s-shirley-brady.htm


	A Personal view of the Internet Subculture Surrounding the JonBenet Ramsey Murder case

This web page is part of a series covering found materials regarding individuals, items or events that apparently became part of what is commonly known as the vortex of the JonBenet Ramsey murder case Christmas night 1996. The webmaster of this site claims no inside official Boulder police information as to who has been interviewed, investigated, the outcome or what information is actually considered official evidence. These pages outline found material which can include but not limited to materials found in books, articles, the Internet, transcripts, depositions, legal documents, Internet discussion forums, graphics or photos, media reports, TV/Radio shows about the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. Found materials are here for historical archive purposes. (www.acandyrose.com - acandyrose@aol.com)

This webpage series is for historical archive and educational purposes on found materials

[Shirley Brady, Former Ramsey nanny from Atlanta]

Shirley Brady (RMN Photo)
Former Ramsey Nanny in Atlanta

Shirley Brady
Ramsey Nanny in Atlanta, Georgia

CHAIN OF EVENTS 1997

1997-01-10 SHIRLEY BRADY letter (Published in the Boulder Camera)

"SHIRLEY BRADY letter"
Published in the Boulder Camera - January 10th, 1997

This is an awful way to start a new year after you get "Happy New Year" wishes from everyone.

I really don't feel happy and I wonder, how long will this sadness last? I never expected such a tragedy as little JonBenet's murder. Although I have not seen her since she was a baby, I have talked to her mother several times. I'll always remember the family as kind, good people; a soft-spoken father who is kind and loving, and his children are his life, and a beautiful mother who is always radiant. She's the only woman I've ever seen who comes to breakfast in her housecoat and looks like a ray of sunshine.

I was the housekeeper and nanny to their little son who was born while I was there. Both are devoted parents and I was crazy about Burke. I used to rock him to sleep; he loved Handel's Messiah's "Halleluiah Chorus." I have in my heart and mind so many happy memories of the whole family including grandparents and aunts. The oldest children had so much grace and class, so well behaved and refined.

When I saw that little coffin and the grieving parents, I was stunned. Who could do such a violent, crazy deed? It is plain insanity for anyone to even think a family member would have done it. After Mr. Ramsey's oldest daughter died, JonBenet was his salvation to go on from his sorrow, loosing his oldest.

Burke adored his little sister. When I babysat, I watched him playing with her when she woke up. He would tell me she woke up so I could change her. He always was a highly motivated, intelligent child. He figured out at 5 months in his walker, how to unscrew every doorknob in his kitchen. I used to call him "Super Kid." I took him to the piano and took his little finger to play: "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." He enjoyed it at least five minutes, which is a long time for a six months old. He loved for me to read to him. I could write a book about them, titled "The Love of One Family."

I was asked how Mr. Ramsey is taking all the tragedies in his life. I said he has a tremendous inner strength - he is like the Rock of Gibralter. He will never ever forget it, but he lets God comfort him in the belief, what He does, he accepts it. Mrs. Ramsey is the same. When you have two people loving each other like they do, nothing can come between them. They share tragedies together.

Finally, as I wrote in their card:

God gave you JonBenet for a little while. Now she is in heaven, in the sunshine of God's smile.

God bless all of you for supporting them.

SHIRLEY BRADY
Americus, Ga.

People Magazine, October 6, 1997, 'Mom and Dad Under Suspicion'
(by Richard Jerome, Vickie Bane in Boulder, Sara Gay Dammann in Charlevoix, Fannie Weinstein and Gail Wescott in Atlanta, Jennifer Mendelsohn in Parkersburg, Margie Bonnett Sellinger in Washington and Sue Miller in New York City)

(Page 107): "Last Christmas afternoon, Shirley Brady spoke to Patsy by phone. "I could hear kids giggling in the backgorund," she says. "And Patsy said, Oh, John is out there cleaning the sidewalk so JonBenet can try out her new bicycle."

