DNA clears JonBenet Ramsey’s family

BOULDER, Colo. – JonBenet Ramsey, the 6-year-old beauty queen whose slaying has stymied investigators in this college town for more than a decade, did not die at the hands of her family, a Boulder official said Wednesday.

New DNA evidence supports the theory that an unidentified man killed the child, according to Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy.

“We do not consider your immediate family, including you, your wife, Patsy, and your son Burke, to be under any suspicion in the commission of this crime,” Lacy wrote in a letter delivered to John Ramsey.

“I wish we could have done so before Mrs. Ramsey died,” the letter added. Patsy Ramsey died in June 2006 of ovarian cancer.

It was Lacy’s strongest statement to date clearing the family of any wrongdoing in the Dec. 26, 1996, death of JonBenet, who was found in her family’s basement with a garrote around her neck. Speculation swirled that family members were involved, and the Ramseys became fodder for tabloid stories.

At the time, the Boulder Police Department said that the Ramseys were under an “umbrella of suspicion” – a statement they have never retracted.

The department’s involvement in the case ended in 2002, when Lacy’s office took over the investigation.