The sad cold case of JonBenet Ramsey has dragged on for almost 26 years while her father has desperately sought the child’s killer and he’s now calling on Colorado Governor Jared Polis to meet in person as time is running out to get answers in the murder.

John Ramsey is 78 years old and has five children. His wife has already passed on. He doesn’t think he has all that much time left and is begging the governor to help him get justice in the murder of his daughter that occurred at the family’s Boulder, Colorado, home the day after Christmas in 1996 when she was only 6 years old.

The distraught father has been pushing the Boulder Police Department (BPD) to hand over evidence from the case that they have had in their custody since JonBenet’s murder. He wants it turned over to an independent agency that has the technological capabilities to test DNA and uncover who the child’s killer is. Ramsey has sent a letter to the governor requesting to meet in person so he can force the police to move on the matter, according to Fox News.

“I am 78 now and realize that time for answers is running out,” Ramsey told the governor in his Oct. 3 letter. “The murder of my daughter can never be undone. There will never be peace or closure. But there can and should be justice. As a community, a state, and a nation, we should demand that from ourselves and our leaders. Whoever is responsible for this has lived the last 25 years in fear of being discovered; in fear that technology would one day evolve to the point that this homicide could be solved. That day, and that technology, are here now.”

“Solving the murder of my daughter will not fill the void in my heart but it will identify and remove a demented and dangerous person from our midst and, in doing so, potentially protect the lives of other children. There is no higher responsibility of a governor than that. As an elected leader, but more importantly, as a father, I respectfully ask you to do the right thing,” he pleaded.

The letter was sent along with a Change.org petition titled “Justice for JonBenet” to Polis. It has almost 29,000 signatures from across the country asking for the police to turn over the evidence.

According to Ramsey’s letter, the petition requests that the governor direct the police department “to move all DNA samples and crime scene evidence that may contain samples to an independent, outside agency of your choosing,” which “would then work with a private forensics lab, like Othram or Parabon Nanolabs, that utilizes proven, cutting-edge technology to get these samples analyzed and sequenced.”

According to Fox News, Polis has not responded to Ramsey as of Tuesday.

Someone did a job of hiding who the killer was years before.

— dpickle (@dugpickell1) November 30, 2022

The details of the case are well-known. Patsy Ramsey, the mother, reported JonBenet missing to police on the morning of Dec. 26, 1996, after finding a ransom note that demanded $118,000 for the return of the child. John Ramsey found JonBenet’s little body later that day and there were signs of sexual abuse. She had been strangled to death and there was blunt-force trauma to her head as well. Her killer has still not been found or identified.

The father is calling on Polis to “insert himself” into the case and “make a couple of things happen.”

“One is to test the crime scene samples that we know have not been tested for DNA evidence and … employ an outside, cutting edge lab to do that,” Ramsey wrote.

“[T]he FBI told us this six or eight months ago: ‘We don’t have the latest technology that is only available in these outside labs,’ and that’s where we need to go. And so we want that to be done,” he added in the letter. “And then to hopefully … take that to the public genealogy database and work that database for information that’s been very successful on some very old cold cases.”

The @boulderpolice and @GovofCO will not hand over the DNA found on JonBenet's clothing for independent testing.

Why do they not want to solve this case and find the killer? https://t.co/Op64dB23ma

— SharonSisterUpstairs #PPC #USECASH #PEACENOW (@Sharon75571311) November 25, 2022

The governor’s press secretary, Conor Cahill, told Fox News that Polis is in receipt of the letter and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) “continues to collaborate with the Boulder Police Department and the DA’s office on this case.”

“In addition to talking with private DNA labs, [BPD] will be consulting with the Colorado Cold Case Review Team in 2023. The Cold Case Review Team is comprised of professional investigative, analytical, and forensic experts from across the state. The Review Team is another tool to help further cold case homicide investigations, including making recommendations based on best practices in the investigative field,” Cahill noted, indicating that the case will stay within the BPD’s purview.

Get the latest BPR news delivered free to your inbox daily. SIGN UP HERE

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.