Convicted Pedophile Claims He Killed JonBenet

54 year old Gary Oliva, a convicted pedophile and long time suspect in JonBenet's murder case, has allegedly confessed to “accidentally” killing the six-year-old in a series of letters sent to a former high school classmate, Michael Vail. Olivia is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Colorado for possession of child pornography. He is up for parole in 2020.

“I never loved anyone like I did JonBenét and yet I let her slip and her head bashed in half and I watched her die. It was an accident. Please believe me. She was not like the other kids.”

“JonBenét completely changed me and removed all evil from me. Just one look at her beautiful face, her glowing beautiful skin, and her divine God-body, I realized I was wrong to kill other kids. Yet by accident she died and it was my fault.”

Vail has suspected Olivia for the last 22 years, ever since he received a disturbing phone call from him shortly after the murder.

“My suspicions began when Gary called me late at night on December 26, 1996. He was sobbing and said, ‘I hurt a little girl.’ … I tried to get more information out of him. The only other thing he told me was that he was in the Boulder, Colorado area. On December 27 I read on the front page of my local newspaper ‘Girl, 6, slain in Boulder, Colorado’. … I immediately called the Boulder Police Department and told them what I knew about Gary and what he had told me just days earlier. They didn’t get back to me. Three months later I called the police again to find out what was going on in its investigation of Gary, but instead I was sent to a police answering machine set up for tips on the JonBenét case. I left a message on the recorded line and again I never heard back from investigators.”

Despite receiving several tips from Vail, Boulder Police didn’t consider Oliva a suspect until 2000, when he was arrested on unrelated charges.

Police found a photo of JonBenét, a poem he’d written titled ‘Ode to JonBenét’, and a stun gun among his possessions.

Several investigators had theorized that a stun gun may have been used to subdue JonBenét the night of the murder.

New DNA testing methods failed to match Olivia's DNA to the crime scene evidence, but the Boulder Police department has since acknowledged that the crime scene was mishandled.

In 2002, Lou Smit, a retired homicide detective hired by the Boulder District Attorney, told 48 Hours that he still considered Oliva a suspect.  

Vail thinks that Boulder police have placed “too much emphasis on DNA matches” when it’s well known that “the crime scene and evidence in the case was compromised.” Vail has maintained contact with Olivia for years in hopes of coaxing  a confession out of him.

"I have now sent these letters to Boulder police in the hope it will get Gary to provide them with firm proof and to name who else may have been involved in JonBenét’s death. … Now they have this, a written confession, the police need to charge him with her murder.”