A Fairy Tale Beginning Six-year-old beauty JonBenet Ramsey was a dream child--smart, talented and blessed. Her mother, a former Miss America contestant, had entered her in every child beauty pageant possible. Wearing lipstick, heavy makeup, and provocative costumes that cost thousands of dollars, with her hair bleached and teased, JonBenet flirtatiously paraded down runways, exuding a sophistication beyond her years. A Nightmare Ending But that dazzling future of crows and titles was brutally cut short the day after Christmas when her mother discovered a random note on the stairs of their luxurious Boulder, Colorado home. Hours later JonBenet's distraught father, millionaire businessman John Ramsey, found his beloved daughter's lifeless body, gagged and strangled in a windowless room in the basement of their million-dollar mansion. An Unspeakable Crime As detectives worked to uncover what happened Christmas night in the darkened mansion, the nation grieved for the innocent little girl whose life was cruelly snuffed out. Carlton Smith's Death of a Little Princess is the tragic true story of a murder that shocked the country.