Kriti Mehrotra
It was on December 26, 1996, when the entire world was left shaken to the core as 6-year-old child beauty queen JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was found murdered in her Boulder, Colorado, home. The truth is, as explored in Netflix’s ‘Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey,’ her cause of death was ruled to be asphyxiation and blunt force trauma to the head, yet her case still remains unsolved. There have been many individuals who have since been identified as possible suspects – like Gary Howard Oliva – considering the girl had also been sexually assaulted, but nothing substantial has ever come to light.
Gary Howard Oliva Has a Dark Past
Although born on January 7, 1964, into a rather middle-class household in California, Gary has a record of acting predatory, behaving erratically, as well as making dark jokes since he was a teenager. In fact, as per reports, while he was in school, he often used to run screaming through the streets for no reason, burn himself using various tools, and make jokes about rape, minors, and necrophilia. He allegedly even had a bizarre fascination with knots and breaking into people’s homes not to steal valuables, jewelry, or cash but mostly art supplies to back his own purported passions.
However, things only became stranger as Gary grew up, especially with him expressing fantasies of joking about raping a friend’s minor daughter and eating other children after cooking them. According to a friend who actually kept in touch with him through audio tapes they used to package to one another, some of his tapes were smeared with what appeared to be blood, while other packages often contained things like hair or posters of missing girls. Thus, it was little surprise when he was ultimately arrested for the first time in 1990 for sexually abusing a 7-year-old girl, followed by a charge for threatening to kill his mother a mere year later.
As if that’s not enough, since Gary had relocated to Boulder, Colorado, upon serving a 17-month sentence, he was right there when a photo of JonBenét Ramsey in his possession, along with a poem titled “Ode to JonBenét.” Ramsey was horrifically slain in December 1996. Nevertheless, it was in December 2000 when he was arrested again for an unrelated drug charge, only for officers to find a photo of JonBenét, a poem titled “Ode to JonBenét, and a stun gun in his possession. That’s when he was identified as a possible suspect in this matter, yet the ensuing investigations led nowhere until his email was linked to child pornography downloads in 2016.
Gary Howard Oliva Allegedly Confessed to JonBenét Murder in Prison
As per records, when the Boulder Police Department came knocking on Gary’s door in 2016 with a warrant in hand, they uncovered over 690 images of sexual abuse of children on his phone. However, what shocked them even more was that he even had around 335 photographs of JonBenét Ramsey or things related to her, including images of her very graphic, detailed autopsy report. He was, hence, eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison on the charge of possession of child pornography while still being investigated over his possible connection to the 1996 murder of JonBenét Ramsey.
It wasn’t until 2019 that things progressed, and only after Gary sent a series of extremely disturbing letters to his aforementioned friend, claiming he had accidentally killed JonBenét. In them, he repeatedly professed his love for the young girl while declaring she was not like the others before going as far as to compare her likeness as well as her death with God. “I never loved anyone like I did JonBenét,” he once penned, “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.”
Gary’s friend obviously went to the authorities with these letters, which sparked another, deeper probe into him, his past, as well as his possible association with JonBenét or her case. This resulted in an expert analyzing his letters with the ransom note left behind at the scene of the crime in 1996, only for them to ascertain there were significant similarities in the handwriting. Yet, owing to the fact his DNA did not match the one departed on the 6-year-old girl at the time of her murder, he has never been arrested or charged in connection to it – the case thus remains unsolved.
Gary Howard Oliva is No Longer Behind Bars
Although Gary Oliva’s sentence was to be concluded in late 2025, he was actually granted early release and has been out of prison since January 2024 on parole under state supervision. In fact, per state records, he is currently based out of a halfway house and motel in Denver, Colorado, from where he is required to attend intensive mental health treatment till 2027. He has reportedly also been ordered to frequently report to his parole office till that period, especially because he remains a possible suspect in the JonBenét Ramsey case even without the DNA match.
Read More: Randall “Randy” Simons: Where is JonBenét Ramsey’s Photographer Now?
