JonBenet Ramsey Autopsy Photos: Defining the Search

Just What Are We Looking For?

Saul Relative, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Jul 19, 2009 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

For some reason, JonBenet Ramsey autopsy photos are being sought online. JonBenet Ramsey died in 1996, murdered by an unknown assailant in the middle of the night in her home in Colorado, her tiny body strangled in the basement and hidden under a white covering. Her story is resurrected often in the tabloids and online, and she is referenced often on television. JonBenet Ramsey, possibly the most famous unsolved murder in recent American history, has been publicly exhumed once more as internet users now seem to want to get a look at her autopsy photos.

Why?

Although people have always had a predilection for looking at the macabre or the gruesome, one wonders where the line should be drawn. And one has to wonder why the sudden interest in autopsy photos of dead celebrities. David Carradine's death in a Bangkok hotel not only created a firestorm of interest, but the subsequent publishing of a death photo, then autopsy photos, seemed to whet the appetite of a voracious, all-consuming beast. Carradine's death was soon followed by Michael Jackson's death and publication of a couple of death photos, followed quickly by rumors of autopsy photos.

And now, JonBenet Ramsey's autopsy photos have gained the interest of the ghoulishly curious.

It seems that the more we achieve technologically as a species, the more regressive we become in philosophy and pursuit. Our motives and intentions seem to be pushing toward the physical and not the cerebral. The internet has delivered an explosion in the porn industry. People blog about their everyday lives (and are read), telling people intimacies or how bored they are or what they're cooking for dinner. Videos are uploaded constantly in pursuit of a couple of unaccounted for Warhol minutes. And the most searched for items on what can only be considered as the greatest invention since the wheel are those of naked people (Emma Watson's Wardrobe Malfunction, Heidi Montag Pratt in Playboy, or Erin Andrews' Peephole Video) and dead people (David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Steve McNair, JonBenet Ramsey).

And the naked and the dead do not have to be famous. Just naked or dead. The internet gives them their fifteen minutes -- or much, much more. But being famous and dead (or naked) certainly creates more traffic.

And there is a definite psychological connection between nakedness and death. Not to delve too far into the Freudian, but nakedness stimulates the sex drive, which is the species' way of continuing and reaffirming life and fighting/staving off death. Somewhere in the psychobabble, one can find the connection between the the popularity of searching for naked people, sex, and death.

But is there a line to be drawn? Isn't there a tipping point or level of saturation that is met? Terrible enough to look for Michael Jackson's or David Carradine's autopsy photos, but to look for the autopsy photos of a 6-year-old girl? What is the point?

It is one thing to be an investigator, whether a trained detective or a private investigator (or even an amateur sleuth), looking into a case gone cold these many years, attempting to perhaps see the case from a fresh viewpoint. It is altogether something totally different when one attempts to view JonBenet Ramsey's autopsy photos out of a need to assuage some prurient or puerile curiosity.

JonBenet Ramsey's murder occurred over 12 years ago. And although some of her autopsy photos can indeed be found online, it must be asked: What are you looking for?

******

Sources:

Google.com
PBWorks.com

Published by Saul Relative

WVU graduate, with degrees in History, English, Secondary Education, Computer Programming, and Psychology (and nearly a degree in Political Science). Originally from West Virginia, with stints in Virginia,... View profile

JonBenet Ramsey Autopsy Photos: Defining the Search

Just What Are We Looking For?

14 Comments

Yahoo! Voices

Also on Yahoo!

Yahoo! Contributor Network