(bbm)
I know that bolded line has been repeated so many times that most people just accept it as fact. Actually though, it comes from what someone remembers hearing on Geraldo that was misquoted and repeated over and over again. Here's what Nedra actually said in its entirety as written in
PMPT:
On September 25, Geraldo Rivera, who had been pursuing the thesis that JonBenét’s killer must be a member of the Ramsey family, hosted “The Ramseys Fight Back” on his daytime TV show. Jennifer Kay, a producer for Rivera’s show, had persuaded Nedra Paugh, Patsy’s mother, to give an impromptu interview from her home in Roswell, Georgia.
“Well, every day was Christmas to JonBenét,” Nedra said. She sat slumped in a chair, a defeated woman, her heartbreak palpable. “She [JonBenét] had a wonderful life. I often looked at her and Burke as well and thought how wonderful life had been to them. She was beautiful. She was gracious, intelligent, loved life, loved her friends, loved animals. She loved everything. And that was taken away by a thief in the night as she slept. Now she is in heaven, and I’m sure she’s a very good angel.”
When Nedra mentioned the crime, it was in a string of half-completed thoughts and seeming nonsequiturs: “I didn’t know that she had been mole…molested to some extent and hit on the head. I didn’t know that. And somehow I hoped that she had died very quickly, and I think that she did. I…I really do believe that whoever has done this strangled her, because I’m sure that she put up a tremendous fight. Although she had tape on her mouth, she couldn’t scream. But I knew she had fought.
“To think that a perfectly healthy, happy child, sleeping in her bed on Christmas Day, dreaming, as the story says, of sugar plum buds—and for someone to kill and murder, molest, and then, if that isn’t enough, strike her on the head, is something—it’s just more, because if that hadn’t happened, she would be well and alive, making a contribution to the world.”