2003-09-23: Did Obsessed Killer Steal Her Portrait?

Transcribed by "ACandyRose"

Did Obsessed Killer Steal Her Portrait?

by Art Dworken
National Examiner
September 23, 2003

Another mystery has surfaced to shroud the still unsolved muder of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.

A portrait of the slain Little Miss Colorado was recently ripped off in broad daylight on a busy Manhattan street while en route to an art exhibition in Shanghai, China.

Now, case experts are asking if the theft hs anything to do with JonBenet's muder.

"So many strange things have happened since JonBenet was killed that ti wouldn't be a total shock to find some link," said an insider.

"The Ramsey family believes someone becamse obsessed with their child and broke into their home to kill her. Is it too strange to believe that the same obsession drove someone to steal and perhaps destroy her portrait?"

Little JonBenet's battered and strangled body was found by her father John Ramsey in the basement of her parents' $1.3 million Boulder, Colorado home December 26, 1996.

Her purloined picture, a glass mosaic on wood by Berlin born artist Nils Grossien, had been on display for months in various public New York City galleries, where it was viewed by thousands of visitors, says the artist.

"The theft happened really fast," adds Ute Thon, Grossien's wife. "While the art movesrs went up to the gallery to get some more crates, the thieves broke the lock of the van and stole Nile' work."

The JonBenet mosaic was part of Grossien's American Faces series, based on images of people with high exposure in the media. Thon tells the EXAMINER. And while this particular display included former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Microsft billionaire Bill Gates and rapper Biggie Smalls, none of those were taken.

Desperate to recover his prized work, Grossien, 46, says he is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the safe return of JonBenet's picture.

The heist is just the latest in a series of baffling mysteries that have occured in the wake of JonBenet's murder:

-- In January, a convict at California's Lompoc Federal Penitentiary says a fellow inmate confessed to her murder -- and the long dormant investigation has been reopened, with the spotlight shifting away from John Ramsey and his wife Patsy for the first time.

The new evidence comes from a man serving 14 years in connection with a plot to kill doctors and staff at abortion clinics and who once vowed that "no child will be slaughtered."

Says an insider close to the new probe: "the guy seemed to have intimate information about the Ramseys."

-- In February 2001, John Ramsey reported a break-in at the Atlanta home he bought in July 1997. He told cops he returned home from an errand to find a burglar inside the house and "scuffled" with the man.

Ramsey said he recieved some cuts and bruises and an injury to his left eye before the intruder fled with a laptop computer, a gold ring and his wallet with cash and credit cards, among other items.

-- In the Ramseys' book The Death of Innocence (Thomas Nelson Publishers), published in 2000, John Ramsey recalls returning to his Atlanta home at dusk from a picnic and finding that the burglar alarm at the house had gone off.

Ramsey says he entered his house and quickly found a basement window unlatched. Later, he writes, he learned about a mysterious note placed in the computer of their security monitoring service.

The note warned NOT to call the cops if the alarm was ever detected at the house.

"Where did that note come from?" Ramsey wonders. "We will probably never know."