Police in Boulder, Colorado, announced Thursday that it “will be consulting with the Colorado Cold Case Review Team” over the 26-year-old murder of JonBenét Ramsey.
According to a news release, the police will be working with the review team “in 2023.”
Six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was found beaten and strangled in her family’s Boulder, Colorado, home on Dec. 26, 1996.
No one has ever been charged in her murder, though, according to the news release, police and the Boulder District Attorney’s Office have investigated leads “stemming from more than 21,000 tips, letters, and emails.”
“We have traveled to 19 states to interview or speak with more than 1,000 individuals,” the statement read.
The Cold Case Review Team is comprised of professional investigative, analytical and forensic experts from across the state.
“This crime has left a hole in the hearts of many, and we will never stop investigating until we find JonBenét killer,” said Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold.
Police have often been criticized for their initial handling of the case, including from the little girl’s parents.
John Ramsey, JonBenét father, supported a recent online petition that asked the governor to intervene by putting an outside agency in charge of DNA testing in his daughter’s murder.
“Somehow we’ve got to force the police, or take it away from them, the ability to go ahead and test some of the crime scene evidence that was never tested for DNA,” Ramsey told The Associated Press earlier this year. “Why that’s never been done and will never be done by the police baffles me.”
JonBenét half-brother, John Andrew Ramsey, also supported the petition that called for authorities to hand over the DNA samples that the Boulder Police Department collected at the time of the murder to a company called Parabon NanoLabs to do DNA testing in the case.
The petition noted advancements in DNA technology, the AP reported.
John Ramsey and his wife, Patsy, who died of ovarian cancer in 2006, said they believe their daughter was murdered by someone who broke into their home on Christmas night, hid and waited for the family to come home from visiting friends.
As of December 2021, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has updated more than 750 DNA samples from the investigation with the latest DNA technology, the department said in a statement.
Authorities noted that the DNA evidence they’ve gathered so far is so small it “could, in whole or in part, be consumed by DNA testing.”