The family of JonBenét Ramsey believe there are seven key pieces of evidence that could solve the decades-long mystery of her murder.
The child beauty queen was found brutally killed her family’s Boulder, Colorado, home on December 26, 1996.
Her stricken parents had initially reported her missing after they discovered a rambling ransom note and their daughter gone.
Her father, John Ramsey, later found the six-year-old girl battered and strangled to death in their basement. Thanks to a bombshell new Netflix series on the murder, interest in the case – and the TV show’s focus on a pedophile who confessed to the murder – has been renewed.
Her killer has eluded police ever since, but her grieving dad, who is now in his eighties, still holds out hope that advanced DNA testing on several items found at the crime scene could hold the key to tracking them down.
‘Finding the killer isn’t going to change my life at this point,’ he told CBS. ‘But it will change the lives of my children and grandchildren. This cloud needs to be removed from out family’s head.’
John, his late wife Patsy – who died in 2006 at the age of 49 – and their son, Burke, who was nine years old and home at the time of the killing, were largely convicted in the court of public opinion following JonBenét’s death, despite the Boulder DA officially clearing them and apologizing in 2008.
John is confident that DNA left at the scene from an unidentified male will lead to the identification of a suspect. Here, DailyMail.com breaks down the evidence which could be used for testing.
John Ramsey, father of JonBenét Ramsey, believes there are seven key pieces of evidence which could solve the decades-long mystery of her murder
The child beauty queen was found brutally killed her family’s Boulder, Colorado home on December 26, 1996
Ransom Note
Patsy’s first clue that something was amiss came when she awoke early after Christmas Day was a note left on her stairs.
The message had been scrawled using her personal stationery and demanded $118,000 for the safe return of her daughter.
‘Listen carefully! We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction,’ the note read.
‘We do respect your bussiness [sic] but not the country that it serves. At this time we have your daughter in our posession [sic].
‘She is safe and unharmed and if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter.’
The note, addressed to JonBenét’s father, continued on at length and warned him not to contact police.
A handwriting expert later claimed to have spotted similarities between Patsy’s cursive and the script found in the note, however it could not be conclusively proven.
This ransom note was found by JonBenét’s mom, Patsy, shortly before her daughter was discovered dead in the basement
Garotte
An autopsy report concluded that JonBenét’s cause of death was ‘asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma’, meaning she was strangled and hit in the head.
The killer of the Young Miss Colorado left her on a heap of clothes with an eight-inch fracture to her skull and a fragmented paint brush stuck into her neck by garrote.
The crude device had been constructed by hand and was found at the scene with entwined with pieces of JonBenét’s hair entwined.
Male DNA was also found on the object, but John says this has never been tested.
‘I don’t know why they didn’t test it in the beginning,’ her told True Crime News.
‘To my knowledge it still hasn’t been tested. If they’re testing it and just not telling me, that’s great, but I have no reason to believe that.’
In the latest Netflix documentary, Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey?, the convicted pedophile Gary Oliva was featured heavily as a potential suspect.
Oliva, who recently went missing from the halfway home he was ordered to reside, had long confessed to ‘accidentally’ killed 6-year-old JonBenét.
However, he was cleared as a potential suspect, given that his DNA did not match that found at the scene.
The docuseries questions whether Oliva should still be on cops’ list of potential killers given that the DNA evidence was unreliable at the time.
Oliva had sexually assaulted a neighbor in Oregon and ended up in Boulder homeless at the time JonBenét was killed, using an address just 10 blocks from her home.
John would like the garotte used to kill his daughter retested for DNA evidence
JonBenét’s broken body was discovered by her father swaddled in a white blanket in the basement of her home
Blanket
JonBenét’s broken body was discovered by her father swaddled in a white blanket in the basement of her home.
The little girl had a piece of duct tape on her mouth, which John removed and threw on top of the blanket before he carried his daughter upstairs.
‘She had tape over her mouth, and her hands were tied behind her back,’ John told Cold Case. ‘And I immediately pulled the tape off, and I tried to untie her hands, but the knot was tied really tight, I couldn’t get it undone.’
John believes the blanket could also contain vital DNA evidence and wants it retested.
The Boulder Police Department has long been criticized over how they handled the DNA evidence throughout their investigation.
In 2015, former Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner admitted that crime scene evidence may have been mishandled on a Reddit forum.
‘The crime scene was not handled properly and this later affected the investigation,’ he said.
John Ramsey believes the blanket covering his daughter could also contain vital DNA evidence and wants it retested
Patsy Ramsey with her children JonBenét and Burke before tragedy struck the family
Rope
During a sweep of the home after JonBenét’s death, a length of rope was discovered by detective Lou Smit in the family’s guest bedroom next to the youngster’s room.
None of the Ramseys could identify how it got there, according to Smit – which roused his suspicions.
‘Nobody in the Ramsey family can identify it,’ he said in a video interview shown on Cold Case.
‘It is a possibility that the intruder could’ve taken that in with him also to use as binding and just left it up there.’
During a sweep of the home after JonBenét’s death, a length of rope was discovered by detective Lou Smit in the family’s guest bedroom next to the youngster’s room
The grieving father believes developments in DNA testing could unlock the mystery of his daughter’s killing. Pictured: JonBenét Ramsey with family, top left-right: stepsister Melinda (stepsister), her dad and stepbrother John. Front center: Mom Patsy and brother Burke
Suitcase
One of the biggest mysteries aside from who killed JonBenét is how the murderer was able to get in and out of the Ramsey home.
Investigators noted that there was a suitcase place underneath the window in the basement, with a scuff mark on the wall that could suggest someone had shimmied in and out through the same window.
Smit conducted his own tests and easily proved it was possible to fit through the window’s gap and noted that it was easier with something to stand on.
His theory was that someone used the suitcase to get in or out of the basement.
A suitcase was found under the basement window which led investigators to believe that the suspect used it to climb in and out
DNA under fingernails
Detectives believe that JonBenét tried to fight off her attacker, noting that she had her own DNA under her fingernails as well as that of an unidentified male.
Smit posited that the presence of JonBenét’s DNA was as a result of her desperate attempts to claw at the garotte around her neck.
The sample was tested a year after the killing and did not match with any profile on the FBI’s databased.
Sources also told the Denver Post that authorities had been unable to match a metal fragment under JonBenét’s nails to another object.
Given the accusations that the DNA analysis was botched, the family of the late beauty queen want that lack to be factored into a renewed investigation.
JonBenét’s stepbrother John Andrew Ramsey explained in the Netflix documentary that ‘if the (existing) DNA isn’t as valuable as we think then we’ve been ruling people out for the wrong reasons‘.
DNA in underwear
But Boulder Police insist that they are not sitting on evidence and the ‘assertion that there is viable evidence and leads we are not pursuing — to include DNA testing — is completely false’
Testing done on foreign DNA found in JonBenét’s underwear has also resulted in no leads.
The DNA did not match with anyone in her family, however cops continued to float the idea that one or more of the Ramseys could have been responsible – despite never formally charging them.
John supported an online petition in 2022 that asked Colorado’s governor to intervene in the investigation into her death more than 25 years ago, by putting an outside agency in charge of DNA testing in the case.
However, Boulder Police have since hit back at the claims they have been sitting on evidence.
‘The assertion that there is viable evidence and leads we are not pursuing — to include DNA testing — is completely false,’ a statement read.
However, Police Chief Stephen Redfearn admitted, ‘There were things that people have pointed to throughout the years that could have been done better and we acknowledge that is true.’