DA clears Ramsey family

The Boulder district attorney's office announced today that new DNA evidence discovered in the clothing worn by JonBenet Ramsey identifies "the perpetrator of the homicide" and excludes all members of the murdered girl's family. District Attorney Mary Lacy said in a letter posted on the DA's website and first reported by Paula Woodward of 9News that the Ramsey family should "be treated only as victims," and she apologized to them.

Six-year-old JonBenet was discovered with a garrote around her neck in the basement of her parents' Boulder home on Dec. 26, 1996. No one has ever been charged in her death. Boulder police once said "an umbrella of suspicion" was over her parents, Patsy and John Ramsey.

Tabloids pointed the finger at their son, Burke, who was 9 when his sister was killed. But today, in a letter to John Ramsey, Lacy said her office wanted "to state that we do not consider your immediate family - including you, your wife, Patsy, and your son, Burke - to be under any suspicion in the commission of this crime. "I wish we could have done so before Mrs. Ramsey died." Patsy Ramsey died June 26, 2006, of ovarian cancer at age 49.

Lacy's office took over the investigation into JonBenet's death in December 2002. One of the clues they inherited was male DNA found in JonBenet's underwear that did not match that of anyone in her family. Last year, Lacy attended a National Institute of Justice program on forensic biology and DNA that introduced her to a new technology called "touch DNA," she said in the release. "Forensic scientists scrape a surface where there is no observable stain or other indication of possible DNA in an effort to recover for analysis any genetic material that might nonetheless be present. This methodology was not well-known in this country until recently and is still used infrequently," she said.

At the end of last year, her office opted to work with Bode Technology to apply the new technology to the Ramsey case. The lab scraped both sides of the waist of the long johns JonBenet was wearing over her underwear the night she was killed. This area was chosen, the release said, because it was assumed that her killer took off JonBenet's clothing and then redressed her and would have handled the long johns. The lab notified the DA on March 24 that DNA was found on both sides of the waist of the long johns. That DNA matched the DNA found years ago in JonBenet's underwear. Lacy's office had the Colorado Bureau of Investigation analyze other samples to make sure the DNA profile could not have been left during the autopsy, when JonBenet's clothes were removed. That was not the case, the CBI reported on June 27.

Lacy called the DNA found on JonBenet's clothing "very significant and powerful evidence." She said in the release, "It is very unlikely that there would be an innocent explanation for DNA found at three different locations on two separate items. It is, therefore, the position of the Boulder district attorney's office that this profile belongs to the perpetrator of the homicide." And "the most reliable forensic evidence we can hope to find" excludes all members of the Ramsey family, the release concluded.

Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner issued a statement this afternoon on the new DNA findings: "The discovery of additional matching DNA in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case is important information that raises more questions in the search for JonBenet's killer. The Boulder Police Department concurs with the Boulder District Attorney's Office that this is a significant finding. We remain committed to bringing JonBenet's killer to justice. That is, and always will be, our goal."

In the letter Lacy sent to John Ramsey dated July 9, she explained how the new DNA was found. She apologized to him and his family, saying: "To the extent that we may have contributed in any way to the public perception that you may have been involved in this crime, I am deeply sorry." She told him "solving this crime remains our goal."

When asked what receiving the letter means to him, Ramsey replied, "The most significant thing to me was the fact that we now have pretty irrefutable DNA evidence we now have very, very solid evidence and that's always been my hope, at least in the recent past, that that would lead us to the killer eventually as the DNA database grows and is populated."

Original report here




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