Burke Ramsey filed a $750 million lawsuit Wednesday against CBS, a production company and seven consultants over a TV special that aired in September, accusing him of killing his younger sister, JonBenet Ramsey, in Boulder in 1996.
The show in question, The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey, aired Sept. 18 and 19.
On Wednesday 9 Wants to Know obtained a copy of the suit, which was filed in Michigan.
It names CBS Corp., Critical Content LLC and consultants Jim Clemente, Laura Richards, Jim Kolar, James Fitzgerald, Stanley Burke, Werner Spitz and Henry Lee.
The suit seeks $250 million in compensatory damages and $500 million in punitive damages.
According to a copy of the suit, Burke Ramsey filed it to “redress the permanent damage to his reputation resulting from Defendants’ false accusation that he killed his sister, JonBenét Ramsey.”
It is the second defamation filed by Burke Ramsey since the broadcast of the CBS special, The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey. Investigators involved in that show suggested that Burke had killed JonBenet by hitting her in the head with a flashlight.
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On Oct. 6, JonBenet’s brother sued Dr. Werner Spitz, one of those experts involved in the CBS special, for defamation. That suit, also filed in Michigan, seeks $150 million in damages.
That suit was based in part on comments Spitz made during an interview with CBS Detroit on Sept. 19 suggesting that Burke Ramsey killed his younger sister.
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According to the suit, during the interview Spitz said, “If you really, really use your free time to think about this case, you cannot come to a different conclusion.”
It also attributed other statements to him – “It’s the boy who did it, whether he was jealous, or mentally unfit or something,” and, “I don’t know the why, I’m not a psychiatrist, but what I am sure about is what I know about him, that is what happened here.”
The suit labeled Spitz “a publicity seeker with a history of interjecting himself in high profile cases in an effort to make money, exaggerate his resume and claim a level of expertise that he does not possess or deserve.”'
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The suit noted that in addition to the murder of JonBenet, Burke Ramsey had endured the deaths of his older sister, Beth, in a car crash in 1991 and his mother to cancer in 2006.
“Burke’s life has also for the past 20 years been lived under the cloud of years of false accusations against his parents and periodic media frenzies,” the suit alleges. “Now Defendant Spitz has attacked and permanently harmed the reputation of 29-year-old Burke Ramsey by describing him as a killer since age 9.”
Spitz’s attorneys have asserted that his statements were his opinion and protected by the First Amendment. They have filed a motion to have the suit dismissed.
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