Nearly 30 years since the unsolved murder of JonBenét Ramsey, her father said he has “great hope” that police are on the right track to finally solve her killing.
JonBenét Ramsey, a 6-year-old child beauty queen, was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family’s Boulder, Colorado, home in December 1996.
Her murder dominated headlines and transfixed the public, but for decades has remained unsolved. The case saw her parents and brother cast under a cloud of suspicion until prosecutors apologized to them in a letter in 2008 and said they were not considered suspects. Authorities found male DNA on the child’s body that did not belong to her family, which pointed an unknown outsider.
John Ramsey, JonBenét’s father, 81, said he hasn’t given up on solving her case.
He met with the new Boulder police chief on Monday and said it was the first time in 28 years that he felt the case was in good hands.
“They were just open to sincerely discuss the case. I’m just very impressed with the caliber of the leadership now and that gave me great hope,” he told NBC’s Stephanie Gosk.
Speaking on the male DNA that was previously withheld from the district attorney's office in the case, he said: “They kept that result secret from the D.A., certainly from us. The problem that police had is it’d conflict with their conclusion the family were the killers.”
The DNA was a focus of the Netflix documentary "Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey" released late last year, which criticized Boulder police.
“Our family reputation has been damaged quite severely by the police. The only way it will be mostly restored is if there is a killer caught,” John Ramsey said. JonBenét’s mother, Patsy, died of cancer at age 49 in 2006.
In response to the documentary, Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn acknowledged the investigation could have been better handled all those years ago and said the case is far from closed.
“Our goal is to find JonBenét Ramsey’s killer. Our commitment to that has never wavered,” Redfearn said in a video message at the time.
Ramsey is hopeful that forensic genetic genealogy, which has helped solve other cold cases, will lead to a break.
“That’s how it’s going to get solved,” he said.
