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'DARK EVIDENCE'
A SUSPECT in the unsolved killing of JonBenét Ramsey is a "serial creep" who mailed an old high school classmate blood-stained cassettes containing disturbing recordings and newspaper clippings of missing girls.
Gary Oliva, a convicted pedophile currently imprisoned for child pornography offenses, was for years considered a suspect in the unsolved murder of JonBenét who was found bludgeoned to death in the basement of her family home in Boulder, Colorado, on December 26, 1996.
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The 59-year-old has previously admitted to having an "obsession" with the slain child beauty pageant queen and has authored a series of confession letters from prison, claiming to have killed her by accident.
Those confession letters were sent to Michael Vail, an old high school classmate of Oliva's in Irvine, California, 'who told The U.S. Sun Oliva was known as "scary Gary" growing up among his peers.
While he never considered Oliva to be one of his friends, he did latch onto Vail's friendship group, which was mostly comprised of artists, musicians, and creatives.
"Well, I hate to use the word friends because when you're in a small school, maybe 75-100 kids, you pretty much know everybody and you get into your little cliques, right?" said Vail.
"But Gary is what I would call an orbiter. He would orbit around our group and people would call him Scary Gary because he was so unpredictable. He was a very disturbed kid.
"Sometimes he'd have a spasm and start burning his arm with something, or just go running screaming down the street.
"He also used to joke about necrophilia and stuff [...] he would commit all these petty crimes like breaking and entering and he'd always steal weird things like art supplies.
"He just had a very messed up, dysfunctional childhood. One of the worst you can imagine [...] but I had a fantastic childhood, so I think that's why he gravitated towards me because he was seeking out some sense of normalcy."
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This story is part of an ongoing series investigating Gary Oliva's potential ties to the murder of JonBenét Ramsey.
Vail first started corresponding with Oliva via letter a few years after they both graduated high school.
Their letters were at first fairly typical exchanges in which they'd update one another on their lives, jobs, and families.
The stuff he started sending me just got darker and darker and darker.
Michael Vail
Before long, Oliva began sending Vail audio tapes which - at least to begin with - started out innocently enough and often contained odd but amusing skits, including one recording of Oliva pretending to interview a macaroon cookie.
But after a few years of exchanging "stupid sh*t", the content of Oliva's correspondences quickly grew darker and more disturbing sometime around 1989, Vail said.
Regular conversational topics were displaced for long, rambling paragraphs about blood and murder and newspaper clippings of missing girls, and quirky interview tapes gave way to sickening recordings of Oliva simulating the rape of a child.
Some of the tapes even had writing scrawled in blood on them, according to Vail.
In 1990, Oliva would be charged with sexually abusing a seven-year-old girl. The following year, he'd be charged with attempting the strangle his mother to death with a telephone wire.
"The stuff he started sending me just got darker and darker and darker," said Vail.
"Sometimes I would open the package and a bunch of hair would fall out, along with a poster of a missing girl in Oregon or something.
"I wonder who that girl was and why did Gary mail me the poster. Was he involved or was he just aroused by missing people and the poster was some kind of pornography for him?
"I don't know why I got that in the mail, but it's very disturbing [...] and there were cassette tapes with their labels smeared in blood.
"Some of the recordings were so disturbing," he added.
"In one it sounded like he was killing an animal, and in another was a doll that talked and he was simulating raping this doll."
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Concerning the latter tape, Oliva is heard talking to the doll and pretending he has been left alone to babysit a friend's daughter.
"How are you doing Roonette?" Oliva is heard saying in a snippet of the tape, to which to doll responds, "Hi."
"Why don't you come over here and sit on my lap and let me touch your back, how do you like that?" adds Oliva.
In another tape, he was heard fantasizing about hurting and eating little children.
"Things I do like making bacon strips out of little girls, I'm into it you know, being a sick dog," Oliva said.
'HE KILLED HER'
Vail said he's convinced Oliva was in some way involved in JonBenét's death.
That belief stems from a call from Oliva hours after the six-year-old was found dead and hours before news of her brutal murder would make headlines across the country.
During the call, a frantic and emotional Oliva cried: "I just hurt a little girl."
Vail pried for more information but Oliva hung up the phone.
The following morning, he went outside to collect the paper when he noticed a headline in the L.A. Times that read: "Girl, 6, slain in Boulder, Colorado."
He immediately contacted Boulder PD tip line which was listed at the bottom of the article and informed them what Oliva had told him - but Vail never received a call back.
"I called that number as fast as I could and reported it right away," he said.
"I told them, 'Hey. This guy called me and told me he'd hurt a little girl in Boulder' and then told them everything I know.
"And then I sat back and waited, thinking I'll soon be reading in the newspaper that Gary had been arrested.
"But day after day went by and I was like, 'Why hasn't Gary been arrested yet?'"
Three months would pass without a reply, and so Vail once again reported Oliva's call.
"I said, 'Hey, I need to talk to you guys because I'm wondering why haven't you arrested Gary yet?' And they just put me through to a recorded line and I left a message but, again, nothing happened," he recounted.
"I was just baffled. How can this guy call me and tell me he's hurt a little girl before it's even in the newspaper and the police don't do anything?
"I always just assumed the police knew what the f**k they were doing.
"But there's no understanding not following up on that lead. I was convinced Gary did it because never in my life have I heard a grown man sobbing like that - ever.
