“The Mystery of JonBenét Ramsey” by Joyce Carol Oates

In the June 24, 1999, issue of The New York Review of Books, Joyce Carol Oates wrote about the murder of JonBenét Ramsey and dissected America’s fascination with “the category of nonfiction known as ‘true crime.’” In this episode of Private Life, “The Mystery of JonBenét Ramsey" is read by writer Alissa Bennett, whose work has appeared in The Paris Review, Vogue, The New York Times, and Artforum. From 2016 to 2019 she also wrote the zine Dead Is Better, about celebrity deaths, and from 2019 to 2022 she cohosted the podcast The C-Word with Lena Dunham. 

This reading accompanies the Private Life episode featuring Oates discussing her novels, essays, and the improbability of her life. You can read “The Mystery of JonBenét Ramsey” with a subscription to The New York Review of Books, which, in addition to twenty print issues a year, provides online access to our full archive going back to 1963.