A CANNIBALISM-obsessed pedophile who claims to be JonBenét Ramsey’s killer used to break into a university to sleep next to a skeleton and taste its bones, an ex-classmate of the suspect claims

Gary Oliva, 59, has for years been considered a suspect in the unsolved killing of six-year-old JonBenét, who was found brutally murdered in her family’s Boulder, Colorado, home in December 1996.

Oliva is currently imprisoned for unrelated child pornography offenses and has never been charged in connection with the case.

However, since his arrest in 2016, he has penned a series of confession letters to an old school friend, Michael Vail, claiming to have murdered JonBenét accidentally.

Vail has known Oliva since they were teenagers and told The U.S. Sun that the person he and others referred to as “Scary Gary” was incredibly disturbed from a young age.

While he never considered Oliva a friend during their shared school years, Vail said he took pity on Oliva and allowed him to “orbit” around his friendship group, which was mainly comprised of artists and poets.

After graduating high school, Oliva started writing to Vail, sharing updates about his life, which prompted a years-long exchange of mail between the pair.

Their correspondences started off innocently enough, Vail said, but sometime around 1989 the subject of Oliva’s messages suddenly became incredibly dark and disturbing, making frequent mention of blood, murder, cannibalism, and even child rape.

Within two years, Oliva would be arrested for raping a seven-year-old girl and attempting to strangle his mother to death with a telephone wire.

In the years that followed, he continued to write Vail, sending him cassette tapes containing sadistic recordings and newspaper clippings of missing children along with locks of hair.

This story is part of an ongoing series investigating Gary Oliva’s potential ties to the murder of JonBenét Ramsey

When JonBenét was murdered in 1996, Oliva had ties to an address just 13 houses away from the Ramseys. 

He called Vail on the day her body was found – but before the news made headlines across the country – telling him through tears: “I hurt a little girl.” 

Oliva reported the call to Boulder PD when he learned of JonBenét’s death in the paper the following morning, but the tip wasn’t initially seized upon by investigators. 

In fact, Oliva wouldn’t be looked at as a suspect until he was arrested in December 2000 while trespassing on the University of Colorado campus.

At the time of his arrest, Oliva was found with a stun gun in his possession, in addition to a photograph of JonBenét, news clippings about the case, and a poem he’d written about the girl, titled: “Ode to JonBenét.”

Investigators had long theorized a stun gun had been used on the girl to subdue her shortly before her death.

In a copy of the arrest report obtained by The U.S. Sun, it’s revealed that Oliva was arrested after illegally entering the university’s fine arts building after hours.

Vail claims the reason Oliva broke into the school was that he had a penchant for stealing art supplies and a strange attraction to a skeleton the university had on display.

He said: “When he got arrested, he told me he’d been sleeping on the floor of the art rooms.

“He was breaking in at night, sleeping in the art rooms because he wanted to be next to the skeleton that was there.

“They were using the skeleton for drawing, painting, human studies – or whatever they do – and he would sleep with this skeleton.

“He said how disappointed he was because when he would taste the bones it had shellac on it, ruining the flavor.”

STRANGE FIXATIONS

When he was caught trespassing, Oliva initially gave the officer a fake name, Gary Sabetta, before producing an ID card with his real name.

When asked why, Oliva said that he was worried there was a warrant out for his arrest.

Investigators soon discovered there was: he had violated the terms of his bail in Oregon for child sex crimes. He was initially due to be extradited back to Oregon, but the state declined to do so.

During a subsequent interview, Oliva was informed he had been banned from stepping foot on campus again.

In the report, an officer wrote: “He said that he has been around the campus for several years and does sit in on some classes.”

Oliva apparently told the officer that he was very upset as he’d no longer be able to leave “little mementos” on a rock where a plaque for slain student Susanna Chase had been placed.

Chase was beaten to death, raped, and dumped in an alley in Boulder in 1997, just months after JonBenét.

Her case went unsolved for 12 years before Chilean national Diego Olmos Alcalde was found guilty of the brutal crime in 2009.

“Oliva claims to be some sort of amateur artist and likes to hang out around the Fine Arts Center,” reads the report.

