On January 4th, Discovery+ released a brand new photo of the Ramsey Christmas that hasn’t been seen in over 24 years. It shows six-year-old JonBenet seated on her brand new bottle-green bicycle. JonBenet’s nine-year-old brother Burke stands beside her, with the wheel of Patsy’s silver bicycle just visible behind his left arm. Further to Burke’s right is an unopened gift from the boutqiue toy store FAO Schwartz.

Fragments of FAO Schwarts wrapping were later found in the small basement room where JonBenet’s dead body was hidden on the day after Christmas.

Very few photos of the Ramsey Christmas of 1996 – JonBenet’s last – have been released to the media. In September 2016, TCRS [formerly Shakedown] brought the bicycle narrative to the world’s attention for the first time. From the aramseys interviews with the police, and their books on the case, it appears they deliberately left out the bicycle aspect of the narrative – until it came up again in 2016.

In December 2019, TCRS re-emphasized this narrative in a YouTube video.

In short, why is there so much contradiction and intrigue over bicycles? John initially told the police in 1998 that JonBenet and Patsy got bikes that Christmas. Burke was supposed to get a new bike on his tenth birthday a month later. On Dr. Phil in 2016, Burke Ramsey contradicted his father, saying: “We both got bikes…”

Detective Lou Smit’s meticulous review of the crime scene archive, also caused him to ask John Ramsey in 1998:

LOU SMIT: You know, I’ve looked at a lot of pictures in regards to this particular case and I can’t remember seeing any bikes. What happened to the bikes?

JOHN RAMSEY: Right. It wasn’t unusual for him to ride through the yard.

LOU SMIT: Did you say he had a bicycle that Christmas?

JOHN RAMSEY: I know we got — I got a bicycle. I think that’s what it was. I gave myself a bicycle.

LOU SMIT: That Christmas?

JOHN RAMSEY: Yeah, Patsy got a bicycle, I got a bicycle, JonBenet got a bicycle. Burke already had one, I am pretty sure. I don’t know what it is, I guess…

On the 1st-anniversary of JonBenet’s death, the Daily Camera reported on both children receiving bicycles, a distortion in the media that we now know to be not true.

Christmas day was warm and sunny for the most part, and JonBenét and her brother each received new bicycles that their mother picked out from University Bicycles downtown.

Interestingly, in the new photo released JonBenet is actually posing on her bicycle, sitting on it with her hands on the handlebars. We know Boulder is a bicycle-friendly town, with bike paths criss-crossing the suburbs, and that Jonbenet actually spent her last hours of Christmas Day riding her new bike on the front lawn. John claimed he cleared away some snow to make it easier for her to ride it. Getting a bicycle that year was a big deal for JonBenet. Was it a big deal for Burke that he didn’t get one?

PATSY [1998 interview]: Well, all of this stuff right here was from FAO Schwarz in New York. JonBenét got [a] bicycle that year. I got a university bicycle…

HANEY: A lot of presents out?

PATSY: Yeah.

HANEY: Big ones, we have the Nintendo and a bike.

PATSY: Yeah.

HANEY: How about for you, what did —

PATSY: I got a bicycle.

HANEY: Okay. From John?

PATSY: From Santa Claus

On Dr. Phil Burke claimed he snuck downstairs, got on and sat behind “his” bicycle [obviously none of the bicycles were wrapped]. If so, he was in for a nasty surprise later on when he discovered neither of the sparkling machines were intended for him.