In the months following JonBenet Ramsey‘s shocking murder in December 1996, her father John Ramsey says he wanted to end his life rather than live without her. “I wanted to escape from the pain,” he reveals to People in a new interview. In his new memoir The Other Side of Suffering, he recounts the turmoil that followed after finding his 6-year-old‘s lifeless body in the basement of his and his wife Patsy‘s Colorado home.

Long the focus of police investigation, the 68-year-old says he and Patsy, who died of Ovarian cancer in 2006, were ready to go to jail and even signed over custody of their son Burke to a relative.

“Patsy joked, ‘Can I have stripes that run vertical? Horizontal are going to make me look fat,’” he remembers.

Young Burke was 9 years old when his sister was killed, and soon found himself at the center of the investigation. Now at 25 years old, he’s a “quiet” Purdue University grad. “[He] has certainly matured as a young man,” John says. “He’s got a 401K plan, an IRA [and] a girlfriend.”

John was formally cleared of having any involvement  by the Boulder County district attorney in 2008, and he’s since moved on to a new love. After dating Natalee Holloway‘s mom Beth Twitty, he’s now married to Las Vegas-based fashion designer Jan Rousseau, 54.

John says finding love again and writing his book have helped him heal, but he still “would like to know” who killed his young daughter.

“Everybody has a burden, and I wanted to tell people it doesn’t last forever,” he says. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

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The father of the late JonBenet regrets exposing his daughter to competitive beauty pageants and says he finds reality shows like ‘Toddlers & Tiaras’ to be ‘bizarre.’

While many may remember murder victim JonBenet Ramsey as a 6-year-old pageant star, her father, John Ramsey, has different memories of his late daughter. While visiting Good Morning America on March 10, John shared how he doesn’t remember his young daughter as a fancy beauty queen — and he’s not not a fan of pageant reality show Toddlers & Tiaras.

“I see her, you know, in shorts and T-shirt and hair kind of scruffy and just kind of a kid,” John told GMA.

While JonBenet was a well-known pageant star, he describes the competitive world of child pageants on shows like Toddler’s & Tiaras as “bizarre,” and shares how he tried to take a different approach with his daughter.

“I saw an element of competitiveness that I didn’t think was healthy,” he admitted. “I used to always tell her that it’s your talent that counts, don’t worry if you’re not always the prettiest.”

Jennifer Velez

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John Ramsey has found happiness with Las Vegas fashion designer, Jan Rousseaux.

The happy couple met two years ago at a mutual friend’s wedding in Denver, Colo. and now, they’re married themselves! John Ramsey, 67, and Jan Rousseaux, 53, wed in front of 70 guests on July 21 at Castle Farms in Charlevoix, Mich., the same town his tragic 6-year-old beauty queen daughter JonBenet Ramsey, who would have turned 21 on Aug. 6, won the Little Miss crown in 1994.

“It was a beautiful wedding,” Jan tells the National Enquirer, “The weather was wonderful.”

John confesses that there’s not “a day that goes by when I don’t think of JonBenet” adding that his daughter, who was murdered on Christmas night 1996 in his Boulder, Colo. home, would be very proud of him.

“The saddest part is that her future was lost,” John says. “We believe she is in a better place, it is left to us to grieve for her. But I have no doubt she will be smiling.”

And so will his wife Patsy, who died in 2006 after a battle with ovarian cancer at 49, and his daughter Elizabeth, who died in a car accident at the age of 22 in 1992.

John says of Patsy,” Before she died, she said, ‘Well, we’re going to have to find you a new wife.’ I told her I was happy with the one I had. But I know she’s happy for me,” he adds. “I let Patsy’s family know about the wedding, and they are delighted.”

As for his new bride, she’s delighted too! Although John did admit that he briefly dated Beth Twitty, the mother of Natalee Holloway, who vanished in Aruba in 2005, he said his connection with Jan was immediate, even though they stayed friends for a while.

“John made the seven-hour Journey from Moab, Utah to Vegas to see me every weekend…He never complained,” Jan, a divorcee with two grown children, explains. “It certainly got my attention, and that’s how the relationship blossomed.”

Now Jan is there for John, whose family was cleared of any involvement of JonBenet’s death in 2008 after years of public and media scrutiny. Her murder is still an unsolved mystery.

John has a new book coming out next year entitled, The Other Side of Suffering: The Father of JonBenet Ramsey Tells the Story of His Journey from Greif to Grace.

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