John Ramsey has sharply criticized remarks by the Colorado prosecutor now overseeing his daughter’s unsolved murder case. The family also says investigators offered an encouraging update earlier this year.
Ramsey said Wednesday that if authorities still consider him guilty nearly 30 years after JonBenét’s death, they should file charges and let the evidence be tested in court. His response followed comments from Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty, who said he would not have publicly cleared the family in 2008, as his predecessor Mary Lacy did.
“They can’t selectively apply the unknown male DNA both ways,” Ramsey said, arguing that investigators have excluded several people because their DNA did not match an unidentified male sample recovered from JonBenét.
Dougherty did not agree to an interview Wednesday. His office said he planned to share video of his recent comments after concerns that a headline had presented them without context.
“I’ve never ruled out people in a case that’s unsolved,” Dougherty told local reporters Tuesday. He said investigators must remain open-minded and follow the evidence wherever it leads.
That approach is standard in an open investigation, said Jason Pack, a retired FBI agent who has followed the case for years. If new evidence calls an old assumption into question, investigators should revisit it, he said, without necessarily accusing anyone again.
JonBenét, 6, died from strangulation and head trauma, according to the Boulder medical examiner. Her family reported her missing on Dec. 26, 1996; she was found dead in the basement of their home the following day. Investigators have since reviewed more than 20,000 tips and hundreds of pieces of evidence, comparing recovered DNA with more than 750 reference samples.
Early DNA testing did not find a match with JonBenét’s immediate family, though her parents remained under scrutiny for years. Ramsey said investigators should either believe they have the killer’s DNA or not, and accused them of using evidence selectively instead of letting it guide the investigation.
Some DNA collected at the crime scene remained untested as recently as last year. Ramsey has urged authorities to use modern investigative genetic genealogy techniques to develop new leads.
JonBenét’s half-brother, John Andrew Ramsey, said the family received a hopeful update from Boulder police earlier this year. He said they learned that evidence had been sent to a laboratory for testing late last year. Authorities have not publicly confirmed the testing or released results, but he believes it may involve DNA.
“We met with them in February 2026, and they had this new message of hope and optimism,” he said. The family took that to mean investigators were nearing the point of sending evidence for SNP testing.
He is unsure whether there will be a significant development before the 30th anniversary in December. If investigators were close to a breakthrough, he suggested, they might not be speaking publicly. He estimated that a result could come in six to 12 months in an especially optimistic scenario, or perhaps in two to five years.
Experts disagree about whether the family could have been ruled out early in the investigation based on DNA. Some say the evidence could have cleared them in the first weeks; others argue no one should be excluded until a case is solved.
Retired Colorado Springs detective Lou Smit joined the investigation in 1997 at the Boulder County district attorney’s request. He believed an intruder was more likely responsible than a family member, but left the case the following year, citing tensions with Boulder police, who had focused on the family.
John Anderson, a friend of Smit’s and a former El Paso County sheriff who wrote a book about the case, said he strongly disagreed with the suggestion that the Ramseys should not have been cleared.
Several possible suspects have emerged over the nearly three decades since JonBenét’s killing. The case remains unsolved.
