Investigators in Boulder are retesting decades-old evidence in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey as her family nears 30 years since the unsolved slaying in their former Colorado home.
“Chief [Steve] Redfearn and I are more hopeful now than we have been in the past because of the advances in the investigation and the advances in technology,” Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty told reporters in a news briefing this week. “And I say that based on just how DNA has progressed over time.”
Her father, John Ramsey, had spent years begging authorities to attempt to solve the case through investigative genetic genealogy, a relatively new technique for ginning up DNA leads that involves combining genetic testing results with genealogy research to identify potential persons of interest. IGG itself is rapidly evolving as state-of-the-art DNA testing also improves.
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A cold case review panel was convened in Boulder as local police, state and federal investigators continue to dig into what happened on Dec. 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.
“It’s no secret,” Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn told reporters in a sit-down interview earlier this week. “We’re also going back, based on that cold case review, and retesting things that were tested 30 years ago with newer technology.”
Redfearn appeared to confirm a recent revelation from JonBenet’s half-brother, John Andrew Ramsey, who told Fox News Digital previously that the family had learned this year that new testing had begun in the fall of 2025.
“Maybe something comes of that,” Redfearn said. “Not that it was missed, but maybe the technology just improved enough that we look at, hey, this item was tested in ’97, we’re testing it again, and hey, look, we found something that was missed in ’97.”
Dougherty gave an example of a recent trial that he said involved the testimony of four different DNA experts because testing had been done on multiple occasions as the technology improved.
Among the benefits of rapidly improving technology is an increasingly successful ability to identify DNA profiles contained in mixed samples, Dougherty added.
“To me, it’s quantity, quality, and location of the DNA,” he said.
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Traditionally, testing a sample left behind by a single donor is straightforward, he explained.
“When it’s a single source in DNA, just generally speaking, it’s much easier assuming you have enough to test, particularly if it’s blood or semen,” he said. “But if it’s touch, and it’s a single source, that’s different than if it’s touch or saliva, and it is a mixture.”
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When two or more people leave DNA on the same surface, it must first be untangled in a lab.
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The process can be destructive to the evidence, especially when there isn’t much left, he said, and that complicates things under evidence rules that must be validated and stand up in court.
“We’re not gonna do it recklessly, to use Chief Redfearn’s word,” Dougherty said. “We’re also not gonna hesitate. We recognize the clock’s ticking. None of us are gonna be here forever. We wanna see this case solved for everyone involved and everyone impacted by it. And we’re absolutely committed to doing that.”
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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.
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“There’s still plenty of things that are not out there that we have,” he told reporters.
While tips continue to come in regularly almost three decades after JonBenet’s slaying, investigators are still asking anyone who may have information to come forward.
“There is more than one someone out there that knows something,” Redfearn said.
