CHAPTER 27
DNA
Front cover of CBI DNA Report
CHRONOLOGY
January 1997—Colorado Bureau of Investigation releases some preliminary DNA information to the Boulder Police Department.
February 1997—BPD officials send DNA for testing to Cellmark Diagnostics in Maryland.
May 1997—Cellmark Diagnostics DNA test results reveal “no surprises” as they are similar to the CBI results.
July 2008—Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy clears the Ramsey family based on advanced DNA “touch” testing from the Bode Technological Group.
February 2015—Former Boulder Police Chief Beckner does his first extensive interview related to the Ramsey murder investigation on the Reddit website.
IT’S THIS SIMPLE ABOUT THE DNA in the JonBenét Ramsey murder case:
In a new and advanced “touch DNA” test conducted in 2008 on JonBenét’s clothing, two new areas of DNA were found on two spots on the inside of the waistband of her long johns. The waistband represented a previously untested area. The newly discovered DNA matched the 1997 DNA collected from her panties. The 2008 test had been conducted on the request of Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy.
In 1997, two different agencies consulted by the Boulder Police Department had tested foreign DNA that had been found in three places: mixed with blood in JonBenét’s panties and under her fingernails on both hands. The three samples that were tested twice in 1997, although weak, had indicators that they matched each other. All the samples had been taken from the same unknown male and excluded individual members of the Ramsey family.
In 2008, Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy hired the Bode Technology Group in Virginia to analyze the untested areas on JonBenét’s clothing with the new, advanced “touch DNA” technique. Bode Technology Group in Virginia had performed DNA tests in thousands of criminal cases and helped identify criminals, terrorists and victims of war and natural disasters. In 2008, the lab found that the newly unidentified DNA in the Ramsey case matched the unidentified DNA that had been collected from a different area of JonBenét’s clothing and tested in 1997. None of this DNA matched anyone in the Ramsey family; not John, not Patsy, not their children or immediate relatives.
District Attorney Lacy had worked in the Boulder DA’s sex assault unit before she was elected DA in 2001.
After Lacy was elected, she took the Ramsey case away from the Boulder Police Department and moved it into her own office. Because of her prior experience as an attorney in the Boulder DA’s office who handled sexual assault cases, Lacy (with her investigators) considered whether there were any other places the killer could have left evidence on JonBenét’s clothing. They reasoned that the killer would have used his fingertips and perhaps shed skin cells when he pulled down JonBenét’s long johns in order to sexually assault her. This was the reason why they had two places on the inside waistband of her long johns tested.
“We became aware last summer that some private laboratories were conducting a new methodology described as ‘touch DNA,’” Lacy wrote in a letter to John Ramsey that was dated July 9, 2008. “The Bode Technology laboratory was able to develop a profile from DNA recovered from the two sides of the long johns,” she continued. “The previously identified profile from the crotch of the underwear worn by JonBenét at the time of the murder matched the DNA recovered from the long johns at Bode.
“Unexplained DNA on the victim of a crime is powerful evidence. The match of male DNA on two separate items of clothing worn by the victim at the time of the murder makes it clear to us that an unknown male handled these items,” Lacy explained. “Despite substantial efforts over the years to identify the source of this DNA, there is no innocent explanation for its incriminating presence at three sites on these two different items of clothing that JonBenét was wearing at the time of her murder.”
The three sites Lacy was referring to were two spots on the left and right sides of the inside waistband of the long johns tested in 2008 and one site in JonBenét’s underwear, which was first tested in 1997. The DNA found under JonBenét’s fingernails in 1997 was not mentioned in the 2008 comparison.
Lacy acknowledged, “There will be those who will choose to continue to differ with our conclusion. But DNA is very often the most reliable forensic evidence we can hope to find, and we rely on it often to bring to justice those who have committed crimes.”
DNA has become an incredible indicator. It cannot identify the perpetrator of a crime, only confirm the identity of the person belonging to the DNA, but that is usually what is needed to identify and convict a suspect.
Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner issued a statement in 2008 on the “trace” DNA results found by District Attorney Lacy that seemed to indicate that a stranger had killed JonBenét Ramsey: “This is a significant finding. The police department has continued to look diligently for the source of the foreign DNA, and to date, we have compared DNA samples taken from more than 200 people,” Beckner said. “Finding the source of the DNA is key to helping us determine who killed JonBenét.”
Still, rumors denouncing the new DNA findings swirled.
On February 21, 2015, nearly two decades after JonBenét was killed, former Boulder Police Chief Beckner, who had retired in 2014, answered questions in an extensive question-and-answer interview on the website Reddit.com. This interview represented the most that Beckner had ever talked publicly about the Ramsey murder case. It is important to understand that Beckner had more continuing influence on the case than any other law enforcement officer. He was working on the case within three weeks of JonBenét’s murder. He was appointed commander of the Ramsey investigation in the fall of 1997. He was appointed Boulder Police Chief in the fall of 1998 and guided the case as police chief for nearly sixteen years.
In the Reddit Internet interview, Beckner speculated on possible sources of the DNA in ways that reflected the mantra of some Boulder investigators who’d been on the case for most of the past eighteen years when he said: “Manufacturing process is one. Interactions with other people is another. Intentional placement is another. Belongs to an intruder is another. Yes, you can often tell where DNA comes from. In this case, it is small enough that it is difficult to tell. CBI [Colorado Bureau of Investigation] thought it was either sweat or saliva.” Yet the DNA samples had been significant enough to fit the stringent FBI Combined DNA Index System or CODIS format for inclusion of DNA.
Three days after the Reddit question-and-answer interview went live online, Beckner did a case-changing complete public reversal on his DNA comments, according to a February 24, 2015 article published in the Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder. In that article, Beckner is quoted as saying, “I think the only thing I would emphasize is that the unknown DNA (from JonBenét’s clothing) is very important. And I’m not involved anymore, but that has got to be the focus of the investigation. In my opinion, at this point, that’s your suspect.”
This 2015 comment was the first time Beckner had ever acknowledged a direct link from the DNA to a suspect in the Ramsey murder. Prior to this, Boulder Police Department rumors had asserted that the DNA was not key to solving this murder.1 In essence, what the former chief said meant: the DNA does not match the Ramseys, so they are not suspects in the murder. Only the Daily Camera picked up and published this case-changing statement.
Those who officially researched it considered the foreign DNA weak, but the DNA profile contained sufficient alleles and met the rigid criteria for inclusion in the FBI’s CODIS.
The CODIS program is a national computerized data bank operated by the FBI that stores DNA profiles of convicted and charged offenders or unknown profiles from criminal incidents. It is accessible to law enforcement officials for comparison purposes and for entering DNA profiles as long as such profiles have been approved for admittance by the FBI based on certain criteria. In order to be admitted into CODIS, DNA must be identified by forensic analysts to have eight to thirteen physical locations of genes on alleles.
When a DNA profile submitted by law enforcement “hits” or matches a DNA profile in the CODIS database, the FBI notifies the submitting agency so additional testing and comparisons can be done of the subject who has been identified.
As of March 2016, the National DNA Index contained more than 12,253,681 offender profiles, 2,292,478 profiles of people arrested and 690,220 forensic profiles. While CODIS has produced more than 325,615 hits assisting investigations, the foreign DNA found on JonBenét Ramsey is one of the 500,000-plus forensic profiles with no DNA match, so far, in CODIS.2
According to DNA experts, there could be several reasons why no match has been found in the JonBenét case. One reason is untested rape kits, an issue that was investigated in a series of reports in USA TODAY:
“In the most detailed nationwide inventory of untested rape kits ever, USA TODAY and journalists from more than 75 Gannett newspapers and TEGNA TV stations have found at least 70,000 neglected kits in an open-records campaign covering 1,000-plus police agencies—and counting. Despite its scope, the agency-by-agency count covers a fraction of the nation’s 18,000 police departments, suggesting the number of untested rape kits reaches into the hundreds of thousands … The records reveal widespread inconsistency in how police handle rape evidence from agency to agency, and even officer to officer. Some departments test every rape kit. Others send as few as two in 10 to crime labs.”3 Since the USA TODAY investigation was published, several legislative jurisdictions in the US have passed mandatory legislation requiring time limits on the testing of DNA, including in rape cases.