“We talked about his background and his criminal charges and past problems. He stated that his main mistake was the sex assault in Oregon.

“Other than that, he said everything else is because of him getting drunk and stupid.”

Oliva denied being a thief and claimed that he had been in the arts center to get out of the cold.

“Oliva seems very emotional about the Jon Benett Ramsey [sic] and Susanna Chase murders even to the point of getting tears in his eyes,” the report continues.

“Conclusion is that Oliva shows [signs] of being fairly intelligent but that at other times he seems off in a faraway land.”

Oliva pleaded guilty to all charges in the case.

ANOTHER ARREST, MORE JONBENÉT RELICS

He was arrested in Boulder again 16 years later – and would again be found to be in possession of a number of JonBenét-related artifacts.

In June 2016, Oliva was caught uploading images depicting the sexual abuse of children to his personal Gmail account on public Wi-Fi connections across Boulder.

In a copy of his arrest affidavit obtained by The U.S. Sun, Boulder PD said it was made aware of Oliva’s illicit activity by Google.

Oliva, who was homeless, was detained under a bridge near a railroad track on June 6, 2016, and his phone and other personal items were seized by investigators.

On the device, police recovered approximately 695 images depicting child pornography. Details about the images are redacted in the report.

Additionally, there were 335 photos of and relating to JonBenét.

“Some were regular photographs of her likely found online,” reads the report. “Of those photographs, 19 were images of JonBenét’s autopsy like from photographs that had previously leaked to the press in years past.

“There were also many photographs of what appear to be shrines to JonBenét Ramsey. It is unknown where these shrines are located or if they were created by Oliva or not.”

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.

Numerous other images depicted scenes of cannibalism, torture, and mutilation of dead bodies, per the report.

Along with those images were drawings – believed to have been crafted by Oliva – that depicted rape, murder, dismemberment, and cannibalism.

Images of children crying or otherwise appearing scared had been saved on his phone in large quantities and dozens of images purporting to depict cannibalism and death had been wiped from the device.

Oliva’s sketch notebook and a black rucksack were also seized by police.

In the notebook, Oliva made a number of collages that combined photographs of either semi-nude girls or girls in bathing suits with images of child pornography.

In his backpack, investigators found numerous items, including what they called “eight magazines of interest.”

“[Seven] of the magazines were American Girl magazines and featured photographs of young prepubescent or early pubescent girls.

“The other magazine was a skating magazine with a young female approximately 11 to 12 years old on the front cover.

“Due to the nature of this case and Oliva’s history of sexual assault on a child, as well as my training and experience, […] people with pedophilic impulses generally will use those types of magazines for the purposes of sexual gratification.”

Officers noted that at the time of his arrest, Oliva showed no remorse for his actions but did reportedly tell them that he “admitted to having a problem with young girls […] around the age of eight and nine.”

‘I KILLED JONBENÉT’

Three years after his arrest, Oliva penned a series of odd and disturbing letters to Vail, claiming to have killed JonBenét by accident.

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.

In a statement at the time, a spokesperson for the department said: “The Boulder Police Department is aware of Mr. Oliva and has investigated his potential involvement in this case, including several previous confessions.”

The department went on to state that they “routinely receive information” on the Ramsey investigation and that information “is reviewed along with other tips and theories.”

The department refused to comment further, citing an active and ongoing investigation.

BPD’s response appeared to signal that investigators do not believe Oliva is responsible for JonBenét’s death.

He was DNA tested in 2000, but sources say he was not found to be a match for the DNA evidence recovered from the crime scene.

BEYOND REFORM

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.

Vail is now urging BPD to investigate Oliva once again, pointing to what he calls an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence tying him to the murder.

But regardless of whether he was involved in the murder of JonBenét, Vail says Oliva should never be granted freedom.

“When I started writing to Gary in 2016, I thought he was going to tell me that he wasn’t involved, and that would’ve put me at ease,” he said.

“I thought he was going to tell me he didn’t do it, like a normal person who wanted to get out of jail would do, right?

“But why is Gary doubling down? He really has these crazy urges he speaks about and that comes through in his art.

“Why else would he be mailing me artwork of children being roasted on an open fire?

“He should be writing me saying: ‘I didn’t do it, man.’”