CHAIN OF EVENTS 1998

1998-09-23: Justice Watch Forum thread, "Meeing Shirley Brady"

"Meeing Shirley Brady"
Posted by Anderson on 16:44:52 9/23/98

I met Shirley Brady, the Ramseys former nanny, yesterday. She is a multifacited woman with a nack for telling storytelling unlike anyone I've ever know. Shirley is friends with Mother and came up with her to visit an old friend here in Atlanta. (Her friend is another story all together)

Shirley had nothing but good things to say about the Ramseys. She spoke highly of John and his patience with Burke when he was a baby. (BUT she told me that I look like John when I smile. AKKK). She had baby pictures of Burke and a picture of Burke and JonBenét taken at her first Christmas when she was only 4 months old. JonBenet was a beautiful baby.

Shirley told of Patsy going into labor with JonBenet at 2am. All in all she has left an impression on me that I won't soon forget. The topper was hearing her play the piano and sing the song that she wrote for JonBenet after she was murdered.

5. "Shy"
Posted by Anderson on 17:24:13 9/23/98

I emailed Allipat and told her a story that Shirley told me about Burke rubbing egg yolk all over John's shirt while he was eating breakfast before going to work. John was very calm about it, continued eating and when he was finished he put Burke down and went and changed shirts. The point of Shirley telling the story was to tell how John never got upset with the children. She didn't have anything bad to say about him. Of course she left them when JonBenét was 6 months old and before Patsy's bought with cancer so

7. "Mrs. Brady"
Posted by Anderson on 17:40:27 9/23/98

Shirley brought a beautiful ceramic hand painted angel that she made herself that I'm going to hang on the tree for her. She has JonBenét's name stenciled on the bottom of it. She didn't bring nuttin for me but I had my picture taken with her. As soon as I get them from Mother I'll see about posting it.

9. "Maxi"
Posted by Anderson on 06:06:19 9/24/98

Shirley Brady played the piano and sang for us. Shirley Brady is Hungarian. No Belle and I are not siblings? Where'd that come from? Has the fog lifted yet?

CHAIN OF EVENTS 1999

1999-10-15: Little girl gets lost in public image of beauty princess

Little girl gets lost in public image of beauty princess
By Cindy Brovsky
Denver Post Staff Writer

Oct. 15, 1999 - She is enshrined in the public's memory as a young, precocious blonde, prancing on the stage during child beauty pageants.

But JonBenet Ramsey was really a pretty typical 6-year-old girl, those who knew her say.

She liked kindergarten and was just starting to excel in math. She asked her family's landscaper questions about thorns on roses. She was eager for Santa Claus to visit on Christmas

"I can tell you that JonBenet was highly intelligent,'' Shirley Brady, a former Ramsey nanny, said Thursday. "Mrs. Ramsey taught her how to answer the phone when she was just 22 months old. I called once and she said, "Hello, who is this?' When I told her "Mrs. Brady,' she said in her tiny little voice, "Who is Mrs. Brady?' She remembered when I told her it was Nanny.''

Brady came to work for JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, when they were living in Atlanta in the late 1980s, before they moved to Boulder in 1991. She initially was hired when the couple's son, Burke, was born, and then she helped raise JonBenet until she was 6 months old.

"In the three years I was in that house, there was never an argument, never voices raised,'' Brady said.

That's why Brady, 72, says she never has wavered in her belief that the Ramseys are innocent - even though they have always been suspects in the girl's murder. On Wednesday, Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter announced that, after a year-long review of the case by a grand jury, no one would be charged in the case.

"I'd like to shake every one of the grand jurors' hands because they know this mother and father couldn't have hurt their child,'' Brady said. "Mrs. Ramsey survived cancer. Why would she kill the only little girl she would ever be able to have?''

In Lawrence Schiller's book "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town,'' friends are quoted saying that JonBenet's life was more than her beauty-pageant competitions.

