It’s been nearly three decades since Atlanta-born child beauty pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey was brutally killed in her Colorado home. Her family now hopes advances in DNA technology can help solve the case soon, but it’s unclear if police have engaged the private companies at the center of the cutting edge technology that is helping solve hundreds of cold cases, including several in Georgia.
In a meeting last week, Boulder police told the family that DNA found in JonBenet’s underwear has not been tested using forensic genealogical methods because the science used to generate profiles from degraded DNA samples is not yet sensitive enough, according to the Denver Gazette. But the department is constantly monitoring the rapidly evolving technology, the report stated.
“It’s not if, but when,” John Andrew Ramsey, her eldest brother, told the news outlet.
The case has several ties to the metro Atlanta area. The family moved to Colorado from Atlanta before returning here after the slaying, and JonBenet is buried in Marietta next to her mother, Patsy. Boulder detectives also visited her grandparents’ home in Roswell as part of the investigation.
John Andrew Ramsey did not return The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s request for comment.
Boulder police confirmed the meeting to the AJC but declined further comment and would not confirm if private laboratories, such as Othram, Parabon Nanolabs or Bode Technology, have been consulted.
JonBenet was just 6 years old when she was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her Colorado home the day after Christmas in 1996. The case captured the attention of the nation, and the Ramseys found themselves thrust into a spotlight that never really left.
Credit: DAVID ZALUBOWSKI / AP
Credit: DAVID ZALUBOWSKI / AP
Credit: Randall Richards / Special
Credit: Randall Richards / Special
For more than a decade, they lived under a cloud of suspicion as police targeted JonBenet’s parents and her then-9-year-old brother as suspects. Prosecutors publicly cleared the family of wrongdoing in 2008 after the DNA found in her underwear was found to belong to at least one unidentified male who is not related to any of the Ramseys.
Credit: Ellen Jaskol / Rocky Mountain News / AP
Credit: Ellen Jaskol / Rocky Mountain News / AP
In 1997, they moved back to be with family in Atlanta, where her father, John Ramsey, met and married her mother years earlier, the AJC previously reported. JonBenet was born here in 1990, and her grave is in Marietta’s St. James Episcopal Cemetery.
The Ramseys left Atlanta for Michigan in 2003 but returned briefly in 2006 when Patsy’s health declined due to ovarian cancer, according AJC reports from the time. She died at her father’s Roswell home in 2006 with her husband by her side.
That same year, Atlanta native and former school teacher John Mark Karr was arrested in Thailand after claiming to have been present when JonBenet died and said her death was an accident. He was eventually exonerated, despite his objections.
Credit: Renee Brock / Special
Credit: Renee Brock / Special
Credit: Andy Sharp / asharp@ajc.com
Credit: Andy Sharp / asharp@ajc.com
The latest wave of interest in the case was churned up in November by the release of the Netflix documentary, “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey.” The series dives into what John Ramsey believes were errors by investigators and his hope that advancements in DNA technology will finally put an end to their decades-long nightmare.
In December, Executive Producer Joe Berlinger told The Hollywood Reporter that, “to our knowledge, (Boulder police) has not met with Bode Technology, Parabon Nanolabs or Othram.”
Credit: PATRICK DAVISON
Credit: PATRICK DAVISON
Those companies are developing technology that is allowing for DNA extraction from smaller and smaller sample sizes, the AJC previously reported. Scientists are learning how to fill out even partial profiles, which are then used by a group of researchers known as forensic genetic genealogists to reverse-engineer the family tree by tapping into the vast web of genetic information housed in public genealogy databases to find a suspect.
Today, even a minuscule amount of DNA from contaminated, degraded remains can lead to positive matches.
For example, Othram — which has helped close many Georgia cold cases — has had success in identifying degraded human remains that were burned or exploded, left in a sewage tank or at the bottom of lakes, and even some dating to the late 1800s. In one case, DNA from just 15 human cells collected 32 years ago led to the identification of a perpetrator.
“If you touch your phone, you’ve left hundreds of cells,” Kristen Mittelman, chief development officer for Othram, previously told the AJC. “It was a mixture of perpetrator and victim, and we still identified that perpetrator.”
Othram representatives did not return a request for comment this week.
In a response to the renewed attention last year, Boulder police released their yearly update a month early, stating, “The assertion that there is viable evidence and leads we are not pursuing — to include DNA testing — is completely false.”
Prior to the documentary’s release, the department said in its 2023 update that investigators were “working with leading DNA experts from across the county to ensure the latest forensic techniques are used to analyze remaining DNA samples.”
The evidence would be “ready for testing when there is proven and validated technology that can accurately test forensic samples consistent with the evidence available in this case,” the statement added.
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