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MICHAEL RUIZ: JonBenet Ramsey investigators are retesting evidence with newer technology, police chief says

Investigators in Boulder are retesting decades-old evidence in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey as her family nears 30 years since the unsolved slaying in their former Colorado home.

✦ Extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting•From 1 source•1 min read•Updated November 13, 2026, 11:00 AM UTC
Key points
  • Although investigators have pursued a number of potential suspects, persons of interest and theories about how she died over the years, no one has been convicted, and her death remains one of America's most prominent unsolved cases.
  • CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM THE FOX TRUE CRIME HUB The process can be destructive to the evidence, especially when there isn't much left, he said, and that complicates things under evidence rules that must be validated and stand up in court.
  • GET BREAKING NEWS BY EMAIL While tips continue to come in regularly almost three decades after JonBenet's slaying, investigators are still asking anyone who may have information to come forward.

"Chief [Steve] Redfearn and I are more hopeful now than we have been in the past because of the advances in the investigation and the advances in technology," Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty told reporters in a news briefing this week.

Additional details
  • "It's no secret," Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn told reporters in a sit-down interview earlier this week.
  • Among the benefits of rapidly improving technology is an increasingly successful ability to identify DNA profiles contained in mixed samples, Dougherty added.
  • "But if it's touch, and it's a single source, that's different than if it's touch or saliva, and it is a mixture." SIGN UP TO GET THE LATEST TRUE CRIME NEWS When two or more people leave DNA on the same surface, it must first be untangled in a lab.
  • SEND US A TIP "We're not gonna do it recklessly, to use Chief Redfearn's word," Dougherty said.
  • 26, 1996, when JonBenet was found strangled and with head trauma in the basement of her home.

How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →

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