JonBenét Ramsey murder mystery: The seven pieces of evidence that her family says could solve the grisly crime

JonBenét Ramsey’s family believes there are seven key pieces of evidence that could solve the decades-long mystery of her murder.

The child beauty queen was brutally murdered at her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado on December 26, 1996.

Her stricken parents initially reported her missing after discovering a rogue ransom note and their daughter disappearing.

Her father, John Ramsey, later found the six-year-old girl abused and strangled in their basement. Thanks to a new Netflix series about 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 since escaped police, but her grieving father, now in his 80s, still holds out hope that advanced DNA testing on several items found at the crime scene could be the key to tracking them down .

“Finding the killer won’t change my life right now,” he said CBS. ‘But it will change the lives of my children and grandchildren. This cloud must be removed from the minds of our family.”

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 murder, were largely convicted in the court of public opinion after the death of JonBenét. despite the Boulder DA officially sanctioning them and apologizing in 2008.

John is confident that DNA from an unknown man left at the scene will lead to the identification of a suspect. Here, DailyMail.com analyzes the evidence that can be used for testing.

Ransom note

Patsy’s first clue that something was wrong came when she woke up early after Christmas Day: a note left on her stairs.

The message was scrawled on her personal stationery demanding $118,000 for her daughter’s safe return.

‘Listen carefully! We are a group of individuals representing a small foreign faction,” the note said.

‘We respect your business [sic] but not the country it serves. We currently have your daughter in our possession [sic].

“She is safe and unharmed and if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions carefully.”

The note, addressed to JonBenét’s father, went into detail and warned him not to contact police.

A handwriting expert later claimed to have noticed similarities between Patsy’s cursive and the script in the note, but this could not be conclusively proven.

Garotte

An autopsy report concluded that JonBenét’s cause of death was “asphyxia due to strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma,” meaning she was strangled and hit in the head.

The Young Miss Colorado’s killer left her on a pile of clothes with an 8-inch skull fracture and a fragmented paintbrush stabbed into her neck by garrote.

The crude device was constructed by hand and was found at the scene with tangled pieces of JonBenét’s hair.

Male DNA was also found on the object, but according to John this was never tested.

“I don’t know why they didn’t test it to begin with,” she told True Crime News.

‘As far as I know it still hasn’t been tested. If they test it and just don’t tell me, that’s great, but I have no reason to believe that.”

In the latest Netflix documentary Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey? convicted pedophile Gary Oliva was frequently mentioned as a potential suspect.

Oliva, who recently went missing from the house where he was supposed to stay, had long confessed that he had ‘accidentally’ killed six-year-old JonBenét.

However, he was cleared as a potential suspect as his DNA did not match the DNA found at the scene.

The docuseries questions whether Oliva should still be on the police’s list of potential killers, as DNA evidence was unreliable at the time.

Oliva had sexually assaulted a neighbor in Oregon and had ended up homeless in Boulder at the time JonBenét was murdered, at an address just 10 blocks from 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 over her mouth, which John removed and threw onto the blanket before carrying 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 off the tape and tried to loosen her hands, but the knot was so tight I couldn’t get it loose.”

John believes the blanket may also contain vital DNA evidence and wants it retested.

Boulder police have long been criticized for the way they handled DNA evidence during their investigation.

In 2015, former Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner admitted that evidence at the crime scene may have been misused. Reddit forum.

“The crime scene was not handled properly and this later affected the investigation,” he said.

Rope

During a search after JonBenét’s death, a piece of rope was discovered by Detective Lou Smit in the family’s guest room next to the youngster’s room.

According to Smit, neither of the Ramseys could identify how it got there, which raised his suspicions.

“No one in the Ramsey family can identify it,” he said in a video interview on Cold Case.

“It’s possible the intruder also took that to use as a binding agent and just left it there.”

Suitcase

One of the biggest mysteries, aside from who killed JonBenét, is how the murdered man was able to get in and out of the Ramsey home.

Investigators noted that there was a trunk area under the basement window, with a scuff mark on the wall that could indicate someone had slipped in and out through the same window.

Smit conducted his own tests and easily proved that it was possible to fit through the opening of the window, noting that it was easier if you had something to stand on.

His theory was that someone used the suitcase to get in or out of the basement.

DNA under fingernails

Detectives believe JonBenét tried to fight off her attacker, noting that she had her own DNA under her fingernails, as well as that of an unknown man.

Smit stated that the presence of JonBenét’s DNA was the result of her desperate attempts to claw at the garotte around her neck.

The sample was tested a year after the murder and did not match any profile in the FBI database.

Sources also told the Denver Post that authorities had been unable to link a metal fragment under JonBenét’s fingernails to another object.

Given the accusations that the DNA analysis failed, the family of the deceased beauty queen wants to take that defect into account in a renewed investigation.

JonBenét’s stepbrother John Andrew Ramsey explained in the Netflix documentary that “if the (existing) DNA is not as valuable as we think, then we have excluded people for the wrong reasons.”

DNA in underwear

Tests on foreign DNA found in JonBenét’s underwear have also led to no clues.

The DNA didn’t match anyone in her family, but police continued to float the idea that one or more of the Ramseys might have been responsible — despite never formally charging them.

John supported an online petition in 2022 asking the governor of Colorado 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 pushed back on claims they tampered with evidence.

“The claim that there is viable evidence and leads that we are not pursuing – including DNA testing – is completely false,” a statement said.

However, Police Chief Stephen Redfearn admitted: ‘There were things that people have pointed out over the years that could have been better and we recognize that to be true.’