Entertainment

JonBenet Murder Case Returning To Primetime TV

Brandon Katz Contributor
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JonBenet Ramsey’s murder case 20 years ago received a national spotlight and widespread media coverage. Now, with anniversary projects lined up at CBS, Investigation Discovery, Lifetime and “Dr. Phil,” the unsolved murder is once again taking center stage, USA Today reports.

Ramsey, a six-year-old Colorado beauty pageant contestant, was murdered in 1996. Her story drew the attention of the entire country and quickly became a tabloid sensation.

“People are drawn to stories that are deep moral dramas…There’s a primal hunger for justice. People want to know the guilty will be punished and the innocent exonerated,” Lifetime general manager Rob Sharenow told USA Today.  Lifetime is producing “Who Killed JonBenet?,” a scripted film that will arrive this fall.

Lifetime has previously aired dramatizations focusing on the real-life trials of Drew Paterson and Amanda Knox.

“It’s unsolved. There’s something that gnaws at people about not having resolution of this case. There’s a young child involved and this seemingly perfect American family having this tragedy strike them,” Sharenow said, adding that these types of cases often prove “difficult to wrap your mind around when you’re hearing about it in the past-tense from a talking head. Dramatizations put you in the moment in a very different way.”

CBS will air “The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey” in September and ID will produce “JonBenet Ramsey: An American Murder Mystery” around the same time.