The National Institute of Justice said in 2015 that it is “unknown, nation-wide” how many untested DNA and DNA sexual assault kits exist in the US.
Other possible reasons why no match has been found with regard to the DNA in the JonBenét Ramsey case involve state requirements on who must give DNA samples. Due to a lack of uniformity among states on who is required to give DNA, some people convicted of crimes have never been tested.4
In 1988, Colorado became the first state in the country to require collection of DNA from sex offenders. Since April 2002, all convicted felons in Colorado, not just sex offenders, have been required to give DNA samples to law enforcement agencies. In September 2010, Colorado lawmakers expanded the law again to require that DNA from all charged felony suspects be uploaded into CODIS for comparison. If no felony convictions are filed against the suspects, the law allows their DNA samples to be destroyed after one year.
JonBenét’s DNA saga began its “nothing is ever easy with this case” format with the results of the first testing on January 15, 1997. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation gave the results of its testing to the Boulder Police Department. While the CBI results did not conclusively identify anyone, they did eliminate the Ramseys, provided the foreign DNA found all matched one person. The DNA results were publicized four months later, but not completely. An unnamed “source” leaked that the DNA tests were “not conclusive,” even though the test results had eliminated the Ramseys and several of their friends as possible suspects.
The 1997 Colorado Bureau of Investigation DNA report concluded:
The DNA profiles developed from [bloodstains from panties as well as from right- and left-hand fingernails from JonBenét] revealed a mixture from which the major component matched JonBenét. If the minor components contributed from [bloodstains from panties as well as from right- and left-hand fingernails from JonBenét] were contributed by a single individual, then John Andrew Ramsey, Melinda Ramsey, John B. Ramsey, Patricia Ramsey, Burke Ramsey, Jeff Ramsey, [etc.] would be excluded as a source of the DNA analyzed on those exhibits.
That document is still sealed.
Dr. Elizabeth Johnson from Thousand Oaks, California, is an expert in DNA analysis. She studied the 1997 CBI report at my request and concluded that the minor or foreign DNA tested at that time was “very weak.” Dr. Johnson said there is an indication that the DNA from all three 1997 samples was from the same person. She added that, if the DNA from these samples was from the same person, it eliminated the Ramseys and their family members as contributors to the mixture.
As mentioned earlier in this book, despite the 2008 “trace” result findings, some law enforcement officials still do not believe those findings exonerated the Ramseys. Instead, some believe that this DNA could have come from law enforcement or medical personnel who had mishandled the evidence. Forensic analysts say it’s possible that a “secondary transfer” could occur with “touch DNA.” This occurs when a person touches a second person who then touches something else and leaves the first person’s touch DNA or cell DNA in a strategic area. In the Ramsey murder case, several people involved in processing the new set of DNA, including “all” CBI and Denver Police Department lab people handling these items, were tested and cleared as possible contributors.5
Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett took office in January 2009 after District Attorney Lacy’s terms were completed. At that time, he returned the Ramsey murder investigation to the Boulder Police Department. “There are persons in law enforcement, or who used to be in law enforcement, who believe that the Ramseys are guilty and they contact me from time to time,” he said. “I tell them the same thing I tell everyone else: the Ramseys are presumed innocent and are entitled to be treated with that presumption. All I care about is the evidence and unless, at some point, I have sufficient evidence to charge someone in a court of law, where I will openly explain to a judge or jury my views of this case, I have no comment about the state of the evidence.”
Garnett did talk extensively off the record, but at the time did not want to say more because “it’s still an open case.” “What I want to make sure I do,” he added, “is to not say anything publicly that forecloses my ability to follow whatever evidence that may develop in the case in the future. I think I owe that to the public and that’s what I’ve tried to do. I also understand the Ramseys are presumed innocent. They’ve been exonerated by letter by my predecessor, which really has no legal effect, but certainly emphasizes that they’re presumed innocent … I will follow the evidence.”