New testing is being done on evidence from the murder of JonBenet Ramsey by ‘competent’ investigators who came to the case last year, John Ramsey and his long-time lawyer said on Saturday– but it’s not clear whether the knotted weapon they believe could hold the key to solving the case is finally being tested.
John Ramsey, now 81, appeared at CrimeCon in Colorado alongside Hal Haddon, the attorney who’s represented him since the early days of the investigation. Next year marks the 30th anniversary of the six-year-old’s brutal murder in Boulder in 1996, when the Ramseys awoke the day after Christmas to find a ransom note and their daughter missing.
Her tiny mutilated body was found hours later in the basement of the family home; she had suffered blunt force trauma and been strangled with a garrote, a knotted rope weapon tied to a piece of wood.
‘I have pressed hard for DNA analysis of the knots in this garrote, which our DNA experts say could be quite promising, because someone had to tie those – and they’re fairly sophisticated,’ Haddon told a packed ballroom of true-crime enthusiasts.
‘Someone had to use their fingers and likely got their DNA in these knots,’ he said. ‘They’ve never done that [testing], and I questioned them on that every time that we’ve met.
‘The handle on this garrote … is wooden, and that wooden handle has never been tested for DNA, even though splinters from that handle were found on and inside the body of JonBenet.’
Haddon said ‘unspecified’ evidentiary items had been sent to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which promised they would ‘expedite’ the testing.
He called the case ‘extraordinarily premeditated.’
JonBenét was found strangled and beaten to death in the basement of her family’s ritzy Boulder, Colorado mansion on December 26, 1996. Her father and his long-time lawyer spoke to a packed ballroom at CrimeCon Denver on Saturday
John Ramsey, center, and lawyer Hal Haddon, left, said ‘unspecified’ evidentiary items were being newly tested by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation
‘Someone had obviously been in your home or had cased it thoroughly,’ Haddon said, addressing Ramsey. ‘Someone spent an extraordinary amount of time writing a ransom note which quoted extensively from murder movies which were contemporary in the day – movies like Dirty Harry.
He called the note ‘elaborate’ and ‘obviously … pre-written.’
Ramsey said he’d met at least three times with new Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn – most recently on Thursday, along with Ramsey’s wife, Jan, and older son, John Andrew.
He described Redfearn as a ‘very cordial person, open.
‘I like him,’ Ramsey said. ‘Seems to be confident, has a lot of experience, came from outside the Boulder Police Department, which is a big thing.’
The Ramseys have insisted for decades that Boulder police immediately considered the family guilty – putting on blinders and ignoring other leads.
While the new chief seems ‘open,’ though, Ramsey said he was still encountering resistance to using forensic genealogy on DNA taken from the crime scene.
The Ramsey family woke up the day after Christmas in 1996 to find JonBenet missing and a long ransom note; the six-year-old’s body was found hours later in the basement of the home
Haddon and Ramsey feel the key to solving the case could be in testing DNA from the knots of a handmade garrote, left, used to strangle JonBenet
‘We’ve been pushing really hard for that to happen,’ he said. ‘There are outside labs a few that are really good at it – and not only can do the testing, which is needed now, but get the sample in the right format to do the genealogy research.
‘We have unidentified male DNA, but it’s not in a format compatible’ with databases.
Ramsey offered to raise $1million to fund genealogical testing, his lawyer said – but ‘they said collectively, “Oh no, Mr Ramsey, we couldn’t take your money” – which in turn means: We don’t want to take your money,’ Haddon said Saturday.
‘I think the new investigative team, which has been installed in the last year, are competent,’ Haddon said. ‘I don’t think that they’ve been given the resources necessary to do what’s needed, which is why John offered to help them – and, for whatever reasons, in these budgetarily difficult times, they declined.’
John and Patsy Ramsey – who passed away in 2006 almost immediately became the lead suspects in the case, with authorities saying the couple was under an ‘umbrella of suspicion’
Ramsey pointed out that DNA testing has advanced enormously since the 1996 murder – and, while the crime scene DNA sample is small, testing can now be done on even a picogram of evidence.
When asked on Saturday who he thought killed JonBenet, Ramsey pointed to two common theories: that it was either a kidnapping gone wrong or that it was perpetrated by someone who was either very angry or jealous of Ramsey and wanted to hurt him.
‘I always thought those two conflicted,’ he said. ‘And somebody pointed out, well, no, that that doesn’t conflict.
Whoever the murderer was, he said, ‘this is absolute, pure evil – demonic evil. No question.’
Ramsey’s lawyer for the last 30 years, Haddon, called JonBenet’s murder ‘extraordinarily premeditated’ on Saturday
His lawyer said that he believed it ‘highly unlikely’ the case would ever be solved ‘if genealogical testing … isn’t pursued.’
But Ramsey remained slightly more optimistic.
If tested by a ‘competent lab,’ he said, ‘I believe there’s a 70 per cent chance we get an answer.
‘We may not, but the odds are very high that we can,’ Ramsey added. ‘This new technology that’s been employed finding these old killers, old cold cases, is a dramatic improvement over the last testing that was done in our case, which was eight or 10 years ago.’
With new investigative teams and technology, he said, ‘I’m more hopeful than I’ve ever been.’
