JonBenét Ramsey Doc Director Responds to Boulder Police Statement: “The Family Is Owed Communication” About DNA Tests (Exclusive)
One week after the release of Netflix’s Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey docuseries, the Boulder Police Department is responding to claims that it failed to properly investigate the 1996 murder of the 6-year-old pageant queen that remains unsolved nearly 30 years later.
“The killing of JonBenét was an unspeakable crime and this tragedy has never left our hearts,” Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter via Boulder Police Department Public Information Officer Dionne Waugh. “We are committed to following up on every lead and we are continuing to work with DNA experts and our law enforcement partners around the country until this tragic case is solved. This investigation will always be a priority for the Boulder Police Department.”
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Doubling down on that statement, Waugh added in the email to THR, “The assertion that there is viable evidence and leads we are not pursuing — to include DNA testing — is completely false.”
In response to the Boulder Police Department’s comments, Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey director and executive producer Joe Berlinger released a statement exclusively to THR calling on BPD to communicate directly with the Ramsey family, whom he says have been kept in the dark regarding any progress on the case.
While the Boulder Police Department’s 28-year-track record does not inspire confidence, we applaud any concrete effort they are taking to solve this horrible crime. Neither we nor the Ramsey family said BPD is currently ignoring viable evidence and leads… we said that we just don’t know if the Boulder Police Department is pursuing viable evidence or leads because they have not given any concrete information to the family. In fact, according to the family, BPD told the Ramsey’s almost two years ago that they were going to relaunch the investigation from the “ground-up” using “best practices” and bring in new investigators with “fresh eyes.” According to our information, the family was also told that BPD would provide regular updates and keep them informed on all developments. To date, the Ramsey family says it has not received any meaningful updates.
The Boulder Police Department may have requested the Cold Case Team review in 2023, but our understanding is that the Colorado Cold Case Team was established as a full-time part of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation in 2022. It advises on all cold cases across the state, not just the JonBenét case. It is our understanding that the Ramsey family had to petition the Governor of Colorado to have the case presented to the CO Cold Case Review team. This seems like it would be a routine practice for any 20+ year old child homicide. In JonBenét’s case, it required a public campaign to have this step completed. To our knowledge, no actions have been taken after the Cold Case Review presented specific recommendations to BPD.
We (the filmmaking team) and the Ramsey family believe that new DNA testing can solve this crime due to the incredible advancements in DNA technology since 1997. However, to our knowledge, BPD has not met with Bode Technology, Parabon Nanolabs or Othram. Othram is now used routinely by other law enforcement agencies due to its amazing cold case track record, including recently solving the 1995 Morgan Nick kidnapping cold case with state-of-the-art DNA technology. We are under the impression that BPD has also refused to proceed with probabilistic genotype testing. Bode Technology (a leading forensic DNA analysis lab and current custodian of the data) can quickly complete the analysis — we are told that they just need BPD to sign a release form. Why has this form not been signed?
Perhaps we are wrong and BPD is knee-deep in new DNA testing and are completing all of the recommendations by the Cold Case review team. Nothing would make us happier. The problem is that BPD has not communicated any specific information to the family. The BPD also refused to sit down and be interviewed for our documentary, which they certainly have a right to do. It is not uncommon for police departments to decline participation in documentaries about open cases. But after being so mistreated by BPD’s original investigation and the ripple effect of pain that the family has endured as a result, the Ramsey family is owed direct and specific communication about whether or not new DNA tests are being conducted, which includes re-testing of old items that were previously tested; testing old items that were previously sent to the crime lab that were inexplicably never tested; and, most important test of all: new testing on the unidentified foreign male DNA sample discovered in 1997 which is mixed with the DNA of JonBenét Ramsey and therefore compromised. New technological advances today can separate the unidentified male DNA from JonBenét’s DNA to create a much cleaner profile which can take advantage of today’s investigative genetic genealogy that has been so useful in solving recent cold cases such as the Golden State Killer and the Green River Killer.
We wish the BPD great success in finding the killer of JonBenét Ramsey and urge them to collaborate with all outside entities, including private forensic labs, who have offered to assist them in solving this horrific crime. And most of all — The Boulder District Attorney’s office has already long cleared the Ramsey family as suspects and formally apologized to them, so the team that has spent nearly two years researching and creating the Netflix documentary on this case begs you to please communicate with these victims more directly about what steps you are taking to solve this crime after almost three decades.
In response to renewed public interest in the murder of JonBenét, the Boulder Police Department released its latest investigative update, which originally had been set for publication on its website in December, ahead of schedule at the end of November, Waugh explained over email. That includes a nearly six-minute video statement from Chief Redfearn that acknowledges the department’s initial mishandling of the case. “So much of how law enforcement works has changed in the last 30 years. There are a number of things that people have pointed to throughout the years that could have been done better and we acknowledge that as true,” Redfearn stated. “However, it is important to emphasize that while we cannot go back to that horrible day in 1996, our goal is to find JonBenét Ramsey’s killer.”
In his remarks, Redfearn also brought up the Cold Case Review Panel that was created in December 2023, which Waugh said was convened by the Boulder Police Department and not the Colorado Bureau of Investigation as stated in the documentary. Redfearn stated that the review took a year to complete and consisted of more than 21,000 tips; 1,000 interviews; and samples, including handwriting, fingerprints and DNA from more than 200 individuals, to determine whether current technologies and updated forensic testing might develop new leads in the case. However, he said publicly sharing the findings would compromise the integrity of the case and any possible future prosecution.
In May 2022, the Ramsey family petitioned Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to transfer the handling of the DNA evidence in the case from the Boulder Police Department to an independent investigative agency.
“What we’re advocating for, and we’ve been doing so for the last year or so, aggressively, is we know there’s five or six items that were taken from the crime scene, sent into the lab for DNA sampling, and were not sampled so we want those items sampled,” John said in the documentary. “We want the items that have been sampled and tested to be retested and then use the public genealogy database to look for not only a match but a similar relative. That’s been used very successfully in the last three or four years by police departments to find the killer of very old cold cases but we don’t know what’s being done.”
Berlinger told THR in a prior interview that he was inspired to revisit the case of JonBenét as a result of how “poorly” the Ramsey family had been treated in years past with John, JonBenét’s mother, Patsy, and her older brother, Burke, all being suspected of her murder. The Ramseys weren’t officially cleared as suspects until 2008 by Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy. Patsy died of ovarian cancer two years earlier, in 2006.
“I think we can solve the case,” Berlinger said. “I want to give that family a measure of justice.” (Read his full interview with THR.)
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