Former El Paso County Sheriff Claims Boulder Police Ignore Critical DNA Evidence in JonBenet Ramsey’s New Book

February 22 – JonBenét Ramsey has arguably collected some of the most important evidence of her death.

In a new book, a former El Paso County sheriff accuses Boulder police of ignoring DNA results, saying initial investigators should have used an early lab report to exonerate the six-year-old’s parents as suspects early on.

The six-year-old girl died the day after Christmas 1996. Her father found her in a dark back room in the basement seven hours after her mother found a ransom note and called 911. She was strangled with a noose made from a length of rope and a broken brush handle. A white rope was wrapped loosely around her wrists, and black duct tape covered her mouth. Her favorite nightgown, Barbie, lay on the concrete floor nearby. Later, the Boulder County Coroner found an 8-inch crack in her skull.

Jon Anderson believes that JonBenét died fighting off her attacker while she was being strangled. Photographs from the crime scene and from the medical examiners who investigated the case show evidence that she scratched her neck.

The DNA that was scraped from under the child’s nails and extracted from her clothes has never matched anyone compared to more than 20 million profiles in the FBI’s National Combined DNA Database System (CODIS). It also did not match her parents, family friends and dozens of possible suspects, including John Mark Carr, a man who confessed to the crime and was brought from Thailand for a cheek swab in 2006.

However, Anderson is urging the Boulder police to retest the DNA using the latest technology.

However, in a recent press release, the BPD insists that they have done just that – using the latest DNA technology for evidence in the Ramsey case with the help of “multiple agencies, including the FBI, the District Attorney’s office, the Colorado Department of Public Safety, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and several private DNA labs across the country,” the statement released last November said.

A source in the investigation, who asked not to be named, said critics “have no idea about our current evidence. If it were possible, given today’s technology, we would have already done it.”

Anderson, who served as El Paso County Sheriff from 1996 to 2003 after 22 years with the Colorado Springs police, lost confidence in the Boulder police. To back up his claims, he lifts the lid on the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s official lab results in Lou and JonBenet’s Quest for Legendary Child Beauty Queen Murder Lawyer, including a report of nail scrapings recovered by the then coroner. John Meyer during the autopsy.

An unedited report, compiled just four days after the murder, removed DNA profiles of 10 people from the mud scraped off JonBenét’s nails, including John and Patsy Ramsey.

“How could the Boulder police continue to ignore the physical evidence and focus on this family that was clearly not involved in the death of this little girl?” Anderson asked in a recent interview with The Denver Gazette.

But the question is: isn’t it strange that John and Patsy Ramsey’s DNA hasn’t been found in nail scrapings since they lived with her?

“Absolutely not,” Anderson said, adding that JonBenét struggled to breathe and in doing so left with her killer’s tissue. Anderson added: “This is not just a casual contact.”

In a December 30 DNA lab report on nail scrapings, JonBenét’s DNA showed a strong sample profile.

Like his longtime law enforcement colleague Lou Smith, Anderson insists that John and Patsy Ramsey are innocent.

“We urgently need. It’s not just about exonerating Ramsey. This book is supposed to say that there is a killer in there. We need to find him,” Anderson told The Denver Gazette.

Patsy Ramsey died in June 2006 of ovarian cancer at the age of 49.

Lab results from December 30, 1996 showed that in addition to JonBenét’s own DNA visible in samples from under her fingernails, there was also DNA that did not point to any of the test subjects. Twenty-six years ago, DNA technology was not sophisticated enough to determine the exact percentage of JonBenet DNA compared to unknown profiles, and could not sort mixtures.

DNA tested on eight cadavers

The nail clippers Meyer used were also found to have been used on other cadavers and were sterilized between autopsies. Because of this contamination, the Boulder police tested the DNA of at least eight bodies that had been autopsied shortly before JonBenet’s. Result? Does not match.

Since then, the Boulder County Coroner’s Office has used new clippers to clip every incoming body.

However, while Anderson believes that the DNA belongs to JonBenet’s killer, other investigators say this is not necessarily the case.

“I don’t know if it’s the killer’s DNA.”

