JonBenét Ramsey’s father is pushing back against reports that the Colorado prosecutor now overseeing his daughter’s cold-case murder would not have cleared the Ramsey family as suspects if he had been in office when a predecessor did so in 2008. His comments came as the family revealed that investigators delivered an encouraging update earlier this year.
“After 30 years, if they still think I am guilty, then please file charges, and we will settle this in court based on facts and evidence,” John Ramsey told News Media Wednesday. He was responding to remarks from Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, who recently told local reporters that he “would not have” publicly excluded the family as suspects, as former District Attorney Mary Lacy did in 2008.
“They can’t selectively apply the unknown male DNA both ways,” Ramsey said. “They have cleared a number of interesting suspects based on their DNA not matching unidentified male No. 1 DNA recovered from JonBenét’s person.”
John Ramsey speaks with News Media in Las Vegas in April 2022. He is the father of JonBenét Ramsey, the Colorado 6-year-old whose murder on Dec. 26, 1996, remains unsolved nearly 30 years later. (Michael Ruiz/News Media)
Dougherty declined a News Media interview request Wednesday. His office said he planned to release video of his local interview online after concerns that his comments had been taken out of context beneath a headline that read, “Boulder County DA says Ramseys shouldn’t have been cleared in JonBenét’s murder.”
“I’ve never ruled out people in a case that’s unsolved,” he told local reporters Tuesday, according to The Boulder Daily Camera newspaper. “Doing right by the victim demands that I remain open-minded and committed to following the evidence wherever it leads.”
JonBenét Ramsey pictured in an undated portrait. The Colorado 6-year-old was found dead in her home Dec. 26, 1996, in one of America’s most high-profile unsolved cases. (Splash News)
Retired FBI agent Jason Pack, who has followed the case for decades, described Dougherty’s position as a standard investigative approach.
“If new evidence challenges an assumption made years ago, they need to take another look,” he told News Media. “That doesn’t mean accusing somebody all over again. It means being willing to let the evidence change the direction of the investigation.”
According to the Boulder City medical examiner, the 6-year-old died from strangulation and head trauma. Her family reported her missing, then discovered her body in the basement of their home the following day, Dec. 26, 1996.
Since then, investigators have reviewed more than 20,000 tips and hundreds of pieces of evidence. They have also compared previously collected DNA with more than 750 “reference samples.”
Either they believe they have the killer’s DNA — or not.
As News Media has previously reported, initial DNA testing did not link JonBenét’s immediate family to the evidence. Police nevertheless continued to consider her parents potential suspects for years.
“Either they believe they have the killer’s DNA or not,” the family patriarch said. “This problem of selective use of evidence to try and fit things to their opinion rather than use evidence to solve the crime has been the problem from the beginning.”
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The home in Boulder, Colorado, where JonBenét Ramsey was murdered in December 1996 is pictured Aug. 17, 2006. Investigators have said renewed DNA testing has raised hopes of solving the decades-old cold case. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)
As recently as last year, police still possessed some untested DNA collected from the 1996 crime scene. John Ramsey has urged authorities to use modern investigative genetic genealogy techniques to pursue additional leads.
JonBenét’s half-brother, John Andrew Ramsey, said the family received an encouraging update from Boulder police earlier this year.
Investigators told the family that evidence had been sent to a laboratory for testing late last year, he told News Media Wednesday. Authorities have not publicly confirmed the testing or disclosed any results, but he suggested it involved DNA.
“We met with them in February 2026, and they had this new message of hope and optimism,” he said. “We took that to mean they were close to sending something off for SNP testing.”
Even so, he said he does not know whether authorities will announce a significant development before the 30th anniversary of JonBenét’s death in December.
“I think if they were super close, they would not be talking to the press,” he said. “Six to 12 months, being super optimistic. Two to five years, no problem.”
Some experts believe DNA evidence could have excluded the family during the investigation’s early weeks. Others maintain that no suspect is truly ruled out until a case is solved.
The late Colorado Springs Detective Lou Smit returned from retirement in 1997 at the request of the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office to assist with the case. He argued that an intruder, rather than a family member, was the most likely perpetrator.
Smit left the investigation in 1998, citing tensions with the Boulder Police Department, which had focused on the Ramsey family as suspects.
“I strongly disagree with anyone saying the Ramseys should not have been cleared,” said John Anderson, a friend of Smit’s and a former El Paso County sheriff who wrote a book about the case.
Multiple potential suspects have surfaced during the nearly three decades since JonBenét’s death, but the case remains unsolved.