JonBenét Patricia Ramsey (August 6, 1990 – December 25, 1996)[1] was an American child beauty queen who was killed at the age of six in her family's home in Boulder, Colorado. A long handwritten ransom note requesting the exact amount of money her father had recently received in a bonus from work, was found in the home. Her father, John, found the girl's body in the basement of their house about seven hours after she had been reported missing. She had sustained a broken skull from a blow to the head and had been strangled; a garrote was found tied around her neck. The autopsy report stated that JonBenét's official cause of death was "asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma".[1][2] Her death was ruled a homicide.[3] The case generated worldwide public and media interest, in part because her mother Patsy Ramsey, a former beauty queen, had entered JonBenét into a series of child beauty pageants. The crime is still considered a cold case and remains an open investigation with the Boulder Police Department.