Forensic pathologist Dr. Henry Lee, who was hired to work on the investigation after his experience in the O. J. Simpson trial, told the Denver Gazette that DNA might not be the smoking gun everyone would like to have.

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“I don’t know if it’s the killer’s DNA. Maybe not, maybe yes. Who knows,” he said.

Lee believes the body of evidence, including forensic interviews and a bizarre and verbose ransom note, are the main clues to the case.

“Different medical examiners have different opinions,” Li said. “Some people think it was an accident. Some people think it was murder.”

Now that DNA can be separated and retested, in addition to advances in genealogy methods, Lee suggests that BRP recheck every piece of evidence from the crime scene, including those pesky nail clippers.

“I hope they still have nail clippers to make a more sensitive DNA test, and maybe then you can figure it out,” Li said.

In an earlier interview, former Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett argued that JonBenét’s death would not be resolved by determining who owns the DNA, saying the case would be solved using “the body of evidence.”

Unwavering Curiosity

Through two generations of obsession with the JonBenét Ramsey case, her murder has never ceased to grow more and more curious. There are at least 16 books exploring the quarter-century-old unsolved mystery, written by everyone from retired Ramsey detectives to reporters, armchair sleuths, and even JonBenet’s own parents.

John and Patsy Ramsey wrote their own story after Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter chose not to comply with the 1999 grand jury decision to indict them.

Anderson’s nearly 300-page book chronicles his 50-year friendship with Smith, a veteran Colorado Springs detective who was brought out of retirement by then-Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter three months after the child was found murdered. After some time, Smith came to the unpopular conclusion that the Ramseys were innocent of his daughter’s death and resigned in September 1998, frustrated that he believed the Boulder police refused to consider anyone else.

He took a computer full of clues with him and devoted the rest of his life to finding JonBenet’s killer. He never charged a dime for his work, but critics say he was too close to Ramsey. He went to the funeral of Patsy Ramsey and John Ramsey spoke at Smith’s memorial after the death of the former investigator in 2010.

Despite any criticism, no one denies that Smith was thorough. Anderson, a couple of dedicated retired cops, and Smith’s family worked on an 883-column spreadsheet that Smith left behind when he died. Based on this, they have a tiered list of hundreds of suspects, according to Andersons.

The team collects DNA from suspects suggested by Smith and sends it to a private lab, paying for the reports with their own money and funds raised through donations. So far, “at least a dozen” people have been removed from Smith’s original list.

“In my opinion, there are dozens more to be tested, maybe even 80-100,” Anderson said.

The Boulder police responded to such accusations with their own statistics. Last fall, the BPD said in a statement that investigators traveled to 19 states, spoke to more than 1,000 people, and examined findings from more than 21,000 tips, letters, and emails.

Since the case was referred to them in 2009 after District Attorney Mary Lacy took over, he said, they have not shared critical information about the case with John Ramsey, his eldest son John Andrew Ramsey, or anyone of the Smith’s commands.

Anderson says they opened their arms to the Boulder investigators, hoping that time could heal the rift between the police and Smith after he stepped down and started his own path, but that relationship appears to be over.

“We met with them twice, they ignored our list of POIs, they don’t even return my phone call or email anymore, and so our confidence, like Lou’s, is that they will finish this case and identify the killer. just reduced to an impossible value,” Anderson told The Denver Gazette.

Hence the reason Anderson wrote at least the 17th in a series of books about the curious death of JonBenét Ramsey. This is his eighth published book, the previous ones were mostly on history.

In a recent statement, Boulder police responded to Anderson’s book by stating that the case is under active investigation.

“We acknowledge that many articles and books have been written about this tragic murder. We have not read this newest book, which appears to contain statements from the late 1990s,” the statement said.

There are at least three other Ramsey investigators who are still with the Boulder Police Department, but most have quit or retired.

The cold case of JonBenet Ramsey survived the mother of a murdered six-year-old, Patsy, the deputy district attorney, the family’s Santa Claus, and Lou Smith.

Anderson, who was at Smith’s bedside as he died, said: “What I was trying to do with this book was to communicate two things: that an intruder entered the house and that it was a kidnapping attempt for ransom that went wrong. One of his dying wishes for his family and a handful of detectives is that this case doesn’t die with him.”

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