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The Confessions of Gary Oliva, The Sex Offender Who Said He Killed JonBenét Ramsey By Accident
Despite his confession to the 6-year-old’s death, he has never been charged with her murder.
To learn the full story, read my article on All That’s Interesting.
Gary Howard Oliva was known for his disturbing behavior long before six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was murdered. High school classmates even nicknamed him “Scary Gary.”
In 2019, Oliva, a convicted sex offender, admitted to killing JonBenét in a series of disturbing jailhouse letters and poems, claiming her death was “by accident.”
Obsessed with JonBenét for years, Oliva was found with hundreds of images of her on his phone when he was arrested in 2016 for uploading child pornography. Police discovered that he lived near the Ramsey home at the time of the murder and even attended a vigil on the first anniversary of JonBenét’s death.
Oliva’s high school classmate, Michael Vail, kept in touch with him for years and the two often exchanged letters. Eventually, Oliva began sending Vail tape recordings that got progressively more vulgar as time went on.
In many of the disturbing recordings, Oliva would pretend to be with a young child. On one tape, he joked about raping a girl, and in another, he talked about wanting to eat one.
Vail finally had enough and notified authorities when Oliva started sending him packages that contained blood and hair…
