JonBenet Ramsey case: Boulder investigators retest decades-old evidence with newer technology

Investigators in Boulder, Colorado, are retesting decades-old evidence in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, as her family nears 30 years since the unsolved slaying in their former home.

Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty told reporters at a news briefing this week that he and Police Chief Steve Redfearn are more hopeful now than they have been in the past because of advances in the investigation and in technology. Dougherty said he based that on how DNA testing has progressed over time.

Her father, John Ramsey, had spent years asking authorities to try to solve the case through investigative genetic genealogy, a relatively new technique that combines genetic testing results with genealogy research to identify potential persons of interest. The technique itself is rapidly evolving as state-of-the-art DNA testing also improves.

A cold case review panel was convened in Boulder, as local police, state and federal investigators continue to dig into what happened on December 26, 1996, when JonBenet was found strangled and with head trauma in the basement of her home.

Although investigators have pursued a number of potential suspects, persons of interest and theories about how she died over the years, no one has been convicted, and her death remains one of America's most prominent unsolved cases.

In a sit-down interview with reporters earlier this week, Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn said that, based on the cold case review, investigators are also going back and retesting things that were tested 30 years ago with newer technology. An item tested in 1997 might now reveal something that was missed in 1997, he said.

Redfearn appeared to confirm a recent revelation from JonBenet's half-brother, John Andrew Ramsey, who had said the family learned this year that new testing had begun in the fall of 2025.

Dougherty said one benefit of rapidly improving technology is an increasingly successful ability to identify DNA profiles contained in mixed samples, adding that it comes down to the quantity, quality and location of the DNA. A sample left by a single donor is generally easier to test, while DNA from two or more people on the same surface must first be untangled in a lab.

That process can be destructive to the evidence, especially when there is not much left, and it complicates matters under evidence rules that must be validated and stand up in court, Dougherty explained. But investigators will not act recklessly, nor will they hesitate, he said, recognising that the clock is ticking and that they are committed to solving the case.

Separately, Redfearn told reporters that if the new DNA testing fails to yield results, investigators have additional previously unreleased evidence they could make public in the hope that someone comes forward. Tips continue to come in regularly almost three decades after the slaying, and investigators are still asking anyone who may have information to come forward; Redfearn said there is more than one person out there who knows something.