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
