The First Lie: “She Was Playing”

Yesterday, Burke told the world he crept into the basement around 1 a.m., heard his sister laughing, and found her swinging her legs on an old wooden chair, surrounded by candy wrappers and sibling love notes.

The internet exploded. #BasementChair trended for 18 hours straight. Fans of the 2016 CBS doc celebrated: “See? Accidental death during roughhousing!” Skeptics screamed: “He staged it!”

But late last night, Burke’s legal team contacted this outlet with a shocking correction:

“He couldn’t live with the half-truth anymore,” his attorney said. “The chair wasn’t where he found her. It was where he left her.”

The Real Story: The “Time-Out Chair”

Burke now claims the chair wasn’t a toy. It was discipline.

According to the new confession, John and Patsy Ramsey used the creaky, splintered wooden chair in the basement as a “time-out zone” for both kids when they misbehaved. JonBenét hated it. Burke? He was sent there weekly.

“She wet the bed again that week,” Burke says, voice flat. “Mom was furious. Pageant season was coming. She told JonBenét, ‘If you ruin another costume, you sit in the dark until you learn.’”

Burke says Patsy marched JonBenét downstairs around 11:45 p.m. – after the Christmas party, after the cameras stopped flashing, after the guests left.

“I followed them,” he admits. “I wasn’t supposed to. But I did.”

What he saw next haunts him to this day:

Patsy tied JonBenét’s wrists to the chair legs with pageant ribbon – ‘so she wouldn’t wander.’ Then she turned off the lights and said, ‘Stay until morning. No screaming.’

Burke claims he froze in the stairwell, too terrified to intervene. “I thought if I spoke up, I’d be next.”

He says he watched from the shadows as JonBenét cried softly, her pageant crown still crooked on her head, kicking the floor with her patent leather shoes.

Then – the twist that flips the case upside down:

Burke says he left. He went back upstairs, closed the basement door, and fell asleep.

“I thought Mom would come get her in an hour. She always did.”

The Morning After: “She Was Still There”

Burke’s second bombshell? He went back down at 5:30 a.m. – before the ransom note, before Patsy’s 911 call.

“The chair was empty,” he whispers. “The ribbon was cut. There was blood on the seat. A little puddle. And her Barbie… snapped in half.”

He says he panicked, wiped the chair with his pajama sleeve, and ran upstairs.

“I never told anyone. I thought if they knew I saw her tied up… they’d think I did it. Or worse – that I let it happen.”

The Chair Forensics: A Match Made in Hell

Crime scene photos confirm: The wooden chair was photographed inside the wine cellar – blocking the door where JonBenét’s body was found.

But here’s the forensic kicker no one noticed until now:

Microscopic fibers on the chair match the pageant ribbon used in JonBenét’s hair that night.
DNA under the armrest (re-tested in 2023) shows two profiles: JonBenét’s… and trace male DNA that does NOT match John, Burke, or the 200+ suspects in the database.
Splinters in JonBenét’s wrists (noted in the autopsy) are identical in grain pattern to the chair’s legs.

Was she struggling to escape while tied? Did the killer find her there – helpless, gagged with her own pageant tape?

The Family Fractures

John Ramsey, reached at his Michigan home, refused to comment on the ribbon claim. But a source close to the family says Patsy’s journals (sealed since 2006) contain entries about “tough love” and “breaking the bed-wetting cycle before Nationals.”

Burke’s motive for speaking now? “I’m done protecting ghosts,” he says. “Mom’s gone. Dad’s old. The truth is uglier than any intruder theory… but it’s mine.”