Just Like All Lives Matter, All Unsolved Murders Matter, Too

JonBenet Ramsey's unsolved homicide is fast approaching its 20-year-anniversary.

Stand by for non-stop media coverage.

In 1996, six-year-old child beauty pageant participant JonBenet Ramsey was initially reported missing by her parents, Patsy and John Ramsey, from their mansion in Boulder, Colorado and later found beaten and strangled to death in the home's basement. The as-yet unsolved homicide, which the Ramseys claim was the work of an intruder, became the leading story on the national news front for months.

Now, twenty years later, Oprah Winfrey-employed Dr. Phil McGraw, otherwise known as 'Dr. Phil', is airing a three-part interview with the victim's brother, Burke, who was nine years old at the time of the slaying and has remained silent through the passing years. In addition, a CBS documentary, an A&E network special and a slew of other interviews are all planned to hit the airwaves marking the twenty years that have passed since this tragic murder.

Why?

What about all the media coverage and interviews over all the other unsolved murders from 1996? Or any other year, for that matter? Not to lessen or demean the death of this six-year-old child, but what about the unsolved murder of Amber Hagerman, the ten-year-old from Arlington, Texas who was abducted and found dead in a ditch four days after last being seen riding her bicycle near her home, whose death inspired the creation of the AMBER Alert System? Or Barbara Barnes, a thirteen-year-old from Steubenville, Ohio who was found strangled to death in a riverbed two months after being reported as missing by her family?

Are their unsolved murders any less important to this nation's consciousness than JonBenet Ramsey's?

No, they are not. Each of the victims were mere children who died in horrific manner, whose families still grieve...and remember. The only one the rest of America will hear about, though, is JonBenet Ramsey.

All the others, from Hagerman to Barnes and the thousands of other victims whose killers have never been apprehended, deserve the same sorrow and grief that will drip from the national media's coverage of JonBenet Ramsey, 6-year-old child beauty queen and the daughter of affluent parents. No national front-line interviewers from major networks will revisit any of the other deaths, will mark the anniversaries of their unsolved slayings.

And that is shameful.