"I wasn't there, obviously, but I have my theories as to what happened."
OLIVA NAMED A SUSPECT
At the time of Vail's second call to BPD, Patsy and John Ramsey had already been designated the key persons of interest in the case by investigators and all leads and tips regarding other suspects largely went ignored.
Vail wouldn't hear from authorities until 2002 when the District Attorney took a fresh look over the case.
He turned over dozens of the letters and tapes Oliva had sent him over the years which have still not been returned to him.
By that time, Gary Oliva had already been arrested in Boulder on charges of criminal trespass, drug possession, and possession of a weapon by a prior criminal offender after he was caught roaming the halls of the University of Colorado campus after hours.
At the time of his arrest, Oliva was found with a stun gun in his possession, in addition to a photograph of JonBenét, a newspaper clipping about the case, and a poem he'd written about her, titled "Ode to JonBenét."
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Lou Smit, a legendary detective who came out of retirement to investigate the case for the DA's office, pointed to the incident as cause for naming him a potential suspect.
The discovery of the stun gun was a particularly interesting development for Smit, who had long theorized a stun gun was used on JonBenét to subdue her in the moments before her death.
Smith told CBS' 48 Hours in 2002 that Oliva may have been a part of a group of several men that broke into the Ramsey home.
John Ramsey told The U.S. Sun he believes his family was being watched for several weeks or even months before JonBenét's murder, suggesting also that the culprit - or culprits - had been in or broken into the home previously.
Describing Oliva as a "creeper" with an apparent penchant for breaking and entering, Vail believes his former classmate - who was staying 13 houses away at the time - may have crossed paths with JonBenét at some stage and developed a fascination with her.
"Gary's proximity to the Ramseys is one of the things that most alarms me. Where he was getting his mail, 13 houses away, was accessible via an alleyway that also ran behind the Ramsey home.
"I can't imagine he hadn't seen JonBenét [...] And since I know Gary used to creep into homes and buildings and steal art supplies, I think he could've been inside that house numerous times.
"He was a creeper and expert at sneaking in and doing things without anyone ever knowing he was there."
TWISTED MESSAGES
Oliva's DNA was taken as part of Smit's investigation but he wasn't found to be a match for the crime scene.
However, very little DNA exists in the case, and over the years BPD has been heavily scrutinized for their failure to secure the crime scene after JonBenét was reported missing, contaminating potentially crucial evidence in the meantime.
Oliva has never been charged in connection with the case.
He was arrested again in Boulder, in June 2016, on charges of possession of child pornography.
Much like his arrest 16 years earlier, Oliva was found to be in possession of a number of JonBenét-related artifacts.
A search of his phone yielded 335 photos of the slain girl, including images of her autopsy, pictures of homemade shrines to her, and police crime scene images.
Investigators also noted that a number of contacts in Oliva's phone referenced members of the Ramsey family, and several videos paying tribute to her were saved on the device.
Vail reached out to Oliva after his arrest to learn more about the phone call he made to him in December 1996 and elicit a confession from him for murdering JonBenét.
Three years later, he would pen a series of odd and disturbing confession letters to him, claiming to have killed her accidentally.
In one of the letters, which Vail shared with The U.S. Sun, Oliva wrote: "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."
In another, he claimed: "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."
In other letters penned by Oliva, he claimed to have a "disorder" for killing children.
"Please don't hate me. I'm sorry I turned scumb [sic] but even when you first met me I told you how I wanted to kill children.
"When I met JonBenét, she took away that horrible craving to kill kids that you know me for.
"She changed me into a new person. But it's OK. I've killed so many children I've lost track."
Vail forwarded Oliva's apparent confessions to BPD in 2019 but the department brushed aside the claims.
Since then, Oliva has continued to send Vail disturbing letters and drawing from his prison cell in Limon, Colorado.
In one such sketch, Oliva crafted a pencil drawing of a smiling JonBenét - wearing a crown and sash with the word "Bambini" emblazoned across it - nailed to a cross.
Written above the girl's head are the words "JonBenét Christ."
In another etching of JonBenét, Oliva wrote a poem about his love for the slain six-year-old.
"My heart was split, and a flower appeared; and grace sprang up; and it bore fruit for my God," begins the bizarre rambling.
"You split me, tore my heart open, and filled me with love. You poured your spirit into me; I knew you as myself. My eyes are radiant with your spirit, my nostrils fill with your fragrance. My ears delight in your music.
"[...] Blessed are the people who planted on your earth, in your garden, who grow as your trees and flowers grow, who transform their darkness to light. Their roots plunge into darkness; their faces turn toward the light.
"There is infinite space in your garden; all people are welcome here; all they need do is enter.
"I love you, JonBenét," continues the letter. "It would be worth it to take the blame for you."
'KEEP HIM LOCKED UP'
Oliva's 10-year sentence is due to come to an end in 2025, though it remains to be seen whether the state will agree to release him.
Under the terms of his sentence, the state is only required to do so if he passes a sex offender treatment program.
Vail said that his former classmate should never be permitted freedom because he is incapable of reform.
"Society would not be safe with him out [...] he's told me in some of our calls that you could give him shock therapy and still he'd have these urges.
"I'm mean, this guy is sending me drawings of grilling and eating children.
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"He's a menace to society."
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