Landscaper Brian Scott told Schiller how the little girl used to follow him around the family's Boulder yard asking numerous questions.

"Do roses know their thorns can hurt?'' she asked him one day.

Scott also remembers how JonBenet started to cry one day when she said she missed her father when he went on trips. But in the next minute, her playful side emerged.

"I saw JonBenet was scooping up the leaves from the top of the barrel and hurling them over her head into the wind,'' Scott recalled.

Barbara Kostanick's daughter attended school with JonBenet.

"I remember the first time I saw them together - they looked so cute playing on the monkey bars,'' she recalled in Schiller's book.

Pam Griffin, a seamstress who made JonBenet's pageant costumes, said the Ramseys had a loving relationship with their daughter.

"And then there was all the love in JonBenet's eyes when she spoke to her father,'' Griffin said. "Everything he said was important to her.''

Those kinds of memories don't surprise Brady. She said the Ramsey family were thoughtful of each other and very loving.

"The public never met the Ramseys, so they jump to these horrible conclusions that just aren't true,'' Brady said. "They were a loving family who never could have hurt each other. I know that is the truth.''

CHAIN OF EVENTS 2001

2001-09-21: Steve Thomas Deposition (Atlanta, Georgia)
Wolf vs Ramsey Civil Action File No. 00-CIV-1187(JEC)
(Screen Capture on left is from "Today Show, October 28, 2002)

APPEARANCES
For Plaintiff: Darnay Hoffman, ESQ.
For Defendants: James C. Rawles, ESQ., L. Lin Wood, ESQ.
For Deponent: Charles P. Diamond, ESQ., Sean R. Smith, ESQ.
Also present: O.M. "Ollie" Gray
Also present: Jay R. Ren, CLVS, Todd Tompkins, Videographer Intern

Steve Thomas Deposition (Atlanta, Georgia)
Wolf vs Ramsey Civil Action File No. 00-CIV-1187(JEC)
(Shirley Brady)

294
7 Q. Did you ever interview Shirley
8 Brady, who had been a housekeeper for the
9 Ramseys for almost four years?
10 A. The name sounds familiar and if
11 it's the person I'm thinking of who resided
12 in Georgia I think Harmer or Gosage conducted
13 that interview.
14 Q. They would have prepared a report?
15 A. I would think so.
16 Q. Shirley Brady tells me that she
17 got a phone call and about a five-minute
18 interview and when she said she made it
19 pretty clear that the Ramseys weren't in any
20 way the type of people that could be involved
21 in this, that the interview ended and she
22 never heard from anybody again. Does that
23 sound like a thorough investigation if that's
24 true?
25 A. It depends on what the detectives

295
1 were doing. I don't know what they were
2 doing.
3 Q. Well, you know if you have got to
4 -- if you're spending a lot of time with
5 Linda Hoffmann-Pugh who had worked for them
6 less than two years and only worked part time
7 and you want to know all about this family's
8 background, a thorough investigation, wouldn't
9 you believe, sir, from your experience as a
10 police officer that you're going to spend
11 more than five minutes on the phone with
12 someone who was a housekeeper for three
13 years?

Steve Thomas Deposition - 09-21-2001
Chris Wolf vs Ramsey Civil Case
(Shirley Brady)

0295
14 A. For some reason in my mind, and I
15 may be wrong, I don't think Mrs. Brady was
16 ever in Colorado with the family. There was
17 apparently nothing that the detective who
18 interviewed her felt was worth more than
19 their five minutes. You would have to ask
20 them.
21 Q. So you had to be in Colorado with
22 the family in order to be a significant
23 witness as to their background?
24 A. No, not to their background.
25 Q. That doesn't make any sense, does

296
1 it?
2 A. No.
3 Q. I didn't think it did. I mean,
4 you know you all were looking to see if
5 there was any pathology in this family on
6 either John Ramsey's part or Patsy Ramsey's
7 part, right?
8 A. We did.

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