples gathered at the crime scene, including director Joe Berlinger of the latest JonBenét three-part series “Cold Case: JonBenét Ramsey,” who told People magazine that compromised DNA samples gathered at the crime scene ruled out a lot of suspects who shouldn’t have been.

Jensen and Vail question how much can be done with a degraded DNA sample in terms of forensic genetic genealogy or other testing.

Both believe the subjective evidence they've collected deserves careful merit by police. 

In March 2024, the pair took the letters, recordings and other information to Boulder police in a meeting. Both Vail and Jensen felt like they were being taking seriously and that police seemed interested in what they had to say.

Following the meeting, Vail has exchanged follow-up emails with police but understands that they need concrete evidence that may hinge primarily on the DNA.

Jensen agreed. He gets it. 

The new detectives are stuck with the remnants of an old case that many critics have accused the Boulder police of botching from the onset. He said these new investigators are heroes in his eyes, and that’s it’s important to convict a person on charges that will stand up in court.

“It’s a difficult position they’re in,” Jensen said.

Clock Is Ticking

For Vail, time is also of the essence given that Oliva, a convicted pedophile and reported paranoid schizophrenic, was released from prison in January after serving eight years of a 10-year sentence for the possession of child pornography.

At the time of Oliva’s arrest in 2016, he was found with 22 explicit images of girls between the ages of 4 and 7, according to an arrest warrant issued by the Boulder County District Court. Prior to this charge, Oliva was convicted in Oregon of first-degree assault of a child.

According to the Colorado Department of Corrections, Oliva is out on probation and assigned to the PI Parole facility in the Denver Central Metro Region with a projected discharge date of Aug. 12, 2026.

"There's an expiration date," Vail said. "That ankle bracelet will be coming off."

Vail said that he worries about what Oliva might do in light of his relative freedom.

“If he hurts another child, I won’t be able to live with myself,” Vail said.

Dueling theories

To date, Boulder police have stated they’ve followed up on 21,016 tips, letters and emails and have traveled to 19 states to interview more than 1,000 suspects and analyzed nearly 1,000 DNA samples.

Last year, Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn announced that the department convened a cold case review panel to put fresh eyes on the case with the focus being to continue following up new leads and working with DNA experts to match evidence.

So far, no new updates have been released.

From its onset, the investigation was riddled by dueling theories.

Following the murder, detectives and then-Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter were at loggerheads about whether the murder had been done by someone inside the home or an outside intruder who’d broken into the house through a basement window.

The police zeroed in on the family, determining there were no footsteps in the snow outside the window to support the intruder theory while Hunter thought all options should remain on the table, according to local reporting at the time.

To this end, Hunter brought in seasoned homicide investigator Lou Smit from Colorado Springs to further investigate, who found strong evidence that the girl had been killed by an intruder. 

In particular, he zeroed in on what he believed were taser marks on the little girl’s face and back. He believes the intruder tased the girl in her bed, before bringing her down to the basement to kill her, according to several media reports.

The police, however, believed it was an inside job, blaming first John Ramsey and then his wife Patsy.

A grand jury was convened in 1998, and after a 13-month investigation, they voted to indict the Ramseys for child abuse and criminal conduct leading to their daughter’s death, but Hunter’s office refused to indict the parents, citing a lack of evidence.

A decade later, and after Patsy had already died of cancer, the Ramseys were officially exonerated based on the DNA evidence.

Oliva is not the only person to confess to the murder. 

John Mark Karr was questioned in 2006 after his graphic description of how he committed the crime, but the charges were ultimately dropped due to family members who said he wasn’t in Colorado at the time as well as a lack of physical evidence. 

Unforgettable call

For Vail, the evidence clearly points to Oliva, who he’s known since the two were in high school. He described Oliva as an “orbiter” who he connected with over their shared interest in music.

Oliva was always an odd guy, Vail said. He also described Oliva as having a rough childhood and said his own father stepped in as a surrogate to help Oliva out. 

In letters over the years, Oliva talked about this bond and called Vail his only friend.

After high school, the two stayed in touch, often sending audio letters recorded on cassette tapes. Where Vail’s were light and funny, Oliva’s were increasingly disturbing and dark, Vail said, much like many of Oliva’s childhood drawings which in retrospect take on a much more menacing light.

Once, Oliva sent Vail a recording in which he mimicked raping a child with a toy. Another time, he sent Vail slivers of hair with a poster of a missing girl in Oregon. Often there were references to cooking children in bone broth and making bacon strips out of a little girl’s flesh.

Sometimes, he seemed to have written on the cassette tapes in blood.

Clearly, Oliva had problems, but Vail wondered if it was enough to notify police.

Finally, he did notify them on the night of Dec. 26, 1996, after Oliva called him from Boulder to say he’d hurt a little girl. Oliva was sobbing uncontrollably to the point of hyperventilating.

“I’ve never heard anyone sob like that,” Vail said. “It was terrifying.”

The confession hit Vail hard.

“It was like a lightbulb moment when I thought of all those cassette tapes,” he said. “I thought, ‘This is serious. This is some serious stuff.’”

