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JonBenet’s parents Patsy and John Ramsey. Patsy died of cancer in 2006
Nearly 12 years after a six year old girl was sexually abused and murdered in her parent’s home in an affluent suburb of Boulder, Colorado, the DA’s office has revealed that DNA evidence uncovered using new technology has cleared her entire family of the crime.

JonBenet Ramsey was murdered the day after Christmas in 1996. The case was plastered all over the news for months. Video clips were played ad naseum of JonBenet competing in child beauty pageants and the media speculated who would commit such a horrible crime against a privileged little girl. Although there was only little or no evidence that pointed to her father or stepfather as the perpetrator, many people believed that it must have been a coverup by the family.

New DNA has been discovered on clothing worn by JonBenet at the time of her death which comes from an unrelated male and fully exonerates the Ramseys. The advanced scientific method used to find traces of the murderer was only recently developed. It’s called “touch DNA” and enables scientists to extract and test DNA from skin cells that are shed when an object is touched.

The Boulder County DA’s office has issued an official statement and apology in light of this new information. It also sounds like there is little chance that this DNA came from contaminated evidence, because it matches a drop of blood found on the scene.

On Wednesday, the Boulder County district attorney, Mary T. Lacy, said definitively that the whispers about prosecutorial plots and favoritism were fantasy. A new technique of analysis, Ms. Lacy said in a letter to JonBenet’s father, John Ramsey, has found DNA traces, unobtainable by earlier methods, of an unidentified male on the long johns JonBenet wore the night she died.

The DNA is not from a member of the Ramsey family and is almost definitely that of the killer, who would have presumably removed or otherwise handled the long johns, Ms. Lacy said.

The genetic material matches that from a drop of blood found on JonBenet’s underwear early in the investigation. The authorities determined then that the blood was not from a member of the Ramsey family but could not say whether it came from the killer, Ms. Lacy said.

The letter to Mr. Ramsey said the new evidence “has vindicated your family,” adding, “No innocent person should have to endure such an extensive trial in the court of public opinion.” It said specifically that neither Mr. Ramsey nor his wife, Patsy, who died of cancer in 2006, nor their son, Burke, was “under any suspicion in the commission of this crime.”

Two years ago, Ms. Lacy’s office announced with great fanfare the arrest of a suspect, John M. Karr, after what Ms. Lacy described at the time as “several months of a focused and complex investigation.” But Mr. Karr’s DNA did not match, and less than two weeks later Ms. Lacy announced that he had been cleared of suspicion.

The methodology that led to Wednesday’s announcement, called “touch DNA” analysis, is essentially a way of looking for traces of genetic material that earlier methods would have overlooked.

[From The NY Times]

This is long overdue news for this family. JonBenet’s mother, Patsy Ramsy, died of ovarian cancer in 2006 at the age of 49. Her father John is still alive, though, and says he’s grateful for the DA’s continued effort in the case, and their statement and apology.

As for why there was such suspicion on the family, CNN’s Mary Snow said that John Ramsey told her that “People found it hard to accept people would come into a home and murder a child this way.” And that “The case became an entertainment event for the media.”

Now that prosecutors have the DNA fingerprint of the killer, maybe they’ll be able to find the real murderer.

Here’s a clip from CNN on this breaking news:

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