A lawyer for defendants in a $750 million defamation lawsuit filed by Burke Ramsey, the brother of murder victim JonBenet Ramsey, filed a response Thursday asking that his action be dismissed outright.

Burke Ramsey on Dec. 28 sued CBS for its production “The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey,” a four-hour “docu-series,” as the network described it, that was produced for CBS by Los Angeles-based Critical Content.

The series offered a theory that JonBenet, discovered murdered in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder the afternoon of Dec. 26, 1996, might have been killed by Burke, who was then 9.

“Plaintiff’s rambling, 108-page, 726-paragraph complaint comes down to this: he alleges that Defendants accused him of kill(ing) his sister, JonBenet Ramsey,” the new motion states.

“That statement was never made in the series. To the contrary, the only even arguably similar observation contained in the entire series is one made by investigator James Kolar” that Burke Ramsey, out of anger, “may have struck” JonBenet with a flashlight, the filing states.

And the first page of the filing features a screen grab of a disclaimer that appeared at the conclusion of each segments of the series. It stated, in part, “The opinions and conclusions of the investigators who appear on this program about how it may have occurred represent just some of a number of possible scenarios.

“John Ramsey and Burke Ramsey have denied any involvement in the crime, including in recent televised interviews. We encourage viewers to reach their own conclusions.”

Show had audience of millions

The girl’s parents have consistently denied any family member’s involvement in the slaying, which Thursday’s motion calls “one of the most famous unsolved crimes in American history.”

Burke Ramsey spoke in September for the first time publicly about the case in a multi-part interview on the “Dr. Phil” show, insisting that he had no role in his 6-year-old sister’s death.

Burke Ramsey, now 30 and a resident of Charlevoix, Mich., had targeted in his suit the CBS Corporation and Critical Content, along with show participants Kolar, Jim Clemente, Laura Richards, James Fitzgerald, Stanley Burke, Henry Lee and Werner Spitz.

The suit is filed in the Circuit Court for Wayne County, Mich.

Kolar, who is the town marshal for Telluride, spent two years as a Boulder County district attorney’s investigator under former DA Mary Lacy, from 2002 to 2004. Kolar also authored the 2012 book “Foreign Faction,” which the suit alleges formed the basis for the subsequent CBS series.

Burke Ramsey’s suit noted that he did not respond five years ago to Kolar’s publication of “Foreign Faction” because he didn’t want to bring more attention to Kolar or his book, and also because the book “was a miserable failure,” and at that time it caused no significant harm to his reputation.

By contrast, the suit alleges that the initial installment of the CBS production, airing on Sept. 18, was seen by 10.4 million people, and its second and concluding installment Sept. 19 had an audience of 8.24 million.

The documentary, according to Burke Ramsey’s suit, had left unmentioned exonerations of JonBenet’s brother that have been issued over the years at several junctures by the Boulder Police Department and the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office.

‘Unabashed campaign’ to silence

In the defense motion filed Thursday for CBS by Ann Arbor-based attorney James E. Stewart, it is argued that not only was Kolar’s statement clearly offered only as a hypothesis, but that his codefendants did little more than “express their personal agreement with the possible version of events that he offered.”

It goes on to state that Burke Ramsey’s naming of the show’s other investigators as codefendants “confirms that this is not really a defamation case at all; it is instead an unabashed campaign to silence anyone who dares to think and say that it is plausible that the evidence points to him.”

John and Patsy Ramsey were both indicted in JonBenet’s death in 1999, but the indictments were not made public until a judge ordered them unsealed in 2013. Although the indictments had been returned following a 13-month grand jury investigation, the couple was never prosecuted because then-Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter did not believe there was evidence to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

Lacy issued a letter exonerating all members of the Ramsey family in July 2008, based on new DNA testing that had recently been completed. But a joint investigation in 2016 by the Daily Camera and 9News cast doubts on Lacy’s interpretation of that DNA evidence, and it was announced in December by the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office and the Boulder Police Department that a new round of DNA testing was expected to be launched this year.

Patsy Ramsey died in 2006 after a long battle with cancer.

Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennan