I have believed that for a long time. It's the only thing that fits.
I have believed that for a long time. It's the only thing that fits.
My guess is the brother or mother did it. Possibly the brother because of what others on this forum thread have already said. Or possibly the mother who may have been upset with the daughter that night about something (her mother put her daughter in lots of child beauty pageants, so maybe they argued about something related to that?) and did something that might have accidentally caused her death. I don't think the father had anything to do with her death. I also think it's possible the father or both parents tried to cover up the death with the extremely long obviously fake "ransom" letter, the garrote situation in the basement, picking up his daughter's dead body, bringing her upstairs and laying her body in the middle of a room (where many of the Ramseys' neighbors were already gathered and sitting down), then (finally!) calling the police after all of the above had already occurred, etc.
Thus, it seems irrational to think the "real killer(s)" were outside the family.