The father of cold case murder victim JonBenet Ramsey is hoping for a breakthrough as a new police chief takes on the decades-old investigation.
John Ramsey, who is now 80, told Fox News that there is DNA evidence that has not been tested, including the garrote around his daughter's neck and the notorious ransom note.
John found his daughter's body in the basement of the Ramsey home in Boulder, Colorado on the day after Christmas in 1996. The girl, a child beauty queen, was reported missing hours earlier by her mother Patsy Ramsey, herself a former beauty pageant winner.
An unusual, two-and-a-half-page ransom note from a "small foreign faction" was found, demanding $118,000, the same amount as John's Christmas bonus. The note and a practice draft were written on a notepad from inside the home.
The investigation was tainted at its inception by police errors, including a failure to secure the scene to protect evidence.
The police initially suspected John, a successful businessman in computer software, and Patsy. They were the only people home at the time of the murder besides JonBenet and her brother Burke.
Years later, John maintains that the police buried key evidence that did not fit their theory of the Ramseys' guilt.
"We have an unidentified male DNA result from the testing they did in 1997, which … by today's standards, it was primitive," Ramsey said. "But we have an unidentified male DNA sample, which was reported to the police in January 1997. They kept that a secret because it conflicted with their conclusion that we were guilty. How do we explain that away? Which they tried desperately to do."
The case has brought intense speculation, but the killer has never been found.
In a move that was vigorously protested by police in Boulder, former District Attorney Mary Lacy publicly exonerated the Ramseys in 2008, citing a trace amount of DNA from an unknown male.
John said the new police chief of Boulder, Stephen Redfearn, comes from "outside the system."
"He's good. I like him," Ramsey told Fox News Digital, calling his new appointment "good news."
In 1999, a grand jury recommended charges against John and Patsy Ramsey for child abuse resulting in JonBenet's death, but the district attorney at the time said there wasn't enough evidence.
Patsy Ramsey died in 2006 from ovarian cancer.
