The Murder Of JonBenét Ramsey: 8 Things To Know About The Cold Case Ahead Of CNN Special

A 20-year-old cold case will again get air time on CNN Tuesday night with the premiere of "The Murder of JonBenét," a special report airing at 9 p.m. EST.

"The Murder of JonBenét" comes almost exactly two decades after a Colorado couple woke up to find their 6-year-old daughter, JonBenétRamsey, had been kidnapped on Dec. 26, 1996. Later that day, she would be found dead in the basement of the Ramseys' Boulder home.

The case has never been definitively solved, and fascination around it has never truly fizzled out. This fall alone, at least four networks released JonBenét documentaries — not including CNN.

"It is impossible to overstate how huge this case was — and still is — in the United States," Hadley Freeman, a columnist for the Guardian, wrote in a Sunday piece. "Every year, the US media promise 'A chilling new discovery' and 'Latest twist,' even though the case remains as cold as Christmas in Colorado."

Here are eight things to know about the famous case.

1. JonBenét was a beauty queen, having won contests like Little Miss Colorado, Little Miss Sunburst and National Tiny Miss Beauty, according to BuzzFeed.

2. Patsy Ramsey was the first to report JonBenét missing. The mother had put JonBenét and her then-9-year-old brother, Burke, to bed Christmas night and when she awoke, she said she found a note on the stairs explaining JonBenét had been abducted.

3. The kidnappers allegedly demanded an $118,000 ransom. The parents called the police and helped search the home.

4. John Ramsey discovered JonBenét's body in the basement. She had been strangled, and her mouth had been duct-taped shut, according to the Denver Post.

5. In addition to Burke, JonBenét had older half-siblings. They weren't in Boulder the day she died, though.

6. Ten years after JonBenét's death, a man named John Mark Karr was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, and confessed to killing her. But Karr had an alibi, and his DNA didn't match evidence at the scene, according to People.

7. JonBenét's parents were cleared of involvement in 2008, by which time Patsy Ramsey had died. Court documents released in 2013 showed a grand jury had, however, wanted to indict the parents in connection with her death.

8. JonBenét's brother, Burke Ramsey, spoke out about the murder this fall for the first time. "Seeing that as a little kid is just kind of a chaotic nightmare, so I was pretty skeptical of any sort of media, it just made me a very private person," Burke said earlier this year. "As to what I’m doing now, it’s the 20th anniversary and apparently still a lot of tension around it, I guess I kind of wanted to make it about remembering her and not just another news story."