Vail immediately tried to get more information, but Oliva hung up. 

He immediately called the Boulder Police Department and left a message on their tip line. Then he waited for news of Oliva’s arrest.

“I told my friends and family, ‘Hey, watch out for what happens any second now, for Gary’s arrest,’” he said.

Three months later, nothing had happened. He called the tipline again.

Vail was never interviewed by police, but he was contacted later by former DA Hunter, who drove out from Colorado to Vail’s house in California in 2002 to collect the box of drawings and cassette tapes.

Once again, Vail waited for an arrest that never happened.

More Evidence

Over the years, Vail has given both television and print interviews to get word out about Oliva’s confessions. This is how he met Jensen, who reached out to Vail for an interview while consulting on a Japanese documentary on the case in 2023 in which Vail was also interviewed.

Jensen was dubious about Vail’s story until he heard about the phone call and numerous letters, which is when he started digging in.

First and foremost, Jensen noticed Oliva’s absolute obsession for JonBenét, which he’s expressed in great detail to Vail over the years in letters and through his actions.

In fact, when Oliva was picked up in Colorado in December 2000 on drug charges, he was found with both a stun gun in his backpack as well as many photos of JonBenét, The Denver Post reported.

Oliva was also spotted attending a candlelight vigil outside the Ramsey residence on the first anniversary of her murder, former Boulder Police Detective Lou Smit reported to CBS “48 Hours” on a 2002 episode.

And according to Vail, Oliva had been staying right down the street from the Ramseys at a homeless shelter in Boulder at the time of her murder and had also done odd painting jobs for a local church.

Confessions

Oliva has also repeatedly confessed his obsession for JonBenét in both phone calls and letters to Vail.

In one letter, Oliva wrote, “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. It was an accident. Please believe me. She was not like the other kids.”

In yet another letter, Oliva wrote of JonBenét above a hand-drawn portrait of her: “You split me, tore my heart open, filled me with love. You poured your spirit into me; I knew you as myself.”

Oliva has also credited the little girl for saving him, so he didn't hurt other children. 

Over the years, Oliva has also shared his drawings of JonBenét and asked Vail to send him photos of her in return.

In recent years, those letters and phone calls have gotten even more bizarre and obsessive, Vail said.

During a 2024 visit to see Oliva in Denver in which Vail tried to convince his friend to confess to police, Oliva showed him the shrine he built in JonBenét’s honor, telling Vail repeatedly that he worshipped her and wanted to eat her.

He asked Oliva to record him to share with the world.

And though he’s confessed to Vail in letters in the past while incarcerated, so far Oliva claims to not remember the details of that night.

When asked by Vail point blank what happened, Oliva told him that he was "black-out-under-a-bridge drunk" that night and couldn't recall what happened, but still acknowledges he's responsible for JonBenét's death, Vail said.

In one prison phone call, Vail said Oliva further bragged to him that he'd gotten away with the murder of the century.

If the rambling confessions and letters are not enough to get the attention of police, Jensen has hired forensic handwriting specialists to compare the writing to that of the ransom letter the murderer left at the Ramsey home that night.

In one analysis, Dawn McCarty, a certified forensic document and handwriting examination consultant, found notable similarities in both the upper and lower-case letters in the known and un-known writing samples.

Given her comparison, she concluded that though she was unable to unequivocally pinpoint Oliva as the author of both documents, there is “compelling basis for plausibility, warranting further examination,” she stated in her final report.

A second examination by Texas-based Forensology found that Oliva “is highly likely to be the author of the ransom note,” according to a report provided to Cowboy State Daily.

CSI Effect

As for the DNA evidence, Jensen believes that sometimes it’s not the definitive answer such as cases like this one where other types of evidence are seemingly discarded.

“It all boils down to DNA, just like the 1990s when it was the CSI effect,” Jensen said. “Now, everything boils down to DNA, and we want scientific-level proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

He questions whether the DNA evidence found even belongs to the murderer or if it’s unrelated, contaminated DNA that may have been transferred from the paintbrush that had been used to sexually assault her. 

Perhaps that DNA belonged to the person who last used the paintbrush that was brought to the scene by the killer who may have been wearing gloves, Jensen said.

In this instance, maybe DNA is not the best evidence to crack the case, he added, given the quality and amount.

“We’re talking touch DNA, and it’s a degraded sample,” he said. “So, you might as well not even count on it and instead use the next best evidence you’ve got.”

Jensen points to the handwriting analysis, confessions and the fact that Oliva knew the ransom letter was written on smaller notebook paper, Jensen said.

These are the types of details that Vail and Jensen hope to continue ferreting from Oliva, who they both believe has first-hand knowledge of the crime.

"Only facts are going to solve this crime," Vail said, "so that's what I'm trying to provide."

Apart from getting justice, it's also about Vail's desire to protect other children, which is the real message he'd like to impart to parents given his firsthand knowledge of the inner workings of a child predator.

"There are some sick people out there," Vail said. “So please watch your children."

Contact Jen Kocher at jen@cowboystatedaily.com

Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.