John Ramsey was 53 years old when he found his 6-year-old daughter, JonBenet, murdered in a dark utility room in the basement of their Boulder home.
She had been strangled with a garrote made from a length of rope and a broken paintbrush handle. White cord was loosely tied around her wrists and black duct tape covered her mouth. Her favorite Barbie nightgown lay on the concrete floor nearby.
Later, the Boulder County coroner discovered an 8-inch crack in her skull.
The fact that JonBenet’s body was found the day after Christmas 1996 compounded the sadness of an already-horrifying situation.
For years, John and Patsy Ramsey were careful about their interactions with the press.
Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in 2006 at the age of 49 and John Ramsey remarried five years later.
After 26 years with no resolution to the unsolved case, Ramsey is 79-years-old and losing patience — specifically with the Boulder Police Department.
He has called them "incompetent" and suggested they are arrogant for refusing to ask for help on the case.
Despite protests from the Ramsey family, investigators who have worked the case point to countless national experts who have been consulted along the way, including nationally renowned forensic pathologists and forensic document examiners, knot specialists, and spider experts.
"This case has been investigated thoroughly," said former Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett, who left Boulder in 2018 and is now in private law practice. "It’s not as if the case is unsolved because there has not been diligent police work."
Boulder Police say they have traveled to 19 states and spoken with more than 1,000 people. They have investigated leads from more than 21,000 tips, letters and emails in the high-profile case.
Boulder police remain in charge of the investigation.
These days, Ramsey is most concerned with investigation of DNA evidence in the case. He believes it belongs to the killer and is publicly calling for the DNA portion of the investigation to be taken out of the hands of Boulder police and given to private labs. If that is out of the question, he’d like for the police to consider having the case DNA tested at private labs.
As an example, he points to the case of the Golden State killer, arrested in 2018 after 40 years. The smoking gun in that dramatic case? Free, open-source genealogy websites.
“The government doesn’t have the latest technology per the FBI,” Ramsey wrote in a text message to the Denver Gazette. He said he met with the regional FBI six months ago.
The FBI would not confirm nor deny such a meeting, and Boulder Police Department officials said Ramsey is wrong about them going it alone and the testing they have done.
Last month, perhaps in response to Ramsey's protest and also anticipating the usual annual flood of media requests on the case, Boulder Police and the Boulder District Attorney’s office released a rare statement saying that it regularly works with “multiple agencies including the FBI, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.”
Contrary to Ramsey’s criticism, police officials have said investigators have "worked with several private DNA laboratories across the country.”
Since time is not on Ramsey’s side, he is also campaigning for public sentiment with a petition he started this April which has garnered 30,000 signatures asking for “new DNA testing technology and forensic genetic genealogy.”
He sent the petition to Gov. Jared Polis, who grew up in Boulder. Ramsey also sent a letter to Polis in which he requested a face-to-face meeting. He told the Denver Gazette that he hasn’t heard back.
In an email, Gov. Polis’ office explained to the Denver Gazette that he has met with the Colorado Department of Public Safety regarding JonBenet’s case.
Polis said he asked for the Colorado Cold Case team to consult with the Boulder Police in 2023 and added that he is hopeful that “this technology will be proven in a matter of months or a few short years, given rapid advancements in the field.”
Ramsey said he wants 5-7 evidentiary items tested, but he hasn’t specified what those items are. His oldest son, John Andrew Ramsey, said there could be hundreds of items that could still be tested for DNA.
The Boulder Police and Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty remain tight-lipped about which items have been tested, but Garnett was open about a batch of evidence which was sent to the CBI DNA six years ago.
That year, the media was ramping up pressure on the case because it was the twentieth anniversary of the child’s death.
Shortly before Thanksgiving 2016, Garnett, then-Boulder Police Chief Greg Testa and Colorado Bureau of Investigation Director Mike Rankin huddled. The police wanted to send crime scene evidence to the CBI, which had just acquired new technology and Garnett agreed it was an appropriate time to do so.
Sources, who asked not to be named because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, told a reporter back then that those items included the garrote that was used to strangle the little girl and ligatures that were found tied loosely around her wrists
“We sent everything in,” Garnett told the Denver Gazette. "In 2016, the intent was to test anything that could be tested. Anything from the crime scene.”
At the time, Garnett noted he didn’t think the Ramsey case hinged on the DNA, but he wanted to make sure. He said he didn’t expect for the evidence to break open the case, and he was right. It never did.
Garnett has always maintained that JonBenet’s death will not be solved by identifying who the DNA belongs to, saying the case will be solved using the “totality of the evidence.”
For instance, no one who believed that an intruder broke into the home and killed JonBenet has come up with a plausible explanation for who wrote a rambling two-and-a-half-page ransom note that Patsy Ramsey found on the back spiral stairway.
The paper the note was written on had been torn from her notepad. Handwriting experts said the person who wrote it started writing it with the left hand and then switched to using the right hand. Thirteen pages were torn from middle of the pad, which were never found, and imprints on corresponding pages showed someone had practiced writing it.
Unidentified DNA which was found in a blood stain in JonBenet's underwear and touch DNA discovered on the waistband of her long johns has never matched anyone, including any of the Ramsey family.
Ramsey has repeatedly denied any involvement in his daughter’s death.
In the last few years, his oldest son, John Andrew Ramsey, has been vocal in the family’s fight for justice for JonBenet.
“We asked the BPD pretty please with a cherry on top to pursue more DNA testing,” he said. “I’m not saying our case is a short putt, but it is within the realm of possibility.”
