Boulder, Colorado, December 1996. Snow on the rooftops of a quiet suburban street. Christmas lights still glowing in the windows of the house at 755 15th Street. The morning after Christmas, the kind of morning that is supposed to feel like the world is still resting from something good. It was 5:30 in the morning when Patsy Ramsey came downstairs. On the staircase she found three pages of handwriting, a ransom note. It demanded $118,000 for the safe return of her 6-year-old daughter. The note said, "Do not call police." The note said she is being watched. The note said, "Follow instructions and she will be returned safely." Patsy Ramsey called 911. Then she called friends, then her pastor. By 7:00 a.m. the house was full of people, neighbors, a victim advocate, a minister, and police officers who had not yet secured the house as a crime scene. They waited. They searched outside. They made phone calls. They watched the hours pass. At 1:00 in the afternoon, 7 and 1/2 hours after the note was found, a detective finally asked John Ramsey to search the house himself. He went to the basement. He found a small white door in the wine cellar. He opened it. His daughter was inside. She had been there the entire time. JonBenét Patricia Ramsey had been strangled. She had suffered a skull fracture 8 and 1/2 inches across. She had been sexually assaulted. The garrote around her neck was still attached to a wooden stick fashioned into a handle. She was 6 years old. JonBenét was born on August 6, 1990. She was the younger daughter of John Bennett Ramsey, the CEO of a technology company, and Patsy Ramsey, a former beauty queen who had turned her love of performance into something she shared with her youngest child. JonBenét competed in children's pageants, not because she was pushed into them, but because she loved them. She was a 6-year-old child who lit up when she performed. She was also a child who rode her bike, and played with her dog, and argued with her older brother Burke, and went to church with her family on Christmas morning. She attended the Ramsey's neighbors Christmas party that evening. She went to sleep in her Christmas pajamas. She was not yet 7 years old. She would never turn 7. The ransom note was the first impossibility in a case full of them. At three handwritten pages, it was the longest ransom note in American forensic history. It referenced John Ramsey's exact bonus amount from that year, $118,000, a figure that was not publicly known. It used phrases from two separate Hollywood films. It was literate, composed, and remarkably calm for something written under pressure. Most significantly, it was written inside the house. The notepad it was written on came from the Ramsey kitchen. The pen used to write it was found in the Ramsey kitchen. The killer had sat down at a counter in this family's home and written three pages before doing what they came to do. No fingerprints were found on the note, not one. The garrote around JonBenét's neck had been fashioned from a cord and a small piece of wood broken from a paintbrush found in Patsy Ramsey's art supplies. Her mouth had been taped with duct tape, but when the tape was removed, there was no saliva on the inside surface, meaning the tape was applied after she was already dead. The scene had been deliberately arranged. A suitcase was found directly beneath a basement window, the window through which investigators believed an intruder might have entered. Cobwebs on the window ledge were intact. A footprint in a scuff of dust on the suitcase's surface was eventually identified as belonging to a shoe that did not match any member of the Ramsey family. It was never conclusively matched to anyone else, either. The Boulder Police Department had no experience with a homicide case of this scale or complexity. The chief flew to Atlanta the morning of December 26th. Forensic investigators were not called to the scene immediately. By the time the house was properly processed, dozens of people had walked through it. Evidence had been touched, moved, potentially contaminated. The crime scene that should have been airtight had been compromised within the first 2 hours. A former Boulder Police Chief later acknowledged that the initial response had serious failures. Investigators focused their suspicion on the Ramseys. The family retained attorneys who restricted access. John and Patsy Ramsey were not formally interviewed until April 1997. In 1998, a grand jury was convened. For 13 months, the jurors heard evidence and reviewed forensic reports in private. In October 1999, the grand jury voted to return a true bill against both John and Patsy Ramsey. District Attorney Alex Hunter reviewed the indictments. He declined to sign them. He stated the evidence was insufficient to achieve a conviction. The indictments were sealed. They remained sealed for 15 years. In 2013, a judge ruled they could be released. The male DNA found on JonBenét's clothing became the most discussed piece of evidence. It was found in three separate locations: on the waistband of her long underwear, in her underwear, and beneath her fingernails. In 2008, District Attorney Mary Lacy sent a letter stating the DNA evidence pointed to an unexplained third party and effectively cleared the Ramsey family of suspicion. But the DNA itself remained a mystery. Was it the killer? Was it contamination from the manufacturing process? Could a DNA profile that small and that degraded be reliably interpreted? Now, in 2025, the case is moving again. In December 2023, Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfern convened a cold case review panel. The team digitized all evidence, created a searchable database of more than 21,000 tips, and reviewed nearly 2,500 pieces of physical evidence. Several items that were never tested in 1996, including the garrote, the suitcase, a climbing rope, and a backpack, are now being tested using modern DNA technology. John Ramsey has met with the police chief several times. He says he is more optimistic than he has been in years. He believes his daughter's killer can be identified within months. He believes in investigative genetic genealogy. The same technology that identified the Golden State Killer. It has identified suspects in over 500 cold cases. It requires only a signature from the Boulder Police Department authorizing Bode Technology to proceed. As of May 2025, that signature has not yet been provided. JonBenét Ramsey would be 34 years old. She would be the age of a young woman who has lived a full life. But she never got any of that. The person who killed her has lived 30 years of days she never got. But the technology that could name that person exists. It is available. It is waiting. And the file, JonBenét's file, is still open. If you have any information, please contact the Boulder Police Department. JonBenét Ramsey deserves to not be forgotten.