One of the leading suspects for the murder of JonBenét Ramsey allegedly made a prison bizarre confession to a fellow lag – three years after a series of “tributes” to her were found on his phone.
Gary Oliva, 59, was arrested in Boulder, Colorado, in 2016 on charges relating to child abuse images.
He’s currently serving an indeterminate sentence – meaning he won’t be released until he successfully completes the state's sex offender treatment program.
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Michael Vail, a former classmate of Oliva's, Michael Vail, told The Sun that the sex offender had called him over Christmas 1996 – at around the same time that the six-year-old beauty pageant star had been murdered – and tearfully told him: "I hurt a little girl.”
“He kept moaning, ‘I hurt a little girl. I hurt a little girl,’” Vail told In Touch magazine.
Vail reported the call to Boulder police the following morning, but investigators didn’t follow up on the call until 2002.
Oliva was arrested in 2016 after using a public wi-fi network to upload images depicting child sexual abuse to his personal Gmail account.
But alongside almost 700 shocking abuse images, there were some 330 images of JonBenét.
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"Some were regular photographs of her likely found online," a police report reads. "Of those photographs, 19 were images of JonBenét's autopsy like from photographs that had previously leaked to the press in years past.
"There were also many photographs of what appear to be shrines to JonBenét Ramsey. It is unknown where these shrines are located or if they were created by Oliva or not."
JonBenét was found dead on Boxing Day 1996 in her family's basement.
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The six-year-old had been strangled with a garrotte made of a knotted rope attached to a broken paintbrush handle.
Vail believes the rope points to Oliva’s involvement in JonBenét’s murder.
“I said to myself, ‘Holy crap — that’s a paintbrush and there’s a knot on the f–king string,'” he said.
Oliva reportedly had an obsession with knots and nooses, and Vail said he remembered the way he would draw detailed images of ropes when they were at school together.
“When we were at school, Gary used to creep into homes, buildings, and classrooms and steal art supplies … paintbrushes, glue, paint, things like that,” Vail said.
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Oliva would visit a church close to the Ramseys’ family home in Boulder, CBS News reported, and Vail believes he could have broken into their home more than once.
The Boulder Police Department issued a statement saying it was “aware of Gary Oliva and has investigated his potential involvement in this case, including several previous confessions”.
The statement continued: “The department routinely receives information on this investigation. Information provided to the police department is reviewed along with the many tips and theories we receive.”
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